Posts by bombastic bob 10944 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
i've heard that, too. Back in the B.C. Roman days, It was reportedly Vitruvius that invented the steam engine by using bent pipes on a boiling pot of water on a spindle, proving the concept.
Anecdotally, the response by those who might have funded it and/or promoted development: "What will we do with all of the slaves?"
(Apparently the Roman economy was too closely to slavery)
You are not wrong.
Although I see unions as a necessary evil in some cases (to deal with exploitation) by asking for too high of a wage and/or too expensive of a benefits package,. unions can often shut down the company, especially when it is on the verge of unprofitability as it is (right Hostess?).
Still, a union can ALSO be a benefit to all if it manages the HR stuff for the management company, and provides reasonable cost for services (almost like a contracting agency would).
For software people, a union would be a BAD idea. Many reasons exist as to why.
And of course Microsoft's position seems to be the only one they CAN take when it comes to unions.
(when you potentially make 6 figures doing creative things and playing with cool toys, why would anyone want to form a union and JEOPARDIZE that?)
well about some of that I'd say "you are not 'wrong'" in the general sense...
The thing is some of what the article says IS true. That is:
* smaller reactors have higher neutron flux, which means higher incidence of neutron activation of components that make up the reactor, coolant, and surrounding equipment.
* smaller reactors use higher fuel enrichment and necessarily have higher concentrations of unspent U235 in the waste
So in SOME ways they are right. What *I* call B.S. on is the "5 times" figure which seems oddly exaggerated to me. (if you assume all U235 in spent fuel as "waste" then MAYBE, but that would be a gross underutilization of U235 fuel, which I think is a WORSE thing than higher waste volume, if you consider how expensive enriching it is)
Also you have to keep in mind that U235 in nuke waste CAN be removed chemically. Were it not for a lot of N.I.M.B.Y. nonsense (and in the case of Sellafield, equipment and storage facilities in need of proper maintenance), we could streamline the process and maybe MAKE USE of decay heat in some practical way.
Radioactive metals from neutron activation are a problem, though, as are materials like Co60 that you get when Iron corrosion sends rusty particles through the coolant and into the heart of the reactor, where it is exposed to maximum neutron flux. The technical term for this radioactive rust is "CRUD". "CRAP" is what you have when things get contaminated outside of the reactor, like "I got crapped up when that valve dripped contaminated water on me".
So - MY $.10 worth (or maybe up to $.25 now) is that YES, you DO get more waste from smaller reactors, which is one reason why the industry likes BIG ones. But 5 times as much? I doubt it.
(since I have worked with one VERY small reactor design, and know what happens when it is very old and pipes are full of 'CRUD traps', and how often they need refueling, etc. etc. I think I can make a qualified assessment in this case).
requiring management to work to almost the same conditions as factory workers
EXACTLY! Middle and upper management jobs require you to actually MANAGE, not sit there at home in your underwear doing 'remote meeting' stuff.
Not the same as IT which can be done remotely or on site, depending on how you set it up and whether or not physical hardware is involved.
But building cars and rockets needs people who make physical things to perform their tasks on assembly lines and test with expensive equipment and so forth, and managers need to BE THERE to streamline and solve problems.
Aluminum is lighter but has higher resistance than copper. For super high voltage lines over long distances, I would expect aluminum cables to be of practical use, though.
Also because of 'skin effect' the high capacity distribution lines are really hollow pipes.
the method of heat generation for a typical steam plant can be radically different, but the steam produced generates electricity in roughly the same way (superheaters and operating temperatures notwithstanding) and require the same kinds of "infrastructure" to control the electrical generation systems and deliver power onto the grid. So yeah.
geothermal is GREAT news, but here is a problem: think of the reaction by environmentalists to FRACKING, which just might double the amount of oil that can be extracted economically from an oil well (and if I remember correctly, helps TREMENDOUSLY with natural gas extraction, which carbon-neutral people should LOVE).
Then consider how many "it affected my cows" claims will fling multiple lawsuits at ANYONE trying to produce energy from geothermal, regardless of how much you AND *I* like the idea.
Because, it is NOT about the environment, about some farmer's cows, or about saving the planet. It is about ECONOMIC CONTROL. (snip the rest, it's what I've said many times about taxation and elitists and whatnot)
Still, practical geothermal plants. I like that.
