Mixed-endianness
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The only thing I know about the Vietnam war is how it all went to shit. I don't think anybody won.
Of course, it's war, and I'm a progressive rationalist leftie treehugger, so nobody wins in any war.
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@Hatshepsut said:
Erm... Do you really think the US lost that war?
It's a little ambiguous. Philosophical, even. When your friend is in a fight, and you land some punches on his behalf, but your friend gets knocked out anyway, and so you pack up and leave, do you lose?
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@dhromed said:
The only thing I know about the Vietnam war is how it all went to shit. I don't think anybody won.
Of course, it's war, and I'm a progressive rationalist leftie treehugger, so nobody wins in any war.
What about the weapon manufacturers?
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@boomzilla said:
@DaveK said:
As everyone knows, Vietnam has been a multi-party capitalist democracy ever since the triumphant American victory in the Vietnam War eliminated Communism from the Indochinese Peninsula forever and reunited both halves of Vietnam under the leadership of the South.
I'm trying to find a point somewhere in there, but I don't think there's any point in making the attempt.
DaveK is being funny because he's describing this alternate-reality fanfic version where things are the opposite of our own universe. Can't wait for the movie, in which everybody has ring beards and a gruff voice and I shave daily.
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@dhromed said:
I should watch Lord of War again. Brilliant.
The first 10 minutes are. Then Nicholas Cage shows up.
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@blakeyrat said:
@dhromed said:
I should watch Lord of War again. Brilliant.
The first 10 minutes are. Then Nicholas Cage shows up.
I like Nic.
I even liked Con Air.
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@PJH said:
Vibrators were originally invented as a piece of medical equipment in the late 1800's to help doctors treat women with hysteria, since manual manipulation was so tedious and time consuming.
Bloody hell, I never knew that!
I was astonished when - some years back - someone showed me fuckingmachines.com and I saw that vibrators had been taken to a whole new level, that people were actively designing and building quite complex technology solely for this purpose.
I thought it quite a niche market but it seems it's a lot more widespread than us prudish Limeys make out.
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@Zemm said:
@boomzilla said:
Actually, proper punctuation says that it should be:
Yes.
Actually, British English lets you put punctuation outside quotes. Which makes more sense in many cases. Log in an type "rm -rf folder ." - if you include the dot in that command it will delete the current directory, not just "folder".
Actually, they're called "directories" in *nix.
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@lethalronin27 said:
but our square footage is much higher than yours,
.. because your average arse is much bigger than ours, so requires larger land mass to support the increased weight.
@lethalronin27 said:
We can just pick ourselves up ..
.. but it's a struggle, mind, with that increased girth.
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@dhromed said:
I should watch Lord of War again. Brilliant.
Another vote, excellent movie. Jared Leto played a good part, also.
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@dhromed said:
@Hatshepsut said:
Erm... Do you really think the US lost that war?
It's a little ambiguous. Philosophical, even. When your friend is in a fight, and you land some punches on his behalf, but your friend gets knocked out anyway, and so you pack up and leave, do you lose?Getting closer. Except that your friend was still fighting when you left, and didn't get knocked out until later, when you stopped supporting him, but his opponent was still getting outside help. Also, before you left, you had beaten the enemy to within an inch of his life, but your girlfriend misinterpreted the result backwards and convinced you to leave the fight.
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@Cassidy said:
@PJH said:
Vibrators were originally invented as a piece of medical equipment in the late 1800's to help doctors treat women with hysteria, since manual manipulation was so tedious and time consuming.
Bloody hell, I never knew thatGasp! You mean you never saw The Road to Wellville?
... just kidding, nobody saw that piece of shit film.
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@blakeyrat said:
Gasp! You mean you never saw The Road to Wellville?
... just kidding, nobody saw that piece of shit film.
Er.. yeah.... I admit it, I did see that film (linkified if others don't know it) - but late one night on TV when channel-hopping, rather than actively seeking it out.
