* Posts by I ain't Spartacus

10123 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009

Virgin Galactic reveals giant mirror feature in cabin design for Beardy Branson's space bus

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Devil

Re: A 10-minute countdown ? For real ?

Well, the pilots are re-usable. Whereas the passengers have paid in advance, and are therefore counted as a consumable.

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Happy

Re: Mood lighting my arse.

Thinking about it, why not?

Wouldn't it be great if every time you sat on the toilet for a number two - the bathroom was suffused with the beatiful glow of your now revealed anaLED BumLumination - reflected gently from the bowl?

Maybe a restful blue for your number 2 - with the option of a brighter mode to show your underlings that the sun shines out of your arse.

BT: 'Because of the existing underlying supply of the 4G equipment, most of our 5G (NSA) so far is with Huawei'

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It's funny how France announced pretty much the same policy last week - all Huwawei kit to be out of the 5G networks by 2028.

How does that relate to your comment on chicken imports?

Let alone the continuing bizarre inisistance that any UK government is going to "sell off the NHS". A claim Labour has made at pretty much every election since 1950 - and yet is strangely still yet to happen - despite Labour having lost most of those subsequent elections...

EU orders Airbus A350 operators to install anti-coffee spillage covers in airliner cockpits

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Thumb Up

Re: SImpler solution?

Steve K,

Tee hee!

Let me guess - have you recently retired from an engineering management role at Boeing?

Out of interest, when do you start your new job at the FAA? It's nice to see an enlightened, "can-do" atttitude amongst our regulatory overlords.

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Re: SImpler solution?

Perhaps a mask, with a straw, that drops from the ceiling in an emergency? Such as an under-hydrated or under-caffeinated pilot. I guess it could even dispense vodka, in case the pilot is too awake.

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Re: SImpler solution?

Steve K,

Eating shouldn't be a problem. You can do that quickly, and in one go, while having a bit of time away from the controls. But coffee and tea are hot, in my experience of flying, coffee is normally served at about 500°C. Though hopefully the pilots are getting the actually drinkable stuff from first class - I only dared the coffee on 6am flights, when the horror of the impending meetings, made death by airline coffee seem the preferable alternative.

But levity aside, the pilots are working in a very dry environment - often for long periods. So while you could easily ban drinking at the controls on short hops - it's not really reasonable to do so on long flights. And it then becomes an interesting problem in safety decision making. You don't want tired pilots, or even thirsty ones. I think it's been pretty well shown that well-hydrated people show better judgement and problem solving. Surely a good thing for pilots. You also don't want shorted controls. But finally you also want both your pilots to be near the controls, in case of emergency. There's often quite a lot to do, and so having 2 people responding in a time critical situation is also important.

Google allowed to remember search results to news articles it was asked to forget. Good

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Re: Why I love the Right to be Forgotten

Julz,

I approve of your enlightened attitude to recruitment. Sadly I'm not sure how many people share it. In a lot of cases the early stages of hiring often seem to involve whittling down the large number of applications to a manageable number to seriously consider. So it's much more of a negative process of finding reasons to move on to the next candidate. Rather than positively assessing each application in an attempt to find the very best person. Sad, but true.

Also HR departments tend to be risk averse, by design.

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Re: Why I love the Right to be Forgotten

I’m one of your downvoters. Not because I disagree with you about people being responsible for their own actions. But precisely because i do believe in responsibility in all its meanings. Yes, it’s foolish to allow the photos, but making mistakes is what young people do.

The reason for the downvote is the "victim blaming". The person responsible for the horrible crime of stalking is the wrong-doer. Not the person who makes a perfectly legal decision you and I regard as foolish. Just because I accidentally leave my door open, doesn’t make it OK for you to steal my stuff. The law is very clear on this, in both types of cases. And so it bloody well should be.

