* Posts by I ain't Spartacus

10120 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009

$600m in cryptocurrencies swiped from Poly Network

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Re: Oh poor deluded fools.

I don't know how traceable these currencies really are though. Because they have "tumblers" who mix up huge numbers of transactions, in order to make sure there still is anonymity. It would make sense for the legitimate businesses using these coins to refuse to have anything to do with coins that have recently (or even ever) been through tumbers - in order to incentivise legitimate users not to use them. Thus leaving them only for the criminals.

Chocolate beer barred from sale after child mistakes it for chocolate milk

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Canabis definitely can be dangerous! Both in terms of mental health problems and the danger to your concentration if taken before say driving a car.

Canabis is almost certainly safer than alcohol or tobacco, but then that's not a high bar to reach, both of those being quite dangerous.

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Happy

Re: I am afraid the whole idea makes me feel yuk

Noone has to like and enjoy every flavour.

A good rule. But there is an exception to every rule. And that exception is bacon! Everybody must like bacon!

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Happy

Re: Yeah, that sounds plausible.

Nesquik!

Stir with a spoon,

It's easily done,

Nesquik makes milk fun.

Come on, be a super-shaker,

Nesquik makes milk fun!

All you need to do, is add a mooooo...

Typed that from memory of 1970s adverts. Thinking about it now, it suggests you stir with a spoon, but that you should be a super-shaker. Does that imply making it in a cocktail shaker? "Miss Moneypenny, I'll have the strawberry Nesquik, shaken not stirred..."

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Re: I might have an opinion...

I'm not a huge fan of the chocolatey or coffee flavours in beer, so tend to steer clear of porter - though I often end up drinking them on the grounds of trying everything once. I have a bit more luck with finding stouts that I like. But I must say, I'm intrigued by the idea of a plum porter.

My favourite dark beer is Chimay blue.

But there's not many beers that I don't enjoy, even if I won't have a second glass.

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Re: Not beer

Not to mention the Belgian lambic fruit beers. Which are generally much less sweet - but still very interesting. Though not something I've managed to get many friends to drink, who'll drink other fruit beers.

The nice thing about variety, is that there can be something to everybody's taste.

Plus I'm not sure I see anything morally superior in choosing to drink something because it's not sweet - or initially takes getting used to. If you like those ciders with fruit juice dumped into them, then all power to you. I find them too sweet, but I know plenty of people who find them pleasant and refreshing. Including my Mum - who's 82 and definitely not in the alcopop market. Her favourite drinks are strong German or Czech lagers, those fruity ciders or a glass of wine.

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Pint

Re: 3 years old? When my lad were a lad...

My brother's attitude was to let their daughter try everything. Children mostly liking the sweet stuff. So sh had a sip of beer, yuck, never tried again. Same with wine, her Mum's rum, or her Dad's scrumpy.

Until the fateful Christmas when I bought him a bottle of Madeira. One of the sweet ones. That was much to her taste. I intercepted her at my place (aged 4), on Boxing Day heading for the kitchen. "Oh can I get you a drink, I've got lemonade, fruit juice, squash."

"Can I have some madeira please Uncle NotSpartacus."

Link to the inevitable song...

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Re: Beer Definition

Floris are a Belgian brewery that do a chocolate beer. They also do a bunch of different fruit beers. They're all a bit "bland wheat beer with some flavourings chucked in" for my personal taste, but they're nice enough on a warm afternoon.

The chocolate beer is particularly odd, because it simply tastes like a glass of mediocre hot chocolate that's gone cold. But it had to be tried, and it's the most chocolatety tasting beer that I've yet had.

Of course porter already has chocolatey notes, so when you add chocolate to those, it can be quite nice. I'm a fan of the Meantime one, that I've already seen mentioned.

Although Meantime also do a lovely raspberry beer. Which is particularly nice, because it's a nice beer that they've put some raspberries in, so you can drink several bottles of it. Whereas I'm usually happy after just one fruit beer, and then move on to something else.

