I finished up my last year and a half as a transportation officer at the Camp Lejeune brig (military prison). I was what is known as an Escort/Chaser at MCIEAST. Once upon a time, before my time, if a prisoner escaped and you were the escort and you didn't succeed in your efforts to chase them (thus the name chaser), you did their time until the prisoner was back in custody.
Anyhow, one of the least enjoyable tasks that we were faced with was cleaning the idiot seagulls out of the razor wire. They are foul beasts, truly foul. Once they're opened up on the wire, the smell is horrific. Rank doesn't even begin to describe it. It's like an assault on all of your senses the first time you see it. It looks bad, it sounds bad, and it smells bad. You glove up to remove them (I never had to do that - not my job, thanks) but I imagine they feel bad and I'm sure they taste bad.
If anyone is curious, military prisons are nothing at all like civilian prisons. Sure, the inmates were far more dangerous in a military prison but they have a whole different level of respect. In the military you go to prison as your punishment. The worst thing that they can do is take away your freedom. It seems that with civilian prisons you go there to be punished.
A plaque on the barracks wall said, "There but by the grace of God go I." That plaque has a positive impact on me - even today. We treated our prisoners with the utmost respect - firm but fair. We did carry a loaded firearm, in a shoulder holster, while transporting the prisoners but the pistols get locked in a safe/lock box and never go into the secure facility. Regular guards do/did not carry any weapon other than a strong pepper-spay.
What I do find confusing is that I've seen, specifically, Polish jokes here on Slashdot that were moderated up. They're white so it's okay to be racist towards them? I've seen this happen on more than on occasion. One of them was, as I recall, +5 funny and I seem to recall 30% of the votes (if you click on 'em you can see 'em) were +1 informative.
Sadly, the joke that I'm mentioning wasn't even a good joke. It was just crude. Someone had said the screen door on a submarine joke and the follow up was, "Why do the seagulls fly upside down over Poland? There's nothing worthwhile to shit on." I called 'em a racist prick and took -1 Troll like a man. And no, no I'm not white. I'm a mutt. In order, I am a Micmac, Irish, English, Black African. I look Asian and speak Spanish fairly well. I love to slip into Spanish and confuse people who are looking at me. With a little effort, I can kind of blend in with any race and many cultures. So, it has its benefits.
Oh no... Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I was saying that the Nazis really didn't have a huge technical advantage over the Allied Forces and citing examples of meaningful tech that the Allied Forces had as examples as to where it was closer than many people think. We all had individual peaks and valleys, so to speak and an average (if we could make one) would put them on par with one another or fairly close.
The "it could have gone either way" kind of left out the option for a stalemate in my head - perhaps that's not what you meant but that was how I read it. After, what was it, Potsdam? After that there was no hope for a stalemate - unconditional surrender was the only option.
Also, I left something out. I think at one point it could have gone either way - now that I think about it. Had Hitler just kept building up his arsenal and actually forwarded the tech prior to invading Poland then they just might have come out on top as everyone around him was really not doing a whole lot to prepare until things started to go crazy.
From your post, I can see you're familiar with the firearm improvements, the jet, the rocket powered plane called Comet as I recall, the rockets, wire guided ordinance, and I seem to recall they had played with radio controlled ordinance but that might have been the Allies. At any rate, if he'd stocked up and allowed the new tech to grow instead of pushing it off to the side because he thought he had an easy victory then, maybe, they'd have managed to get an armistice or even "win" for a while. Poking the bear was a horrible choice.
Japan and Italy were really both at a disadvantage scientifically. The only novel thing that Italy really seems to have done is use three engines on their planes and miniature submarines. Much of what Japan has was largely copied from others. I seem to recall that their main battle rifle was from 1905. Germany helped them out. Oh, heh... Japan had a helicopter, of sorts. It was tethered to a ship and used to see beyond the horizon - based on something they'd bought from Bell and copied so it's not really *their* tech per se.
You're right. I do. I consider owning property an essential liberty. I am free because I can own property. In fact, ownership of property is one of the cornerstones to freedom.
You may not like it or understand it but that's saying more about you than about me. I also own a house (three technically), some rental property, shares in a bunch of business, clothing, a bunch of books and computers, and a lot of cars. Oh, and I own property in two countries (soon to be three).
Some of the many things I own are firearms. Just because you're scared of them doesn't mean that I can't be trusted with them. The only things that have to worry about me and a firearm are bits of paper and an animal that I think is going to be tasty.
However, I mostly posted 'cause I saw you debating with the other guy and, frankly, they were not putting up a nearly valid defense. You can't just win a debate with that guy and say, "I won! I'm right!" No... LOL No! That's like beating up a toddler and then saying you're the boxing champion of the world.
Now, are you going to posit that ownership of property is not a cornerstone of freedom? You can say that you're scared of firearms and want them to be outlawed, that's okay to hold that belief. You can say that you want to be less free (having fewer liberties) if you want and that's a fine position to hold. However, when you enact legislation based on fear you end up with really bad laws.
Let's clarify some terms: Liberty, freedom, and rights. You are free to kill me. You do not have the liberty to do so. If you do, then they will take away your freedom and remove your right to bear arms.
If you want to be less fewer liberties then you can do so and that's a fine position for you to hold in your country. You can even hold that position in my country but nobody is going to listen to you. I do not want to be less free. I want as many liberties as I can reasonably have. I like math, do you like math?
In the United States, in 2013, your odds of being murdered with a firearm were ~35:1,000,000. The number of homicides (and other crimes and even gun violence) has been trending down for quite some time.
So, no... Basing legislation on fear is how you end up with governments trying to put a back door in encryption, the TSA, Homeland Security, excessively long prison sentences, watch lists, no-fly lists, and many other things. You can be less free while enjoying the illusion of security but you don't get to use your cowardice as a means to take away my liberties.
Damn it all to hell! I had a huge and beautiful response and it was a perfect time waster. Then I somehow opened the menu and managed to close the browser in its entirety. I'd cited a few good examples of the US (as well as some Allied) science was well in the lead. Things like Fat Man and Little Boy, the Jeep, the B-29, the B-17, P-51, M-1, M-202, M-30, more accurate RADAR (thanks to improving on a UK design that they shipped over), and the list goes on and on.
