On 2025-09-24, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 24/09/2025 05:05, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 21:39:59 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
(Mention RPG to a computer science weenie and watch his face turn
green...)
For good reason. The 5120 had BRADS II, sort of a RPG for Dummies that
used BASIC. It could have been worse; it could have used APL.
Role Playing Game?
:-)
Rocket-Propelled Grenade.
On 9/19/25 21:36, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-19 11:52, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
Den 18.09.2025 kl. 23.21 skrev Carlos E.R.:(radial paths) in sectors (arc sections) defined by a program.:
https://hardwarecomputerist.atariverse.com/media/pdf/datasheet/
Western%20Digital%20FD1771%20-%20Specifications.pdf
There is something weird with this PDF. Text looks fuzzy, as if the
page was scanned or photocopied. But the text is selectable and
searchable.
It's even weirder. If you select some of the text, it will change.
Here's the last part of the first section copied:
defined by a program.:
rned heade'r asshown below:
rned heade'r asshown below:
Right, I see it. Should be:
(radial paths) in sectors (arc sections) defined by a program-
med header as shown below:
So it is an OCR with the text placed in the exact location of the graphics. I knew about PDFs with OCR but never saw one. I thought it was different "files" inside the pdf.
Very nice, even if not perfect.
I guess we can not do this in Linux :-?
I'm not really following the thread, but you can add OCR to PDF files
using Linux. I use OCRmyPDF to add OCR to PDF files from my scanner.
On 2025-09-23 20:03, Frank Slootweg wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 23/09/2025 16:23, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Daniel70 <[email protected]> wrote:
Many places will accept 'documents' on a slab or mobile phone
Indeed. And many things with QR or similar codes. Boarding passes, (other) public transport, movie theaters, exhibitions, lab tests, etc., etc..
BUT, if your phone breaks (as mine did, intermittent hardware
crashes), it can be quite a problem. So for important stuff, I copy
things from my phone to my wife's and vice versa.
When flying, I print the tickets. I do not trust the phone will operate
at the other end, and some times it is true. At least till I buy a local SIM.
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 14:31:40 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
It is an engineering feat to build a nuclear power submarine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593)
It's still a tender subject in New Hampshire since the civilians were ride-alongs that had worked on it at the Kittery Naval Yard. It was
supposed to be a special treat. Then there is Christa McAuliffe. NH is suspicious of any government offers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zClEHMU8W_4--
Phil Ochs could get some could songs out of the 21st century but he
checked out early.
On 23/09/2025 21:21, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:37, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Not if it's designed to be opened up
On 23/09/2025 12:23, Daniel70 wrote:
On 23/09/2025 10:17 am, Jeff Barnett wrote:
<Snip>
Labs where I worked had a reactor that they do longer needed or
wanted. The history of getting rid of one of those things in less
than 15 (or was it 20) years was bureaucracy 100% and space
reclamation 0%. The Chief Scientist of this aerospace laboratory
was bored and looking for a hobby so said he'd give it a try. A few >>>>> years later, he succeeded! Next thing we know is folks with similar >>>>> problems were lined up at his door with job offers. He was a rock
star who made good.
Your comments interest me ...... As people here-abouts may or may
not be aware, Australia was/is in the market for new Submarines and
have settled into the AUKUS consortium along with the UK and US of A
for a project that will last well past 2050.
As I understand it, one criteria of the set-up is that when the
Submarine's Nuclear Reactor has reached End-of-Life, the Reactor
vessel will be removed and disposed of (somehow/somewhere) and a new
reactor vessel fitted into the Submarine ..... and off they go!
REALLY??
Yes, really.
Its actually easier and safer than attempting to refuel or service it.
IIRC it is not designed to be refuelled at all.
Opening up a submarine to replace the "engine" must be an engineering
feat.
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real
death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation,
and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
On 2025-09-23 00:35, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:38:16 -0600, lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-09-22 13:48, Sam Plusnet wrote:
On 21/09/2025 21:33, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-21 22:10, Sam Plusnet wrote:
On 20/09/2025 23:07, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-20 21:44, Sam Plusnet wrote:There are always alternatives.
On 19/09/2025 21:55, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-19 07:11, c186282 wrote:Who in their right mind would pay that kind of rent?
On 9/19/25 00:38, rbowman wrote:
On Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:16:18 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>
Of course I am low rent. I worked at low-paying jobs >>>>>>>>>>>> with allsorts
and
shades of skin color. Not being able to work full time or part >>>>>>>>>>>> time did
not pay any better but I did the best I could and was raised >>>>>>>>>>>> to be
rather thrifty. A tight-wad and a penny-pincher wth expensive >>>>>>>>>>>> taste for
my economic class.
I'm a college educated redneck but never developed expensive >>>>>>>>>>> tastes
thankfully and have a minimalist life style. That led to little >>>>>>>>>>> anomalies
like buying a relatively expensive computer while sleeping on a >>>>>>>>>>> mattress
on the floor. The computer was a business expense anyway. >>>>>>>>>>>
I got the AARP mag today with the glossy photos of high end >>>>>>>>>>> retirement
communities, scenic cruises, and vacations to exotic places for >>>>>>>>>>> a glimpse
into another world. I'd rather mow the lawn and scratch the >>>>>>>>>>> cat's ears
when she comes back from whatever exotic place she visits when I >>>>>>>>>>> fire up
the lawnmower.
I read 'Walden' at a formative age I guess.
Heh ... I'm kind of in a similar groove. Don't need or >>>>>>>>>> want the 'elegant lifestyle' bullshit or to hob-knob >>>>>>>>>> with the 'elites' or project 'image'.
It's WAY cheaper - keeps you in the black and well
away from the red. Also just FAR less BS.
Cruises ... well, if you crave a dose of norovirus :-) >>>>>>>>>> Besides, people might want to talk at you about
Stupid Stuff ...
Some people say that it is cheaper to live on a long cruise than >>>>>>>>> paying the rent back home.
When there is no alternative...
They could move the South Wales.
(Rents are pretty cheap - for good & sufficient reasons.)
Well... not everybody wants to emigrate.
But they are prepared to 'leave home' and live aboard a cruise ship far >>>> from anything they have known?[1]>
For instance, there are many jobs in the island of Mallorca, specially >>>>> in summer. But there is no affordable houses or rooms to be had. So
the workers sleep in tents or cars instead. They are not poor, they
have good salaries. But housing prices skyrocketed.
Youths that managed to register to their dream university have to
abandon their studies because they don't get anywhere affordable to
live while they study.
I'm sure you didn't invent the phrase, but "dream university" sounds
weird to me. If there was ever a time for rational thinking,
choosing a
university would be it.
The 'dream' is not a reference to lack of rationality, but an adjective
meaning, in effect, very desirable.
[1] A thought occurs. What happens to someone who is living on a
cruise
ship when their passport expires? Do they become stateless? Doomed to >>>> forever roam the waves without ever being able to visit dry land?
Presumably, the ship would be unable to evict them.>
Presumably the same thing that happens to a pilot flying an aircraft
when his airworthiness certificate expires. Nothing.
I think an airworthiness certificate applies to the aircraft, not the
pilot.
Indeed it does, but the aircraft does not suddenly crash.
On 2025-09-24, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 23/09/2025 21:21, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Opening up a submarine to replace the "engine" must be an engineering feat. >>Not if it's designed to be opened up
That reminds me of the "fast ferry" fiasco here in B.C. This batch
of new ferries, as it turns out, had to be red-lined in order to get
the speed that was promised - which wore out the engines in record
time. That's when it was discovered that there was no means to
easily remove the engines for servicing, so holes had to be cut
in the hull. After the provincial government's standard 100%
cost overrun building them, they were eventually pulled from
service (to the great relief of everyone who traveled on them),
and they were eventually sold for 10 cents on the dollar.
Ironically, they turned out to generate such a wake that they
had to be run slowly past the islands near each end of the trip
so that their wake wouldn't bash everything on said islands, so
the purported time savings shrank to 5 to 10 minutes on a 1:35
trip. Yawn. The only person I know of who liked them was a guy
who lived on Gabriola Island who would get out his surfboard
whenever one went by.
Pancho <[email protected]> wrote:
On 9/19/25 21:36, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-19 11:52, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
Den 18.09.2025 kl. 23.21 skrev Carlos E.R.:(radial paths) in sectors (arc sections) defined by a program.:
https://hardwarecomputerist.atariverse.com/media/pdf/datasheet/
Western%20Digital%20FD1771%20-%20Specifications.pdf
There is something weird with this PDF. Text looks fuzzy, as if the
page was scanned or photocopied. But the text is selectable and
searchable.
It's even weirder. If you select some of the text, it will change.
Here's the last part of the first section copied:
defined by a program.:
rned heade'r asshown below:
rned heade'r asshown below:
Right, I see it. Should be:
(radial paths) in sectors (arc sections) defined by a program-
med header as shown below:
So it is an OCR with the text placed in the exact location of the
graphics. I knew about PDFs with OCR but never saw one. I thought it was >>> different "files" inside the pdf.
Very nice, even if not perfect.
I guess we can not do this in Linux :-?
I'm not really following the thread, but you can add OCR to PDF files
using Linux. I use OCRmyPDF to add OCR to PDF files from my scanner.
It isn't really OCR.
PDF files, that is, real ones,
contain information to put characters in their proper places.
The characters are called by name, and converted into pixels
only for a particular rendering.
So the information is already inherent in the pdf,
it only has to be put into usable form.
Linux has nothing to do with it, pdf, based on Postscript,
is a programming language in its own right,
Nor does the person on that cruise ship suddenly cease to exist - butPresumably the same thing that happens to a pilot flying an aircraft
when his airworthiness certificate expires. Nothing.
I think an airworthiness certificate applies to the aircraft, not the
pilot.
Indeed it does, but the aircraft does not suddenly crash.
they would probably find that they cannot enter any country where the
ship enters port.
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 08:44:44 +1000, Peter Moylan wrote:
The advantage of having lots of books is that there are always some I
haven't read for a long time.
I read 'Robur the Conqueror' a while back but I'd never read it. It was written in 1886, 'Five Weeks in a Balloon' from 1863 was one of Verne's earliest but he seems to have lost interest in balloons. Robur makes fools
of members of a balloon club with his heavier-than-air invention.
__. ___ ___ _..
. _. ___ .._ __. ....
On 9/24/25 01:06, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-09-23, lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:00, Sam Plusnet wrote:
On 23/09/2025 05:06, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 21:17:47 +0100, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
Straying from the subject, I’m sure Iceland would take anyone off a >>>>>> cruise ship with good Icelandic and a plausible facial bone
structure if
that person asserted his or her Icelandic passport had been lost or >>>>>> stolen.
I'll have to brush up on my Old Norse.
Are you any good at Norse Code?
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
__. ___ ___ _..
. _. ___ .._ __. ....
I agree about the "translator" sites. Tried
to use them more than once. Horrible interface,
horrible results.
On 2025-09-23 17:08, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 00:34, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:00, Sam Plusnet wrote:
On 23/09/2025 05:06, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 21:17:47 +0100, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
Straying from the subject, I’m sure Iceland would take anyone off a >>>>>> cruise ship with good Icelandic and a plausible facial bone
structure if
that person asserted his or her Icelandic passport had been lost or >>>>>> stolen.
I'll have to brush up on my Old Norse.
Are you any good at Norse Code?
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
Interestingly, automated translators fail at this.
?
The only difference between what I posted and the output from these
three sites are the '/' to delineate words, where I uses a newline.
https://morsecode.world/international/translator.html
https://morsecodetranslator.com/
https://dnschecker.org/morse-code-translator.php
All three of them correctly translated "I am not".
Den 24.09.2025 kl. 22.19 skrev Sam Plusnet:
Nor does the person on that cruise ship suddenly cease to exist - butPresumably the same thing that happens to a pilot flying an aircraft >>>> when his airworthiness certificate expires. Nothing.
I think an airworthiness certificate applies to the aircraft, not the
pilot.
Indeed it does, but the aircraft does not suddenly crash.
they would probably find that they cannot enter any country where the
ship enters port.
Except perhaps the free area[1], but the ship probably doesn't dock there.
[1] What is it called in English? It's the area where goods can be
stored for continued transport without customs being involved.
I take SciFi as following science rules. If a law is broken, it has
to be explained how. Usually some law is broken, like having
superluminal speed crafts, but is an assumption they make.
But well, Verne was not yet SciFi, was maybe the best precursor.
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real
death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation,
and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western"
industry.
On 2025-09-24 02:28, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 23/09/2025 21:21, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:37, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Not if it's designed to be opened up
On 23/09/2025 12:23, Daniel70 wrote:
On 23/09/2025 10:17 am, Jeff Barnett wrote:
<Snip>
Labs where I worked had a reactor that they do longer needed or
wanted. The history of getting rid of one of those things in less >>>>>> than 15 (or was it 20) years was bureaucracy 100% and space
reclamation 0%. The Chief Scientist of this aerospace laboratory
was bored and looking for a hobby so said he'd give it a try. A
few years later, he succeeded! Next thing we know is folks with
similar problems were lined up at his door with job offers. He was >>>>>> a rock star who made good.
Your comments interest me ...... As people here-abouts may or may
not be aware, Australia was/is in the market for new Submarines and >>>>> have settled into the AUKUS consortium along with the UK and US of
A for a project that will last well past 2050.
As I understand it, one criteria of the set-up is that when the
Submarine's Nuclear Reactor has reached End-of-Life, the Reactor
vessel will be removed and disposed of (somehow/somewhere) and a
new reactor vessel fitted into the Submarine ..... and off they go!
REALLY??
Yes, really.
Its actually easier and safer than attempting to refuel or service it. >>>>
IIRC it is not designed to be refuelled at all.
Opening up a submarine to replace the "engine" must be an engineering
feat.
How?
A huge "door" with many bolts?
I highly suspect the Spanish S81 and S82 will be opened at the major
review operation in some years time to install the AIP instead of the
diesel it has now.
DeepL fails to translate the Spanish wording. Chatgpt says it is "Great Careening"
In article <10b1l7m$3th1u$[email protected]>,
Bertel Lund Hansen <[email protected]> wrote:
Den 24.09.2025 kl. 22.19 skrev Sam Plusnet:
Nor does the person on that cruise ship suddenly cease to exist - butPresumably the same thing that happens to a pilot flying an aircraft >>>>>> when his airworthiness certificate expires. Nothing.
I think an airworthiness certificate applies to the aircraft, not the >>>>> pilot.
Indeed it does, but the aircraft does not suddenly crash.
they would probably find that they cannot enter any country where the
ship enters port.
Except perhaps the free area[1], but the ship probably doesn't dock there.
[1] What is it called in English? It's the area where goods can be
stored for continued transport without customs being involved.
"Free Port"
Msjor Drydock work! Careening was done in the days of woodenships and
iron men. It involved getting the ship up on the beach to scrape off
the barnacle and repair any damage.
_That_ was it. I thought I saw high numbers in California somewhere.
You're right, it was the exit ramp numbers.
From the science fiction point of view 'Five Weeks in a Balloon' is a disaster.
Bless him, he was no scientist (if we take the example of "20,000
Leagues," he doesn't seem to understand that electric power systems
require a power source other than "um, electricity?" and the less said
about geology and volcanology in "Journey to the Center of the Earth"
the better,) and suffered from the common 19th-century weediness of
prose (although that may be in part a fault of his translators; I yield
to Francophones on that point.)
On 2025-09-23 23:06, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
__. ___ ___ _..
. _. ___ .._ __. ....
.. / .- -.. -- .. - / ..
.-.. --- --- -.- . -.. / .. - / ..- .--.
The only letters I ever remember are
S and O because they are part of SOS
V because of Beethoven
On 2025-09-23 00:35, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:38:16 -0600, lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-09-22 13:48, Sam Plusnet wrote:
[1] A thought occurs. What happens to someone who is living on a
cruise
ship when their passport expires? Do they become stateless? Doomed to >>>> forever roam the waves without ever being able to visit dry land?
Presumably, the ship would be unable to evict them.>
Presumably the same thing that happens to a pilot flying an aircraft
when his airworthiness certificate expires. Nothing.
I think an airworthiness certificate applies to the aircraft, not the
pilot.
Indeed it does, but the aircraft does not suddenly crash.
The Europeans came and disrupted the native Americans who
with a Confederation of Tribes had invented a parliment and executive
body. Which is where Franklin got some of his ideas to the best of my recollection.
On 24/09/2025 17:53, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-09-24, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:Ah. Every programmer needs one of those...
On 24/09/2025 05:05, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 21:39:59 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
(Mention RPG to a computer science weenie and watch his face turn
green...)
For good reason. The 5120 had BRADS II, sort of a RPG for Dummies
that used BASIC. It could have been worse; it could have used APL.
Role Playing Game?
:-)
Rocket-Propelled Grenade.
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:57:25 +0200
"Carlos E.R." <[email protected]d> wrote:
I take SciFi as following science rules. If a law is broken, it has
to be explained how. Usually some law is broken, like having
superluminal speed crafts, but is an assumption they make.
But well, Verne was not yet SciFi, was maybe the best precursor.
Bless him, he was no scientist (if we take the example of "20,000
Leagues," he doesn't seem to understand that electric power systems
require a power source other than "um, electricity?" and the less said
about geology and volcanology in "Journey to the Center of the Earth"
the better,) and suffered from the common 19th-century weediness of
prose (although that may be in part a fault of his translators; I yield
to Francophones on that point.)
But by *God* was he a terrific "ideas man." It's hard to name a story
of his that doesn't at least catch the imagination with a "hey,
*that's* a cool notion" premise, however it works out in the execution.
On 25/09/25 07:02, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 23:06, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
__. ___ ___ _..
. _. ___ .._ __. ....
.. / .- -.. -- .. - / ..
.-.. --- --- -.- . -.. / .. - / ..- .--.
The only letters I ever remember are
S and O because they are part of SOS
V because of Beethoven
I learnt Morse in my late teens because I wanted to get an amateur radio >licence. Unfortunately I never managed to get up to the required speed.
Over time other interests took over, and I stopped practicing Morse. As
a result, I can recognise about half the alphabet immediately, but have >forgotten the codes for the less common letters.
This discussion brings to mind an old strip from "The Wizard of Id". A
witch was flying on her broomstick, when without warning she crashed to
the ground. A bystander ran over and asked "What happened?". "The
warranty ran out", she said.
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 21:40:36 -0400
c186282 <[email protected]> wrote:
Who stole substantial portions from the Previous Owners at
spear-point, who stole substantial portions from the Previous Owners
at spear-point, who ... regress 35,000 years ... conquests,
genocides, slavery ..........
Why is only 'western culture' blamed for conquests ???
While I am more than anything just exasperated with the *endless* OT >political/Great Culture War spam flooding this newsgroup of late,* I
have to take a moment to boggle at this "WELL THEY DID IT FIRST!!!"
nonsense. Get outta here with that, you wouldn't even buy that excuse
from bickering kindergartners.
* (Who would've guessed that turning off the Google Groups firehose--
would actually *not* lead to an improvement in poster quality!?)
On 2025-09-24 05:54, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 17:08, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 00:34, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:00, Sam Plusnet wrote:
On 23/09/2025 05:06, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 21:17:47 +0100, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
Straying from the subject, I’m sure Iceland would take anyone off a >>>>>>> cruise ship with good Icelandic and a plausible facial bone
structure if
that person asserted his or her Icelandic passport had been lost or >>>>>>> stolen.
I'll have to brush up on my Old Norse.
Are you any good at Norse Code?
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
Interestingly, automated translators fail at this.
?
The only difference between what I posted and the output from these
three sites are the '/' to delineate words, where I uses a newline.
https://morsecode.world/international/translator.html
https://morsecodetranslator.com/
https://dnschecker.org/morse-code-translator.php
All three of them correctly translated "I am not".
Letters to morse, yes. The reverse, none. If it works for you, I'd like
to see a photo, so that I learn how to do it.
On 2025-09-24 15:23, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 05:54, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 17:08, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 00:34, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:00, Sam Plusnet wrote:
On 23/09/2025 05:06, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 21:17:47 +0100, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
Straying from the subject, I’m sure Iceland would take anyone off a >>>>>>>> cruise ship with good Icelandic and a plausible facial bone
structure if
that person asserted his or her Icelandic passport had been lost or >>>>>>>> stolen.
I'll have to brush up on my Old Norse.
Are you any good at Norse Code?
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
Interestingly, automated translators fail at this.
?
The only difference between what I posted and the output from these
three sites are the '/' to delineate words, where I uses a newline.
https://morsecode.world/international/translator.html
https://morsecodetranslator.com/
https://dnschecker.org/morse-code-translator.php
All three of them correctly translated "I am not".
Letters to morse, yes. The reverse, none. If it works for you, I'd
like to see a photo, so that I learn how to do it.
Copy and paste the morse code below into https://morsecode.world/international/translator.html
--. --- --- -.. / . -. --- ..- --. .... ..--..
It translates to "GOOD ENOUGH?"
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 16:46:22 -0600, lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-09-23 00:35, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:38:16 -0600, lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-09-22 13:48, Sam Plusnet wrote:
On 21/09/2025 21:33, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-21 22:10, Sam Plusnet wrote:
On 20/09/2025 23:07, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-20 21:44, Sam Plusnet wrote:There are always alternatives.
On 19/09/2025 21:55, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-19 07:11, c186282 wrote:Who in their right mind would pay that kind of rent?
On 9/19/25 00:38, rbowman wrote:
On Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:16:18 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>>
Of course I am low rent. I worked at low-paying jobs with allsorts
and
shades of skin color. Not being able to work full time or part >>>>>>>>>>>>> time did
not pay any better but I did the best I could and was raised to be
rather thrifty. A tight-wad and a penny-pincher wth expensive >>>>>>>>>>>>> taste for
my economic class.
I'm a college educated redneck but never developed expensive tastes
thankfully and have a minimalist life style. That led to little >>>>>>>>>>>> anomalies
like buying a relatively expensive computer while sleeping on a >>>>>>>>>>>> mattress
on the floor. The computer was a business expense anyway. >>>>>>>>>>>>
I got the AARP mag today with the glossy photos of high end >>>>>>>>>>>> retirement
communities, scenic cruises, and vacations to exotic places for >>>>>>>>>>>> a glimpse
into another world. I'd rather mow the lawn and scratch the >>>>>>>>>>>> cat's ears
when she comes back from whatever exotic place she visits when I >>>>>>>>>>>> fire up
the lawnmower.
I read 'Walden' at a formative age I guess.
Heh ... I'm kind of in a similar groove. Don't need or >>>>>>>>>>> want the 'elegant lifestyle' bullshit or to hob-knob >>>>>>>>>>> with the 'elites' or project 'image'.
It's WAY cheaper - keeps you in the black and well >>>>>>>>>>> away from the red. Also just FAR less BS.
Cruises ... well, if you crave a dose of norovirus :-) >>>>>>>>>>> Besides, people might want to talk at you about
Stupid Stuff ...
Some people say that it is cheaper to live on a long cruise than >>>>>>>>>> paying the rent back home.
When there is no alternative...
They could move the South Wales.
(Rents are pretty cheap - for good & sufficient reasons.)
Well... not everybody wants to emigrate.
But they are prepared to 'leave home' and live aboard a cruise ship far >>>>> from anything they have known?[1]>
For instance, there are many jobs in the island of Mallorca, specially >>>>>> in summer. But there is no affordable houses or rooms to be had. So >>>>>> the workers sleep in tents or cars instead. They are not poor, they >>>>>> have good salaries. But housing prices skyrocketed.
Youths that managed to register to their dream university have to
abandon their studies because they don't get anywhere affordable to >>>>>> live while they study.
I'm sure you didn't invent the phrase, but "dream university" sounds >>>>> weird to me. If there was ever a time for rational thinking, choosing a >>>>> university would be it.
The 'dream' is not a reference to lack of rationality, but an adjective >>>> meaning, in effect, very desirable.
[1] A thought occurs. What happens to someone who is living on a cruise >>>>> ship when their passport expires? Do they become stateless? Doomed to >>>>> forever roam the waves without ever being able to visit dry land?
Presumably, the ship would be unable to evict them.>
Presumably the same thing that happens to a pilot flying an aircraft
when his airworthiness certificate expires. Nothing.
I think an airworthiness certificate applies to the aircraft, not the
pilot.
Indeed it does, but the aircraft does not suddenly crash.
No, but the authorities might not allow it to take off, just as they
might not allow a passenger without a passport to leave the ship,
though in that case the passenger might not want to, since they regard
the ship as their permanent home.
I learnt Morse in my late teens because I wanted to get an amateur radio licence. Unfortunately I never managed to get up to the required speed.
Over time other interests took over, and I stopped practicing Morse. As
a result, I can recognise about half the alphabet immediately, but have forgotten the codes for the less common letters.
Looking at the symbols here, some of my old clues for particular letters
came to mind. A tougher message would have beat me.
I'm pretty sure I never tested to see how many wpm I could achieve.
Oh, I only ever dealt with written code. I don't remember ever testing
with sounds, other than someone saying dit and dah.
On 9/24/25 01:06, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-09-23, lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:00, Sam Plusnet wrote:
On 23/09/2025 05:06, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 21:17:47 +0100, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
Straying from the subject, I’m sure Iceland would take anyone off a >>>>>> cruise ship with good Icelandic and a plausible facial bone structure if >>>>>> that person asserted his or her Icelandic passport had been lost or >>>>>> stolen.
I'll have to brush up on my Old Norse.
Are you any good at Norse Code?
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
__. ___ ___ _..
. _. ___ .._ __. ....
I agree about the "translator" sites. Tried
to use them more than once. Horrible interface,
horrible results.
I could just go to the airport, fire up the plane, tell the tower I was
ready to go. They would give me clearance to taxi to a runway, where I
would tell them I was ready for takeoff, and when safe, they'd clear me.
I would definitely not take off if my plane's CofA had expired, as it
would very be bad to get caught.
This discussion brings to mind an old strip from "The Wizard of Id". A
witch was flying on her broomstick, when without warning she crashed to
the ground. A bystander ran over and asked "What happened?". "The
warranty ran out", she said.
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:02:15 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 25/09/25 07:02, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 23:06, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
__. ___ ___ _..
. _. ___ .._ __. ....
