Posts by Stevie

Bah!

"Perhaps now more will begin to understand why profit, far from being evil, is a necessary thing."

Profit is never an evil thing. Excessive profit often is, or did you miss the slash-and-burn of the 1980s? I remember the quote by an AT&T executive who said that throughout that era he was terrified some corporate raider would realize how much copper AT&T had, and would acquire the company to strip mine the phone infrastructure for short term profit.

Shareholder profit quite often is, as it is all-to often the altar on which the core business of the public company in question is sacrificed. Only this morning yet another radio commentator was surprised at the number of private companies that outspend and outperform their larger publicly-held rivals in R&D.

As with all "isms", capitalism works well until it is allowed free rein, when the wheels come off alarmingly quickly. You must have noticed the events of 2008 (including the snouting-at-the-public-trough that went on in bonusland).

The key to profit != evil is the invisible qualifier *reasonable*. The problem is that in the new something-for-nothing millennium, people's definition of "reasonable" is "whatever I think I can get away with".

Re: Who came second?

"Whatever is said about German vs. Russian tanks - the deciding factor is - who's was in front of the Reichstag on May 2nd 1945?"

Agreed. Apropos of nothing I saw both a new Rolls Royce and a new Mini Clubman yesterday.

Re: what about all the tanks from the uk and ussr or dont they count ?

Not if you don't want to die laughing they don't. The only British tanks that could be said to have been successful designs for most of the war were the superb Churchills and Matildas, and they were infantry support AFVs that could not fulfill the then-current "cavalry" mode the Germans were showing everyone they'd need to fight effectively on account of the top speed being on the order of 14 mph.

The history of the British Cruiser Tank is perhaps suitable fodder for a Dad's Army reboot but one doesn't hold them up in polite tank conversation unless one is playing for laughs.

The USSR were the silly buggers who showed the Germans how antiquated their Panzer designs were. It was the shocked reaction to the BT-type tanks (that would soon morph into the T34) with their radical sloped armour that set the Germans stampeding along the track to the Panther and the "King" Tiger.

Better thank providence that even the Germans had their own doctrinal stick-in-the-muds or the manufacturing plants would have been race-tuned to make only Panzer Vs and derived hulls therefrom.

And for all the complaints that the Panthers broke down, various armies across the world were happy to deploy War Reparation Panthers through the mid 50s. Newsflash: All tanks break down eventually, and a lot sooner than you might think in them days on account of the Weapon Calibre/Armour Thickness/Power Plant balancing act producing the same results no matter who did the sums. The Panther had its problems but in its weight class was a superb fighting machine.

I might mention the doctrinal idea common to all German WWII designs that the Commander should be a commander and not a loader or gunner, and the consequent provision of space for a larger more role-focused crew. I might mention the cupola with its periscopes so the commander could fight without poking his nice soft head out into all the bullets and shrapnel. CF the T34 that had a roof hatch for the commander to crouch behind, or the Sherman that sat so high it was hard to get hull down in fighting terrain - important since the Sherman's armour was so thin and adding improvised armour like the popular sandbag/concrete/battlefield-junk glacis caused the tranny to fry out prematurely.

The Panther's main failure mode was the breaking of the front torsion bar due to the weight of the gun being born primarily by that wheelset. It should be understood that even drooping the Panther could and did fight on.

Yesyesyes the battle of Kursk. But they learned what was wrong and fixed what they could in record time to produce a superb AFV well ahead of anything the western allies had in the field in that role. Fast, hard and hard-hitting.

Hate the people that made 'em, hate the people who drove 'em, hate the people who told them where to go, but don't rubbish the design 'cos it weren't half bad.

Re: Panther IVs were the workhorse of the German army

Actually, mein generale, I think you'll find that role was assumed by the Panzer III. Many of the German high command felt there was more need for those than any other Panzer Tank Tracked Armoured Fighting Vehicle (that should get the redundancy Nazis firing up their engines and heaving on their epicyclic steering). There were certainly more upgrade variants of the model than any other during WWII.

The IV was a heavy support tank in concept - intended to supplement formatiopns of IIIs - and had weaknesses the III did not (such as removing most of the rear armour to save weight so the tranny didn't fry). Doctrine said the IV should stay at the back and so it wouldn't get shot in the arse.

However, the fate of the III was sealed when turret ring could not be upgraded to carry heavier armament - similar problem suffered by the M4A1 Sherman which resulted in the eventual introduction of the Patton.

There's a bloke out near me has a Tiger Ausf B in drivable condition, apparently. I've never seen it but I've been invited to go for a ride sometime.

