Ike

Very nice. Thank you, Hunter!

"Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay", Otis Redding "Standin' in the Shadows of Love", Temps "Time Won't Let Me" .. forgot who.

As I recall the history of WW2, the limiting factor for most of the war and most of the armies was the necessity to have a wire landline in place from the battery or battalion fire direction control center to the front line CO or FO in order to call in the fires. Perhaps in the American (and hence British, Commonwealth, and other Western - maybe not Russian) Army by 1945, radios were small enough, powerful enough and widely available enough to enable a company commander or platoon leader (less likely IMHO) to call on fires. But, as usual in military practice, because of the continuation of the methods of calling artillery fires in use prior to widespread availability of radios, there would have to be an assignment of fire support in order for the line unit to have that ability. That's how the signal folks know who to run the land lines to and from, e.g.: "42nd FA Battalion will, on order, fire missions in support of 27th Infantry Regiment, beginning 0530, 21 April 1945." It requires an entirely different internal organization and fire planning/plotting to allow effective fire support from multiple batteries/battalions of field artillery for infantry/armor units in an ad hoc manner, as opposed to assigned fire support. That is to say, the difference between the above example of the 42d FA Bn versus the battalions of the 27th Infantry Regiment being able to simply "net on" the artillery common net and call in fire support on an as needed/required basis. The "as needed" method also requires a considerably larger number of gun and heavy mortar tubes deployed and available to fire than were available from - roughly - 1940 through 1944 in most armies.

For my part, I'd like to see CMC come out, so that we can then create supplemental campaign rules - those of us who think it might need them - or not as our view dictate. Then, we can see whose views of CMC are true to the game's rules, etc based on the outcomes. I bow to all of the superior theoretical knowledge and historical knowledge; my remarks are not to be taken as sarcasm re: those posts, but rather as the least iota of impatience with the game release.

C'Rogers: The answer to your two questions are: (1) Correct; and, (2) Entirely correct. My question: (a reference to Cordwainer Smith's SF stories if it matters) does the "C'" refer to cats or camels?

So, now that it's been decided to drop a satchel charge on the engine deck of the Tiger, who is going to run up there with it? I mean to say, which one of you fine gentlemen is going to write the programming or scripting and start a website with that "instant campaign" scripting/programming on it?

Wonderful updates and great information. Please continue; to quote Perot, "I'm all ears."

Very nice, Hunter! Thanks for the update!

"...a consumation devoutly to be wished", General Bolt. Unfortunately, given the pace of CMC's development, I may not live long enough to see the connection between and among CM:BB/AK, CMC, and SC2 realized and playable. <sigh>

"defecato ergo sum".

Sons of the Pioneers, about 1938 or so, if I remember correctly, right after Roy Rogers joined them.

...an IL-2M, which misperception was caused by ...

Thanks. I think that's it.

Oh, to be able to remember I old name ... sigh. It was Russian, I remember that ... it started with a B .... Boris Badenov ... no, but nearly. I shall sign up and try to recall my old nick. [edited to add]: Well, I tried to register and the forums won't let me, says my email is already registered, use another. As if. I confess, I don't remember my old nickname, but it was something like B. Barikov or Borisov ... If it's possible, can you delete the old entry or perhaps somehow activate my old? Thanks. [ May 16, 2006, 04:33 PM: Message edited by: Ike ]

"Move to contact" is the term of art. "Attack", while it denotes movement, implies a planned assault against an enemy during the movement, presumably at a predicted time.

I would be more confident of the outcome were that errant staff officer facing a court-martial. I was in CMMC2 for a time. Do you suppose I could come back?

"Curiosity killed the cat; satisfaction brought it back." (I forget who) "Laudanum" is an older generic name for a solution of opium in ethyl alcohol, in various hopefully non-lethal percentages. In older teminology it is a "tincture of opium". It was for a number of years considered a sovereign cure for various diseases, don't remember which diseases as the claim was false to fact, although plausible. The laudanum gave syptomatic relief and, in large doses, permanent relief in the form of a peaceful easy death in an opium-induced dream. From whence comes, e.g.: "In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree; Where Alph the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man; Down to a sunless sea." Hope that helps.