I couldn't answer the survey, because I don't mind the odd chocolate beer - but I prefer a fruit beer - if I want some sweetness in my glass. A nice kriek goes down well. Sainsbury's, Tesco and Morrisons all have a small range of Belgian beers, and can be relied on to have one or two fruit ones on the shelves.

I like a bit of lambic too, but none of my friends have ever found that to be acceptable tasting. Whereas most people like a nice fruit beer when you serve them.

Alibaba fires manager accused of sexually assaulting colleague

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Re: "web giant lacks formal sexual harassment policy"

Sorry, I thought my next sentence made it clear. Calling the police is not enough. What then? To over simplify, you’re still left employing either a sex offender or someone who’ll make up an allegation, and you can’t have them both working in the same place while it’s resolved. Plus the police investigation, and any trial, will take time. So what to do in the meantime.

Plus justice, and innocent until proven guilty, of course. But selfishly, that’s expensive. Suspending people on full pay for a couple of years isn’t ideal. And the trial is to a higher standard of proof and might not come to a clear conclusion. Sex offences often coming down to deciding about consent given between two people alone in a room.

In HR's shoes, you probably want rid of both people, and to forget the whole thing. I remember feeling very sorry for my managers in a case where someone made an allegation of minor stalking, after two employees' relationship broke down. Clearly they didn’t want to, and weren’t trained to, work out if he was guilty. They tried to sort stuff out, but they’re not Relate either. He soon left, and got another job. She then started stirring up trouble. Making stuff up, or at least massively exaggerating, about those managers and also bringing "problems" to them, and eventually also left. Or was pushed? Was that because she’d made up the original accusations? Or because she was angry about how it was handled? Whatever the truth is, management suffered a lot of headaches, and wasted a lot of time. My impression is they tried to handle it reasonably, in the circumstances, but both parties left angry with them, and it caused a lot of disruption. The police certainly didn’t resolve anything.

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Re: "web giant lacks formal sexual harassment policy"

Not so simple for sexual harrassment. Where you do need a set of policies. But even for sexual assault, you can't just call the police. You can't just have a policy to suspend someone if they're being investigated then sack them if they're convicted, or keep them on if they aren't. You need to be faster moving than the justice system, for a start. And you can (and probably have to) work on lower standards of evidence.

SpaceX Starship struts its stack to show it has the right stuff

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Re: SpaceX

Uhm... you do realize that ALL of Blue Origin's funding has been from Mr. Bezos

Perhaps it's not enough? The poster did after all say billions, maybe he meant billions per year?

I'm certain that Bezos has sunk way more money into Blue Origin personally than Musk has into SpaceX. I don't know if that still holds, when you include money from investors. But then SpaceX now have a significant revenue stream from actually getting paid to do stuff.

That also has the benefit of making most of your costs cheaper. Because you're manufacturing at scale, plus you can afford to fund more employees - as some of them are again being paid for by your customers.

It's also an excellent test of the quality of your work - can you get people to pay for it? And gives you market sectors to aim at - because you're talking to your customers all the time - and they're likely to tell you what they want.

Plus having a good (and visible) track record gives you credibility. Both in hiring good people, and in getting money out of NASA.

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Re: Nothing to see here

Musk really doesn't need to show off. SpaceX have been there and done that. They are now the space top dogs - and can already do a bunch of stuff that nobody else can do. With more capabilities in development. Until someone else has got re-usability on medium and heavy lift - they're in a class of their own.

Not that it stops him, as he does like to show off a bit. But at least he doesn't feel the need to put out the kind of whiny, passive agressive statements that Blue Origin often do.

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Going back to the Bezos and Dynetics complaints, do they honestly expect the world to hang around while they play catch up?