He’s responsible for being a horrible scumbag. She merely made a mistake. And don’t tell me you didn’t do anything equally stupid when you were growing up, even if you were lucky and got away without consequences. If you did, I salute you for your unique perspicacity. I don’t think I know anyone that doesn’t have youthful mistakes they regret making. At least our generation's weren’t recorded on ubiquitous recording devices, and published for the world to see.

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Re: Confused

Oh dear. No I wouldn’t. There was a time when Bing! was hitting nearly 20% share in the US. Which must have been before people knew how to change default settings on their browsers.

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Re: Confused

Also, I don't think that Bing! has much marketshare in Europe. Last time I saw figures, it was at least a significant player in search in the US, but less so on this side of the pond.

Once considered lost, ESA and NASA's SOHO came back from the brink of death to work even better than it did before

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Pint

Re: If it ain't broke

Pete 2,

I'd imagine it's cost issues, combined with flight experience. You'll note that later in the article it states that SOHO control is now operated by many fewer people - and I'd imagine that means more automation.

Obviously this is partly a function of cost saving. Can we automate things, to save money? And you might object to that, but government funded science is always going to suffer from that.

But there's also a much better reason for cost savings. Doing more science. It's now common for space missions to over-run their design lifetimes by orders of magnitude. The Opportunity rover on Mars (14 years instead of 3 months), being an awesome case in point. Yes, we know, that spacecraft are over-engineered - and have many backup systems. Plus we're getting better at using software and clever tricks to overcome a situation when even our back-ups have failed - using different systems to overcome that - in SOHO's case using the star trackers as gyros, or Kepler using thrusters to overcome the failure of reaction wheels.

But this has a problem. If you're only budgeted for having x number of active missions to control in 5 years time, and now you've got 2x still working, what are you to do? You either delay new missions, until you've got the staff to operate them, abandon perfectly good spacecraft, or ask for a bigger budget. Which you might not get.

My final point is that we gain experience by flying these missions. Each spacecraft is unique, even when they use some common parts. Along with different mission profiles, that means you get better at controlling them over time, you understand the problems - and have a better idea of what needs to be done. 3 monthly maintenance procedures may not be worth automating on a 12 month mission - where you're only doing it 4 times - but on a mission that now lasts 10 years I'd suggest the chances of someone getting it wrong one of the now 40 times you're doing it manually becomes greater than the risk of problems with automation.

Beers all round! Especially to the guys still getting the 2 Voyagers to do science. Although I think they lose power for the radios this decade.

UKIP blackmail, data breach sueball allegations were groundless, rules High Court

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Re: Inside Scoop ?

I don't think Tim Worstall was ever a staffer. I think he was a freelance, brought in for occasional pieces. But he's not appeared on here in a while, and I don't think he's been involved with UKIP for years.

Soon after Farage took over as leader, UKIP pretty much became a one-man band. Which of course meant they were stuffed, after he left.

Fresh astro-underwear, anyone? Orbital shenanigans as Progress freighter has last-minute ISS docking wobble

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Re: Contactless Delivery Service Possibly?

Perhaps it’s using the new Amazon software? And it was going to throw the payload over the garden fence and chuck a card through the airlock saying, "We rang and you were out."

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Devil

Re: Only 3 hours?

Marketing Hack,

Are you sure that dropping an exploding rocket on Orlando wouldn’t be an improvement?

Russia tested satellite-to-satellite shooter, say UK and USA

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Re: Weapons in space

To be fair, the Death Star really needed a health and safety officer. There's all those tripping hazards (including the cleaning droids), massive risks of falls from height (no safety rails) and the rubbish disposal system alone is a risk-assessment nightmare.

Also HR need to buck their ideas up, as I think Lord Vader should at least be investigated for workplace bullying.

Although at least their policies on giving people with disabilities senior management roles can't be criticised...

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Happy

Re: Weapons in Space

Dave 126,

You say there are no bears in space. But we've only got your word for it...

SuperTed, for example, was space-capable. And I bet NASA are as vulnerable to being bribed with marmalade sandwiches as the rest of us.

