Posts by Alan Brown

Re: @nematoad ... Also...

"the US has always talked and acted as if nothing really happened until after Pearl Harbor."

And up to that point many in the US were talking about coming on the side of the NAZIs

Even during the war, people like Hollerith (IBM) were actively assisting them and selling them hardware so that they could carry on with their extermination policies.

Re: Also...

"America was basically the "hired help" who only bothered to get a job because of Perl Harbour"

That and Germany declared war on them.

Re: My main regret ...

"China, India and the developing world are going to add much more than the USA to CO2 levels"

India and China in particular are furiously developing new nuclear technologies to ensure they DON'T contribute to increasing CO2 levels.

Re: My main regret ...

If the wall is high enough and sealed well enough, we could make it into a swimming pool.

Re: Sleep is a Good Thing(TM)

"Theres nothing man could do to turn the earth into venus, for that to happen we'd need to raise the temperature in the tropics to about 70C,"

About 7-10C actually. Enough to raise water vapour levels to enable solar forcing to do the rest - water vapour is a _very_ strong greenhouse gas.

Widespread temperatures above 55C are cause for concern.

Re: Sleep is a Good Thing(TM)

"Where is the 400 odd level measured? Hawaii."

The atmosphere is pretty homogenous. Mixing happens quite well.

Measurements are taken all over the globe.

Hawaii was the LAST place that measurements crossed the 400ppm threshold with all other parts of the world being a few ppm higher.

Re: Sleep is a Good Thing(TM)

"catastrophic global climate change"

The question is "How Catastrophic?"

About 250 million years ago at the end of the Permian. era, Flood-basalt volcanism on a titanic scale, in what is now Siberia, injected enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the air as it punched through coalfields in the area.

The result: Sudden global warming, which reached a point at which methane hydrate formations in the oceans became unstable and released vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Which warmed up the atmosphere even more. Which prompted more methane hydrate releases, in a vicious cycle.

It wasn't so much the rising temperatures that killed off most of the plants, but the increasing acidity of rain. For a sizable period of time (long enough to be observed but not long enough to be estimated), paleopalynologists find virtually no pollen -- only spores of fungi adapted to feeding on rotting vegetation -- and the ten million years after the crisis is the only known period in natural history since the arrival of plants on land that no coal formed anywhere on earth. Which is a very good marker of how far-reaching the death of land plants was.

All of those fungi and microorganisms feeding on the dead plants (and, soon after, the dead animals) consumed oxygen and excreted carbon dioxide -- making their own contribution to the vicious cycle, with no living plants to take up CO2 and damp the effect. Some palaeontologists believe that this cycle, once triggered, could have played out very, very rapidly -- on a scale of months.

Atmospheric oxygen levels dropped from ~20% to around 12-14%. The oceans became oxygen-depleted as well; what little fauna survived was notably adapted to low-oxygen conditions. With plant life nearly extinguished, food webs collapsed. Between the increased acidity of rainfall and the denudation of slopes, erosion increased to a furious pitch.

The result: the greatest mass extinction in Earth history -- no other even approaches it. 75-90% of species died out, and the biosphere was nearly handed back to the single-celled organisms. Biodiversity plummeted to the point at which a single species of land animal, a pig-sized herbivore, made up 80% of land animal biomass.

It didn't just happen once, although that was the biggest one. This time around the essential ingredients (rapidly rising CO2 levels and very large marine methane clathrate deposits - which are already bubbling out along the siberian continental margin - lookup "leptav sea methane emissions) are still there. I wouldn't bet on H. sapiens sapiens making it through the coming challenge, let alone its "civilisations".

Re: You mean, like, Caller ID?

"or didn't want to but was forced to"

For those, I have a 070 number.

"all he had to do is make a call, give his real name and the real name of his company (which maybe sounded like acronym for some police department), and they just gave him the data."

There have been a number of prosecutions in the UK for almost exactly the same thing. This isn't a problem restricted to the USA and "fronting" is a widespread issue that needs solving.

Re: It's a hard problem

"it's magnetic and about the size of a shoe polish tin."

And it already existed in 2012, using Qi to charge and NFC or other close-coupled comms along with 3G, so _no_ external connection ports. Unlike TV/movies, they don't come with LEDS on the outside to make it obvious what they are and being matte black plastic they blend in pretty quick with the rest of an underbody thanks to road dirt being thrown over them.

Re: Capitalism baby

"While this is true, the Police have V8's which are definitely not communism,"

You've never heard of the GAZ Volga, have you? (Standard USSR police issue)

All animals are equal. Some are more equal than others,

Re: The Ginger vaj really has no clue (about anything)

The really painful thing for the USA is that if the clown-in-chief decides not to pay when those chits are called in - and he's openly threatened to do so - is that its utterly unlike his declaring bankruptcy where he took no penalties and stuffed all his suppliers.