Re: Ole Jule Cretins.

I'm sorry, this is just inaccurate. My parents who live in northern Alberta which, last time I checked, is in North America, cannot get broadband via cable because no cable company will lay the required pipe to where they live no matter how much dosh is in the offing.

So: dial-up or satellite.

Which is not really a choice, is it?

Re: first used by the Spaniards

There's an account of what *I'd* call a concentration camp in Thucydides' Peloponnesian War which I read in the Penguin translation back in the late 70s.

Wassat, like 460 BC or something?

Re: Hacker/Cracker

Oh dear. Someone who actually read those 45 pages at the start of a unix textbook.

Sorry mate, that war was lost almost as soon as it began.

And you can say "safehacker" if you want. You'll sound silly unless the rest of your circle start saying it too, but it's a free country.

Re: Give rhe devil his due .,,

I can beat that. Angered by all the talk-but-no-action at work over Linux (then the new kid on the block) I bought a copy of "Linux Unleashed" - I'd had a very positive experience with "Unix Unleased" and was hoping that experience would carry into the New World O' Linux - which came with Red Hat 4.2 on a CD-ROM.

I built the two floppy "boot discs", then popped the first one into the machine-to-be and was shown the message: "Error".

That was the entire text of the message.

Re: the crucifixion scene

If you own a print of the Picasso work you'll be done as a drug fiend too.

Re: Definitions

Again, you try and define my viewpoint in terms of your own and then discuss it as a variation on a theme. My atheism is only a theistic philosophy because of a trick of linguistics. Any understanding you have achieved of how I stand on the subject is fundamentally flawed as it is based on a false premise.

I'll try again, but not in an attempt to convert you.

I think the one thing all religions share that *might* be the definition you are looking for is the belief in the continuation of the human self after death.

It's phrased differently of course. People speak of souls but what they really speak of is the Self.

I have concluded, based on the evidence available to me, that humans have no undying part. To me it is evident that the self is the mind, which in turn is an emergent behavior of the brain's natural complex recursive activity. No brain, no self.

Understanding that this complex brain is possible to develop without some sort of helping hand is made easier if on spends some time thinking about massively parallel evolutionary processes over geological timescales.

Re: Collective Delusion.

You missed the point. The many who misuse the word "Religion" to mean philosophy of life or obsession notwithstanding, religion is a belief that there is a point to it all. One or more "gods" are usually involved, and invoked as a cosmic doorstop whenever the thinking gets too hard, and thanked whenever sheer chance caused the believer to personally not become involved in some catastrophe or other.

The real difference (for me) between anyone's religion and my atheism is that I *never* stop to say "this event could only be possible in the complete absence of a creator" and I rarely waste brainpower worrying about lack of gods and random universal chaos because it doesn't work that way.

People with a strong and firm belief in a creator and life after death often find themselves pondering the whichness of the why and can't understand that I simply don't, in the way I don't think about tennis or horseback riding or how paper is made unless I have some definite question about those subjects.

I am happy not knowing where reality all came from and the prospect of dying *still* not knowing (I wouldn't spurn the knowledge if it was there to be had of course). I don't need gods to invent it because they don't solve anything. Show me a real honest to Offler god and my next question is "Well, who made it"? All a creator does is drop a curtain in front of an unreachable problem horizon.

I've bent a few brain cells wondering about where the universe is, and can appreciate that for some the comfort of saying "this far and no further shall ye look" is appealing. The problem is that then they get upset when I don't share their views and start talking "atheism is religion" nonsense.

As for life after death, when asked once by a friend where I thought we went after death I answered "The same place the numbers go when you turn off your calculator". The question seems meaningless to me.

But I'm no evangelist, determined to make you all see the sense in my argument because it doesn't work that way. I'd be more likely to demand everyone stop thinking about tennis (except it would not occur to me to discuss tennis most days).

Bah!

I have to read The Daily Mail?

Damn you, this is just like what happened in Orwell's 1984.

(Doubleplusgood New Rule though. Tried to upvote it twice.)

Bah!

"If you are a parent, it's up to you. If you don't understand either learn or pay someone who does. Simple."

I quite agree with this simple demand made in the most reasonable tone.

I trust you'll reciprocate my own sensible and reasonable suggestion that anyone wishing to use anything with moving parts be conversant with the operation of a capstan lathe to machine a variety of materials (or pay someone who is to explain it to them).

Shouldn't drive a car or use a disk drive if you can't make a spindle or a bearing journal in my opinion.

And don't get me started on why you shouldn't have an internal combustion engine if you can't explain the difference between a magneto and an alternator/points setup.