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 Discussion on question by Amruth A: W…

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Rekesoft
May 19, 2023 10:29
@AlexP The USA is not at the hands of a reptilian race of adenocrome-drinking paedophiles disguised as humans, but you'll find a significant amount of people ready to believe it.
Rekesoft
May 19, 2023 10:29
@AlexP If enough part of the population is convinced that the country is at the hands of a handful of rich men, who are rich mainly because their parents were, they may not mind losing the paltry inheritance their relatives could give them if it ends the plutocracy once and for all. And when revolution comes, you may find that you and your fellow revolutionaires are outnumbered by me and my side. Just because you don't like the proposal, it doesn't mean it couldn't work.
 

 Discussion on answer by Italian Philo…

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Rekesoft
Sep 20, 2022 08:00
And second, competition against public may be beneficious for the system. In most european countries private health insurance provides the same coverage than american ones for a fraction of the prize... because they have to compete against free universal healthcare. In Spain there are calls to create a small state-owned energy company... to check if the energy is as costly as the private companies say. In theory, private companies are more economically efficient than public ones, but cartels and fixing-prices schemes are common. Public companies may help in detect and correct those.
Rekesoft
Sep 20, 2022 08:00
(+1) I'd add another two advantages to SOEs. First, any capital-intensive with lots of long, costly I+D research is always publicly paid-for. SpaceX was founded in 2002, and bankrupt by 2006 before was saved by governmental help. Despite what Musk says, NASA and other government subsidies make 90% of SpaceX. Big Pharma would only invent new antiaging creams if it were left to its own. Every medicine they have discovered was part of a joint research with some kind of public-founded investigation facility were the taxpayer paid 99% of the research and Big Pharma took 100% of the benefits.
 

 Discussion on answer by Tom Au: What …

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Rekesoft
Jul 21, 2022 12:09
And Rogers Clifford is very much an individual opinion. A very patriotic, moreover, individual opinion. Crécy had also cannons, but we don't know how effective they were. Pressumably low, because they were so primitive, but again, like most things about those times "pressumably". We don't know how many people those cannons killed (if any), and we don't know how many people the arrows killed - if any, but the genoese surely had many loses to arrows, or they wouldn't have fled.
Rekesoft
Jul 21, 2022 12:03
@DevSolar That's the problem with comments: they are indeed unsuitable to extended discussions due to the limited space, and when you start deleting words to make it fit you end up with much more categorical affirmations that you had initially written. We both agree that bows were an important asset in medieval warfare (minor nitpicking aside about whether machine guns or howitzers are a better metaphore) that they were area-denial and suppresion weapons, intented to harass the enemy.
Rekesoft
Jul 21, 2022 11:57
@DevSolar And on a different note I don't know how much historical value has the Bayeaux Tapestry. Turner painted the Spanish sailors of the age of sail wearing muslim turbants. The tapestry was commisioned and made way after the battle, and the artists were'nt there at the battle. An artistical representation may provide some historical clues about what people wore in a certain time, but you have always to contemplate the possibility of artistic licenses. Nobody thinks the spartans at Thermopilae were actually naked but shield and sword.
Rekesoft
Jul 21, 2022 11:57
@DevSolar My bad. I was refering to a single evidence of that happening in the battle of Crécy. Accidents happen, but they are that: accidents. Phyrrus of Epirus was killed by a tile thrown by an old lady from a rooftop, but that didn't made ancient generals to march to battle with hordes of old ladies armed with tiles. Crécy is not a valid example of "first shooting battle" because every historian, despite their opinion about the efficacy of the longbow, they reckon that 80% or more of the casualties were not caused by arrows (actually, most of the dead were actually executed post-battle).
Rekesoft
Jul 21, 2022 11:57
@DevSolar Wow! Ad hominem much? Please, show me your historical research. Explicitly, tell me about the percentages were an arrow went through a weak spot on an armour. Or even single recorded evidence of that. Isn't that how historical research is done? Like, finding a single evidence of that ever happening? Because your false assumption of "surely some of those arrows must have hit some weak point of the armor" is a very much an unsourced conclusion. That's not the way historical research is done. Has anybody tried to found the corpses of that battle looking for arrow injuries?
Rekesoft
Jul 21, 2022 11:57
@DevSolar Dare to calculate the probability of a weak point being hit? By a conservative estimation, shooting with a longbow against a static target at 300m or against a moving target at any distance, it's below 1 in a billion. Which, given that the Welsh bowmen only shot a few thousand, leads us to the same conclusion than before: no knight was harmed by arrows. By the way, horses are more than capable to work with armor. Actually, barding was invented partly in response to Crézy, since quite a few horses were hit when they had to stop in the trenches the English army had dug.
Rekesoft
Jul 21, 2022 11:57
@DevSolar Most arrows won't even hit at all. You all think of bows as if they were medieval-age assault rifles. They are not. They are medieval-age howitzers. You don't aim at anything smaller than an acre because it's pointless. Never in history has an archer looked from a vulnerable spot in an armor, except with a knife. By the time your enemy is close enough to look for vulnerable points in their armour you're being late for ditching your bow and draw a sword instead. Arrows are used to harass unprotected light infantry, nothing more (and nothing less: this is a valuable asset).
Rekesoft
Jul 21, 2022 11:57
@Tom Au Nope. Look this video of a longbow against medieval-style armor. Even at point blank, it fails to penetrate: youtube.com/watch?v=DBxdTkddHaE The English bowmen started raining down arrows towards the unarmored french infantry; the genoese crossbowmen, being downhill and outgunned, couldn't do anything about it, so the french knights killed them and charged uphill against trenches and pikes. Those were who dismounted the french knights. NOT A SINGLE KNIGHT WAS EVER HARMED BY AN ARROW. history.stackexchange.com/questions/46757/…
Rekesoft
Jul 21, 2022 11:57
I've downvoted for the same reason that Pieter Geerkens mentions: most of the casualties of the battle were caused by blades, not by arrows. While the longbows of the English army forced the French to attack uphill against an entrenched position, so you could say that "longbows decided the battle", they didn't kill that many.
 