Finally, I'm going to have to also politely disagree with your statement that Germany was ever close to winning the war. Hell no... The Russians were right pissed. If anything, people shouldn't be thanking America for winning the war (we didn't - we did help quite a bit) but they should be thanking the Americans for not having to speak Russian today. Left to his own devices, Stalin would have just taken that land, all of it, until he ran into Atlantic. They were on a rape, murder, and pillage spree. (Quite literally.)
If you want to say that Germany *might* have been close to winning if they'd never acted on Operation Barbarossa then I *might* agree with some caveats but, no... There's no meaningful, simple, choices that Germany could have made that would have ended the outcome of the war. They did stupid shit like letting the Allies capture some 250,000 people due to Operation Torch. North Africa is where the Germans surrendered their most troops in one fell swoop.
At any rate, from what I know and from the vast majority of historians that I know of, Germany was never close to winning the war. They were kind of, sort of, close to prolonging it but you'd have to change so many facts/choices to get any outcome other than a loss. It was more like a comedy of errors that got them as far as they did. I can go into details if you want.
While I'm here... Some silly trivia like the above capturing record...
The Soviets had more than one type of tank. It wasn't terrible. The T-34 is nice but not the only tank they built. The T-34 was still in service with some countries up until the mid-1990s. The ME-109 was produced in the highest number, ever. D-day was the largest amphibious landing ever conducted. Antwerp got more rockets dropped on them than any other place. Malta got the bombs -- like more than anywhere else by area *and* by duration and by total number (if you count only Axis bombs). I forget the name but it was actually a small town in Germany that got more bombs than even Berlin. Polish people contributed a great deal and were instrumental in the push to Rome (they were the group that made it up the mountain to the monastery). Omaha was actually supposed to be less heavily defended than the other beach. None of Japan's Unit 731 (live human vivisection, germ warfare, etc) scientists were ever prosecuted. The convicted war criminals, from Japan, are still worshiped to this day by some Japanese people. Canada is full of badasses, they're just polite because they don't feel like killing you today. The ME-262 was the first operational jet fighter but based on an HE-111 (I think? Some HE model was first.) Roughly 75% of the people Japan took prisoner did not survive. The two big bombs were not the only deciding factor - the Russians had started curb stomping Japan too. Angry Russians love to rape, murder, pillage, and burn. They were really pissed. Some 24,000,000 Russians died in the war, more than even Germany. Both of Germany's giant guns (one was Big Bertha, the other I forget the name but was at Sevastopol) from both World Wars disappeared and we've never found them. Germany made some awesome weapons but one of the greatest was the 88 mm which served multiple roles. Not much is as awesome as the wooden plane known as the Mosquito. That's a damned fact, I tell you.
Ah well... There's some trivia for people who might not know much about WWII. I was that bored.:/
A lot of people seem really fond of misremembering the past as if it was somehow better. One of my favorites is about how journalists are biased today and that we used to have a lot more investigative, hard hitting, unbiased journalism that exposed the truth. It's usually from young people who weren't actually there. In the example that I used, the history of yellow journalism would be a good indicator that they may be off in the wrong direction.
Hell, the first use of a DOS attack or electronic sabotage was in the America's Cup. A journalist, using a spark-something-or-other, managed to get the results of the race through to the telegraph office and then proceeded to hold the friggin' button down for the next hour so that none of the other journalists could get the story out.
This Utopian past never existed. They're as bad as the conservatives who pine for the glory days of the 1950s because everything was rosy then. It never was the way they envisioned it. The past is never as good as is remembered. History is just the story we agree to tell each other so as to not look or feel too bad. Take a real look at it and you'll find it was never good.
It's like people complaining that/. used to be good. Heh... I'm on my second account (lost the first one and the email address associated with it and don't recall the username) and I've been coming here for a very long time. No... If I put on my rose-tinted glasses I might go so far as to say that Slashdot was once better but damned if I'm going to be so dishonest as to say that it was *ever* good.
"That's not news for nerds!!!" Nope... We've had that complaint forever. "Slashdot editors suck since Dice bought them!" Heh... Yeah, no... They've always sucked. "We used to able to crash servers!" Yeah, I used to be able to lock the brakes up in my car. They improved the infrastructure. "Slashdot posters used to be smarter!" Err... Just no... Well, maybe some truth. However, I just recently re-read a thread about the announced product known as VMWare and the general consensus was that it'd never catch on, was a waste of money, and nobody would have a use for it. Maybe three people actually understood what was going on. The rest ranted and raved about it without actually even understanding what it was. I doubt they read the summary or article.
So, there's an example of a rose-tinted view that's a bit closer to home. I've never looked but I suspect there's some actual research done on how people envision or selectively remember the past. There might even been a five-syllable word to describe it, I don't know. It's kind of odd and I don't understand why it is that people do this sort of thing. I'm probably not entirely immune to it but I do try to keep myself in check because I'm aware of the trend.
What's funny is that they (and you - but mostly you) seem to be making the claim that farmers (perhaps construction workers, etc) aren't educated. They're educated. They're just not educated in the things that both of you seem to deem important. A lack of formal education does not mean one is uneducated. It does not even mean a lack of intelligence. It simply means a lack of formal education.
A neighbor of mine, back home in Maine, will be here tomorrow evening for the holidays (his wife is already here). He can read, a little, and probably can't write much more than his name. He can place a dime on the ground and make a tree fall on it every time. He can tell you how many cords of wood are in a pile. He can (and does) provide a healthy income for his family. He's adept at welding, mechanical work, animal husbandry, wildlife tracking, plant identification, etc... He can build a barn, help birth a cow, repair even a modern vehicle, process meat and vegetables, etc... He does construction work, masonry, concrete, and finish construction...
He also paints beautiful oil paintings and some water colors. He sings and plays guitar, banjo, and probably a dozen other instruments... He composes music with lyrics that are quite well done if not a bit raunchy at times. And he's as every bit awesome as you might imagine.
