Posts by jake 26690 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007
"where to dispose of the used electrons?"
You collect them in the bit bucket and dump them back in at the highest point for re-use.
Hint: Use a funnel. You don't want to miss and spill them all over, they are a bitch to clean up. NEVER OVERFILL! Don't forget to replace the cap when you are done.
And there you were, thinking bit buckets were only good for collecting chad.
But they do NOT have the water.
I owned an 80 acre parcel out that way. It included the last twelve years of a 99 year water lease. For seven years I grew pumpkins and other squash on it. It was very profitable. I spent most of those 7 years trying to figure out how to extend the water lease, but the State of California was adamant: NO! Most of the locals were in the same boat. Basically, it's scrub land that is good for not much more than grazing a few cattle on. You don't need as much water for cattle as you might think ... consider that most of the BLM land in California's southern deserts is cattle grazing land.
So I sold the place to a friend who had been helping me in the squash business. He knew that he'd be out of water in 5 years, but figured he'd be able to pocket enough loot to purchase land on one of the islands in the Delta to keep the farm going. He was successful, and sold the original property to a developer[0] who didn't care about the lack of water. It has been sitting empty ever since (25+ years now).
To see what the place looks like, try this map:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.2135488,-121.8026745,11278m
It's the bit in the middle, north of Hwy 12. Not the extreme lack of much of anything. No row crops, no signs of major grazing, no signs of harvesting, etc. That's what no water gets you.
[0] No, not these yahoos. Although that guy may have unloaded the parcel on them. I can't be arsed to find out.
There is a ready supply of servants in Solano County. Their unemployment rate is the highest in the Bay Area.
Bill's fully aware of how politics works here in the USofA, being involved in it for about a third of a century.
He also knows that he's out of his current seat (due to term limits) in 2024, so if he wants to move along in his political career he has to "message the populace". Frankly, I'm surprised he hasn't thrown his hat into the ring for Feinstein's empty seat in Washington. Maybe he'll be sensible and retire.
Water. They have none. In drought-stricken California it'll never fly on this alone. And no, they are not allowed to simply pump it out of the Delta. Every drop (and then some) is already earmarked. There is a reason that they put Travis where they did... and a reason that Rio Vista hasn't appreciably expanded.
The other issue is traffic. Ever drive Highway 12 or Highway 113 during commute hours? I have. Never again ... YES, they could increase the size of those roads, but once you add the traffic from the new community it'll instantly become gridlock again. Lovely.
Someone is making a pile of loot from ignorant marks investors.
""It's the equivalent of like 100 years ago, when there was no food supply chain," he said. "We didn't know what we're eating."
100 years ago we knew far more about what we were eating because we actually knew the people who grew it. With the exception of a few dry-goods, virtually everything on the table was grown/harvested within a day's walk.
Yes, I know, ice-based refrigeration cars became available on the railroads starting in the late 1800s, but they weren't really useful to the prols until the mid 1920s, when prices started dropping to the point where the Great Unwashed could afford food shipped that way. Even as late as the early 1950s, ice (a major cost center) was the coolent of choice for most, the widespread use of modern refrigerator cars came later.
"Is any article that talks about NASA contractually required use the phrase "US Space Agency"?"
The technical term is "padding". It helps to fill column-inches. In the old days of hand-set type, it was something you could ad or remove to help fit the type to the page. These days, they just leave it in. (Does anybody still get paid by the word? Not taking the mick, I honestly don't know.)
Why would I want to irk my cows? It makes their milk taste off, which leads to awful viili, yogurt, cream, butter and cheese.
Cows are actually quite docile. No fence needed. If you irk them, they will likely turn their back to you and move away.
Unless they have guns, that is.
I don't actually drink milk ... milk is made for for baby bovines, not adult humans. Have a beer instead. Much more civilized.
"I see you are still collecting those downvotes like some kind of badge of honour"
Normally I wouldn't know about votes thumbs, up or down. I drop them as useless. (Remember, adblockers can block more than just ads).