To be fair to Bezos, the original NASA idea was that the moon landing contract was going to have more than one winner. But Congress didn't give them the funding the requested, so they chose to cut the program to be a winner-takes-all halfway through. And who can blame them for going with SpaceX, who've met all their other COTS contracts? The GAO appeal established that NASA had said in advance that multiple awards was dependent on funding, so changing it was fine.

In the previous COTS contracts there was some up-front money for design / early production, and then if it looked good you got awarded some future contracts - which you'd obviously only get paid on if you complete.

So for example Boeing are being paid more per crew launch to the ISS than SpaceX - which is funny because the Boeing one still doesn't work. However NASA only paid for one test flight, so Boeing are having to fund this month's themselves, having fucked up the last one so badly. And of course, if NASA don't OK it, they'll just tell Boeing to bugger off, and can give those other missions to SpaceX. Which must look tempting, given they're cheaper.

With the cargo deliveries to the ISS they went to SpaceX and Orbital (with Cygnus / Antares). Both blew up one payload, though at least SpaceX had the good grace not to total the launch complex as well...

Wireless powersats promise clean, permanent, abundant energy. Sound familiar?

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Happy

Re: The effectiveness of such a device...

For that reason alone even if it was actually practical, nobody would want something like it in orbit

Not quite true. Everybody would like to have one in orbit that they have control of. Just nobody else should have one...

84-year-old fined €250,000 for keeping Nazi war machines – including tank – in basement

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Facepalm

Re: Weird Case

Vometia has insomnia. Again.,

Oh dear. You're totally correct. Well done to your memory and yah-boo-sucks to mine!

I'd thought it was only the Tiger (and the lower production stuff like the Stalin) that got up to those kinds of weights. But nope, the Panther was 44 tonnes. And the Scorpion only 9. So tanks for the correction.

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Re: Weird Case

They’ll do 70mph on the road. But there’ll probably not be much road left after you’ve done it. Still 13 tonnes too, so not that much weight difference from a Panther.

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Re: WTF?

small and stupid,

Well the Marxist historians aren't so against the idea of an inevitable path of history. They just don't like that particular version. Their's is no less stupid of course.

But there are certainly some differences in what happened in say England and France that do seem to explain why their political systems evolved so differently. Obviously it's a bit bloody odd celebrating what a great system you have and how your people are free compared to those poor frenchies, subject to the tyranny of Kings un-restrained by Parliament. While at the same time your country runs a massive global empire, subjugating all those people under your tyranny, without representation.

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Re: WTF?

ibmalone,

Sort of true. But that was after James had been captured (to William's obvious embarassment) and sent (allowed to escape again) on his way to exile in France.

It wasn't until the next year he went back to Ireland and raised an army. The year after he was defeated at the Boyne and left.

Although as the Irish Parliament had refused to crown William and Mary and kept faith with James, you could call it a civil war. Or you could say that William was given the kingship of England and Scotland but conquered Ireland.

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Pint

Re: Ah, shucks

Surely that should be tanks for reading...

But seriously this is a great community, with an excellent balance of allowing lots of leeway without descending into some online horror show. And therefore to be cherished and praised, and have glasses of beer raised to it.

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Re: Weird Case

There was a guy in the late 80s in central London, who bought an army surplus Scorpion light tank. Painted it bright yellow, and used to drive round town in it. As you do...

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Happy

Re: WTF?

Just one point ... Hand grenades are illegal to own here in the US. Even practice ("dummy") grenades are a big no-no in civilian hands. Too much room for error in an object that has absolutely no use for civilians.

I counter your argument with one simple word. Fishing.

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Re: WTF?

With big guns and tank guns in collections they're supposed to be de-activated. Which means some combination of pouring concrete into them and sticking spikes through the breech.

Similarly you shouldn't have machineguns that haven't been deactivated, unless you've got a firearms license - that you may not even be able to get for personal use.

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Re: WTF?

Particularly as the Germans were forgiven most of their war debts in the Dawes Plan in 1924.

