Posts by Lars 4260 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2007
"Why cant we we (and everyone else) do their own recycling?".
Britain is not too good at recycling whatever.
What is the country that recycles the most?
Leading the list with a whopping 52 percent of its waste being recycled is Switzerland. This is nearly double what the United States has. Number two on the list is Austria with 49.7 percent. This is a close match for number three-ranked Germany with 48 percent and number four-ranked Netherlands with 46 percent.
Japan's plastic waste utilization rate stood at 83% in 2014, up from 73% in 2006 and 39% in 1996, according to the nation's Plastic Waste Management Institute [35]. The figure for the UK is about half that of Japan's, while the figure for the US is around 20%.
As for Gove's deposit return scheme, many European countries have had it for many years now.
But I suppose island people have a temptation to just dump everything in the sea.
PS. I hope leaving the EU doesn't make you shit in the Thames again.
"Colossus was years ahead of everyone else".
No it wasn't, you find this about the Colossus:
"Colossus was a set of computers developed by British codebreakers in the years 1943–1945 to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to perform Boolean and counting operations. Colossus is thus regarded[2] as the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer, although it was programmed by switches and plugs and not by a stored program.".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
But then you also find Konrad Zuse:
"The Z3 was an electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer.[1] The Z3 was built with 2,000 relays, implementing a 22-bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hz.[2] Program code[3] and constant data were stored on punched film.
The Z3 was completed in Berlin in 1941.
Thanks to this machine and its predecessors, Konrad Zuse is often regarded as the inventor of the computer."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse
Now compare the pictures and think again, who was years ahead.
What I don't know is if the Germans are moaning as much as you and telling porkies because, after all, the German computer industry isn't that stellar either.
See there is a world outside Britain.
"I could go on and on".
I know you will go on and on for the rest of your life.
But we would have computers and jet airliners totally regardless of England, civilization did not start in Britain, hopefully it will not end there either.
I would like to help you but I am afraid you are beyond help.
I have hope in the new generation of Brits who understand that innovations are, and were, made all over the world, not only in Britain. Companies come and go, errors are made and inventions tend to go where there is capital for the purpose.
Perhaps it would help you if you manged to come to the conclusion that Britain is part of the world and not the whole world.
And please do not pollute the minds of your children.
I give you some credit, however, for writing "an inventive nation" and not the "most world leading inventive nation in human history" or something worse.
".... which will then land and I'll get off, leaving a 30 min turn around time before you get on.".
Or you would be asked to leave your bed 1h before landing and the beds would be fine and ready for the next flight.
If this idea is to fly, it will be made to fly. Back to the past, just like the Zeppelins did it, but less expensive.
"The right way to combat propaganda is with Truth. Every time we tried that it works. Every time we try to do a Boris instead it ends up as a clusterf*ck."
That sentence is interesting if we think of Brexit, truth did not help remain much at all while simple propaganda and slogans won. Boris is indeed a clusterf*ck, or are we talking about the same clusterf*ck.
Education and a responsible press helps against propaganda but the sad fact is that Christopher Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica guy, knows how well it works, much too well.
"The metric system was first described in 1668 and officially adopted by France in 1799.".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_measurement
"The metric system was designed to have a set of properties that make it easy to use and widely applicable, including units based on the natural world, decimal ratios, prefixes for multiples and sub-multiples, and a structure of base and derived units. It also has a property called coherence, which means its units are related 1:1, so that conversion factors are unnecessary. In science, it has a property called rationalisation which eliminates certain constants of proportionality in equations of physics."
"On 20 May 1875 an international treaty known as the Convention du Mètre (Metre Convention) was signed by 17 states...".
The British problem was, of course, that is was French and strongly supported by Napoleon.
The wonderful and decisive, on going since 1875, story of Britain's move towards the metric system seems to have disappeared from the Wikipedia, sad.
"people who scoff at calf fries".
Using the Wiki with all the nice pictures it's nothing to scoff at, and not that exotic either..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicles_as_food
I don't know about the rules regarding sausages today, but that was where all that stuff including udder ended up. Perhaps it's used in animal food today, but it is certainly used, and why not.