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Re: Outer Space Treaty

Interesting. I thought the Outer Space Treaty specifically did prohibit weapons based in space. Which would give an obvious loophole for ground or air-launched anti-satellite missiles.

And nope, you're correct. The treaty forbids the basing of nuclear (or other weapons of mass destruction) in space. Astronaut's personal laser cannon are exempt - as are armed satellites - and all manner of other things. Every day's a school day...

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Re: Thanks for stepping up Russia

A crappy little 700k/hr anti-satellite missile isn't going to be up to that job. We need space based nukes to fight the aliens with.

Visa fraud charges: Uncle Sam accuses four Chinese eggheads of covering up their true ties to China's military

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Happy

Re: Barr

how the West stole the Chinese pottery and gun powder secrets.

But I thought, after watching that documentary 'The Great Wall' that Matt Damon didn't steal the gunpowder in the end?

Or did I fall asleep and miss something?

Nvidia may be mulling lopping Arm off Softbank: GPU goliath said to have shown interest in acquiring CPU design house

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Re: "Also, there's tidy licensing income to be collected."

On the other hand, Softbank lost $100bn last year. And I'm pretty sure that's a pre-Covid 19 number too. Although quite a few tech companies have done quite well out of lockdown and working from home - just not, I suspect, Uber and WeWork.

So although Softbank bought it for $32bn, they may well be willing to just add a few more numbers to their losses. And then they'll have lovely cash to invest more into the glorious future prospects of Uber and WeWork!

Personally I'd just save the effort and burn it...

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Re: What is the point ?

The problem is, Softbank are likely to not want to lose an embarrassing amount of money on the deal. So it's going to cost an arm and a leg.

Nominet shakes up system for expiring .uk domains, just happens to choose one that will make it £millions. Again

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Re: The various registrars aren't getting the message, are they?

I'd love one of Elon's Falcon 9 Flamethrowers, I just can't afford it.

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Flame

Re: The various registrars aren't getting the message, are they?

Stick's not working. Aren't flamethrowers cheap nowadays?

The volcanoes on Venus aren't dead, say astroboffins, they're merely resting, pining for the planet's lava fjords

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Re: Makes sense

Wow! I thought Venus was horrible enough already. What with the sulphuric acid rain, lead-melting temperatures, killer lightning and massive pressure. Now add planet destroying mega vulcanism. Think I’d rather holiday somewhere else...

UK intel committee on Russia: Social media firms should remove state disinformation. What was that, MI5? ████████?

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Report from self-important people uncritically 'informed' by 'evidence' from untrustworthy sources?

Long John Silver,

US/UK aggression against Iraq destroyed trust in British and American overseas security operations. 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' demonstrated the incompetence and/or criminal association of senior security operatives as handmaidens of corrupt politicians.

The Joint Intelligence Committee actually went to the unusual step of publishing their evidence on Iraqi WMDs. Which means we know they didn't lie about it, because they told us what they knew - which was very little. If you actually read the published report (as I did at the time), it was almost all publicly available evidence - such as the UN weapons inspectors reports from the 1990s. Which told you what parts of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program the UN had so far discovered - and what they'd destroyed before being forced out of the country. What they'd found was more than what they'd destroyed. Hence the estimates of what Iraq had left.

The JIC report didn't say we have secret intel on what Iraq currently has, it was merely a process of counting.

The one bit of that dossier that you might unfairly call a lie was the intelligence source who said that Iraq's remaining chemical weapons were deployable and useable at 45 minute's notice. Almost every serious intelligence agency in the world believed that Iraq still had the stuff, but many didn't believe Iraq had the capability to use it. Given the UN inspections in the 90s had commented on the poor quality of their chemcal purity, meaning they had short shelf lives. The original JIC report said that there was a report from a single source that Iraq might have this capability (turns out that source was from a defector held by German intelligence at the time) - and it was re-written for the "dodgy dossier" to say the slightly more positive that we had intelligence to say that... Thus making it seem like the information was sligtly more credible than the actual info. As I understand it, real intel reports are full of such caveats - because information is scarce.