Also King George was pretty much irrelevant as a political force. The last of the serious royal power ebbed away through the 19th Century - the monarchy never recovered from George III's illness. Making the politicians much more important.

Even Keiser Bill wasn't an absolute monarch. Though he was genuinely politically important and was often steering the ship. Had he been better at politics he could have had much more control of German politics. But he wasn't, and he didn't have politicians of the stature of Bismarck to help (at least not after he sacked him).

Basically ignore any history documentary that starts off talking about WWI as a "cousins' war" or some such crap. There weren't many absolute monarchs left. And Nicholas II of Czar of all the Russias wasn't exactly running a tight ship.

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Re: Most Brits have a fair idea of Germany before, during and after WW2.

Even back then though, we didn't cover the EEC in history. We didn't cover much European history at all, except as it related to conflicts with England or the UK, unless you go back to ancient Roman and Greek times.

It's a mistake to think that everyone learned the same as you at school.

The English and Welsh education system is not uniform. The syllabus you cover is dependent upon the exam board your school picks, and the bits of it that your teacher chooses to teach. Or at least it used to be back in the early 90s, when I did A Level history - and although there have been changes since I think it's still true.

I happened to do papers from both the Oxford and Cambridge exam boards, and there were quite big differences. Plus my brother did mostly late Medieval and Early Modern (Tudor) history for his A Level.

If I remember right, Oxford was 1800-1914 European and British political and economic history with a bit of extra British social history. Obviously more detail on the British bits.

Whereas Cambridge went up to 1945 and had more political/diplomatic/military history and less economic and social.

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Happy

Re: Most Brits have a fair idea of Germany before, during and after WW2.

a substantial part of history lessons over two years was spent learning about the development of the EEC

But that's not bloody history! Modern History stops in 1914! Or at a push 1945. Everything after that is contemporary studies or politics studies or somesuch crap...

Of course that means that we'll have to talk about "post-modern" history or some such shit as the philosphers already do, but that's a worry for another day...

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Re: WTF?

batfink,

It depends. In England they say William was invited. However I noticed when I was in Scotland last week that there it's referred to as an "invasion".

It's a bit of both. So I think gives people an opportunity to be all revisionist in their history - and modern takes on revisionist history are often indistinguishable from trolling...

After all, he brought a massive army with him - and there was nearly a battle - although much of James II's troops had already buggered off at that point. So it never happened.

On the other hand, William didn't rule in his own right. He was joint head of state, his wife Mary II was jointly reigning, rather than just being his Queen. And Mary was the daughter of James II, but crucially protestant (like William). James being basically catholic was ignorable, as she was his heir, right up until the point he had a son - which was one of the triggers (probably the main trigger) of the people who invited William to invade.

Also, William had to agree to the Bill of Rights before Parliament would appoint him monarch. Which was much more than they'd got from Charles II to return as King after the civil war. Even though he was occupying the capital with his large army at the time, so he clearly didn't act like he'd won a war of conquest.

But I think it's become fashionable to call it an invasion, as a way at having a go at people you don't like.

And of course, calling it the "Glorious Revolution" is all part of the idea of Whig History - which is the old school of history where everything is described as this path of the inevitable path of English greatness - where the progress of English history leads to this great constitutional monarchy with a strong parliamentary, liberal state institutions (by the standards of the 18th/19th Century anyway), lovely delicious empire and free global trade. Plus massive fuck-off navy (and not to mention regularly trouncing the French of course...).

That school of history gets right up some people's noses, even though it's a couple of hundred years old - but still has influence on modern historical thinking. It also has the unfortunate aspect of being at least a somewhat accurate description of events - which I think really gets on the more left wing historians' tits...

RingCentral shouts revenue growth from the rooftops while shareholders can't help but notice deepening losses

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Terminator

Translation needed

AI enabled tools which provide predictive analytics on customer health metrics across the entire customer base."