Those of you who have read Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis will remember that it's a very dear, or should one say rear, product you will give only a very good friend, a real delicacy.
The film was good too, kept with the book fairly well, but not with that part. Although I read the book as a teen I can still remember how the writer expressed the look on the face of the poor animal who had just lost both.
Bon appetit, have to try it some day.
"Wife carrying (Finnish: eukonkanto or akankanto, Estonian: naisekandmine, Swedish: kärringkånk) is a contest in which male competitors race while each carrying a female teammate. The objective is for the male to carry the female through a special obstacle track in the fastest time. The sport was first introduced at Sonkajärvi, Finland.
Several types of carry may be practised: piggyback, fireman's carry (over the shoulder), or Estonian-style (the wife hangs upside-down with her legs around the husband's shoulders, holding onto his waist).
Wife Carrying World Championships are held annually in Sonkajärvi, Finland, since 1992 (where the prize depends on the wife's weight in beer).".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife-carrying
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1la1l8gv00
Then there is, of course, how surprising,
Mobile phone throwing is an international sport that started in Finland in the year 2000. It's a sport in which participants throw mobile phones and are judged on distance or technique. World record holder is Tom Philipp Reinhardt from Germany with a throw of 136,75m.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_throwing
And some claim Finn are so very serious people.
It's late, and I am about to switch off the light, but where does it go to die. So there is is this star, dead a long time ago and that light is just moving alone and moving alone, does it never get sort of tired, and then the light is off of us, just moving alone, just moving alone, like me just now switching off the light, moving alone. Yes it is late.
John Lykoudis, a general practitioner in Greece, treated people for peptic ulcer disease with antibiotics, beginning in 1958, long before it was commonly recognized that bacteria were a dominant cause for the disease.[38]
Helicobacter pylori was identified in 1982 by two Australian scientists, Robin Warren and Barry J. Marshall as a causative factor for ulcers.[39] In their original paper, Warren and Marshall contended that most gastric ulcers and gastritis were caused by colonization with this bacterium, not by stress or spicy food as had been assumed before.
In 2005, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Dr. Marshall and his long-time collaborator Dr. Warren "for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.
I have been wondering about that name too, it's the name of the son of a German immigrant to the USA who's name was Wilhelm Böing, whatever that name means. This information has been deleted from the English Wiki for some reason.
Anybody out there who has come to realize that there is all sorts of "cleanups" on the Wikipedia.
"And that is not out of spite?".
Leaving the EU your status within ESA will change and you will become an associated member like Canada, just a fact. Will that change anything, perhaps not that much, and I am fairly sure Brits involved with ESA will be so in the future too.
The relationship to all EU related institutions will change, of course.
https://www.ft.com/content/72ead180-229a-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16
"Britain is fighting to remain the home of two of the EU’s most prestigious agencies covering medicines and banking after Brexit, in a move that is likely to cause astonishment in European capitals.
David Davis, Brexit secretary, does not accept that the two agencies and roughly 1,000 staff will have to move from London’s Canary Wharf, even though the EU is about to run a competition to relocate them."
This move is inevitable if the UK is leaving the EU, nothing surprising there, nothing "petty" either.
Davis must be total idiot if he thinks he can decide about that.
And the UK will also have to make a new agreement with EURATOM and probably with Open Skies too.
The Germans are ahead too. But in a way I have given up regarding this "world-leading" sentence, it seems to be "hardwired" into the British mind and education since a long time ago and I doubt any other Europeans have it as "hardwired" as the Brits.
I suppose one reason is how British history is read and written, as world history, so that when a Brit writes about the world's first war correspondent I should understand it's not the worlds first but the first in British history. Still it's a bit funny. And this reflex seems to pop up all the time, Britain, the "fifth or sixth wealthiest country", will that turn into the "fifth or sixth or seventh wealthiest country" in due time.