At the time of the Iraq war I was reading the excellent 'The Secret State' by Peter Hennessey. Which is about UK intelligence in the early Cold War. And it was frightening to see how little intel they had on the Soviet Union. Military intel was what stuff they could see - but they had very little political information to speak of about what the Soviet government was planning or thought were in its interests. So it was clear to me that we were suffering from a similar lack of info on Iraq, just with better military info from satellites. It's hard to get inside information on governments that shoot people who talk to ousiders, or in Saddam's case sometimes people that just annoy him a bit.

A lie would imply that the British government thought Iraq didn't have chemical weapons. Iraq had used chemical weapons, as well as deploying them at Corps HQ level in 1991 - the whole reason for the sanctions regime in the 90s was to destroy that, and it was never finished.

Johnson, in previous ministerial role, swallowed the ridiculous 'Skripal' narrative hook, line, and sinker.

Are you accusing Boris Johnson of buying the ridiculous Russian story that 2 tourists from Russia who just happened to have sequentially numbered passports, were scared to walk a mile in Salisbury to get to the Cathedral because of slush? Oh no, I see, you've fallen down the whole conspiracy theory bollocks rabbithole that thinks the UK government made the whole thing up and spend a few tens of millions of pounds decontaminating a small city just for fun and to allow them to be rude to the poor innocent Russian government. I'm afraid I can't help you then.

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Re: If the cap fits, wear it * Denial is simply counter-productive and always self-defeating

Of course there's a complicated wiring diagram of government responsibility. How could there not be? Nor is this anything new.

The SIS (MI6) and GCHQ are responsible for spying on foreigners. In most cases they're not even supposed to be allowed to work in this country. So for obvious reasons they're under the direction of the Foreign Office. The National Cyber Security Centre hangs off GCHQ, because they're the guys with the computer expertise - hence also being under the FCO.

The Security Service (MI5) are Home Office because their job is counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. So they're spying here - although again the counter-espionage thing could be under SIS and the Foreign Office, considering most of that involves spying on foreign diplomats operating in London. Also here there's always been overlap (and conflict) with Special Branch, which I think is now part of the Met's Counter Terrorism Command?

There have always been power struggles, bureaucratic infighting and problems crossing the boundaries between the intelligence services. Traditionally the coordinating role was always the Cabinet Office, and the Cabinet Secretary, which ran the Joint Intelligence Committee (who also bring in the Defence Intelligence Agency) to write joint intelligence assesments as needed. It was the Cabinet Office who were supposed to at least keep the weasels fighting inside the same sack...

That coordination role was increased by either Cameron or May by creating the National Security Council (and Advisor) - again under the Cabinet Office - to try and improve coordination.

But it would be very hard to have it all in one department, given all the different organisations, and potentially dangerous too - as we don't want too many spies spying on us - we want most of them set on all those nasty foreigners. Hence keeping them separate.

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Re: I see

How do you know there's not another Russian bot who downvotes everyone who downvotes mention of the Russian bot in order to make it look like there isn't a Russian bot?

Also, does a Russian bot have another, smaller, bot inside it?

In the US Presidential campaign, there were (assumed due to other activities) Russian bots on both sides of quite a lot of the conflicts. For example pushing attendance at pro and anti-Trump rallies at the same plaace.

I'm not sure the Russians are pushing a side, so much as pushing chaos. Basically they have no supporters. Nobody looks at the Russian system and says, "we want some of that". Or even looks at the Russian government and thinks they'd like them as allies. It's not like the old Soviet days when they had ideological supporters, who liked the idea of communism, despite the horrible disasters caused whenever it was tried. So rather than say, "our system is great" they are now reduced to screaming into the void, "your system is just as shit as ours."