Hmmmm. Are they saying their previous customer churn was down to all their customers dying...

Quite clever if they've got an AI that can spot a customer before they leave and presumably then task a terminator to stop them from doing so.

International Space Station actually spun one-and-a-half times by errant Russian module's thrusters

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Happy

Re: Official name for a rotation unit?

Surely the "Zebulon" is an even better choice? Were someone's parents Douglas Adams fans perhaps?

Ecuador shreds Julian Assange's citizenship

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Re: use of different signatures

Every day's a school day. And this is usually a good site for learning odd stuff.

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Re: Time flies

You mean the footage that Assange edited, to hide the fact that the people with the journalists had RPGs? That footage? That he called "Collatoeral Murder"? The one where the helicopter gunner screams out RPG (which sadly was actuallly the camera pointing round the side of the building) and then engages it? I mean he might have been a really good actor - except that both of them came across as gung-ho idiots. The one where the helicopter was flank guard for a convoy that was under attack at the time.

Because if you do, the reason nobody went to prison is that no crime was committed. They engaged armed people, in a combat zone, believing they were under attack.

They may well have used excessive force. There's a bit (that Assange also cut out) at the end where they fire into a building after some armed guys have gone inside it. But not knowing who (or what) else was in there - they probably shouldn't have. That might be a breach of their rules of engagement - and I've even seen a US academic lawyer argue that that might actually come close to a war crime, but the bit at the beginning of the video was just a fuck-up in a combat zone. And as much the cameraman's fault as the helicopter crew's.

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Re: use of different signatures

Nope. Embassies are not sovereign territory.

They are treaty-mandated protected areas inside other countries. In this case the Vienna Conventions. Once an embassy is granted the host country can only enter with the permission of the ambassador or their government.

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Re: Journalist prosecution

I don't give a flying fuck what Assange was "prepared" to do. The law states that he should have stayed in Sweden to face and charge and arrest. He ran. He got caught in the UK under a European Arrest Warrant. He got his day in court, he lost. He got an appeal. He lost. He appealed again, which was allowed as I think it was the first big test case of the new EAW system. He lost. The court ruled that he was accused of rape and that this was equivalent to the crime in the UK and that he'd have been extradited under the old system too.

He ran away again. This time to spend 7 years in an embassy. Now he's done the time for his bail jumping and is still there because of running twice before. Had he stuck to his bail conditions he'd be out on bail now too. In this case awaiting the US appeal, because they can't extradite him. As he's had about 5 appeals in this country, he's no right to complain if other litigants have a go too...

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Re: use of different signatures

Seems very odd. There can't be any doubt of his identity - he was in their embassy for 7 bloody years. You'd have thought the people processing it might just recognise him by that point...

However, who'd be surprised if he'd lied about some documents - which is a nice excuse to reverse an embarassing mistake they made. Seems a bit harsh though to blame him for not living in Ecuador in order to keep his citizenship. It's not like he's had much choice of accommodation, since they kicked him out of the embassy.

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Re: Journalist prosecution

Swedish law apparently requires you to be interviewed before you can be charged. You're then charged at that interview. He was clearly not considered a flight risk by the Swedes - as they texted his lawyer the night he fled the country - to come in for a charge interview the next morning. The lawyer denied this in one of the UK hearings and then was forced to produce his phone and show the text message still on there.

At which point they issued the European arrest warrant.

I no longer have a burning hatred for Jewish people, says Googler now suddenly no longer at Google

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Re: Ummmm

Interestingly enough, even after being sacked, he says he still believes in Google's "mission".

Whether that the mission to make everything searchable and easily available or the mission to make vast amounts of cash by making the internet a vastly more unpleasant place is not yet clear…

Annoyed US regulator warns it might knock SpaceX's shiny new Texas tower down

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Happy

The Germans have no word for fluffy. And their operas last for serveral days...

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Re: Ah yes,

How do you know he can't buy his way round the rules? He hasn't tried... Yet...

