* Posts by bombastic bob

10275 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Trump continues on the warpath: Now US tariffs cover nearly everything arriving from China

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Worrying...

"a massive holding of US debt."

which COULD get canceled... (this was Obaka's fault, by the way, to have them buy up all of those bonds)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Trump likes winners

last I heard this sort of thing was a form of TAX EVASION...

and if they ARE doing it, they deserve the appropriate punishment (even sanctions, etc.)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Talk is cheap

"trade is a give and take relationship that can't always be "take" for one side."

Very! Well! Said!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: The only thing the tariffs accomplish

thanks for the leading question. the premise you state in the form of a question is WRONG, i.e. that

a) tariffs are VAT taqxes on cheap crap at walmart

b) billionaire hedge fund managers are the [only?] recipients of a 1 trillion dollar tax cut

First, I shall school you on tariffs, what they are, and why they are a good idea in THIS case...

Traditionally ALL countries (including the UK) charge taxes on things, and imports are no exception. These are called 'tariffs'. They help fund the government, and also help prevent a foreign country from RUINING a particular business within YOUR country through various predatory and unfair practices (such as 'dumping').

If this were essential items, then MAYBE you'd have a point. but it's not. The end result is that China will lose business to other competing nations and businesses [remember China is STILL COMMUNIST, and really state-owns pretty much EVERYTHING when you boil it all down], when it's now possible for the others to compete.

Predatory competition has been used forEVAR to shut down the competition, form monopolies, and then REALLY rape the customer down to his last penny. Tariffs are a way for a nation to STOP this at the border. That's what's happening NOW.

Now, when it comes to TAX CUTS: When cigarette taxes are used to stop people from smoking, it should be obvious that taxation REDUCES an activity. In the case of taxing INCOMES, why REDUCE them? Don't people DESERVE to KEEP what they earn? And those who earn MORE _ALSO_ deserve to KEEP it!

The only TRUE FAIR TAX RATE is the SAME rate, whether your single, married, have kids, or earn MORE than the next guy. Seriously. And the end-result of HIGH TAXES on "the wealthy" are always twofold: a) "The Wealthy" always seem to have the resources to CIRCUMVENT it since often their income is NOT EARNED, and b) those who DO earn high incomes are likely to just say FUCK IT and either retire or stop WORKING THEIR ASSES OFF to get ahead.

High marginal tax rates on "the rich" are on those trying to BECOME the rich, not the ACTUAL rich. So your STUPID CLASS ENVY BULLSHIT is JUST a SOCIALIST PLOY to use CLASS ENVY to EMPOWER "them". Aka SOCISLISTS.

Whenever you LOWER tax rates on those who INVEST and CREATE BUSINESSES, you get more, uh, INVESTMENT and BUSINESSES. This means JOBS. And that's the point.

This is why Trump-economis WORKS, just like Reagonomics WORKED in the 80's, and if you don't actually remember SEEING it and LIVING it, then your revisionist history BULLSHIT is talking, not THE TRUTH.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Let's find out. China, just go ahead and ban ALL export to the USA. G'head. Do it.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Orange Fool

"But the his base consists of idiots"

No, it's actually the DEMO[N,C]RAT base that consists of idiots.

Why? because they actually SUPPORT "Quatro Perra" aka 'The Gang of Four' and their horrific socialist agenda, along with Pocahontas, Harris, Bernie, "Beto", and the rest of 'em. Biden actually looks MODERATE compared to "them". And yet, WHOM do the base support? That's right, the WACKOS.

Now as for Republo-crats that vote in RINOs, I might consider your opinion.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Orange Fool

you just don't like Trump. Your "feeling" (not thinking) on this matter is obvious.

Your opinion has been noted, and subsequently ignored.

If Trump cured cancer, paid everyone's taxes worldwide out of his own pocket, and did whatever every other nation and critic wanted him to do, you would STILL hate him.

It's like this, kinda (to a feminist): If a man says something, and there's no woman around to hear him, is he still "wrong" ?

