Posts by Pompous Git 3087 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2014
Surely it would be much sillier to eat a cow because she was spying on you via telepathy
Oh, I dunno. The cow certainly wouldn't be able to telepathically spy on you any more. What would be crazy is eating hamburgers so they couldn't. Everybody knows that hamburgers aren't telepathic.
Violas irritate everybody.
Not! Some friends had a band called Mackenzie Theory back in the 1970s. Cleis Pearce was the electric viola player. While her playing in a prog rock band (rather than a classical music orchestra) annoyed the fuck out of her parents, we all loved her viola playing.
Maybe he means the frying bacon smell is what makes him regret being vegetarian?
And... since you've mentioned being Jewish further down, I'll take your bacon, just to avoid your lapsing into sin/temptation ;-).
Let's face it, there is no smell quite so delightful as frying bacon, only enhanced by the smell of freshly made coffee :-) There is nothing comparable in vegetarian cuisine despite ever so many delicious vegetarian dishes.
Jewishness in the sense of race is passed on through the female of the species. As it happens, my father was raised a Roman catholic, not the Jewish faith. My mother was an Anglican, but in her latter years was a Methodist and an atheist in-between. My father became apostate when he saw a priest raping a very young girl. For my sins I'm agnostic. My mother's pastor claims my father became a believer at the last, but I have my doubts. People infected by religion seem ever so good at self-deception.
But this has nowt to do with bacon! You may share my bacon with me, but stealing it is definitely a grievous sin no matter your intentions. Roit?
apparently not us robust commentards though, feeling guilty about bacon.
I have a very good friend who is vegetarian and he tells me that the only downside to it is the smell of frying bacon. So, when you think about it, we are doing vegetarians a favour by eating fried bacon because that makes the smell go away and removes the temptation :-)
It occurs to me to explain my bad "joke". You are precisely the second person to notice the message. For some reason I find that unutterably sad. Despite all the protestations of "never to forget", almost everyone does forget. Many never learn. I meet ever so many youngsters who think "The War" was in Vietnam. They know nothing of the great conflict that commenced in 1939.
So I must thank you for knowing what the inscription means and what the original meant for so many millions of my people as they passed from this world into another.
You want real adult content? Wait for the New Zealand Sheep Farmer add-on.
Murray Ball cartoon depicts a bloke and a sheep standing at the foot of the bed. Bloke's wife is in bed smoking a fag and hair in curlers. Bloke says: This is the cow I have sex with when you've got a headache.
His Missus says: That's not a cow; it's a sheep.
Bloke says: I wasn't talking to you.
lets just say rocks DO taste better than onions.
Let's just say I find the concept of commencing a curry by gently frying diced Twinkies instead of onions somewhat disgusting.
Disclaimer: I have never in my life eaten a Twinkie.
Tip carcasses into the plucker[0], then eviscerate[1], and voila ... one dozen roasters, ready for cooking in about ten minutes.
That sounds like it's very efficient. Plucking by hand is surely a chore. My current best friend (several having died recently) skins his and that's very quick. Personally, I prefer crispy-skinned roast chicken to skinless. I also think that people who eat meat and don't slaughter their own are in no position to criticise.
Congrats on the use of voila BTW. For some reason "viola" irritates me immensely.
Holy fuck! Even as a joke: no, no, and no.
I'm truly sorry if that offends; my Jewish ancestors transmitted some weird sense of humour genes into me.
Here's a really good "joke". My father was a guest in one of Mr H's Holiday Camps (AKA a slave labourer). When the German government paid him reparations, it was on the basis the money not be taxed. The Australian government decided that since it was definitely income received in the present, it was taxable and took most of it. Funny eh?
PS The chickens are definitely better fed and treated than my father was if that helps.
I can eat him, my wife can eat him, but I can't sell him or allow anyone else to eat anything. When it comes to visitors, the law is a bit grey.
My understanding is that cannibalism is not illegal, so if you have your visitors' permission, it's likely OK to eat them. Warning: There may be other laws you contravene when doing so.