.. / .- -.. -- .. - / ..
.-.. --- --- -.- . -.. / .. - / ..- .--.
The only letters I ever remember are
S and O because they are part of SOS
V because of Beethoven
I learnt Morse in my late teens because I wanted to get an amateur radio >licence. Unfortunately I never managed to get up to the required speed. >Over time other interests took over, and I stopped practicing Morse. As
a result, I can recognise about half the alphabet immediately, but have >forgotten the codes for the less common letters.
I made out the message above, but I was helped by context.
I don't remember any strong ambitions to get an amateur radio
license. The best I recall, there must have been a Merit Badge
in the Boy Scouts that rewarded knowledge of the Morse Code.
Looking at the symbols here, some of my old clues for particular
letters came to mind. A tougher message would have beat me.
I'm pretty sure I never tested to see how many wpm I could achieve.
Oh, I only ever dealt with written code. I don't remember ever
testing with sounds, other than someone saying dit and dah.
--
Rich Ulrich
Pancho <[email protected]> wrote:
On 9/19/25 21:36, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-19 11:52, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
Den 18.09.2025 kl. 23.21 skrev Carlos E.R.:(radial paths) in sectors (arc sections) defined by a program.:
https://hardwarecomputerist.atariverse.com/media/pdf/datasheet/
Western%20Digital%20FD1771%20-%20Specifications.pdf
There is something weird with this PDF. Text looks fuzzy, as if the
page was scanned or photocopied. But the text is selectable and
searchable.
It's even weirder. If you select some of the text, it will change.
Here's the last part of the first section copied:
defined by a program.:
rned heade'r asshown below:
rned heade'r asshown below:
Right, I see it. Should be:
(radial paths) in sectors (arc sections) defined by a program-
med header as shown below:
So it is an OCR with the text placed in the exact location of the
graphics. I knew about PDFs with OCR but never saw one. I thought it was >>> different "files" inside the pdf.
Very nice, even if not perfect.
I guess we can not do this in Linux :-?
I'm not really following the thread, but you can add OCR to PDF files
using Linux. I use OCRmyPDF to add OCR to PDF files from my scanner.
It isn't really OCR.
PDF files, that is, real ones,
contain information to put characters in their proper places.
The characters are called by name, and converted into pixels
only for a particular rendering.
So the information is already inherent in the pdf,
it only has to be put into usable form.
Linux has nothing to do with it, pdf, based on Postscript,
is a programming language in its own right,
Jan
Pancho <[email protected]> wrote:
On 9/19/25 21:36, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-19 11:52, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
Den 18.09.2025 kl. 23.21 skrev Carlos E.R.:(radial paths) in sectors (arc sections) defined by a program.:
https://hardwarecomputerist.atariverse.com/media/pdf/datasheet/
Western%20Digital%20FD1771%20-%20Specifications.pdf
There is something weird with this PDF. Text looks fuzzy, as if the
page was scanned or photocopied. But the text is selectable and
searchable.
It's even weirder. If you select some of the text, it will change.
Here's the last part of the first section copied:
defined by a program.:
rned heade'r asshown below:
rned heade'r asshown below:
Right, I see it. Should be:
(radial paths) in sectors (arc sections) defined by a program-
med header as shown below:
So it is an OCR with the text placed in the exact location of the
graphics. I knew about PDFs with OCR but never saw one. I thought it was >>> different "files" inside the pdf.
Very nice, even if not perfect.
I guess we can not do this in Linux :-?
I'm not really following the thread, but you can add OCR to PDF files
using Linux. I use OCRmyPDF to add OCR to PDF files from my scanner.
It isn't really OCR.
PDF files, that is, real ones,
contain information to put characters in their proper places.
On 2025-09-24 02:28, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 23/09/2025 21:21, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:37, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Not if it's designed to be opened up
On 23/09/2025 12:23, Daniel70 wrote:
On 23/09/2025 10:17 am, Jeff Barnett wrote:
<Snip>
Labs where I worked had a reactor that they do longer needed or
wanted. The history of getting rid of one of those things in less >>>>>> than 15 (or was it 20) years was bureaucracy 100% and space
reclamation 0%. The Chief Scientist of this aerospace laboratory
was bored and looking for a hobby so said he'd give it a try. A
few years later, he succeeded! Next thing we know is folks with
similar problems were lined up at his door with job offers. He was >>>>>> a rock star who made good.
Your comments interest me ...... As people here-abouts may or may
not be aware, Australia was/is in the market for new Submarines and >>>>> have settled into the AUKUS consortium along with the UK and US of
A for a project that will last well past 2050.
As I understand it, one criteria of the set-up is that when the
Submarine's Nuclear Reactor has reached End-of-Life, the Reactor
vessel will be removed and disposed of (somehow/somewhere) and a
new reactor vessel fitted into the Submarine ..... and off they go!
REALLY??
Yes, really.
Its actually easier and safer than attempting to refuel or service it. >>>>
IIRC it is not designed to be refuelled at all.
Opening up a submarine to replace the "engine" must be an engineering
feat.
How?
A huge "door" with many bolts?
I highly suspect the Spanish S81 and S82 will be opened at the major
review operation in some years time to install the AIP instead of the
diesel it has now.
DeepL fails to translate the Spanish wording. Chatgpt says it is "Great Careening"
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real
death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation,
and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western"
industry.
I think TNP is also saddling SMRs with the millstone of a 60 yearYou have no idea how investment works.
expected lifespan. Investors don't like this because there is huge
risk some cheaper energy will take away expected profits in the long
term future. Some of the SMR designers are looking at much shorter
expected lifespans, as low as 5 years. If they can get this to work
economically it is more appealing in that it reduces long term
financial risk and the short lifecycle will allow for much more
rapid innovation.
Once built the running costs of a nuclear power station is
insignificant. ALL the cashflow goes to servicing the debt, and the
longer it operates the cheaper it can generate electricity once the debt
is repaid. Contrariwise the longer it takes to build the more the debt
piles up because its generating no revenue.
This is exactly how regulatory ratcheting is used to destroy the
investment value, that and forcing premature cloisure as happened in
Germany. Where the government was successfully sued for breach of contract.
What you have stated is exactly the reverse : Nuclear is highly
attractive to investors like pension funds swinging huge piles of cash
and looking for a steady 7.5% return over 60 years or more.
Their only worry is risk. Not of cheaper technology coming along, but
that *government will change the rules and force closure*.
On 9/24/25 13:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real
death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>> and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima
disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western"
industry.
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened before.
And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back. The siting o Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can say about that.
[1] What is it called in English? It's the area where goods can be
stored for continued transport without customs being involved.
But well, Verne was not yet SciFi, was maybe the best precursor.
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 09:37:06 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
The Europeans came and disrupted the native Americans who
with a Confederation of Tribes had invented a parliment and executive
body. Which is where Franklin got some of his ideas to the best of my
recollection.
That's the propaganda and is a very romantic view of the Iroquois Confederacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Wars
The French and Indian War was a continuation with the Iroquois on the
British side.
Of course I am what is called in Canada, a private pilot. An airline
pilot does not have to worry about the CofA. He is assigned to a flight,
and away he goes.
The problem I'm referring to is technological advance. In a reasonable world, we would expect future breakthroughs in technology to make electricity cheaper. Maybe Fusion, maybe SMRs (like Copenhagen Atomics).
In 60 years, it is likely something will turn up. I know you agree with
me, that electricity could be generated cheaper.
So that is the problem for any finance based upon future cashflows from
the sale of electricity decades in the future. The amount you can sell electricity for will likely decrease. The longer in the future, the more likely cheaper alternatives will appear.
It is only now that we see that politicians have made such a pig's ear
of generation that you see big companies, ai data centres, getting
scared. They know if the governments continue to mess it up, the first people to suffer from rationing will be ai data centres.
On 25/09/2025 05:41, lar3ryca wrote:
Of course I am what is called in Canada, a private pilot. An
airline pilot does not have to worry about the CofA. He is assigned
to a flight, and away he goes.
Actually, I don't think he does.
He cannot fly a plane that does not meet safety criteria without
risking his licence. He is required to view the maintenance log for
any outstanding issues, and physically inspect the plane, and is
fully within his rights to refuse to fly it if it does not meet
safety criteria.
I remember being held for 45 minutes while a mechanic was called in
to replace a blown bulb in a panel of warning lights...
On 2025-09-24 04:20, rbowman wrote:. . .
. . .written in 1886, 'Five Weeks in a Balloon' from 1863 was one of Verne's
the globe. Ok... but that is against the principle that energy can not
be created nor destroyed, only transformed. He can get the same effect
On 9/24/25 13:02, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 02:28, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 23/09/2025 21:21, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:37, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Not if it's designed to be opened up
On 23/09/2025 12:23, Daniel70 wrote:
On 23/09/2025 10:17 am, Jeff Barnett wrote:
<Snip>
As I understand it, one criteria of the set-up is that when the
Submarine's Nuclear Reactor has reached End-of-Life, the Reactor
vessel will be removed and disposed of (somehow/somewhere) and a
new reactor vessel fitted into the Submarine ..... and off they go! >>>>>>
REALLY??
Yes, really.
Its actually easier and safer than attempting to refuel or service it. >>>>>
IIRC it is not designed to be refuelled at all.
Opening up a submarine to replace the "engine" must be an
engineering feat.
How?
A huge "door" with many bolts?
A welded shut hatch big enough to take out the system to be removed.>
I highly suspect the Spanish S81 and S82 will be opened at the major
review operation in some years time to install the AIP instead of the
diesel it has now.
DeepL fails to translate the Spanish wording. Chatgpt says it is
"Great Careening"
Msjor Drydock work! Careening was done in the days of wooden ships
and iron men.
It involved getting the ship up on the beach to
scrape off the barnacle and repair any damage. It involved
lightening the ship by removing weapons and stores. Getting it up on
the Beach then doing the work. Then back to water and reload
everything previously removed if the stores had survived the work.
This was done by explorers and pirates. Military ships would go
into dry dock for the same work. I dunno if merchant ships went to
dry dock.
On 24/09/2025 23:20, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Well exactly. You have *no idea* about the issues *at all*.
On 9/24/25 13:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real >>>>> death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>>> and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima
disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western"
industry.
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened before.
And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back. The siting o
Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can say about that.
In fact the reactor survived the tsunami and the earthquake.
Just not the flooding.
Hundreds of square miles of Japan were devastated by that event. 20,000 people were killed . The only flaw in the reactor was that the emergency diesel generators were flooded.
Nevertheless the last safety containment worked, and the reactor melted
down fully contained except a little hydrogen *which regulations would
not let the operators vent*.
So ultimately it vented itself with a bang.
Fukushima is a tribute to the incredible safety of even a reactor built
in the 1960s.
Just as Chernobyl was a wake up call to actually how much radiation
could escape with so little long term effects.
SMRs are of course designed without the need for cooling pumps when shut down so cannot do what Fukushima did
Statistically nuclear power is the safest power generating industry
there is. In terms of deaths and injuries per unit electricity generated.
And yet the public perception is that it's extremely dangerous.
I wonder why that is?
Cui Bono?
On 24/09/2025 21:02, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 02:28, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Well of course. Many of them.
On 23/09/2025 21:21, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:37, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Not if it's designed to be opened up
On 23/09/2025 12:23, Daniel70 wrote:
On 23/09/2025 10:17 am, Jeff Barnett wrote:
<Snip>
Labs where I worked had a reactor that they do longer needed or >>>>>>> wanted. The history of getting rid of one of those things in less >>>>>>> than 15 (or was it 20) years was bureaucracy 100% and space
reclamation 0%. The Chief Scientist of this aerospace laboratory >>>>>>> was bored and looking for a hobby so said he'd give it a try. A >>>>>>> few years later, he succeeded! Next thing we know is folks with >>>>>>> similar problems were lined up at his door with job offers. He
was a rock star who made good.
Your comments interest me ...... As people here-abouts may or may >>>>>> not be aware, Australia was/is in the market for new Submarines
and have settled into the AUKUS consortium along with the UK and
US of A for a project that will last well past 2050.
As I understand it, one criteria of the set-up is that when the
Submarine's Nuclear Reactor has reached End-of-Life, the Reactor
vessel will be removed and disposed of (somehow/somewhere) and a
new reactor vessel fitted into the Submarine ..... and off they go! >>>>>>
REALLY??
Yes, really.
Its actually easier and safer than attempting to refuel or service it. >>>>>
IIRC it is not designed to be refuelled at all.
Opening up a submarine to replace the "engine" must be an
engineering feat.
How?
A huge "door" with many bolts?
Water pressure will hold the doors in place once closed
How do the people get inside? How do the missiles get inside? Or the Torpedoes? Or the food and water?
A reactor is not that big. No space in a sub anyway.
I highly suspect the Spanish S81 and S82 will be opened at the majorCareening is a process of hauling a ship out of the water to make repairs.
review operation in some years time to install the AIP instead of the
diesel it has now.
DeepL fails to translate the Spanish wording. Chatgpt says it is
"Great Careening"
Today we would probably say 'dry dock'
On 9/24/25 13:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real
death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>> and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima
disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western"
industry.
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened before.
And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back. The siting o Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can say about that.
On 24/09/2025 21:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real
death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>> and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima
disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western"
industry.
The tsunami killed 20,000 people
No one died at the nuclear plant.
The safety systems all performed as designed.
There was no disaster.
It was a very old design of reactor indeed
It simply had not been designed for a once in a thousand years tsunami.
Now nuclear plants are.
But the main thing was that the press made the nuclear meltdown a
'disaster' and completely ignored the fact that far far more death and destruction had been caused by the tsunami itself. The nuclear incident
was a mere footnote.
More clear evidence of anti-nuclear propaganda, is hard to find.
And really, how many people today keep upSome of us try....
with major shifts in physics after they finish school, like
even having a clue about what Bell's Inequalities are?
On 2025-09-25 00:20, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 9/24/25 13:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real >>>>> death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>>> and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima
disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western"
industry.
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened before.
And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back. The siting o
Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can say about that.
And they did not know that when designing? They could not have designed
the diesel generators to be raised on platforms about what could be the water level?
The fact is, it was a disaster. We can not trust a new reactor anywhere
to be safe.
It it an interesting paradox. People decided that Nuclear power plants were bad, but everyone now has to have computers that require terabytes
of storage. Terabytes of storage require terawatts of energy. To get
the terawatts of energy, the people who provide those terabytes of
storage are turning nuclear power plants to provide those terawatts of energy. So it is coming to the point where to have terabytes of
storage, they will have to accept nuclear plants or give up the computer.
On 9/24/25 19:43, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Pancho <[email protected]> wrote:
On 9/19/25 21:36, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-19 11:52, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
Den 18.09.2025 kl. 23.21 skrev Carlos E.R.:(radial paths) in sectors (arc sections) defined by a program.:
https://hardwarecomputerist.atariverse.com/media/pdf/datasheet/
Western%20Digital%20FD1771%20-%20Specifications.pdf
There is something weird with this PDF. Text looks fuzzy, as if the >>>>>> page was scanned or photocopied. But the text is selectable and
searchable.
It's even weirder. If you select some of the text, it will change.
Here's the last part of the first section copied:
defined by a program.:
rned heade'r asshown below:
rned heade'r asshown below:
Right, I see it. Should be:
(radial paths) in sectors (arc sections) defined by a program-
med header as shown below:
So it is an OCR with the text placed in the exact location of the
graphics. I knew about PDFs with OCR but never saw one. I thought it
was
different "files" inside the pdf.
Very nice, even if not perfect.
I guess we can not do this in Linux :-?
I'm not really following the thread, but you can add OCR to PDF files
using Linux. I use OCRmyPDF to add OCR to PDF files from my scanner.
It isn't really OCR.
PDF files, that is, real ones,
contain information to put characters in their proper places.
The characters are called by name, and converted into pixels
only for a particular rendering.
So the information is already inherent in the pdf,
it only has to be put into usable form.
Linux has nothing to do with it, pdf, based on Postscript,
is a programming language in its own right,
PDF files can be constructed from text, as you described, but they can
also be constructed from images, jpeg, tiff, etc.
When I scan documents, it creates tiff or PDF files, there is no OCR,
the files are effectively images, pictures. The problem is that you
can't perform a text search on these scanned documents.
OCR can take these document pictures and create a text file from them.
The way this is implemented in PDF OCR is that the original picture file
is kept, and a new text file is added to it. Each word in the text file
is then mapped to the coordinate position of the word in the image file
it was created from. Hence, it appears to the user as if the image of a
word is mapped to the text version of the word. The positioning isn't perfect, like you would see with a genuine text document, but it is good enough to use.
As I said, OCRmyPDF works on Linux <https://github.com/ocrmypdf/
OCRmyPDF>. In Debian (or PI OS) it can be installed via apt. I've used
it for years. My scanner writes scans to a network folder. A docker
service runs on a PI4 watching the folders. When it sees a new file it applies OCRmyPDF to it to create a searchable PDF file which it moves to another folder.
This process isn't perfect, occasionally OCRmyPDF crashes, but it is
pretty good. Most of the problems I had, were to do with watching the folder, and proper document flow, organising proper states etc. But that
is due to not having the time to devote to setting it up robustly,
rather than a problem with OCRmyPDF.
On 25/09/2025 10:10, Pancho wrote:
The problem I'm referring to is technological advance. In a reasonableI guess that is why 50 year old reactors in the UK are now the cheapest generators on the grid
world, we would expect future breakthroughs in technology to make
electricity cheaper. Maybe Fusion, maybe SMRs (like Copenhagen
Atomics). In 60 years, it is likely something will turn up. I know you
agree with me, that electricity could be generated cheaper.
So that is the problem for any finance based upon future cashflows
from the sale of electricity decades in the future. The amount you can
sell electricity for will likely decrease. The longer in the future,
the more likely cheaper alternatives will appear.
In fact under renewable energy and the advent of tight oil the price of electricity has steadily *increased*.
And you have completely ignored the issue of potential refinancing if
e.g. bond rates go down.
The cost of running a reactor is *absolutely dominated* by the cost of
the capital you borrowed to build it.
No other structure of comparable complexity is going to cost less.
The only way to get costs down is by reducing regulatory overburden back
to the levels of the 1960s and 1970s
You simply do not understand the detail of the cost of a nuclear power station.
It costs next to nothing to run. Only a small amount to maintain.
ALL its costs are the costs of the capital used to build it (and
ultimately to decommission it, but that's far less).
Ergo if its designed to have paid for itself after - say - 50 years and
it does another ten years after that, it can afford to sell its
electricity for the cost of the fuel and maintenance, which is so low
that NOTHING can compete with it
Which is why it's the last thing to be taken off the UK grid., Any
income at all is profit.
Nothing can compete with a paid for nuclear reactor on electricity price.
And golly. They want reactors.
It is only now that we see that politicians have made such a pig's ear
of generation that you see big companies, ai data centres, getting
scared. They know if the governments continue to mess it up, the first
people to suffer from rationing will be ai data centres.
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:57:25 +0200
"Carlos E.R." <[email protected]d> wrote:
I take SciFi as following science rules. If a law is broken, it has
to be explained how. Usually some law is broken, like having
superluminal speed crafts, but is an assumption they make.
But well, Verne was not yet SciFi, was maybe the best precursor.
Bless him, he was no scientist (if we take the example of "20,000
Leagues," he doesn't seem to understand that electric power systems
require a power source other than "um, electricity?"
and the less said
about geology and volcanology in "Journey to the Center of the Earth"
the better,) and suffered from the common 19th-century weediness of
prose (although that may be in part a fault of his translators; I yield
to Francophones on that point.)
But by *God* was he a terrific "ideas man." It's hard to name a story
of his that doesn't at least catch the imagination with a "hey,
*that's* a cool notion" premise, however it works out in the execution.
On 2025-09-25 10:53, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 24/09/2025 21:02, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 02:28, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Well of course. Many of them.
On 23/09/2025 21:21, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:37, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Not if it's designed to be opened up
On 23/09/2025 12:23, Daniel70 wrote:
On 23/09/2025 10:17 am, Jeff Barnett wrote:
<Snip>
Labs where I worked had a reactor that they do longer
needed or wanted. The history of getting rid of one of
those things in less than 15 (or was it 20) years was
bureaucracy 100% and space reclamation 0%. The Chief
Scientist of this aerospace laboratory was bored and
looking for a hobby so said he'd give it a try. A few
years later, he succeeded! Next thing we know is folks
with similar problems were lined up at his door with
job offers. He was a rock star who made good.
Your comments interest me ...... As people here-abouts
may or may not be aware, Australia was/is in the market
for new Submarines and have settled into the AUKUS
consortium along with the UK and US of A for a project
that will last well past 2050.
As I understand it, one criteria of the set-up is that
when the Submarine's Nuclear Reactor has reached
End-of-Life, the Reactor vessel will be removed and
disposed of (somehow/somewhere) and a new reactor vessel
fitted into the Submarine ..... and off they go!
REALLY??
Yes, really.
Its actually easier and safer than attempting to refuel or
service it.
IIRC it is not designed to be refuelled at all.
Opening up a submarine to replace the "engine" must be an
engineering feat.
How?
A huge "door" with many bolts?
Water pressure will hold the doors in place once closed
How do the people get inside? How do the missiles get inside? Or
the Torpedoes? Or the food and water?
Certainly, but those hatches are small.
A reactor is not that big. No space in a sub anyway.
It is way bigger than a man.
Today we would probably say 'dry dock'
Yes, certainly it is in a dry dock, but the Spanish name actually
used at the ship yards and all news I read is "la gran carena", thus
the translation I found.
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 14:30:04 -0700, John Ames wrote:
Bless him, he was no scientist (if we take the example of "20,000
Leagues," he doesn't seem to understand that electric power systems
require a power source other than "um, electricity?" and the less said
about geology and volcanology in "Journey to the Center of the Earth"
the better,) and suffered from the common 19th-century weediness of
prose (although that may be in part a fault of his translators; I yield
to Francophones on that point.)
Was it '20,000 Leagues' that had rifles that fired what was a highly
charged capacitor? Not quite a Taser but not bad for 18-something.
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:57:25 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
From the science fiction point of view 'Five Weeks in a Balloon' is a
disaster.
There is a lot of hand waving in 'Robur' too. There are two sets of
props, one for the vertical lift and one for the forward motion.
I thought there was a design in the '20s like that but I all I can find
are autogyros where the rotor isn't driven and a Focke-Wulf design but
wiki says the horizontal axis prop wasn't for propulsion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_61
On 2025-09-25 00:20, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 9/24/25 13:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real >>>>> death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>>> and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima
disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western"
industry.
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened before.
And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back. The siting o
Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can say about that.
And they did not know that when designing?
They could not have designed
the diesel generators to be raised on platforms about what could be the water level?
The fact is, it was a disaster. We can not trust a new reactor anywhere
to be safe.
"Carlos E.R." <[email protected]d> wrote or quoted:
On 2025-09-24 04:20, rbowman wrote:. . .
. . .written in 1886, 'Five Weeks in a Balloon' from 1863 was one of Verne's
the globe. Ok... but that is against the principle that energy can not
be created nor destroyed, only transformed. He can get the same effect
Yeah, Helmholtz's 1847 paper is usually pointed to as the
turning point when people in science circles really started
to accept the principle, and by 1850 you already see the
phrase "the law of the conservation of energy" being used.
His essay on energy conservation, which was his first big
contribution, came out of his background in medicine and philosophy.
He got into the topic while studying how muscles burn energy.
What he was trying to show is that no energy disappears during
muscle movement, and the idea behind that was that you do
not need some special "vital force" to make muscles work.
That was a pushback against Naturphilosophie and vitalism,
which at the time were pretty mainstream in German physiology.
He was countering the vitalist claim that "living force" could
keep a machine running forever.
Verne was born in 1828, so he would have been in his mid-twenties
when energy conservation was starting to get traction. His
take on the world might have still been shaped more by what he
picked up earlier. And really, how many people today keep up
with major shifts in physics after they finish school, like
even having a clue about what Bell's Inequalities are?
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,rec.arts.sf.written
On 24/09/2025 21:57, Carlos E.R. wrote:
But well, Verne was not yet SciFi, was maybe the best precursor.
At least he didn't make audible bangs in space wars
On 2025-09-24 15:23, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 05:54, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 17:08, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 00:34, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:00, Sam Plusnet wrote:
On 23/09/2025 05:06, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 21:17:47 +0100, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
Straying from the subject, I’m sure Iceland would take anyone off a >>>>>>>> cruise ship with good Icelandic and a plausible facial bone
structure if
that person asserted his or her Icelandic passport had been lost or >>>>>>>> stolen.
I'll have to brush up on my Old Norse.
Are you any good at Norse Code?
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
Interestingly, automated translators fail at this.
?
The only difference between what I posted and the output from these
three sites are the '/' to delineate words, where I uses a newline.
https://morsecode.world/international/translator.html
https://morsecodetranslator.com/
https://dnschecker.org/morse-code-translator.php
All three of them correctly translated "I am not".
Letters to morse, yes. The reverse, none. If it works for you, I'd
like to see a photo, so that I learn how to do it.
Copy and paste the morse code below into https://morsecode.world/international/translator.html
--. --- --- -.. / . -. --- ..- --. .... ..--..
It translates to "GOOD ENOUGH?"
On 2025-09-23 23:06, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
__. ___ ___ _..
. _. ___ .._ __. ....
.. / .- -.. -- .. - / ..
.-.. --- --- -.- . -.. / .. - / ..- .--.
The only letters I ever remember are
S and O because they are part of SOS
V because of Beethoven
On 2025-09-25 11:00, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 24/09/2025 21:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real >>>>> death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>>> and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima
disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western"
industry.
The tsunami killed 20,000 people
No one died at the nuclear plant.
There is long term radiation disease and deaths to account for.
The safety systems all performed as designed.
There was no disaster.
Oh yes, there was.
It was a very old design of reactor indeed
It simply had not been designed for a once in a thousand years tsunami.
Oh. So now you tell me to trust other designs, that they will be "safe"? That _nothing_ bad will ever happen?
The thing is, it wasn't a huge disaster. The world can stand a few such disasters. The risks from energy poverty, global warming, pollution, war
are much greater.
