notalex

Yep -- it's the divide between goods and services. The percentage of manufacturing jobs in the US and Canada is down to about 15% or so, but productivity improvements mean that they remain competitive, if not dominant, in the global market. And don't forget that arrayed behind that burger flipper or assembly-line bolt twister is a formidable range of service improvements and innovations, from Just-In-Time inventory to technological breakthroughs to massive advertising roll-outs to some rather, uh, "creative" accounting...well, it's the Information Age versus the Industrial Revolution. Look at what's happened in warfare. (A final, desperate try to get this somehow back on topic.) It mattered little that Iraq had the fourth-largest army in the world in 1991 when they went up against a foe who owned the skies, who could see in the dark, who could hit them wherever and whenever it chose. That is the difference between sweat and brainpower; and not uncoincidentally, the difference between free men and the conscripts of a tyrant.

Well, I wouldn't be so sanguine about the Canadian system, either. One geography professor at the University of Alberta gives his first-year students a map of Canada with only the provincial and territorial boundaries marked and asks them to locate the provincial capitals. Anything within a 100-km radius he marks as correct. Not so good. Only 20% or so get more than half right; an astonishing 40% can't even get Alberta's capital of Edmonton right. This is getting wildly off topic, so before the padlock comes down I thought I'd regale y'all with my theories on education. Basic information like geography, grammar, and the rudiments of spelling and arithmetic are best drilled into kids when they're young and eager to learn. Horrors! Rote and repetition -- utter anathema to today's educators. But they've got it exactly bass-ackwards in my opinion. They let children, on the pretext of encouraging "creativity," wander virtually untutored through those critical first years and then try to hammer knowledge into them as teenagers when they almost instinctively mistrust anything an adult has to say. So we get university students who can't read or write or reason; and as for the "creativity" part of it, as T.S. Eliot said, "You've got to know what the rules are before you break them." But I digress.

As one of the first to call it to your attention...uh, thanks for kicking off an interesting discussion. Your (entirely admirable) angst at sending men to their deaths reminds me of an interview with the developers of the Squad Leader boardgame. [Much paraphrased] They knew they were on to something special when a playtester quit rather than make a last desperate charge. Spoiler! . . . . . . . . . . . AAR: Defender: Why are you quitting? Attacker: I'm not sending my men into that.

Now I am thoroughly humiliated. I will report for duty in the PENG thread, SUH! BTW: Happy Birthday! [ January 12, 2003, 02:54 AM: Message edited by: notalex ]

I defer to your greater knowledge, suh! I'm not a naval grog, so my recollection of Midway is largely confined to the (1965?) movie with Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, et. al. But wasn't the initial attack on the Jap(anese) carriers a more-or-less opportunistic thing when the Navy fighters caught them out in the open with their CAP flights still warming up on the flight deck? I thought that it was the dive-bombers who got the first shot in by crashing through the wall of flak, and the torpedo-bombers came along a bit later to drive it home. But I could be wrong. DoH! Maybe I should do some research or something before I run my mouth. There's this thing called the Internet...maybe it would have one or two websites devoted to the subject?

It's happened to me, too -- either the board went down or my computer froze. So, use Notepad (or the Mac/Linux equivalent) to write it out and then cut-and-paste into the UBB editor. Ya big dummy.

I hope you're not losing too much sleep over this. They are just pixels, after all. It's Situational Ethics. Can you pull back and regroup (not really applicable in CMBB, unless playing a campaign or with something like the Biltong rules)? Must you punch through the enemy line at any cost (including your own possible execution if you fail)? Is it really a suicide mission or do you think you might have the drop on them? If you further want to rationalize it, pretend that one of your sergeants saw a dim chance at outflanking the enemy and perished in the attempt. Ordinary men do extraordinary things in wartime. The American pilots who divebombed the Japanese fleet at Midway knew they were going to their deaths as surely as any kamikaze, but they did it anyway, without a lot of sentimental blubbering about FDR or the flag. The whole point about military training is (apart from smartly marching about) to learn that the survival of the team is what ultimately matters. It's completely counter-intuitive to charge a machine-gun nest; but if the choice if a 5% chance of living through it or a 100% certainty of annihilation, and with it, your buddies, then the 5% looks almost attractive.

Singing the Monty Python "Lumberjack Song" mod. (I understand it's quite moving in Russian.) You notice how BTS never comments on these threads? We'll probably not even get a credit when they turn up in the engine rewrite.

I have a Sega tennis game where fast-moving cloud shadows periodically sweep over the court. It's just a simple little thing, but very effective.

These treacherous trees were reported to Comrade Stalin, of course? Surely your Komissar shot them on the spot?

Beg, borrow, or steal a credit card, because you can only buy it that way from Battlefront. (They also take MOs and personal cheques, if you're in the US.) This is by far the best wargame I have ever played and I've played them all. $45 US divided by hours-of-pleasure equals division by zero or something before I lost control of the metaphor. Buy this game.

This is reminiscent of a story I heard (probably an urban legend -- it's too good to be true) of some good ol' boys in Minnesota who got all liquored up and decided to go ice fishing with their (brand-new) SUV, their guns, and some dynamite. Sounds promising right there, doesn't it? Unfortunately they also brought along their trusty dog, who as luck would have it, was a retriever. Men drive out onto lake, toss lit dynamite. Dog obediently scrambles after burning stick and trots happily back towards them. Men enter panic mode and start shooting at dog. Dog, by now seriously freaked out, seeks cover under nearest large object, the (brand-new) SUV. BOOM! goes dog. BOOM! goes (brand-new) SUV. BOOM! goes men's insurance claim. If it didn't happen, it should have, if only as a cautionary lesson.

Be honest now. How many moments of sheer pleasure has CMBB given you? The only thing I can compare it to is when I first unwrapped Squad Leader and actually got a sunburn from a 60-watt incandescent light while I played it (solitaire) long into the night for too many nights for too long. I remember one Tractor Works game when a single Russian rifle squad (through a truly amazing series of dice rolls) wiped out a platoon of German assault engineers equipped with smoke, flamethrowers, MGs and great leadership. Who knows? Maybe a wall or ceiling fell on them or someone's satchel charge went off a bit too soon. The genius of Squad Leader and lately of CMBB is that we care to ask these questions.

Michael Dorosh: I'll tell ya, they only come out at night.But it is daytime in Finland.... [[Confused]] [[Confused]] [[Confused]] He's not really a pirate. A real pirate would say things like "AAAARRRHHHHGGG!" and "Shiver me timbers, mate!" (Apologies to Dave Barry.) On a more serious note, I've only seen one copy of CMBO being offered on Kazaa. (I haven't bothered to search for CMBB.) There are two ways to look at this. The first is that of the ~3-million base of Kazaa, there is only one person with a copy of CMBO. The second is that the genuine community of wargamers recognizes quality when they see it, and every dollar that BTS/BFC earns is a dollar kept out of the hands of the pirates. If me own blessed mother begged me to burn her a copy of CMBB, I'd have to say, tough luck, Mom. Madmatt's kids need new shoes.

DSL. Quite apart from the speed, what I like about it is that the Internet is a single mouse click away. Much better than writing addresses and topics down all day to check out when the phone line's free.