Connecting a VM to a serial port

So you've got an old DOS or Windows 98 program that you'd really like to run. Maybe it's radio programming software for amateur radio,  an old game that you've got fond memories of, an expensive printer that you can't afford to replace, or something else that you've used for years for business or fun that you just don't feel like giving up.
Well, a Windows 98 VM is a fairly effective solution, and certainly one that works better than Microsoft's built in "compatibility mode". My hypervisor of choice is Virtualbox. It's free and platform independent, which many of the competitors are not. There are some good tutorials for setting up Windows 98 VMs for gaming, but they don't really get into what you'd need to do to connect your VM to an outside device, and you really do need to do that if you're planning on doing anything that requires a connection between your VM, and a piece of hardware.

A short tutorial on connecting a serial device to your VM:

1. From a "powered down" state click on settings
2. Select "Serial Ports" on the left.
3. Check the "Enable Serial Port" box.
4. Under the Port Number drop down, select the port number you want for the COM port inside the VM. Note: DOS programs often will not recognize ports other than COM1 or COM2, so if you plan on utilizing a DOS program, such as Motorola's GP350 RSS, make sure to only use COM1 or COM1.
5. In the "Path/Address" field, type in the name of the port that you want the VM to utilize. If you've got a permanent physical COM port on your computer, use that. If you do have to use a USB Serial adapter, be aware that the VM will only start when you have the adapter plugged into your computer, unless you disable the adapter, and that unplugging it while utilizing the VM will require rebooting if you wish to continue using the adapter.
6. Start up the VM and bring up whatever program you wish to use. Make sure that the right serial port is selected.

Gun Control: The Law Says what we Want it to Say edition

At Trump's directive Jeff Sessions and the ATF just put out a new interpretation of the NFA that bans machine guns.
This is, of course, a hilariously bad idea, even if you think that gun control in general is a good idea.
Don't understand why? Well:

1. This action relies upon deliberately bad logic to re-define bump stocks as machine guns. Basically, they're lying about bump-stocks being covered.
2. Bump stocks have been legal for over a decade. There have been MULTIPLE ATF letters that said they were legal.
3. The ATF is taking the position that they were always illegal, they just didn't realize it. Therefore the takings clause doesn't apply.
   

So, the government decided that an item met the definition of another, illegal item, despite the language of the law not supporting that interpretation, and retroactively banned it after over a decade of it being legal, while denying compensation, because it was always illegal. Now imagine if they did this with anything else. If this is allowed to stand as precedent, you can be damn sure that they'll do it again.

Carthago Delenda Est

All those old stories about salting the earth to prevent crops from growing ever again are either myth, or hyperbole. How do I know? Well, up here in New England, they put down enough salt to perform a reenactment of the Third Punic War every winter, and yet stuff still grows by the side of the roads.

On Gun Laws and Tragedy

I have some notes for any anti-gun individuals who might read this post, and a couple for the people on my side.

For the Anti-gun folks:

1. Police were called to the Parkland shooter's (I refuse to learn the names of these assholes) home MULTIPLE times. As in 39. He posted credible threats on the internet UNDER HIS OWN NAME. People called the FBI twice about him. The armed school resource officer, rather than do his job, decided to sit the shooting out. For all intents and purposes, Law Enforcement at every level failed to do their jobs. These are the same people who'd be enforcing any new gun laws that get passed. What makes you think that they're competent do do that?
2. If you read the Second Amendment, the operative clause says, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." There's a distinct lack of "unless it'll make people safer" or "unless it saves one child."
3. Even if the Second Amendment did allow for that, the problem isn't guns. Here are some data points:
1. 19 dead in a knife attack in Japan
2. 33 Dead in a mass stabbing at a Chinese train station
3. 22 stabbed outside a school (according to this article, knife attacks are apparently not uncommon in China)
4. 334 dead in the Beslan School Siege
5. 87 Dead in Happy Land arson
6. 168 dead in the Oklahoma City Bombing.
7.   
   
8.  If guns were the problem, our murder rate would make Honduras' look like kindergarten play. In fact, if there is a correlation between guns and homicide, it's a negative one.
9. If you refuse to accept Honduras' homicide rate as relevant, you're admitting that it's more complicated than "Guns cause crime".
4. Bump stocks aren't the problem either. They've been used once for a mass killing - mass killings are more likely to involve arson, explosives or trucks, than they are to involve a bump-fire stock. And yet people are getting all worked up about a piece of plastic that any chump with a 3d printer (and, if you're willing to do the assembly yourself, 3d printers are surprisingly affordable) can push out by the dozens or hundreds, depending on how committed he is. And you don't actually need a bump-fire stock to bump fire - it just makes it more comfortable.
5. Do you really want to give Trump more power?
6. Luty, Metral, Sten, Uru. Do you know what all those names have in common? They're all submachine guns that can be built with minimal tools and hardware store components. The Luty SMG was actually designed with that in mind. Variants of all those guns (except, AFAIK, the Luty) get mass produced by illegal arms factories in various nations and sold to criminals. most of these nations have very strict gun control. 
7. Gun control is not the answer, not even a part of it. There is, in fact, no simple answer. Allowing qualified teachers to carry, and putting armed LEOs in as many schools as possible is a start, but it isn't a complete answer in and of itself.