 Discussion on answer by Machavity: Wh…

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Rekesoft
Jul 15, 2022 07:50
@Machavity Are you sure about that? What constitutes "free speech" and what doesn't? In many european countries, such as Spain, hate speech is a crime you can be fined or imprisoned for, but you could walk through a mall nude and while private security could be upset about it, there's no laws against that. In the US that would be public indecency and you will be forever marked as a "sexual offender" for life. The fact that in the US you're allowed to be a bigoted racist, but not to be in topless as a woman on the beach doesn't make the US "freer". Just different kind of censure.
Rekesoft
Jul 15, 2022 07:50
@JonathanReez You seem to imply this is wrong, but the link doesn't provide much evidence on the contrary. The fact that the US doesn't have an official "Chief Censor" bureaucrat doesn't mean that free speech is any better in the US. More likely that not that only implies that restrictions to free speech come from non-official, non-supervised entities.
 

 Discussion on question by Allure: Why…

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Rekesoft
Apr 28, 2022 09:22
@JoeW Whataboutism is indeed what you are talking about. You said "If the China/Australia situation escalates I would expect the same actions regarding it." I say that's never been the case, and that's why there's so little support for sanctions against Russia besides NATO countries and their puppet allies. Latin America has not joined the sanctions, Africa has not joined the sanctions, Asia has not joined the sanctions (but Japan), the Middle East has not joined the sanctions... they all see it one rule when NATO does illegal things, and other for the rest.
Rekesoft
Apr 28, 2022 09:22
@JoeW How many international sanctions you recall against the US for its illegal war on Irak? Its murdering drone assassination campaign? I don't recall the US being cut from SWIFT, or its athletes banned from international competition.
Rekesoft
Apr 28, 2022 09:22
@JoeW I wouldn't. It would be nice if the Ukraine war leads us to a world where international sanctions are applied equally to every transgressor, but that has never been the case and I don't have any reason to think that it will.
 