What are you made of jake? That is the single most stupid argument for meat eating that exists, unless you're a cannibal.
Wow! Picture of chickens in grass. Have you any idea how rare that is? Most 'free range' chickens are stuck in barns and only need 'access' to outside to qualify as free range.
Not particularly rare here. You're thinking of the supermarkets. "The Fresh Food People" also sell vegetables in an advanced state of decay. Barn-laid eggs are usually labelled "barn-laid eggs" here. The Git used to keep a couple of dozen laying hens and was paid full retail for them by the dude who sold them on to gourmet restaurants. These days we only have two, a pullet (Mia Sparrow) and a hen (Henrietta Grub) living in a moveable pen called The Female Factory. It's for bird girls only and has a sign on it: Eiablage macht frei.
The chickens we eat are free-range from a producer who specialises in such. In the early days (1980s) there was a quota of one bird per fortnight due to demand. These days they are the most successful producers of poultry meat in the state.
What about some 'free range foxes' killing and eating or discarding dead free range chickens
If you don't know how to properly care for stock, you need to find another occupation.
farmer who has livestock usually doesn't slaughter these animals themselves. They get loaded into a truck, unloaded at the slaughter house and after processing (yes, I know how that sounds) the farmer gets the end product(s): the meat and such.
While the farmer sells most of his stock to somebody else who sends the meat to the slaughterhouse, almost every farmer I know slaughters his, or her own. It takes me about 20 minutes to kill and remove the innards and skin of a sheep; a little longer for a goat (the skinning is all knife-work). The slaughterhouse I took one animal to 30 years ago currently charges ~AU60 so I have saved a small fortune over the years doing my own.
Dave Stephens who owned that slaughterhouse now has a mobile slaughtering business and is most useful for the larger animals -- pigs and steers -- that need a winch and suitable place to haul the animal off the ground.
There are several reasons for preferring to slaughter on-farm. The main one is the animal doesn't get frightened. The adrenalin in a scared animal toughens and taints the meat. On-farm slaughtering's also a lot cheaper. Dave also has a portable chiller you can rent these days so you can hang your beef for a fortnight. Beef that has been properly aged is much tastier and more tender than fresh beef.
PETA complains about dipping pigs in scalding water without mentioning that the animal is dead by then and minus its internal organs! The reason is to loosen the bristles that would otherwise render the skin inedible. Let's face it, the main reason for roast pork is the crackling. And for all the bacon sarnie lovers here, you've never had a proper one until you've had one made with home-made bacon from a free-range pig. Eat your heart out :-)
I not talking about some ancient Greek navel gazer making a candle out of his own earwax
I've never heard the city of Babylon (one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world) described in that way before. You really are a bullshitter aren't you?
Petroleum has been used for less than 50 years, and it is estimated that the supply will last about 25 or 30 years longer. If production is curtailed and waste stopped it may last till the end of the century. The most important effects of its disappearance will be in the lack of illuminants. Animal and vegetable oils will not begin to supply its place. This being the case, the reckless exploitation of oil fields and the consumption of oil for fuel should be checked.
In the Titusville Herald (Titusville, PA) July 19, 1909 rather than "in earnest".
We will eventualyl HAVE to move on to green energy, and it will be a very painful comedown before we get there.
After 130 years of "peak oil" I suspect that the "painful comedown" will not occur in the lifetime of anyone now living. Don't today's kids ever hear the story of The Little Boy Who Cried "Wolf!"?
The fact that we burn petroleum for energy is an enormous scam!We have not needed petroleum for energy for more than 70 years.
Please learn more and demand accountability for this crime against humanity.
Let's see, a fit adult human generates about 1 kw/h per day and a litre of petrol should generate something of the order of 4 kw/hrs of useful energy. I have a breast plough here for skimming the turf off 4 acres of land we could sow down to wheat. You should be able to complete the task in a little over 3 working weeks. The cost in petrol for that work would be somewhat less than $AU5, but I'm happy to pay you ten times that in return for the entertainment value of watching you prove that burning petroleum for energy is a scam.
So it could be a statement's unprovable within the system or it could be the proof hasn't been found yet; there's no way to tell.