On 9/25/25 10:43, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 25/09/2025 10:10, Pancho wrote:
The problem I'm referring to is technological advance. In aI guess that is why 50 year old reactors in the UK are now the
reasonable world, we would expect future breakthroughs in technology
to make electricity cheaper. Maybe Fusion, maybe SMRs (like
Copenhagen Atomics). In 60 years, it is likely something will turn
up. I know you agree with me, that electricity could be generated
cheaper.
cheapest generators on the grid
So that is the problem for any finance based upon future cashflows
from the sale of electricity decades in the future. The amount you
can sell electricity for will likely decrease. The longer in the
future, the more likely cheaper alternatives will appear.
In fact under renewable energy and the advent of tight oil the price
of electricity has steadily *increased*.
And you have completely ignored the issue of potential refinancing if
e.g. bond rates go down.
The cost of running a reactor is *absolutely dominated* by the cost of
the capital you borrowed to build it.
No, interest rates can be fixed. You can hedge, this is a red herring.
No other structure of comparable complexity is going to cost less.
The only way to get costs down is by reducing regulatory overburden
back to the levels of the 1960s and 1970s
You simply do not understand the detail of the cost of a nuclear power
station.
It costs next to nothing to run. Only a small amount to maintain.
ALL its costs are the costs of the capital used to build it (and
ultimately to decommission it, but that's far less).
Ergo if its designed to have paid for itself after - say - 50 years
and it does another ten years after that, it can afford to sell its
electricity for the cost of the fuel and maintenance, which is so low
that NOTHING can compete with it
I understand there is a balance between plant cost (decommissioning too,
if you insist on comflexification) and revenue from sales.
You keep assuming revenue from sales is assured. In a free market, it
isn't. The amount of revenue could drop after 10 years, you might never
get to break even. This is why the government fixes a strike price.
However, the upfront plant investment in nuclear isn't just build cost,
it is R&D. Any reactor builder is investing in learning how to build
future reactors cheaper. This isn't just big reactors, it is SMR too.
The government doesn't offer a strike price for all the reactors you
plan to build. So if the electricity price plummets, the R&D asset disappears.
Yes, you can say electricity prices might go up. They have gone up. But
that is due to political incompetence. Prices can only go up so far
before something snaps and much cheaper alternatives are rolled out. Hopefully in the next 10-20 years.
Which is why it's the last thing to be taken off the UK grid., Any
income at all is profit.
Nothing can compete with a paid for nuclear reactor on electricity price.
Yes, I understand it is profit, but it isn't enough to balance build
cost. SumOfAllFutureProfit - BuildCost = ActualProfit.
And golly. They want reactors.
It is only now that we see that politicians have made such a pig's
ear of generation that you see big companies, ai data centres,
getting scared. They know if the governments continue to mess it up,
the first people to suffer from rationing will be ai data centres.
And to his huge credit, Bill Gates has invested in them, rather than building silly space rockets.
The Chinese communists of course have a superior government, managed economy, which builds them.
On 25/09/2025 05:41, lar3ryca wrote:
Of course I am what is called in Canada, a private pilot. An airline
pilot does not have to worry about the CofA. He is assigned to a flight,
and away he goes.
Actually, I don't think he does.
He cannot fly a plane that does not meet safety criteria without risking
his licence. He is required to view the maintenance log for any
outstanding issues, and physically inspect the plane, and is fully
within his rights to refuse to fly it if it does not meet safety criteria.
I remember being held for 45 minutes while a mechanic was called in to >replace a blown bulb in a panel of warning lights...
On 2025-09-25 01:58, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:57:25 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
From the science fiction point of view 'Five Weeks in a Balloon' is a >>> disaster.
There is a lot of hand waving in 'Robur' too. There are two sets of
props, one for the vertical lift and one for the forward motion.
I thought there was a design in the '20s like that but I all I can find
are autogyros where the rotor isn't driven and a Focke-Wulf design but
wiki says the horizontal axis prop wasn't for propulsion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_61
In the thick books I have of the Verne collection, there were
descriptions of actual dirigibles, some by Santos Dumont, if I recall correctly.
--. --- --- -.. / . -. --- ..- --. .... ..--..
It translates to "GOOD ENOUGH?"
Yes, this one works. But this:
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
does not. I get:
IATTNTTTT
Notice that it has no dashes, but underlines.
I bought a pocket torch recently that has a mode in which it blinks the
LEDs in the morse code for SOS.
On 09/25/2025 5:11 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
It it an interesting paradox. People decided that Nuclear power plants were bad, but everyone now has to have computers that require terabytes
of storage. Terabytes of storage require terawatts of energy. To get
the terawatts of energy, the people who provide those terabytes of
storage are turning nuclear power plants to provide those terawatts of energy. So it is coming to the point where to have terabytes of
storage, they will have to accept nuclear plants or give up the computer.
On 2025-09-25 00:20, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 9/24/25 13:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real >>>>> death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>>> and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima
disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western"
industry.
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened before.
And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back. The siting o
Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can say about that.
And they did not know that when designing? They could not have designed
the diesel generators to be raised on platforms about what could be the water level?
The fact is, it was a disaster. We can not trust a new reactor anywhere
to be safe.
On 2025-09-22, Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:------------------------------------------ACCEPT (or mayube not...)
On 2025-09-22 19:22, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-09-22, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 22/09/2025 02:38, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
...
I thought you were emphasising the misspelling of 'losing'...I missed
the grocers' apostrophe.
"Grocers' apostrophe" - cute. My favourite grocers' grammatical error
is when they write prices like ".99 cents". I'm tempted to hand the
cashier a penny and tell him/her to keep the change.
:-D
Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?
Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small
business signs to alert the reader that an S is coming up at
the end of a word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S,
or NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ITEM'S.
-- Dave Barry: Tips for Writer's
On 9/25/25 04:25, knuttle wrote:
On 09/25/2025 5:11 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Big snipWe have spent trillions of dollars in the past 80 years, trying to
The present situation is that Nuclear Power is a mature but problematic technology. But where to put that spent reactor fuel waste after you recycle because not only is it tadioactive to some degree but the
minerals left behind are toxic. No one seems to want them.
It it an interesting paradox. People decided that Nuclear power
plants were bad, but everyone now has to have computers that require
terabytes of storage. Terabytes of storage require terawatts of
energy. To get the terawatts of energy, the people who provide those
terabytes of storage are turning nuclear power plants to provide those
terawatts of energy. So it is coming to the point where to have
terabytes of storage, they will have to accept nuclear plants or give
up the computer.
Now that is a good idea but better is to say give up AI data centers until
the power requirements are reduced to reasonable levels. After all Natural Intelligence runs on a few hundred or thousand calories a day for people
who
do a lot of thinking.
Those terawatts of energy are only important because the owners of the
plants are using them to make profits. Not the people deciding but the owners of technology and data centers and right now they do not care
about how much pollution the power plants produce it seems.
My personal computers, used generally one at a time provide plenty of
support to my NI for a reasonable amount of electricity. Maybe we should take big computers requiring large amounts of electrictiy and water for cooling right off the table allowing only modern chips that use less electrictiy
be the power behind the Internet.
Well someone besides myself will be making the decisions and larger profits will eventually dictate the use of less electricity with less
water for
cooling.
bliss
Careening is a process of hauling a ship out of the water to make
repairs.
Today we would probably say 'dry dock'
On 9/24/25 13:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote: >>>> On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real
death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>> and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency. Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western" industry.
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened before. And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back. The siting o Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can say about that.
bliss
On 9/25/25 04:25, knuttle wrote:
On 09/25/2025 5:11 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Big snipWrong/.
The present situation is that Nuclear Power is a mature but
problematic technology.
But where to put that spent reactor fuel waste after you recycle
because not only is it tadioactive to some degree but the minerals
left behind are toxic. No one seems to want them.
Given the level of debate the fact that the thinkers here are burningIt it an interesting paradox. People decided that Nuclear power
plants were bad, but everyone now has to have computers that
require terabytes of storage. Terabytes of storage require
terawatts of energy. To get the terawatts of energy, the people who
provide those terabytes of storage are turning nuclear power plants
to provide those terawatts of energy. So it is coming to the point
where to have terabytes of storage, they will have to accept
nuclear plants or give up the computer.
Now that is a good idea but better is to say give up AI data centers
until the power requirements are reduced to reasonable levels. After
all Natural Intelligence runs on a few hundred or thousand calories a
day for people who do a lot of thinking.
Those terawatts of energy
are only important because the owners of the plants are using them to
make profits. Not the people deciding but the owners of technology
and data centers and right now they do not care about how much
pollution the power plants produce it seems.
My personal computers, used generally one at a time provide plenty
of support to my NI for a reasonable amount of electricity. Maybe we
should take big computers requiring large amounts of electrictiy and
water for cooling right off the table allowing only modern chips that
use less electrictiy be the power behind the Internet.
Well someone besides myself will be making the decisions and larger
profits will eventually dictate the use of less electricity with less
water for cooling.
bliss--
On 9/25/25 04:29, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-25 00:20, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 9/24/25 13:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher
<[email protected]d> wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the
regulatory framework was very light and governments wanted
them built,. The real death knell was Germany, the Green
party, proportional representation, and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to
Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes
Fukushima disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the
art "western" industry.
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened
before. And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back.
The siting o Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can
say about that.
And they did not know that when designing? They could not have
designed the diesel generators to be raised on platforms about what
could be the water level?
History of a place in regard to quakes and other disruptive natural
events are frequently ignored otherwise the cities that replaced
Pompei would not have been built.
It was a very great disaster.
The fact is, it was a disaster. We can not trust a new reactor
anywhere to be safe.
Trusting new reactors in other places
is up to you. The use of Coal to generate power is fraught with other liabilities and may have a greater death toll but of individuals
dying of black lung at the mines and where it is burned more
respiratory problems including lung cancer.
bliss--
We have spent trillions of dollars in the past 80 years, trying to circumvent the use of nuclear energy. If that trillions of dollars had been spent in the laboratory to develop methods to handle nuclear waste
we would not still be facing the problem that we recognized 80 years ago.
With research we develop the methods to concentrate uranium for the bomb
in a little more that 6 years (1939 to 1945). Now 80 years later we
have not progressed much beyond that level of technology when it comes
to the nuclear waste
On Wed, 9/24/2025 6:20 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 9/24/25 13:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote: >>>>> On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real >>>>> death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>>> and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency. Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes Fukushima disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art "western" industry.
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened before.
And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back. The siting o
Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can say about that.
bliss
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Japan is an island.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Japan_topo_en.jpg
You're building initially four reactors and eventually
six reactors. The ocean makes for a compact cooling system. Your choices
are to position reactors on a fresh-water river, if one of sufficient capacity and sustainable water flow is available. Or, to use the ocean.
The bluff was cleared of overburden, which lowered the height of the
bluff, but mounted the reactors on bedrock.
Tsunami events, historically, a few were very high. The Alaskan one
was 1700 feet. B.C. has some marks on a mountain somewhere, at
around 800 feet or so. Providing your emergency diesel with air
to drive it, would require a rather tall pipe to do the job
in such a way as to tolerate any incoming tsunami.
In hindsight, if "they'd made this a foot higher or that
a foot higher", it's hindsight that provides those measurements.
They could have made the seawall taller, but then the base
has to be bigger.
The area is the Ring of Fire, so surprises are to be expected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire
Paul
History of a place in regard to quakes and other disruptivenatural
events
are frequently ignored otherwise the cities that replaced Pompei would
not have been built.
On 25/09/2025 12:29, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-25 00:20, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 9/24/25 13:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> >>>>> wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
Indeed.
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real >>>>>> death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional
representation,
and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima. >>>>
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes
Fukushima disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art
"western" industry.
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened
before.
And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back. The siting o
Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can say about that.
And they did not know that when designing?
No tidal wave had *ever been experienced* that high. Fukushima was built
to withstand 1 19ft surge which is all that was known in the 1970s when
it was designed.
Later studies in the 1980s concluded that probably was not high enough,
They could not have designed the diesel generators to be raised on
platforms about what could be the water level?
Expect they didnt.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing
The fact is, it was a disaster. We can not trust a new reactor
anywhere to be safe.
That is alarmist bollocks. The design was safe. The core was contained.
No one died.
I don't know why you need to lie about this.
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 08:17:36 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
History of a place in regard to quakes and other disruptivenatural
events
are frequently ignored otherwise the cities that replaced Pompei would
not have been built.
Or much of California. Loma Prieta was a year before I started trucking
but having I-880 fall down and go boom did nothing for the traffic around
SF.
Then there was the 1994 Northridge quake that took out the Newhall Pass interchange. That was a complex mess when it was functional and a complete horror show when it was broken.
That's the one that was destroyed in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and Built Back Better.
PG&E seems to have searched for every fault line in California to build Diablo Canyon. Good luck with that one. At least Bodega Bay got headed off
at the pass, so to speak.
Rancho Seco didn't even need an earthquake to fail. I think shutting that
one down was the best thing that ever happened to SMUD. It would have
never survived deregulation.
I won't even go into all the mudslides waiting to happen.
On 24/09/2025 21:44, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
[1] What is it called in English? It's the area where goods can be
stored for continued transport without customs being involved.
Freeport.. And indeed it may contain industries to process goods
without taxation on added value
On 2025-09-25 06:26, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-24 15:23, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 05:54, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 17:08, Carlos E.R. wrote:Letters to morse, yes. The reverse, none. If it works for you, I'd
On 2025-09-24 00:34, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:00, Sam Plusnet wrote:Interestingly, automated translators fail at this.
On 23/09/2025 05:06, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 21:17:47 +0100, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
Straying from the subject, I’m sure Iceland would take anyone >>>>>>>>> off a cruise ship with good Icelandic and a plausible facial >>>>>>>>> bone structure if that person asserted his or her Icelandic
passport had been lost or stolen.
I'll have to brush up on my Old Norse.
Are you any good at Norse Code?
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
?
The only difference between what I posted and the output from these
three sites are the '/' to delineate words, where I uses a newline.
https://morsecode.world/international/translator.html
https://morsecodetranslator.com/
https://dnschecker.org/morse-code-translator.php
All three of them correctly translated "I am not".
like to see a photo, so that I learn how to do it.
Copy and paste the morse code below into
https://morsecode.world/international/translator.html
--. --- --- -.. / . -. --- ..- --. .... ..--..
It translates to "GOOD ENOUGH?"
Yes, this one works. But this:
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
does not. I get:
IATTNTTTT
Notice that it has no dashes, but underlines.
Its amazing how people with axes to grind airbrush everything that
disproves their thesis out of their versions of history.
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:06:40 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]>
wrote:
This discussion brings to mind an old strip from "The Wizard of Id". A >>witch was flying on her broomstick, when without warning she crashed to
the ground. A bystander ran over and asked "What happened?". "The
warranty ran out", she said.
Many people seem to have a similar misconception about Windows 10.
They are talking about the end of support from the vendor as though
it means "end of life" -- perhaps because they have heard the phrase
"life support" and assume that the two are necessarily connected in
all instances.
I can't speak for any other country than Canada, but nobody ever checked
to see if my plane had a current valid CofA. It was up to me to ensure
that it had one before I took off.
I could just go to the airport, fire up the plane, tell the tower I was ready to go. They would give me clearance to taxi to a runway, where I
would tell them I was ready for takeoff, and when safe, they'd clear me.
I would definitely not take off if my plane's CofA had expired, as it
would very be bad to get caught.
Of course I am what is called in Canada, a private pilot. An airline
pilot does not have to worry about the CofA. He is assigned to a flight,
and away he goes.
I mostly flew out of uncontrolled airports and I'm not sure everything I flew was airworthy. There was one Lark, sort of a C-180 type from
Rockwell, that added a step to the final approach sequence -- pumping up
the brakes. I also flew a Tomahawk that some times needed a jump start and once the latch on the gull wing door broke. It gets sort of noisy and breezy.
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 18:14:39 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 24/09/2025 17:53, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-09-24, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:Ah. Every programmer needs one of those...
On 24/09/2025 05:05, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 21:39:59 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
(Mention RPG to a computer science weenie and watch his face turn
green...)
For good reason. The 5120 had BRADS II, sort of a RPG for Dummies
that used BASIC. It could have been worse; it could have used APL.
Role Playing Game?
:-)
Rocket-Propelled Grenade.
One! Two is one and one is none.
https://trueprepper.com/two-is-one-and-one-is-none/
An insurrection without a few ain't an insurrection despite the pearl clutchers.
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:30:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 25/09/2025 05:41, lar3ryca wrote:
Of course I am what is called in Canada, a private pilot. An airline
pilot does not have to worry about the CofA. He is assigned to a
flight,
and away he goes.
Actually, I don't think he does.
He cannot fly a plane that does not meet safety criteria without risking >>his licence. He is required to view the maintenance log for any
outstanding issues, and physically inspect the plane, and is fully
within his rights to refuse to fly it if it does not meet safety
criteria.
I remember being held for 45 minutes while a mechanic was called in to >>replace a blown bulb in a panel of warning lights...
I was in a plane that returned to the gate for a half hour or so.
An air hostess explained that the pilot did not like the sound of the engines. So they replaced the pilot. That was not entirely comforting
news.
Den 25.09.2025 kl. 14.33 skrev Carlos E.R.:
--. --- --- -.. / . -. --- ..- --. .... ..--..
It translates to "GOOD ENOUGH?"
Yes, this one works. But this:
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
does not. I get:
IATTNTTTT
Notice that it has no dashes, but underlines.
I don't understand why you complicate matters by using underscores and spaces. Dashes have an automatic space even if they are written close,
and then space can separate characters.
On 25/09/2025 13:20, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-25 01:58, rbowman wrote:Airships were the coming thing when he wrote his books, as was electricity.
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:57:25 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
From the science fiction point of view 'Five Weeks in a Balloon' is a >>>> disaster.
There is a lot of hand waving in 'Robur' too. There are two sets of
props, one for the vertical lift and one for the forward motion.
I thought there was a design in the '20s like that but I all I can find
are autogyros where the rotor isn't driven and a Focke-Wulf design but
wiki says the horizontal axis prop wasn't for propulsion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_61
In the thick books I have of the Verne collection, there were
descriptions of actual dirigibles, some by Santos Dumont, if I recall
correctly.
On 25/09/2025 12:23, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-25 10:53, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 24/09/2025 21:02, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 02:28, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Well of course. Many of them.
On 23/09/2025 21:21, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:37, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Not if it's designed to be opened up
On 23/09/2025 12:23, Daniel70 wrote:
On 23/09/2025 10:17 am, Jeff Barnett wrote:
<Snip>
Labs where I worked had a reactor that they do longer needed or >>>>>>>>> wanted. The history of getting rid of one of those things in >>>>>>>>> less than 15 (or was it 20) years was bureaucracy 100% and
space reclamation 0%. The Chief Scientist of this aerospace >>>>>>>>> laboratory was bored and looking for a hobby so said he'd give >>>>>>>>> it a try. A few years later, he succeeded! Next thing we know >>>>>>>>> is folks with similar problems were lined up at his door with >>>>>>>>> job offers. He was a rock star who made good.
Your comments interest me ...... As people here-abouts may or >>>>>>>> may not be aware, Australia was/is in the market for new
Submarines and have settled into the AUKUS consortium along with >>>>>>>> the UK and US of A for a project that will last well past 2050. >>>>>>>>
As I understand it, one criteria of the set-up is that when the >>>>>>>> Submarine's Nuclear Reactor has reached End-of-Life, the Reactor >>>>>>>> vessel will be removed and disposed of (somehow/somewhere) and a >>>>>>>> new reactor vessel fitted into the Submarine ..... and off they go! >>>>>>>>
REALLY??
Yes, really.
Its actually easier and safer than attempting to refuel or
service it.
IIRC it is not designed to be refuelled at all.
Opening up a submarine to replace the "engine" must be an
engineering feat.
How?
A huge "door" with many bolts?
Water pressure will hold the doors in place once closed
How do the people get inside? How do the missiles get inside? Or the
Torpedoes? Or the food and water?
Certainly, but those hatches are small.
A reactor is not that big. No space in a sub anyway.
It is way bigger than a man.
The smallest made (critical) reactor is about the size of a gas
cylinder. Plutonium decay heat ones power space probes and a are a few
kg in weight
HEU reactors can be made that will do 30 years between refuels
No designer envisaging the need to remove an entire reactor during the service life of the ship is going to require it to be cut open and
welded shut again
TRIDENT nuclear submarines have 8ft diameter hatches...
In short neither small reactors nor large hatches are particularly
rocket science. Although the missiles that are loaded into them are.
Just out of interest facts are not hard to arrive at, although
admittedly harder than idle speculation by people with imaginations
greater than their IQs...
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear- applications/transport/nuclear-powered-ships
"Naval reactors (with the exception of the ill-fated Russian Alfa class described below) have been pressurised water types, which differ from commercial reactors producing electricity in that:
They deliver a *lot of power from a very small volume* and therefore
most run on highly-enriched uranium (>20% U-235, originally c 97% but apparently now 93% in latest US submarines, c 20-25% in some western
vessels, 20% in the first and second generation Russian reactors
(1957-81)*, then 21% to 45% in 3rd generation Russian units (40% in
India's Arihant). Newer French reactors run on low-enriched fuel.
The fuel is not UO2 but a uranium-zirconium or uranium-aluminium
alloy (c15%U with 93% enrichment, or more U with less – eg 20% – U-235) or a metal-ceramic (Kursk: U-Al zoned 20-45% enriched, clad in zircaloy,
with c 200kg U-235 in each 200 MW core).
They have long core lives, so that refuelling is needed only after
10 or more years, and new cores are designed to last 50 years in
carriers and 30-40 years (over 1.5 million kilometres) in most
submarines, albeit with much lower capacity factors than a nuclear power plant (<30%).
The design allows for a compact pressure vessel with internal neutron
and gamma shield. The Sevmorput pressure vessel for a relatively large
marine reactor is *4.6 m high and 1.8 m diameter*, enclosing a core 1 m
high and 1.2 m diameter.
Thermal efficiency is less than in civil nuclear power plants due to
the need for flexible power output, and space constraints for the steam system."
Note *4.6 m high and 1.8 m diameter* is not 'way bigger than a man' -
its about twice the size of a man and really pretty easy to move around. Through a hatch. Once every 50 years
Indeed. It's probably where English got the term, from from the spanish navy.Today we would probably say 'dry dock'
Yes, certainly it is in a dry dock, but the Spanish name actually used
at the ship yards and all news I read is "la gran carena", thus the
translation I found.
But its meaning stayed attached to small boats ships - not submarines
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:53:55 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Careening is a process of hauling a ship out of the water to make
repairs.
Today we would probably say 'dry dock'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_dock#Renaissance_Europe
Two different processes. The ship isn't hauled out. It's run in until it's barely afloat at high tide and you wait for the tide to ebb. The Grace
Dieu example is an exception. Usually you can scrape the hull, apply anti- fouling paint, or perform other tasks before the tide comes in.
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 08:17:36 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
History of a place in regard to quakes and other disruptivenatural
events
are frequently ignored otherwise the cities that replaced Pompei would
not have been built.
Or much of California. Loma Prieta was a year before I started trucking
but having I-880 fall down and go boom did nothing for the traffic around
SF.
Then there was the 1994 Northridge quake that took out the Newhall Pass interchange. That was a complex mess when it was functional and a complete horror show when it was broken.
That's the one that was destroyed in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and Built Back Better.
PG&E seems to have searched for every fault line in California to build Diablo Canyon. Good luck with that one. At least Bodega Bay got headed off
at the pass, so to speak.
Rancho Seco didn't even need an earthquake to fail. I think shutting that
one down was the best thing that ever happened to SMUD. It would have
never survived deregulation.
I won't even go into all the mudslides waiting to happen.
On 09/25/2025 11:11 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
We have spent trillions of dollars in the past 80 years, trying to circumvent the use of nuclear energy. If that trillions of dollars had been spent in the laboratory to develop methods to handle nuclear waste we would not still be facing the problem that we recognized 80 years ago.
On 9/25/25 04:25, knuttle wrote:
On 09/25/2025 5:11 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Big snip
The present situation is that Nuclear Power is a mature but problematic
technology. But where to put that spent reactor fuel waste after you
recycle because not only is it tadioactive to some degree but the
minerals left behind are toxic. No one seems to want them.
It it an interesting paradox. People decided that Nuclear power plants were bad, but everyone now has to have computers that require terabytes of storage. Terabytes of storage require terawatts of energy. To get the terawatts of energy, the people who provide those terabytes of storage are turning nuclear power plants to provide those terawatts of energy. So it is coming to the point where to have terabytes of storage, they will have to accept nuclear plants or give up the computer.
Now that is a good idea but better is to say give up AI data centers until
the power requirements are reduced to reasonable levels. After all Natural >> Intelligence runs on a few hundred or thousand calories a day for people who >> do a lot of thinking.
Those terawatts of energy are only important because the owners of the
plants are using them to make profits. Not the people deciding but the
owners of technology and data centers and right now they do not care
about how much pollution the power plants produce it seems.
My personal computers, used generally one at a time provide plenty of
support to my NI for a reasonable amount of electricity. Maybe we should >> take big computers requiring large amounts of electrictiy and water for
cooling right off the table allowing only modern chips that use less electrictiy
be the power behind the Internet.
Well someone besides myself will be making the decisions and larger
profits will eventually dictate the use of less electricity with less water for
cooling.
bliss
With research we develop the methods to concentrate uranium for the bomb in a little more that 6 years (1939 to 1945). Now 80 years later we have not progressed much beyond that level of technology when it comes to the nuclear waste
On 25/09/25 19:30, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 25/09/2025 05:41, lar3ryca wrote:
Of course I am what is called in Canada, a private pilot. An
airline pilot does not have to worry about the CofA. He is assigned
to a flight, and away he goes.
Actually, I don't think he does.
He cannot fly a plane that does not meet safety criteria without
risking his licence. He is required to view the maintenance log for
any outstanding issues, and physically inspect the plane, and is
fully within his rights to refuse to fly it if it does not meet
safety criteria.
I remember being held for 45 minutes while a mechanic was called in
to replace a blown bulb in a panel of warning lights...
I once sat in a plane for two hours in Brussels, before a decision not
to take off. We were put in a hotel overnight while a spare part was
flown in from Singapore.
