something like 100 Bofors 40mm quick firing guns and a decent complement of slower firing heavy AA guns

The Iowa class had 20 5" dual-purpose guns (12-22 rounds per minute each), 80 40mm AA guns (160 rounds per minute each), and 49 20mm AA guns (450 rounds per minute each).

I don't think it ever saw active combat

In actual fact the entire class saw plenty of active combat in WW2, and one or more ships in Korea, Vietnam, off Lebanon, and the Gulf War. We are taking thousands of 16" main gun rounds. No battleship-to-battleship duels, but plenty of shore bombardment, and plenty of AA hellfire in WW2.

other than showing the colors, they really haven't done anything else since [Vietnam]

If he said that prior to 1984 he would have been right, but in 1984 New Jersey was used to try to attack some targets in Lebanon. Unfortunately it was a tragic fiasco, with shells landing as much as 10 km from the untouched targets, and inflicting terrible collateral damage which stirred up a huge reaction. The Marines can tell you how that reaction ended up, with their barracks devastated in an explosion.

In 1991, Missouri fired over 800 main gun rounds in the Gulf War. Wisconsin was also involved. Both also fired Tomahawks.

The 2700 lb shell was armor piercing. No one would waste that on jungle bunnies. The bursting charge was only 40 lb. It was just a big slug of steel. Pretty sure they were firing the 1900 lb "high capacity" shell, but again the bursting charge even on that was only 154 lb. It wouldn't have been a very pleasant experience, but why would that scare them more than the explosion of 400 lb of TNT from a 2000 lb bomb?

The Iowa class battleships were equipped with analog mechanical computers to precisely aim and fire the guns. Combined with radar directed gunnery this system was capable of extreme accuracy and certainly building sized accuracy, especially since buildings don't move.

Horse shit. Accuracy was a big lie. Battleships themselves were the size of very large buildings, and they couldn't hit each other for shit. Hit rates at full battle range were typically 1-5%. That is why they carried ONE THOUSAND main gun rounds. It wasn't because the shells were not devastating when they hit. It was because it was almost impossible to get a hit. To sink Bismarck before running out of fuel and ammunition, Rodney had to close to less than 3 km (gun range was over 30 km). Her guns were firing flat trajectory. Even then, it took torpedoes from a cruiser to actually give the coup de grace.

In WW2, at the peak of battleship technology, the round-to-round uncertainty in muzzle velocity for Iowa class was speced to +-10 fps out of 2500 fps. That suggests a range repeatability/accuracy of 320 m at a full range of 40 km. By Korea it had degraded to +-14 fps, and by Vietnam to +-23 fps. By Lebanon in 1984, the ancient powder, manufactured and left over from WW2 had degraded so much as to bring that to +-32 fps (figure 1000 m range uncertainty). Accuracy was so poor at Lebanon as to create a scandal. The hits were all over the countryside, devastating various civilian areas and leaving the targets untouched.

An elaborate program of reblending and rebagging the ancient powder was undertaken, and supposedly got the accuracy back to WW2 standards. Some deal, eh? 300 m, compared to guided smart bomb and cruise missile accuracy of around 5 m.

But it gets even worse. Everybody knows the shells weighed over a tonne. What everybody does NOT know, but the information is readily available, is that that weight was PRACTICALLY ALL STEEL CASING! The actual explosive bursting charge for an armor piercing round was a puny 1.5% of total weight - a puny 18 kg or so. The so-called "high capacity" rounds for shore bombardment of relatively soft targets had an 8.1% bursting charge - 154 kg. That is the neighborhood of the same explosive capacity as two Mk 82 500 lb bombs, and only 40% as much as one Mk 84 2000 lb bomb.

When shooting each other, the tiny explosive power of the armor piercing shells was beside the point, because the explosion was only there to create a little collateral damage to meat and vulnerable equipment. The primary means of devastation was the kinetic energy splitting the armor and letting water in. Or, if they were lucky and hit a powder magazine, of course it was sayonara.

Battleships carried their own guaranteed self-destruction agents, in the form of huge powder magazines and shell rooms.

As a VW owner, the nicest way I can frame my response is this. What in the HOLY FUCK is "accessory position"? The only kind of ignition switch I ever actually used has only off, on, and start. If the car is running down the road and I turn the key to off, no steering lock engages. That happens when I entirely REMOVE the key. And only then. Yeah, the power assisted steering and vacuum assisted brakes revert to manual. You have to use a little more force. BIG FUCKING DEAL. Any driver who can't deal with the loss pf power steering and power brakes at highway speed is a helpless twit and a Darwin candidate. The same with sudden loss of all forward power.