Yet you would call him uneducated, feel superior, and make claims about them not knowing what they missed. I wonder if some introspection and some internal honesty might help you see that the reverse is equally true? And no, you can't just learn it from a book in a few weeks. That you think you can is laughable. I'm willing to blindly wager that I've a fair deal more education than you but the difference is that I can see how educated he really is. In short, he's brilliant. I've learned vast amounts from him because I was smart enough to shut the hell up and listen and to ask questions instead of pretending I knew the answer already. I don't have a whole lifetime left in which to amass the knowledge he has but his education has been wide and deep.
It's funny how many times that skill has come in handy for me. What skill is that? The one that lets me let go of my ego, admit that I don't know everything and that I may be wrong, and then to shut the hell up and actually listen to someone who does know what they're talking about. As far as eduction goes, well, that was one of the hardest ones for me to learn. I'll let you draw any further conclusions on your own.
Slashdot needs an "Eloquent +1" mod. I'm far too verbose to be articulate. Even my novellas are often whittled down from my original drafts (I do preview - sort of, sometimes) and I can not manage to say much of what I want to say without needing to say many other things.
So, I don't actually use my mod points (I prefer to comment and not to judge), I'll just say that it is posts like your post that are why I visit as frequently as I do. I didn't actually learn anything new, factually-wise, from your post - I did, on the other hand, get to enjoy reading it and appreciate *how* it was composed.
You probably don't want to hear this but chances are very good that your belief in science is very much a faith-based belief system. Science is, by its nature, incomplete and often needing refinements. Belief in it, as it currently stands, is actually a bit antithetical to science. That's why we have words like consensus. That's where the majority, usually vast majority, think that it is probably correct. Belief in science, as opposed to practicing science, is kind of silly given that it's very likely that what you believe today may well be different in a few hundred years as we understand more and more about the universe.
The problem is that weak minded people want to know "the truth" instead of being able to admit "I don't know." It's not that hard to admit "this is probably true but might not be." You just need to let go of your ego and stop being afraid to be wrong. Belief in science is silly. Practicing science and learning as you go is good. You exhibit signs of the former and probably do not have much experience with actual science. Science is a process. You're treating it like a religion.
Hmm... Rereading that makes it look like I'm trying to insult you. I'm not. I just don't see a better way to phrase it. The men in white coats are not the new priests. Stop treating them as such. They're probably wrong. Good ones know they're probably wrong - that's why they're still "doing science." If they were right, well, they'd stop doing science. When they close up shop and say, "We're done here." Then you can believe them. Until then, you're practicing a faith-based belief system where you're subjecting yourself to knowledge handed down by people to whom you've mentally applied a pedestal. That's silly, don't do that.
This isn't to say that religion is correct. No, it's saying that by their very nature the scientists are wrong (or at least incomplete). You're believing something to be true that may well not be true and that's because you don't actually understand it. It's okay. Most people don't. Hell, I get stuck at QM. I can't wrap my head around some of it - as hard as I try. I hold a Ph.D in Applied Mathematics and I can't understand that. I know little/nothing about biology. The list goes on. Instead, I don't accept answers at face value and look to see if I can find the answer by educating myself in areas that I find interesting. Then I think about it. Then I realize they're probably on the right path. The good scientists say things like, "If you accept the current standard model to be correct then..." The bad ones say, "This is the truth." (Obviously, some things are truths, as well as we can know.)
That's kind of strange, isn't it? We can cite Cracked and actually have it be a valid citation much of the time. Some of their writers do their homework. Who'd have thought you'd be citing Cracked Magazine as an authoritative source?
Oh, there's probably a couple of kernel updates that you might want to do on her laptop. They're security related. You have to change the notice level to show things rated 5 (potentially unstable, evil, and dangerous!!! - they're harmless but she will need to reboot to load the kernel into memory until 4.4 is released).;-)
The sad part is, I have a terrible memory. It's just some things stick and it's usually not the useful stuff that sticks. I too have no Facebook account even though my children nag me. I'm obviously not worried about what people know about me, at least to some extent, I just don't want another inane platform to inflate my ego. I don't want the hassle. I don't want the mindless blather that most people copy and paste.
I like spirited discussions where I learn things, challenge my held views, and see things from different perspectives. Also tech... So, yeah, here we are. It's funny how some of us will complain about social media, and this is where I think I was going but got lost, and then make those complaints right here in the comments section of a user submitted story with the content provided by us, the commentators.
It's like the guy who says he hates squash as he begs for a second helping. Ah well... Now I want squash.
It could also be that the US paid for a goodly bit of their infrastructure, after they bombed themselves into ruin, and didn't even make them pay all the money back. Well, the UK did. The US also footed their defense bill for a very long time (and still does fund quite a bit of it) so they have money to invest in other areas.
See? There's all sorts of fun ways to look at things.
That's pretty much in line with my thinking. If they say they insist on serving everything then I decline to partake in any.
You're sending a request for a page and they're saying the page contains this. You're saying no, just give me the parts that I want. It's okay, it's just us being assholes. In our defense, they started it. I know you're not crafting individual HTTP requests but using the address bar in your browser or clicking on a link. Well, no, you *might* be... Probably not, though. I suspect you've better things to do with your time.
It's okay, we're just jerks. They were jerks first. I still respect their property and if they have a notice that says that they don't want me to use an ad blocking utility then I simply close the tab or hit the back button. If they say that they want me to make use of their property in a proscribed manner then it's incumbent on me to do so. That's called respect. I am, of course, free to not make use of their property.
I browse, send texts, and read emails on my Windows phone and I'm happy that I made the switch - I only made the switch a couple of months ago. The other thing I do with my phone, and this might come as a shocker, is make phone calls. I have found a few apps that looked interesting and installed them but I don't actually ever seem to use them. I just use the 'net, email, and SMS. Well, that and make and accept phone calls.
I've actually jokingly referred to a project of clustering retired Android phones to be used to map rain-forest flora genomes. While it is said in jest, I'm still a bit curious about the idea.