United, Mesa airlines order 200 electric 19-seater planes for short-hop flights

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Re: Houston we have a problem

Forcibly put the gasses back into the passengers on debarkation perhaps?

So you give a pint of blood on take-off. They put it into a Sodastream and carbonate it. Then pump it back into you while you're strapped down for the landing. Who doesn't want fizzy blood?

Western Approaches Museum: WRENs, wargames, and victory in the Atlantic

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Re: Book recommendation

Charles Calthrop,

Oddly the railway tracks weren't really the problem. It was the depots and infrastructure. To change guage - you simply picked up the rails, moved them a bit closer together and nailed them down again. This could be done by reasonably easily and quickly.

The problem was that Russia is bigger than Germany. So even if they hadn't destroyed them, Russian depots and water towers were further apart. Russian trains had larger coal tenders. Also the Russians were pretty good at destroying or removing their locomotives - and the Germans were always short of replacements.

The Germans had actually predicted the logistics problesm. In the original invasion planning von Paulus (of Stalingrad fame) had suggested a 2 week pause at some point in the middle of the campaign. This would allow troops on the frontline to rest and re-organise, and for the whole logistics system to be overhauled - so that more supplies could be pushed further forward.

Admittedly it would have also given the Russians time to reorganise. But given that Stalin was even worse than Hitler at interfering in operations at this point in the war - he'd have probably ordered a suical counterattack (as he did at Smolensk in September 41) - or sent more troops to the front to hold ground, that would have been ripe for pocketing and capture.

Supply would also have been much easier if the Germans had picked fewer axes of advance. Trying to advance on all fronts simultaneously was just asking for trouble - and logistical overstretch. Concentrating on just Moscow might have led to it's capture. Sending Guderian's panzers off to capture Kiev did net them another 700,000-odd prisoners. But crippled the attack on Moscow. Maybe doing that and Moscow, but not Leningrad would have made the difference? Pushing the Russians back to Leningrad and ignoring it - while winning elsewhere was much sounder strategy.

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Re: Alas, here we go again...

I did A Level History in 1990-92. Our syllabus was European economic and political history from 1789-1945. The themes we covered were the Congress of Vienna (not the Napoleonic Wars) and the diplomatic system that followed it for much of the 19th Century - ending with a bit of the start of WW1 and Imperialism in Africa. Italian and German unification. British politics up to WW1. And finally the industrial revolution in Europe and its social effects in Britain in the 19th C.

There's an awful lot of German history in there, and no mention of Nazis. I think we did the Oxford exam board. Our German history textbook even had a brand new cover and a hastily written final chapter on German reunification in 1989-90. But we pretty much stopped in 1914.

Although I did do a Cambridge exam board paper, which had loads of WWII.

My brother got medieval to early modern history for his A Level with all the Henries and up to the Civil War.

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Re: a quote from American journalist David Fairbanks White, …

Pseudononymous Coward,

I strongly disagree that it's a pernicious myth that Britain stood alone.

Partly just from the practical sense that people said it at the time, but were pretty loose in their terminology. Saying Britain when they meant the empire, or if you were Hitler often saying England when you meant the whole lot of the UK + empire and dominions.

Saying England when you meant the UK was also commonplace at the time. There's even a dig at this in 'The Man Who Never Was' (1956), where an officer says how this will do great service for England, and the father of the dead man says that we're Scottish - but we're used to you saying that.

I don't really like to use the word pernicicious about any honest attempt to do history, but I'd argue there's at least as much bad faith in their arguments from the revisionist types as the original (perhaps more jingoisitic) ones who they're reacting against.

Britain had the Empire and Dominions (principally Oz, NZ, Canada and South Africa). This was clearly a massive part of the war effort. But they were a long way away. And of course, in the case of the Empire, they didn't get a choice about joining in the war. Though the Dominions' governments did.