Yep, it was shit. I found it tedious, and was unsure how much was actually factually correct and how much was pure embellishment. I think I probably zoned out a few times through the film, so it served its purpose of unwinding me before sleep.
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The real explanation about the weird mixed-endianess format is... it's an ESRI format. I learned to despise that company since they left a lot of users hanging because their POS DRM implementation failed to install on Windows 7 x64. There were lots of people with the same complaint in the ESRI forums, and they never *answered* it. No patches to download and fix the issue either. At one point I thought I would have to tell my boss that no, this expensive piece of software could *not* be moved to the new powerful machines and would have to stay on the old hardware. Fortunately I eventually found (from some obscure and probably not-quite-legal forum) that the DRM supplier had updated libraries that solved the problem. I had to install the libraries manually, but I managed to make ArcGIS recognize the USB token. No thanks to the ESRI support.
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@Cassidy said:
Actually, they're called "directories" in *nix.
Actually, if you read what I typed (you quoted) I have a directory called "folder".
@Zemm said:if you include the dot in that command it will delete the current directory, not just "folder".
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How dare you bring surrounding but relevant facts to combat my pedanticness!
Kindly focus upon the minutiae and leave the bigger picture out of this.
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@boomzilla said:
@DaveK said:
You might try reading the tag.As everyone knows, Vietnam has been a multi-party capitalist democracy ever since the triumphant American victory in the Vietnam War eliminated Communism from the Indochinese Peninsula forever and reunited both halves of Vietnam under the leadership of the South.
I'm trying to find a point somewhere in there, but I don't think there's any point in making the attempt.
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@Vila Restal said:
@boomzilla said:
@ASheridan said:
I think the clue is in the name: "English", which comes from England, which is part of Britain...
They should have thought of that before they lost the war.Which war was that precisely?
Vietnam? Oh no we weren't involved in that - that one you managed to lose (didn't have help you see).
Nope, nothing last century, or the century before.
Oh you mean the "War" of Independence. That little skirmish. We just had bigger fish to fry at the time.
It's good to see our colony is managing ok on its own.
Ask 500 or so Aussies who didn't come back on their opinion if the US had help.
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@PedanticCurmudgeon said:
@boomzilla said:
@DaveK said:
As everyone knows, Vietnam has been a multi-party capitalist democracy ever since the triumphant American victory in the Vietnam War eliminated Communism from the Indochinese Peninsula forever and reunited both halves of Vietnam under the leadership of the South.
I'm trying to find a point somewhere in there, but I don't think there's any point in making the attempt.
You might try reading the tag.Indeed I did read it before replying (and again at your suggestion). The tag implied that DaveK was telling us that he thought the US had obviously lost the war (through sarcasm, of course), and that he was replying to someone whose grip on reality was altered by smoking something. And I suppose that if you include the war after the war (i.e., after the Paris Peace Accords), then DaveK is right. And you might as well state that the Allies lost World War I, because it didn't stay won either.
In conclusion, DaveK already seems to have something decent to smoke.
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@dhromed said:
@Hatshepsut said:
Erm... Do you really think the US lost that war?
It's a little ambiguous. Philosophical, even. When your friend is in a fight, and you land some punches on his behalf, but your friend gets knocked out anyway, and so you pack up and leave, do you lose?
Yes, I can see the ambiguity. When you set out to destroy a society, and you destroy it, it's hard to tell whether you lost or not.
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@Hatshepsut said:
Yes, I can see the ambiguity. When you set out to destroy a society, and you destroy it, it's hard to tell whether you lost or not.
For the US, it was neither a win nor a lose, since they pulled out before everyone was done fighting. It's not possible to claim that the US won (though they most likely would have, had their involvement continued), nor is it possible to claim that they lost.
I have spoken.
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@dhromed said:
Not to mention it was not democracy vs communism. It was a corrupt government versus communism, aka bad guys versus a bigger bad guy. So no matter what the US did or who won, the US was stuck in a lose-lose situation. Luckily it the long run it appears to have worked itself out. Wish I could say the same about North Korea.@Hatshepsut said:
Yes, I can see the ambiguity. When you set out to destroy a society, and you destroy it, it's hard to tell whether you lost or not.