US gives Chinese smuggler 37 months in the slammer for selling knock-off Apple kit

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Quality?

most likely they were BUILT BY TH#E SAME PEOPLE working FOR THE SAME COMPANY with THE SAME SUPPLY CHAIN on what is sometimes known as "4th shift", aka the "off the books" shift where they do all of the counterfeiting and cloning - usually for consumption WITHIN CHINA.

Hong Kong in the 80's was ALREADY known as a place where you could buy a camera [for example] and end up wtih a shell that didn't even open the shutter when you pressed the button. Member's Only, Adidas, Canon and Nikon, brands that were often faked at that time and sold in legit-looking stores in town.

"They warned us" about such things when I was there in 1985, as a member of the U.S. Navy. The recommendation was to ONLY purchase things at the China Fleet Club, which was run by the Royal Navy. I got a nice tailored suit and a good quality set of dishes there.

I'm sure that this reputation (for Hong Kong) has continued, and so it seems that Hong Kong was the pipeline for the counterfeit goods in this case. Too bad, I liked Hong Kong when I was there. bamboo scaffolding, construction still going on even though it was 1985, 4 years until the handoff to China.

In any case I have no doubt that the reason these "fakes" didn't look FAKE is that they probably weren't "fake", just NOT paying the royalties...

Lyft pulls its e-bike fleet from San Francisco Bay Area after exploding batteries make them the hottest seat in town

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: "San Jose – the heart of Silicon Valley"

I've lived in all of those places. You could NOT pay me enough money to live there again!

(In the 70's, it wasn't like it is today. It was actually ACCEPTABLE. This is because it was mostly ELECTRONICS and actual SILICON-related engineers, and military contracts, and cutting edge technology, not like the current "cloud" crowd dominating it today)

(NASA had a lot of presence there as well)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: That's what you get

samsung doesn't make the batteries, they most likely buy them from a company in China, since making the batteries requires polluting the environment, and it's ok to do that in China because they don't care.

So batteries built anyplace ELSE in the world willl cost a LOT more, because you need to TAKE PRECAUTIONS to avoid polluting the environment [whch is reasonable, I say]. but competition being what it is, the lowest price:quality always gets the sales and the supplier contracts.

So there ya go. Now Sammy had some issues with PINCHING their batteries (causing failure) but that was a final assembly problem. The batteries themselves probably performed "as designed". Whatever THAT implies, yeah.

I would actually blame a couple of other things, though. DISCHARGING a LiPo battery too far is one of the most dangerous things you can do to it, resulting in gassing and swelling and other chemical nastiness that you don't want to go into. If the battery control on those bikes does NOT prevent this, and ALSO prevent too-rapid charge rates [especially on heavily depleted batteries], you'll get explosions and fires and other things. Yeah, been there, done that. Worked with LiPo a LOT.

* one time I accidentally shorted a LiPo by connecting to a board I'd hand-built but didn't see a short across the battery, accidental solder bridge, in the visual inspection. Within 10 seconds the battery looked like a balloon. I disconnected it and ran it under a faucet to rapid-cool it, then it suddenly shrank down all wrinkly looking. Was completely unchargeable though, totally ruined. At least it didn't go *boom*

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Looks like the technology hasn't been properly studied

in a state KNOWN for it's over-litigation, a company did... WHAT?

Lithium _IS_ _THE_ _MOST_ _REACTIVE_ _METAL_ _ON_ _THE_ _PLANET_ Let it get outside of its protective container, and it WILL burst into flames and explode, reacting with LITERALLY everything!

That being said, who made the batteries? El Cheapo Battery Company, LTD from Ali Baba web site, right?

Yeah THAT'll keep costs down. And customers in pain.

Don't get me wrong, an electric bike service where you could "just grab one" sounds convenient, but here in San Diego we've had a LOT of problems with bike rental companies [the non-leccy kinds] and people leavng the things in (being kind) INCONVENIENT places.

People are (in general) pigs, in other words, without motivation to NOT be pigs. Self-disciplined people are generally an exception but not the norm.