 Discussion on answer by Rekesoft: Why…

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Rekesoft
Mar 10, 2022 08:54
@prosfilaes There is not such thing as "international law", because there's no one to enforce nor tribunal to judge it - and where there is one, the powerful nations like the USA choose to not opt in. The only truth in your comments is "yes, the USA also do that, so what?". So what indeed.
Rekesoft
Mar 10, 2022 08:54
@RussellMcMahon And the present situation is precisely why they would like nukes rather than garantees on paper. Russia has accused Ukraine of trying to get nukes, and while this nukes are as fake as Iraq's WMDs, I don't find it unreasonable at all.
Rekesoft
Mar 10, 2022 08:54
@MrVocabulary The USA has bombed many countries many times, and as a result most of them would like to have nukes. That doesn't mean it's a good idea letting them have nuclear weapons, despite their reasons being understable.
Rekesoft
Mar 10, 2022 08:54
@MSalters I'll add the sources back home, but the whole "let's admit Ukraine in NATO" was George Bush' idea. Which wasn't a european president. And while Putin didn't like EU membership for Ukraine, he didn't threatened with war - actually his main reserves about EU membership is that it usually makes a tandem with NATO membership. Buy one, get the second for free.
Rekesoft
Mar 10, 2022 08:54
@RedSonja Maybe, but there's where everybody lives. The USA has never been worried about Russia's proximity to Alaska. Soviet missiles on Cuba, however, were a very different issue and almost triggered WWIII.
Rekesoft
Mar 10, 2022 08:54
@Allure True, but just like Fizz comments in their answer, NATO is quite flexible. There's no official mecanisms to expel a country from the SWIFT system, but it has been done. Twice.
 

 Discussion on question by Vogon Poet:…

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Rekesoft
Feb 17, 2022 17:53
This question boils to "who would have had first the concept of a nuclear steam engine in the XIXth century?", which is akin to ask "who would have had the idea of supersonic flight in the XVIth century?", to which the only natural answer is "no one had any reason to think that was even within the realms of possibility at the time", but if you provide alternate facts to change the course of history... how do you expect anybody to know the name of the inventor is this parallel temporal line? This is unanswerable. Voting to close.
 

 Discussion on answer by JJJ: What is …

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Rekesoft
Feb 12, 2022 20:14
Not a bad answer, if a bit naïve (would the "open door" policy of the NATO be still open to China, Russia, Iran and North Korea? A military alliance is not just defined by who you decide to side with, but specially by who you're allying against), but I'll remove the last paragraph; yes, the NATO budget is much bigger than Russia's; no, that doesn't guarantee at all a sure victory for NATO, even in a non-nuclear war.
 

 Discussion on question by Eddy96: Rea…

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Rekesoft
Oct 28, 2021 16:18
Define "leave the Earth". If you are saying "why do they don't have satellites, why do they haven't explored the Moon", that's a thing. If you're saying "why haven't they colonized the Moon and terraformed Mars? Why do they haven't expanded through the galaxy?" the answer is for the same reasons we are not going to do it: it's economically ruinous even if there were enough physical means to achieve it - and they may never exist: FTL isn't possible and antimatter or fussion may be unatainable or improductive.
 

 Discussion on answer by Moshe: Are th…

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Rekesoft
Aug 17, 2021 09:35
Your initial post is hard to read and unnecesarily colourful in language, but the part under P.P.S. [mo: 15AUG21] is solid (and highly interesting) information. (+1) Well-awarded bounty.
 

 Discussion on question by pootis: Wha…

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Rekesoft
Jun 5, 2021 03:04
@Dragongeek It's not true that offensive technology advances faster than defensive technology. They usually go alongside, with minor sprints on one or the other which may favour different approachs to combat. Shaped charges seemed to end the age of armored vehicles by the end of WWII, but now chobham ceramic armor and Active Protection Systems like israeli Trophy have turned the tide around, and anti-tank weapons are abandoning HEAT and going back to high-speed kinetic penetrators.
 

