Posts by Poncey McPonceface

This is shocking stuff. How is all this not taken into consideration when the CO2 output of this method is calculated? Even on paper (recycled, don't you worry!) it sounds stupid. Cut down trees from across an ocean?! Madness. That's literally one of the most moronic things I've heard in a long time. Not being a native Brit I just had a nice little read of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_power_station and boy the stats are troubling.

“The environmental effects of coal burning are well documented. Coal is considered to be "easily the most carbon-intensive and polluting form of energy generation available".[103] In 2007 the station produced 22,160,000 tonnes of CO2, making it the largest single source of CO2 in the UK.[47][104] Between 2000 and 2007, there has been a net increase in carbon dioxide CO2 of over 3,000,000 tonnes.[47] The station also has the highest estimated emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the European Union.[105]”

“Drax's annual report for 2013 reported that Drax's annual emissions were at 20,612,000 tonnes of CO2. This was a slight decrease from 2007 levels due to the burning of biomass.[107] Drax still remains the UK's largest single source of emissions.[citation needed][clarification needed]”

Both coal and biomass are largely imported! Close this thing down and build a nuke plant. If people were *really* that concerned about the environment this thing could never continue operating.

Currently 13 nuke plants are being built in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#Nuclear_power_plants_under_construction

I know China is a lot bigger energy consumption-wise, ranking 1st in the world versus 12th for the UK but still: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2233rank.html

I'm no bleeding heart environmentalist and I get that the fuel of a power plant often has to be transported to it. The fuel source that Drax was built to consume is spent. The plant was started in '74, completed in '86, started co-firing biomass in 2010 -- I reckon it's had a good innings. Once you start burning trees felled an ocean-ride away you gotta rethink your existence I reckon. I honestly can't believe it, aren't we meant to be chopping trees down to pulp into paper, not to pelletize them for burning.

Re: Ooh, Can't Wait

Great, you won't regret it.

Re: "spent some of that dosh on documenting the hardware so that Penguinistas"

> From their point of view, why should they?

Because there is good will generated if they play nice with others. And there is ill will generated if they don't. We have seen it time and time again. One has to offset the good will gained with losing some, but not much, competitive advantage. I believe that one then grows the entire market and grabs a smaller slice of a much bigger pie. Standards foster innovation at least as much (if not more) as competition.

Why is Microsoft the behemoth that they are? Yes, their OS was locked down, and they abused their monopoly position, but the hardware platform was always relatively open. It took me many years to see this. It's not just about free software / open source. There's hardware, wire protocols, encodings, file formats, repositories, and finally code. Lots of places where a company can choose to go their own way or not. I've listed at least six places where choices can be made to choose an open standard, I'm sure you could name some more.

Focussing purely on software (like I did for many years) blinds you to all the locations where a tech company can lock down its ecosystem. Microsoft has in fact always participated in a more open ecosystem than Apple. Indeed, Apple have piggy-backed on an open hardware ecosystem. The app store on iOS and macOS are classic examples of Apple wanting to wall off its customers. Can you imagine if we could persuade Microsoft to create an open app store? that would be amazing. Microsoft were forced to document their Office file formats because of pressure from LibreOffice. The internet and the web or the vibrant places they are because of about protocols and formats.

Let's encourage PC (let's not forget the P in PC stands for personal) vendors of all stripes to abide by some kind of PC charter. I applaud what Facebook and other are doing on the server-side of the fence with open data centre specifications. Mobile will be a struggle especially with the baseband module being locked down. Let's keep the laptop/desktop market at least relatively open or all our advances in free software / open source will mean nothing if it doesn't speak to the kit we buy.

Re: surprisingly good – at least from a hardware perspective.

> Isn't Linux Open Source? Write your own drivers? Wasn't this part of the whole point with Linux that you can write what is not supplied?

@Ragarath

But it would be nice not to reverse engineer hardware specs. It'd be nice if the big tech companies with more money than they know what to do with spent some of that dosh on documenting the hardware so that Penguinistas could write drivers for the hardware *if they so wished*. Also, wouldn't it be nice to be able to write Windows drivers for Macbook / Airbook hardware and run Windows on Apple kit? Think about the big picture mate!

Re: surprisingly good – at least from a hardware perspective.

> So all that it needs now is to replace the OS with Linux then ?

Why not have it so it can run both, or either. Why is it always, "my team or no team"?

Re: surprisingly good – at least from a hardware perspective.

> Until Linux supports all the touch/pen/dial features, you would just spend a lot of money for a device you can't fully use. It looks MS understood it needs high-end hardware to sell an OS many would like to avoid...

@LDS

You may have a point. Hit the nail on the head you have, When you put this together with Apple's new function-bar-strip plus touch-id reader which undoubtedly also does not have drivers then we have the worrying trend that PC hardware which has been traditionally open(-ish) is being made more closed by two of the world's biggest tech companies. I would not be surprised if this was a deliberate tactic. It is as much about building walled gardens in the middle of the open(-ish) PC ecosystem as it is about innovation.

The people here suggesting that OEMs ought to do hardware innovation like this are speaking out of their hats. The normal way the PC hardware industry has worked for 30 years is that a standard is born, de facto or otherwise and the OEMs manufacture to those templates. Same goes for box builders and peripheral makers. I'm all for hardware innovation but do you trust every shop to bundle Linux drivers with their new innovative tech? No, didn't think so. I has taken 50 years to get a semi-open PC ecosystem. Have we forgotten the days when networking kit only worked with a particular OS? Do we want to go back to those days?

When Apple launches new shiny laptop features (tied to macOS) and Microsoft launches new shiny laptop and desktop features (tied to Windows) and Google launches new shiny phone features (tied to its flavour of Android) what we geeks need to be doing is calling them out on not creating open hardware standards. Forget about your stupid fan-boy and -girl partisanship for a while can you not? Stop Apple bashing and Microsoft bashing. It's getting really old really quickly. I can barely read the comment section here any more. We get it. You hate *insert object of hate* here. Keep it to yourself. Nobody cares.

Rant over :)

Re: Has to be said

What's this then?

http://spaceflight101.com/slides-elon-musk-unveils-spacex-mars-architecture/its-033/