The Conspiracy - Holocaust and World War II

I've been fascinated for some time on how it was that the Nazis were able to pull off what they did during World War II.
How Hitler rose to power and all the things generally associated with the war.

So I found a movie at the library called Conspiracy that details what went on at the Wannsee conference in 1942.  This was a secret meeting held near Berlin to as it is called "come up with a final solution to the Jewish Question.  Or resolve the Jewish Question."
Very Stale movie in reality.  To much Heil Hitler in the beginning and clearly racist throughout.

 
A full version of the movie all 1 1/2 hours.
What I find interesting is how it is detailed in the movie that everyone in a general sense was worried about having some legal claim as they "evacuated" the Jews.  You see they wanted to have some legal claim to stand on.  That all the relocating, sterilization, and eventual gassing was  OK per some legal definition.
The other things that becomes clear is that by that point they had already begun to experiment with ways of "evacuating" the Jews on a mass scale.  Originally, it seemed that this was the conference that defined the policy of the Holocaust.  Reality, is it was simply a meeting of mid level military personnel and ministry heads to convey the message that you need to do everything you can to help the Reich to "evacuate" the Jews.  They were receiving the policy not making the policy.
You see things can be deceptive.  If you think of this as the first time they come up with a policy to kill Jews in mass then you will truly believe that in 3 short years - 6 million dead is just amazing. Reality indicates they were not so efficient.  Detractors have clearly presented in some videos what they believe is the lies of the holocaust.  They'll even tell you how they should have done it if they were to have killed the numbers professed.   They basically prove through their critics that the Holocaust did happen.  That there was a concentrated effort by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews, in mass.  And had they been given more time may have succeeded. If you give them only the 3 years from the 1942 Wannsee meeting you'd have on average 5000 persons killed per day.  Even spreading this among 3-4 death camps that number is huge. So I concur with the skeptics the numbers do not totally match up.  They never will since only portions of the death are documented. However, per things I got from the movie they'd been killing off people in various forms for some time before the Conference.  They mention use of gas trucks, and the Ghettos in places like Poland were already in full force.  So how many people died each year from the beginning of the war? Did it ramp up drastically after this conference?  NO doubt about it.  But, many had already died.

Locations of Death and concentration camps World War II Europe

What I always believe is if they had started earlier, and been even more organized then they were you really might have had a complete extermination of the Jews in some places.  As it stands the majority of the deaths of Jews comes from Poland and they were nearly cleared out.
Had they had another year or two what could have happened?

Holocaust death totals by country

The estimated total number of people executed in the Nazi camps in the table below is over three million:

Camp	Estimated deaths	Operational	Current country of location	Primary means for mass killings
Auschwitz–Birkenau	1,100,000[30]	May 1940 – January 1945	Poland	Zyklon B gas chambers
Bełżec	600,000[31]	17 March 1942 – end of June 1943	Poland	Carbon monoxide gas chambers
Chełmno	320,000[32]	8 December 1941 – March 1943, June 1944 – 18 January 1945	Poland	Carbon monoxide vans
Majdanek	80,000[33]	October 1, 1941 — July 22, 1944	Poland	Zyklon B gas chambers
Maly Trostinets	200,000[34]	Summer of 1941 to 28 June 1944	Belarus	Mass shootings, Carbon monoxide van
Sajmište	23,000– 47,000	28 October 1941–July 1944	Serbia	Carbon monoxide van
Sobibor	250,000[35]	16 May 1942 – 17 October 1943	Poland	Carbon monoxide gas chambers
Treblinka	800,000[36]	22 July 1942 – 19 October 1943	Poland	Carbon monoxide gas chambers
Total	3,115,000– 3,215,000

a table listing estimates of deaths at concentration camps from wikipedia.org
Some will try and pass off the holocaust as something run by a few 'wack jobs' that did not represent the whole of German society.  There are film clips available that show local resident near some of the camps being forced to take a tour shortly after liberation.  Many wanted to be sick.....  but you have to wonder how it is they never smelled anything coming from the direction of the camps.
This is well shown how the local family of the camp director just ignored the things going on so close to them in basically their back yard in - The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
The general consensus within the population was that they wanted the Jews Gone.  They then turned a blind eye to how it happened.


Something of a parting thought.   Could this type of thing happen in our day and age?
With our 24 hours news cycle, Internet connectivity, and global interconnectedness is is really possible this type of mass extermination could occur.

Some would say that it has.  Look to Africa  being the forgotten continent.  The place that war seems a constant and people in power regularly are 'rubbing out' the opposition that in many cases of a different ethnic tribe.

Our challenge is to get beyond the hatred, bigotry and become more loving and friendly to those around us.  To be more open to new ideas, religions and peoples....  not to the point of losing our own identify but, more along the lines of co-existing for the greater good.