I now have a Windows phone (8, I guess) and I'm told that I should be able to upgrade it just fine. That's kind of impressive. I'm told it should be just as snappy as it is now and it is pretty good. I hate to admit it but I'm kind of liking it. I bought it because I was sick of Android and all the security shenanigans and I have no desire to own an iPhone.
That said, I could easily see myself chucking a phone up on a desktop environment to get some extra stuff done. I don't like tablets but I don't mind my phone too much. Yeah, I could see it being used on occasion. (Probably VNC to my my Linux DE but still used.)
If you measured the number of lines of code that I have written then you'd assume I was a good programmer and you'd be wrong. I know this because I hired good programmers who cleaned up my work and eventually rewrote the entire thing. I did, however, have *many* lines of code.
Whilst there are vast differences between Facebook and Slashdot, it would not be remiss to refer to Slashdot as "social media." We even have friends and foes, a journal, and a couple of ways to submit content. We've user generated content with comments that include personal information. I've organized a couple of meet-ups on here over the years.
It's more social media than we might like to admit. So isn't a forum... I dare say, "social media" is a stupid and vague term but I do believe Slashdot fits the definition well enough. Albeit in clunky ways... Then again, much of Slashdot is clunky. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Hell, I share all sorts of inane shit about the pointless goings on in my life. Others do too.
For instance, your wife uses a laptop with Linux Mint on it and I seem to recall you live in PA.;-)
You do realize that that only gets you past GRUB in unpatched systems, right? There are all sorts of ways to compromise the system without that if you've already got physical access to it. I'm sure you can find a contrived situation where it's a locked room, controlled situation, and an armed guard is right outside the door so you need to act quickly to do... What?
It doesn't mean you've decrypted the drive, the/home partition, the/data partition, or whatnot. Just insert a damned Live USB, boot to disk, and mount the drives or delete and replace GRUB entirely. You've got physical access to the box. It's not much different then picking the lock on someone's luggage to get to the safe inside. It's really rather trivial and has been patched for some time now. If this is a problem then sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.
Yup. I've had nary an issue. They have even been helpful in pointing me in the right direction back when I was just getting my business started (very early 1990s). I've heard some horror stories and seen a few documentaries that went on about them. I sometimes wonder if the people making the documentaries are not being entirely forthcoming with the whole story? I'm not above assuming that the IRS makes mistakes or even can have malicious actors but I've yet to *personally* encounter anybody who complains and wasn't without some share of the blame.
When the IRS mails you a letter you should open it, read it, and follow the directions. If you owe money then pay it. I've not had anything untoward happen to me but, again, there are those who claim they have. I've not been run over by a semi either, so there's that.
That doesn't happen in the US. Any hospital that accepts any funding from the government (pretty much all of them except for some private hospitals that you can't afford to go to) can not refuse critical/emergency care treatment. You'll still be billed, go bankrupt, and be otherwise ruined but they don't just let you die.
And, in case you're daft, I'm not saying that the American health-care system is ideal. I'm a strong proponent for single-payer health-care. I am saying that the situation that you describe is technically possible but rather unlikely - to the point where it's just not something to be concerned about. If you're in an accident and it is an emergency they'll fix you up...
Then they bill the hell out of you, your family, and sue your dog but you'll get treated. You won't get a heart transplant or something like that but they'll patch you up if you're in an accident. You'll just be paying for it until you die from some other cause. (My daughter is a pediatrician that works in an emergency trauma unit. They don't even ask for an insurance card before they start treating emergency cases.)
Wait, what? You want the government to tell you what you can and can not buy for food? How about we skip that silliness and just, you know, teach people to eat healthy along with a bunch of other things we fail to teach? Why run around trying to limit liberties, masking the problem, instead of working on the root cause which is that people aren't terribly bright and some need to be taught things that seem otherwise simple to the rest of us?
How about we expand that limited time period to encompass, say, just the past 100 years and count all deaths as a result of firearms, shall we?
But, more to the point... Freedom has a cost. It means bad things might happen and probably will happen. I am not a coward and thus prefer freedom. You're free to criticize, you're free to opine, and you're free to do with your country as you want. Isn't freedom great? If you want less freedom then, by all means, join with your peers and enact such legislation.
As Americans, we have collectively accepted these risks. You may not like it and that's okay. What you don't have is a say in the matter. Your cowardice is duly noted and your opinion summarily discarded. I'm not afraid of a mass shooting because I know how exceedingly rare such is and how rare it is to be a victim of such. The thought doesn't even really cross my mind unless someone brings it up in conversation. I am not scared and prefer to have the liberty to arm myself if I so choose.
Mostly, I kill innocent bits of paper. I slaughter the ever living hell out of them. I mean mass murder them. Sometimes, the other bits of paper are forced to sit idle while I slaughter one of their group. Sometimes I hunt and eat the food that I harvest. Sometimes the animal gets away. They're a bit more sneaky than the bits of paper.
Just because you opt to bomb your civilization into rubble every couple of generations doesn't mean that the rest of us are going to have to give up our firearms due to your fear. I have quite a collection of firearms - I've even posted some neat pics over the years. I've yet to see a single one of them take off on its own and start harming anything - not even bits of paper and they absolutely *hate* paper.
Cowardice is not a good reason to enact legislation that restricts liberties. You're free to opine. You're free to do as you wish with your country. You're free to speak and feel any way you want. I'm free to mock you for being a coward and wanting to impose idiotic restrictions based on your inability to understand statistics, acceptable risks, and understand what liberty means and why it is important.
Just because you can't be trusted with a firearm does not mean that I can not be trusted with one. Just because you're afraid does not mean that I am. Life is full of risks, some more acceptable than others, and the illusion of safety is not important enough to give up our liberties. Basing legislation on fear is not an option. It's how you end up with stupid shit like the Patriot Act, TSA, DHS, forced information sharing, data collection, and wanting a master key to all encryption.