On another occasion, on a flight from San Francisco to Sydney, the plane
ran out of fuel and had to land at some obscure Pacific island. The refuelling took a couple of hours, then we taxied out to the runway ...
and had to turn back when a tyre burst. That was on Pan Am, which
already had a bad reputation for poor maintenance.
Yes, you can say electricity prices might go up. They have gone up.
On 2025-09-25, Peter Moylan wrote:
On another occasion, on a flight from San Francisco to Sydney, the
plane ran out of fuel and had to land at some obscure Pacific
island. The refuelling took a couple of hours, then we taxied out
to the runway ... and had to turn back when a tyre burst. That was
on Pan Am, which already had a bad reputation for poor
maintenance.
Unless I'm mistaken, running out of fuel in such a journey is *not*
something light, that could just happen out of the blue, so what
happened?
Some mistake refueling, or did Pan Am maintenance do something like
Air Transat did in the aircraft of their flight 236? (2001 YYZ-LIS, emergency landing on TER. That one burst tyres too, but because of
the forces involved in the unpowered landing (together with the lack
of some powered braking mechanisms?).
On 2025-09-25 06:26, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-24 15:23, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 05:54, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 17:08, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 00:34, lar3ryca wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:00, Sam Plusnet wrote:
On 23/09/2025 05:06, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 21:17:47 +0100, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
Straying from the subject, I’m sure Iceland would take anyone >>>>>>>>> off a
cruise ship with good Icelandic and a plausible facial bone >>>>>>>>> structure if
that person asserted his or her Icelandic passport had been >>>>>>>>> lost or
stolen.
I'll have to brush up on my Old Norse.
Are you any good at Norse Code?
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
Interestingly, automated translators fail at this.
?
The only difference between what I posted and the output from these
three sites are the '/' to delineate words, where I uses a newline.
https://morsecode.world/international/translator.html
https://morsecodetranslator.com/
https://dnschecker.org/morse-code-translator.php
All three of them correctly translated "I am not".
Letters to morse, yes. The reverse, none. If it works for you, I'd
like to see a photo, so that I learn how to do it.
Copy and paste the morse code below into
https://morsecode.world/international/translator.html
--. --- --- -.. / . -. --- ..- --. .... ..--..
It translates to "GOOD ENOUGH?"
Yes, this one works. But this:
..
._ _ _
_. _ _ _ _
does not. I get:
IATTNTTTT
Notice that it has no dashes, but underlines.
They might close the gates at low tide.
In Cartagena there are no tides though, and that is where the submarines
are made and maintained. So either they have a huge cart on wheels, or
close the gates and pump the water out.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1006351.We_Almost_Lost_Detroit
I think the Original Occupants called it "the shaking land" and
we have has a couple of small jolts on the Hayward fault recently.
That Fault has buildings built on top of it from homes to schools,
churches and roads. Equal endangerments opportunity.
Of COURSE we have. We know how to confine toxic material in a glass
that will absolutely outlast the radioactivity in it. The pellet size
lump of this that is each humans contribution is way less lethal than
the amount of shit they produce every day.
Nobod can desighn anything for the one in ten thousand year event. Lets
face it, wind turbines are designed for the one every month event of no fucking wind, or the daily event of an eagle being smashed out of the
sky,
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:41:26 -0600, lar3ryca wrote:
I could just go to the airport, fire up the plane, tell the tower I was
ready to go. They would give me clearance to taxi to a runway, where I
would tell them I was ready for takeoff, and when safe, they'd clear me.
I would definitely not take off if my plane's CofA had expired, as it
would very be bad to get caught.
I mostly flew out of uncontrolled airports and I'm not sure everything I
flew was airworthy. There was one Lark, sort of a C-180 type from
Rockwell, that added a step to the final approach sequence -- pumping up
the brakes. I also flew a Tomahawk that some times needed a jump start and once the latch on the gull wing door broke. It gets sort of noisy and
breezy.
On 2025-09-25, Peter Moylan wrote:
On another occasion, on a flight from San Francisco to Sydney, the plane
ran out of fuel and had to land at some obscure Pacific island. The
refuelling took a couple of hours, then we taxied out to the runway ...
and had to turn back when a tyre burst. That was on Pan Am, which
already had a bad reputation for poor maintenance.
Unless I'm mistaken, running out of fuel in such a journey is *not*
something light, that could just happen out of the blue, so what
happened?
Some mistake refueling, or did Pan Am maintenance do something like Air Transat did in the aircraft of their flight 236? (2001 YYZ-LIS,
emergency landing on TER. That one burst tyres too, but because of the
forces involved in the unpowered landing (together with the lack of some powered braking mechanisms?).
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:30:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 25/09/2025 05:41, lar3ryca wrote:
Of course I am what is called in Canada, a private pilot. An airline
pilot does not have to worry about the CofA. He is assigned to a flight, >>> and away he goes.
Actually, I don't think he does.
He cannot fly a plane that does not meet safety criteria without risking
his licence. He is required to view the maintenance log for any
outstanding issues, and physically inspect the plane, and is fully
within his rights to refuse to fly it if it does not meet safety criteria. >>
I remember being held for 45 minutes while a mechanic was called in to
replace a blown bulb in a panel of warning lights...
I was in a plane that returned to the gate for a half hour or so.
An air hostess explained that the pilot did not like the sound of
the engines. So they replaced the pilot. That was not entirely
comforting news.
On 2025-09-25 00:05, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:41:26 -0600, lar3ryca wrote:
I could just go to the airport, fire up the plane, tell the tower I was
ready to go. They would give me clearance to taxi to a runway, where I
would tell them I was ready for takeoff, and when safe, they'd clear me. >>> I would definitely not take off if my plane's CofA had expired, as it
would very be bad to get caught.
I mostly flew out of uncontrolled airports and I'm not sure everything I
flew was airworthy. There was one Lark, sort of a C-180 type from
Rockwell, that added a step to the final approach sequence -- pumping up
the brakes. I also flew a Tomahawk that some times needed a jump start and >> once the latch on the gull wing door broke. It gets sort of noisy and
breezy.
Same here. What I mentioned above was when I flew from controlled airports.
I flew rented 172s for a while, got a tail-dragger certification, and started flying a cub, owned by the RAA out of Delta Air Park. Eventually
I bought a Cessna 170 and flew that until I finally sold it and moved to Sakkatchewan.
Went in and out of some pretty interesting (read that as a bit scary) places. SWMBO and I flew into a BC Hydro right-of way up around
Desolation Sound one time, camped there and fished for a couple of days, then flew out the way we came in, Another time it was Pender Island, one
way in, same way back out. Coming in the grass runway was flat for a
little bit, then up a fairly steep hill, needing power to get to the
flat part at the top. Taking off downhill made for a very short takeoff run.
I really miss flying.
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:06:40 +1000, Peter Moylan wrote:
This discussion brings to mind an old strip from "The Wizard of Id". A
witch was flying on her broomstick, when without warning she crashed to
the ground. A bystander ran over and asked "What happened?". "The
warranty ran out", she said.
Back in the day the J.B Hunt fleet had some of the first onboard computers and satellite tracking and were quite strict about the DOT regulation of
10 hours on duty. The joke was when you saw the skid marks where an 18 wheeler had locked up all tires that it was a J.B. Hunt driver that had
hit his 10 hours.
Swift and Hunt were the two companies everybody liked to pick on.
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:06:42 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Nobod can desighn anything for the one in ten thousand year event. Lets
face it, wind turbines are designed for the one every month event of no
fucking wind, or the daily event of an eagle being smashed out of the
sky,
Turbines have a way of catching fire, usually from the batteries, throwing blades, or collapsing the tower completely.
On 9/25/25 21:56, rbowman wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:06:42 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Nobod can desighn anything for the one in ten thousand year event.
Lets face it, wind turbines are designed for the one every month event
of no fucking wind, or the daily event of an eagle being smashed out
of the sky,
Turbines have a way of catching fire, usually from the batteries,
throwing blades, or collapsing the tower completely.
References, please.
bliss
Went in and out of some pretty interesting (read that as a bit scary) places. SWMBO and I flew into a BC Hydro right-of way up arounddays,
Desolation Sound one time, camped there and fished for a couple of
then flew out the way we came in, Another time it was Pender Island,one
way in, same way back out. Coming in the grass runway was flat for arun.
little bit, then up a fairly steep hill, needing power to get to the
flat part at the top. Taking off downhill made for a very short takeoff
I am not lying.
I do not trust any nuclear design to be safe enough, and there are
millions of people that think the same.
Even for the bombing of Hiroshima the pilots weren't sure that it wasn't going to be a one-way trip.
Yes. But I meant to say that some of those dirigibles had horizontal and vertical propellers. I saw the drawings, but I can't find any with Google.Fore runners of drones and quadcopters.
But its meaning stayed attached to small boats ships - not submarines
But in Spain the term is indeed applied to submarines. You can google
it. I simply do not know what is the English term, I had to ask DeepL
and ChatGPT.
The latest proposal, to "re-process high level waste", sure, it will redistribute the waste and change the height of the different piles.
But, will it eliminate the high level waste ? Of course not. Which means
that the Finnish process, is the ultimate destination of at least some
of that kind of material. There is room for us other countries, to also
work on*both* solutions at the same time, as*both* are needed. The Finnish result,
shows it can be done.
On 2025-09-25, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 25/09/25 19:30, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 25/09/2025 05:41, lar3ryca wrote:
Of course I am what is called in Canada, a private pilot. An
airline pilot does not have to worry about the CofA. He is assigned
to a flight, and away he goes.
Actually, I don't think he does.
He cannot fly a plane that does not meet safety criteria without
risking his licence. He is required to view the maintenance log for
any outstanding issues, and physically inspect the plane, and is
fully within his rights to refuse to fly it if it does not meet
safety criteria.
I remember being held for 45 minutes while a mechanic was called in
to replace a blown bulb in a panel of warning lights...
I once sat in a plane for two hours in Brussels, before a decision not
to take off. We were put in a hotel overnight while a spare part was
flown in from Singapore.
On another occasion, on a flight from San Francisco to Sydney, the plane
ran out of fuel and had to land at some obscure Pacific island. The
refuelling took a couple of hours, then we taxied out to the runway ...
and had to turn back when a tyre burst. That was on Pan Am, which
already had a bad reputation for poor maintenance.
Unless I'm mistaken, running out of fuel in such a journey is *not*
something light, that could just happen out of the blue, so what
happened?
Some mistake refueling, or did Pan Am maintenance do something like Air Transat did in the aircraft of their flight 236? (2001 YYZ-LIS,
emergency landing on TER. That one burst tyres too, but because of the
forces involved in the unpowered landing (together with the lack of some powered braking mechanisms?).
In comp.os.linux.misc Pancho <[email protected]> wrote:
Yes, you can say electricity prices might go up. They have gone up.
Have they though? There were recently huge peaks in the electricity
price in Australia due to peaks in international gas prices and old
coal power plants being shut down (plus a not-so-old 2001-vintage
coal power plant exploding). But apparantly here in Victoria the
price in 2024 had dived back down to where it was ten years earlier:
https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/spot-market-prices-and-revenues-ten-years-of-historical-spot-prices/
Longer-term inflation-adjusted statistics here for the USA show the
price of electricity steadily going down there since 1978:
https://www.in2013dollars.com/Electricity/price-inflation
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:30:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 25/09/2025 05:41, lar3ryca wrote:
Of course I am what is called in Canada, a private pilot. An airline
pilot does not have to worry about the CofA. He is assigned to a flight, >>> and away he goes.
Actually, I don't think he does.
He cannot fly a plane that does not meet safety criteria without risking
his licence. He is required to view the maintenance log for any
outstanding issues, and physically inspect the plane, and is fully
within his rights to refuse to fly it if it does not meet safety criteria. >>
I remember being held for 45 minutes while a mechanic was called in to
replace a blown bulb in a panel of warning lights...
I was in a plane that returned to the gate for a half hour or so.
An air hostess explained that the pilot did not like the sound of
the engines. So they replaced the pilot. That was not entirely
comforting news.
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:00:38 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Of COURSE we have. We know how to confine toxic material in a
glass that will absolutely outlast the radioactivity in it. The
pellet size lump of this that is each humans contribution is way
less lethal than the amount of shit they produce every day.
The US has solved the problem. Nobody wants waste in their backyard
so the was is in what were meant to be temporary holding ponds or dry
casks at the plant sites. So far 'temporary' means about 40 years but
the clock is ticking.
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:06:42 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Nobod can desighn anything for the one in ten thousand year event. Lets
face it, wind turbines are designed for the one every month event of no
fucking wind, or the daily event of an eagle being smashed out of the
sky,
Turbines have a way of catching fire, usually from the batteries, throwing blades, or collapsing the tower completely.
On 9/25/25 21:56, rbowman wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:06:42 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Nobod can desighn anything for the one in ten thousand year event. Lets
face it, wind turbines are designed for the one every month event of no
fucking wind, or the daily event of an eagle being smashed out of the
sky,
Turbines have a way of catching fire, usually from the batteries,
throwing
blades, or collapsing the tower completely.
References, please.
bliss--
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 22:52:28 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 9/25/25 21:56, rbowman wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:06:42 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Nobod can desighn anything for the one in ten thousand year event.
Lets face it, wind turbines are designed for the one every month event >>>> of no fucking wind, or the daily event of an eagle being smashed out
of the sky,
Turbines have a way of catching fire, usually from the batteries,
throwing blades, or collapsing the tower completely.
References, please.
bliss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBLqf3Obpzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVHzfUWul2Y https://www.americanexperiment.org/wind-turbine-owned-by-apex-clean-energy-catches-fire-in-texas/
https://www.electricaltechnology.org/2024/07/two-engineers-hug-die-top-burning-wind-turbine.html
https://www.ktvu.com/news/wind-turbine-catches-fire-in-solano-county https://futurism.com/the-byte/wind-turbine-fire-lightning https://www.kcci.com/article/adair-county-iowa-fire-destroys-wind-turbine/45563818
https://www.powerengineeringint.com/renewables/wind/the-burning-issue-of-wind-turbine-fires/
On 25/09/2025 21:26, Carlos E.R. wrote:
But its meaning stayed attached to small boats ships - not submarines
But in Spain the term is indeed applied to submarines. You can google
it. I simply do not know what is the English term, I had to ask DeepL
and ChatGPT.
I know, We call it 'putting it into dry dock'. We might make a verb out
of that and say 'dry docking it'
Careen very much is about hauling a ship out onto a beach and heeling it over ....In english
The word has its roots in the Latin fir a ships keel - exposing that was
the purpose of it
Today we use it to mean a ship heeling over dangerously, or indeed a
person who is drunk
On 2025-09-26 11:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 25/09/2025 21:26, Carlos E.R. wrote:
But its meaning stayed attached to small boats ships - not submarines
But in Spain the term is indeed applied to submarines. You can google
it. I simply do not know what is the English term, I had to ask DeepL
and ChatGPT.
I know, We call it 'putting it into dry dock'. We might make a verb
out of that and say 'dry docking it'
Ok, but the meaning in Spanish is more complicated. It means putting it
into dry dock and doing a major revision/overhauling. In Spanish "Gran carena", a big one. It is done every few years. May include replacing
the engine.
Careen very much is about hauling a ship out onto a beach and heeling
it over ....In english
The word has its roots in the Latin fir a ships keel - exposing that
was the purpose of it
Today we use it to mean a ship heeling over dangerously, or indeed a
person who is drunk
Right, I have seen that one. Maybe for cars, too.
On 09/25/2025 5:11 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 24/09/2025 23:20, Bobbie Sellers wrote:It it an interesting paradox. People decided that Nuclear power plants were bad, but everyone now has to have computers that require terabytes
Well exactly. You have *no idea* about the issues *at all*.
On 9/24/25 13:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> >>>>> wrote:
On 22/09/2025 23:55, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
Indeed.
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real >>>>>> death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional
representation,
and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima. >>>>
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian inefficiency.
Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later comes
Fukushima disaster. No communists there to blame. State of the art
"western" industry.
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened
before.
And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back. The siting o
Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can say about that.
In fact the reactor survived the tsunami and the earthquake.
Just not the flooding.
Hundreds of square miles of Japan were devastated by that event.
20,000 people were killed . The only flaw in the reactor was that the
emergency diesel generators were flooded.
Nevertheless the last safety containment worked, and the reactor
melted down fully contained except a little hydrogen *which
regulations would not let the operators vent*.
So ultimately it vented itself with a bang.
Fukushima is a tribute to the incredible safety of even a reactor
built in the 1960s.
Just as Chernobyl was a wake up call to actually how much radiation
could escape with so little long term effects.
SMRs are of course designed without the need for cooling pumps when
shut down so cannot do what Fukushima did
Statistically nuclear power is the safest power generating industry
there is. In terms of deaths and injuries per unit electricity generated.
And yet the public perception is that it's extremely dangerous.
I wonder why that is?
Cui Bono?
of storage. Terabytes of storage require terawatts of energy. To get
the terawatts of energy, the people who provide those terabytes of
storage are turning nuclear power plants to provide those terawatts of energy. So it is coming to the point where to have terabytes of
storage, they will have to accept nuclear plants or give up the computer.
On 25/09/2025 19:44, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I am not lying.
I do not trust any nuclear design to be safe enough, and there are
millions of people that think the same.
Do you Believe In God, as well?
China ridicules Trump's denialism by announcing that it will increase
its wind and solar power sixfold
On 2025-09-26 11:21, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 25/09/2025 19:44, Carlos E.R. wrote:No.
I am not lying.
I do not trust any nuclear design to be safe enough, and there are
millions of people that think the same.
Do you Believe In God, as well?
Daniel70 <[email protected]> wrote:
On 23/09/2025 10:07 am, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-09-22, Paul <[email protected]d> wrote:
Not all reactors, are held to high standards. But, we're learning.
And that's why the documentation for a reactor, is two million sheets
of paper. It's why the high speed printer was invented. Just to make
reactor designs.
And then the politicians said, "Hey, give me one of those printers.
I have some omnibus bills [1] to run off." And then the lawyers
wanted one so they could bury their opponents in paper, and the
bureaucrats wanted one so they could print mountains of paper to
justify their existence, and, and, and...
.... and then along came The Internet .... to which we'll all be
connected so there will NEVER be the need to print out any document EVER
AGAIN ...... SURE!!
Like for The Natural Philosopher, for me it's also largely true. Of
course I still *get* quite a lot of printed stuff, but *I* print very,
very little.
Our printer is stored 'offline' in a cabinet, because it's hardly ever needed, takes up too much space in the living room and isn't quite a
pretty sight.
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 22:52:28 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 9/25/25 21:56, rbowman wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:06:42 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Nobod can desighn anything for the one in ten thousand year event.
Lets face it, wind turbines are designed for the one every month event >>>> of no fucking wind, or the daily event of an eagle being smashed out
of the sky,
Turbines have a way of catching fire, usually from the batteries,
throwing blades, or collapsing the tower completely.
References, please.
bliss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBLqf3Obpzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVHzfUWul2Y https://www.americanexperiment.org/wind-turbine-owned-by-apex-clean-energy-catches-fire-in-texas/
https://www.electricaltechnology.org/2024/07/two-engineers-hug-die-top-burning-wind-turbine.html
https://www.ktvu.com/news/wind-turbine-catches-fire-in-solano-county https://futurism.com/the-byte/wind-turbine-fire-lightning https://www.kcci.com/article/adair-county-iowa-fire-destroys-wind-turbine/45563818
https://www.powerengineeringint.com/renewables/wind/the-burning-issue-of-wind-turbine-fires/
Caesium strontium and iodine. And tritium especially. Other stuff is far
more short lived. Xenon for example. Once the above are at low levels
then you can reprocess the rods to recover plutonium U235 and U238
On 2025-09-26, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
Caesium strontium and iodine. And tritium especially. Other stuff is far
more short lived. Xenon for example. Once the above are at low levels
then you can reprocess the rods to recover plutonium U235 and U238
Are you sure about tritium? Its decay releases only 18.6 keV.
I had a watch with a tritium dial and never worried about it,
since the radiation wouldn't even make it through my outer
skin layer, let alone the metal back of the watch.
On 2025-09-26, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
Caesium strontium and iodine. And tritium especially. Other stuff is far
more short lived. Xenon for example. Once the above are at low levels
then you can reprocess the rods to recover plutonium U235 and U238
Are you sure about tritium? Its decay releases only 18.6 keV.
I had a watch with a tritium dial and never worried about it,
since the radiation wouldn't even make it through my outer
skin layer, let alone the metal back of the watch.
On 26/09/2025 12:43, Carlos E.R. wrote:
China ridicules Trump's denialism by announcing that it will increase
its wind and solar power sixfold
from one turbine to six?
On 2025-09-26, lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-09-25 00:05, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:41:26 -0600, lar3ryca wrote:
I could just go to the airport, fire up the plane, tell the tower I was >>>> ready to go. They would give me clearance to taxi to a runway, where I >>>> would tell them I was ready for takeoff, and when safe, they'd clear me. >>>> I would definitely not take off if my plane's CofA had expired, as it
would very be bad to get caught.
I mostly flew out of uncontrolled airports and I'm not sure everything I >>> flew was airworthy. There was one Lark, sort of a C-180 type from
Rockwell, that added a step to the final approach sequence -- pumping up >>> the brakes. I also flew a Tomahawk that some times needed a jump start and >>> once the latch on the gull wing door broke. It gets sort of noisy and
breezy.
Same here. What I mentioned above was when I flew from controlled airports. >> I flew rented 172s for a while, got a tail-dragger certification, and
started flying a cub, owned by the RAA out of Delta Air Park. Eventually
I bought a Cessna 170 and flew that until I finally sold it and moved to
Sakkatchewan.
A friend of ours flies a 120 out of Delta. We did a trip with him and one
of his RAA buddies up to Fort St. John a few weeks ago (3 airplanes total).
Went in and out of some pretty interesting (read that as a bit scary)
places. SWMBO and I flew into a BC Hydro right-of way up around
Desolation Sound one time, camped there and fished for a couple of days,
then flew out the way we came in, Another time it was Pender Island, one
way in, same way back out. Coming in the grass runway was flat for a
little bit, then up a fairly steep hill, needing power to get to the
flat part at the top. Taking off downhill made for a very short takeoff run.
I went into Pender Island one time. I managed to stop before the
steep hill at the other end, but I figured it would stop me if I
didn't. I don't know whether the strip is still open.
I really miss flying.
:-( If you're ever out this way again, look me up.
My wife recently got her licence too; we fly a 172
(a vintage B model, Continental engine and manual
flaps) out of Pitt Meadows.
On 25/09/2025 13:16, Pancho wrote:
On 9/25/25 10:43, The Natural Philosopher wrote:That does not eliminate the need to pay the interest.
On 25/09/2025 10:10, Pancho wrote:
The problem I'm referring to is technological advance. In aI guess that is why 50 year old reactors in the UK are now the
reasonable world, we would expect future breakthroughs in technology
to make electricity cheaper. Maybe Fusion, maybe SMRs (like
Copenhagen Atomics). In 60 years, it is likely something will turn
up. I know you agree with me, that electricity could be generated
cheaper.
cheapest generators on the grid
So that is the problem for any finance based upon future cashflows
from the sale of electricity decades in the future. The amount you
can sell electricity for will likely decrease. The longer in the
future, the more likely cheaper alternatives will appear.
In fact under renewable energy and the advent of tight oil the price
of electricity has steadily *increased*.
And you have completely ignored the issue of potential refinancing if
e.g. bond rates go down.
The cost of running a reactor is *absolutely dominated* by the cost
of the capital you borrowed to build it.
No, interest rates can be fixed. You can hedge, this is a red herring.
Sheesh. Why is this so hard?
Of course its assured. Only its amount is variable.
No other structure of comparable complexity is going to cost less.
The only way to get costs down is by reducing regulatory overburden
back to the levels of the 1960s and 1970s
You simply do not understand the detail of the cost of a nuclear
power station.
It costs next to nothing to run. Only a small amount to maintain.
ALL its costs are the costs of the capital used to build it (and
ultimately to decommission it, but that's far less).
Ergo if its designed to have paid for itself after - say - 50 years
and it does another ten years after that, it can afford to sell its
electricity for the cost of the fuel and maintenance, which is so low
that NOTHING can compete with it
I understand there is a balance between plant cost (decommissioning
too, if you insist on comflexification) and revenue from sales.
You keep assuming revenue from sales is assured. In a free market, it
isn't. The amount of revenue could drop after 10 years, you might
never get to break even. This is why the government fixes a strike price.
However, the upfront plant investment in nuclear isn't just buildThat is simply not true.
cost, it is R&D. Any reactor builder is investing in learning how to
build future reactors cheaper. This isn't just big reactors, it is SMR
too. The government doesn't offer a strike price for all the reactors
you plan to build. So if the electricity price plummets, the R&D asset
disappears.
In fact its utter bollocks.
All modern designs are standrd more or less off the shelf ones.
Yes, you can say electricity prices might go up. They have gone up.
But that is due to political incompetence. Prices can only go up so
far before something snaps and much cheaper alternatives are rolled
out. Hopefully in the next 10-20 years.
Yes. Nuclear reactors. Everybody who cares to do the sums comes to that conclusion.
Which is why it's the last thing to be taken off the UK grid., Any
income at all is profit.
Nothing can compete with a paid for nuclear reactor on electricity
price.
Yes, I understand it is profit, but it isn't enough to balance build
cost. SumOfAllFutureProfit - BuildCost = ActualProfit.
Actually the interest on the build cost is far more than the build cost itself
Let's do some real sums, and say that as a medium risk, the bond holders demand 7.5% per annum. It's a lot better than general motors gets...
The total cost of that is around *76 times* the initial investment. Over
60 years.
And golly. They want reactors.
It is only now that we see that politicians have made such a pig's
ear of generation that you see big companies, ai data centres,
getting scared. They know if the governments continue to mess it up,
the first people to suffer from rationing will be ai data centres.
And to his huge credit, Bill Gates has invested in them, rather than
building silly space rockets.
The Chinese communists of course have a superior government, managed
economy, which builds them.