In 1940 it was Britain that was under threat of invasion. And the bulk of the forces in play were British - both in terms of personnel, manufacture and funding.

After Dunkirk, when the bulk of the British army came back disorganised and with no heavy weapons I believe one Canadian division made it to the UK. Which was dead useful, seeing as Churchill sent most of the remaining organised troops (and the only armoured division) off to North Africa. Which is where the first available ANZAC and Indian troops were also sent.

For example, of the 3,000-odd pilots counted as having fought in the Battle of Britain a bit less than 600 were foreign. Although only one Canadian squadron fought as such. All the rest were integrated into the RAF - or had already been in it for years - given that "British" forces always had a number of recruits from around the empire.

I think to call it a pernicious myth is utterly ludicrous. Certainly context needs to be added, but it wasn't Canadian cities getting bombed, nor was Australia under immediate threat of invasion.

Obviously I've no right to take any kind of smug, self-satisified kudos from having fought the Nazis alone. I wasn't born yet. I suppose my Mum could - although as she was a child in the war Hening Wehn argues that all she was doing was using up resources vital to the war effort - so she was actually on Hitler's side...

I'd argue Hening Wehn is much better at puncturing that pomposity with humour - than any number of revisionist historians are with their own self-righteous twisting of the narrative.

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Happy

Re: An excellent read.

Submarine warfare rules. Have seen this game done, it was funny and reasonably accurate.

Blindfold ten people. Place them in a medium sized hall with a slidy wooden floor. Your church hall or local community centre should be perfect.

Each person has 6-10 marbles to act as their load of torpedoes.

Each person lies flat on the floor on their back.

Movement is as fast or slow as you like. If you hit someone you're both dead as you've sunk your submarines.

Passive sonar: Listen. If someone is moving, you should hear them. Unless they're moving very slowly and stealthily.

Active sonar: Say "ping". This is where you need people who won't cheat. Anyone who hears the word "ping" must repeat it at exactly the same volume they heard it at. Thus your active pings will be heard further away than you can hear the replies. Plus you can moderate the power of your active sonar.

Torpedoes: When firing, simply roll your marble in the desired direction. Anybody hit by a moving marble is dead.

Suggested tactic: If you hear a torpedo, you may wish to fire one back down that bearing.

If you are hit (torpedo or other boat), say "bang" - then get up and quickly and quietly leave.

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Re: Book recommendation

In the end, it was a war of economics. And so the author has a point. It's easy to forget, because reading about battles is more interesting to most people. But reading about how Germany mismanaged its war economy, while the UK ran its far better - and the US economy boomed off into the stratosphere is vital to understanding the war.

However, the battles still matter. What if Germany had captured Moscow in 1941? That would have cut the Soviet rail network in half - severering almost the last North-South links. As well as doing immense damage to morale and Stalin's prestige. It would have done immense damage to the economy and made military operations so much harder - allowing the Germans the mobility to shift forces around and possibly outnumber different Russian fronts and defeat them in detail.

This post is giving me flashbacks. All those essays I was set at university, what is the effect of blah, blah blah on the thesis of Paul Kennedy's 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers'. Which basically takes 800 pages (and quite a lot of charts) to tell you that the alliance with the biggest economy tends to win the big wars. But at least I'm old enough to have avioded all the essays on Francis Fukuyama and his thesis about the end of history...

It is underestimated how much damage bombing did to the German ecoonomy. Not just bomb damage, but the vast resources put into trying to counter allied air attacks. And thus how little was left for equipment for the armies on the Russian front. The other thing is how crap Hitler was as a strategic commander. He had the attention span of a 4 year-old, when it came to someone wanting to waste vast resources on a shiny new project. So the mad thing is that German war production didn't peak until June/July 1944! And by then bombing had made a mess of Germany, and it was getting impossible to coordinate production properly.