No!
The first incompleteness theorem states that in any consistent formal system F within which a certain amount of arithmetic can be carried out, there are statements of the language of F which can neither be proved nor disproved in F.
You can make such a statement provable by adding axioms. The price of this is the generation of new unprovable statements. See Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems if you want to make your head hurt a bit. Hint: that's what philosophers do for fun ;-)
The tesla owner could have been completely off grid, solar and wind, not using anything from the coal power plants, but still being taxed for it.
Don't expect any of this green shit to make any sense. I live in Tasmania where we have hydro-electrickery. Hydro Tasmania sells its energy to the mainland where the consumers get brownie points because it's "clean and green". In return, the mainland sells its electrickery that's generated with brown coal, the most polluting sort, and we in Tasmania are dirty, filthy polluters as a consequence. Needless to say, there's no need for any electron flow betwixt the two regions for this to be "true".
It's just a pity that so few people even read what they are agreeing to, let alone care about what it actually means.
The problem of that is where do you find the time to read all of the EULAs for all of your software and also understand the legalese, or have your lawyer explain the terms to you (expensive). Most of us just want to get the job done and your suggestion just reduces the amount of revenuing you can do. Somehow I don't think you're eating your own dogfood. If I'm wrong, and you are independently wealthy, then good luck and thanks for doing this on my behalf ;-)
@ Sanditz
Well that's much different from when I was involved then. Win95/98 didn't come in Home and Professional versions and Win9x was the standard desktop OS. Those Win95 licenses were certainly not upgrades for machines running Win3.11 because those machines were never available with Win3.11.
I suppose WinNT4/Win2k could be construed as a professional upgrade to Win95/98, but I rarely saw them on corporate desktops and given the small numbers involved when I did, unlikely to have been Volume Licenses.
Also I attended a Tech Briefing on MS licensing changes in 1997, a memorably boring event. I suspect I would have recalled this requirement of effectively purchasing two licences per machine had it been mentioned. I would have been appalled.
The free breakfast was very nice; I recall that. And the free copies of version 8 Corel Wordperfect Suite, CorelDRAW! and Wordperfect for Linux. Sadly, the copy Ventura Publisher was a timeout demo only.
How times change...
For all MS volume licensing options there is an assumption that a valid full license is already associated with the machine on purchase.
You appear to be claiming that organisations that already have fully licensed machines voluntarily give MS even more money for what they have already paid for. Really? Evidence...
It would cost almost nothing in terms of the turnover/profits of the big suppliers to test the latest releases of a few alternative OS, say 3 or so different and popular Linux distros and maybe FreeBSD and include the information in the tech blurb stating that OS foo, version bar was successfully tested on this model.
True. OTOH they probably figure that the Lunix community already does that testing without costing them a cent and posts the results on the interwebs to be easily found by anyone who bothers searching.
We were told by our suppliers that it was illegal to sell a computer in Australia without an OS.
Clearly, you were lied to. It's a harsh world out there. Current T&Cs for what used to be called Microsoft Certified Trainer include the following:
With either subscription, you get access to core Microsoft products for training use, including Office, Windows, SharePoint, SQL Server and other resources valued at up to $15,000 USD.
MS has never required paying twice for the same product. Nor have there ever been laws passed by Australian state or federal governments requiring such. OTOH it could be you that's lying. Care to provide evidence?
Probably because the consumer level kit is full of trail versions of software the suppliers have paid to have pre-installed in the hope enough mugs will pay to "upgrade" to the full versions.
The reason according to my friend who works for Dell is rather more mundane. The average purchaser isn't all that bright when it comes to computers; heck, we've all had a few laughs here over some of their misunderstandings. So, average punter purchases the cheapest machine available. Note here that charging more for a machine without Windows + bloatware would not be smart marketing. Average punter then attempts to install Open Office that he/she/it [delete whichever is inapplicable] just purchased for $AU18.95 from eBay, but can't because there's no OS installed. Result = one very pissed off customer.