On this thread we already had the "second biggest contributor to thee EU", and some time ago there was the "second biggest contributor to the UN".
You work it out, it should not annoy me, but when you start to spot it, it's sort of disturbing.
Regards,
Lars, 180cm or 200cm of world leading height
So many errors in your comment, Britain is not the second-biggest contributor.
The EU did not viewed Britain as a milch cow to be exploited but largely ignored*.
Nor is it true that "Cameron got the cold shoulder treatment and got no concessions at all".
He did get some concessions, but returning to your claim of "second-biggest contributor" which isn't true, it is "four", it's not how a union could, or should, if democratic, operate.
What if Germany as the biggest contributor could, whenever, ask for new concessions and get them, not to mention France, the second biggest contributor, should they also be able to have whatever concessions they like because of that.
Cameron was stabbed in the back, poor boy, still I am fairly sure he is a decent father, husband and human being, but still a hapless boy. With his face and voice he looked less convincing speaking even the truth than both Farage and Boris not to mention JRM in full rubbish mode.
This is not to say I don't agree with some of your comments.
* if you really believe that I would claim it's because you, like so many Brits, are just totally unused to cooperate with anybody on equal terms, as that has never been required of you before, it was hard even with the Americans during WW2..
"It's bleeding obvious we should get a full refund of all the cash we've wasted on this EU vanity project."
A world of warning, life is hard. Let me tell you about a friend of mine who was a member of a yacht club. Then one day he read about the wonderful Chinese yacht clubs and as he wasn't that pleased about paying for his membership he decided to leave and show them who is actually in charge.
First he told them he is actually quite pleased but would rather be a free member.
But they turned difficult and refused to listen.
Then he told them he had been a member for 40 years and that he had contributed to the new building and leaving he was entitled to empty the bar, and perhaps take the front door with him.
But they turned difficult and refused to listen.
And then they asked him to move his yacht out of the marina. And that indeed made him very upset, and he told them that the marina was indeed, if only for some time, rather acceptable and he could perhaps agree to pay a little for it.
But they turned difficult and refused to listen and told him his berth has gone to an other member already, but they might rent him a space to anchor his yacht outside the marina.
Well, I haven't met him since then, perhaps he is a reformed member now, or perhaps he went for China.
Forgive me but there is reality in reality, should I perhaps go for "reality means reality".
ESA funding 2018 5.60 BE
https://m.esa.int/About_Us/Welcome_to_ESA/Funding
France 24,2%
Germany 23,1%
Italy 11,8
UK 8,4%
....
Canada 0,5%
No, I can't find Israel in that link, and regarding Canada and Switzerland they haven't apparently shown any interest in changing their status.
With Brexit the UK will resign from ESA's governing Council and I would guess the UK will need a new "the best possible" agreement in the future.
"The national bodies responsible for space in these countries sit on ESA's governing Council: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.".
https://m.esa.int/About_Us/Welcome_to_ESA/New_Member_States
"ESA has 22 Member States. The national bodies responsible for space in these countries sit on ESA’s governing Council: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Canada also sits on the Council and takes part in some projects under a Cooperation Agreement. Slovenia is an Associate Member. Seven other EU states have Cooperation Agreements with ESA: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Slovakia.
The Czech Republic formally became ESA's 18th Member State on 12 November 2008. Romania became ESA's 19th Member State on 22 December 2011, and Poland exchanged Accession Agreements with ESA in September 2012. The latest to join are Estonia, which signed the Accession to the ESA Convention on 4 February 2015, to become the 21st Member State, and Hungary, which signed on 24 February 2015, to become the 22nd Member State.
As can be seen from this list, not all member countries of the European Union are members of ESA and not all ESA Member States are members of the EU. ESA is an entirely independent organisation although it maintains close ties with the EU through an ESA/EC Framework Agreement. The two organisations share a joint European Strategy for Space and have together developed the European Space Policy.".
I have no doubt Britain can and will apply to join again but ESA is not just financed by member states but also through the EU budget so things do change with Brexit.
