Danger of Automation

Once you automate any process you really never know what is going on anymore since ANOTHER automated process has to tell you!

 

Copy Protection by using Technology: Obsolete before Written

      Trying to solve a SOCIAL problem with TECHNOLOGY never works.

 

     Content companies only think in the short term - like stockholders who think of only the next quarterly earnings - worry about stopping copyright infringement right now and don't care about any long term impacts . None the of DRM methods they  have  implemented will be still around after 100 years as mainstream - what happens to all this content that depends on hardware / software which no longer exists? Are they going to give people current copy replacements? 

 

      I think not.

 

      They should take the shareware approach - give people free 30 second clips of the music or 5 minutes of movie for free and if people really like what they hear or see then those people will buy the full versions of them.

 

      Unfortunately, the real world is that people who do download songs and movies illegally all the time would have never bought it legally even if was there and offered at a reasonable price - these people had no money to purchase it so firms should should not be using this  "lost of income"  as a fact for them. Not an excuse  for stealing , but it is reality.

 

    For content providers to claim this as a loss of income is like saying a stock a person bought for $2 was really worth $50 a share when they sold it at $10 so they should be able to take a $40 loss per share on their taxes.

 

    This "fact" looks good on paper but that logic does not exist in the real world.

 

One Danger Of Automation

 Once you automate any process you really never know what is going on anymore since ANOTHER automated process has to tell you!

 

Fast Company Article and How True It Was about Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling

In issue #44 of Fast Company magazine (March 2001, Page 124 by Tom Peters) was an article about leadership.

 

This section was called:

 

"Rule #3: Leadership Is Confusing As Hell"

 

In this article he wrote:

 

"Enron chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling have figured out how to operate like a band of pirates. Got an idea? Don't dally. Go for it while it's an original! Doesn't work? Try something else. If that doesn't work, fuhgeddaboutit!"

 

With the conviction of these two today I suspect these modern day pirates last set of goals is to figure out who gets to walk the plank first.

 

Net Neutrality - Will Never Happen

My take is that the Telecoms are trying to put in place the tiered tariff style for the backbone system that they created for the last mile: dial-up / 4 wire no guaranteed speed; dedicated line 56K, Fractional T1, T1, T3 etc which was the traditional way of giving telecom service from 1950s to the 1990s to businesses: going from CO (Central Office) to a business they leaded a line monthly to them and the FCC enforced that rate and level of service.

When the Internet kicked in the Telcos leased many tens of thousands of lines to businesses -- but had to build the backbone up to handle the extra data that they were now getting from these businesses which they had leased the lines to and so the "back office" lines were a "cost" that they could not directly charge (tariff) to the end users per the FCC rules.

Now, they are trying to move that backbone layer down one level into a leasing business tariff layer so they can get money off the of backbone which they had to create because they sold all those last mile circuit leases.

This is akin to what many states and cities are floating around for putting in high speed priority lanes for vehicle commuters -- if you want speed and avoid traffic you pay extra for it.

A "charge to use" transportation system will eliminate a lot of people from using it - those without the necessary money - by putting up a (legal) barrier to keep out the "riff raff" - the same idea is what the telecommunication companies want to do on the net.

Those that pay can play on the new circuits and their data will get there faster - those that cannot then get to use the clogged "free" lanes (which are really paid for indirectly for though normal telco costs but this fact is ignored by all those in charge who set the rules in the FCC Government).

End result: those with money will earn more money and so will the Telcos who can now charge for the long haul backbone circuits they normally do not charge directly for.

 

Taking the road analogy further, this means if local governments are allowed to build lanes with public money, then give preferential treatment for people with more money so they can drive from point A to point B on this road - then allowing the Telcos to give preferential treatment to people with more money to get faster network service is THE SAME THING.

 

If you want to bar Telcos from doing this on the Internet long haul circuits they really should also bar all governments from setting restrictive HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes, toll express lanes, and similar preferential treatment set asides to a select class of users of the road.