Requiring customers to specifically request there be no OS keeps those who want Windows and those who don't happy. Except for those who are too fucking stupid or lazy to pick up the phone, or use Dell's chat facility to make the request.
What part of "distortion of the market" did you not understand?
Don't you think it's a little disingenuous to piss and moan about MS distorting the market when the community you advocate for isn't bothering to compete? We know that in the areas where the Linux community does compete with MS, it wins resoundingly. It isn't Windows that makes MS successful, it's the many useful applications that make it so. It isn't Linux itself that makes it a success in the web serving arena, it's Apache. According to Paul Thurrott:
About 1 billion devices are running Apple software
Windows has about 1.5 billion active users
Android about 1.4 billion devices
That's some "monopoly" ain't it?
Frankly, rather than hear people whining about how unfair MS is, I'd rather hear "Have you checked out this kewl new application that means you won't have to boot into Windows ever again?"
Fortuitously, the ASUS Zenbook I purchased works fine with Linux Mint 17.3. Bluetooth, Wi-fi, trackpad, the lot work without any requirement from me other than run the standard installer. It was a refurb and that means I didn't have the option of ordering it without Windows. As a manufacturer’s refurb it came with the full warranty of a new machine. Being a refurb it cost $700 instead of full retail $1,300. Basically that means I don't give a flying fuck, or fiddler's fart about the "Microsoft tax". I saved $600.
I suspect that when it needs replacing in several years' time (I've had it for three) I will use this thing called an Internet search engine and determine beforehand whether the portable I'm seeking (preferably a refurb) works with Linux (Mint or other).
I suppose there's some sort of cachet associated with brand new, and "they forced me to pay blah, blah" but I'd rather spend less than more and not lie through my teeth about anybody forcing me to do anything.
My son has a smart meter. He does his dishes at 4c/KWh.
I have SWMBO. I have no idea how much she costs per KWhr, but I'd rather have sex with her than an electric dishwasher :-)
NB The Git does most of the cooking, grows the vegetables, provides the firewood for the cookstove/space heater and used to provide the meat as well, but we no longer keep sheep.
That's not really surprising for a lightbulb that gets used for maybe 10-15 minutes per day :-)
Probably more than that; it's on a motion detector. It's intially on for 15 minutes before turning itself off. Then triggered by wildlife or SWMBO's arrival and if she doesn't turn it off, it keeps being randomly triggered until the following day. This is precisely the condition that kills CFLs.
While you can leave your CFL on constantly to achieve the rated lifespan, the fire service recommend turning them off when leaving a room as they occasionally catch fire.
Yes, I would have gone LED as I said in an earlier post, but $AU60,000 seemed a bit OTT. The double glazed windows only cost $AU30,000!
@ handle
Putting money into the bank for a 1.5% return when investing in property returns between 10 and 20% is, to put it mildly, insane. Hint: I may be crazy, but I'm not insane ;-)
It's not so much The Git dissing the technology, but electrical engineers. The Git reads and draws conclusions. As I understand this, the solar PV arrays generate their maximum output when there's sod all consumption and the voltage for everyone in the vicinity rises. Appliances that are connected all the time, such as freezers and refrigerators, suffer a shortened life. Presumably this is the "smarts" part of modern appliances; motors tend to suffer from low rather than high voltage.
There are ever so many places in Australia (according to the journals aimed at engineers) that are no longer granting permits for solar PV for the very reason I cite.
I was not aware of the EU mandate, but would note that "being able to operate" isn't saying very much. There's a question of longevity. The Git was brought up to consider such things. There's a cost to purchase and ever so many people focus on that alone, but the real cost is the annualised cost over the lifetime of the purchase.
Then there's the embodied energy in the system. Solar PV is manufactured, not with renewable energy, but good old fashioned fossil fuels or nuclear. Since the electricity The Git consumes is generated by hydro-electric plant, installing solar PV would have increased his carbon footprint rather than decreasing it. As you say, you shouldn't generalise, but that doesn't stop people doing so. The Gillard government subsidised Tasmanians to increase their carbon footprint as a carbon emissions reduction measure and somehow that's "saving the planet"? Ya gotta laff!