I would however advice Davis to be a bit more careful with his mouth at home, the other day he was there again with "Britain could refuse to pay EU £40 divorce bill, theoretically,", things like that hardly add to his credibility in the EU.
I am also fairly convinced he knows the "nothing is agreed before everything is agreed" is true only if both parties agree to change something previously agreed. I suppose he is grinning for the home front as before, though.
"Looking forward to the MS Linux distro!".
Linus spoke about that possibility about almost twenty years ago, and if they want to do it then they are free to do it, but I will not use it as I don't want to pay to use it, and I doubt I will need a MS version either. But again they are free to use it, provided they stick to the rules, and I suppose that will be the point of worry.
"knowing the way Ferrari operate he would probably have been instructed to give up his place anyway".
I doubt that as this was after all the first race. If the difference in points climb things might change for the top teams.
Ferrari was simply smarter this time, or should we assume their computer told them to pit. Some of the engine etc. problems are probably due to computer errors too.
I also wonder a bit about this sentence "causing the Brit to slow down more than was necessary", was he actually asked to slow down.
Somebody spoke of 1ookmh but it's like this.
"Exceeding the Pit Lane Speed Limit (from season 2014 - 60kph in practice and qualifying, 80kph during the race)".
PS, I find rally driving quite interesting too although there is no overtaking and perhaps we find qualifying in F1 interesting too, and for some reason I find the drivers less "prima donna" like than some of the F1 drivers over the years and more cool confronted with problems during the race. Could that be because they earn less and that most of the errors are of their own making and it's harder to claim otherwise.
Yes indeed like all companies.
I find it interesting to compare say Amazon and Alibaba, and I will add IKEA to this. All started from scratch by, in a way, fairly similar characters as one man companies.
On IKEA and Ingvar Kamprad we find this;
"He started selling matches at the age of five. When he was seven he began travelling further afield on his bicycle to sell to neighbours. He found he could buy matches in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm".
On Amazon and Jeff Bezos we find this;
"He founded Amazon in late 1994 on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an Internet merchant of books and expanded to a wide variety of products and services, most recently video and audio streaming. It is currently the world's largest Internet sales online company",
And then there is Jack Ma of Alibaba:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma
"He began studying English at a young age by conversing with English-speakers at Hangzhou international hotel. He would ride 70 miles on his bicycle to give tourists tours of the area to practice his English for nine years."...
"Jack Ma applied for 30 different jobs and got rejected by all. "I went for a job with the police; they said, 'you're no good,'" Ma told interviewer Charlie Rose. "I even went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four people went for the job. Twenty-three were accepted. I was the only guy...".[12] In addition he applied 10 times for Harvard Business School(hbs) and got rejected.".
Alibaba is not a copy of Amazon they do differ.
"we can for all practical solutions be stuck in the Milky Way."
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter between 100,000 and 180,000 light-years The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars. There are probably at least 100 billion planets in the Milky Way. The Solar System is located within the disk, about 26,000 light-years from the Galactic Center.
And you call that to be stuck.
The number ten closest stat is Ross 248, 10.322 light years from us, suppose we would manage 1/10 of the speed of light, 30.000km/sec it would take us more than 100 years to reach that star.
And about 260.000 years just for a one way trip to the Galactic Center, but of course only 26.000 years at the speed of light.
And not being stuck in the Milky Way, would be the easy peasy task to have a look at our nearest Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from earth.
I can do it, easily, in science fiction, much faster and cheaper and safer too, and I am damned good at it.
And I can even see it with my own eyes, like here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Andromeda_Galaxy_%28with_h-alpha%29.jpg
.
While this thread is getting a bit old, perhaps we should also remember that while it's so fun, and we seem to do it all the time, that is, the "it was known years ago, and my grandfather did it too" there is a new generation of kids who don't know it.
Certainly is would be wrong to suddenly stop talking about things we already have seen and done before because we are afraid of somebody pointing out "it's old news".
As funny as it sounds, education is really all about old news, enabling us to make more old news.