Exactly. The smart money, which isn't government money, or renewable
money guaranteed by governments, knows that a cheap small reactor that
can come off a production line with all its R&D paid for already that
will do 40-60 years and can be financed at a few percent, is an
extremely good investment.
When you look at nuclear power, what is immediately apparent is that the fuel cost is negligible. EDF reckoned that a fully processed and manufactured fuel rod only added 15% to the cost of running the reactor
and financing its debt. My calculations implied that O & M - operations
and maintenance - was less at around 5%. Which is impressive too,
Leaving 80% of the cost as *interest on the loan* taken to pay to build it.
Whether that loan is repaid early, or extended depends on money market conditions and electricity prices.
And of course on how long it takes to build it.
SMR design is looking at two years from planning consent to clear the
site and build the infrastructure around it, and a further two years following delivery of a factory built reactor to the site to install
and commission it.
Compared with an average of 9 years for an AP1000 or in the case of Hinkley Point, 14 years.
On 2025-09-26 18:36, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-09-26, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
Caesium strontium and iodine. And tritium especially. Other stuff is far >>> more short lived. Xenon for example. Once the above are at low levels
then you can reprocess the rods to recover plutonium U235 and U238
Are you sure about tritium? Its decay releases only 18.6 keV.
I had a watch with a tritium dial and never worried about it,
since the radiation wouldn't even make it through my outer
skin layer, let alone the metal back of the watch.
Some smoke alarms use some nuclear radiation source, americium-241. They are very cheap, used in Canada for instance.
On 2025-09-25 23:22, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
:-( If you're ever out this way again, look me up.
My wife recently got her licence too; we fly a 172
(a vintage B model, Continental engine and manual
flaps) out of Pitt Meadows.
I definitely will. No plans to come out that way yet, though.
A few years ago We went to Mesa, Arizona for a winter holiday.
I saw an ad for something that intrigued me. A fellow was offering a
'flying lesson' in a Stearman. When I explained that I was a pilot, but hadn't flown for about 10 years, he allowed me to do the flying. I did a 'lazy 8' at his request, and promting me.
He also asked me to do several things under his direction, like "turn to
a heading, climb to an altitude, and best of all, make the approach to
the airport on the way back. He handled the radio, and I did the
approach up until about 500 feet on final, when he took over. I then
taxied for a bit. I was pleased when he said that I had done very well.
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 20:48:33 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1006351.We_Almost_Lost_Detroit
No big loss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1
Ignorance is bliss. I think it's one of Feynman's book where he talks
about early experiments to determine the critical mass. They had two
blocks of uranium on a workbench with a Geiger counter. The tech pushed
one towards the other with a screwdriver until the counter went nuts.
In comp.os.linux.misc rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 20:48:33 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1006351.We_Almost_Lost_Detroit
No big loss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1
Ignorance is bliss. I think it's one of Feynman's book where he talks
about early experiments to determine the critical mass. They had two
blocks of uranium on a workbench with a Geiger counter. The tech pushed
one towards the other with a screwdriver until the counter went nuts.
It didn't end well for the tech: https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1946USA1.html
On 2025-09-26, lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-09-25 23:22, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
:-( If you're ever out this way again, look me up.
My wife recently got her licence too; we fly a 172
(a vintage B model, Continental engine and manual
flaps) out of Pitt Meadows.
I definitely will. No plans to come out that way yet, though.
A few years ago We went to Mesa, Arizona for a winter holiday.
I saw an ad for something that intrigued me. A fellow was offering a
'flying lesson' in a Stearman. When I explained that I was a pilot, but
hadn't flown for about 10 years, he allowed me to do the flying. I did a
'lazy 8' at his request, and promting me.
He also asked me to do several things under his direction, like "turn to
a heading, climb to an altitude, and best of all, make the approach to
the airport on the way back. He handled the radio, and I did the
approach up until about 500 feet on final, when he took over. I then
taxied for a bit. I was pleased when he said that I had done very well.
Cool. I've heard of some funky airplanes you can get some rides
in down there. Some friends have been up in some pretty neat -
if expensive - machines, e.g. Mustang.
In comp.os.linux.misc rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 20:48:33 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1006351.We_Almost_Lost_Detroit
No big loss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1
Ignorance is bliss. I think it's one of Feynman's book where he talks
about early experiments to determine the critical mass. They had two
blocks of uranium on a workbench with a Geiger counter. The tech pushed
one towards the other with a screwdriver until the counter went nuts.
It didn't end well for the tech: https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1946USA1.html
On 2025-09-25 11:00, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 24/09/2025 21:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher
<[email protected]d> wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real >>>>> death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>>> and Chernobyl.
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima.
Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian
inefficiency. Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later
comes Fukushima disaster. No communists there to blame. State of
the art "western" industry.
The tsunami killed 20,000 people
No one died at the nuclear plant.
There is long term radiation disease and deaths to account for.
The safety systems all performed as designed.
There was no disaster.
Oh yes, there was.
It was a very old design of reactor indeed
It simply had not been designed for a once in a thousand years tsunami.
Oh. So now you tell me to trust other designs, that they will be
"safe"? That _nothing_ bad will ever happen?
Now nuclear plants are.
But the main thing was that the press made the nuclear meltdown a
'disaster' and completely ignored the fact that far far more death
and destruction had been caused by the tsunami itself. The nuclear
incident was a mere footnote.
More clear evidence of anti-nuclear propaganda, is hard to find.
On 27 Sep 2025 10:16:52 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 20:48:33 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1006351.We_Almost_Lost_Detroit
No big loss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1
Ignorance is bliss. I think it's one of Feynman's book where he talks
about early experiments to determine the critical mass. They had two
blocks of uranium on a workbench with a Geiger counter. The tech pushed
one towards the other with a screwdriver until the counter went nuts.
It didn't end well for the tech:
https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1946USA1.html
That would be the one. I didn't remember the details, mostly that he was using a very sophisticated piece of lab equipment -- a screwdriver. It doesn't say what the clue was when it went critical.
On Wed, 9/24/2025 6:20 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Fukushima was built in a zone where tidal waves had happened before. >> And it was internally SOTA but that was a while back. The siting o >> Fukushima was very bad and that is the most I can say about that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Japan is an island.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Japan_topo_en.jpg
You're building initially four reactors and eventually
six reactors. The ocean makes for a compact cooling system. Your choices
are to position reactors on a fresh-water river, if one of sufficient capacity and sustainable water flow is available. Or, to use the ocean.
The bluff was cleared of overburden, which lowered the height of the
bluff, but mounted the reactors on bedrock.
Tsunami events, historically, a few were very high. The Alaskan one
was 1700 feet. B.C. has some marks on a mountain somewhere, at
around 800 feet or so. Providing your emergency diesel with air
to drive it, would require a rather tall pipe to do the job
in such a way as to tolerate any incoming tsunami.
In hindsight, if "they'd made this a foot higher or that
a foot higher", it's hindsight that provides those measurements.
They could have made the seawall taller, but then the base
has to be bigger.
The area is the Ring of Fire, so surprises are to be expected.--
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire
On 2025-09-25, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-25 11:00, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 24/09/2025 21:12, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 01:57, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher
<[email protected]d> wrote:
In particular when the 1960s reactors were built the regulatory
framework was very light and governments wanted them built,. The real >>>>>> death knell was Germany, the Green party, proportional representation, >>>>>> and Chernobyl.
(We're now at "blame proportional representation for being
representative"!?)
From what I remember "Germany" was largely a reaction to Fukushima. >>>>Indeed.
It was my turning point, and that of many people.
When Chernobyl exploded we though: that's Russian
inefficiency. Communists are corrupt and imbecile. Then years later
comes Fukushima disaster. No communists there to blame. State of
the art "western" industry.
The tsunami killed 20,000 people
No one died at the nuclear plant.
There is long term radiation disease and deaths to account for.
The safety systems all performed as designed.
There was no disaster.
It's one of two events with the highest ranking in the nuclear accident scale, and you want us to believe this non-sense of "there was no
disaster".
Oh yes, there was.
It was a very old design of reactor indeed
It simply had not been designed for a once in a thousand years tsunami.
Oh. So now you tell me to trust other designs, that they will be
"safe"? That _nothing_ bad will ever happen?
This really starts looking like a blatant misrepresentation of facts,
IIRC the placement of generators had been raised several times years
before, both as a general caution, and specifically regarding Fukushima Daiichi. This isn't a failure to account to something in the design
that hadn't been considered before an accident, it might be closer to
STS-107 (disintegration of OV-102 Columbia) in that *despite* concerns, nothing was done.
https://enwp.org/Fukushima_Daiichi#Warnings_and_design_critique
You can say whatever you want about the age of the initial plant design
or the reactor design itself. But it doesn't really apply much in a
situation where part of that could have been changed, possibly
completely avoiding the *disaster*.
Now nuclear plants are.
But the main thing was that the press made the nuclear meltdown a
'disaster' and completely ignored the fact that far far more death
and destruction had been caused by the tsunami itself. The nuclear
incident was a mere footnote.
More clear evidence of anti-nuclear propaganda, is hard to find.
Yeah, I guess exclusion zones are mere propaganda. You planning to move
into one to prove how it's harm-free?
I guess "DROP & RUN" is also mere anti-nuclear propaganda to you?
I'd argue it doesn't even classify as hindsight bias in this case, given
the potential issue had been previously raised.
Just so you know - I loved the post, and got to the end!
As you say language (and its evolution) is fascinating.
Le 21-09-2025, Jim Jackson <[email protected]> a écrit :
Just so you know - I loved the post, and got to the end!
Thanks. It's good to know because if I was answering Marc's message,
even if my message could look like I was speaking to him, I wasn't. As
long as I'm writing here, I'm writing to everyone here.
As you say language (and its evolution) is fascinating.
Yep, but I'm far from the ultimate truth. If I don't put random words, I
can make mistakes. So what I wrote must be taken more like the basis for
a (new? I hope so for some people) way of seeing things than a way of correcting people who see things differently. Or just people who use
words without thinking about what's behind them.
On 21 Sep 2025 14:09:19 GMT
Stéphane CARPENTIER <[email protected]> wrote:
Yes, it's impossible to translate, the only way is to find something
similar. It's not always possible. Here a crude translation could only
lost on way to understand it, the understanding remains, but the joke
is lost.
Puns are probably the hardest thing to translate;
sometimes coincidence
or shared linguistic heritage hands you an easy one,
and sometimes (as
in your example) a change in particulars allows the translator to get
the gist of the joke across even if it's technically saying something different...but sometimes there's just nothing you can do, and the
harder you try the more tortured the result gets...
I can see footnotes used in the same way in other books. But it's
different. A joke explained is never as funny as a joke understood.
Sometimes there's just no helping it, though.
Been on a kick digging
into medieval beast fables this year, and that's enough of a culture
gap all by itself, even before before you get to the satire on the
abuses of the clergy in the 12th century or cases where a particular
Latin pun is so bad that the original author has to stop and explain
just how bad it is...!
Stéphane CARPENTIER <[email protected]> wrote:
But I love languages and history and as we are speaking about computers
at the same time, I feel a longer answer isn't out of topic here. And as
I like your mistake, I'm enjoying to answer it in advance. Thanks for
your question.
Thank you very much for your answer, I enjoyed reading it.
So, a really different point between the French world and the English
world is: in France we are speaking about ordinateurs and informatique
when in US/UK they are speaking about computers and computer science.
I think that the English word "computer science" is wrong.
My first
professor, back in 1988 when I started studying what is called
"Informatik" in Germany, said in the first lecture that it shouldn't
be "computer science" in English but "informatics", because our topic
doesn't have necessarily to do with computer. He is right, in my
opinion.
In German, we don't have a wildly used word for a computer. Experts
say "Rechner" which is a quite literal translation for both computer
and calculator, but that's rather uncommon in every day language.
A computer is something designed to compute. Which means the actual >>computer follow either the Chinese abacus if you want to go back in time
as far as you want.
Before NASA bought their first electronic computer, they had big rooms
full of people doing computations. They were actually called
computers.
For the no need of translation, you have the clavier. Everyone in France
is using a clavier. Nobody need to speak about keyboard. The reason is >>obvious: it cames from the typing machines which had a keyboard/clavier
and came along well before the personal computers. So the same word was >>used in the computer world. The translation is obvious and the need of a >>better world doesn't exist.
A Klavier in German is a piano. And Michael Jackson was using a
synthesizer called the "Synclavier" in the 1980ies.
The bogues are something very different. They are the green things with >>spikes around chestnuts. So, they are an already existing word, sounding >>like the word they mean to replace even if the meaning is different. The >>bug is the thing that create issue. The bogue is the issue you have if
you try to take it with bare hand. When in the English world, the bug is >>the thing that destroys little part of computers. For me, and for a lot
of people in France, the idea is stupid. For others, it's a good idea.
The English word bug was created when an actual bug caught in a relay
of an early computer that used relays instead of transistors because
we didn't have 'em yet. Took days to find.
It has probably taken you some time to read it. Be assured it took me
more time to write it. But I enjoyed it, I'm sorry if you didn't like my >>answer.
I am pretty much enjoying myself right now.
But where is the logiciel part?
On 2025-09-23, Marc Haber wrote:
Stéphane CARPENTIER <[email protected]> wrote:
A computer is something designed to compute. Which means the actual >>>computer follow either the Chinese abacus if you want to go back in time >>>as far as you want.
Before NASA bought their first electronic computer, they had big rooms
full of people doing computations. They were actually called
computers.
To me (YMMV, IMHO, &c.) computer science is about doing computations,
and to formalize that activity mathematically and logically (and in a
way that also abstracts whether it's done by people or by machine). This
may end up being called "theoretical computer science" sometimes? Also consequently, in this view, computers aren't necessarily machines,
unlike the "computing machinery" of "Association for Computing
Machinery".
For the no need of translation, you have the clavier. Everyone in France >>>is using a clavier. Nobody need to speak about keyboard. The reason is >>>obvious: it cames from the typing machines which had a keyboard/clavier >>>and came along well before the personal computers. So the same word was >>>used in the computer world. The translation is obvious and the need of a >>>better world doesn't exist.
A Klavier in German is a piano. And Michael Jackson was using a
synthesizer called the "Synclavier" in the 1980ies.
And in French can't Clavier also be an Astérix?
On 2025-09-21 19:59, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/09/2025 18:28, rbowman wrote:
I'm not fond of kings but an enlightened ruler might not be worse than a >>> bunch of self-serving politicians doing the will of the highest bidder.
TBH there is very little difference.
The only thing about kings is that you can't vote them out, They need to
be murdered.
Yes, they can be voted out.
King Alfonso XIII of Spain was voted out, the republicans won the vote.
A bit controversial this point, though, but the fact is that he
consequently fled the country voluntarily. There were no hordes trying
to kill him or whatever, he left more or less silently.
The murdering came when the military and the right wing made war to
remove the II Republic and put a dictatorship.
I think there was another instance previously of an ousted king or
queen, but I don't recall the details. No murdering, either.
Words (and objects) are metadata that *point to* a different order of reality.
It's very important that you neither confuse the word for the reality
it points to, nor think that you can change the underlying reality by changing the meaning of the word.
On 2025-09-27, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
Words (and objects) are metadata that *point to* a different order of
reality.
It's very important that you neither confuse the word for the reality
it points to, nor think that you can change the underlying reality by
changing the meaning of the word.
Ooooh, the woke crowd are _not_ going to be pleased with you.
On 9/23/25 21:19, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 9/23/25 16:05, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 24/09/25 06:22, Sam Plusnet wrote:Well the USA stole a substancial portion of a continent from the >> Original Occupants
On 23/09/2025 10:50, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
If you choose to live in a country, you agree to abide by the laws of >>>>> it. If those laws specify that your property can be expropriated under >>>>> certain circumstances, then it has nothing to do with theft.Every time I read a post in this subthread, I hear a voice saying:
"It's not illegal if the President does it."
I keep hearing the voice of an anarchist saying "Proper tea is theft".
Who stole substantial portions from the Previous Owners
at spear-point, who stole substantial portions from the
Previous Owners at spear-point, who ... regress 35,000
years ... conquests, genocides, slavery ..........
Why is only 'western culture' blamed for conquests ???
Reference :
https://www.ancientpages.com/2016/03/11/codes-of-ur-nammu-worlds-oldest- known-law-code/
Plenty of stuff about slaves in there ......
Endless conquests/genocides going on at the time too.
On 23/09/2025 12:42, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 13:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:...who mandated the use of renewable energy without understanding the consequences. Or holding its advocates to account.
On 23/09/2025 10:09, Carlos E.R. wrote:
We have socialists and communists running the government here, and
nothing untoward has happened.
Just a power cut for the whole country.
LOL. Not their fault, likely. Could have happened to any government
anywhere.
Le 22-09-2025, Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> a écrit :
On 2025-09-21 19:59, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/09/2025 18:28, rbowman wrote:
I'm not fond of kings but an enlightened ruler might not be worse than a >>>> bunch of self-serving politicians doing the will of the highest bidder. >>>TBH there is very little difference.
The only thing about kings is that you can't vote them out, They need to >>> be murdered.
Yes, they can be voted out.
King Alfonso XIII of Spain was voted out, the republicans won the vote.
A bit controversial this point, though, but the fact is that he
consequently fled the country voluntarily. There were no hordes trying
to kill him or whatever, he left more or less silently.
The murdering came when the military and the right wing made war to
remove the II Republic and put a dictatorship.
I think there was another instance previously of an ousted king or
queen, but I don't recall the details. No murdering, either.
And in a country close to yours, a revolution was done in a very good
way. Of course, I'm not speaking about France in which I'm happy to live without a king but I can't say that the way the revolution was done was
good. I'm speaking about your other neighbour which should inspire more people.
What I mean is: even if most revolutions are spreading blood, it's not a requirement.
On 2025-09-23, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 23/09/2025 12:42, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 13:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:...who mandated the use of renewable energy without understanding the
On 23/09/2025 10:09, Carlos E.R. wrote:
We have socialists and communists running the government here, and
nothing untoward has happened.
Just a power cut for the whole country.
LOL. Not their fault, likely. Could have happened to any government
anywhere.
consequences. Or holding its advocates to account.
You do need to finally take the time to actually check what happened,
instead of just sitting on the same pile of steaming far-right bullshit.
If we're getting into this kind of "consequences" talk, maybe: they
should hold whoever allowed private operators to account, or whoever did
not mandate strict enough procedures and/or rules to catch early or
prevent the succession of failures?
Or - and I'm going on a limb here - we could drop the far-right bullshit
and instead talk of a proper investigation of why what ought to be
critical systems did not handle this failure in the way they were
expected to and instead caused wide disruption?
(I said "drop the far-right bullshit", so please don't reply to this
with "because of solar power" or "because of renewables" or "because of [non-existing] subsidies".)
It was bad enough dealing with the failures of Iberdrola and of the
fossil fuel plants to avoid disturbing the grid, do we now have to brace
for Trump and GOP-style (if not -infused) far-right misinformation on
this invading iberian politics?
But I guess you're not even aware - or you chose to ignore it because it conflicts with your worldview? - that it was a failure in fossil fuel
plants that actually brought the grid down? (Besides overall failure to
act as expected from thermal and nuclear power plants, at least one
thermal plant is said to have done the opposite of that it should.)
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 13:16:03 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Besided almonds and olives, the valley produces walnuts, peaches
and a lot of stone fruit, pistachios, pecans, melons of many
varieties, rape seed(becomes canola oil on the market shelves),
rice, corn, wheat, beans and more green produce than I can find
the strength to write about.
Don't forget the tomatoes. During harvest season I'd pass the trucks
that looked like bathtubs on wheels pile high with tomatoes. Most of
the time they were leaving a trail of tomatoes on I-5.
I've hauled rice out of the Delta to BC, and wine to various places.
On one of the wine runs most of the load was from Gallo but I also
stopped at smaller vineyards for a few cases. It was about 5 PM when
I got to the last one and they couldn't load me that day but let me
park in the vineyard. It was one of the more pleasant places I'd had
to park overnight.
On 2025-09-23 14:36, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 23/09/2025 12:42, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 13:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:...who mandated the use of renewable energy without understanding the
On 23/09/2025 10:09, Carlos E.R. wrote:
We have socialists and communists running the government here, and
nothing untoward has happened.
Just a power cut for the whole country.
LOL. Not their fault, likely. Could have happened to any government
anywhere.
consequences. Or holding its advocates to account.
That was not the cause. You wish it were.
On 2025-09-24, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 23/09/2025 21:21, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Opening up a submarine to replace the "engine" must be an engineering feat. >>Not if it's designed to be opened up
That reminds me of the "fast ferry" fiasco here in B.C. This batch
of new ferries, as it turns out, had to be red-lined in order to get
the speed that was promised - which wore out the engines in record
time. That's when it was discovered that there was no means to
easily remove the engines for servicing, so holes had to be cut
in the hull. After the provincial government's standard 100%
cost overrun building them, they were eventually pulled from
service (to the great relief of everyone who traveled on them),
and they were eventually sold for 10 cents on the dollar.
Ironically, they turned out to generate such a wake that they
had to be run slowly past the islands near each end of the trip
so that their wake wouldn't bash everything on said islands, so
the purported time savings shrank to 5 to 10 minutes on a 1:35
trip. Yawn. The only person I know of who liked them was a guy
who lived on Gabriola Island who would get out his surfboard
whenever one went by.
Well, Trump plans to steal land, too. That is not ancient.
And wants to destroy the UN, so that nobody protests.
On 2025-09-23 14:36, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 23/09/2025 12:42, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 13:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:...who mandated the use of renewable energy without understanding the
On 23/09/2025 10:09, Carlos E.R. wrote:
We have socialists and communists running the government here, and
nothing untoward has happened.
Just a power cut for the whole country.
LOL. Not their fault, likely. Could have happened to any government
anywhere.
consequences. Or holding its advocates to account.
That was not the cause. You wish it were.
On 24/09/2025 3:06 pm, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-09-24, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:.... but at least your ferries had somewhere to berth when they did finish their voyage. Australia's Island state, Tasmania, has ordered two new ferries but the new ferries are longer then the port they use!!
On 23/09/2025 21:21, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Opening up a submarine to replace the "engine" must be an engineering feat.
Not if it's designed to be opened up
That reminds me of the "fast ferry" fiasco here in B.C. This batch
of new ferries, as it turns out, had to be red-lined in order to get
the speed that was promised - which wore out the engines in record
time. That's when it was discovered that there was no means to
easily remove the engines for servicing, so holes had to be cut
in the hull. After the provincial government's standard 100%
cost overrun building them, they were eventually pulled from
service (to the great relief of everyone who traveled on them),
and they were eventually sold for 10 cents on the dollar.
Ironically, they turned out to generate such a wake that they
had to be run slowly past the islands near each end of the trip
so that their wake wouldn't bash everything on said islands, so
the purported time savings shrank to 5 to 10 minutes on a 1:35
trip. Yawn. The only person I know of who liked them was a guy
who lived on Gabriola Island who would get out his surfboard
whenever one went by.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-23/spirit-of-tasmania-iv-arrives-in-hobart-from-scotland/105685256
Quote
"It's costing us so much money and it's come so far, that we really hope it will lift our state and bring plenty of visitors in and pay for itself," Chresley Elphinstone said.
"It's been a shambles, really, but I just hope they've got it all right now — but that port should have been ready a long time ago."
End Quote
and
Quote
"The bungled rollout has caused political turmoil in Tasmania, with the infrastructure minister who oversaw the project losing his job over it."
End Quote
One of the things that can go wrong with that kind of solution,
is "forgetting to close the door" while at sea. Apparently, that's bad for them 🙂
Ferry wrangling is a hard concept for politicians.
The pictures make it look like yours is the size of the Love Boat.
I was expecting something more RORO oriented (so the RORO-end
could meet the dock end).
On 2025-09-24 06:31, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 13:16:03 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Don't forget the tomatoes. During harvest season I'd pass the trucks
that looked like bathtubs on wheels pile high with tomatoes. Most of
the time they were leaving a trail of tomatoes on I-5.
Here they box them first. Otherwise they crush.
I'm curious.
When lorries park at some place waiting to be loaded the following day,
does the driver go to an hotel somewhere, or sleep in the vehicle? And
how do they go, taxi? I fear they mostly sleep on the vehicle, other
thing would be expensive and eat on the earnings.
On 2025-09-24 06:31, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 13:16:03 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Besided almonds and olives, the valley produces walnuts, peaches and
a lot of stone fruit, pistachios, pecans, melons of many
varieties, rape seed(becomes canola oil on the market shelves),
rice, corn, wheat, beans and more green produce than I can find
the strength to write about.
Don't forget the tomatoes. During harvest season I'd pass the trucks
that looked like bathtubs on wheels pile high with tomatoes. Most of
the time they were leaving a trail of tomatoes on I-5.
Here they box them first. Otherwise they crush.
I've hauled rice out of the Delta to BC, and wine to various places.
On one of the wine runs most of the load was from Gallo but I also
stopped at smaller vineyards for a few cases. It was about 5 PM when I
got to the last one and they couldn't load me that day but let me park
in the vineyard. It was one of the more pleasant places I'd had to
park overnight.
I'm curious.
When lorries park at some place waiting to be loaded the following day,
does the driver go to an hotel somewhere, or sleep in the vehicle? And
how do they go, taxi? I fear they mostly sleep on the vehicle, other
thing would be expensive and eat on the earnings.
On Sun, 9/28/2025 8:52 AM, Daniel70 wrote:
.... but at least your ferries had somewhere to berth when theyFerry wrangling is a hard concept for politicians.
did finish their voyage. Australia's Island state, Tasmania, has
ordered two new ferries but the new ferries are longer then the
port they use!!
The pictures make it look like yours is the size of the Love Boat.
I was expecting something more RORO oriented (so the RORO-end
could meet the dock end).
In this picture, there is a RORO that parks end-on. I suppose it all depends on
how rough the water is, in-port, whether docking that way is practical.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Queenscliff_ferry_terminal.jpg
Carlos E.R. hat am 28.09.2025 um 14:25 geschrieben:
On 2025-09-23 14:36, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
...who mandated the use of renewable energy without understanding the
consequences. Or holding its advocates to account.
That was not the cause. You wish it were.
WTF does this discussion - or, for that matter, the person calling
themself "The Natural Philosopher" - have to do with Linux or with the
usage of the English language?
