* Posts by jake

26591 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007

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Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations

jake Silver badge

Here's a shocker: California is a big place. There are plenty of places nuclear plants could be built in California which would not be subject to major earthquake damage. Rancho Seco comes to mind.

The real reason is the ex-hippie greenaholics running the place are irrationally anti-nuke.

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

Renewables aren't. Entropy says no.

However, you are quite correct: The Hippies probably fucked up the entire planet permanently with their leading the charge against nuclear power.

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

"In the early 90’s I was told we’d run out of fossil fuels by now."

They were saying we'd be out by the year 2000 back in the '60s.

For the rest of your comment, get thee to a library. Do some research.

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

A well insulated and sealed house requires proper equipment for heating/cooling, ventilating, and humidity control. None of these are exactly rocket surgery ... but I can understand why "getting a little man in" who understands these things might be an issue in the UK.

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

"Nothing that flies or has to travel long ranges can get by without fossil fuels at the moment"

I have a truck that just made an 800 mile round-trip, towing a trailer with three horses in it outbound. The truck runs on Ethanol that I made here at the Ranch. All other fluids in the truck are fully synthetic. No fossil fuels used at all (except probably in the plastics in the dash, under the hood/bonnet, etc.).

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

It's an emerging technology, sure, but what it produces is hella-expensive, and will in no way affect the energy issue in my (or your) lifetime. Sure lures in the suckers investors, though.

Better to use alcohol production for vehicle fuel, and use the petroleum for more durable goods. (I have trucks running on both Ethanol and Methanol, both produced here at the ranch. The Government hates this, for obvious reasons, but what I am doing is legal).

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

There is no such thing as a renewable energy source. Entropy says no. Using such a word indicates you have little scientific background, and probably don't understand the details of what you are talking about. See Al Gore, Greta, et alia.

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

"Solar panels have an energy payback time of around 2 years"

But the entire system takes from 20 to 30 years to pay back. I've run the numbers. Solar basically pays for itself just in time to fall apart.

Note that this is not necessarily a bad thing!

Note also that this is for a smaller installation ... your home in California, where we have lots of sunlight, for example. Wiring up a small town (or larger) quickly becomes a logistical nightmare.

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

Faux News changes it's tune as the advertising money changes. Most intelligent people ignore them.

MAGA (Muppets Annoying Genuine Americans) are pretty much voiceless and out of the loop. Don't give them a platform and they will dry up like the pond scum that they are.

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

Wind is a no-go. It costs too much, is an eyesore,, and the greens hate it.

Tidal slows the planet's rotation down, and changes the moon's orbit. It's not sustainable. (Remember, there is no such thing as "renewable energy", entropy says no.)

Hydro works in places where it's possible ... if the greenaholics allow it. Which is unlikely to happen in North America on any large scale, ever again.

Geothermal is VERY location dependent if you want a positive TCO.

Solar is FINALLY a viable solution ... if you are willing to make an investment that just about pays for itself just as the equipment is wearing out to the point of needing replacement. Think of it as (roughly) paying your entire electricity bill in one lump sum for the next 30ish years worth of power (plus a bit for a new battery halfway through). Note that it only works for small estates ... for larger installations it quickly becomes too complex, and a maintenance nightmare.

The only viable, long-term, mass-production option we have for energy is nuclear.

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

"But in ecomomics, time has a value as well."

Not according to the IRS ...

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

I've got a rather large Fresnel lens (bought from Edmund Scientific in the late '60s). It will toast bread in a matter of seconds, using nothing but sunlight. Of course you lot in the UK would find that kind of option fairly useless most of the time ...

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

I often toast my breakfast bread by doming it in the bread oven after baking the day's loaves. Seems to work, and beats firing up the 22,000 BTU salamander in the kitchen ...

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

"I should know better than to argue on the internet with people who think it's ok to put casual threats of violence into simple misunderstandings of fairly inconsequential things, but there we go."

I have seen no threats of any kind. What the fuck are you talking about?

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

"but how many people have the space in their kitchens for an sustainable, organic methane generator?"

All of them.

Note that you didn't specify volume of production.

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

"If you've superinsulated your home, that toast-heat won't exit your home and be conducted/radiated away to space. But if you have superinsulated, you may want to avoid toasting due to the moisture content of the bread."

Nah. Look up "Air Exchanger". They work a treat. I've been making toast with impunity in my super-insulated home for many years now. The silly contraption even allows me to fry fish without pissing off the fair mrs. jake ... without ever opening a window. Can even take long, hot steamy showers without running the risk of peeling paint and wallpaper. Recommended.

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPMeed you soal into a battery

Feed you solar into a battery (preferably lithium iron phosphate), and then convert to AC from that. Only fools try to run high power equipment directly from solar panels.

Besides, there is no need for all that tech to make toast. The Victorians had a little thing called a toasting fork. They work nicely. If you prefer, look up "camping toaster". It'll work over any source of enough heat, from your hob to a campfire to the exhaust pipe of a tractor.

jake Silver badge

Re: @45RPM

"Vacuums, for instance, are much better now since manufacturers were forced to adapt and innovate."