Yeah, that's right, Count d'Ten. I'm going to retire while I'm waiting for CMC to come out.

Well, that's true, but the creation of the FoW in the first place has prior to CMC been accomplished by various limited permission hidden fora for the sides and GMs, etc. Now with CMC, there is no reason for players to come to a forum website for a campaign; CMC handles all the FoW issues. And they can find opponents etc through already existing forums and websites. Hence, my idea is not a useful one.

BigDog944 No credible method exists to predict long term local climate shifts. Neither can it honestly be said that one will occur at some specific time - even to a decade one way or the other - nor can it be predicted what any such event will be. The best we can get is a guess. The use of computer models are unhelpful in reducing the potential error in such a guess, even when they are constructed to the best present knowledge of systems and how they interact and further are "fed" honest data from the real world, not the output of other GCM computer programs. These are the basic reasons why that is so. All the various computer models are either: (1) so-called "process models" which are intended to study whether one or another particular model of one factor that is believed to cause long term climate changes has any effect in an artifical system which models one that factor holding all others constant; or, (2) weather forecasting computer models "on steroids" - so to speak - with their ranges enlarged to a global or near-global scope. Even assuming accurate modeling and plausible real word data is being fed into a "process" model, no prediction or projection can honestly be made from any output from it. It only potentially gives some insight on how the modeled process works. This is the climate science equivalent of what economists do when they say in an econ textbook: "Assuming other variables are unchanged and equal....". This is utterly unhelpful in either guessing the future climate or planning policy for any governmental action. When you watch the evening local news, please note that the "five-day" forecast for the fourth and fifth days changes sometimes drastically as those particular days approach. How then can we believe the claims made for the climate of the entire globe based upon the output of such a program, when the code and assumptions upon which it's basic code is founded cannot accurately forecast the local weather five days in advance? I assume your reference to "...the loss of certain plankton species ..." is to say that certain species are now extinct? I refer you to the figures in JasonC's posts about the volume of water in the world's oceans. Now I ask you to consider how it is possible to say that an entire species is extinct, even assuming only the top - say - 10 meters (34 feet) of the vast oceans contains such life. Just as certain species of amphibians, in certain localities, have been observed to have a die-off of about 60% of their populations in recent years were widely touted as being "an extinction", there is a considerable amount of exageration on the part of some of the global warming partisans as well as on the part of the skeptics. In point of fact, a subsequent study or two determined that the frogs in that particular Central American jungle were being killed by a fungal infection imported into the area by American scientists who had been studying that population. Quite unintentionally, I'm sure, but that was the cause; not global warming, as the satellite records showed no significant changes in cloud cover or temperature there during the period of interest. (Sorry; I do go on; don't I?) The point of the frog example is that even the "extinction" where there were actual dead frogs to see was from only a 60% die-off; 40% survived and reproduced. (See if anyone mentions when the population returns to former levels.) Note that there is no mention in any of the literature of any larger animals that we can readily count or at least gain a genuinely useful survey of the numbers for; too easy to refute, I suspect. No evidence of a food chain break caused by species extinction. I'm not entirely certain that such a thing is possible; but assuming it is, no evidence. Short response: there is no way to determine if another "Dust Bowl" as was in the American Mid and South-West in the 1920's and '30's will recur. (I note that there was no accompanying temperature increase in that period; rather a slight decline.) There is no plausible scientific mechanism to explain how climate change would or could cause another dust bowl anywhere. There is only the bald assertion of causation, without any explanation. Similarly, there is a widely-touted claim of plankton extinctions, but no evidence. Public policy decision-making cannot and should not be based upon fear-mongering. Rather it should be based upon genuine data and scientific theory, openly and honestly debated. Follow the link to realclimate.org and read some of the postings. Notice how often the posters respond to skeptics of man-caused climate change disaster with ad hominem attacks on their integrity because of the source of the skeptics' funding and their ideologies, rather than a response to the skeptics factual or theoretical contentions. Such responses are not the responses of people who believe in a particular theory based on evidence; it is the response of those who are "true believers" in some dogma. This isn't science, only mud-slinging. And, finally, such attacks can be made as easily on those who are advocates of global warming based on their ideologies and their sources of funding. Not science either; likewise only mud-slinging. But, then, I probably do not count as being among the "thinking people".