If the current US deregulation precedents of the past three decades continues expect this dual tier system to occur in a year but no later than 5 years from now - money talks and saying "free market" enough times will win this change.

 

See NAFTA.

Commentary on the book "Among The Dead Cities" by A.C. Grayling; ISBN -10: 0-8027-1471-4 C 2006

I finished reading this book a few weeks after it was published in March of 2006. There are some factual errors (maybe proofreading, or typing, some are very obvious to WW II readers) the basic premise is that the "Area Bombing," "de-housing," "moral lowering," campaign - the words used the British Bomber Command at various times during the Second World War - was immoral and did not help the Allies win World War II. A surface examination of the topic shows that this premise is sustainable.

As in most things there are various degrees of truth.

Prior to the war there was, as he talked about, great fear as to what fleets of aerial bombers could do. Watch the movie "Things to Come" and you will get a graphic Hollywood movie view of what bombing would do to cities - and in many German cities (and some British) what the ruins of the city looked like in the movie actually came true.

There was a general agreement among western nations that deliberately bombing cities would not be done - and both sides in the beginning of the war went to great lengths NOT to bomb non-combatants. The case of Rotterdam was mentioned in the book and it was later proven that most of the bombers were recalled by radio and did not bomb while the one KG group that did bomb the lead plane had a malfunctioning radio so did not hear the recall nor did the flight commander see the abort flares fired by the German troops due to the direction they flew into the target. German soldiers were already in the area where they bombed too! Then why did the Germans target the city? To force Holland to surrender quickly so the rest of the AG (Army Group) could sweep thorough the Netherlands and get behind the British. Any time you make a threat you have to be able to carry it out or else the threat does not mean anything.

The British, and Germans, started out hitting tactical / strategic targets in 1940. However, the Germans were the first ones to find out that a tactical air force designed to support the field army - which is all what the Germans and British had - could not on its own fight into hostile airspace and return without exceeding a 10% loss rate or higher on each mission. As he stated, a 3.5% loss rate per mission is sustainable (just don't tell the aircrews) due to aircraft production and crew training limitations.

The Germans failed at daylight bombing over Southern England July - September 1940 during the "Battle of Britain" for the same reason the British did in 1941-42: lack of long range escorts and heavily armed bombers with enough bomb load to make precision industry bombing effective. Initial Luftwaffe Fighter command actually employed the correct tactics. Sending fighters out ahead and to the side of the stream to intercept the British before they could attack. The few British that got threw then shot down bombers, which caused bomber leaders to complain about lack of fighters near them and thus pulled Luftwaffe fighters back to close escort where they were ineffective.

The US Army Air Force employed the same close escort tactics FIRST that the Germans employed at the end of the BoB and the bombers suffered. They switched to what the Germans started with in loose escort in early-mid 1944 and broke up the Luftwaffe attacks. The bomber losses went down.

The Luftwaffe switched to night bombing in order to carry on the fight. The high losses suffered made it the only reasonable alternative due to Adolf Hitler's need for to always attack and to help his propaganda by saying he is still attacking England. It forced the British to expend efforts in defending against it. Bombing was still seen as part of the pre-war mentality that attacking civilians would weaken resolve as espoused in "Things To Come" and would force capitulation.

During 1941 the British raided into French and Belgium with small number of bombers (sometimes only 1) with massive fighter escorts. JG 26 and JG 2 defended against these raids (called Circus-01, 02 etc) yet the bombers were still shot down on many occasions. Seeing that hugh numbers of escorts still resulted in the bombers being shot convinced Bomber Command that attacks against deep targets in NAZI controlled areas would not achieve the war aim of crippling their industry. They ignored the bad escort tactics that were employed which allowed the Luftwaffe pilots to get to the bombers which was the real cause of the losses.