I dunno ... Modern shopvvacs don't hold a candle to the one my Grandfather bought and installed in his woodshop (for dust collection) back in the '50s. I still use it. Likewise, the "whole-house" vacuum system in my parent's house in Palo Alto, installed as the house was built in '55, works far better than modern variations.

jake Silver badge
Pint

Re: "I hear there's a war on pickup trucks in Canada"

I'm glad a Canuck said it, or a Californian would have had to :-)

jake Silver badge

Re: One guy...

The "coal-rollers" are fucking idiots.

All that black smoke is incompletely burned fuel, signifying wasted power.

jake Silver badge

Re: @Flywheel

They were growing wine grapes between Hadrian's and Antonine's Walls 1800 years ago. People were ice-skating on the Thames in the early 1800s.

The climate changed radically for those to happen then, and then it changed back. Nobody knows why. To suggest humans are causing it is hubris ... at best. At worst, it's an attempt to profit from what may very well become a natural disaster by selling snake-oil "fixes" for the unfixable.

The fact is, we just don't know. Anyone who claims otherwise is anti-science.

jake Silver badge

Re: @Flywheel

Just to add a real-world data point ... My family owns an iron ring mooring point driven into the rock on the Noyo River, in Fort Bragg California. We've owned it for coming up on`150 years. According to my Great Grand Father's, Grand Father's, Father's and my own planting diarys, the water level at the lowest and highest astronomical tides haven't changed significantly in that time frame (it does vary a couple inches up and down over the decades, but statistically, it hasn't moved).

jake Silver badge

Re: @Flywheel

Tangier Island is a sandbar, and has been losing area since the 1800s. Blaming it on supposed sea-level rise is disingenuous at best.

California has many ecosystems, desert being just one of them, at about 16%. Well, several of them, actually ... California holds several different types of desert. We're not getting most of our power from solar for the same reason you aren't. Total Cost Of Ownership says no.

Agree on the Colorado River water ... We have plenty of our own water to feed ourselves, no need to feed the rest of the nation.

jake Silver badge

Re: @Flywheel

"So first they come for your PC, because that's a gas guzzler."0

My PCs and the rest of the human living quarters here at the Ranch will be run off-grid by this time next year. Solar, with home-made alcohol burning gensets to charge the batteries when it's cloudy or dark. How will "they" know how much power I'm consuming?

I have not yet made up my mind if I'll take the machineroom/museum/mausoleum/morgue, machine-shop and print-shop off-grid or not ... I'll probably keep the three-phase for that old junk, at least for a couple more years[0] ... but I'll make up for it by running my traction engine more often. (She runs on old, junk wood that would be burned for disposal anyway ... might as well get some work out of it!)

[0] Have you priced 3-phase solar kit recently? And I though the price of high-grade coal was ridiculous!

jake Silver badge

Re: @Flywheel

"and physics will ensure that we can no longer live here."

We live at the South Pole, and we live in the Mojave Desert. I'm fairly certain we'll manage to survive this blip in climate data.

jake Silver badge

"For the hard of thinking, we don’t have a choice."

Or so you've been told. Do you believe in a bearded sky-fairy, too? How about the Easter Bunny? Santa?

jake Silver badge

Re: 6 states is not 50

"The federal prohibition is still very much on the books."

Indeed. The Feds can, at any time, seize any and all assets belonging to a pot growing operation, including the property (owned or leased/rented!). And they will start doing so as soon as it's politically expedient. No way in hell I'd invest in something built on such a precarious base.

jake Silver badge

Re: 6 states is not 50

Yes. The inspection stations primarily deal with agricultural products (plants, livestock, and bees), although they will report other obvious illegal activity to the CHP. I suspect they will just wave an 18-wheeler full of computers on through.

jake Silver badge

Re: As a Californian, all I can sat is "Who cares?".

I do not think I missed the point. I believe the lawmakers have missed the point. I'm contemplating making a run to Nevada and bringing back a truckload of Dell computers to re-sell (they are "used" at this point) through a friend's computer shop in Mountain View.

jake Silver badge

Re: As a Californian, all I can sat is "Who cares?".

Yes, I fear they are working on that. I do not believe it will survive the court system.

jake Silver badge

Re: As a Californian, all I can sat is "Who cares?".

::sighs::

I act locally as best I can. But the herds of sheeple are ineducable. As they are everywhere on this muddy rock we call home.

jake Silver badge

Re: As a Californian, all I can sat is "Who cares?".

There will always be demand for housing here, alas. It's the weather.

jake Silver badge

Re: As a Californian, all I can sat is "Who cares?".

While our Bob might hold a few libertarian views (as do I), he's not libertarian any more than I am.