And here are the two grand prize questions in the whole climate change issue: (1) Do we genuinely need to do something about a warming change in the climate? (2) Are we able to do something significant about it, without reducing our industrial output or power useage or whatever but do something that reduces our wealth creation to an extent that causes deaths? It is my opinion that the answer to #1 is "No, we don't need to do anything except buy more shorts and short-sleeved shirts." That makes the answer to #2 moot. But ... In case you believe #2 to be an exaggeration, suppose that it were possible to return to a 19th Century level of industrial production and assume that level is low enough to affect the climate "favorably" (whatever that means): consider how many people lived in the world in the 19th Century and how many live now and who gets to die from a lack of industrial output. Your children? My grandchildren? China's? India's? Whose? Any plan that actually reduces human produced CO2 without either massive nuclear energy production facilities being built or the invention or (and?) the introduction of some entirely new energy source necessarily reduces the production of wealth - not money, useable goods and services that people use to live. Renewable energy sources don't work; if they did, it wouldn't need subsidies from the government because the naughty nasty capitalists would be using it already and the CO2 production would (arguably)be lower already. Science aside: why are there people who insist that we have to curtail human freedom and wealth production right now for some maybe-could be-might be-if only-perhaps bad event in the next 100 years? They use the word catastrophe, but that word implies a sudden event; what is being described is the gradual increase in the "average global temperature". Do you ever wonder why? Not altruism, I bet.

I'm not certain your audience is really paying attention, JasonC. Guys, this is his point: There is only "X" amount of energy coming to the Earth in the form of light from the sun, heat rising to the surface from the still-molten core of the Earth, plant, animal and human activities, and the decay of radioactive elements near the surface of the Earth (in the ground). And perhaps other stuff, but we - the scientists - haven't discovered what that is, if there is anything. In order for the Earth to heat up, the heat input from all these sources has to total up to an increase. The part he was outlining in his physics posts is the part of that heat which comes from the Sun and is - was? - usually re-radiated (sent out in infrared light form) into space, but is now being kept by the increase in CO2. That part is, according to his post, 2 parts in 300, less than 1%. A increase in energy the Earth gets and keeps. His calculations there are to show how much increase in temperature is possible with that extra two-thirds of one percent of energy. The answer is: a lot less than what the "global warming by mankind" advocates are claiming, and a lot closer to the observed "average temperature" increases actually measured over the last 100 - 150 years. And keep in mind about measuring the Earth's temperature: there aren't good records for most of the Earth that go back more than about 100 years. There is the Central England - whatisit - that goes back longer, but for Indonesia what do we have? Now think about the rest of the world and temperature records. You see, his point isn't about greehouse gases or other mechanizism for trapping the heat from the Sun. His point is, even if all that is 100% true, based on what the human race already knows about the sources of the Earth's warmth and how that energy is kept or lost, CO2 increases as actually measured cannot possibly result in an increase of temperature of 5 - 7 degree Celsius as is being predicted. Sorry, JasonC; I don't mean to interfere, but sometimes a simpler wording gets the point across. And guys, I'm not implying that you're idiots, either. This is an area of science that is relatively complicated (climate) and JasonC's post was about another one, but one we know a lot more about, but it isn't something we all discuss over a beer or a wine at the local. Ya know?

Originally posted by BigDog944: "Uh, so you're saying that CMC, though a nice idea, isn't playable?" No, what I'm saying is that the idea I posted for a league for CMC isn't playable, since there are no prizes - although I gather that from your second post - and any and all communication issues which might be simulated via a forum are already contained in CMC. I hope that clarifies my post.

Ah, you're right. It isn't a playable idea, then. Thanks for pointing all that out. Never mind, then. [ April 15, 2006, 01:30 PM: Message edited by: Ike ]

[deleted by poster] [ April 15, 2006, 07:49 PM: Message edited by: Ike ]