 Discussion on answer by Carcer: Is Zo…

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Rekesoft
May 5, 2021 08:00
@Toddleson Many people here on this world believe in life after death, resurrection or reincarnation. Even for them, the verb "to kill" has a definite, concrete meaning.
Rekesoft
May 5, 2021 08:00
@MichaelHomer While rationalizations of your misguided deeds are common among criminals ("I didn't kill him, the bullets did") nobody ever truly believes them. You lie to yourself, you know that you're lying to yourself, but you choose to keep doing it because it makes you feel better. You still know it's a lie. If you can claim that your character "really" believes those lies then it's cognitive dissonance it's so great it completely precludes them to function as a normal person - since you can't be insane only when you chose to. That's a -10 Wis, -10 Int for your character.
Rekesoft
May 5, 2021 08:00
@MatejDrobnič "I am not living" and "I am not living there anymore" are two very different statements which start with the same words. Under the spell rules, "I did not kill King Bob" is a lie and I don't see why some non-pronounced words which could be added to the sentece make this legit. Alice would need to say the whole sentence: "I didn't kill King Bob yesterday at two o'clock" to make it truthy, but the unnecesary and unrequested adding is just a proof of guilt. "Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta".
 

 Discussion on answer by user76284: Wh…

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Rekesoft
Feb 19, 2021 20:29
This is an answer to an answer, not to the question, and as such should be a comment on Ted Wrigley's answer.
 

 Discussion on answer by Radovan Garab…

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Rekesoft
Jul 10, 2020 12:54
I'm with @RobWatts here. The electrical charge is inmense, true, but how much would the electric field would last? At worst, that would be the mother of all electrical pulse surges, but it wouldn't last enough to counteract any gravitational fields.
 

 Discussion on answer by Rekesoft: Wou…

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Rekesoft
May 18, 2020 18:34
@computercarguy I'm afraid that most of what you (think you) know about ancient warfare comes through Hollywood movies. No, camo paint and gillie suits doesn't give you much advantage in a world where, in a nigth without moon, you could not see your own hand three inches away from your nose. And don't expect recognition to offer much help, either. Usually soldiers put their tents wherever they could, so the only disposition of the enemy camp you are going to get is "like the Woodstock 69's camping area".
Rekesoft
May 18, 2020 18:34
@computercarguy Way before the US Forces took the badge of being the best specialists on night attacks, this merit was of the spanish Tercios. In their 80 years long struggle in the Netherlands they were reknowned, among other things, for their dreaded "encamisadas", surprise night attacks on enemy camps. They well called "encamisadas" because the Tercios' soldiers would wear a white shirt (camisa, in spanish) to tell them other apart among the chaos. Wearing a white shirt as a ghillie suit? Yes, because, in a world without electricity, the major problem was seeing, not avoiding being seen.
Rekesoft
May 18, 2020 18:34
@computercarguy Also, infiltration can be useful in a time where a platoon with automatic assault rifles and some kilos of C4 can unleash the Armaggedon. Without pictures of the enemy campsite took by spy satellites or drones, without night-vission glasses and armed with short swords (and without heavy armour, because it's cumbersome) your infiltration team can't do too much damage and it's hopelessly disavantaged in a night darker than chinese ink through a labyrinthic enemy campsite they don't know fuck about.
Rekesoft
May 18, 2020 18:34
@computercarguy Bollocks. That's like saying that a time-traveller from the 24th century will outperform you in things like driving a car without IA or using a phone without voice-commands because they have a 101 course on primitive technology. What you call "doing things without modern technology" they called just "living" and they were vastly more apt than you at doing it. Day by day. Modern abilities on camouflage and infiltration were useless back then because in a world without electricity you couldn't see your one hands for inches in front of your eyes. Night was really dark then.
Rekesoft
May 18, 2020 18:34
@toolforger What point it is being bigger and stronger if they can't use a sword or a bow? They are worse fighters and, on top of that, they eat a lot. Any wise commander would put them on the first line as human shields to get rid of them at the first opportunity. Whenever the army has been deployed as riot police they have underperformed badly. You just can't handle them shields and batons and expect them to perform as well as a thorougly trained unit. That would be the same, but way more deadly (for them).
Rekesoft
May 18, 2020 18:34
@tbrookside What do Cromwell, Gustavus Adolphus, Maurice of Nassau, the Romans and the modern US Army have in common? Some powerful, rich states and a decent navy at their disposal. If Cromwell or Nassau had been disembarked in Lebannon, then the fleet had been dismissed they would have had the same problems the Crussaders had. I never denied that logistics is vital. I only stated that wishing logistics is not useful. Most answers here are overly positive verging on naive. The path from theory to realization is always an order of magnitude greater that initially thought.
 