Slashdot Mirror
I finished up my last year and a half as a transportation officer at the Camp Lejeune brig (military prison). I was what is known as an Escort/Chaser at MCIEAST. Once upon a time, before my time, if a prisoner escaped and you were the escort and you didn't succeed in your efforts to chase them (thus the name chaser), you did their time until the prisoner was back in custody.
Anyhow, one of the least enjoyable tasks that we were faced with was cleaning the idiot seagulls out of the razor wire. They are foul beasts, truly foul. Once they're opened up on the wire, the smell is horrific. Rank doesn't even begin to describe it. It's like an assault on all of your senses the first time you see it. It looks bad, it sounds bad, and it smells bad. You glove up to remove them (I never had to do that - not my job, thanks) but I imagine they feel bad and I'm sure they taste bad.
If anyone is curious, military prisons are nothing at all like civilian prisons. Sure, the inmates were far more dangerous in a military prison but they have a whole different level of respect. In the military you go to prison as your punishment. The worst thing that they can do is take away your freedom. It seems that with civilian prisons you go there to be punished.
A plaque on the barracks wall said, "There but by the grace of God go I." That plaque has a positive impact on me - even today. We treated our prisoners with the utmost respect - firm but fair. We did carry a loaded firearm, in a shoulder holster, while transporting the prisoners but the pistols get locked in a safe/lock box and never go into the secure facility. Regular guards do/did not carry any weapon other than a strong pepper-spay.
What I do find confusing is that I've seen, specifically, Polish jokes here on Slashdot that were moderated up. They're white so it's okay to be racist towards them? I've seen this happen on more than on occasion. One of them was, as I recall, +5 funny and I seem to recall 30% of the votes (if you click on 'em you can see 'em) were +1 informative.
Sadly, the joke that I'm mentioning wasn't even a good joke. It was just crude. Someone had said the screen door on a submarine joke and the follow up was, "Why do the seagulls fly upside down over Poland? There's nothing worthwhile to shit on." I called 'em a racist prick and took -1 Troll like a man. And no, no I'm not white. I'm a mutt. In order, I am a Micmac, Irish, English, Black African. I look Asian and speak Spanish fairly well. I love to slip into Spanish and confuse people who are looking at me. With a little effort, I can kind of blend in with any race and many cultures. So, it has its benefits.
Oh no... Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I was saying that the Nazis really didn't have a huge technical advantage over the Allied Forces and citing examples of meaningful tech that the Allied Forces had as examples as to where it was closer than many people think. We all had individual peaks and valleys, so to speak and an average (if we could make one) would put them on par with one another or fairly close.
The "it could have gone either way" kind of left out the option for a stalemate in my head - perhaps that's not what you meant but that was how I read it. After, what was it, Potsdam? After that there was no hope for a stalemate - unconditional surrender was the only option.
Also, I left something out. I think at one point it could have gone either way - now that I think about it. Had Hitler just kept building up his arsenal and actually forwarded the tech prior to invading Poland then they just might have come out on top as everyone around him was really not doing a whole lot to prepare until things started to go crazy.
From your post, I can see you're familiar with the firearm improvements, the jet, the rocket powered plane called Comet as I recall, the rockets, wire guided ordinance, and I seem to recall they had played with radio controlled ordinance but that might have been the Allies. At any rate, if he'd stocked up and allowed the new tech to grow instead of pushing it off to the side because he thought he had an easy victory then, maybe, they'd have managed to get an armistice or even "win" for a while. Poking the bear was a horrible choice.
Japan and Italy were really both at a disadvantage scientifically. The only novel thing that Italy really seems to have done is use three engines on their planes and miniature submarines. Much of what Japan has was largely copied from others. I seem to recall that their main battle rifle was from 1905. Germany helped them out. Oh, heh... Japan had a helicopter, of sorts. It was tethered to a ship and used to see beyond the horizon - based on something they'd bought from Bell and copied so it's not really *their* tech per se.
You're right. I do. I consider owning property an essential liberty. I am free because I can own property. In fact, ownership of property is one of the cornerstones to freedom.
You may not like it or understand it but that's saying more about you than about me. I also own a house (three technically), some rental property, shares in a bunch of business, clothing, a bunch of books and computers, and a lot of cars. Oh, and I own property in two countries (soon to be three).
Some of the many things I own are firearms. Just because you're scared of them doesn't mean that I can't be trusted with them. The only things that have to worry about me and a firearm are bits of paper and an animal that I think is going to be tasty.
However, I mostly posted 'cause I saw you debating with the other guy and, frankly, they were not putting up a nearly valid defense. You can't just win a debate with that guy and say, "I won! I'm right!" No... LOL No! That's like beating up a toddler and then saying you're the boxing champion of the world.
Now, are you going to posit that ownership of property is not a cornerstone of freedom? You can say that you're scared of firearms and want them to be outlawed, that's okay to hold that belief. You can say that you want to be less free (having fewer liberties) if you want and that's a fine position to hold. However, when you enact legislation based on fear you end up with really bad laws.
Let's clarify some terms: Liberty, freedom, and rights. You are free to kill me. You do not have the liberty to do so. If you do, then they will take away your freedom and remove your right to bear arms.
If you want to be less fewer liberties then you can do so and that's a fine position for you to hold in your country. You can even hold that position in my country but nobody is going to listen to you. I do not want to be less free. I want as many liberties as I can reasonably have. I like math, do you like math?
In the United States, in 2013, your odds of being murdered with a firearm were ~35:1,000,000. The number of homicides (and other crimes and even gun violence) has been trending down for quite some time.
So, no... Basing legislation on fear is how you end up with governments trying to put a back door in encryption, the TSA, Homeland Security, excessively long prison sentences, watch lists, no-fly lists, and many other things. You can be less free while enjoying the illusion of security but you don't get to use your cowardice as a means to take away my liberties.
Damn it all to hell! I had a huge and beautiful response and it was a perfect time waster. Then I somehow opened the menu and managed to close the browser in its entirety. I'd cited a few good examples of the US (as well as some Allied) science was well in the lead. Things like Fat Man and Little Boy, the Jeep, the B-29, the B-17, P-51, M-1, M-202, M-30, more accurate RADAR (thanks to improving on a UK design that they shipped over), and the list goes on and on.
