dieseltaylor
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Posts posted by dieseltaylor
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I was curious as to the casualties given the number of battalions involved.
http://military.blogs.mydesert.com/tag/operation-medina/
Great little item on Ruffer. Gives figures of 177 dead Vietnamese, and 86 US casualties [11dead] in C company however it is not at all clear what the overall bodycount was. Anyone got the reference books.
Another link
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Funnily enough this is the same kind of thing. One mans long struggle to get the full history into daylight.
Jaws literally dropped as Prof Randell delivered his lecture, he told the BBC. They dropped again in the evening as Prof Randell had arranged for one of Colossus's creators, Allen "Doc" Coombs, to attend and answer questions about the machine and what it did. Prof Randell's lecture and Coombs's comments meant the computer history books would have to be rewritten."Eniac was not the first computer, it was the 11th," he said.What is much less well known is the tale of how Colossus's story came to be told in the first place. It is a tale of how one man's dogged efforts overcame official secrets and official indifference to rewrite computer history.Computer scientist Brian Randell was the man who started uncovering the history of Colossus.
That history had to be pried out of the archives because official efforts to cover up its success worked so well. Thousands of people worked in the huts at Bletchley Park during WWII on code-cracking but only a handful were involved with Colossus and fewer still knew everything about it. All those codebreakers signed the Official Secrets Act which demanded that they kept quiet about their wartime career.
Almost all the machines were broken up once they ceased to be useful and design documents were burnt or destroyed at the same time.
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It is quite humbling to read how a very few people can have a major effect on such a "dead" subject.
(Reuters) - "It was a warm day but I suddenly felt cold," was how Philippa Langley described the powerful sensation she experienced when she walked over the unmarked grave of her hero King Richard III beneath a car park in central England.One of the greatest archaeological discoveries of recent English history has been driven by one woman's obsession with overturning Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard as a twisted tyrant who murdered two young princes in the Tower of London.
The extraordinary tale of the discovery of the bones of the last English monarch to die in battle combined passion, sleuthing and scholarship with carbon dating, DNA testing and a search for funding worthy of a best-selling detective yarn.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/02/08/uk-britain-richard-idUKBRE91705K20130208
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Good link Wicky. Interesting and nice to see a thorough debunking.
Thanks for the offer Affy : ). I suffer from too much to read and must try to restrict myself. I fail of course.
It lead me to wonder where my reading was these days. We can have up to 56 library books and I get numerous e-mails per day. Despite light pruning I see I have still nearly 80,000 stored in my ISP box since I opened the account a decade ago.
Many e-mails are compilations of interesting stuff. This weeks list from Phys.org has 150+ stories to browse. Given the amount available I am now giving up the magazines I previously subscribed too.
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A search will find it alive and well. With much support.
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If only I had the £23.50 to pay for it! ANd the translation ..
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Yes. I suppose the idea that you get jailed for reporting illegal behaviour seems weird when you compare it to this sort of thing:
MATT TAIBBI: Drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico. They laundered money for terrorist connected banks in the Middle East. Russian gangsters. Literally, you know, I talked to one prosecutor who's, like, "They broke basically every law in the book and they did business with every kind of criminal you can possibly imagine. And they got a complete and total walk." I mean, they had to pay a fine.BILL MOYERS: $1.9 billion, a lot of money.
MATT TAIBBI: It's a lot of money. But it's five weeks of revenue for the bank, to put that in perspective. And no individual had to suffer any consequences at all. There were no criminal charges no individual fines, which was incredible. Incredible.
ANd there is a lot more from here:
BILL MOYERS: Blowing the whistle.MATT TAIBBI: For blowing the whistle. But the SEC was later forced to pay a $750,000 wrongful termination suit to Aguirre in that case. But what's so interesting is that Aguirre's boss, the guy who killed that case went to work for Mary Jo White's firm nine months after the case died. And he got, you know, a multi-million dollar position. It's a classic example of how the revolving door works in Washington. You know, you have these regulators at the SEC. And they know that there's that job out there waiting for them. So how hard are they really going to regulate these companies when they know they can get that money?
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I was always dubious about the correctness of financial companies who engineered a collapse of the mortgage market - or perhaps more correctly the people involved.
So it is rather exciting to see that in America the law can be used for the benefit of society as a whole.
Wyoming's HB 0126 http://openstates.org/nh/bills/2013/HB110/ is the perfect example of a direct link between an undercover investigation of a factory farm and the introduction of an Ag-Gag law. The bill was introduced mere weeks after nine factory workers at Wheatland-WY-based Wyoming Premium Farms, a supplier to Tyson Foods, were charged http://www.humanesociety.org animal cruelty following an undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). HSUS activists videotaped workers kicking live piglets, swinging them by their hind legs and beating and kicking mother pigs. Charges were filed in late December. In January, State Rep. Sue Wallis and Senator Ogden Driskill introduced Wyoming's Ag-Gag bill which would make it a criminal act to carry out investigations such as the one that exposed the cruelty at Wyoming Premium Farms.Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038884_terrorism_animal_abuse_factory_farms.html#ixzz2JXWxtQta
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Rick Atkinson
Seems to have a good pedigree.