Indeed, lots of pig farms produce their own energy like that using diesel engines turning generators. In some countries they are payed if adding to the grid. Could it be that the news here is that the gas is bottled or something. Anybody tried with a match down there, (no I haven't)
@ Ivan 4
I don't think you need to worry about American propaganda beating Russian propaganda in Russia.
Trump is just a thin skinned ego who doesn't like to think that he needed outside help to win, or that that women won the popular vote, or that there wasn't more people at his inauguration than ever before (read Obama). He is obsessed with the "strongmen" of the world and cannot understand that he has not as much power as he expected running his new company, all alone, as he has the brains like nobody ever before.
He would like to be called "Father Sunshine" like Stalin and then there is this guy in China who has given him this rather ingenious idea of a lifetime presidency, but perhaps still a bit too coy to suggest it..
If you want to move towards democracy you have to do it yourself from inside.
"The accounts department is going to need Excel."
I might be wrong, but I seriously doubt large companies use a spread sheet application for their accounts, I hope they have something more reliable for those tasks. Then again it could explain quite a few "problems" if they do.
Sometimes I have this feeling that even Microsoft has to, eventually, start from scratch with something, perhaps Google has an advantage there, a fresher start, sort of.
The link provided by this article regarding the Boeing/Airbus kerfuffle (not to mention Bombardier) is from 4 September 2017 "Boeing declares victory in Airbus subsidies dispute".
However there is also this, and it is a separate but rather similar case, not reported on ElReg, and is from January 29 2018. "Bombardier just bested Boeing in a trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada. Here's what you need to know.".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/01/29/bombardier-just-bested-boeing-in-a-trade-dispute-between-u-s-and-canada-heres-what-you-need-to-know/?utm_term=.3a031fb1110a
My point is that if ElReg wants to report on this never ending saga on how companies love competition, then keep us informed.
PS. also the second link is outdated as Airbus actually got some very well needed new orders.
"God knows what they teach at the Ecole Polytechnique, it certainly isn't common sense".
I would suggest Brits should be more concerned with what they teach at the Eaton school.
States invest in companies for many reasons. Sometimes for strategic reasons or should we say security, water, energy and such, and if possible, like that Buffet guy, for profit, not such a bad idea.
And sometimes because there is no better alternative. Areva is one such case, but as a Brit, keen on having a new nuclear power plant, you should be happy, because without the French with the Chinese you would have to turn to the Russians for a plant.
Lots of common sense in that decision by the French.
As for Nokia, it was a bit too big a company for a small country and the Finnish ownership was well under 10%, so I have nothing against this decision at all.
While I don't want to sound too British and go for the "fifth or sixth", Nokia is first or second in Europe and something in the world.
What else, I suppose we must agree that cheese eating frogs could not have surpassed the UK as an economic power due to said people. So where should we look, oh where should we look to sole this problem, should we look for common sense perhaps.
".. companies will not invest in something if they can get it cheaper from elsewhere...".
The mantra, and no doubt the fact, is that companies are about creating wealth for their owners.
As it is education and social wellfare is largely the responsibility of the society.
Looking back it wasn't always like that, companies had to take more responsibility because they understood that a healthy and educated workforce was simply needed.
Universal health care is good example, quoting the Wikipedia:
"The first move towards a national health insurance system was launched in Germany in 1883, with the Sickness Insurance Law. Industrial employers were mandated to provide injury and illness insurance for their low-wage workers, and the system was funded and administered by employees and employers through "sick funds", which were drawn from deductions in workers' wages and from employers' contributions. Other countries soon began to follow suit. In the United Kingdom, the National Insurance Act 1911......"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care
One example of a director of a company who decided to create a school for kids of his workforce was Emil Molt of the Waldorf-Astoria-Zigarettenfabrik,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Molt
Hardly the only company of its kind in the world but a school I happen to know the background to as I put two of my kids into a Steiner school and I must admit I think they managed to get through it sane. Something I have started to have doubts about regarding kids leaving that world class Eaton school.
Finally, nobody is an island, no pun intended.
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