The USA reneging on its debts - any of them - would have immediate and far-reaching consequences for the country pretty much starting with oil suppliers insisting on cash up front - and not in US dollars.

A trading currency is only as good as the confidence those using it have in it. We know there's a shitload less gold in the US Federal reserve than is claimed to be and it looks like they pilfered the stuff that other countries left there for safekeeping during WW2 (the UK has been trying to get its gold back since the 1980s and the US wobt hand it over). Reneging on a bond would be confirmation for most observers.

Protectionism isn't just tariffs

This is exactly the problem the US automotive industry has created for itself.

By creating uniquely USA standards for vehicles in the 1960s and 70s they thought they were making a substantial import barrier by stealth (No WTO breaches) but what they were really doing was making themselves a captive market they could be lazy in, whilst simultaneously erecting a massive barrier to _exporting_ vehicles - noone would buy the overpriced, thirsty, badly built American products that were being foisted on them when those inscrutable folk from the east had already demonstrated it didn't have to be that way and in the process had forced all the other car makers around the world to up their game in order to survive. These days people would rather have a Skoda than a Chevrolet

Re: Yeah, no

"Would be wide open to civil suits"

Not really. you're operating an email to bulletin board gateway and there's a very simple way to prevent sensitive information showing up on it - don't mail it in.

As for #3 - the civil suits will start flying and they won't be directed at you.

You might also try contacting the ICO if there's personal information on what's coming through and the company is UK based.

"At one point i even went as far as having an automated reply of "this is not the domain you are looking for", all that did was make them double down on the attempts to send it to the wrong address"

I had a similar problem with a finance company whose fax number was the same as mine - in another area code. Complaining made it worse.

The annoying faxes on the voice line only stopped when we plugged in a fax and started faxing back applications with "REJECTED" written across them in 2-inch high letters. I'd imagine that someone started getting an earful in head office.

Re: "Backblaze has just four brands in its estate"

"Not sure if it is still true, but all of the Toshiba drives I have bought internally refer to themselves HGST drives."

That's because they _ARE_ HGST drives. Lookup the merger and divestiture trails.

Toshiba acquired the facility as part of agreements imposed by Chinese regulators to prevent a duopoly forming with consequent market abuse issues (which we'd already seen post-2011 floods)

Re: "Backblaze has just four brands in its estate"

"part of the acquisition was that it had to operate independently."

That was a condition of merger imposed by the Chinese anti-monopoly regulators. Seagate faced similar restrictions and there were requirements to divest parts (which is how Toshiba strangley ended up as a major 3.5" HDD player years after effectively exiting the market in favour of 2.5" format devices.)

My summary when the Chinese regulators finally allowed HGST to be folded into WD was that SSDs were at the point of parity with HDDs and a HDD duopoly no longer posed a threat to the market. Subsequent events have proven me correct - and the rapidly falling price of multi-TB SSDs is underscoring that summary.

It doesn't matter if they 'only' have 1000 rewrite capacity, when a 16TB "archival" drive is write once, read occasionally - and I'm waiting to pull the trigger on my aging spinners as it'll save a several kW of power consumption along with precious rack space.

Re: Extradition?

> SFO DID NOT say he "had no case to answer" but rather that the likelihood of obtaining a successful prosecution was small.

As they have repeatedly done in some blindingly obvious cases involving sale of "certain types of aircraft" to "certain repressive regiemes".

Ah, when law enforcement is subjugated to political control.....

Re: Random executions

> I expect HPE was banking on the current US system of "litigant with the most money wins".

That's a very long standing British Tradition which only occasionally gets upset. (same in the USA too)

Law courts are not (and never have been - despite the claims to be) justice systems and them with the biggest pockets usually prevail.

Re: Wow - could this be the first time LinkedIn was useful for anything ?

Using it to disprove CV claims (and track down references the applicants DON'T want you to get hold of) is about the only use for it.

and they still haven't heard of GDPR.

Re: Ooops.

"So very very expensive droppings that might be frame or used as jewelry"

You just described a lot of opals (fossilised dino poo)

Re: Ooops.

"Thinking they were buying a magic sparkle pony to fix their problems when they were just buying a pony."

The way they then try to blow off customers is amusing too - if you're not a customer.

Putting _extremely_ shitty NVME sticks (worse performance than 2011-era sata SSDs) in their latest desktops and selling them as premium product, then accusing customers of lying when they present benchmarks showing how bad the products are, is a great way of winning repeat business.

As is causing more than $100k of damage on one site due to substandard (abrasive) LTO5 tapes and then trying to disclaim all responsibility for the product on the basis of "expired warranty" - on a lifetime warranty product less than 3 years old.

Re: Wouldn't surprise me..

It's way up there in the "common substances" list. The general idea was that asteroids whose orbits went much closer than earth-distance would have most of it gassed off by now.