Despite the fact that the best places to live in the world are all democratic, and all the places that have ever achieved decent standards of living for most of their population have either been democracies, or societies transitioning towards democracy.

51 years after humans first set foot on the Moon, a deepfaked Nixon mourns how Armstrong and Aldrin never made it home

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It turns out cyanide is quite dangerous. Which might be reason not to use it, though I agree deliberately opening your hatch or helmet doesn’t sound much fun.

I’m not being facetious here. There was a case 2 years ago of an ex SOE operative from WWII, who’d kept his cyanide pill. I think he’d been dropped into France in 43 or 44. Anyway having terminal cancer, he decided to use it. Because the cause was known, it was deemed too hazardous to do an autopsy, even with full precautions.

So you’d have to be quite careful with the stuff, given you're in a closed environment. Then again, some of the LEMs had a chunk of plutonium strapped to the side to power the rovers, so why the hell not.

I’d imagine it was more a case of doing everything to succeed, and not planning to fail. If the astronauts had wanted it, they could have insisted, I’m sure. But I imagine that went against the grain of being a steely eyed missile man with the right stuff. And massive brass balls of course...

Or alternatively, if Armstrong can’t fly it off, Aldrin just punches the Moon until they achieve sufficient altitude for Collins to make the rendezvous...

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Apollo in Real-time is great too. Enjoy hours of BBC spaceyness. The Moon landing is a bit repetitive, but it’s deliberate in order to build you up to being able to listen to the whole communications recording, while recognising all the voices and the jargon. Hope you have fun.

My next job is reading Michael Collins' book, which is sitting on my table. After that I think I need a good book on the Soviet space program.

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For some reason, in that crappy litttle it's all gone wrong bit, they've got loads of little snippets of Gene Kranz saying, "Rog."

Having listened to both series of the BBC World Service's brilliant '13 Minutes to the Moon', I've heard a lot of recordings of Gene Kranz, my favourite quote being, "Let's not make things worse by guessin'." If you haven't listened to those, then do so as soon as possible. I think I preferred Apollo 13 to the Moon Landing - but they are both absolutely top notch. Even if Kevin Fong did slope off halfway through recording the second series to go and advise on Covid 19 response, making me wait for the final episode for a couple of months...

He also did another brilliant documentary for the Beeb on the lessons the military learnt in emergency trauma medicine in Iraq (and particularly) Afghanistan - which are now making their way into civilian hospitals. He's an air ambulance medic - so knows what he's talking about and what he's comparing to. Program is still available, so linky to BBC

I'd apologise for coming across as a bit of a Kevin Fong fanboy, except I'm probably guilty as charged.

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Re: C'mon MIT, if that's the state of the art, I want my money back

I don’t think the picture was too bad. The advantages of trying to fake poor quality TV. But the sound is dreadful. Even accounting for the poor mics at the time, he sounds like a Dalek. It sounds like one of those pop songs where the singer is OK, and mostly in tune, but has no power in their voice. So you overdub someone good singing as identically as possible to try and add some character and tone. You get a sort of chorus effect.

Also the voice sounds too normal. Nixon really liked to over pronounce words.

Brit telcos deliberately killed Phones 4u, claim admins in £1bn UK High Court sueball

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Re: Supposed to give a warning

In UK law secret recordings are a bit of a grey area. At least as I understand it from legal programs I've heard, being no lawyer. Mostly the police can't do it, but private individuals can - even though they're legally supposed to ask for permissionto record - it may still be admissable, even if they didn't. Although I suspect the real answer is: It's complicated.

From 'Queen of the Skies' to Queen of the Scrapheap: British Airways chops 747 fleet as folk stay at home

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Coat

Re: Once...

I got offered cheap upstairs seats the last time I flew. I was very excited, until they started strapping me to the roof of the aircraft. That’s the last bloody time I fly Ryanair!

Oh deer! Scotland needs some tech smarts to help monitor its rampant herbivore populations

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Coat

What about deer with no legs? You’re being ableist! They’re still deer...