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Re: Good fiction reads

The film of the Cruel Sea is truly excellent, and doesn't shy away from some of the nastier bits of war. I was planning to recommend it, just because I watched it during lockdown, and there's a scene where one of the officers pops into Western Approaches to have a look at the operations map. One of my favourite scenes is the junior officer basically told that you're it, there's no doctor, here's a crew member with a broken arm and a book on advanced first aid. Get on with it. Which was pretty much how stuff went on the converted trawlers they were sending out as corvettes in 1940/41. It wasn't until they got the new flower class frigates in numbers, that things got a bit better.

Walker also talks a bit about it during the episode of 'The World at War' on the Battle of the Atlantic.

I guessed (and just checked) it was Audacity that was the escort carrier lost in the convoy where they gamed Walker's tactics. Audacity was Eric "Winkle" Brown's carrier (as often mentioned in this parish) - and he was on it when it got torpedoed. He talks about it in the BBC program where they interviewed him for his 90th birthday. Said that he survived because he had an RAF life jacket, which was much better than the Navy ones. He also talks about it in his book 'Wings on My Sleeve'.

And finally, while recommending books, 'Das Boot'. Lothar-Gunther Buchheim. Glad I looked up how to spell his name, as that's a fictionalised account of his two patrols as a photo-journalist on a U-Boat. Later he produced a trilogy of book-length photo essays on the war in the Atlantic - although they're probably going to be hard to get hold of.

But it's important to remember the Battle of the Atlantic. Not only was it vital to the war. But both sides suffered terribly. You were far safer in most army units than you were wandering round the Atlantic in 1941-43.

Euro space boffins hatch comms satellite hijack plan to save Earth from extinction

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Re: The Stainless Steel Elephant

The Atomium is awesome and should be left to its shiny glory! It's very shiny, since being refurbished. You used to be able to hire it for parties, back when I lived in Brussels. And that was the venue for my fantasy birthday bash.

However fitting rockets to the corners of the Eiffel tower and launching it to poke the asteroid out of the way does have its attractions.

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Re: Am I missing something...

A Coronavirus vaccine was in development after the original SARS outbreak of 2003. It was ready for human trials in 2016. Nobody was interested in funding it.

This is actually unfair. The human race did pretty well, what with a couple of separate Covid programs being parked and ready to go - when Covied decided it was ready to come for us.

The Oxford vaccine was originally designed for MERS - the Middle Eastern variant that liked to hide in camels before popping up to kill people. But there was limited transmission of that between people. Which is just as well - it killed half the people that got it. Because there was no outbreak ongoing, there was no way to test the vaccine. Or at least there was, but it was to vaccinate volunteers and then to deliberately infect them - which are called challenge trials. The ethics of deliberately infecting people with a virus that has a 50% death rate are unacceptable.

Boffins find an 'actionable clock' hiding in your blood, ticking away to your death

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Re: iAge

You are infringing Apple copyright. Please desist.

I admit it. I have rounded corners and respond to touch and gestures.

Imagine a world where Apple shacked up with Xerox in the '80s: How might it look today?

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Happy

Re: Alternate, alternate history

With all the carnage in the computer industry - Alan Sugar is amazed to see his computer company taking over the world - and becomes super-rich. Copying an idea from a little known American he creates 'The Apprentice Worldwide'. He surfs this success into standing for election in all democracies - wins - creates a single world government and finds the alien stardrive in Area 51. Makes cheap knock-off copies of same, and goes on to create the United Federation of Planets.

Starfleet standing orders now demand that all Federation Starship Captains must declare, "You're fired!" immediately after desroying alien planets. This to be carried out on their ships ten year missions to discover new life, and new civilisations in order to sell them hi-fi equipment.

[perhaps you shouldn't have had those mushrooms for lunch - Ed]

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Stop

Re: Lots of fun!

And everybody in the world uses Lotus Notes...

Mwahahahahahahahaha!

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Devil

Re: Xerox

Where's the misty-eyed nostalgia for High Wycombe?