On Sun, 28 Sep 2025 14:45:08 +0200, Silvano
<[email protected]> wrote:
Carlos E.R. hat am 28.09.2025 um 14:25 geschrieben:
On 2025-09-23 14:36, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
...who mandated the use of renewable energy without understanding the
consequences. Or holding its advocates to account.
That was not the cause. You wish it were.
WTF does this discussion - or, for that matter, the person calling
themself "The Natural Philosopher" - have to do with Linux or with the
usage of the English language?
Very little. I think we've got ourselves a troll.
Many of our long haul vehicles have sleeper spaces behind the controlling part of the cab as we call call the enclosed spaces on the tractors that haul the immense trailers across the nation whether fromexcept
East to West or South to North.
A lot of this stuff formerly moved by rail but with the Interstate
highways built at the instigation of Eisenhower to prospectively move
troops and military equipments the companies profiting by such movement
of goods moved to trucks. When I was a kid the Railway Express was
widely accessible but since then track that went all over the
countryside to small towns with crops to be moved have been torn up.
The remaining railways are poorly maintained as far as I know
perhaps on passenger routes.
In comp.os.linux.misc Paul <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Sun, 9/28/2025 8:52 AM, Daniel70 wrote:
.... but at least your ferries had somewhere to berth when theyFerry wrangling is a hard concept for politicians.
did finish their voyage. Australia's Island state, Tasmania, has
ordered two new ferries but the new ferries are longer then the
port they use!!
The pictures make it look like yours is the size of the Love Boat.
I was expecting something more RORO oriented (so the RORO-end
could meet the dock end).
In this picture, there is a RORO that parks end-on. I suppose it all depends on
how rough the water is, in-port, whether docking that way is practical.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Queenscliff_ferry_terminal.jpg
That's the wrong ferry. It just crosses the Port Phillip bay to
save people driving through Melbourne (but they manage to charge
about as much as the fuel costs to drive). The ferry to Tassie has
always docked elsewhere, but it did recently move closer, from
Melbourne to Geelong, where I assume the new terminal there suits
the new ferries, but I haven't been following the details on that.
Both services do take cars. This page shows the car ramps that
lead up to the ship at the new dock in Geelong:
http://web.archive.org/web/20250815130213/https://engage.geelongport.com.au/spiritoftasmania
On 9/28/25 17:30, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Sun, 28 Sep 2025 14:45:08 +0200, Silvano
<[email protected]> wrote:
Carlos E.R. hat am 28.09.2025 um 14:25 geschrieben:
On 2025-09-23 14:36, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
...who mandated the use of renewable energy without understanding the >>>>> consequences. Or holding its advocates to account.
That was not the cause. You wish it were.
WTF does this discussion - or, for that matter, the person calling
themself "The Natural Philosopher" - have to do with Linux or with the
usage of the English language?
Very little. I think we've got ourselves a troll.
Some people may see him as such but I find him annoying
enough to put in my killfile.
On Sun, 28 Sep 2025 13:45:29 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Many of our long haul vehicles have sleeper spaces behind theexcept
controlling part of the cab as we call call the enclosed spaces on the
tractors that haul the immense trailers across the nation whether from
East to West or South to North.
A lot of this stuff formerly moved by rail but with the Interstate
highways built at the instigation of Eisenhower to prospectively move
troops and military equipments the companies profiting by such movement
of goods moved to trucks. When I was a kid the Railway Express was
widely accessible but since then track that went all over the
countryside to small towns with crops to be moved have been torn up.
The remaining railways are poorly maintained as far as I know
perhaps on passenger routes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_freight_transport
Intermodal has become increasingly common. It probably started with
maritime transport. My brother-in-law was a merchant marine officer and
most of his career was on container ships. That drastically cuts down on
the loading/unloading time. Once the goods are in a container, they might
as well stay in it, assuming one consignee. Usually trucks are involved at the endpoints, sort of the final mile thing.
Piggybacks are also common, particularly for the large carriers. The
company I worked for didn't do piggybacks but furniture was one of the profitable goods. Local drivers would pick up furniture at the factories
in the southeast and bring it to the terminal in Oxford Mississippi where
it was loaded into conventional boxcars. Those would eventually wind up in Helena MT, Kent WA, or one of the other terminals, be unloaded, and
delivered locally.
A lot depends on the time sensitivity and the availability of a rail
terminal in the area.
Railroads aren't obsolete, trust me. We have a few surface level crossings and I've spent many minutes watching lumber, coal, cars, chemicals, and
who knows what else going by if I got caught.
Passenger service is iffy outside of the eastern corridor. This town has
two former stations and no passenger service. Amtrak runs on the former Northern Pacific line so I'd have to drive over 100 miles to get a train
to Seattle. When I was working in Ft. Wayne I could take Amtrak to
Chicago. It was seedier than the east coast service but it did work.
I've seen whatever passenger train goes through Lompoc out by the beach
but I don't know how feasible it is.
I won't go into CAHSR. That's your problem.
The Passenger train is 10 miles outside of Lompoc at Surf Cityterminal
so it does not sound too feasible to me.
The Nach as I think of him espouses right wing values and^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
climate denial idiocy.
On 9/28/25 17:30, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Sun, 28 Sep 2025 14:45:08 +0200, Silvano
<[email protected]> wrote:
Carlos E.R. hat am 28.09.2025 um 14:25 geschrieben:
On 2025-09-23 14:36, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
...who mandated the use of renewable energy without understanding the >>>>> consequences. Or holding its advocates to account.
That was not the cause. You wish it were.
WTF does this discussion - or, for that matter, the person calling
themself "The Natural Philosopher" - have to do with Linux or with the
usage of the English language?
Very little. I think we've got ourselves a troll.
Some people may see him as such but I find him annoying
enough to put in my killfile.
The Nach as I think of him espouses right wing values and
climate denial idiocy. Some others do as well. While it appears
that the Nach reads replies at time he denies factual referrals
to sites that support the idea that climate is warming and that
it already has had consequences and that further on in the
cycle of hell fossil fuel overuse has spawned it will be even
worse. Most trolls fail to read replies.
Why English usage is in the Header line I do not know but
a lot us Usenetters are hair-splitters.
Somewhere there was a note about using "-" in dates but
in Linux a "/" indicates a directory so I cannot save a simple file
as a 2025/09/28. That would indicate top level 2025 then a
directory of 09 and inside that a directory 28.
So we include miscellaneous Linux information whenever
we find an excuse.
Linuxish haltingly spoken here...
He keeps e.g. insisting that renewables are to blame, that renewables
aren't profitable, that renewables get subsidies, all of these look like far-right talking points that are lies that get traction to fuel an anti-renewable policy. It's all either specific to some country
which does indeed subsidize these to overcome some local extreme
cheapness in other power source or just made up.
On 28/09/2025 13:06, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Well, Trump plans to steal land, too. That is not ancient.
And is not accxeptable, and seems to not be being discussed much more.
And wants to destroy the UN, so that nobody protests.
Frankly, the UN has become a handout-demanding Western hating pit of 3rd world banana republics and probably should be destroyed.
Like all bureaucracies eventually it got taken over by freeloaders and bureaucrats and needs replacing with something fit for purpose.
Why English usage is in the Header line I do not know but
a lot us Usenetters are hair-splitters.
On 28/09/2025 13:25, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:36, The Natural Philosopher wrote:It was the cause and I know it was. It is after all what I took a degree course in.
On 23/09/2025 12:42, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 13:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:...who mandated the use of renewable energy without understanding the
On 23/09/2025 10:09, Carlos E.R. wrote:
We have socialists and communists running the government here, and >>>>>> nothing untoward has happened.
Just a power cut for the whole country.
LOL. Not their fault, likely. Could have happened to any government
anywhere.
consequences. Or holding its advocates to account.
That was not the cause. You wish it were.
Its you who have your fingers in your ears,
On 9/28/25 05:38, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 06:31, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 13:16:03 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Besided almonds and olives, the valley produces walnuts,
peaches and a lot of stone fruit, pistachios, pecans, melons
of many varieties, rape seed(becomes canola oil on the market
shelves), rice, corn, wheat, beans and more green produce than
I can find the strength to write about.
Don't forget the tomatoes. During harvest season I'd pass the
trucks that looked like bathtubs on wheels pile high with
tomatoes. Most of the time they were leaving a trail of tomatoes
on I-5.
Here they box them first. Otherwise they crush.
Crushing is ok because these tomatoes in the big trucks are heading
to processing plants to be canned at least or possibly turned into
sauce, paste or various other product including much better crushed
tomatoes for fogies like me to to make sauces or other dishes.
I've hauled rice out of the Delta to BC, and wine to various
places. On one of the wine runs most of the load was from Gallo
but I also stopped at smaller vineyards for a few cases. It was
about 5 PM when I got to the last one and they couldn't load me
that day but let me park in the vineyard. It was one of the more
pleasant places I'd had to park overnight.
I'm curious.
When lorries park at some place waiting to be loaded the following
day, does the driver go to an hotel somewhere, or sleep in the
vehicle? And how do they go, taxi? I fear they mostly sleep on the
vehicle, other thing would be expensive and eat on the earnings.
Many of our long haul vehicles have sleeper spaces behind the
controlling part of the cab as we call call the enclosed spaces on
the tractors that haul the immense trailers across the nation
whether from East to West or South to North. A lot of this stuff
formerly moved by rail but with the Interstate highways built at the instigation of Eisenhower to prospectively move troops and military equipments the companies profiting by such movement of goods moved
to trucks. When I was a kid the Railway Express was widely
accessible but since then track that went all over the countryside
to small towns with crops to be moved have been torn up.
The remaining railways are poorly maintained as far as I know except
perhaps on passenger routes.
bliss>--
On Sun, 28 Sep 2025 14:38:17 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 06:31, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 13:16:03 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Don't forget the tomatoes. During harvest season I'd pass the trucks
that looked like bathtubs on wheels pile high with tomatoes. Most of
the time they were leaving a trail of tomatoes on I-5.
Here they box them first. Otherwise they crush.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-koSjUj7kU https://boomcalifornia.org/2013/06/24/thinking-through-the-tomato-
harvester/
The second link describes the tandem development of the machinery and the tomatoes that can survive the machine.
"The key was a change in perspective. Instead of looking for flavor,
texture, or even color or appearance, as he would have otherwise, he had
in this project to learn to “look at a plant mechanically.” Flavor, liquid
content, shape, and appearance were secondary to finding the properties
that could be run successfully through the harvester. "
They look like tomatoes but don't necessarily taste like them. The white
bins in the video and the text link are transferred to flatbed trucks for highway transport but the loads are piled high and not tarped so some loss
is inevitable.
I'm curious.
When lorries park at some place waiting to be loaded the following day,
does the driver go to an hotel somewhere, or sleep in the vehicle? And
how do they go, taxi? I fear they mostly sleep on the vehicle, other
thing would be expensive and eat on the earnings.
You sleep in the truck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_sleeper
https://www.core77.com/posts/59146/What-Do-Luxury-Sleeper-Cabs-for-Long- Haul-Truck-Drivers-Look-Like
https://www.cloudtrucks.com/blog-post/where-do-truckers-sleep
The company I drove for had very rudimentary sleeper, just a narrow bunk
with some storage underneath like the first photo in the third link.
Another company in the same city had larger sleepers and we were told
'Drive for them and you'll need the bigger sleeper because you'll never
get home.'
I'd typically be out two or three weeks with four or five days home. It
sucks for anyone with a family. You're going to miss holidays, birthdays, graduations, and so forth. I'd drive during the Christmas holidays since
it didn't matter to me and would give someone a chance to take the time
off.
The truck stops have shower facilities and you get a coupon if you buy
fuel. I never was fond of truckstop food so I'd get bread or bagels,
granola, dry milk, canned food, and so forth. Most trucks had places
around the manifold where you could stick a can and it wouldn't fall out.
Hot meal in 100 miles.
For grocery shopping, doing your laundry, and so for you'd drop the
trailer and 'bobtail' with just the tractor.
Overnight parking might be a truck stop, rest area, where you were loading
or delivering, or other quiet spot. Good luck with that. I parked at what looked like a peaceful little park. Seems it doubled as a landing pad for
the LAPD helicopters.
It's a different life and it was fun until it wasn't. When I was a kid I wanted to be a truck driver. Of course my parents wouldn't hear of it. I
was going to college or else. Years later when I was burned out with computers I decided it was time. Since there is no continuity beyond delivering a load it had the advantage for me that I could take the winter off and go to Arizona. In the spring I'd go back and hit the road. The industry has a very high turn over so there is always a truck waiting.
You're paid by the mile so if freight is slow you'er not making money.
On 28/09/2025 17:00, Paul wrote:
One of the things that can go wrong with that kind of solution,
is "forgetting to close the door" while at sea. Apparently, that's bad
for them 🙂
The evening that the Herald of Free Enterpise sank, I was travelling
from Belgium back to the UK. But I always drove to Calais and took the shorter ferry trip.
The next morning my farmer landlord rushed up and hugged me and said
"You're alive!"
I had no idea what he was talking about.
On the Monday morning as I took the ferry back to Calais the music
playing on the Tannoy was Mike Oldfield's 'Never ever get to France'....
In comp.os.linux.misc Paul <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Sun, 9/28/2025 8:52 AM, Daniel70 wrote:
.... but at least your ferries had somewhere to berth when theyFerry wrangling is a hard concept for politicians.
did finish their voyage. Australia's Island state, Tasmania, has
ordered two new ferries but the new ferries are longer then the
port they use!!
The pictures make it look like yours is the size of the Love Boat.
I was expecting something more RORO oriented (so the RORO-end
could meet the dock end).
In this picture, there is a RORO that parks end-on. I suppose it all depends on
how rough the water is, in-port, whether docking that way is practical.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Queenscliff_ferry_terminal.jpg
That's the wrong ferry. It just crosses the Port Phillip bay to
save people driving through Melbourne (but they manage to charge
about as much as the fuel costs to drive). The ferry to Tassie has
always docked elsewhere, but it did recently move closer, from
Melbourne to Geelong, where I assume the new terminal there suits
the new ferries, but I haven't been following the details on that.
Both services do take cars. This page shows the car ramps that
lead up to the ship at the new dock in Geelong:
http://web.archive.org/web/20250815130213/https://engage.geelongport.com.au/spiritoftasmania
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 21:23:33 +1000, Daniel70 wrote:
As I understand it, one criteria of the set-up is that when the
Submarine's Nuclear Reactor has reached End-of-Life, the Reactor vessel
will be removed and disposed of (somehow/somewhere) and a new reactor
vessel fitted into the Submarine ..... and off they go!
Good luck with that. If you think the waste is going to be buried
someplace in WA or SA think again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository
All 3 million inhabitants will suddenly become concerned about a patch of desert they've never seen. The Abos will suddenly discover areas sacred to their ancestors. The nature lovers will take up the defense of the
numbats. The UK might have gotten away with setting off nuclear bombs in
the '50s but that was then.
On 2025-09-28 20:44, rbowman wrote:Misattribution: Bowman wrote that paragraph.>>>> Don't forget the tomatoes. During harvest season I'd pass the trucks
On Sun, 28 Sep 2025 14:38:17 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-24 06:31, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 13:16:03 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
that looked like bathtubs on wheels pile high with tomatoes. Most of
the time they were leaving a trail of tomatoes on I-5.
Here they box them first. Otherwise they crush.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-koSjUj7kU
https://boomcalifornia.org/2013/06/24/thinking-through-the-tomato-
harvester/
Audio is Spanish, but you can see the plantation is very different. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIjz3yhGAYI
Another plantation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi_v6yXhscA
air view of an industrial farm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R16F3rm_xOg
A short of harvesting. It is manual. Lots of immigration labour. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/a3TU299iFvo
Tomatoes here are usually planted inside greenhouses, to have earlier
crops and year round, and supported by canes, so bigger plants and the fruits in the air.
A lot of that tomato is exported to north of us in Europe. We also take
them from Morocco.
Some people like them green, but mostly they harvest green starting to
go red, so that they ripen during transport. Gives them extra time. But a tomato that ripens in the plant is delicious. I try to grow a plant or
two, but often the plants are eaten by insects and I get nothing. I'm
not a good gardener.
The second link describes the tandem development of the machinery and the
tomatoes that can survive the machine.
"The key was a change in perspective. Instead of looking for flavor,
texture, or even color or appearance, as he would have otherwise, he had
in this project to learn to “look at a plant mechanically.” Flavor,
liquid
content, shape, and appearance were secondary to finding the properties
that could be run successfully through the harvester. "
They look like tomatoes but don't necessarily taste like them. The white
bins in the video and the text link are transferred to flatbed trucks for
highway transport but the loads are piled high and not tarped so some
loss
is inevitable.
I'm curious.
When lorries park at some place waiting to be loaded the following day,
does the driver go to an hotel somewhere, or sleep in the vehicle? And
how do they go, taxi? I fear they mostly sleep on the vehicle, other
thing would be expensive and eat on the earnings.
You sleep in the truck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_sleeper
https://www.core77.com/posts/59146/What-Do-Luxury-Sleeper-Cabs-for-Long-
Haul-Truck-Drivers-Look-Like
Astounding interiors. Here they are much smaller.
https://www.cloudtrucks.com/blog-post/where-do-truckers-sleep
The company I drove for had very rudimentary sleeper, just a narrow bunk
with some storage underneath like the first photo in the third link.
Another company in the same city had larger sleepers and we were told
'Drive for them and you'll need the bigger sleeper because you'll never
get home.'
I'd typically be out two or three weeks with four or five days home. It
sucks for anyone with a family. You're going to miss holidays, birthdays,
graduations, and so forth. I'd drive during the Christmas holidays since
it didn't matter to me and would give someone a chance to take the time
off.
The truck stops have shower facilities and you get a coupon if you buy
fuel. I never was fond of truckstop food so I'd get bread or bagels,
granola, dry milk, canned food, and so forth. Most trucks had places
around the manifold where you could stick a can and it wouldn't fall out.
Hot meal in 100 miles.
For grocery shopping, doing your laundry, and so for you'd drop the
trailer and 'bobtail' with just the tractor.
Overnight parking might be a truck stop, rest area, where you were
loading
or delivering, or other quiet spot. Good luck with that. I parked at what
looked like a peaceful little park. Seems it doubled as a landing pad for
the LAPD helicopters.
It's a different life and it was fun until it wasn't. When I was a kid I
wanted to be a truck driver. Of course my parents wouldn't hear of it. I
was going to college or else. Years later when I was burned out with
computers I decided it was time. Since there is no continuity beyond
delivering a load it had the advantage for me that I could take the
winter
off and go to Arizona. In the spring I'd go back and hit the road. The
industry has a very high turn over so there is always a truck waiting.
You're paid by the mile so if freight is slow you'er not making money.
Thanks for the view :-)
On 2025-09-28 16:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:No. In fact the experts say different. Only the political left sponsored 'studies' exonerate renewables
On 28/09/2025 13:25, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 14:36, The Natural Philosopher wrote:It was the cause and I know it was. It is after all what I took a
On 23/09/2025 12:42, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-23 13:20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:...who mandated the use of renewable energy without understanding
On 23/09/2025 10:09, Carlos E.R. wrote:
We have socialists and communists running the government here,
and nothing untoward has happened.
Just a power cut for the whole country.
LOL. Not their fault, likely. Could have happened to any government >>>>> anywhere.
the consequences. Or holding its advocates to account.
That was not the cause. You wish it were.
degree course in.
The experts and their reports say otherwise. Only the political right disagree, for political reasons, not the engineers.
Its you who have your fingers in your ears,
On 29/09/2025 2:34 am, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 28/09/2025 17:00, Paul wrote:
One of the things that can go wrong with that kind of solution,
is "forgetting to close the door" while at sea. Apparently, that's
bad for them 🙂
The evening that the Herald of Free Enterpise sank, I was travelling
from Belgium back to the UK. But I always drove to Calais and took the
shorter ferry trip.
The next morning my farmer landlord rushed up and hugged me and said
"You're alive!"
I had no idea what he was talking about.
On the Monday morning as I took the ferry back to Calais the music
playing on the Tannoy was Mike Oldfield's 'Never ever get to France'....
"Mike Oldfield's 'Never ever get to France'...." Was that pre- or post- "Tubular Bells" He sure was/is a talented musician.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Oldfield--
Hmm! Tubular Bells II and Tubular Bell III. Must check them out!! I
already have Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn.
Even in very different languages, translators can get lucky. There's ansometimes coincidence
or shared linguistic heritage hands you an easy one,
Of course, French, Italian and Spanish are closely related to each
other. English is related even if less closely. But Japanese and
Chinese aren't. So sometimes, a translation from French to Spanish
would be easy. From french to English would be more difficult and
from French to Japanese or Chinese would be impossible.
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early >twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a >globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree,
and,
on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer
projections combined into implausible chains of inference,
proceeded to
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.
Richard Lindzen
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:44:09 +0100, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
proceeded to
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.
Richard Lindzen
A "rollback of the industrial age" was an exaggeration that
seemed less extreme 20 years ago, before wind and solar
progressed rapidly and became viable substitutes.
I think it is a sober judgment to say, "Better safe than sorry."
Especially when the cost of being safe is not hard to meet.
The opposition is funded, especially, by the some very rich
(feral-rich: no social conscience) owners of oil and gas rights,
who WILL lose out.
On 27 Sep 2025 13:22:33 GMT
Stéphane CARPENTIER <[email protected]> wrote:
sometimes coincidence
or shared linguistic heritage hands you an easy one,
Of course, French, Italian and Spanish are closely related to each
other. English is related even if less closely. But Japanese and
Chinese aren't. So sometimes, a translation from French to Spanish
would be easy. From french to English would be more difficult and
from French to Japanese or Chinese would be impossible.
Even in very different languages, translators can get lucky. There's an
early storyline in Ranma 1/2 where the female lead's hair gets sheared
off during a fight between two of the other characters, and the author
got in a shameless pun on "kega wa nakute" (she wasn't injured) and "ke
ga nakunatta" (she lost her hair.) The staff for the English release, happily, were able to preserve it:
"At least she wasn't injured."
"Yeah, but she sure got a bad cut!"
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:44:09 +0100, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:No one denies climate.
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early
twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a >> globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree,
That sounds like Lindzen in 2007, between el ninos.
However, Lindzen is an actual GOOD scientist of the atmosphere.
Climate deniers have few scientists on their side, of any specialty.
]
If you read about it, his contrarian theory allows for a few decades
of warming, before the increased water vapor at high altitudes causes
heat to start leaking, eventually erasing 45 years of increases.
and,
on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer
projections combined into implausible chains of inference,
I believe the more accurate summary would be, "on the basis
of simple linear extrapolations of present trends, ignoring
complications that COULD arise, and are not entirely implausible."
If he weren't trying to make a point, I think Lindzen would not
object to that version of his statement. How implausible is his
theory? His fellow scientists don't say "how unlikely" while
rejecting it. I figure the uncertainty - owing to unknowns -
could to as high as 20%.
It is valuable to have a few contrarians. How badly will the
reputation of science suffer, if the future follows his theory
(or some other negative feedback, yet to be imagined) and
the warminng reverses?
I agree that there are a lot of unknowns in the science.
The water currents seem to drive the air currents, and no one
has a grasp on el nino, etc. - The predicted odds seem to be
increasing, that the Gulf Stream will collapse. The aftermath
of THAT is projected as an awfully chilly Europe, for quite a
while.
proceeded to
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.
Richard Lindzen
A "rollback of the industrial age" was an exaggeration that
seemed less extreme 20 years ago, before wind and solar
progressed rapidly and became viable substitutes.
I think it is a sober judgment to say, "Better safe than sorry."
Especially when the cost of being safe is not hard to meet.
The opposition is funded, especially, by the some very rich
(feral-rich: no social conscience) owners of oil and gas rights,
who WILL lose out.
On 2025-09-29 18:54, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:44:09 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
<[email protected]d> wrote:
...
proceeded to
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.
Richard Lindzen
A "rollback of the industrial age" was an exaggeration that
seemed less extreme 20 years ago, before wind and solar
progressed rapidly and became viable substitutes.
I think it is a sober judgment to say, "Better safe than sorry."
Especially when the cost of being safe is not hard to meet.
The opposition is funded, especially, by the some very rich
(feral-rich: no social conscience) owners of oil and gas rights,
who WILL lose out.
The current state of climate change already means disasters every year causing many deaths in my country.
A short of harvesting. It is manual. Lots of immigration labour. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/a3TU299iFvo
On 29/09/2025 18:14, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-29 18:54, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:44:09 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
<[email protected]d> wrote:
...
proceeded to
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.
Richard Lindzen
A "rollback of the industrial age" was an exaggeration that
seemed less extreme 20 years ago, before wind and solar
progressed rapidly and became viable substitutes.
I think it is a sober judgment to say, "Better safe than sorry."
Especially when the cost of being safe is not hard to meet.
The opposition is funded, especially, by the some very rich
(feral-rich: no social conscience) owners of oil and gas rights,
who WILL lose out.
The current state of climate change already means disasters every year
causing many deaths in my country.
And yet the deaths due to climactic and weather eventse are getting less every single year.
On 2025-09-29 20:00, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 29/09/2025 18:14, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-29 18:54, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:44:09 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
<[email protected]d> wrote:
...
proceeded to
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.
Richard Lindzen
A "rollback of the industrial age" was an exaggeration that
seemed less extreme 20 years ago, before wind and solar
progressed rapidly and became viable substitutes.
I think it is a sober judgment to say, "Better safe than sorry."
Especially when the cost of being safe is not hard to meet.
The opposition is funded, especially, by the some very rich
(feral-rich: no social conscience) owners of oil and gas rights,
who WILL lose out.
The current state of climate change already means disasters every
year causing many deaths in my country.
And yet the deaths due to climactic and weather eventse are getting
less every single year.
WTF! They are increasing. More than 200 in a single event the past year
near me.
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:00:11 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
A short of harvesting. It is manual. Lots of immigration labour.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/a3TU299iFvo
In the US mechanical harvesting is done whenever feasible. Like the
tomatoes often cultivars better adapted to machinery are developed in conjunction with the machinery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_7TRko1VwQ
Tree shaking works for many nuts. Efficient techniques for olives are
being developed. Fruit still involves a lot of hand labor.