Of course it helps that I am not BLOODY STUPID. My ignition key is not on any keychain at all. It is inserted by ITSELF and there is no weight whatsoever tugging on it. And the VW ignition switch is not perfectly reliable. It has a reputation for intermittency if you treat it like a goddam gorilla would. Funny, though. In 7 VWs and 2 Audis, I never had the slightest hint of a problem with any of mine.

BTW, the lightest, most delightful steering I ever experienced? A 1988 Golf. Didn't have power; didn't need it. Light as a feather roaring along at 70, or parking at less than 1 mph. A previous Rabbit and 2 Sciroccos, all unassisted steering, were only very slightly less sublime. And yes, power steering that craps out is a whole hell of a lot heavier than unassisted steering in the same class of car. But what it's NOT is some kind of trial of superhuman powers. Sheesh.

It's FAR easier to steer a car whose power steering has failed at 70 mph than it is at a walking or parking pace. Tip for those who aren't very bright: you don't make huge sudden steering inputs at 70 mph. You will fishtail into the ditch if you aren't very, very good. Those in piece of shit SUVs and pickups will roll over. I know something about this from testing the limits on a deserted road.

Danger, this organization does not have a level of institutional intelligence sufficient for you to consider a continuance of your working relationship.

If linus has trouble counting above 20, the project is in trouble. If you go with 4.0, what happens when it hits 20.0? You are just putting off the inevitable reckoning. He should, with respect, LEARN TO COUNT.

I like it. You zeroed in on the only possible justification that could possibly hold any water at all. I don't buy it, but it's not crazy reasoning.

So how is the 4.9.1 that follows 4.9.0.9 in your scheme different than the 4.9.1 that follows 4.9.0? Hmmm? It's just wrong. Thanks for trying. Semver is ONE THING THAT DOES NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH, EVER. I mean that literally. It works perfectly; it does not NEED fucking up.

The only dates that are just as stupid as American dates MM-DD-YYYY are European dates of the form DD-MM-YYYY. OK, not QUITE as abjectly stupid, because while American is NEITHER big endian nor little endian, Euro is at least little endian. I.e., they had two choices and got it exactly backward, while American got it just plain brain-dead-level fucked up.

Re: Euro; if you are going to write things little endian, why is the year 2015? Why is it not 5102? Makes no sense. It is just plain wrong.

Definitely ISO is the only sensible way. It's the way I have written dates ever since I saw the ISO spec. That's how I fill out checks and how I give dates in text. Anybody who doesn't is either ignorant or stupid.

do yum updates (or similar) have a restart service flag (depending on what the update includes)?

The hook is there; at least some packages do this when updated - but I wouldn't be too confident that they all do.

Waves in the ocean. That sure came out of left field. How could we have predicted that? We have the best experts money can buy making our plans, but how can we succeed when all this weird unpredictable stuff happens to us? /sarc

I like and respect thinking, and I like and respect trying to solve intractable problems. However ...

The suggestion in your signature fails to recognize the way things are structured. The Vice President has no power whatsoever; in fact no FUNCTION whatever save to attend state funerals and dinners, break exact ties in the Senate, and wait for something to happen to the President. There is close to a 100% guarantee that a sitting Vice President will never be elected President.

The only thing that tapping some clown for Vice President accomplishes is a pretty damn good "bodyguard" for the President, unless he is an even worse clown.

the masses ... average person ... they really want

This may be seen as quibbling, but I really don't believe there is any substance in attributing motivations and aspirations to masses of people or some statistical "average person" - except insofar as a mass of people may be organized to an agenda. Different people want different things to different degrees. Statistically you can posit that there is critical mass for certain changes and not for others. National elections are a good example of statistical conclusions, even warped as they are by undue sinister influencing agents and by corrupt tabulation and perhaps intimidation.

As an illustration, whether the proportion of citizens who are net takers in the economy is 47% or 53%, and the proportion of net producers is the mirror figure - either way there are just about as many takers as producers. There are an awful lot of both. There is little reason to believe that feelings about (perhaps "devotion to" is a better term) liberty and privacy are much different.

Be that as it may ... I submit a specific alternate to your postulate that a leader willing to put large forces under arms in harm's way is the only method to effect fundamental change. The alternate is a new Gandhi. The general principle worked well enough for Martin Luther King, Jr. This is not say we won't get our hair mussed a bit, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a 1775 style revolution with cannons mowing down rows of sons and would-be masters.

Are any of those more than one pixel thick? Because if they aren't, it doesn't address the problem. And why should I have to fuck with styles when all I want is a thicker border?