Posts by W.S.Gosset 2280 posts • joined 18 Nov 2016
> to allow constructs like "for each"
Actually, this is shell's behaviour for "for": it just iterates thru the defined list.
You can create a numeric progression list via shell expansion if you want the original "for", but I don't think I've ever needed to do that for shell tasks.
> But there is an “expanding substrate”, space itself.
That's one theory to explain the observed red-shifting of received light. And from it, necessarily extrapolates The Big Bang.
The theory assumes that light interacts with a substrate (space-time) but does not lose energy in that interaction.
Every other wave-in-a-substrate does.
If you assume light shares that characteristic with all other waves, if you assume light dissipates its energy as it travels, then you get a red-shift. The universe need not be expanding; The Big Bang goes away.
In my personal opinion, I believe it more likely that light loses energy over distance than that it is special magic of immutable unchanging fixedness upon creation.
Black holes always strike me as a design flaw, a bug in the maths. Not by Einstein; by God (or whatever).
In the absence of an expanding substrate, the universe is guaranteed to eventually be a single black hole. Given enough time, no matter how weak the far far distant gravitational attraction is, all matter will be drawn together, and will coalesce as a single black hole.
"Bugger. Same thing happened again. One big fat ball. Oh well, hit the reset switch, I'll twiddle the parameters, and see if we can't get it right this time."
> Given the number of downvotes when I make common sense comments about Linux, no they don't. They don't know their elbows from their ankles.
You recently wrote this:
s'/is a/is yet another/'The strong implication from the misquoting and the quote-form chosen is that you have little hands-on experience with any unix, and that you don't actually understand it. But that you dearly want people to think that you do.
Well, this one was just straight mercantile opportunism on a micro level. With the opium trade re-flourishing and mobs of coolies entering Australia for work, they brought opium dealers&dens into the country. The standard dens' method was to have the opium sitting on a small ball of cotton or similar, and when you smoke it that way, most of the actual high-potency drug simply melts and runs and soaks into the cotton. So after the customers had staggered off, they had all these super-potent cotton balls remaining. Seeing the Aborigines' enormous enthusiasm for whitey's alcohol, they tried the cotton balls on them, and they loved it. Brilliant: additional market, more money. Problem: super-potent. The Aborigines would basically wander off, pass out randomly in the bush, and die. Exposure, respiratory shutdown, both, who knows. This was apparently all only out in the bush -- I haven't seen anything regarding it happening in the cities.
The whiteys eventually woke up to what was going on, had no legal traction to do anything about it, and so started hammering the city folk to sort out some laws or policing or something. I think the tipping point was when the squatters (Britain's wealthy landed gentry's unwanted kids who bought & ran the big farms) found out and started jumping up and down. There are letters on file from some of the big boys who had the direct ear by personal connection to the legislators, office-holders, etc and it seems that about then things started to happen. By this stage, the fatality estimates in the bushies' letters were around 90%.
It culminated in what I believe was the world's first ban/control of opium. eg "Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897".
You'll note there's a sharp dislocation in publicly-presented "traditions" by Aborigines from about that time onwards -- the survivors&kids had virtually no context any more and just started making shit up. You'll see photos from the '20s of Aborigines posing in their kangaroo skin cloaks, but they're on inside out, that sort of thing.
> due to us buying too much stuff from them
No, due to Britain buying too much _tea_ from India as demand exploded for the new drink, and India demanding silver specie in payment. Britain sought to close that loop locally without the long, risky sea transports of silver.
And the Chinese drug problem, and the govt clampdown in response, massively preceded the British involvement let alone the Opium Wars. Be careful of retconned "history".
Interestingly, the British re-opening of the Chinese opium industry to facilitate their tea trade, directly led to the Chinese wiping out over 90% of Australia's Aborigines in a single decade in the 1870s-1880s.
I think that's because YEXIT (Yank exit) occurred while Britain still had a squillion local variations of measures. Volumes in particular were all over the shop, with multiple definitions of hogshead and firkins and barrels and so on. So they inherited a subset of those, which then expanded geographically. Britain had a big push for standard measures at some point but I can't remember exactly when.
It was only the desire for more readable train timetables that led to standardizing _time_. Every town had its own (correct) time. Now nearly all towns have an incorrect but standard time. Except Oxford. Oxford's town clock still runs on Oxford time, not standard time. 2mins behind or something.
Under UK law, any contract term which is illegal (eg, refusing to comply with a court direction) is automatically "null and void". No discretion.
I believe the argument can also be made in court that the entire contract should be struck out on the basis of the illegal section(s). But this is at the court's discretion.
Bill Gates used similar in his early Windows wholesale licences to stymie the DoJ in their anti-trust investigations.
The computer manufacturers' licence forbade them --on penalty of immediate loss of licence to bundle Windows and hence immediate loss of 99.9% of revenue-- to divulge any information about the licence to anyone, explicitly including cooperating with law enforcement, subpoenas, court orders, etc.
Oh hello, they've already been firing warning shots. Spells. Whatever.
Radio Free Europe: Witches cast spells for Putin
Putin's Court Magicians will also take action against Western Wizards:
Tweet- Anastasiia Lapatina, @lapatina_
Russian state media: “Signs of black magic were found in Ukrainian military headquarters”.
A whole new level of idiocy from the Ministry of Truth
<screenshot>
This chap: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Nikolai+Patrustev
Ex counter-intelligence KGB. Currently bossman of the Security Council. Described as a hardliner, apparently responsible for convincing Putin that Ukraine was being taken over by Nazis, apparently responsible ("key architect") for the Ukraine invasion's strategic plan.
Yes, storage is a major problem, and LNG ships are a major capacity constraint.
But the BIG problem is port capacity. That is the BIG bottleneck. And it takes a long time and a lot of money to build new ones.
> a very nasty short-term hit on major European economies
And on poor people. Come winter time, expect the deaths-from-cold numbers to soar. Heating is expensive, and rapidly becoming a luxury item for the bottom quartile of the population. They will die a lot.
> He is currently hiding in an impregnable bunker
I believe he's currently/imminently in hospital for surgery.
Problem: I've read that his deputy who'll be stepping in, his Number 2 & designated successor, makes Putin look sane, reasonable, co-operative, and a champion of human beings' rights.
> There was an equally dumb question asked by a UKIP representative. What happens when renewable energy runs out?
Solar power will run out at 8% of the world's power supply.
That's when it will have exhausted the world's entire reserves of coltan.
At 12%, it exhausts 2 more minerals.
Solar power is the least renewable energy source on the planet.
Sorry, I left implicit the overriding consideration for any military purchase:
"America refuses to provide useful lower-cost tanks, aircraft, etc"
Setting aside occasional exceptions:
America externally provides only cutting-edge, or crap. As your own examples illustrate.
At any given price-point below excruciating, Russian kit dominates USA kit. Result: widespread global dependence on Russia for military security. Result: political influence.
Actually, I have read that Russia exports only reduced-capability versions of its tanks and so on.
America refuses to provide lower-cost tanks, aircraft, etc, so less-wealthy countries have little choice but to buy from Russia. Putting India, for example, in its current invidious position of not daring to say/do anything re Russia's invasion for fear of being weakened vs China.
Just saw this.
A/ it most certainly is NOT a new thing -- the "multiplier" has been observed since the original variant in essentially every such study across multiple countries and multiple variants.
B/ US CDC reported recently that its USA-wide survey shows roughly 2.5 times as many infections as have been officially recorded/detected by testing. 190 million actual infections vs 80 million via testing. That's cumulative to-date, all variants. For example.
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