Some field crops are easier to mechanize.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qDWRZEZdng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMe-d6s9YEU
In the '70s the USDA head, Earl Butz, coined the phrase 'get big or get
out.' Smaller farmers have hung on but it's difficult.
On 29/09/2025 18:14, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-29 18:54, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:44:09 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
<[email protected]d> wrote:
...
proceeded to
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.
Richard Lindzen
A "rollback of the industrial age" was an exaggeration that
seemed less extreme 20 years ago, before wind and solar
progressed rapidly and became viable substitutes.
I think it is a sober judgment to say, "Better safe than sorry."
Especially when the cost of being safe is not hard to meet.
The opposition is funded, especially, by the some very rich
(feral-rich: no social conscience) owners of oil and gas rights,
who WILL lose out.
The current state of climate change already means disasters every year
causing many deaths in my country.
And yet the deaths due to climactic and weather eventse are getting less >every single year.
On 29/09/2025 17:54, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:44:09 +0100, The Natural PhilosopherNo one denies climate.
<[email protected]d> wrote:
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early
twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a >>> globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree,
That sounds like Lindzen in 2007, between el ninos.
However, Lindzen is an actual GOOD scientist of the atmosphere.
Climate deniers have few scientists on their side, of any specialty.
]
No one denies climate changes.
The people who are in denial are the one who (dont) think (without >questioning it):
- there is a 'perfect' climate
- we are not at it
- human activity is the dominant reason. Original sin. Now CO2.
- today's climate is 'bad' and getting 'worse'
- we can actually do something about it, when nothing has ever made it >change in the past.
The whole think is like the Creation myth and the Garden Of Eden - >perfection spolt by human activity shame and self awareness.
If you read about it, his contrarian theory allows for a few decades
of warming, before the increased water vapor at high altitudes causes
heat to start leaking, eventually erasing 45 years of increases.
and,
on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer
projections combined into implausible chains of inference,
I believe the more accurate summary would be, "on the basis
of simple linear extrapolations of present trends, ignoring
complications that COULD arise, and are not entirely implausible."
The point is that the actual dynamics of climate are best represented
by the integration of non linear partial derivatives of the Navier
Stokes equations of fluid dynamics. And the reasons we still use wind >tunnels is because the best computer programs we have a crap at
modelling turbulent flow.
Over 50% of the heat lost from the earths surface is via convection - >turbulent flow.
No climate model does more than make broad assumptions about this.
That's point one.
Point 2 is that the only way to get scary future projections is by >introducing positiove feedback that makes the whole climate unstable.
... but temperature is not tracking
CO2 exactly. At best you can say that CO2 is steadily rising but tempera >tire rises is nothing like steady.
The intelligent assumption is that there is no 'positive feedback' and
that something else is going on.
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:59:15 +0100, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:[...]
- today's climate is 'bad' and getting 'worse'
Pragmatically, Humans continue to add CO2. The easy consequence
(warming) was predicted in the late 1800s. So, yes, while levels of
CO2 continue to go up, we get "climate change" which is disruptive,
plus the long range outcome (200 years) of flooding the cities where
most humans live.
Most discussions ignore the oceans: The surfaces are warming and
becoming more acidic. Reefs are dying. I read a book about the
Sixth Extinction that talkied about oceans.
Ending the INCREASE in CO2 is the first step toward REDUCING the
fossil fuel contributions toward zero. Or otherwise removing CO2?
- we can actually do something about it, when nothing has ever made it >>change in the past.
Defeatist, much? Humans probably made a desert of the Sahara by
over-grazing goats; that lesson is applied on a smaller scale to
create green areas. Humans have driven hundreds of species to
extinction, and regarding those losses as lesson is what led to
preservation efforts that are not yet total failures.
The whole think is like the Creation myth and the Garden Of Eden - >>perfection spolt by human activity shame and self awareness.
Yeah, in a warped way. My environmental readings omit religion.
Humans built cities on coasts. Rising CO2 eventually implies rising
waters, and which flood those cities in a not-distant future. We
Woke folk have the capacity to recognize, "Mistakes are being made."
I have not been able to locate a video of harvesting lettuce near here.
There is a tractor machine, and people sitting on a wide bench,
collecting them and placing them on a bench. On another part of the
machine, other people cut the bad leaves and bag them, ready for sale at
the supermarket. Maybe they are washed, depends.
- we can actually do something about it, when nothing has ever made it
change in the past.
Thankfully things seem to be looking better for the Iberian lynx now.
Only 94 individuals around the turn of the century. Scary.
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:12:49 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I have not been able to locate a video of harvesting lettuce near here.
There is a tractor machine, and people sitting on a wide bench,
collecting them and placing them on a bench. On another part of the
machine, other people cut the bad leaves and bag them, ready for sale at
the supermarket. Maybe they are washed, depends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OilUbKhGD8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdO9mYAyYg
Iceberg lettuce is popular in the US but I don't know how well mechanical harvesting works. Someone is trying to develop a cultivar with a longer
stem that will hold the head higher above the soil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH5V4HE2akA
Trivia: iceberg lettuce got its name from being shipped in chipped ice in
the early days. In Steinbeck's 'East of Eden' that's Adam's big idea
although it doesn't work out well.
Is it good that supermarkets have most produce year around? I don't know. It's one more way to remove people from the reality of the seasons. Why
look forward to fresh sweet corn if it's always available? This time of
year many people were canning the end of the harvest.
On 2025-09-29 03:15, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Why English usage is in the Header line I do not know but
a lot us Usenetters are hair-splitters.
At some point the thread drifted into English language usage, then
drifted again and no one thought to remove that group.
Not everything the so called 'far right' (= conservatives) say is wrong.
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 11:38:48 +0100, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
Not everything the so called 'far right' (= conservatives) say is wrong.
I would say the Far-Right is anything but "conservative".
On 2025-09-29, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:59:15 +0100, The Natural Philosopher[...]
<[email protected]d> wrote:
- today's climate is 'bad' and getting 'worse'
Pragmatically, Humans continue to add CO2. The easy consequence
(warming) was predicted in the late 1800s. So, yes, while levels of
CO2 continue to go up, we get "climate change" which is disruptive,
plus the long range outcome (200 years) of flooding the cities where
most humans live.
Most discussions ignore the oceans: The surfaces are warming and
becoming more acidic. Reefs are dying. I read a book about the
Sixth Extinction that talkied about oceans.
«The ocean's dying. Plankton's dying. It's people. Soylent Green is made
out of people. They're making our food out of people.»
Ending the INCREASE in CO2 is the first step toward REDUCING the
fossil fuel contributions toward zero. Or otherwise removing CO2?
Also, overall improvements to reduce pollution tend to improve quality
of life.
- we can actually do something about it, when nothing has ever made it >>>change in the past.
Defeatist, much? Humans probably made a desert of the Sahara by
over-grazing goats; that lesson is applied on a smaller scale to
create green areas. Humans have driven hundreds of species to
extinction, and regarding those losses as lesson is what led to
preservation efforts that are not yet total failures.
Thankfully things seem to be looking better for the Iberian lynx
now. Only 94 individuals around the turn of the century. Scary.
The whole think is like the Creation myth and the Garden Of Eden - >>>perfection spolt by human activity shame and self awareness.
Yeah, in a warped way. My environmental readings omit religion.
Humans built cities on coasts. Rising CO2 eventually implies rising
waters, and which flood those cities in a not-distant future. We
Woke folk have the capacity to recognize, "Mistakes are being made."
Isn't that *the* definition of woke, after all?
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:14:26 +0100, Nuno Silva
<[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-09-29, Rich Ulrich wrote:
Ending the INCREASE in CO2 is the first step toward REDUCING the
fossil fuel contributions toward zero. Or otherwise removing
CO2?
Also, overall improvements to reduce pollution tend to improve
quality of life.
RIGHT. Back in the 1970s, the US had the Delaney Amendment (IIRC),
which provided that contaminants could be banned only if they caused
deaths in humans. Quality of Life? How can that compare to
Profits?
DDT killing off vultures did not bother people much, but killing off
eagles....
Humans built cities on coasts. Rising CO2 eventually implies
rising waters, and which flood those cities in a not-distant
future. We Woke folk have the capacity to recognize, "Mistakes
are being made."
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 14:27:34 +0200, "Carlos E.R."
<[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-09-29 03:15, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Why English usage is in the Header line I do not know but
a lot us Usenetters are hair-splitters.
At some point the thread drifted into English language usage, then
drifted again and no one thought to remove that group.
The English usage point was the distinction between floppies,
minifloppies and microfloppies (sometimes called "stiffies"); and the distinction between disks, discs and diskettes.
If follow-ups don't deal with English usage, then remove aue from the follow-ups line, and if they don't relate to Linux, remove colm. It's
that simple.
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:59:15 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
- we can actually do something about it, when nothing has ever made it
change in the past.
That's what worries me. When it comes to tweaking the environment humanity has a history of fucking up royally with the best of intentions. Neal Stephenson's 'Termination Shock' make the case that when you start geoengineering there will be winners and losers.
Back in the '90s when 'global warming' was still current Pournelle & Niven had a novel with the theme that the only thinking holding off the next ice age was anthropogenic global warming. I forget the title.
The intelligent assumption is that there is no 'positive feedback' andIt seems to me that you have some badly mistaken impression
that something else is going on.
of the meaning of 'positive feedback.'
On 2025-09-29, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:59:15 +0100, The Natural Philosopher[...]
<[email protected]d> wrote:
- today's climate is 'bad' and getting 'worse'
Pragmatically, Humans continue to add CO2. The easy consequence
(warming) was predicted in the late 1800s. So, yes, while levels of
CO2 continue to go up, we get "climate change" which is disruptive,
plus the long range outcome (200 years) of flooding the cities where
most humans live.
Most discussions ignore the oceans: The surfaces are warming and
becoming more acidic. Reefs are dying. I read a book about the
Sixth Extinction that talkied about oceans.
«The ocean's dying. Plankton's dying. It's people. Soylent Green is made
out of people. They're making our food out of people.»
Ending the INCREASE in CO2 is the first step toward REDUCING the
fossil fuel contributions toward zero. Or otherwise removing CO2?
Also, overall improvements to reduce pollution tend to improve quality
of life.
- we can actually do something about it, when nothing has ever made it
change in the past.
Defeatist, much? Humans probably made a desert of the Sahara by
over-grazing goats; that lesson is applied on a smaller scale to
create green areas. Humans have driven hundreds of species to
extinction, and regarding those losses as lesson is what led to
preservation efforts that are not yet total failures.
Thankfully things seem to be looking better for the Iberian lynx
now. Only 94 individuals around the turn of the century. Scary.
The whole think is like the Creation myth and the Garden Of Eden -
perfection spolt by human activity shame and self awareness.
Yeah, in a warped way. My environmental readings omit religion.
Humans built cities on coasts. Rising CO2 eventually implies rising
waters, and which flood those cities in a not-distant future. We
Woke folk have the capacity to recognize, "Mistakes are being made."
Isn't that *the* definition of woke, after all?
All three like tasty little sheep.And who doesn't?
But Australia also has a close association with many Pacific Islands,
and for them there is just one important quality-of-life issue, and
that's sea level rise.
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:59:15 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
- we can actually do something about it, when nothing has ever made it
change in the past.
That's what worries me. When it comes to tweaking the environment humanity has a history of fucking up royally with the best of intentions. Neal Stephenson's 'Termination Shock' make the case that when you start geoengineering there will be winners and losers.
Back in the '90s when 'global warming' was still current Pournelle & Niven had a novel with the theme that the only thinking holding off the next ice age was anthropogenic global warming. I forget the title.
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:12:49 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I have not been able to locate a video of harvesting lettuce near here.
There is a tractor machine, and people sitting on a wide bench,
collecting them and placing them on a bench. On another part of the
machine, other people cut the bad leaves and bag them, ready for sale at
the supermarket. Maybe they are washed, depends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OilUbKhGD8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdO9mYAyYg
Iceberg lettuce is popular in the US but I don't know how well mechanical harvesting works. Someone is trying to develop a cultivar with a longer
stem that will hold the head higher above the soil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH5V4HE2akA
Trivia: iceberg lettuce got its name from being shipped in chipped ice in
the early days. In Steinbeck's 'East of Eden' that's Adam's big idea
although it doesn't work out well.
Is it good that supermarkets have most produce year around? I don't know. It's one more way to remove people from the reality of the seasons.
Why
look forward to fresh sweet corn if it's always available? This time of
year many people were canning the end of the harvest.
Le 23-09-2025, Marc Haber <[email protected]> a écrit :
Stéphane CARPENTIER <[email protected]> wrote:
But I love languages and history and as we are speaking about computers
at the same time, I feel a longer answer isn't out of topic here. And as >>> I like your mistake, I'm enjoying to answer it in advance. Thanks for
your question.
Thank you very much for your answer, I enjoyed reading it.
Good to know. I don't have the habit to send messages that long on
Usenet. And when I read your question, I knew I wouldn't have a way
between the short answer and the long one.
So, a really different point between the French world and the English
world is: in France we are speaking about ordinateurs and informatique
when in US/UK they are speaking about computers and computer science.
I think that the English word "computer science" is wrong.
Let's be clear on that point. I'm not saying one is right and the other
is wrong. Even if i agree with you, my point wasn't to say French are
right and English are wrong. My point was saying things behind those
words are different.
In the end both refer to the same thing. I don't believe that someone speaking about a computer see a thing different than someone speaking
about an "ordinateur". The same for "computer science" vs
"informatique". But my point was that the thought behind those words
came from different visions. Even if actual people using them today have
the same vision.
For the no need of translation, you have the clavier. Everyone in France >>> is using a clavier. Nobody need to speak about keyboard. The reason is
obvious: it cames from the typing machines which had a keyboard/clavier
and came along well before the personal computers. So the same word was
used in the computer world. The translation is obvious and the need of a >>> better world doesn't exist.
A Klavier in German is a piano. And Michael Jackson was using a
synthesizer called the "Synclavier" in the 1980ies.
In French the clavier is a part of the piano. It's the part where the
keys are. So, probably the clavier in typing machines came from the
piano and harpsichord, when French people were considering the typing machine, which isn't a "clavier" but a "machine à écrire" in French (or
the "machine to write"). And the clavier is only a part of it.
The bogues are something very different. They are the green things with
spikes around chestnuts. So, they are an already existing word, sounding >>> like the word they mean to replace even if the meaning is different. The >>> bug is the thing that create issue. The bogue is the issue you have if
you try to take it with bare hand. When in the English world, the bug is >>> the thing that destroys little part of computers. For me, and for a lot
of people in France, the idea is stupid. For others, it's a good idea.
The English word bug was created when an actual bug caught in a relay
of an early computer that used relays instead of transistors because
we didn't have 'em yet. Took days to find.
Yep. As I said: the thing that create issues.
It has probably taken you some time to read it. Be assured it took me
more time to write it. But I enjoyed it, I'm sorry if you didn't like my >>> answer.
I am pretty much enjoying myself right now.
Good to know. I wasn't losing my time because I was enjoying writing
that. But sending it here, I could have wasted others' time. As you are
at least two to have enjoyed it I can consider I didn't.
But where is the logiciel part?
I didn't looked far at it since my message because it was a little bit disappointing. As I guessed it was before I was born, that's the reason I always heard about this part: it was well accepted by specialists before coming to the street people. It was a translation created by a part of
the French administration I have never heard: I don't know if it still
exist today (I don't believe so). It cames from logic and they put an end behind it to make logiciel. So the forty morons never need to have a say about it.
All three like tasty little sheep.
On 29/09/2025 23:17, Rich Ulrich wrote:
The intelligent assumption is that there is no 'positive feedback' andIt seems to me that you have some badly mistaken impression
that something else is going on.
of the meaning of 'positive feedback.'
Since studying it in depth was a part of my engineering qualifications, perhaps it is you that lacks the understanding?
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
[Fto: alt.usage.english]
On 29/09/2025 23:17, Rich Ulrich wrote:
The intelligent assumption is that there is no 'positive feedback' and >>>> that something else is going on.It seems to me that you have some badly mistaken impression
of the meaning of 'positive feedback.'
Since studying it in depth was a part of my engineering qualifications,
perhaps it is you that lacks the understanding?
That explains a lot.
A typical problem with engineers is that they know everything better
than everybody else, and are unshakable in that conviction,
Jan
On 2025-09-30 04:00, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:12:49 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I have not been able to locate a video of harvesting lettuce near here.
There is a tractor machine, and people sitting on a wide bench,
collecting them and placing them on a bench. On another part of the
machine, other people cut the bad leaves and bag them, ready for sale at >>> the supermarket. Maybe they are washed, depends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OilUbKhGD8
I don't recognize that type of lettuce.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdO9mYAyYg
Iceberg lettuce is popular in the US but I don't know how well mechanical
harvesting works. Someone is trying to develop a cultivar with a longer
stem that will hold the head higher above the soil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH5V4HE2akA
These I know. I like them, my late mother did not.
Trivia: iceberg lettuce got its name from being shipped in chipped ice in
the early days. In Steinbeck's 'East of Eden' that's Adam's big idea
although it doesn't work out well.
Oh! No idea about that name.
Is it good that supermarkets have most produce year around? I don't know.
It's one more way to remove people from the reality of the seasons.
Yes.
Why
look forward to fresh sweet corn if it's always available? This time of
year many people were canning the end of the harvest.
I eat it canned, or frozen and boiled. Complete as it comes from the
plant is rare here.
On 9/30/25 03:28, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-09-30 04:00, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:12:49 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I have not been able to locate a video of harvesting lettuce near here. >>>> There is a tractor machine, and people sitting on a wide bench,
collecting them and placing them on a bench. On another part of the
machine, other people cut the bad leaves and bag them, ready for
sale at
the supermarket. Maybe they are washed, depends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OilUbKhGD8
I don't recognize that type of lettuce.
Looks like curly green escarole.
So many sorts but I like butter lettuce which is available at a lot of markets, packed in plastic containers with the root still attached.
If you add a very little water it helps keep the lettuce longer.
The lettuce is grown hydroponically. When you get it with the roots on
it is alive. <https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/close-up-of-aquaponic-lettuce-in- container-on-table-gm2164198960-584488559?searchscope=image%2Cfilm>
Why
look forward to fresh sweet corn if it's always available? This time of
year many people were canning the end of the harvest.
I eat it canned, or frozen and boiled. Complete as it comes from the
plant is rare here.
I hope it has been properly treated to make it more digestible.
I confine myself to eating fresh so-called green corn which i microwave
for 2 minutes on the cob. A very little salt and some margarine then my
big front teeth get a real workout.
Making corn more digestible involves boiling it with a little wood ash
or lye. Found that out from a Speculative Fiction story. Discovered thousands
of years back by the people who bred the the corn we eat today.
The process makes the niacin in the corn more available and converts
some of the starch to sugar.
So far off topic I needed some Linux news to balance.
Linux Lite 7.6: Plenty for Windows Refugees, But Too Dumbed Down for--
Comfort
By bride of linux September 30, 2025
While it’s very commendable that Linux Lite is going after a particular user – people who might be unhappy with Windows 11 – treating these new users like digital imbeciles leaves a lot to be desired. <https://www.linuxtoday.com/blog/linux-lite-7-6-plenty-for-windows- refugees-but-too-dumbed-down-for-comfort/>
It is only 20 years of Linux use that keeps me from being a total digital imbecile...
The other 9 or 10 years of other than Linux use help too.
bliss- Dell Precision 7730- PCLOS 2025.09- Linux 6.12.49-pclos1- KDE
Plasma 6.4.5
On 2025-09-30 04:00, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:12:49 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I have not been able to locate a video of harvesting lettuce near
here. There is a tractor machine, and people sitting on a wide bench,
collecting them and placing them on a bench. On another part of the
machine, other people cut the bad leaves and bag them, ready for sale
at the supermarket. Maybe they are washed, depends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OilUbKhGD8
I don't recognize that type of lettuce.
I eat it canned, or frozen and boiled. Complete as it comes from the
plant is rare here.
Making corn more digestible involves boiling it with a littlewood
or lye. Found that out from a Speculative Fiction story. Discovered thousandsconverts
of years back by the people who bred the the corn we eat today.
The process makes the niacin in the corn more available and
some of the starch to sugar.
Oh. No idea about the ash. Never heard it.
One small correction: you mentioned “people run cars on limited alcohol” — I don’t recall that exact element from *Fallen Angels*. It might be conflated with something else, or else that detail is present but less central (or I might be mis‐remembering). The core storyline, though, is
a match with what you described.
DDT killing off vultures did not bother people much, but killing off eagles....
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no nutritional
value.
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 09:54:17 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
One small correction: you mentioned “people run cars on limited alcohol” >> — I don’t recall that exact element from *Fallen Angels*. It might be
conflated with something else, or else that detail is present but less
central (or I might be mis‐remembering). The core storyline, though, is
a match with what you described.
That's the book but I didn't say anything about cars and limited alcohol.
I'll have to reread it since all I remember is the theme of global warming saving humanity from freezing to death. Before global warming global
cooling was the big thing in the '70s.
https://harpers.org/archive/1958/09/the-coming-ice-age/
The problem of living too long is you're seen too many reversals of The Science to believe anything that isn't apparent by stepping out on the
porch.
On 30/09/2025 00:14, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2025-09-29, Rich Ulrich wrote:What has CO2 got to do with 'pollution'
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:59:15 +0100, The Natural Philosopher[...]
<[email protected]d> wrote:
- today's climate is 'bad' and getting 'worse'
Pragmatically, Humans continue to add CO2. The easy consequence
(warming) was predicted in the late 1800s. So, yes, while levels of
CO2 continue to go up, we get "climate change" which is disruptive,
plus the long range outcome (200 years) of flooding the cities where
most humans live.
Most discussions ignore the oceans: The surfaces are warming and
becoming more acidic. Reefs are dying. I read a book about the
Sixth Extinction that talkied about oceans.
«The ocean's dying. Plankton's dying. It's people. Soylent Green is made
out of people. They're making our food out of people.»
Ending the INCREASE in CO2 is the first step toward REDUCING the
fossil fuel contributions toward zero. Or otherwise removing CO2?
Also, overall improvements to reduce pollution tend to improve quality
of life.
But if you want to know where CO2 deserves condemnation for
"tainting" and kill life directly, rather than its indirect effects
after melting Greenland and Antarctica, read about CO2 turning the
surface waters acidic. That is already measurable and is already
having effects on the life in the oceans (the tiniest flora and
fauna are direly effected, IIRC). The longer-term thread from that
pollution is thus the collapse of ocean food chains. The oceans do
provide quite a bit of food for quite a few people.
On 01/10/25 09:50, Rich Ulrich wrote:
But if you want to know where CO2 deserves condemnation for
"tainting" and kill life directly, rather than its indirect effects
after melting Greenland and Antarctica, read about CO2 turning the
surface waters acidic. That is already measurable and is already
having effects on the life in the oceans (the tiniest flora and
fauna are direly effected, IIRC). The longer-term thread from that
pollution is thus the collapse of ocean food chains. The oceans do
provide quite a bit of food for quite a few people.
South Australia currently has a big problem that it doesn't know how to >solve. An algal bloom along the coastline is killing sea life, including >large fish species, and beaches are being covered with dead fish. The
fishing industry is under threat. The problem is caused by rising sea >temperatures. That phenomenon, which has also become very noticeeable in >other oceans, has a huge momentum.
Even if we stopped all burning of
fossil fuels today (which is politically difficult), ocean temperatures >wouldn't go back to normal for about another century.
On 30/09/2025 07:46, Peter Moylan wrote:
But Australia also has a close association with many Pacific Islands,
and for them there is just one important quality-of-life issue, and
that's sea level rise.
The problem is, there is no sea level rise to speak of.
Other that going on for the last 5000 years.
You are just regurgitating the green myths propagated by the people with
the money who want us all to die of cold after we have handed all our >savings to them for pre processed soya and unreliable renewable energy
----
“People believe certain stories because everyone important tells them,
and people tell those stories because everyone important believes them. >Indeed, when a conventional wisdom is at its fullest strength, one’s >agreement with that conventional wisdom becomes almost a litmus test of >one’s suitability to be taken seriously.”
Paul Krugman
On 30/09/25 12:42, rbowman wrote:
All three like tasty little sheep.
No, no. The words are "All we like sheep".
All of us. Although not necessarily for eating.
I read that "Also ... reduce pollution" comment as going beyond
the CO2 issue, addressing the general problem of achieving
beneficial ends. "Quality of Life" is worth improving - Isn't it?
From your appended note,
" ... one’s agreement with that conventional wisdom becomes almost
a litmus test of one’s suitability to be taken seriously.”
Paul Krugman
True words. Regardless of how much cynicism to want to apply
to "conventional".
On 30/09/2025 21:32, rbowman wrote:
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no nutritional
value.
We all eat far too much 'nutritional value' as it is.
Lettuce has water and fibre and some useful minerals.
On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 11:36:09 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]>
wrote:
South Australia currently has a big problem that it doesn't know how to
solve. An algal bloom along the coastline is killing sea life, including
large fish species, and beaches are being covered with dead fish. The
fishing industry is under threat. The problem is caused by rising sea
temperatures. That phenomenon, which has also become very noticeeable in
other oceans, has a huge momentum.
I'm trying to open my mind to the metaphor of "momentum"
applying to the rise of temperature of sea water.
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 02:08:30 -0400, Rich Ulrich wrote:
DDT killing off vultures did not bother people much, but killing off
eagles....
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/vanishing-vultures-create-burial-crisis-for-bombay-s-parsees-5364937.html
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:44:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/09/2025 21:32, rbowman wrote:
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no nutritional
value.
We all eat far too much 'nutritional value' as it is.
Lettuce has water and fibre and some useful minerals.
So does the assorted grass and weeds out in the lawn. The deer eat the grass;I eat the deer. Or, to be specific, tonight I'm eating part of a cow.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition-pictures/best-salad-greens-for-your-health.aspx
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
What I think I recall is more pessimistic than that -- ocean
temperatures would continue to CLIMB for years. It might be
a century before the air's CO2 drops enough that the waters
BEGIN to go back to normal.