Thus the British Bomber Command, like the Luftwaffe High Command before them, switched to attacking precision targets at night. As stated in the book, hitting precision targets at night was very, very, difficult. The Germans found this out which is why they developed the two beam system to guide their bombers to targets in England. Still, being over a target at 15 to 20 thousand feet at night and then dropping bombs to hit a single factory was just not possible given the technology they had. The only way to hit a specific target was drop enough bombs so that at least 5 to 10% of those dropped would hit it and knock it out - which means you need a LOT of bombs and bombers. To put this in perspective you would need 41 Boeing B-17, each loaded with twelve 500 lb bombs, over the target in order to effectively get fifty 500 lb bombs onto the target to knock it out for any length of time. A Bomb Group normally has 3 squadrons of 18 planes each giving a total of 54 planes assigned to it. A BG could - and did - hit a single target and take it out - during the DAY. The main difference was that the B-17s bombed from 25 to 32 thousand feet thus scattering the bombs over a wider area. The lowest bombing altitude that I know of was done by B-17s at 17,000 feet. (Ignore the Ploesti B-24 raid which bombed 50 to 800 feet AGL.)

Bombing done at low altitude is more accurate. RAF night bombing assigned altitude was from 7 to 17 thousand feet. Compared to USAAF of 22 to 32 thousand feet it would seem the RAF would have been deadly accurate. But, this being night, and with cloud cover and darkness the accuracy was just not there initially. With the advent of H2S radar for ground map navigation, pathfinders to mark targets, the ability to hit specific targets at night was doable by all of the RAF by late 1943. The "Dambusters" raid in May 16/17 1943 showed that it was very feasible to hit specific targets.

When I talked to a "Master Bomber," Wing Commander Raymond B. Phillips, D.F.C. A.F.C. in 1997 (from Dunston in Lincolnshire) he had acted as a Master Bomber over Berlin on two raids he stated that the standard rule that pilots followed was that bombers usually ignored orders concerning assigned bombing altitude. They often climbed as high as possible to avoid being dropped on by OTHER bombers. Other pilots and crew that I talked to stated they also ignored altitude orders. It is better to be above than below other bombers when dropping bombs!

The British, by tactics and necessity just like the Germans before them, switched to night bombing due to inability to fight during the day with massed bombers.

After initial tries at hitting targets they made a conscious decision to target SOMETHING that they could hit - and the whole city was the target. This is the whole premise of the book: that the British (and later Americans vs. Japan) deliberately targeted people and their possessions out of proportion to war's necessity. This is further exacerbated by stating that when Bomber Command COULD target at night with precision - and could fly in daylight - they DID NOT stop targeting cities.

This is where he comes in stating that the Allies should feel guilty about this aspect of the Bombing Campaign.

Halifaxes, Lancasters, Sterlings and the other bombers were not designed to drop above 18,000 feet. The bomb load that they carried precluded it. Thus, they were designed to fight low and at night. This increased accuracy. The bomb aimers still aimed their bombs, used the British equivalent to the Norden Bomb Sight that the USAAF used, and were fully capable of hitting really small targets - like that of a railway tunnel. The fact that they did not was simply a matter of policy of RAF Bomber Command.

The ministers in charge of the war got their information on the campaign from Bomber Command and there was no way to get any independent view of the bombing effectiveness except from them. Thus you have a case where the people who could have ordered them to start precision bombing where all the necessary technical solutions were in place had no information to back up that order with logic and reason.

In the point that when they COULD switch from area bombing to precision bombing by the British they should have I agree with him. The military necessity of bombing by area was no longer valid. As to whether the US and UK should feel guilty by targeting the workers I think not. The scope of "front lines" and helping the war effort started to be blurred in the the First World War and it became even more prevalent during the Second World War. The UK and the USA own internal propaganda encouraged people to act as if they WERE on the front lines. The US even equated working in factories to being a soldier in many posters. Thus the workers considered themselves as combatants. When you go to a TOTAL WAR economy everyone is a worker for the overall war effort and thus - in reality whether you like it or not - they ARE targets.