> I learned this by watching Miami Vice all those years ago when they referred to drugs packages as "keys"

Those were the ones shipped in by the CIA in their private airline as part of arms deals funding the Contras - and no, i'm not making it up, this came out in Oliver North's trial over the "Iran Contra" affair

https://listverse.com/2015/01/15/10-reprehensible-crimes-of-ronald-reagan/ - scroll down to #2 on the list

Declaring a "war on drugs" whilst simultaneously flooding inner city (black) America with hundreds of tons cocaine - something that not even Orwell could have dreamed up.

Hypothetical figures for a random substance:

Producer: £200

Exporter : £300

Importer : £400

Wholesale (before cutting) £1,000

Wholesale (after cutting) £2,000

Retail £3,000

Giving a total of £6,900 which is rounded up to £10,000

Very hypothetical figures, considering a medically pure knockout dose of cocaine or heroin is less than a quid (both substances are used in real medical settings and they're amazingly cheap, The stigma attached is because of the addiction problems)

When you realise THAT, you realise just how vast the profits are that can be had and _why_ no matter how fast "The authorities" knock down minor players, 10 more are ready to take their place - and knocking over major players results in all out bloodbaths as they struggle for control of the money supply.

"It is police maths."

Yup, and they do so in order to justify their continued sucking at the trough of "enforcement" at the expense of dealing with a _public health_ issue.

Just ask Portugual. They haven't solved the problem with their health-care oriented changes, but it's far more manageable and the narcogangs have largely given up on the country because there's little profit to be had when addicts can get treatment for free - with the knock on effect that there's been a massive decrease in crimes best described as "for the purpose of obtaining money to purchase a fix"

Which in turn takes out a whole other criminal enterprise chain (fencing of stolen goods etc) for lack of supply.

Everybody benefits from the current UK drugs law madness - except addicts and the general public.

Fake address dropboxing

"They were thinking of mail order items purchased using stolen credit cards, but it works just as well for drugs."

Or (bringing it back to biting the hand that feeds IT): servers and routers when you're setting up a new ISP:

"One Friday night there was a visit from the police, who unplugged and removed all the new Iconz hardware to the sixth floor of the central Auckland police station.

...

Apparently most of the equipment seized by the police had been obtained through credit card fraud. The so-called business partner had created the scam while working for a company that sold PBX equipment. He had acquired a pile of credit card carbon-copy forms from a retail outlet in Newmarket to get names and card numbers, then convinced retailers to deliver goods to an office address. The couriers would then be intercepted by this person or an accomplice just outside the office, often in a high rise in central Auckland, saying they had urgently been waiting for the disk drives, screens, modems, or whatever equipment was being hijacked. The courier, in a rush, would be glad to get a signature and head back down to street level. The supplier never knew anything was wrong until a month later when the real credit card owners denied ever purchasing the products.[4] "

https://www.nethistory.co.nz/Chapter_7_-_Craving_for_Connection_II/

(This is the same "Internet Company of New Zealand" that pioneered sending out fraudulent domain renewal forms in the mid 1990s long before various "Internet Registry of XYZ" copycats emerged - the victims - suckered by the company name - would have their registration and DNS switched away from their hosting ISP and be charged a 400-1000% markup over the real registry's figures - a lot of people got pretty peeved about having their websites suddenly stop working.)

Tea Dances

Perhaps some of the older folk present reminiscing about how it the tea reminds them of the old days in 1930s Germany

Re: Insurance value 5k max

"The sooner cannabis is legalised and fuckers like him are put out of business, the better."

And when it comes down to it, this is what ALL the narchogangs are about - MONEY.

Making stuff illegal and increasing the penalties simply increases the profits - it doesn't increase the production or distribution costs and it merely encourages sale to more and more people to make more profit. This is WHY you have dealers pushing crack at schoolkids.

Drug usage are a symptom and you can't win a war against a symptom. Imagine a war against sneezing that didn't aim to actually eliminate Ebola as the cause of the sneezing.

Re: " if they were smarter they might not have to turn to crime"

> Surely the "smart" ones enter banking or politics? Or both

Think of a scam which has people coming back again and and again, throwing money at you and violently attacking anyone who questions your integrity.

Yup - religion. That's where the _really_ smart ones go.

Re: Journalist my arse

"He doesn't report things. He simply republishes what people have sent,"

You just described 95% of the content of every newspaper on the planet.

" the court will assume that the US will abide by the rules "

If/when the US does not, what happens next? Does the UK tear up the treaty?

Or do poodles remain wandering halls of power?

Re: The USA wants Assange for what he did

"I do have some sympathy for the rootless and unhappy teenagers the British Army, at least, seems to prey on to make its recruitment numbers"

My sympathies lay more on the ones it abandons on the streets once it's finished with them.