Sorry for the presumption regarding the missus. Most blokes seem to have one though I notice that some of them are male.
sunshine at night, anybody?
Definitely! The Spaniards had a solar power plant generating electrickery 24 hours a day.
Spanish newspaper El Mundo found that between November and January, 4500 megawatt hours (MWh) of solar energy were sold to the electricity grid between midnight and seven in the morning.It has been suggested that some plants in the regions of Castilla-La-Mancha, Canarias and Andalucía have been using diesel generators connected to their solar panel arrays to illegally benefit from government subsidies.
Spanish nighttime solar energy fraud
Definitely a nice little earner for the rich people...
the reality of decent LEDs is that they are still relatively expensive, but can be far brighter than the "equivalent" incandescent (mainly halogen these days) or CFL units. The halogens tend to blow within a short period of time
Not according to my supplier, a specialist supplier of (quality) light fittings and globes. The LEDs I purchased from him were the largest and brightest drop-in replacements for my 35W 630 lumens halogen downlights. The 6 W LEDs are rated for 370 lumens, but I believe that falls to 260 lumens over time. Not really enough light when it's illuminating a workspace where very sharp knives are used.
I agree that halogens have a lamentably short life (~1,000 hrs), but then when I purchased the lighting system for the home I completed 13 years ago, incandescents were on the hit list by the government. I priced the cost of LEDs, but $AU60,000 seemed a little bit OTT.
Both sealed halogens and LEDs rely on 12 volt transformers. I have recently replaced most of them for the third time at a cost so far of more than $AU300. Mind you, the last lot cost very little since I purchased cheap as chips trannies from China just to see how they compared to the ones that were costing me $AU15 each.
I identified the main problem here several years ago when I borrowed an APC UPS that allowed me to monitor the electricity supply. While the nominal voltage is 240, it spikes at 260 V and there are many long periods of over and undervoltage. The supplier only guarantees an average of 240 V over a 24 hour period.
Find it hard to believe by all means, but confirmation bias is a powerful thing, and judging by the unnecessary advice about working on roofs, it's not hard to guess your opinion on solar PV.
Call it confirmation bias if you wish, but when the Gillard government was in power, there was a very high subsidy for installing solar PV so I had a quote prepared by one of the top three suppliers. In order to achieve the cost savings they claimed, the panels would need to have generated 140% of their rated output at our location. When I queried this with the supplier the silence was deafening, though they continued to send me their sales lit.
I did my own sums based on easily obtained information on the interwebs and came up with a time to payback of ~18 years. Choice's figure was ~16 years, but that was for Australia as a whole, not specifically southern Tasmania. Since then, the subsidy has shrunk and FITs have fallen so making them more costly to purchase and less economical to run. IOW time to break even is even closer to the anticipated 25 years of useful life.
You might consider the advice regarding safety on the roof "unnecessary", but your missus might disagree if you fail to take precautions and invalidate your insurance.
The panels with a built-in inverter were eyewateringly expensive when I did my sums and had a time to payback exceeding their anticipated lifespan. Nice to know the price has dropped.
Solar PV has a place, but not in an ordinary suburban setting.* I have a friend in rural New South Wales who was quoted ~AU40,000 to be connected to the grid. He installed solar PV and I think that was an entirely rational economic decision. Purchasing solar PV for The House of Steel was not economically rational.
I note that our electricity consumption is about 50% of what the supplier tells us is average for a household of our size. It's extremely well insulated and we use firewood for cooking, hot water and space heating. We consume about 9kg of LPG for cookery during hot weather.
* Voltage control of local supply of all electricity consumers is distorted by solar PV; the control systems are the other side of the local transformers. The issue has been discussed in publications aimed at electricians and electrical engineers who warned the government before the heavy subsidies distorted the market. This has led to the early demise of any number of electrical appliance: refrigerators, freezers, TV sets etc. The cost of replacing these is for some odd reason never factored in. Frankly, I'd be pretty pissed off if I had to replace my appliances far more frequently than necessary because my neighbour was stupid enough to believe the bullshit.
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