The US Army Air Force when it targeted Hamburg and Dresden did not target the "city" as the aiming point. In all raids the B-17s and B-24 bombers hit factories or rail yards in the cities as their targets. The US, even though in a joint raid, did not abandon their precision targeting doctrine.

When the US started hitting Japan in the fall of 1944 - FROM CHINA - with B-29s they went in with the same tactic of precision bombing. The distance to the targets and the lower bomb load due to fuel needs and the supply problems showed that China was not a viable base.Once the Saipan and Tinian bases were built and attacks from there were started the same problem was shown to occur. Climbing to high attitude requires more fuel (even with the higher True Air Speed gained) and the effect on specific targets could not be achieved unless multiple visits were done.

In the book, and in other sources, when talking about factories in Dresden thereby making it a "legitimate" target they give what official German sources state as to the number of war related facilities that were there. However, remember, this was year 6 in Germany and with the loss of France, Italy and other areas every place that could be used to produce goods was used. And due to the US precision bombing efforts of assembly plants many sub-components were farmed out and dispersed to thousands of small "mom and pop" firms. Tailplanes for 109s were made in cabinet shops around Germany - thus in these stats the many "factories" really consist of these types of firms doing war work. Machine shops, garment shops, canning shops etc were all "war industries" to the central German government.

When the US 21st Bomb Wing started bombing Japan from these islands the industry was in fact dispersed in the same identical manner that Germany went to later in the war: thousands of small shops scattered around in every city and only assembly plants were easily found and targeted. However in Japan's case, the factories started the war in a dispersed pattern. Thus to really cripple the war industry targeting a whole city was in fact a military necessity.

Japan, like any industrialized nation, was dependent upon oil and the US submarine fleet had largely destroyed and isolated Japan from the Oil fields in China, Southeast Asia, Borneo. Indonesia and the other minor oil areas. This meant that crippling war capacity via transportation targets the "cottage" industries that allowed Japan to sustain the war was the only uses left for the large bomber fleet now available. Given the problems in destroying rail systems discovered by fighting Germany (usually rails were repaired within 24 hours, bridges in a week or so) so it required an almost daily visit to every target area to really cripple that system, bombing the cities to destroy the base industry was the only option left for the US planners.

The fact that the cities were mostly two story side by side wood buildings just allowed the firestorm method to be employed. The military result though was great - all the small industries were destroyed.

Graying in the book talks about the direct effect that he bombing campaigns had on the German ability to wage war and makes the case that since the Germans were able to continuously increase production with the British and American bombing of the cities at night that it was a failure. However, the bombing of the cities by the British, and selected targeting of factories by the Americans, caused the Germans to disperse their factories - and even move them into underground facilities - which meant that they had to BUILD the factories and divert time and money to do so and rely even more upon the transportation system to ensure that everything got to where it was needed. Thus when the transportation system was systematically attacked starting in late 1944 the production failure was quick.

In the book he talks that the people defending against the attacks, especially the anti-aircraft (FLAK) personnel were of marginal use to the military. The whole bomber defense system was very involved, technical and required great skill at all levels. True, hauling shells for the batteries could be done by 16 year olds, but radar controlled interconnection, coordination, aiming skill, and the sheer numbers of people required means a LOT of "back end" support for it to work correctly - and they all have to be good at their part in order for it to work. Plus, at most you had maybe 30 minutes from first idea that a raid is coming toward you till bombs over you that is not much time to get people from where they are, to the guns, prep them, set up the fire control system, acquire targets and fire for the 10 minutes they are in range of any one battery.