Sorry, but I couldn’t stop myself.

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Re: Reintroduce Wolves & Bears

And are you going to pay the wages of these extra shepherds that are now required? Or guarantee to buy the farmers lamb now at double the price?

Hot, synchronous DRAM: Next-gen memory tech spec DDR5 lands

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Coat

Re: I’m disappointed!

If Batman is the superuser, the BOfH if you like. Does that mean Robin is a KAPOW!er user?

Best get my coat I think. But appalling puns are in keeping with the only true Batman, Adam West.

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Unhappy

I’m disappointed!

Surely the headline should have been:

Hot synchronous DRAM Batman!

Sorry, but I have nothing actually useful to contribute to the discussion.

Cambridge student rebuilds Polish Enigma-code-breaking box that paved the way for Turing ... and Victory!

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Re: Just love to see something that is not dusty, old and rubbish looking

I believe that the Germans killed more enslaved workers building the V2s than they actually killed Londoners. Which from memory was about 20,000. I think the V1 did for about the same amount.

But the jets are a good example. The Komet was a deathtrap, being a rocket plane - and pretty shit anyway because you only got a couple of passes at a bomber at such a high speed that you couldn't be all that effective. But the Me262 was brilliant - except they couldn't build enough of them and also serviceability was rubbish because they needed an engine rebuild after every 10 hours of flight!

The British government were much more sensible to rely on weapons they knew they could build and would be good enough, but could be produced in numbers and work reliably.

The Tiger tank was similar, in that it was brilliant but couldn't be produced in numbers and broke down all the time. In fact the Luftwaffe suffered throughout the war with planes that were too damaged for the limited field repair facilities they provided, and thus had to be shipped back to the factory for rebuilds. Whereas the Allies produced more spare parts and so didn't waste resources with planes left broken at airfields - or having to transport them back to the factories - something which also slowed down production of new aircraft.

All of these, and the stupid numbers of competing design teams, were all self-inflicted screw-ups, and not caused by allied bombing.

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Re: Just love to see something that is not dusty, old and rubbish looking

The Germans were terribly inefficient, as you say, and really ran their economy poorly.

I haven't got the figures to hand, so am going on memory. But after seriously ramping up aircraft production, from about 1937 onwards, the UK equalled German production somewhere around the beginning of 1940. Hence we were already out-producing Germany in fighters by the time of the Battle of Britain. Particularly useful as on one particular day in August 40, that I happened to hear on a documentary last week (and was surprised by) we lost 35 planes shot down, but only 2 pilots. Whereas German pilots who bailed out ended up staying in Britain for an all-expenses paid 5 year holiday.

Worse, for the Germans, by 1941 they'd only increased their aircraft production by about 10-20% - whereas British production pretty much doubled. And that's not to mention planes built in Canada, or odered from the USA.

In fact the Germans were so rubbish that they didn't even bring in proper materials rationing and a war economy until 1943! According to the US government's Strategic Bombing Survey - German war production peaked in Summer 1944. Despite having lost a lot of territory and resources by that point. This is because they were actually pretty bad at exploiting the production of the countries they'd conquered, and were rubbish at setting up their war economy - so despite the damage done by heavy bombing in 1943/44 - there were still easy wins for increasing production - things that should have been done by 1940.

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Re: Just love to see something that is not dusty, old and rubbish looking

This reminds me of my professor of German history's explanation of WWII. He holds up a piece of metal and says this is why Germany lost the war. I'm going to pass it round during the lecture and see if anyone can tell me what it is - and I'll explain at the end. We later get the clue that it's from a Messerschmitt Bf109.

So it's a piece of 2mm thick steel about 7" from corner to corner, so between a large smartphone / small tablet size. With some engraving on it, that's now badly rusted away.