Finally, I'm going to have to also politely disagree with your statement that Germany was ever close to winning the war. Hell no... The Russians were right pissed. If anything, people shouldn't be thanking America for winning the war (we didn't - we did help quite a bit) but they should be thanking the Americans for not having to speak Russian today. Left to his own devices, Stalin would have just taken that land, all of it, until he ran into Atlantic. They were on a rape, murder, and pillage spree. (Quite literally.)
If you want to say that Germany *might* have been close to winning if they'd never acted on Operation Barbarossa then I *might* agree with some caveats but, no... There's no meaningful, simple, choices that Germany could have made that would have ended the outcome of the war. They did stupid shit like letting the Allies capture some 250,000 people due to Operation Torch. North Africa is where the Germans surrendered their most troops in one fell swoop.
At any rate, from what I know and from the vast majority of historians that I know of, Germany was never close to winning the war. They were kind of, sort of, close to prolonging it but you'd have to change so many facts/choices to get any outcome other than a loss. It was more like a comedy of errors that got them as far as they did. I can go into details if you want.
While I'm here... Some silly trivia like the above capturing record...
The Soviets had more than one type of tank. It wasn't terrible. The T-34 is nice but not the only tank they built.
The T-34 was still in service with some countries up until the mid-1990s.
The ME-109 was produced in the highest number, ever.
D-day was the largest amphibious landing ever conducted.
Antwerp got more rockets dropped on them than any other place.
Malta got the bombs -- like more than anywhere else by area *and* by duration and by total number (if you count only Axis bombs).
I forget the name but it was actually a small town in Germany that got more bombs than even Berlin.
Polish people contributed a great deal and were instrumental in the push to Rome (they were the group that made it up the mountain to the monastery).
Omaha was actually supposed to be less heavily defended than the other beach.
None of Japan's Unit 731 (live human vivisection, germ warfare, etc) scientists were ever prosecuted.
The convicted war criminals, from Japan, are still worshiped to this day by some Japanese people.
Canada is full of badasses, they're just polite because they don't feel like killing you today.
The ME-262 was the first operational jet fighter but based on an HE-111 (I think? Some HE model was first.)
Roughly 75% of the people Japan took prisoner did not survive.
The two big bombs were not the only deciding factor - the Russians had started curb stomping Japan too.
Angry Russians love to rape, murder, pillage, and burn. They were really pissed.
Some 24,000,000 Russians died in the war, more than even Germany.
Both of Germany's giant guns (one was Big Bertha, the other I forget the name but was at Sevastopol) from both World Wars disappeared and we've never found them.
Germany made some awesome weapons but one of the greatest was the 88 mm which served multiple roles.
Not much is as awesome as the wooden plane known as the Mosquito. That's a damned fact, I tell you.
Ah well... There's some trivia for people who might not know much about WWII. I was that bored. :/
A lot of people seem really fond of misremembering the past as if it was somehow better. One of my favorites is about how journalists are biased today and that we used to have a lot more investigative, hard hitting, unbiased journalism that exposed the truth. It's usually from young people who weren't actually there. In the example that I used, the history of yellow journalism would be a good indicator that they may be off in the wrong direction.
Hell, the first use of a DOS attack or electronic sabotage was in the America's Cup. A journalist, using a spark-something-or-other, managed to get the results of the race through to the telegraph office and then proceeded to hold the friggin' button down for the next hour so that none of the other journalists could get the story out.
This Utopian past never existed. They're as bad as the conservatives who pine for the glory days of the 1950s because everything was rosy then. It never was the way they envisioned it. The past is never as good as is remembered. History is just the story we agree to tell each other so as to not look or feel too bad. Take a real look at it and you'll find it was never good.
It's like people complaining that /. used to be good. Heh... I'm on my second account (lost the first one and the email address associated with it and don't recall the username) and I've been coming here for a very long time. No... If I put on my rose-tinted glasses I might go so far as to say that Slashdot was once better but damned if I'm going to be so dishonest as to say that it was *ever* good.
"That's not news for nerds!!!" Nope... We've had that complaint forever.
"Slashdot editors suck since Dice bought them!" Heh... Yeah, no... They've always sucked.
"We used to able to crash servers!" Yeah, I used to be able to lock the brakes up in my car. They improved the infrastructure.
"Slashdot posters used to be smarter!" Err... Just no... Well, maybe some truth. However, I just recently re-read a thread about the announced product known as VMWare and the general consensus was that it'd never catch on, was a waste of money, and nobody would have a use for it. Maybe three people actually understood what was going on. The rest ranted and raved about it without actually even understanding what it was. I doubt they read the summary or article.
So, there's an example of a rose-tinted view that's a bit closer to home. I've never looked but I suspect there's some actual research done on how people envision or selectively remember the past. There might even been a five-syllable word to describe it, I don't know. It's kind of odd and I don't understand why it is that people do this sort of thing. I'm probably not entirely immune to it but I do try to keep myself in check because I'm aware of the trend.
What's funny is that they (and you - but mostly you) seem to be making the claim that farmers (perhaps construction workers, etc) aren't educated. They're educated. They're just not educated in the things that both of you seem to deem important. A lack of formal education does not mean one is uneducated. It does not even mean a lack of intelligence. It simply means a lack of formal education.
A neighbor of mine, back home in Maine, will be here tomorrow evening for the holidays (his wife is already here). He can read, a little, and probably can't write much more than his name. He can place a dime on the ground and make a tree fall on it every time. He can tell you how many cords of wood are in a pile. He can (and does) provide a healthy income for his family. He's adept at welding, mechanical work, animal husbandry, wildlife tracking, plant identification, etc... He can build a barn, help birth a cow, repair even a modern vehicle, process meat and vegetables, etc... He does construction work, masonry, concrete, and finish construction...
He also paints beautiful oil paintings and some water colors. He sings and plays guitar, banjo, and probably a dozen other instruments... He composes music with lyrics that are quite well done if not a bit raunchy at times. And he's as every bit awesome as you might imagine.