Looking on-line it appears people believe - certainly for planes - that different calibres had different colour tracer. Seems sensible. This site might reveal more!
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OM
Thanks for the link - good article.
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True.
And embarrassing I should not have been clearer considering
http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=108135
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Also perhaps the green tracer thing is an author error. I noticed later in the same book he mentions the introduction of US VT fuses for artillery with radar sensors to detonate them above ground. Fair 'nuff, it's true they were introduced in WW2, but late in 1944, not 42/early 43 in the battles for Tunis. I'm shocked actually, he's a well known author, and really did a good job with the book, it's surprising such large errors were made...
Who? ....?
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Re EDN
Because I turn of not only Javascript but all adds and addons at visited sites I sometimes have problems. I have found the one to turn on "jquery" to allow me to see the comments.
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Nice : )
This weeks Economist reports that dung beetles steer by the Milky Way at night!
......Under a full moon the beetles took an average of 21.4 seconds to reach the moat. On a moonless, starry night, their speed was somewhat reduced, but not significantly so. However, under overcast conditions, when neither moonlight nor the stars were visible, the beetles took an average of 117.4 seconds.Curious as to what it was in the sky that the beetles were using to navigate, the team moved their arena inside the Johannesburg planetarium and reran their experiments. As they report in Current Biology, the beetles presented with a full starlit sky, including the Milky Way or just the Milky Way, took statistically the same amount of time to exit the arena (43.3 seconds and 53.3 seconds). Under a sky full of dim stars they were only a little slower (65.2 seconds). This, speculates Dr Warrant, is because they were still able to spot the cluster that forms the Milky Way.
When allowed to see only the 18 brightest stars or immersed in total darkness, the beetles took more than twice as long to exit the arena. The team now wonders how many other animals might be able to use the glowing strip of light created by the Milky Way to guide them.
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Thanks for letting me know .... their clunky way of getting me to update my user profile after 4 years!
I cannot see any of the original interesting comments but is that due to my disabling Javascript or is it not-archived?
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I wish I had excerpted from the link in 2009!
I vaguely remember it as being uncomplimentary of Boeing ...
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Thanks GAJ you are doing a great job for the community.
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From Windows Secrets a more thorough look at the problem and more evidence why IE sucks mightily.
In a perfect world, it's best to turn off Java in IE and Firefox but leave it enabled in Chrome, which is smart enough (and polite enough) to explicitly ask you for permission to run a Java program whenever it encounters one (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. By default, Chrome always asks before running a Java app.But as I said, turning Java off in IE is difficult — so difficult, it isn't worth the effort. Here are the steps for disabling Java in Chrome and Firefox — and, if you're feeling lucky, IE.
- Chrome: In the browser's address bar, type chrome://plugins and hit Enter. Scroll down to the entry Java (2 files) – Version: 10.7.2.11 (or 10.7.2.21), and click the Disable link. Restart Chrome and you're done.
- Firefox: By default, Firefox disables outdated Java plugins. If you have an old version, it might not show up on the Firefox Plugins list. To check, click the Check to see if your plugins are up to date link at the top of the Plugins list.
To disable Java, click Firefox's Tools menu option and select Add-Ons. Select the Plugins tab ("plugins" and "add-ons" are used somewhat interchangeably) on the left, and scroll down to Java Platform SE 7 U11. Select it and click Disable. Repeat for any add-ons you see that refer to Java, then restart Firefox. Easy. - Internet Explorer: I've looked all over the Net and talked to several of my security-enhanced friends, and I've not found a better way than the one documented by (gulp!) the Department of Homeland Security/Carnegie Mellon's CERT site.
With the CERT approach, you download and run a Registry-altering file that zaps almost 800 possible Java entry points in Internet Explorer. You then delete two files which you have to find manually. It's ugly. More to the point, nobody's absolutely certain that the CERT approach (or Microsoft's method, given in KB 2751647) will protect IE from future attacks. So running through this process is not only difficult; it might be insufficient.
So now you know why I recommend that you disable Java for all your browsers and take your lumps.
I have no idea why Microsoft made it so hard to disable Java in IE, particularly when it's such a simple process in Firefox and Chrome.
I find disabling IE works well : )
- Chrome: In the browser's address bar, type chrome://plugins and hit Enter. Scroll down to the entry Java (2 files) – Version: 10.7.2.11 (or 10.7.2.21), and click the Disable link. Restart Chrome and you're done.