Turns out it's the makers nameplate from the radio! In an ideal world your fighter planes should be as light as possible, and Germany definitely couldn't afford to be wasting steel. No wonder the Luftwaffe fighters only had fuel for 5 minutes combat over London, and couldn't get any further North during the Battle of Britain.

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Facepalm

Re: Britain has been a staunch ally to its NATO partners

JJKing,

Sorry. Typing on the iPad, not proof reading. Naughty me!

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Happy

Re: Just love to see something that is not dusty, old and rubbish looking

Perhaps modern computer companies could learn something from the Germans? After all, the Enigma was a utlitarian military device, and yet came in a nicely polished wodden case.

Would sir like his new PC in the beige powder coating, black with LED lights or the french polished rosewood casing? Ah, the rosewood, an excellent choice...

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Re: Loyalty

The real screwing over was post-WW2 when Britain and the USA signed over vast tracts of land to the Russians

What is this "signed over"? The Red Army occupied those countries and decided to not allow them to set up free governments, or in some cases to overthrow the ones that did set up.

The alternative was to declare war on Russia and kick them out. Which might have been the right thing to do, because there was a brief window when that could be done without it becoming nuclear. But the Red Army at that point was a lean, mean fighting machine - and heavily outnumbered the Western Allies.

I'm not even sure if it was militarily feasible, or democratically possible. It probably could have been done using nuclear weapons, but then what would have been the result once Stalin had his own?

The choice facing the politicians at that time was therefore incredibly unclear. Did they want to extend the war by an unknown number of years to fight the Soviets, with worse tanks but better aircraft.

Also your opinion is historically revisionist. In 1945 it wasn't known how much the Soviets would repress Eastern Europe. They were setting up Communist Parties to create fake free governments and it wasn't for a few years until even they were often too indepenendent for Stalin and replaced with even more repressive ones - so that it wasn't clear in 45 that Eastern Europe was about to become the Russian empire.

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Re: Loyalty

Britain created NATO, along with other European states, and asked the US to join. Its origins were based on post war treaties signed between the UK and a few Western European countries. Despite the ignorance of idiots like Corbyn, NATO was the creation, and an excellent part of the legacy, of the post-war Labour government.

To address some more of your historical ignorance, the USSR were never a military threat to the USA. Except massive nuclear strike of course. They did not have the logistic, sealift or airlift capacity to put significant numbers of troops into the field there. The US were in Europe for the same reason they joined WWII in Europe, or Britain joined WWI. Not wanting an enemy to gain dominance of an entire continent.

The thing that gives the lie to your paranoid bollocks about some imaginary US threat is that countries are still begging the USA to base troops there. Because if the security it gives them. Unlike say Russia or China, who have no allies they don’t have to buy or threaten. After using their treaty naval bases to invade Crimea, who’d trust Russia? Bases they only managed to keep by blackmail over Ukraine’s gas supply in winter.

So I’ll give three quick examples. Iraq kicked out US troops, they were offered to keep some by Obama and said no. Since ISIS they want them again. Or the shock and dismay when Trump talked of pulling out of Germany last month. Or my final example of the Polish government asking the USA to base troops there 2 years ago. They even offered to pay $2bn a year, and call the base Camp Trump...

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Re: Britain has been a staunch ally to its NATO partners

There was no option to bomb Germany in 1939. The Allies did not have the heavy bombers available to do it. Or the fighters to escort them.

In fact no country had sufficient 4 engined heavy bombers for a serious strategic bombardment. Including the Luftwaffe, who had to use mainly tactical bombers to bomb Britain, because that was all they had.

The French could have invaded Germany, as their tanks were all in Poland. But the invasion route was not particularly practical due to the border terrain and fortifications. As with World War I, the only practical way to invade across that border was through Belgium. And Belgium were neutral until invaded by Germany in Spring 1942.

The guarantee given to Poland was of deterrent value only until Britain had rearmed. Which it was doing. A lesson that many nations would do well to remember. If you would seek peace, prepare for war. Else your enemies may do so, and then you have no means to apply diplomatic pressure.

