Thank you. Of course my figure for HC of 8.1% was 154 lb, not 154 kg. That was sloppy. Which only reinforces my point that the bursting charge was puny. Less than a single ordinary 500 lb bomb.

Your accuracy citation was from tests in 1987, after corrective action following the dismal performance off Lebanon in 1984. And even then, you quote a total range dispersion of 460 m peak-to-peak even after you discard the worst of the 15 rounds, which is lousy.

You should consider the business model of slashdot. How does slashdot make money? I suspect page views are part of it.

If i were running slashdot, I'd be able to tell you, based on over a decade of historical data, which types of articles generate the highest ad revenues. I'd make sure those articles appeared as often as possible, and I'd look for feedback effects to make sure I wasn't over doing it.

If you want to know why slashdot has lots of articles in Elon Musk, Tesla, Gender in CS, and Microsoft, it's because those stories bring the clicks, commenters, and critically, page views.

(I'm assuming)

21" guns are amazingly expensive to fire

Well, there is the little detail that no 21" gun ever put to sea on any ship. Try 16", and Yamato and Musashi with 18". That will do it (outside of Hitler's fevered dream of 20" battleship guns).

And 16" guns are NOWHERE NEAR as expensive to use as aircraft carrier planes and cruise missiles. But if we worried about cost in a war we would all still be using slingshots and arrows.

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.

It was not so long ago that rural residents exceeded urban residents in the US. While the balance has flipped, it has not dramatically done so.

I live in a rural area and when I go into the office it is a 20 mile one-way trip (that takes only 20 minutes, door to door). If I run any errands while I am in town I need to plan for at least 50 miles of drive on a charge. Given that it gets bitterly cold here (-30F is not uncommon), I wouldn't feel comfortable running a battery pack that didn't have a significant buffer above that range. Also, given that the posted speed limit is 75, and the roads are often empty, my actual road speed can be much higher than the 55-60mph that range testing is conducting at. Also, wind speeds here are often 30mph or more, so the car may be moving through the air at a 100mph or more speed equivalent. Drag increases exponentially with air speed.

When driving in winter, rear defrost, seat heaters, and front defrost will all be running at maximum.

The bottom line is that I don't think I could reliably do my daily commute on something approximately rated for my actual expected round trip mileage. The Leaf is rated at 70 miles at 55mph with intermittent AC usage. That's not enough margin for me to feel comfortable.

I have driven a Tesla 85 and it is simply magnificent. I'd be willing to experiment with the Tesla 60kw and I think it would reliably meet my normal needs, but any lesser EV I have no interest in.

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.