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Good link slomo
For those who might be barred from the site:
27 April 2012 Last updated at 11:42 Magnetic fields light up 'GPS neurons', scientists sayBy Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News
Researchers have spotted a group of 53 cells within pigeons' brains that respond to the direction and strength of the Earth's magnetic field.
The question of how birds navigate using - among other signals - magnetic fields is the subject of much debate.
These new "GPS neurons" seem to show how magnetic information is represented in birds' brains.
However, the study reported by Science leaves open the question of how they actually sense the magnetic field.
David Dickman of the Baylor College of Medicine in the US set up an experiment in which pigeons were held in place, while the magnetic field around them was varied in its strength and direction.
Prof Dickman and his colleague Le-Qing Wu believed that the 53 neurons were candidates for sensors, so they measured the electrical signals from each one as the field was changed.
Every neuron had its own characteristic response to the magnetic field, with each giving a sort of 3-D compass reading along the familiar north-south directions as well as pointing directly upward or downward.
In life, this could help the bird determine not only its heading just as a compass does, but would also reveal its approximate position.
Each cell also showed a sensitivity to field strength, with the maximum sensitivity corresponding to the strength of the Earth's natural field.
And just like a compass, the neurons had opposite responses to different field "polarity" - the magnetic north and south of a field, which surprised the researchers most of all.
"People had reported in the past, in a 1972 paper in Science, establishing that birds do not seem to respond to the polarity of the magnetic field, yet here we have neurons that are in fact doing that," Prof Dickman told BBC News.
"That's one of the beautiful aspects of what we've identified, because it shows how single brain cells can record multiple properties or complex qualities in a simple way."
'Be puzzled' Several hypotheses hold that birds' magnetic navigation arises in cells that contain tiny chunks of metal in their noses or beaks, or possibly in an inner ear organ.
However, the most widely held among them was thrown into question recently when researchers found that purported compass cells in pigeon beaks were in fact a type of white blood cell.
Another theory suggests that a magnetic sense may come about in receptors in birds' eyes. When exposed to light, the theory says, molecules called cryptochromes undergo a fleeting change in their atomic makeup whose length depends on their alignment with a field.
The new work throws this latter possibility into question, as it would work equally well with a north- or south-pointing field.
Asked what an outsider should think, given that the recent results conflict with the two most plausible explanations for birds' remarkable navigation abilities, Prof Dickman said "be puzzled, because I am".
"We're leaning toward a third receptor in the inner ear, and we're doing experiments to try to determine whether it is in fact a receptor or not."
Henrik Mouritsen of the University of Oldenburg in Germany regards the current results with caution.
"[Magnetism-sensitive neurons] must be in the brain in several places... and maybe Dr Dickman has found them. If he has, it's a very, very important finding, but only time will tell," he told BBC News.
"There have been lots of claims of something similar to this, and so far every one has turned out to not be independently reproducible."
Both researchers concede that more than one mechanism may be at work in bird navigation - in their eyes, beaks or ears - and Prof Dickman said he is looking forward to getting to the bottom of it.
"That's what makes this whole field exciting, because there are these competing ideas out there and now, since we've discovered regions in the brain that are actually responding to the magnetic field, it intensifies our search for the receptor and how it might work."
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Am I wrong in thinking that seeing a unit did not necessarily mean your armour/atg could fire at it. Something to do with the commander being higher than the gun. Is that no longer the case?
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So you like "beer & pretzels" and not "Grog" play? To each his own I say.
Now, why is this thread even in this forum and not in the CM1x forum? Take the pipe dream speculation over there please.
Commenting here makes sense as it gets more readers. There are plenty who own CMx2 titles but prefer the scale of CMX1. And the ease and apparent simplicity of play.
As for grogdom a real grog realises the deeper you go into representing what can happen on an individual basis the more you realise that plain luck can make or break small battles that we play*. Trying to simulate it all is a hiding to nothing as the game becomes more and more a lottery. Sometimes playing a game with average effects can be , at the end, more realistic.
* Tiger commander killed outright by an ATR bullet to a vision block.
** A confused battle where a Tiger fires on another and misses three times. Sights not aligned with gun.
*** Three Tigers embedding their gun barrels going over a rail embankment
Trying to factor all of these into a game may eventually be possible but would anybody wish to play a game where all plans are destroyed by "real life" possibilities.
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Update
If you own Lubizol shares .....
22 January 2013 Last updated at 15:15 French Lubrizol factory struggles to stop foul gas leakStaff at a chemicals factory in north-western France are working to stop a gas leak that has spread a foul smell to Paris and south-east England.
French Ecology Minister Delphine Batho said she was heading for Rouen, where the factory is located, to oversee operations to deal with the leak.