As for San Jose California. I left that area in 1980 and would NEVER want to go back there. I understand it took a HARD TURN to the left, and the price of housing there is RIDICULOUS. Seriously, Silly Valley companies do NOT need to hire there, unless their investors ALSO own property [and make money off of ridiculous housing and rent prices]. And considering how bums and hobos and other "human debris" are CRAPPING IN THE STREETS and LIVING IN TENTS ON THE SIDEWALKS, who'd WANT to live there?

In any case, nothing beats a good old fashioned gasoline burning car or motorcycle. Seriously! And last I checked, the rate at which they burst into flames and cook your crotch is VERY small...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: RED HOTS ... RED HOTS ...

red hot... hot dogs?

Ouch. Reinstalling Windows 10 again? By 2020, a 'cloud download' may be all you need

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Who trusts a binary?

when you update the kernel in mint the old kernel usually shows up as a boot option in GRUB until you actually uninstall it manually. Last I checked, it was like that for all of the debian-based distros.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Who trusts a binary?

yeah I can do that with FreeBSD as well [and I do compile the kernel myself before updating]. But when it comes to the 3rd party software, building from source can take DAYS... [even on a super-mega-multi-core box]

But yeah if you want it built with your current shared libs and headers, as long as everything's consistent, build from source is probably the best way to go for reliability.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: "download a pristine copy of the OS from Microsoft's cloud servers"

"Microsoft considers that everything lives on C:"

REAL operating systems don't have a 'C' drive. Worth pointing out...

(when's the last time you used an 'A' or 'B' drive on your machine that has a 'C' drive, hmm???)

A REAL OS has a '/' to which everything mounts on a specfied directory aka 'mount point'. MUCH simpler.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Um, just NO!

WHAT options? last I checked, doesn't work for a VM or with ethernet

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Um, just NO!

"Yeah, how will that work if you're on a metered connection?"

already a major problem with the regular Win-10-nic FORCED updates.

Fix LibreOffice now to thwart silent macro viruses – and here's how to pwn those who haven't

bombastic bob Silver badge

Re: Sent a dodgy ODF?

if someone needs it formatted, I send PDF. But if it's something they need to edit I usually convert the ODF into a Word doc. It's more "compatible" that way.

NOt sure if word macros using LibreLogo would 'convert' back when you open it.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Defaults...

on FreeBSD the port installs all of it, and I didn't see a configure option to get rid of LibreLogo. however, it installs to a specific place and looks like renaming the directory (or blowing it away) would avoid the bug by preventing it from running. so you'd get an error, the first clue that something is wrong with that document.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

I've never liked word macros, especially the auto-run kind. don't wanna code 'em, too much trouble, viruses etc. like "insecure by design". RTF format actually made more sense at one time. But from now on if someone sends me a document, I guess I'll have to find a way to get rid of any macros in it before opening, even in libre office.

stupid feature creep.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Not in Version 5 , it would seem.

looks like it's in version 6 on FreeBSD, in any case.

My fix (hopefully works):

rename /usr/local/lib/libreoffice/share/Scripts/python/LibreLogo to something else

Should make any attempt to run LibreLogo python stuff fail. Doesn't seem tlo affect loading the program, though. I'm sure I'll _NEVAR_ miss this "feature".

in case anyone wonders, there's a checkbox in the 'view toolbars' menu in Libre Office writer, for 'Logo'. It's off, but I'm not convinced that's enough. Renaming the diretory where its support files are, that SHOULD fix it. Use "locate LibreLogo" to find them.

(or on linux, most likely in /usr/lib/libreoffice/share/... yotta yotta)

Monster magnet in my pocket: Boffins' gizmo packs 45.5-tesla punch and weighs just 390g

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Fusion

See, you came up with the SAME application for this that I did.