I'll take a once in a decade or three earthquake over regularly scheduled tornadoes. The wildfires are getting a trifle annoying, though.

jake Silver badge

Back then, MS/PC-DOS was seen as a toy used by glorified secretaries. Real work was done on MCP, VMS, RTMOS, UNIX, TENEX, TOPS-10, RSX-11, OS/360, MVS, TMX, VRX, EXEC 8 / OS 2200 and the like.

jake Silver badge

I have not yet seen such an initiative circulating.

jake Silver badge

As a Californian, all I can sat is "Who cares?".

What self-respecting gamer would purchase a box-stock gaming rig from Dell in the first place? Shirley all y'all who invest in that activity with that kind of money will be building your system from scratch anyway, right?

Somebody is destined for somewhere hot, and definitely not Coventry

jake Silver badge

Re: The Usual Suspects

I've been to Acocks Green, and I've been to Manila. They have virtually nothing in common.

I think you forgot the punchline ... Or I somehow missed the setup.

jake Silver badge

Re: Didn't they anticipate a problem?

Unlikely. Middlesex is a fairly common place name in the North Eastern corner of the United States, where Pfizer's HQ is located.

jake Silver badge

Re: Oops!

Might want to look at those whips a trifle closer. The finishing and other fine details make that kind of work an art form.

Not my cuppa, but I have friends who insist that unwinding often involves a good whipping.

jake Silver badge

Re: Time was

Good thing you posted AC ... using words like that in these hyper-PC times might see you become a victim of character buttbuttination.

jake Silver badge

Re: Protecting yourselves

My air-gapped internal network is not connected to my firewall.

jake Silver badge

Re: Works the other way as well

Might be a poke at the useless local police. Back in the late 1980s a small newspaper here in the Bay Area used to run an article on Fridays listing the best places to buy whatever, from drugs to stolen property to hookers to tax-free booze and tobacco, name it. With addresses, prices, and rough operating hours.

The police, instead of shutting down the illegal activity, decided to sue the newspaper to put a stop to it. Until the paper hinted that in an upcoming issue they'd include cops, judges and politicians for sale. With prices. The (obvious) illegal activity stopped practically overnight. Imagine that.

jake Silver badge

Re: FFS

What is the world coming to? Back in my day, when you went to a web site you knew exactly what you were getting into by the name alone. Nice, holesome places like whitehouse.com ...

If you think that's a misspleling, you're too wholesome for words ...

jake Silver badge

Foxes are members of the Canidae family. They are canines. So clearly, you were using the wrong search term. What you should have looked for was "lactating bitch".

HTH, HAND

If you need a NSFW disclaimer here, you should probably stop reading EReg immediately.

jake Silver badge

The ElReg Oracle has pondered deeply upon your question "Do women still wear slips?" and replies:

If you are old enough to reach the keybr0ad and still have to ask, the Oracle must regretfully inform you that you'll probably never know.

You owe the Oracle a pint and a smile.

Emily Postnews' two-bits: "A gentleman would never ask."

jake Silver badge
Pint

I once sent a rather steamy love letter to my Boss, and a system status report to my girlfriend (now Wife). Thankfully, they both found it hysterical. No harm, no foul. An extra pint that evening helped :-)

jake Silver badge
Pint

Re: Having access to the system logs ...

Well, to be fair you were seemingly advocating (or at least condoning) abuse as a choice ... not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.

Personally, if I were prone to such things as thumbs, I'd down vote you for using that tired old hoary meme of an icon.

"Sticks and stone may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me." —Unknown, mid-20thC

jake Silver badge

Having access to the system logs ...

... at Stanford and Berkeley in the early.mid-90s, I had a handy list of seditious, lewd &etc addresses to filter on, which I happily sold on for the purpose of corporate firewall stocking. It wasn't just the new kids going to iffy sites, it was professors and grad students, too.

Daft thing is that officially the schools did NOT monitor which USENET groups were subscribed to, nor which posts a user "read". It was a privacy/freedom of speech thing. We even told the users that up front, it was part of the "using USENET" package. But for some reason, the PTB insisted that we had to log all WWW activity ... and we told them THAT, too.

So they knew that USENET use was unlogged, but the WWW was logged ... and (essentially) the same content was available on both. The vast majority chose the pointy-clicky-thingy anyway, at which point we knew society was fucked.

It's all been downhill from there.

Lawn care SWAT team subdues trigger-happy Texan... and other stories

jake Silver badge

Re: The Lawnmower Man

To some it's weeds. to others it's insect, bird and small mammal habitat ... fish and amphibian, too, if you are on a watercourse or other wetlands. All you have to do is "accidentally" find a plant or critter on the protected species list, and <bam>, no more yard work!

Now all you'll have to do is convince a Judge not to allow the local greenaholics to evict you.

jake Silver badge

Re: The Lawnmower Man

PG&E is a whole 'nuther kettle o'worms. Don't get me started ... Suffice to say I'm working on a master-plan to take us completely[0] off-grid. I've had it with those fuckers. (Not the guys & galls in the trenches with hardhats & work boots, I'll hasten to add ... it's the suits and ties that are the issue!)

[0] Pseudo-off-grid, I should say. We'll still have gas/petrol, diesel and propane.

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