But just for you, I'll turn them on for the comments in this one article, and see what I see.
Looks like 129 thumbs up, and 8 thumbs down, or just under 6% of the total thumbs are down.
Of those, the 4 votes down that you are commenting on (about 4.3% of the known number of total voters in this comment section, and a full half of the total downvotes) are from deluded people who seem to think the BOFH is somehow very real and relevant, and not a tired, aging cartoon leftover from Usenet.
Even if I gave a shit about thumbs, I could easily live with a result like that.
Have a nice day. This round's on me :-)
The greatest trick was convincing the proles that God (or Gods) existed at all, and that I am the only one who can see/speak with him in real time, so give me lots of money and I'll put in a good word for you. And if you give me a little more, I'll tell ask the god(s) to protect you from the devil/satan/boogeyman as well.
Of COURSE you can speak to god(s) by yourself, without me. But he's really, really busy, running the Universe and all, and probably won't have time to talk directly to you ... but I am the chosen one who has his ear, so obviously your message will get through better/faster/clearer if you go through me. That'll be another couple bucks, please.
Pith helmet? In California?
As a native Californian, I can honestly say I have never run across anyone affecting a pith helmet for daily wear. In fact, I can honestly say I have never known anyone that owned one, except as an old family heirloom. And then, they only wore it on Halloween. Once.
"but better sources are gone."
http://jargon-file.org/archive/
This particular mispleling first appeared on Usenet sometime in the late 1980s. Sadly, the gookids destroyed the DejaNews archive, so finding the actual date and original poster's handle seems somewhat unlikely at this juncture ... although nothing posted online ever truly goes away, so there is hope.
Hint: Cow-orker first appears in version 4.1.0 of The Jargon File.
"What do you think they should be doing instead?"
Force the user to install as an ordinary user, asking for the root/administrator password only as actually needed, and warning if anything is about to be written over as root. (Granted, the average idiot will just answer "yes" to "<blink>Warning!</blink> The INstant Internet Terminal installation procedure is about to overwrite the file "init"! Y/N?", but you can't always protect against the completely ignorant, just minimize the damage. Hopefully.)
Obviously, if the user doesn't have the password, abort the install, and clean up the mess before exiting.
I assumed (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know) he downloaded the binary because he used the word "disassembled". Presumably he downloaded a copy because he didn't feel comfortable extracting a copy from the device that was keeping him ticking over. Which is quite understandable. We'll never know, unless the OP cares to comment.
As for the rest of yours, see ken's classic 1984 address to the ACM titled "Reflections on Trusting Trust".
Am I the only one who reads "ICU" as "In circuit debugger"?
I could hand you an executable assembled by my personal assembler (or compiled by my personal compiler), along with a tarball of what I claim is the full, complete, unadulterated source.
How are you going to verify the executable is actually built from the contents of the tarball without access to my assembler or compiler?
"Heh. "Heldesk" is quite the Freudian slip, there."
Intentional mispleling. Dates back to before DARPNet started fiddling about with TCP/IP. Possibly back to the early 1960s (Source: Me dear old Dad says he thinks he remembers calling phone support for mainframe stuff by that name back then. I cannot find a proper cite ... The first time I heard it was back when I first came into contact with DECUS in the mid 1970s.)
If you need to know why, try answering the phones at one for a few days.
"liquid Hydrocarbon fuels have a large amount of electricity embodied in their creation."
My liquid hydrocarbon fuel of choice's electricity input is provided by a small PV/battery setup. The PV is about 3KW, the battery is comprised of 4 old (rebuilt) 8D "fire engine" batteries. All it does is keep the computers running (home-built, based on ATmega328s ... plural for redundancy), and pump hot water around until it moves itself through convection. The hot water is provided by a GSHP, which is on it's own similar PV/battery system.
I burn alcohol. Try it, you might like it. The way I do it, it is even a net carbon sink.
Let's be clear here ... I am not hell bent on damaging anything.