SO what I want to know (about this magnet)...

a) what is the effect if a neutron flux on its superconductivity,

b) If configured as a Tokomak ring [or some other, perhaps more efficient, magnetic confinement design], can it be made SMALL enough for a practical fusion reactor,

c) does the energy required to keep it cool "break even" with the energy produced by fusion in an appropriate reactor design?

In any case, these are the *kinds* of obstacles that exist for magnetic confinement of fusion, but _BETTER_ superconducting magnets _SHOULD_ make this work better, right?

I'm looking forward to fusion electricity. Thing is, the "no nukes" *IDIOTS* will soon discover that fusion produces MORE neutron radiation than fission, and will BITCH about it just because it's "nukular".

(you watch, they don't want normal people to have cheap electricity)

And let me point ont one other thing - if you LIKE electric cars, fusion electricity will be the future for THAT sort of thing as well. Am I right? Of COURSE I am!

Get ready for a literal waiting list for European IPv4 addresses. And no jumping the line

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: IPv6 was designed by theorists

"Do NOT let theorists be in charge of DESIGN - leave that to engineers."

sometimes true, NOT in this case. although 'any to any' routing is a bit much in SOME cases, in theory you could simply adopt a *modified* version of IPv6 that simplifies the routing of /64 or /48, then apply "any to any" for the remaining bits.

That's simple enough, right? But with netblocks being what they are these days, aren't we already at an "any to any" route (in practicality) for IPv4's ?

I just look at how IPv6 works on my LAN and over a tunnel, and I'm not seeing "all these problems" with it. Aside from ":some stupid wifi router" implementing IPv6 routing aggressively [forcing me to plug an ethernet cable between the WAN and one of the LAN ports to compensate] I see it purely as a problem with implementation rather than the actual protocol itself.

Do it right and everything works. DO it wrong and you have problems. Old routers "doing it wrong" sounds like "the problem" to me, and NOT the protocol design.

/me has had no trouble setting up FreeBSD to route IPv6. Ancient 2.6 kernel routers, on the other hand...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: We need a new approach

yeah, well, being tracked by your IPv6 is no different than an IPv4 that never *really* changes...

Solution: VPNs I guess. ISPs could do them as part of the service.

/me has had a fixed IPv4 address for >15 years... the _SAME_ address.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: We need a new approach

I don't know why you *FEEL* (not think) that "it's not going to happen" based on slow adoption by ISPs...

seems to work fine for me. I have had an IPv6 tunnel for YEARS.

Aside from that, a big problem _might_ be the way IPv4 is allocated. Setting up a /30 for everyone is kinda *stupid*. If you have less than a /28 you should be forced to use PPPoE or some similar method to get your IP address assigned. That would effectively free up a good percentage of the "taken" addresses...

/me points out that if the pipe is good enough, you don't NEED a /30 netblock to get that extra 5% or 10% bandwidth. It's just wasting 3 IP addresses for every one being TRULY used. But it's easier for an ISP to *CLAIM* you get a benefit when you do it that way. And in the process, 3 IPv4 addresses are wasted to get YOU "the one".

let's focus on THAT, too. Raise the price for a /30, or give a price break to use PPPoE or some similar tunnel method that only uses 1 IPv 4 instead of 4 of them.

(yeahTHERE's your problem!!!)

Stones, meet glass house: Mind behind Windows 8 GUI disses Windows 10 over leak

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Hmmmmmm

THey could "get it right" by doing a WINDOWS SUBSYSTEM FOR LINUX - sorta like what they did for OSX a while back...

In other words, if I could GET A LICENSE FOR A WINE ALTERNATIVE coming from Microsoft, which ran 32-bit AND 64-bit applications properly, was LICENSED FOR USING SHARED LIBS, and worked WITH DIRECTX on Linux, then I'd SPEND MONEY to buy that. Seriously.

Just make sure it ALSO works on FreeBSD, K Microsoft?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: stop fucking around with the start menu

Ya know, they had it right in windows 2000, and to some extent in XP. In Windows 7 they sorted by default but you could turn that OFF and put things in THE ORDER _YOU_ want!