For the US, it was neither a win nor a lose, since they pulled out before everyone was done fighting. It's not possible to claim that the US won (though they most likely would have, had their involvement continued), nor is it possible to claim that they lost.
I have spoken.
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@Anketam said:
Not to mention it was not democracy vs communism. It was a corrupt government versus communism, aka bad guys versus a bigger bad guy. So no matter what the US did or who won, the US was stuck in a lose-lose situation. Luckily it the long run it appears to have worked itself out. Wish I could say the same about North Korea.
The South Korean government had its share of troubles / military dictators, too. Still scads better than Communism. Your line of thinking would probably claim there's no significant difference between the old Shah of Iran and the Ayatollahs. And you'd be just as wrong.
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@dhromed said:
For the US, it was neither a win nor a lose,
They achieved their goal, so they won.
@dhromed said:
since they pulled out before everyone was done fighting.
Even more of a win. (Of course that other fighting would have stopped a lot more quickly if they had stopped the flow of funds at the same time.)
@dhromed said:
It's not possible to claim that the US won
That's what I'm doing.
@dhromed said:
(though they most likely would have, had their involvement continued)
They had already won, long before they pulled out.
@dhromed said:
, nor is it possible to claim that they lost.
Plenty of people seem to do just that.
@dhromed said:
I have spoken.
You have.
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@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
For the US, it was neither a win nor a lose,
They achieved their goal, so they won.
What was their goal?
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@serguey123 said:
@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
For the US, it was neither a win nor a lose,
They achieved their goal, so they won.
What was their goal?To win.
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@serguey123 said:
@Hatshepsut said:
Culling the baby boomer population while feeding the military-industrial complex?@dhromed said:
For the US, it was neither a win nor a lose,
They achieved their goal, so they won.
What was their goal?
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@joe.edwards said:
@serguey123 said:
I thought that whether they won or not was debatable @blakeyrat said:@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
For the US, it was neither a win nor a lose,
They achieved their goal, so they won.
What was their goal?To win.
Kickin' Ass. Duh.
Well, Hollywood did make a few movies about it so maybe it was a clear win for them
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@serguey123 said:
@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
For the US, it was neither a win nor a lose,
They achieved their goal, so they won.
What was their goal?[blakey] I'VE ALREADY TOLD YOU, DON'T YOU READ MY POSTS?!? [/blakey]
Ahem.
As I said before, to destroy Vietnamese society.
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@Hatshepsut said:
@serguey123 said:
It would have been cheaper and faster to just give them free wifi.@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
For the US, it was neither a win nor a lose,
They achieved their goal, so they won.
What was their goal?[blakey] I'VE ALREADY TOLD YOU, DON'T YOU READ MY POSTS?!? [/blakey]
Ahem.
As I said before, to destroy Vietnamese society.
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@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
For the US, it was neither a win nor a lose,
They achieved their goal, so they won.
The US mission in Vietnam was cancelled. It was not 'won' by any stretch of the imagination, nor was it lost.
@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
since they pulled out before everyone was done fighting.
Even more of a win.
Going home early is a win? Securing defeat for your ally by leaving is a win? That makes no sense.
@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
It's not possible to claim that the US won
That's what I'm doing.
It's entirely wrong. There is nothing to support this view.
@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
(though they most likely would have, had their involvement continued)
They had already won, long before they pulled out.
This is false. It's true that the Tet Offensive is where the north broke its teeth with a large attack, and two smaller ones after that, but this by no means meant to the formal defeat of the north. That battle was clearly won, but the war was not.
From then on, the US —its warmachine tired, its people unhappy with the war— made arrangements to stop fighting, and specifically, to stop attemtping to gain victory over North Vietnam.
@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
, nor is it possible to claim that they lost.
Plenty of people seem to do just that.
I am not one of them. The Vietnam war was lost by South Vietnam, and won by North Vietnam. The US "merely" lost a lot of money and a chunk of troops.