A drunk stumbling home tripping over your charge cord might be, though.
The difference is the cord is in plain sight (and needs to be disciplined for being a tripping hazard), the radio is out of sight, and out of mind.
I'm waiting for reports of people figuring out how to "siphon" electricity from battery cars. It'll happen. Eventually.
Note that I said "almost never".
They all charge mostly at home, on a dedicated 50A 240V circuit.[0]
All are pissed off at PG&E raising the electricity rates several times recently, and most are looking to off-load the EVs for something more conducive to California's costs and distances.
[0] Yes, almost all houses in the US have that capability, contrary to popular right-pondian belief.
"The more people who pay to have "100% green" electricity, the more capacity will have to be installed if the companies are not to say "oops, sorry, no can do"..."
Unless, of course, the people selling "100% green" are nothing more than legal con artists.
Plan B4: Sell trailers outfitted with diesel generators to tow behind each and every EV, so they can top up anytime they like ... maybe even while driving, which would be handy on long road trips, especially when towing (see what I did there?). Before you pooh-pooh this, consider that trains and ships wouldn't use diesel-electric if it wasn't the single most cost-effective method of transportation.
Take the powerplant WITH the customer, save on transmission losses and operator fees.
"A better solution would be that all EVs have the same design of battery pack"
Because all EVs have exactly the same power needs? Volt owners might not mind your cunning plan (much), but Plaid owners will raise a stink.
"and its a simple 5 min operation to swap it out at a charging station."
Who would want to swap their brand new battery pack with one that has been bouncing along the dirt roads in the Mojave, alternating between freezing and baking from night to day? You think range anxiety is a problem now? Once this daft swap idea becomes mandated (and it probably will, politicians being who they are ... ), nobody but a complete idiot will ever pay for an EV again.
"without worrying over if our antique electrical infrastructure can cope with the extra power draw.."
There are places in the world (including parts of California and Texas, for example) are already living with rotating brownouts. Some even have intentional blackouts when the grid can not keep up with the demand, and/or during inclement weather (including CA and TX ... ) Where are you planning on getting the extra power to charge all those batteries? It just plain doesn't exist. The grid is lacking, and the EV evangelists refuse to see this reality.
We need nuclear power, and the infrastructure to deliver it, and we need to start building 40 years ago.
Why on Earth would the Democrats "rig" the election in favo(u)r of their own Presidential candidate ... and yet not bother rigging the Senatorial and Congressional elections while they were at it? Seems kinda pointless to go through all that trouble, only to end up in a stalemate.
Fortunately the real Republicans are learning to work around the anti-American MAGA[0] asshat clowns, and things are starting to move forward again ... if slowly.
[0] Muppets Annoying Genuine Americans
... that nobody has mentioned the op-ed piece that Ken Block published in USA Today on January 2nd of this year.
"Who is Ken Block?" you might ask ... Ken's the owner of Simpatico Software Systems (look it up), which was hired by Donald Trump on the day after to prove widespread fraud in the 2020 elections.
In a nutshell, they found the exact opposite, and communicated this fact to the Trump Whitehouse. (Must have been a fun phone call. "Despite paying my company millions of dollars to show otherwise, I'm sorry to have to report that you're a loser, Mr. Trump".)
Trump and his sycophants and quislings have maintained the lie anyway. It's what they do.
"'the laptop from hell'"
The Biden laptop is a non-issue, a time wasting distraction, and always has been, simply because of the lack of a clear chain of custody. Its contents are not admissible as evidence in any court in the US. Won't stop the anti-American folks in the MAGA[0] faction from babbling incessantly about it, though.
[0] Muppets Annoying Genuine Americans
If you had put out the word, I'd have loaned you a BERT or two of one description or another ... we were (mostly) done with them by 1988.
Had three of them in MaeWest, another four at the Bryant Street CO in Palo Alto, and a couple more at Stanford.
Not my money, I hasten to add ... they were originally BARRNet issue (I think).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
