Re: Ramp.....Money......
You lied when you wrote "Now.....Linux requires some effort and commitment....." If you stop trying new distros and desktops, it just works.
Posts by Col_Panek
337 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Aug 2013
This is the end, Windows 7 and 8 friends: Microsoft drops support this week
Forget the climate: Steep prices the biggest reason EV sales aren't higher
Saturday 7th January 2023 00:23 GMT
Re: Too expensive, too heavy, too range limited
I am interested in the new Mazda MX-30 with a 100 mile range battery (which covers 100% of my usual daily driving) and a Wankel range extender. That might solve the problems o the rotary engine, running at an optimum RPM.
I said I was interested, not that I'm necessarily going to put a deposit down.
FCC calls for mega $300 million fine for massive US robocall campaign
Brit MPs pour cold water on hydrogen as mass replacement for fossil fuels
Friday 23rd December 2022 14:47 GMT
Re: Hydrogen is an energy storage medium...
Seems to me (although I am not a chemist) there would be more viable synthetic fuels that could be distributed using current infrastructure, saving some trillions of dollars and pounds and thus make all this greenness economically more palatable. Some use nitrogen to suck up the burny stuff, so we couldn't use combustion engines because hot nitrogen makes nasty. We could use good ole moonshine if we take the carbon out of the air, not out of the ground. And filling stations could stay in business.
UK bans Chinese CCTV cameras on 'sensitive' government sites
Monday 28th November 2022 15:36 GMT
Internet connected picture frame
... that my wife got as a present, goes to a server somewhere to get photos people email to her. A search turned up a white hat on Reddit who was a little suspicious when one was gifted to a government official for his desk. I await his analysis.
But i think the eyes in the picture follow you around the room.
Microsoft mulls cheap PCs supported by ads, subs
Why I love my Chromebook: Reason 1, it's a Linux desktop
Your next PC should be a desktop – maybe even this Chinese mini machine
Laugh all you want. There will be a year of the Linux desktop
California wildfires hit CTRL+Z on 18 years of CO2e removal
Friday 21st October 2022 14:28 GMT
Best way to sequester carbon
I cut down a bunch of spruces and started burning them in a biochar retort, which in my case was a meter deep ditch in my garlic patch which took ten minutes to dig. I got about 35 gallons of biochar which went into my mulch piles to soak up nutrients. When spread in the garden, it will sequester the carbon for hundreds of years, and keep nutrients from leaching out.
A retort relies on the structure to pyrolize the material at the bottom of the pile, starving it of oxygen. An untended fire that's a level pile of brush will just turn to ash and the CO2 will just escape into the atmosphere. Of course half the fuel in a retort is gone, but the other half is eternal carbon (to a first approximation).
So, getting rid of brush, sequestering carbon, and making fertilizer. What's not to like?
Scientists pull hydrogen from thin air in promising clean energy move
Friday 9th September 2022 17:13 GMT
Re: Storage ? Transport ?
The way to reduce artificial fertilizers is to burn trees. When they're hot enough, cut off the oxygen so they pyrolize into biochar. Throw that into the ground and it keeps nutrients from leaching out, and it holds water too. It sequesters carbon for hundreds of years. Scrap wood that's just burned to ash turns into carbon dioxide. Compost lasts for a decade then it escapes as CO2.
The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it
California asks people not to charge EVs during heatwave
Underwater datacenter will open for business this year
California to phase out internal combustion vehicles by 2035
Googlers demand abortion searches ‘never be saved or treated as a crime’
I love the Linux desktop, but that doesn't mean I don't see its problems all too well
Seriously, you do not want to make that cable your earth
MIT's thin plastic speakers fall flat. And that's by design
Windows 10 still growing, but Win 11 had another bad month, says AdDuplex
Why the Linux desktop is the best desktop
FAA now says 5G airports may interfere with Boeing 737s
Google's Chrome OS Flex could revive old PCs, Macs
Friday 18th February 2022 18:27 GMT
Re: Hot Garbage
"As for home users, they're not going to use this if they wouldn't use Linux. "
It remains to be seen if there is a subset of home users who are unaware of Linux or think it's for hackers and geeks but certainly not them, who will be able to follow simple instructions to resurrect their closet PCs.
Some may subsequently discover that installing Zorin or Mint is just as easy. At any rate, this is a step forward and needs to be publicised. It's well worth the ink (or electrons).
How can we recruit for the future if it takes an hour to send an email, asks Air Force AI bigwig in plea for better IT
Friday 28th January 2022 15:25 GMT 
Old timer USAF tales
My first work PC was a Heathkit/Zenith 286. We had an in-house word processing system, VT100s all over, but everybody of course wanted PCs. The only way to get one is to claim you needed it for classified processing, meaning it came in a 40 pound Tempest shield. To get off the top you had to take out about 40 screws.
Then I got clever and specified a Leading Edge Model D as a deliverable "controller" from a research contract. It had a color monitor! And I bought memory chips to bring it up to 640K!
Some time later (2005), I rescued a laptop from the turn-in pile that couldn't run all the antimalware/spyware and put Linux Mint on it for fun. I of course could only use it off-line. After that I was done with Microsoft. I moved to an off-base office with an antique PC, put Linux on it, and have never used Windows since.
Getting off Windows is the key to safety, security, and using "old" machines. They could probably get rid of half the IT staff, too. The problem is the brass have never used anything but Windows.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