 Discussion on question by Dragongeek:…

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Rekesoft
Jan 25, 2020 12:11
@Miech Lack of space in the comment. For the precise conversion, consult your own comment above.
Rekesoft
Jan 25, 2020 12:11
@Miech 2000W is the kinetical energy a projectile of 1 gram moving at 12 km/s has, not the energy needed to accelerate it to that speed. I think the OP is asking for scientific methods to do things like that. He could, for example, transform those 2000W into electric current and use a railgun to do it, but then a pair of conductive rails is needed, and there's many other things to account about: maximum theorical efficience, resistance of the materials, recoil and every magic system which wants to support conservation of energy should deal with that hard mistress, thermodynamics.
 

 Discussion on answer by Geremia: What…

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Rekesoft
Jan 20, 2020 18:38
@Geremia Pedro Arbués was killed by assassins hired by marranos, but his extreme hardness was far from groundlessly founded. The opposition against the Inquisition in the kingdom of Aragon was far from restricted to jews. The mutilation of crucifixes and profanations are nothing but blood libels, and the story about Toledo jews planning an uprising and posterior genocide of the christians is pure nonsense. All of which are presented by Dr. Pastor uncritically.
 

 Discussion on answer by dandavis: Why…

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Rekesoft
Dec 14, 2019 12:03
@Yakk Nuclear ABM's are not an option. Depending on the trajectory of interception, it can be better let the enemy missile strike than blowing up your own country with your own nukes. And if interception is made on high altitude - which is desired - a conventional chemical explosive could have greater killing radius than a nuke. Not to mention than nuclear explosions can't be as precisely timed as conventional explosives, which is absolutely a must when you're dealing with interceptors. Or other questions like arming the warhead, which takes more time than a rapid response would require.
 

 Discussion on question by Incognito: …

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Rekesoft
Dec 13, 2019 12:37
@StarfishPrime That's why heavy cavalry horses were armored too. Barding was invented to prevent that.
 

 Discussion on question by Wiggo the W…

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Rekesoft
Nov 28, 2019 12:27
@WiggotheWookie Just have in mind how big is that information (and what kind of data). Floppy disks can store quite a lot of text, some pics at lousy resolution or something like a few seconds of really crappy video.
 

 Discussion on question by pErs0nZ: Ha…

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Rekesoft
Nov 26, 2019 11:46
@WGroleau It is not the number of murders as much the moral position. The allied air raids killed much more people than the Luftwaffe's blitz, but the allies are rarely considered "as evil as the nazis". Some fascist generals overthrowing a democratic government, and some civilians fighting against the former are not in the same moral scale. Even if they also killed people.
 

 Discussion on answer by Starfish Prim…

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Rekesoft
Nov 11, 2019 22:11
@RichardSmith Ufff. I don't have the time nor the will to answer a wall of text of an old question I already upvoted and commented, but 1) it is not a law of nature that a weapon must exist only because it is cool. Laws of nature are, by the way, the most effective anti-laser technology: so far no one has been able to make effective weapons from laser, and probably it just can't be done. Decoherence is going to prevent focusing a narrow beam more than a few kilometers away. The more powerful the laser and the longer the distance, the worse.
Rekesoft
Nov 11, 2019 22:11
@RichardSmith As for drones, many countries are betting on them just like in the 70's they were betting for supersonic interceptors without dogfighting capabilities... until they had their first serious conflict (Vietnam) and they found their predictions of futute fighting were mistaken. Sure, drones are effective in the role they are being used today: bombing mud huts on third-world shitholes. And by "effective" they mean "cheaper than sending an F18". But against Iran they have already seen they are not that useful. Forget using them against Russia or China.
Rekesoft
Nov 11, 2019 22:11
@StarfishPrime That's what I was talking about. Since no effective laser are being employed (yet), the most effective armor is a thin coating of unicorn tears. If laser AA end being deployed, and if they are effective enough, then laser shield will be used. And military grade hardware being fooled is trivial. Only the fact that modern wars are being fought against underdeveloped countries and followed by Fox News makes us thing that modern war is like a Tom Clany novel. In the news every enemy missile is intercepted by a Patriot and every Tomahawk hits with millimetric accuracy. Bullshit.