For every culture, race or religion has it's good points and it's less then savory sides.
You can find what your looking for if you search hard enough.


Buaidh - NO - Bas

Is there really such a thing as "BAD" data?

I've been privy to see a couple of posts relating to quality and data over the last week or so.   I though the topics are wonderful and have decided to write a few words about the subjects myself.

Article #1 - Sometimes Worse Data Quality is Better

Article #2 - Is there really "Bad" Data?

Each deals a bit with quality but both don't directly deal with "Data".

The first article specifies very clearly why beta Max went by the way side in favor or VHS and how the landscape of music changed to an alternate format called MP3.  It also talks about the changes in cameras to digital and how it helped to cause the demise of Kodak.

The second was more a question posed in reference to a book called Bad Data Handbook: Cleaning Up The Data So You Can Get Back To Work.




So is there "bad" data?
That all depends on what you are using it for and what kind of data you have.

Take a bunch of sales numbers.  A few miss input values and everything goes to pot.  But, it  may not be so bad if you are just looking for some kind of trend, theme, or whether a product is doing better then another (if the values are not off by to much).  However, this would generally be a case when accuracy is paramount to obtaining usable information.

Now you may have a bunch of data in video format.  The quality of that data might not be so important.  You might not care that you can see the black head on the end of the commentators nose due to high resolution.  Then again you might want or need that level of resolution or clarity.



I deal with data on a daily basis. Phone data, address data, geodata, consumer data, and many things in between.
Some times we get files that have just what we need in them.  Say just the consumer name and address.  I call this at times "clean data".  Why?  Because there is less stuff in the file to screw up in conversion and the like.  Less to go wrong.



As you go back to the basics of databasing you find that many tables can be created and linked to a main form or table.  With the fields cut down you can do faster queries.  And since it is all linked off of a key code you can string this out over hundreds of tables.  This can also help to keep certain more sensitive table elements out of the hands of unauthorized people.
It can compartmentalize things a lot more and organize things in various ways.

When you start to mention "BAD" data you find a lot of things rely on the perspective and needs of the person that will be using the data.

Maybe a set of phone numbers is good for one person because they are testing if something is picking up, parsing or sorting in a certain way.  That same set of data may not be any good because you have no associated names, products bought, or other prudent information.  How would you use a list of phone numbers if that's all you have and want to do some product follow up.  You can't in that case because the data is "BAD" or "incomplete".

That is one of the points brought up in the discussions of "BAD" data.  There is really is not bad data.  There is incomplete data.
This could be the missing names associated to a list of phone numbers, or a portion of a video clips that has been cut off for any reason.  That data due to be partial or incomplete becomes worthless.

As we in modern society are trending everyone is collecting data and some believe you should go with "The more you have the better".  Yes, you might use some of that data down the road for some heretofore unknown application(s).  However, is that information really any good just sitting around doing nothing but take up space (main copy & backups)?



So due to the ability to acquire cheap digital storage space the trend is to save everything you can get your hands on.  This then nullifies the basic principles of data basing and has to  some extent allowed us to become lazy and less prudent in the way we store things and lay it out.

This phenomena of "BIG" data is a trend that could in the long haul allow for some really cool data analysis.  It also could become a boondoggle that only helps storage providers.

And the larger questions become - "Are you worried all this data is being collected?"

This become relevant as you have complete data or usable data.
If all that is being collected is a bunch of unconnected stuff that in the end is incomplete or "BAD" do you really care.

We have just taken the collecting of data to a whole new level.  This is nothing new to hear of a government that is collecting data.
The Domesday book from William the Conqueror's time was one of the first biggest collection of data for the purposes of taxes and associated elements.  To that point England did not really know what they had in front of them.  After that they had a better idea and could plan accordingly.  Thankfully, that data was not used for nefarious purposes.




"BIG" data does bring up some ethical questions.  Though these ethical questions are no worse now then they were say 100 years ago.  We simply did not have ways of storing so much information that could then be analyzed in such a short period of time with such accuracy.  Have you ever been frustrated with a web search that took 1 minute?  In reality Google is so efficient it can go through thousands it millions of pages in just a few seconds to give you relevant pages associated to what you want.

William the conqueror would never of dreamed of that.  Heck Einstein may never of dreamed of that...... maybe he did but, new it would be years away till anyone could do something about it.



So as we go about our daily lives we need to keep in mind how we can influence the proper use of data and how we can make sure that it stays clean and usable.....  for proper and good purposes.

Hopefully with diligence we will not end up repeating the Holocaust or some unnecessary war. For that could ultimately be what happens when we have "BAD" data!



Buaidh - NO - Bas