The west's dependence on oil or gas sources controlled by regimes that range from dodgy to outright evil
True, except when the USA becomes a net EXPORTER of oil again, which we were doing a couple o' years ago, and EASILY can, again. Then we stop funding evil regimes through the blockage of U.S. (and indidrectly Canadian) oil drilling.
humanity will have burnt up hundreds of millions of years' worth of stored sunlight in a little over a century
Most of the world's carbon (I think it is the eighth most abundant element in the universe, or something like that) is in the MANTLE, and is often gassed up by volcanoes and (indirectly) the surrounding area, which is (one of several reasons) why CO2 levels measured near Mauna Loa are skewed.
of course, the REAL problem is not so much evil regimes producing oil. The BIGGEST problem is that no matter HOW MUCH every OTHER country that is "not china" increases our own cost of energy [and wrecks our economies] through unnecessary carbon fuel taxes and bans, CHINA WILL NOT DO IT. That should frighten people.
burning fossil fuel faster than the released CO2 can be recaptured
No.
you have never done an actual phosphate titration, have you? Consider the HUGE amount of reagent that is needed to get "past the hump" to the next equilibrium point. Then re-read what I quoted.
(most of the good stuff I reserve for #ClimateChangeHoax )
unfortunately the power density is not high enough to utilize properly unless we can manage to build a giant magnifying lens... (solar cells can do around 200W per square meter, requiring a LOT of square meters for panels, especially when you consider electric cars and 30kwh or so per week needed for average driving)
Well, as I recall the MANHATTAN PROJECT was funded by the military and was part of the war effort in WW2, where they invented CONTROLLABLE FISSION.
So I'd consider DOUBLING the military budget and TASK THEM with making fusion electricity a practical reality.
The ENTIRE "reasoning" (if you can even CALL it that, as it is SO UN-SCIENTIFIC) that man-made CO2 *ALLEGEDLY* causes climate change is the BIGGEST [POWER/CONTROL GRAB] HOAX in CENTURIES. I think "flat earth" and "geocentric universe" (right Gallileo?) come in 2nd and 3rd, respectively (though the only power being grabbed and/or maintained in THOSE cases was from an overbearing church...)
Hint: CO2 is *terrible* at being a greenhouse gas (especially compared to WATER), is at equilibrium [with plants, rain, bodies of water, etc.], varies based on water temperature (which holds less CO2 at higher temps like a soda going flat when warm) and volcanic activity (which spews CO2), has been seen rising NEAR A SPECIFIC VOLCANO since 1958 which seems to drive "all of those charts" [not a representative sample in other words; volcanoes are known to often spew tons of CO2 when they are not erupting, more than humans even] and CO2 does not even absorb IR radiation well at frequencies that correspond to black body radiation for temperatures ACTUALLY FOUND ON EARTH.
(it does not take long to find this information, you just have to wade past the MIS-information dump from climate change activists)
And, you KNOW that there is NO WAY IN HELL that CHINA will become "carbon neutral". Why SHOULD they? They're busy EXPLOITING THE REST OF THE WORLD for being so GULLIBLE as to SHOOT OUR OWN ECONOMIC FEET over this.
(facepalm icon as well)
How about this: every teacher carries a loaded pistol and is properly trained in its use.
Then, pass laws that EXEMPT EVERYONE FROM PROSECUTION if deadly force is used to protect yourself or others from harm SUCH AS from a terrorist or a criminal.
And, MAKE SURE CAREER CRIMINALS GO TO JAIL AND STAY THERE.
Self defense is a RIGHT and must NOT be infringed, In My Bombastic Opinion. And children should be taught when it is appropriate to use such force, and when it is not. But we no longer teach any kind of morality in schools any more, do we???
An armed teacher could reduce the death count of any school shooting to *ONE*.
And an UNarmed population is easier to control, manipulate, coerce, lock down, etc... RIGHT AUSTRALIA? RIGHT CHINA?
or, "loud squeeky wheel wokesters" should just quit and work elsewhere. Companies need to tell these agenda-driven crybaby clowns to PACK! SAND!!!
(Good riddance when they quit over this. And, you KNOW that the wokesters would say the same thing to *US* if *THEY* were running the show, "just quit if you do not like it". Politics does NOT belong in business anyway!!!)
And, there are PLENTY of businesses where the execs and boards of directors will want to obtain services and goods from companies that REFUSE TO BOW DOWN TO THIS *WOKE* *CRAP*.
"Cancel culture" can KISS MY HAIRY NAKED FREEDOM LOVIN' BUTTOCKS! (someone has to say it)
exploiting a TRAGIC CRIME and/or TERRORIST ACT for "THE WOKE AGENDA" is *JUST* *SICK*.
^^^ what he said, in the comment above, plus an observation that some (who are socialists) assume that anyone who is rich neither earns the money nor deserves it. It's no longer like Victorian Age wealth (like from a Charles Dickens novel), nowadays. Most people actually have to EARN it.
well in the world of competing suppliers, those who know inventory control and supply chain management understand that there is a tradeoff between low price with poor delivery performance, and higher price with good delivery performance. The most important situation to avoid is LINE STOP. You run out, it's more expensive. So maybe people will make large "whenever it gets here" orders for safety stocks on occasion, or for anticipated demand increases, but I would expect that managers have good memories and will be looking at places "NOT CHINA" (with second and third sources) for procuring materials, in order to get RELIABLE delivery performance.
you are "not wrong". Sadly.