Yet you would call him uneducated, feel superior, and make claims about them not knowing what they missed. I wonder if some introspection and some internal honesty might help you see that the reverse is equally true? And no, you can't just learn it from a book in a few weeks. That you think you can is laughable. I'm willing to blindly wager that I've a fair deal more education than you but the difference is that I can see how educated he really is. In short, he's brilliant. I've learned vast amounts from him because I was smart enough to shut the hell up and listen and to ask questions instead of pretending I knew the answer already. I don't have a whole lifetime left in which to amass the knowledge he has but his education has been wide and deep.
It's funny how many times that skill has come in handy for me. What skill is that? The one that lets me let go of my ego, admit that I don't know everything and that I may be wrong, and then to shut the hell up and actually listen to someone who does know what they're talking about. As far as eduction goes, well, that was one of the hardest ones for me to learn. I'll let you draw any further conclusions on your own.
Slashdot needs an "Eloquent +1" mod. I'm far too verbose to be articulate. Even my novellas are often whittled down from my original drafts (I do preview - sort of, sometimes) and I can not manage to say much of what I want to say without needing to say many other things.
So, I don't actually use my mod points (I prefer to comment and not to judge), I'll just say that it is posts like your post that are why I visit as frequently as I do. I didn't actually learn anything new, factually-wise, from your post - I did, on the other hand, get to enjoy reading it and appreciate *how* it was composed.
Err... TL;DR: Thanks!
You probably don't want to hear this but chances are very good that your belief in science is very much a faith-based belief system. Science is, by its nature, incomplete and often needing refinements. Belief in it, as it currently stands, is actually a bit antithetical to science. That's why we have words like consensus. That's where the majority, usually vast majority, think that it is probably correct. Belief in science, as opposed to practicing science, is kind of silly given that it's very likely that what you believe today may well be different in a few hundred years as we understand more and more about the universe.
The problem is that weak minded people want to know "the truth" instead of being able to admit "I don't know." It's not that hard to admit "this is probably true but might not be." You just need to let go of your ego and stop being afraid to be wrong. Belief in science is silly. Practicing science and learning as you go is good. You exhibit signs of the former and probably do not have much experience with actual science. Science is a process. You're treating it like a religion.
Hmm... Rereading that makes it look like I'm trying to insult you. I'm not. I just don't see a better way to phrase it. The men in white coats are not the new priests. Stop treating them as such. They're probably wrong. Good ones know they're probably wrong - that's why they're still "doing science." If they were right, well, they'd stop doing science. When they close up shop and say, "We're done here." Then you can believe them. Until then, you're practicing a faith-based belief system where you're subjecting yourself to knowledge handed down by people to whom you've mentally applied a pedestal. That's silly, don't do that.
This isn't to say that religion is correct. No, it's saying that by their very nature the scientists are wrong (or at least incomplete). You're believing something to be true that may well not be true and that's because you don't actually understand it. It's okay. Most people don't. Hell, I get stuck at QM. I can't wrap my head around some of it - as hard as I try. I hold a Ph.D in Applied Mathematics and I can't understand that. I know little/nothing about biology. The list goes on. Instead, I don't accept answers at face value and look to see if I can find the answer by educating myself in areas that I find interesting. Then I think about it. Then I realize they're probably on the right path. The good scientists say things like, "If you accept the current standard model to be correct then ..." The bad ones say, "This is the truth." (Obviously, some things are truths, as well as we can know.)
That's kind of strange, isn't it? We can cite Cracked and actually have it be a valid citation much of the time. Some of their writers do their homework. Who'd have thought you'd be citing Cracked Magazine as an authoritative source?
Go hang out with your peers. We're old curmudgeons here!
(Not really, you can stay but be quiet while the grownups are speaking, okay? There's a good lad.)
Oh, there's probably a couple of kernel updates that you might want to do on her laptop. They're security related. You have to change the notice level to show things rated 5 (potentially unstable, evil, and dangerous!!! - they're harmless but she will need to reboot to load the kernel into memory until 4.4 is released). ;-)
The sad part is, I have a terrible memory. It's just some things stick and it's usually not the useful stuff that sticks. I too have no Facebook account even though my children nag me. I'm obviously not worried about what people know about me, at least to some extent, I just don't want another inane platform to inflate my ego. I don't want the hassle. I don't want the mindless blather that most people copy and paste.
I like spirited discussions where I learn things, challenge my held views, and see things from different perspectives. Also tech... So, yeah, here we are. It's funny how some of us will complain about social media, and this is where I think I was going but got lost, and then make those complaints right here in the comments section of a user submitted story with the content provided by us, the commentators.
It's like the guy who says he hates squash as he begs for a second helping. Ah well... Now I want squash.
It could also be that the US paid for a goodly bit of their infrastructure, after they bombed themselves into ruin, and didn't even make them pay all the money back. Well, the UK did. The US also footed their defense bill for a very long time (and still does fund quite a bit of it) so they have money to invest in other areas.
See? There's all sorts of fun ways to look at things.
That's pretty much in line with my thinking. If they say they insist on serving everything then I decline to partake in any.
You're sending a request for a page and they're saying the page contains this. You're saying no, just give me the parts that I want. It's okay, it's just us being assholes. In our defense, they started it. I know you're not crafting individual HTTP requests but using the address bar in your browser or clicking on a link. Well, no, you *might* be... Probably not, though. I suspect you've better things to do with your time.
It's okay, we're just jerks. They were jerks first. I still respect their property and if they have a notice that says that they don't want me to use an ad blocking utility then I simply close the tab or hit the back button. If they say that they want me to make use of their property in a proscribed manner then it's incumbent on me to do so. That's called respect. I am, of course, free to not make use of their property.
I browse, send texts, and read emails on my Windows phone and I'm happy that I made the switch - I only made the switch a couple of months ago. The other thing I do with my phone, and this might come as a shocker, is make phone calls. I have found a few apps that looked interesting and installed them but I don't actually ever seem to use them. I just use the 'net, email, and SMS. Well, that and make and accept phone calls.