On 01/10/25 12:32, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 11:36:09 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]>
wrote:
South Australia currently has a big problem that it doesn't know how to
solve. An algal bloom along the coastline is killing sea life, including >>> large fish species, and beaches are being covered with dead fish. The
fishing industry is under threat. The problem is caused by rising sea
temperatures. That phenomenon, which has also become very noticeeable in >>> other oceans, has a huge momentum.
I'm trying to open my mind to the metaphor of "momentum"
applying to the rise of temperature of sea water.
Perhaps "thermal inertia" would have been a better term. The main
relevant factor is that the oceans contain a truly huge amount of water.
On 09/25/2025 11:11 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Well someone besides myself will be making the decisions and largerWe have spent trillions of dollars in the past 80 years, trying to circumvent the use of nuclear energy. If that trillions of dollars had been spent in the laboratory to develop methods to handle nuclear waste
profits will eventually dictate the use of less electricity with less
water for cooling.
bliss
we would not still be facing the problem that we recognized 80 years ago.
On 26/09/2025 3:19 am, knuttle wrote:
On 09/25/2025 11:11 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
<Snip>
Well someone besides myself will be making the decisions and largerWe have spent trillions of dollars in the past 80 years, trying to
profits will eventually dictate the use of less electricity with less
water for cooling.
bliss
circumvent the use of nuclear energy. If that trillions of dollars
had been spent in the laboratory to develop methods to handle nuclear
waste we would not still be facing the problem that we recognized 80
years ago.
In my simple mind, I've often wondered why we don't just pack all the Nuclear Reactor Waste into conveniently co-located Rockets and send them
off to the Big Nuclear Reactor in the Sky.
Sure, there could be some initial teething problems to overcome .... but anything is possible .... if we set our minds to it!! ;-P
On 26/09/2025 3:19 am, knuttle wrote:
On 09/25/2025 11:11 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
<Snip>
Well someone besides myself will be making the decisions andWe have spent trillions of dollars in the past 80 years, trying to
larger profits will eventually dictate the use of less electricity
with less water for cooling.
bliss
circumvent the use of nuclear energy. If that trillions of dollars
had been spent in the laboratory to develop methods to handle
nuclear waste we would not still be facing the problem that we
recognized 80 years ago.
In my simple mind, I've often wondered why we don't just pack all the Nuclear Reactor Waste into conveniently co-located Rockets and send
them off to the Big Nuclear Reactor in the Sky.
Sure, there could be some initial teething problems to overcome .... but anything is possible .... if we set our minds to it!! ;-P
On 2025-10-01 06:12, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:44:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/09/2025 21:32, rbowman wrote:
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no nutritional >>>> value.
We all eat far too much 'nutritional value' as it is.
Lettuce has water and fibre and some useful minerals.
So does the assorted grass and weeds out in the lawn. The deer eat the grass;I eat the deer. Or, to be specific, tonight I'm eating part of a cow.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition-pictures/best-salad-greens-for-your-health.aspx
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
I have trouble understanding that article. I don't know the names of
most plants in Spanish. Kale is probably "col verde", but I still do not know what is that.
The article doesn't even have photos!
Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-10-01 06:12, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:44:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/09/2025 21:32, rbowman wrote:
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no nutritional >>>>> value.
We all eat far too much 'nutritional value' as it is.
Lettuce has water and fibre and some useful minerals.
So does the assorted grass and weeds out in the lawn. The deer eat the grass;I eat the deer. Or, to be specific, tonight I'm eating part of a cow.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition-pictures/best-salad-greens-for-your-health.aspx
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
I have trouble understanding that article. I don't know the names of
most plants in Spanish. Kale is probably "col verde", but I still do not
know what is that.
The article doesn't even have photos!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:44:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/09/2025 21:32, rbowman wrote:
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no nutritional
value.
We all eat far too much 'nutritional value' as it is.
Lettuce has water and fibre and some useful minerals.
So does the assorted grass and weeds out in the lawn. The deer eat the grass;I eat the deer. Or, to be specific, tonight I'm eating part of a cow.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition-pictures/best-salad-greens-for-your-health.aspx
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
On 26/09/2025 3:19 am, knuttle wrote:
On 09/25/2025 11:11 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
<Snip>
Well someone besides myself will be making the decisions and largerWe have spent trillions of dollars in the past 80 years, trying to
profits will eventually dictate the use of less electricity with less
water for cooling.
bliss
circumvent the use of nuclear energy. If that trillions of dollars
had been spent in the laboratory to develop methods to handle nuclear
waste we would not still be facing the problem that we recognized 80
years ago.
In my simple mind, I've often wondered why we don't just pack all the Nuclear Reactor Waste into conveniently co-located Rockets and send them
off to the Big Nuclear Reactor in the Sky.
Sure, there could be some initial teething problems to overcome .... but anything is possible .... if we set our minds to it!! ;-P
On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 11:36:09 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 01/10/25 09:50, Rich Ulrich wrote:
But if you want to know where CO2 deserves condemnation for
"tainting" and kill life directly, rather than its indirect effects
after melting Greenland and Antarctica, read about CO2 turning the
surface waters acidic. That is already measurable and is already
having effects on the life in the oceans (the tiniest flora and
fauna are direly effected, IIRC). The longer-term thread from that
pollution is thus the collapse of ocean food chains. The oceans do
provide quite a bit of food for quite a few people.
South Australia currently has a big problem that it doesn't know how to
solve. An algal bloom along the coastline is killing sea life, including
large fish species, and beaches are being covered with dead fish. The
fishing industry is under threat. The problem is caused by rising sea
temperatures. That phenomenon, which has also become very noticeeable in
other oceans, has a huge momentum.
I'm trying to open my mind to the metaphor of "momentum"
applying to the rise of temperature of sea water.
I've been mulling the Warming for 35 years and there are more
moving pieces to this problem than to most problems.
The present level of atmospheric CO2 is ~428 ppm, more than
50% above the human-history average. If magic stopped all the
"excess" (human-caused) release of CO2, the CO2 level would
drop SLOWLY. Temperatures are not at equilibrium with the solar
input that is captured; oceans will continue to heat up if CO2 stops increasing; oceans will continue to heat up if CO2 starts slowly
dropping.
Even if we stopped all burning of
fossil fuels today (which is politically difficult), ocean temperatures
wouldn't go back to normal for about another century.
What I think I recall is more pessimistic than that -- ocean
temperatures would continue to CLIMB for years. It might be
a century before the air's CO2 drops enough that the waters
BEGIN to go back to normal.
In comp.os.linux.misc Daniel70 <[email protected]> wrote:
On 26/09/2025 3:19 am, knuttle wrote:
On 09/25/2025 11:11 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
In my simple mind, I've often wondered why we don't just pack all the
Nuclear Reactor Waste into conveniently co-located Rockets and send
them off to the Big Nuclear Reactor in the Sky.
Sure, there could be some initial teething problems to overcome .... but
anything is possible .... if we set our minds to it!! ;-P
Because even if you ignore the fact that, sometimes, rockets explode at launch, orbital physics tends to get in your way in trying to hit the
sun:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a21896/why-we-cant-just-launch-waste-into-the-sun/
Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-10-01 06:12, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:44:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/09/2025 21:32, rbowman wrote:
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no nutritional >>>>> value.
We all eat far too much 'nutritional value' as it is.
Lettuce has water and fibre and some useful minerals.
So does the assorted grass and weeds out in the lawn. The deer eat the grass;I eat the deer. Or, to be specific, tonight I'm eating part of a cow.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition-pictures/best-salad-greens-for-your-health.aspx
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
I have trouble understanding that article. I don't know the names of
most plants in Spanish. Kale is probably "col verde", but I still do not
know what is that.
The article doesn't even have photos!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale
On 2025-10-01 14:46, Rich wrote:
Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-10-01 06:12, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:44:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/09/2025 21:32, rbowman wrote:
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no
nutritional
value.
We all eat far too much 'nutritional value' as it is.
Lettuce has water and fibre and some useful minerals.
So does the assorted grass and weeds out in the lawn. The deer eat
the grass;I eat the deer. Or, to be specific, tonight I'm eating
part of a cow.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition-pictures/best-salad-greens-for-your-health.aspx
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
I have trouble understanding that article. I don't know the names of
most plants in Spanish. Kale is probably "col verde", but I still do not >>> know what is that.
The article doesn't even have photos!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale
Sure, I did that. I did not recognize the plant on the photo. I then do
what I always do, click on the "languages" drop list, to open the
Spanish wikipedia article, which would have the Spanish name of the
plant. But... there are 47 translations and none in Spanish! I can hope
that the Portuguese, Catalá, French, Italian article is similar. Catalá probably is. "Col verda" So probably "Col verde". Not familiar to me.
But there are several other plants in the given link, I would have to
repeat the investigation for each one.
On 2025-10-01 14:46, Rich wrote:
Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-10-01 06:12, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:44:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/09/2025 21:32, rbowman wrote:
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no
nutritional
value.
We all eat far too much 'nutritional value' as it is.
Lettuce has water and fibre and some useful minerals.
So does the assorted grass and weeds out in the lawn. The deer eat
the grass;I eat the deer. Or, to be specific, tonight I'm eating
part of a cow.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition-pictures/best-salad-
greens-for-your-health.aspx
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
I have trouble understanding that article. I don't know the names of
most plants in Spanish. Kale is probably "col verde", but I still do not >>> know what is that.
The article doesn't even have photos!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale
Sure, I did that. I did not recognize the plant on the photo. I then do
what I always do, click on the "languages" drop list, to open the
Spanish wikipedia article, which would have the Spanish name of the
plant. But... there are 47 translations and none in Spanish! I can hope
that the Portuguese, Catalá, French, Italian article is similar. Catalá probably is. "Col verda" So probably "Col verde". Not familiar to me.
But there are several other plants in the given link, I would have to
repeat the investigation for each one.
On 01/10/2025 18:35, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-10-01 14:46, Rich wrote:5 seconds of google reveals that col rizada is spanish for kale.
Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-10-01 06:12, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:44:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/09/2025 21:32, rbowman wrote:
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no
nutritional
value.
We all eat far too much 'nutritional value' as it is.
Lettuce has water and fibre and some useful minerals.
So does the assorted grass and weeds out in the lawn. The deer eat
the grass;I eat the deer. Or, to be specific, tonight I'm eating
part of a cow.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition-pictures/best-salad-
greens-for-your-health.aspx
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
I have trouble understanding that article. I don't know the names of
most plants in Spanish. Kale is probably "col verde", but I still do
not
know what is that.
The article doesn't even have photos!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale
Sure, I did that. I did not recognize the plant on the photo. I then
do what I always do, click on the "languages" drop list, to open the
Spanish wikipedia article, which would have the Spanish name of the
plant. But... there are 47 translations and none in Spanish! I can
hope that the Portuguese, Catalá, French, Italian article is similar.
Catalá probably is. "Col verda" So probably "Col verde". Not familiar
to me.
But there are several other plants in the given link, I would have to
repeat the investigation for each one.
On 10/1/25 10:35, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-10-01 14:46, Rich wrote:
Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-10-01 06:12, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:44:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/09/2025 21:32, rbowman wrote:
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no
nutritional
value.
We all eat far too much 'nutritional value' as it is.
Lettuce has water and fibre and some useful minerals.
So does the assorted grass and weeds out in the lawn. The deer eat
the grass;I eat the deer. Or, to be specific, tonight I'm eating
part of a cow.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition-pictures/best-salad-
greens-for-your-health.aspx
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
I have trouble understanding that article. I don't know the names of
most plants in Spanish. Kale is probably "col verde", but I still do
not
know what is that.
The article doesn't even have photos!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale
Sure, I did that. I did not recognize the plant on the photo. I then
do what I always do, click on the "languages" drop list, to open the
Spanish wikipedia article, which would have the Spanish name of the
plant. But... there are 47 translations and none in Spanish! I can
hope that the Portuguese, Catalá, French, Italian article is similar.
Catalá probably is. "Col verda" So probably "Col verde". Not familiar
to me.
But there are several other plants in the given link, I would have to
repeat the investigation for each one.
Look at this one with 25 varieties of Kale. Better pictures than the one in
the Wikipedia. <https://americangardener.net/varieties-of-kale/>
It is a varigated plant family and you may see one you recognize.
I have trouble understanding that article. I don't know the names of
most plants in Spanish. Kale is probably "col verde", but I still do not
know what is that.
On 2025-10-01 19:47, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 01/10/2025 18:35, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-10-01 14:46, Rich wrote:5 seconds of google reveals that col rizada is spanish for kale.
Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-10-01 06:12, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:44:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote: >>>>>>
On 30/09/2025 21:32, rbowman wrote:
Iceberg or crisphead is the most popular and has almost no
nutritional
value.
We all eat far too much 'nutritional value' as it is.
Lettuce has water and fibre and some useful minerals.
So does the assorted grass and weeds out in the lawn. The deer eat >>>>>> the grass;I eat the deer. Or, to be specific, tonight I'm eating
part of a cow.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition-pictures/best-salad- >>>>>> greens-for-your-health.aspx
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
I have trouble understanding that article. I don't know the names of >>>>> most plants in Spanish. Kale is probably "col verde", but I still
do not
know what is that.
The article doesn't even have photos!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale
Sure, I did that. I did not recognize the plant on the photo. I then
do what I always do, click on the "languages" drop list, to open the
Spanish wikipedia article, which would have the Spanish name of the
plant. But... there are 47 translations and none in Spanish! I can
hope that the Portuguese, Catalá, French, Italian article is similar.
Catalá probably is. "Col verda" So probably "Col verde". Not familiar
to me.
But there are several other plants in the given link, I would have to
repeat the investigation for each one.
Well, DeepL fails to give any translation. Google translate, which I
tend to ignore, this time gives the proper answer.
How to write a question to ask google directly to give that answer
evades me.
On 9/30/25 21:12, rbowman wrote:
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
It repels me as well but i am a creature of habit in dietary matters.
Very probably I have eaten "cabbage" which shares part of the name in Spanish.
On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 10:08:57 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I have trouble understanding that article. I don't know the names of
most plants in Spanish. Kale is probably "col verde", but I still do not
know what is that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale
You're lucky. It became trendy around 20 years ago as a 'superfood'. Maybe it's one of those genetic things but I find it bitter even more than dandelion greens. It's also tough no matter how long you cook it even if
you cut out the central vein. Some people make smoothies out of it. Maybe
if you grind it to a pulp and add bananas, mangoes, lemons, and any other fruit laying around you might have something you can gag down.
https://www.phillymag.com/be-well-philly/2015/01/08/confession-really- really-really-hate-kale/
"It’s to the point that I suspect you’re all punking me. Like, everyone is
secretly in on the joke that kale is disgusting, but you pretend it’s amazing and delicious just to make me feel bad."
On 2025-10-01, Bobbie Sellers <[email protected]> wrote:
On 9/30/25 21:12, rbowman wrote:
I draw the line at kale. I've never found a way to make it edible.
It repels me as well but i am a creature of habit in dietary matters.
https://etherwork.net/blog/kale-and-coconut-oil/protip-kalecoconutoil800x530/
On 01/10/25 12:32, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 11:36:09 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]>
wrote:
South Australia currently has a big problem that it doesn't know how to
solve. An algal bloom along the coastline is killing sea life, including >>> large fish species, and beaches are being covered with dead fish. The
fishing industry is under threat. The problem is caused by rising sea
temperatures. That phenomenon, which has also become very noticeeable in >>> other oceans, has a huge momentum.
I'm trying to open my mind to the metaphor of "momentum"
applying to the rise of temperature of sea water.
Perhaps "thermal inertia" would have been a better term. The main
relevant factor is that the oceans contain a truly huge amount of water.
On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 10:08:57 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I have trouble understanding that article. I don't know the names of
most plants in Spanish. Kale is probably "col verde", but I still do not
know what is that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale
You're lucky. It became trendy around 20 years ago as a 'superfood'. Maybe it's one of those genetic things but I find it bitter even more than dandelion greens. It's also tough no matter how long you cook it even if
you cut out the central vein. Some people make smoothies out of it. Maybe
if you grind it to a pulp and add bananas, mangoes, lemons, and any other fruit laying around you might have something you can gag down.
https://www.phillymag.com/be-well-philly/2015/01/08/confession-really- really-really-hate-kale/
"It’s to the point that I suspect you’re all punking me. Like, everyone is
secretly in on the joke that kale is disgusting, but you pretend it’s amazing and delicious just to make me feel bad."
On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 15:01:11 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 01/10/25 12:32, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 11:36:09 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]>
wrote:
South Australia currently has a big problem that it doesn't know how to >>>> solve. An algal bloom along the coastline is killing sea life, including >>>> large fish species, and beaches are being covered with dead fish. The
fishing industry is under threat. The problem is caused by rising sea
temperatures. That phenomenon, which has also become very noticeeable in >>>> other oceans, has a huge momentum.
I'm trying to open my mind to the metaphor of "momentum"
applying to the rise of temperature of sea water.
Perhaps "thermal inertia" would have been a better term. The main
relevant factor is that the oceans contain a truly huge amount of water.
There's an enormous amount of water, but most of it is DEEP.
AI Overview
How does the temperature of ocean water vary? - NOAA Ocean ...
Ocean water is generally cold below the sunlit surface layers,
with a rapid temperature drop occurring around a few hundred
meters (less than a thousand meters) within the thermocline, and
remaining cold (around 4°C or 39°F) at depths below 1,000 meters.
This deep cold water originates from dense, salty water formed by
freezing in polar regions that sinks and spreads across the ocean
floor.
I expect that the layer that is getting more acidic is thinner than
the layer that is warmer, but I don't know of data about that.
One implication is that "ocean warming" does not affect the great
depths and enormous volume, so it is *relatively* rapid.
What makes me feel that scientists should talk about the future
with a little bit of humility is that the study of underwater currents
is just decades old and does not pretend to be authoritative.
There must be at least a tiny chance that the COLD water of
the deeps might start playing a bigger role, say, after the Gulf
Stream is diverted by the cold fresh waters pouring from Greenland.
What the scientist warn is mostly valid as warnings, but the
science of warming and climate change is not nailed down.
On 2025-10-01 14:44, Rich wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc Daniel70 <[email protected]> wrote:
On 26/09/2025 3:19 am, knuttle wrote:
On 09/25/2025 11:11 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
...
In my simple mind, I've often wondered why we don't just pack all the
Nuclear Reactor Waste into conveniently co-located Rockets and send
them off to the Big Nuclear Reactor in the Sky.
Sure, there could be some initial teething problems to overcome .... but >>> anything is possible .... if we set our minds to it!! ;-P
Because even if you ignore the fact that, sometimes, rockets explode at
launch, orbital physics tends to get in your way in trying to hit the
sun:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a21896/why-we-cant-just-launch-waste-into-the-sun/
Interesting.
The farther a planet is from the Sun, the slower the orbit is. So close
to the Sun it would go very fast.
What would happen if we fire something from the Earth in opposite
direction of Earth's orbit. I understand it would not hold in orbit but start falling towards the Sun, accelerating because of the fall. My
guess is, this acceleration means it would then reach another stable
orbit, closer to the Sun.
This is not explained in the text (the video glances on it). What it
says is “Anything short of that just puts the spacecraft in an
elliptical orbit that never hits the star.”
Broccoli I like.
On 2025-10-01 14:44, Rich wrote:https://xkcd.com/1356/
In comp.os.linux.misc Daniel70 <[email protected]> wrote:
On 26/09/2025 3:19 am, knuttle wrote:
On 09/25/2025 11:11 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
...
In my simple mind, I've often wondered why we don't just pack all the
Nuclear Reactor Waste into conveniently co-located Rockets and send
them off to the Big Nuclear Reactor in the Sky.
Sure, there could be some initial teething problems to overcome .... but >> anything is possible .... if we set our minds to it!! ;-P
Because even if you ignore the fact that, sometimes, rockets explode at launch, orbital physics tends to get in your way in trying to hit the
sun:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a21896/why-we-cant-just-launch-waste-into-the-sun/
Interesting.
The farther a planet is from the Sun, the slower the orbit is. So close
to the Sun it would go very fast.
What would happen if we fire something from the Earth in opposite
direction of Earth's orbit. I understand it would not hold in orbit but start falling towards the Sun, accelerating because of the fall. My
guess is, this acceleration means it would then reach another stable
orbit, closer to the Sun. This is not explained in the text (the video glances on it). What it says is âAnything short of that just puts the> spacecraft in an elliptical orbit that never hits the star.â�
On 2025-10-01 19:47, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
5 seconds of google reveals that col rizada is spanish for kale.
Well, DeepL fails to give any translation. Google translate, which I
tend to ignore, this time gives the proper answer.
How to write a question to ask google directly to give that answer
evades me.
On 10/1/25 11:08, Carlos E.R. wrote:
How to write a question to ask google directly to give that answerIt is hard to figure out sometimes even with my vast English
evades me.
language vocabulary how exactly to ask a question of DuckDuckGo but I
keep at it until i find some measure of satisfaction. Very
persistent hair-splitter.
bliss
On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 20:12:34 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Very probably I have eaten "cabbage" which shares part of the name in
Spanish.
Cabbage is edible, kale is not. There is an Irish dish which is mostly
mashed potatoes and cabbage. I've seen recipes that use kale but I have a feeling it's a translation problem with 'col'.
https://www.thespanishchef.com/recipes/red-cabbage
There is a very similar German recipe, Rotkohl. Warning: I think the
vinegar acts as sort of a mordant and you tend to wind up with purple
teeth. Also, in contact with iron utensils it sometimes develops an
alarming shade of green but it's only the anthocyanin reacting to the pH.
What the scientist warn is mostly valid as warnings,
but the science of warming and climate change is not nailed down.
"It’s to the point that I suspect you’re all punking me. Like,
everyone is
secretly in on the joke that kale is disgusting, but you pretend it’s
amazing and delicious just to make me feel bad."
Ok, I am not tempted to try it 😂
Broccoli I like.
No but there is heat exhange between the surface and the depths and
not all the deep water is that cold. Think about the volcanic vents
at depth providing enough chemical energy to sustain life. Look up
Haline circulation and realize the the ecology of the Southern waters
around Anartica is being disrupted. The sea ice that ringed that
continent over the sea waters is or has already melted. The negative
effects on the krill have already been noted in scientific
oceangraphic publications.
I have no idea how long that would take, but it wouldn't
be a problem for Earth anymore...unless we missed Venus, but
got close enough for it to throw the payload Heaven knows
where.
In comp.os.linux.misc Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-10-01 14:44, Rich wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc Daniel70 <[email protected]> wrote:
On 26/09/2025 3:19 am, knuttle wrote:
On 09/25/2025 11:11 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
...
In my simple mind, I've often wondered why we don't just pack all the
Nuclear Reactor Waste into conveniently co-located Rockets and send
them off to the Big Nuclear Reactor in the Sky.
Sure, there could be some initial teething problems to overcome .... but >>>> anything is possible .... if we set our minds to it!! ;-P
Because even if you ignore the fact that, sometimes, rockets explode at
launch, orbital physics tends to get in your way in trying to hit the
sun:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a21896/why-we-cant-just-launch-waste-into-the-sun/
Interesting.
The farther a planet is from the Sun, the slower the orbit is. So close
to the Sun it would go very fast.
What would happen if we fire something from the Earth in opposite
direction of Earth's orbit. I understand it would not hold in orbit but
start falling towards the Sun, accelerating because of the fall. My
guess is, this acceleration means it would then reach another stable
orbit, closer to the Sun.
Unless the something loses all of its angular velocity [1] then yes, it
will end up in some other orbital path around the sun.
This is not explained in the text (the video glances on it). What it
says is “Anything short of that just puts the spacecraft in an
elliptical orbit that never hits the star.”
Well, that quote *is* the explanation, but that explanation does
presume a certian understanding of orbital mechanics that not every
reader will have.
The problem here becomes the fact that if we decelerate the object
sufficient to make it fall towards the sun, but insufficient to
actually hit the sun, it is now very likely to enter into a "comet like orbit" where the orbital ellipse is very elongated rather than being
closer to circular. If that elongated ellipse is such that it
intersects Earth's orbit (as the object would have begun at Earth's
orbit, it has a higher likelyood of intersecting than any random bit of
space debris) then we have a situation where, at some point in the
future, it may intersect with Earth's orbit while Earth is occupying
the same space at the same time, and we now have a risk of our own radioactive asteroid "dirty bomb" returning home, if the object was originally a radioactive waste disposal container.
[1] Due to the diameter of the sun, there is a minimum angular velocity threshold below which the object would impact some portion of the sun.
I don't know the number (but it is way less than the earth's angular velocity) and I've no interest in going through the calculations to
determine the minimum angular velocity that still results in a "hit" of
the sun.
On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 22:05:15 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Broccoli I like.
Broccoli is definitely edible in many forms. My brother detested it and
saw a upside of being on rat poison (warfarin) that he could pass it up without his wife nagging. He said the only thing he agreed with Bush I on
was broccoli sucked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush_broccoli_comments
In comp.os.linux.misc rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 20:48:33 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1006351.We_Almost_Lost_Detroit
No big loss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1
Ignorance is bliss. I think it's one of Feynman's book where he talks
about early experiments to determine the critical mass. They had two
blocks of uranium on a workbench with a Geiger counter. The tech pushed
one towards the other with a screwdriver until the counter went nuts.
It didn't end well for the tech: https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1946USA1.html
On 27/09/2025 10:16 am, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:Hmm! 2100 REM!! How many REM per X-Ray??
On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 20:48:33 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1006351.We_Almost_Lost_Detroit
No big loss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1
Ignorance is bliss. I think it's one of Feynman's book where he talks
about early experiments to determine the critical mass. They had two
blocks of uranium on a workbench with a Geiger counter. The tech pushed
one towards the other with a screwdriver until the counter went nuts.
It didn't end well for the tech:
https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1946USA1.html
| Sysop: | DaiTengu |
|---|---|
| Location: | Appleton, WI |
| Users: | 1,071 |
| Nodes: | 10 (0 / 10) |
| Uptime: | 64:19:47 |
| Calls: | 13,754 |
| Calls today: | 1 |
| Files: | 186,984 |
| D/L today: |
8,239 files (2,382M bytes) |
| Messages: | 2,425,511 |