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Re: Britain has been a staunch ally to its NATO partners

As a Pole, I can address this. Poland expected an IMMEDIATE action from their allies. The keyword has been highlighted. Actions, not just empty political gestures/statements. Meanwhile, as we all know the war started on September 1st. Poland's defensive war ended October 6th. And the first strike of the English troops took place on October 10th... in Tunisia.

Poland got an immediate action. Britain and France told Germany on 1st September to stop the war in Poland or they would declare war. Set a deadline on 2nd September and declared war on 3rd September.

As to immediate assistance, I would suggest that the Polish government expected no such thing, given that they could read a map. Sending the Royal Navy into the Baltic to ferry troops to Poland was not possible. The alliance was supposed to work by deterrence, i.e. persuading the Germans that the war they weren't ready for would happen early, should they invade Poland. Hitler unfortunately doesn't seem to have believed it, and was surprised by the allied declaration of war.

You are also materially wrong about the Baltic States. Since the UK already has troops in place defending the Baltic States, and has had them there for at least the last couple of years.

In fact NATO directly learned from the experience of WWII, in that its doctrine became to have troops already in place, so that an aggressor would know that if it invaded - the guarantee would be much more likely to work, given that they were likely to have already killed more than one NATO nation's troops.

However it was thought to be too much of a provocation to Russia to base troops in the new Eastern European members, since we were now supposed to be playing nice with Russia after the end of the Cold War. However after the attack on the Ukraine that policy was changed, and NATO forces were based in the Baltic States - at the urging of Poland, UK and the UK - and despite initial objections from Germany and France. To be fair to them, Germany have since taken up leadership of one of the battle groups.

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Re: Loyalty

anonymous boring coward,

It's a bit of both. We commmitted more to NATO than other NATO members did - out of a combination of policy inertia, self-interest and a sense of obligation.

That's why the relatively smaller scale genocide in the former Yugoslavia eventually led to a military intervention, but the worse one in Rwanda didn't.

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Re: Loyalty

So when Britain went to war with Germany for over 5 years under that agreement with Poland, we somehow broke it? Although admittedly we didn't also declare war on the Soviet Union - but then the Wiki you linked to is badly written and doesn't make it clear whether the secret part of the treaty limited it to war with Germany or not.

As to our guarantees to Europe, Britain since WWII, has consistently spent more on the defence of NATO than most of the rest of NATO. With exceptions lilke the US and Greece. There were long periods where we spending as much on the defence of Germany as the German government were - inlcuding large committments of troops to the basically suicidal positions near the East German border - who were there as a tripwire to give other NATO members time to mobilise.

Similarly the British army and airforce are currently forward deployed as one of the main forces committed to the defence of the Baltic States (under very real threat of Russian aggression) - a position that it's been hard to get other NATO allies to take up.

I saw a very interesting piece of polling a few months ago. One of those polls of attitudes across Europe. Showing that Trump has dramatically lowered most people's opinions of the US. But what was really interesting was that only 30% of Germans and Italians thought that their governments should abide by the NATO treaty in defence of the Baltic States, but that even with Trump at the helm 60% still thought that the US would.

Britain has been a staunch ally to its NATO partners, committing serious amounts of blood and treaure to doing so.

Twitter says hack of key staff led to celebrity, politician, biz account hijack mega-spree

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Happy

Re: Lovely example

So, actually english is your second language then. Your first being bad language...

You're testing them wrong: Whiteboard coding interviews are 'anti-women psychological stress examinations'

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Re: Whiteboard coding - never done it, never ask anyone to do it

But blackboard is racist - against those chalkboards that happen to be green...

Although in my book, the bastards deserve it. We had those stupid green blackboards at school, and they were much less clear and never seemed to clean up as well. So what I'm saying is that Greens are difficult and dirty! And we'll have none of this pandering to PC gone mad, we should launch an invasion of Venus immediately!