I've actually jokingly referred to a project of clustering retired Android phones to be used to map rain-forest flora genomes. While it is said in jest, I'm still a bit curious about the idea.
I now have a Windows phone (8, I guess) and I'm told that I should be able to upgrade it just fine. That's kind of impressive. I'm told it should be just as snappy as it is now and it is pretty good. I hate to admit it but I'm kind of liking it. I bought it because I was sick of Android and all the security shenanigans and I have no desire to own an iPhone.
That said, I could easily see myself chucking a phone up on a desktop environment to get some extra stuff done. I don't like tablets but I don't mind my phone too much. Yeah, I could see it being used on occasion. (Probably VNC to my my Linux DE but still used.)
If you measured the number of lines of code that I have written then you'd assume I was a good programmer and you'd be wrong. I know this because I hired good programmers who cleaned up my work and eventually rewrote the entire thing. I did, however, have *many* lines of code.
Whilst there are vast differences between Facebook and Slashdot, it would not be remiss to refer to Slashdot as "social media." We even have friends and foes, a journal, and a couple of ways to submit content. We've user generated content with comments that include personal information. I've organized a couple of meet-ups on here over the years.
It's more social media than we might like to admit. So isn't a forum... I dare say, "social media" is a stupid and vague term but I do believe Slashdot fits the definition well enough. Albeit in clunky ways... Then again, much of Slashdot is clunky. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Hell, I share all sorts of inane shit about the pointless goings on in my life. Others do too.
For instance, your wife uses a laptop with Linux Mint on it and I seem to recall you live in PA. ;-)
You do realize that that only gets you past GRUB in unpatched systems, right? There are all sorts of ways to compromise the system without that if you've already got physical access to it. I'm sure you can find a contrived situation where it's a locked room, controlled situation, and an armed guard is right outside the door so you need to act quickly to do... What?
It doesn't mean you've decrypted the drive, the /home partition, the /data partition, or whatnot. Just insert a damned Live USB, boot to disk, and mount the drives or delete and replace GRUB entirely. You've got physical access to the box. It's not much different then picking the lock on someone's luggage to get to the safe inside. It's really rather trivial and has been patched for some time now. If this is a problem then sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.
Yup. I've had nary an issue. They have even been helpful in pointing me in the right direction back when I was just getting my business started (very early 1990s). I've heard some horror stories and seen a few documentaries that went on about them. I sometimes wonder if the people making the documentaries are not being entirely forthcoming with the whole story? I'm not above assuming that the IRS makes mistakes or even can have malicious actors but I've yet to *personally* encounter anybody who complains and wasn't without some share of the blame.
When the IRS mails you a letter you should open it, read it, and follow the directions. If you owe money then pay it. I've not had anything untoward happen to me but, again, there are those who claim they have. I've not been run over by a semi either, so there's that.
That doesn't happen in the US. Any hospital that accepts any funding from the government (pretty much all of them except for some private hospitals that you can't afford to go to) can not refuse critical/emergency care treatment. You'll still be billed, go bankrupt, and be otherwise ruined but they don't just let you die.
And, in case you're daft, I'm not saying that the American health-care system is ideal. I'm a strong proponent for single-payer health-care. I am saying that the situation that you describe is technically possible but rather unlikely - to the point where it's just not something to be concerned about. If you're in an accident and it is an emergency they'll fix you up...
Then they bill the hell out of you, your family, and sue your dog but you'll get treated. You won't get a heart transplant or something like that but they'll patch you up if you're in an accident. You'll just be paying for it until you die from some other cause. (My daughter is a pediatrician that works in an emergency trauma unit. They don't even ask for an insurance card before they start treating emergency cases.)
Wait, what? You want the government to tell you what you can and can not buy for food? How about we skip that silliness and just, you know, teach people to eat healthy along with a bunch of other things we fail to teach? Why run around trying to limit liberties, masking the problem, instead of working on the root cause which is that people aren't terribly bright and some need to be taught things that seem otherwise simple to the rest of us?
How about we expand that limited time period to encompass, say, just the past 100 years and count all deaths as a result of firearms, shall we?
But, more to the point... Freedom has a cost. It means bad things might happen and probably will happen. I am not a coward and thus prefer freedom. You're free to criticize, you're free to opine, and you're free to do with your country as you want. Isn't freedom great? If you want less freedom then, by all means, join with your peers and enact such legislation.
As Americans, we have collectively accepted these risks. You may not like it and that's okay. What you don't have is a say in the matter. Your cowardice is duly noted and your opinion summarily discarded. I'm not afraid of a mass shooting because I know how exceedingly rare such is and how rare it is to be a victim of such. The thought doesn't even really cross my mind unless someone brings it up in conversation. I am not scared and prefer to have the liberty to arm myself if I so choose.
Mostly, I kill innocent bits of paper. I slaughter the ever living hell out of them. I mean mass murder them. Sometimes, the other bits of paper are forced to sit idle while I slaughter one of their group. Sometimes I hunt and eat the food that I harvest. Sometimes the animal gets away. They're a bit more sneaky than the bits of paper.
Just because you opt to bomb your civilization into rubble every couple of generations doesn't mean that the rest of us are going to have to give up our firearms due to your fear. I have quite a collection of firearms - I've even posted some neat pics over the years. I've yet to see a single one of them take off on its own and start harming anything - not even bits of paper and they absolutely *hate* paper.
Cowardice is not a good reason to enact legislation that restricts liberties. You're free to opine. You're free to do as you wish with your country. You're free to speak and feel any way you want. I'm free to mock you for being a coward and wanting to impose idiotic restrictions based on your inability to understand statistics, acceptable risks, and understand what liberty means and why it is important.
Just because you can't be trusted with a firearm does not mean that I can not be trusted with one. Just because you're afraid does not mean that I am. Life is full of risks, some more acceptable than others, and the illusion of safety is not important enough to give up our liberties. Basing legislation on fear is not an option. It's how you end up with stupid shit like the Patriot Act, TSA, DHS, forced information sharing, data collection, and wanting a master key to all encryption.
Wait until he hears what the kids say about him.