This is why "emergency powers" MUST be limited. I would say no more than 30 days without direct legislative approval. No exceptions. And, it should require re-approval ever 30 days. And it should apply SIMILARLY to the states/provinces and OTHER more local authorities. (a constitutional amendment would be required for this in the USA)
The last 2 years speak LOUDLY about the ABUSE of "emergency powers". And do not forget pre-WW2 Germany, either. (yes that is a link to a relevant "Washington Bleep" article).
sometimes making up your own API is easier (rather than using someone else's concept).
curl http://localhost:1234/function/param1/param2 <-- simple to implement and parse
(this would return back success, errors, query results, whatever like any URL to a web server would, ideally as plain text)
No need for XML, PUT, POST, JSON parsers, or whatever... unless you WANT to have it return XML or JSON or whatever. Pretty straightforward and flexible and do what you want. Not *entirely* RESTful but much better, In My Bombastic Opinion.
(such an API invoked by a set of a simple web pages can do some amazing things, where simple code quickly forms request URLs from user input, implementing it on the back-end in PHP rather than as JavaScript in the client, and use off-the-shelf web server and PHP - or if you wanted to, do a javascript query, whatever and have your API return XML. Pretty fast to do xml as sprintf() and return it. Oh yeah, I would implement the server part in C. In fact, I *HAVE* !!! SEVERAL times!!!)
API as a marketeering buzz-term. Now with MORE TIERS!
This reminds me when $CEO decided that TIERS were good, and MORE of them were better. It's a *FIVE* TIER SOLUTION! I was supposed to implement that. right...
So, is that "NEW TIERS, NOW with APIs"? Or, is it "NEW APIs, NOW with TIERS"?
I think *I* am in tears...
I chose my (shared) hosting provider in one aspect because it has PostgreSQL where most only seem to offer MySQL or maybe the MariaDB equivalent.
MySQL has some odd quirks with respect to embedded quotes. They do NOT follow the SQL standard for that, and it kinda bugs me to have to escape quote marks when it is legit to have "Joe's Computer" in a text field, or double quotes for that matter - the 3" valve, or the 1" pipe. Deaing with this for MySQL adds unnecessary complexity. (the standard SQL way is to double the quote mark if it is an actual embedded quote mark, within whatever context you use it).
So for that, at least, I prefer a database that follows the standard closely so as to be more predictable.
Also PostgreSQL seems to be extremely compatible with others, generating SQL statements (for a dump) that are generic enough for pretty much any DBMS to be able to import the data.
And MySQL (to me) has always been difficult to set up out of the box. Too much security diddly-fiddly crap, or at least was when i tried it a few years ago. Contrast to setting up many PG databases from scratch, and it "just works".
There are 2 kinds of progress, or perhaps a 3rd less obvious one as well.
Evolutionary: Progress forward in which things become faster, better, more reliable, by making EVOLUTIONARY changes.
Rotting: Progress towards a BAD END by making RADICAL changes that distrupt, and eventually CORRUPT everything to the point of decay.
Stagnation: a possible third which is as bad as ROTTING SLOWLY
Guess which one is systemd?
even though browser code bases REMOVE it, gopher still lives. But the same browser authors that remove gopher and ftp POINTLESSLY put CRAP IN ITS PLACE (tracking, 2D FLATASS, etc.) instead of staying the way they were.
You would think that browser devs (or the ones yanking their puppet strings) are a bunch of ARROGANT DWEEBS or something...
the whole system is a house of cards In My Bombastic Opinion.
And WHO gets the midnight phone call to correct the problem caused by an update to a trivial and insignificant shared thing that's merely in the dependency list and NOT even relevant to your code? Why YOU do, of course!
It's as bad as DLL HELL, and maybe even WORSE. [also why I statically link or build from source on a target platform whenever practical]
Scumbag Sam
heh - that reminds me of a video game that has N.P.C.s known as "Thieving Scumbags". But they are useful in the game, if you use items to multiply your monetary gain at the end of a battle, it will also multiply any "recovered" loot stolen by scumbags that you kill (without letting them escape from battle). If properly hacked, you can get millions of currency units pretty fast by manipulating the scumbag characters like that, letting them steal, . and then 'recover' it by killing them before they escape.
(IRL I wish I could do the same thing - see icon)
the early astronauts were all test pilots. Modern astronauts should be more like commercial pilots, and be able to fly highly reliable craft on scheduled runs without incident.
Of course they'll still be still "test pilots" on the first few flights of any new system, but it seems to me that the Boeing design may need a bit more improvement in reliability before putting people on it.