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@Hatshepsut said:
As I said before, to destroy Vietnamese society.
...what? What crazed pamphlets have you been digesting?
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@dhromed said:
@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
For the US, it was neither a win nor a lose,
They achieved their goal, so they won.
The US mission in Vietnam was cancelled. It was not 'won' by any stretch of the imagination, nor was it lost.
It was cancelled because it had had become politically unviable in the US, and since it had achieved its fundamental goal there was no point in carrying on.
@dhromed said:
@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
since they pulled out before everyone was done fighting.
Even more of a win.
Going home early is a win?
It is if you've achieved your goal.
@dhromed said:
Securing defeat for your ally by leaving is a win? That makes no sense.
Sure it does. If you've achieved your goal, what happens to your puppet is irrelevant.
@dhromed said:
@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
It's not possible to claim that the US won
That's what I'm doing.
It's entirely wrong. There is nothing to support this view.
I disagree.
@dhromed said:
@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
(though they most likely would have, had their involvement continued)
They had already won, long before they pulled out.
This is false. It's true that the Tet Offensive is where the north broke its teeth with a large attack, and two smaller ones after that, but this by no means meant to the formal defeat of the north. That battle was clearly won, but the war was not.
From then on, the US —its warmachine tired, its people unhappy with the war— made arrangements to stop fighting, and specifically, to stop attemtping to gain victory over North Vietnam.
The US had already gained its victory, over Vietnam.
@dhromed said:
@Hatshepsut said:
@dhromed said:
, nor is it possible to claim that they lost.
Plenty of people seem to do just that.
I am not one of them.
Clearly.
@dhromed said:
The Vietnam war was lost by South Vietnam, and won by North Vietnam.
It was won by the US, which achieved its aim of destroying Vietnamese society. It was lost by Vietnam, whose social and economic fabric was destroyed. Not completely, obviously, but substantially and profoundly.
@dhromed said:
The US "merely" lost a lot of money and a chunk of troops.
That's often the cost of winning a war..
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@Hatshepsut said:
It was won by the US, which achieved its aim of destroying Vietnamese society. It was lost by Vietnam, whose social and economic fabric was destroyed. Not completely, obviously, but substantially and profoundly.
Wow. You're literally insane. :D
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@dhromed said:
@Hatshepsut said:
It was won by the US, which achieved its aim of destroying Vietnamese society. It was lost by Vietnam, whose social and economic fabric was destroyed. Not completely, obviously, but substantially and profoundly.
Wow. You're literally insane. :DI was going to go with unsubtle troll, but the two are really hard to tell apart.
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@dhromed said:
Wow. You're literally insane. :D
Compare with
@dhromed said:
Wow. You're a Republican. :D
Notice how the second smiley is more strange.
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@boomzilla said:
I was going to go with unsubtle troll, but the two are really hard to tell apart.
I would like to thank this troll for making me read up on an important event of which I had only the most superficial knowledge.
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@Ben L. said:
@dhromed said:
Wow. You're a Republican. :D
Notice how the second smiley is more strange.
D:
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@Ben L. said:
@dhromed said:
Wow. You're literally insane. :D
Compare with
@dhromed said:Wow. You're a Republican. :D
Notice how the second smiley is more strange.This looks like a
personalpolitical problem of yours. Orwellian Progressives: medicalizing dissent for over a century.
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@boomzilla said:
This looks like a
personalpolitical problem of yours. Orwellian Progressives: medicalizing dissent for over a century.Exactly. They're not insane. They're just dicks.
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@dhromed said:
@boomzilla said:
This looks like a
personalpolitical problem of yours. Orwellian Progressives: medicalizing dissent for over a century.
Exactly. They're not insane. They're just dicks.Better to be a dick than to be wrong.
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@dhromed said:
@serguey123 said:
woo pony
FTFYThere is only one type of pony and it wants your blood!
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Who abused the poor thing's left eye?
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Or saw somebody use one.