Win-10-nic, always alphabtized, tiled, prioritized in TILE SIZE by MS's whim.

I think they should roll back a couple o' decades, to a time when they weren't ALL FORNICATED UP.

Sailfish OS given a Jolla good buffing as version 3.1 bobs gently into port

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Kudos to Jolla

maybe a resurrection of a Finland-based cell phone company, using THIS as its OS?

and no back doors or "phone home" slurp

Alibaba sketches world's 'fastest' 'open-source' RISC-V processor yet: 16 cores, 64-bit, 2.5GHz, 12nm, out-of-order exec

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Interesting, but...

I think Ryzen still wins on performance

Backdoors won't weaken your encryption, wails FBI boss. And he's right. They won't – they'll fscking torpedo it

bombastic bob Silver badge
Black Helicopters

you forgot the icon...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Sigh!

back in the 90's at the time all of that was being debated, politicians were given the clue-bat when a LOT of algorithms were simply "made available" with a big thumb-on-nose to gummints in general.

PGP was described "in prose" and printed on T shirts. you couldn't (LEGALLY) publish the CODE, but you could DESCRIBE HOW TO WRITE IT. Or put it into a printed book. Heh.

Trying to control THAT is IMPOSSIBLE. You'd have to uninvent something. Won't happen.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

in general you still need physical access to hardware to "take advantage" of any built-in CPU back doors.

and such a back door could NEVER reliably decrypt encrypted traffic, not if it's done in SOFTWARE. Use of clever stream ciphers might prevent it entirely, since nothing would really be stored in RAM - encrypt or decrypt the stream as it passes by...

byte -> hash -> lookup table -> new hash -> rotate table with new hash -> encrypted/decrypted output

so simple! TKIP kinda works this way, too.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: So what happened to...

recent news proves they are AS CORRUPT as anything ELSE in gummint... perhaps WORSE.

The only answer you should EVER give a federal agent: "I want a lawyer"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: They don't care about security

It is the nature of gummints to become oppressive police states.

It is the responsibility of citizens to TAKE ACTION TO PREVENT IT.

This is a lot like PEST CONTROL. Watch what happens over time if you fail to spray, bait, and/or trap.

That's right. The RATS and ROACHES will win. So we have to do what we MUST to prevent it.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pint

Re: Here comes the truthiness ...

good presentation. Beer, Sir!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Here comes the truthiness ...

RFC3514 - is that a commentary on Microshaft's "Safe" flag in ActiveX ???

[yeah THAT was pretty laughable - 'Oh, of COURSE this virus-laden ActiveX is "safe"' - for scripting or whatever]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Stalin would be so proud of him

You know, Trump should know better, after the WITCH HUNT he's been through...

I wrote a note to the Pres yesterday, comparing crypto to guns and locks on your door. The comparison to guns is like what happens when gummint comes after them. they take away guns, and ONLY criminals will have them! Similarly for strong un-back-doored crypto. And WHO would WANT EVERY LOCK on your door to HAVE A MASTER KEY that "only police can access" ???

Tell that to Houdini, who one day as a kid apparently invented a 'skeleton key' that he was able to use to access everyone's house, for laughs etc.. It proved how worthless those old-style locks were, and as a direct result of people *like* Houdini demonstrating the effectiveness of a skeleton key, the lock-makers quickly came up with a set of wards and tumblers that are FAR more effective at locking things.

The obvious thing is NOBODY would use locks like that. And the genie is out of the bottle, Pandora's box is open, and if it's illegal to make strong crypto inside the US, you'll find it in Finland, Belarus, France, Venequela, and probably Russia and N. Korea, in some cases with "their own back doors" maybe, or maybe not... but yeah LOTS of open source stuff already exists with NO back door and WHO IS GOING TO STOP IT? Nobody.

ANYONE can download (for free) an SDK to create Android programs, and they can be run WITHOUT going through "a store" that could revoke them. You can't stop ANYONE from owning strong crypto, and the applications can remain "on the dark web" even, so that ONLY CRIMINALS can use them...