'toxicity' comes from only a handful of people, In My Bombastic Opinion. But you can pretty much assume that BSD's Init system will not become systemd, nor will it have native Pulse Audio in lieu of OSS audio (which in my opinion should still be the standard for Linux). There is a port for Wayland, sort of experimental from what I gather, but it shall not be installed on any of MY systems. But it is there if you insist on it, right?
I recently DL'd an Ubuntu distro (the 'supported' Linux for a particular SoC system board) and it had WAYLAND on it. I was _NOT_ amused. Fortunately, use of package deletion and re-installation with Xorg fixed it. unfortunately did not fix the hardware incompatibilities with a particular LCD panel, however. I still have not tried loading FBSD on it. It's for a customer after all... but if I have to support a different Linux image maybe FBSD would actually work with that LCD panel... ?
I'm not aware that Xorg requires you to be in the wheel group, at least not from half a year ago when I last updated my ports. VirtualBox requires you be in 'operator' as I recall, and there are a few other things like wireshark that have group membership requirements. (Linux typically has some similar things like that)
But... THAT brings up one o the best features of FreeBSD: You can NOT su to root unless you are a member of wheel (gid 0). So, I typically do everything (including running 'startx') as a user NOT a member of wheel. This means I must su to a user that IS in wheel, then to root (2 step process) but if your system is ever compromised by an application running in your user context, it would be that much more difficult to gain root access.
-> What you can't do is put FreeBSD's root file system in one PC partition, its home file system in a different PC partition and so on, as you can with virtually every normal Linux distro.
Not sure about that or what you did or what you are trying to achieve. I would like to see some clarification.
Early on I used to put / /usr, /var, and /home on different UFS slices, not quite the same as partitions but effectively that's what they are. Since UFS+J the need to keep frequently written partitions separate is much less important, sort of like using EXT4 in Linux... though on my server I still did it that way for uber reliability and easier recovery (the remainder of the disk is a ~1.5Tb ZFS partition). So yeah depending on how you set things up, you can boot from ZFS, have it all in one UFS+J 'slice', or use separate slices for different mounted directories.
-> In our testing, in a VirtualBox VM, trying to install onto ZFS failed
Again, not sure what you are doing here. I tested FreeBSD + ZFS in VB and it works fine..
I also have not had difficulty with this sort of thing, though I have yet not tried building a 13.1 system in VirtualBox. Maybe their VirtualBox drive was emulating IDE instead of SATA ? Though I am pretty sure that this has still worked for me (using IDE emulation), just that did not perform as well if I remember correctly.
Still there is one pair of facts that come out of their experience: First, you kinda need to read the handbook before proceeding with an install, and understand what it is you are doing. Second, you can always start over.
Within the COPYRIGHT file that is part of FreeBSD's source, it says 'Berkeley Software Distribution ("BSD")' when talking about the software, so I can assume that this is the correct term.
Wikipedia is usually accurate but also frequently NOT and so always my skeptic hat remains on, especially for topics that are in any way controversial or in any way debatable.
(/me has been using FreeBSD since right before version 4.8 was released (my first upgrade experience), best overall platform for doing POSIX application development in my bombastic opinion)
Icon, because, BSD
"99.9%" of WHOM exactly? names, research on who they are, and obviously pointing out "appeal to authority" and "hearsay" logical fallacies being at work in that assertion.
And how do you know that "Any scientist" does NOT include ME?
XKCD is NOT a scientific proof of anything... but THIS just MIGHT be.
I explained the reasons for power consumption vs speed in an earlier post, above. Reducing power consumption is a goal, not always achievable. And there are patents that would need licensing, no doubt, if Intel starts copying AMD. They each have their own kind of "cleverness" no doubt, and this will rearrange in the future as these things continue to get smaller, run on lower voltages, and crank up the clock frequencies.
(so I'd think Intel is probably trying to become less power hungry than AMD while AMD tries to keep their edge on Intel, for the moment at least)
for speed inside of a CPU, higher speed means higher current. Lower voltage reduces power (current times voltage) and smaller logic gate sizes reduce current. The materials determine the practical limits on logic gate sizes and voltages, as well as operating temperature ranges. A *LOT* of variables go into this mix, and current designs are asymptotically hitting those limits.
Just to put things into perspective, anyway... (the physics reasons behind the need for better cooling).
Oh, and component density and location on the wafer plays a big part in sinking the heat away from the places that generate it the most also. Gotta be "clever":.
the main reason why higher speed needs higher current has to do with internal capacitance. It requires a bit of extra current to flip the charge on a gate from a 1 to a 0 or vice versa when you ALSO have to overcome the parasitic capacitance. Think of it as being like a tiny unwanted battery that needs to be charged and discharged in the right direction every time you change the logic state. And there are ZILLIONS of those, constantly being charged and discharged at gigahertz frequencies. No WONDER it heats up! I could get into reactive vs resistive current too but in the interest of being brief I think that paints the right picture.