For my side:

1. Specifically for those who voted Trump in the primaries: now that Trump is advocating a useless ban on bump-fire stocks and raising the buying age of guns to 21, do you feel stupid? I hope you do. Just because someone says they're on your side doesn't mean that they actually are.
   EDIT: I'm not blaming anyone for voting for Trump in the General Election. Maximilien Robespierre is a more attractive choice than Hillary.
2. For the NRA - You quisling fuckweasels. I hope you're happy with yourselves for proposing a ban on a piece of plastic. The president apparently agrees with you.

The Myth of Soviet Power in WWII

Much ado is made of Hitler, his ill fated decision to invade Russia right before winter, and, for those who've really drank the cool aid, how the Russians could have kicked Nazi Germany's butt without Allied assistance. However, when you get right down to it, the Soviet Empire would almost certainly have fallen without outside assistance, and certainly wouldn't have been able to do better than a stalemate without it.

20% of all Soviet armored vehicles came from Lend-Lease.
30% of their fighters and bombers were Lend-Lease.
59% of their non-armored tactical vehicles (this category includes Jeeps, trucks, and half-tracks, but it's worth noting that the US sent more trucks than the Soviets total production in this category).
Food aid and petroleum products numbered in the millions of tons.
Then there's the almost 2000 locomotives provided (mostly steam, with less than a hundred diesel locomotives) and close to 10000 train cars to go with them.

I've seen some people make the specious argument that "The Soviets didn't like our weapons, so they got assigned to rear echelon roles where it didn't make a difference". This argument is, of course wrong, for a couple of reasons:

1. Rear echelon roles are still vital - a Sherman in the rear frees up a T34 for the front.
2. They likes several of our designs so much that they based designs of their own on them, or in some cases (such as the B-29) blatantly copied it in the post war era.
3. Sheer numbers meant that entire units were armed with lend-lease weapons - and those units did see combat using those weapons.
4. It of course completely ignores all the support vehicles, trains, food, and petroleum producs that were also a part of lend-lease.

In fact, we really only need to look at one category to understand just what would have happened to the Soviets without lend-lease - Trucks. The US gave the Soviets more trucks (1 1/2 and 2 1/2 ton models) than the entire non-armored vehicle production of the Soviet Union during the course of the war. Without those trucks, the USSR's logistics capability would have been more than halved. If you can't get ammunition, food, and fuel, let alone replacement weapons and repair parts to the front lines, you can't win.

Sources:
https://ww2-weapons.com/lend-lease-tanks-and-aircrafts/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#US_deliveries_to_the_Soviet_Union
https://history.army.mil/books/AMH-V2/PDF/Chapter05.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease_Sherman_tanks#USSR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Guards_Mechanized_Corps_(Soviet_Union)

32 Years ago...

Honor to all the brave men of the space program who lifted off, never again to set their eyes on the cool green hills of Earth.

Crying Wolf, but Ignoring the Coyote

I remember 2011 quite well. The Republicans had put forth the usual group of spineless, but nice, RINOs as candidates for the presidential election. I supported Herman Cain, who, while not a great candidate, was a darn sight better than any of the other yahoos trying to get nominated for the 2012 presidential election. And then his campaign was devastated by sexual misconduct allegations, allegations which disappeared into thin air the instant Cain dropped his campaign.

On the other hand, men on the opposite side of the political spectrum - Roman Polanski and Bill Clinton - engaged in blatant sexual misconduct and rape, and the left went on the warpath to protect them. Never mind that Polanski was a pedophile - "it wasn't rape-rape". Forget that the power dynamic between Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, and the silencing of numerous others accusing Clinton of assault and sexual impropriety - after all, it's just one "vast right-wing conspiracy" to discredit the Clintons.

The extreme difference in media response, with liberals only getting brought down when it's so blatant that the media can't hide it - and as Polanski proved, sometimes not even then - and Republicans getting lambasted when subjected to any claims of sexual impropriety... claims which go away when the Republicans in question are no longer politically relevant, and which usually happened decades in the past, with statutes of limitations well past...

If this dynamic is to be broken, or at least mitigated, so that you don't automatically cause roughly one half of the country to disbelieve you on sexual assault accusations leveled towards a Republican candidate then a couple of things need to happen:

1. I don't care what Judge Roy Moore does - whether he goes to the Senate or obscurity - you better at least force a settlement out of him. It's too late for a criminal conviction (a point against you BTW), but you need to achieve something other than the destruction of his political career to retain credibility. Otherwise a fair number of people will (rightly) view your future accusations as both not credible, and as political weapons. Of course, it also doesn't help that most of what he's being accused of isn't actually illegal... but some of the things he is accused of were actually illegal, so if there's any truth to the accusations, we'd better see a result.
2. Don't allow ANYONE, to get away with shit just because they share your politics. If you know (not suspect, KNOW) that someone is doing something (as, apparently most of Hollywood did about Weinstein) then f***ing report it to the police. Don't let it fester. Don't hold back until the statute of limitations is past (this one is important, both for credibility, and to ensure that sexual predators get taken out of circulation). Don't say that it wasn't "rape-rape". If you have personal knowledge of sexual misconduct, you have an obligation to do something about it. Of course, if you're the victim, reporting (or not) is your prerogative, and you may very well have some good reasons for not reporting. But Weinstein's actions were well known by far more than just the victims.

On the 11th hour, of the 11th Day, of the 11th Month...

The Armistice was signed.