Such nonsense. But we _ARE_ dealing with politicians, after all, even if they ARE "Attorneys General"

El Reg sits down to code with .NET for Linux and MySQL, hitting some bumps along the way

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Any MS devs looked at this?

"from the perspective of someone who hasn't decided they hate it before they look at it."

If someone were to offer me a SHIT SANDWICH, I think I'd just hate it, without tasting.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Holmes

I think Apache with PHP is cross platform. last I checked...

Doesn't ANYONE use THE OBVIOUS SOLUTION any more? Or am I the only one?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: Is it just me?

"Is there a point to all this?"

Embrace. Extend. *EXTINGUISH*. *EX*TER*MI*NATE*!!!

/me looking for dalek icon, settling for THIS one instead

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: MySQL?

I've never tried Maria but have had to deal with OTHER people's mysql stuff.

When I have a choice I use pgsql as well.

The worst MySQL bug has to do with " wtihin a string. First thing I ran into loading test data. Does NOT comply with SQL standard. That pretty much describes it. Yeah NOBODY EVER enters '1/4" nut' into the description field of an inventory database, right? Do that in MySQL some time...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: MS Access for Linux

yeah using the mysql or pgsql command line thingy is pretty easy, and has a reasonably short learning curve. I particularly like pgsql over mysql for that.

Often when you wrap a GUI around a SIMPLE COMMAND LINE INTERFACE, it's embarrassingly CUMBERSOME and NOT a productivity "enhancement".

[I liked MS Excess when it first came out. But for ODBC (or basically any external DBMS) it was way too piggy and then I learned to use POSIX tools or code it myself, directly]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Develop on Unix

YOU maybe take 4 times as long... some of us go FASTER using Linux tools than wasting a bunch o' time with DevStudio doing the "mousie-clickie-mousie-clickie" thing for *EVERYTHING*. Typing is MUCH faster, thanks.

it also helps to KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING and NOT waste time chasing the mayfly of "new, shiny"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: You can develop on Linux.

"There is a universal IDE out there -- Eclipse

Yeah, and IntelliJ, and probably others. But I prefer something _NOT_ written in Java, or (WORSE) JAVASCRIPT, thanks. I like actual UI responsiveness to typing and mousing and stuff. And also NOT wastiing GIGABYTES OF RAM just to support a PIGGY UI. Running a VM or two simultanously (for dev purposes) eats up enough on its own. A piggy UI on top of that, and you run out of RAM pretty fast.

I've been working on my own IDE for years, but what's taking so long is the time it takes to write native X11 code. In the mean time I've found pluma (formerly gedit on gnome 2 - gnome 3's gedit is inferior) to be extremely useful as it has built-in highlighting and indenting that's not irritating. Oh and FINALLY someone fixed the "extra characters at the end of the lines" irritation, for which I had a utility to clean it up..,.

And there's 'ddd' for GUI debugging if you want. Thing is on X11 you can't trace into a server call on a GUI or it'll hang. So get used to using semi-remote debug features, like running the debug session on a different X11 desktop. Tiger VNC helps a LOT wtih that.

and now I bet I just revealed why there isn't a "simple IDE" for Linux.

Pluma is nice for editing. Works pretty well.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Oil & Water

more like hot perchloric acid and most organic substances... *KABOOM*

From the article: "coding and deploying an ASP.NET Core application for the open-source OS comes with a bit of friction compared to using Windows."

My first thought is that it would not come with simple RESISTANCE, but outright REBELLION AGAINST IT... by pretty much EVERYONE along the way!

(icon for the expected and predictable outcome)

Apollo 11 @ 50: The long shadow of the flag

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The most expensive dick swinging contest in history

"If they hadn't done it the money would have been wasted on some pork barrel project"

that part is true, for sure. Politicians need to spend OUR money to STAY IN POWER.