Thousands of people, from as far away as Paris and London, have complained of nausea and headaches.
The gas is reported to be mercaptan, a harmless additive to natural gas.
It leaked on Monday from a plant run by a French subsidiary of the US chemicals manufacturer Lubrizol near Rouen, 75 miles (120km) north-west of Paris.
Winds blew the cloud over northern France on Monday night and then into England on Tuesday.
Ms Batho is cutting short a visit to Germany to a visit to supervise operations to stop the leak.
Tuesday evening's French Cup football match between Rouen and Marseille has been postponed because of the stink.
"We did not want to find ourselves with 10,000 fans two kilometres from the factory and with no means of confining them or evacuating them if necessary," local government official Florence Gouache told AFP news agency.
A senior executive at the factory, Pierre-Jean Payrouse, said stopping the leak could take until the evening. There is no word on the cause.
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Wikipedia says 14 rounds per minute so I suspect in game it is slower - significantly. BTW you have to be very careful on RoF as technically I think the Sherman 75mm could do 20 or more. The problem is taking what a gun is physically capable of its not the same as when the gun is installed and a practical ROF figure is required.
I would think a Pak40 might possibly be close to a real-life 14.
One of the problems in CMx1 was that various Sherman models all fired at the same rate making 76mm and Fireflies more potent than in RL.
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Just to shown how powerful and spreading the gas additive is:!!
22 January 2013 Last updated at 13:46 Foul smell complaints in Kent and Sussex after gas leakA cloud of foul-smelling but harmless gas has leaked out of a factory in north-western France, drifting across the Channel and prompting complaints from Paris to south-eastern England.
The leak is blamed on a chemical factory in Rouen, and many residents compared the odour to diesel fumes.
Police in Kent and Sussex said they had received a large number of calls from people worried about the odour.
The gas is reported believed to be mercaptan, an additive to natural gas.
It leaked on Monday from a plant near Rouen, 75 miles (120km) north-west of Paris. Winds blew the cloud over northern France on Monday night and then into England on Tuesday.
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) and police said reports had started coming in from Surrey, and London Fire Brigade had received 25 calls by Tuesday afternoon. Complaints also came from residents in Hampshire.
Kent Fire and Rescue Service has advised residents to keep doors and windows closed if they had concerns, or were elderly or asthmatic.
But area commander Martin Adams said there were no serious concerns and he urged people not to call the fire service.
Mercaptan is an organic compound containing sulphur, known for its strong, unpleasant odour.
'Unpleasant aroma' One resident in Cheriton, east Kent, said there had been reports of a strong smell in Ashford, Lydd and Hythe.
Tania Bartlett told the BBC that people "all over Facebook" were talking about it.
And Canterbury resident Andrew Roberts said: "Just stuck my head out of the back door here in south Canterbury - strong smell of fuel oil in the air."
Sussex Police said it had been receiving reports of a gas smell along the East Sussex coast.
The force said Kent Police had also received a larger number of calls.
In a statement, a Sussex Police spokesman said: "We understand that this smell emanates from an accidental factory discharge in Rouen.
"The smell is from an additive to the gas which has an unpleasant aroma but is not toxic and there is no danger to the public."
'Rotten eggs' A spokesman for the Environment Agency said officers were responding to reports of an unpleasant odour.
He said: "We understand that a factory in Rouen has reported a leak of a harmless chemical which is added to natural gas to make it detectable.
"We expect that this is causing the smell but we are working with partners locally to rule out other potential sources."
He added: "The odour is detectable at very low concentrations and should dissipate naturally over time."
The HPA said in a statement: "The smell drifting over Southern England today poses no risk to public health.
"The odour, which is similar to rotten eggs, has been noticed by people mainly in Kent, East and West Sussex and some parts of Surrey."
It said the non-toxic chemical which had blown across the Channel would also have been diluted before entering the air over England.
Good thing its not poisonous given the spread must be several hundred square miles.
I was looking at some more info on the sense of smaell and yet again find that it was a known and then unknown fact. This is faintly amusing ...
Just as in ourselves, thesepassages comprise delicate scrolls of tissuecovered
bone (easily broken during fights
and nose-reshaping). The more complex the
scrolling, the greater the surface area for
smell detection. In the 1960s, an American
woman with the wonderful name of Betsy
Bang, who was drawing specimens for her
anatomist husband, noticed that in three
species where there was some behavioural
evidence that they had a sense of smell, the
kiwi, Snow Petrel and the Turkey Vulture, the
nasal conchae were much more convoluted
than in other birds.
http://www.bto.org/sites/default/files/u23/downloads/publications/bird-table/BT69_LR_12-13.pdf
Map of London with blitz-hit overlay
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
Bristol is a city I know weel so it was wierd looking at the hits. As for London I see three within 200 metres of my house!