German Flak Defense World War II

At the end of 1943 there were 2,132 heavy guns used in the defense of the cities. Fixed heavy caliber guns do not move around easily from point to point. That takes a lot of food, ammo, vehicles EVERYWHERE just in case it is needed. A battery (3 guns) could put up 3 rounds per gun a minute so in 10 minutes that is 90 rounds. There are cases where the bombers made three trips over the target before dropping (USA) so that means 270 rounds per battery - maybe more - that were fired. Sometimes up to 100 batteries were defending a target so that gets to 27,000 rounds of ammo at 100 cities that has to be there just in case. Storage, moving them for maybe twice a year use is very inefficient. 2,000 AA guns used in tank defense / attack on the North Africa and Eastern Fronts would have a big impact on attacking tank crews. Add in mobile train based batteries that moved as to where the next attack was expected and you get even more people involved.

In the First World War Germany lost 70+ Zeppelins in raids. Most historians call it a failure and was not worth the effort the Germans put into it. They also used 4 engine Gotha V bombers to target England. At the end of the war there were some 25+ squadrons of English fighters defending England, plus AA batteries, shelters built, and much more to defend against these raids. That means 500+ planes were kept from the front, pilots, crews, artillery, food, and lots of other military gear just in case a raid came. That is tying down a lot of men and equipment from where it was needed. If the Germans had just stopped raiding Britain with Zeppelins and used them in ocean warfare with the U-Boats and launched a raid every once in a while to keep the planes based in the UK there it would have been more effective. The point is that the defense has to expend a lot more to effectively counter an attack than the attacker has to expend. The US committed over 800,000 all told to the 8th Air Force (not counting production transport, etc) but the Germans had to commit three to four times that number to counter the effects of the aerial campaign once you add in the FLAK, Fighter Command, supply, bomb repair of all those people needed from France eastwards to support the defense system. (WW II FLAK towers built in Berlin are now being retrofitted into apartments as of December 2005!)

This is a hugh amount of people and supplies diverted from where it could be better utilized.

A standard field battery of 88s (5 guns) requires 125 men to support it. A standard rule in WWII for the Germans was that for every 1 on the front line firing 6 more were behind them (in uniform) to keep them supplied. Taking into account that these batteries were fixed thus cutting down the number of people per gun in half, at the end of 1943 you have almost 4,000 flak guns of all types in use at an average of 12 men per gun gives 48,000 men just to fire the guns. Take the 6 to 1 ratio of support required for a unit so you have 288,000 support personnel giving a total 336,000 men just to man and support the flak guns.

The ability of the Germans to get supplies quickly to a city after an attack is an example he uses as to the limited impact that bombing had on Germany. But this means those supplies had to be planned for, manufactured, stored, not used on the front, and enough of them stored everywhere to quickly get to the city within 8 hours (no more than 300 miles from a target.) This means at least 6 had sets had to be stored around greater Germany at any one time. That is a lot material made and stored in case a big raid happened.

Just the building of shelters, training, air raid drills, disruption to industry has an effect. German workers left to go to shelters during a raid (slave labor was not allowed into shelters, hired foreign workers had the same air-raid rights as Germans) would disrupt it for hours. If they turned out 24 bombers a day just an air-raid would stop the production of two bombers. That in itself is something.

Errors in the book

Jacket Cover: Those are B-24s on a bomb run over Tours France in August 1944 (according to the US Air Force museum) not Lancasters.

Pg 43: German attacked Russia on June 22, 1941 not May 1941. Some books state June 21, 1941 which is also correct - depending where you are at. 22 June is the LOCAL TIME along the Russian border that they attacked. In the US the day was still 21 June.

Pg 57: Bomb loads. A Lancaster could carry eighteen 500 pound bombs - 9 tonnes. Special versions of the Lancaster could carry a 22,000 "Tallboy" bomb. These were used on the Tirpitz, U-Boat pens, and other special targets.Photos and bomb loads of a Lancaster 

Pg 59: 617 Squadron raid on the five possible targets resulted in 8 planes being lost (1 crashed on the way there, 7 shot down by fighters and flak). Each Lanc has a 7 man crew. 53 were killed and three became POWs.