I'd rather buy rockets. And walls.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: The most expensive dick swinging contest in history

"The Flat Earth thing was a Victorian invented conspiracy for political reasons"

when was the Victorian age again? Didn't Columbus in 1492 try to prove 'round earth' followed by Magellan in 1519 (who's remaining crew actually went all the way around - apparently Magellan himself got k8illed along the way), and this all happened 300+ years earlier?

I think your history timeline is a bit messed up...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The most expensive dick swinging contest in history

" idiocies about the Pyramids requiring space-alien intervention to get built"

I once saw a TV documentary in which someone debunked all of that in the simplest way possible: building an actual pyramid. It was a small one, with only a few layers, and the blocks were smaller too, but he constructed it with ramps constructed from slag and Egyptian sand, with a handful of people, and the usual kinds of traditional muscling of things into place. The idea was to build them a layer at a time, and have a continuous spiraling ramp going around the outside. Then when you get to the top you take away the ramp, fill in the outer sections of the pyramid as you come back down, and so on. It's why pyramids are triangular, in many ways because of that spiral ramp (made of sand and slag) going to the top along the outer edge.

Or that's the theory. But some evidence suggests they discovered electric lighting also, a large glass bulb that could be evacuated with WATER AND HOSES if you knew what you were doing. You can't suck water up more than about 30 feet of hose, because it forms a perfect vacuum at the top. So that's how you make a vacuum pump, a 30 foot drop of water in a pipe or hose, and we know they had batteries and wire, so there ya go. Ancient Egyptians were pretty freaking smart, and well motivated to succeed, and didn't need space aliens to do it FOR them. And then you could make all of those "how did they do that' paintings inside of pyramid, using an electric light.

Similarly, Apollo scientists and engineers were pretty smart, too, and got the job done, landing 2 men on the moon and bringing them back again.

(as for whether or not there ARE space aliens, I think there ARE. but their conspiratorial role in human history is unlikely to be significant - most likely they would INTERFERE and try to HOLD US BACK, rather than advance us forward, just to become a threat to them later. If they're not just observing, that is)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The most expensive dick swinging contest in history

"Europe learned to sail properly by watching the Polynesians do it"

Well maybe not *ENTIRELY* but 'm sure that the Polynesians had perfected many of the tiny details. Outrigger canoes tend to have high stability and like a catamaran can handle crosswinds well. As such, you can tack at 90 degrees and not capsize. Tall ships designed for trade winds can't really do that without a really deep keel and as such you wouldn't be able to go into port with it.

But maybe as much as 2000 years prior to that, there were triangular sailed craft, clear evidence of which apparently dates back to the 1st century BC (according to 'teh intarwebs'). This was alluded to in the movie 'Ben Hur' as the Roman ships had square sails, and after Ben Hur rescues the captain, the captain asks him what shape the ship's sails are that he sees, and he said something like "It's a square sail. It's a Roman ship".

So anyone using a triangular sail would be doing so because of its advantage when tacking. But you can't make a TALL ship that way, not without making it a catamaran or outrigger. It's just different application of different ways of getting the job done. Fast downwind (tall ship with square sails) or fast tacking (catamaran or outrigger with triangular sails).

so what does this have to do with moon exploration? Not a whole lot, really. Except it's probably worth pointing out that people have GOOD IDEAS ALL OF THE TIME, and when you get them together on a single project, you can do some REALLY COOL SCHTUFF... like go to the moon!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The most expensive dick swinging contest in history

"Which of those things is more realistic? Are people really still this thick?"

a) the first one (doing something hard and succeeding) is more correct. it was done with guts, guile, and innovation. The tech that came ouf of this program, such as integrated circuits and freeze-dried food, was pretty much a leap forward spawned by that innovation. We could've had an extra decade or two in there before everyone had a personal computer, as one example.

b) As for 'are people really still this thick', apparently so, Mr. Pot. Just take a look in this mirror and you'll see what I mean.

/me does a rendition of the ending of a 'Private SNAFU' cartoon, when our main character sees himself in a mirror as the back end of a horse, and they play this specific snarky music segment as a kind of leitmotif. I think it's supposed to go 'S... N A, F, U'