Posts by Lars 4260 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2007
"If Russia's suffered 200k+ and Ukraine <50k, then.. how?".
I don't know if there is any truth to that or not, but for the "why", lets remember it's the Russians coming over the border and fairly easy to spot.
And the motivation to defend ones own country tend to be a lot higher than running around in a foreign country for no good reason and being shot at.
@Liam Proven
"All that sounds fair and reasonable to me."
I am not all that sure you have thought about it.
There are those who find a one party country absolutely perfect, and there are those who consider a two party country the golden standard, like the Brits and the Americans, but there are also those in more democratic countries who prefer a system of many parties and I hope it's the same with open source and Linux.
Let Microsoft represent the one party system.
@VoiceOfTruth
What you write is so immensely childish and a disgrace for the British should you represent a typical Brit.
I hope that is not the case.
My suggestion to you is that read about what you claim here.
You do know the Germans had their jet engines up in the air years before the British. The first patent was by a French guy.
The computer is not a British invention, lots vent on in both the USA and Germany. Read about Konrad Zuse, for instance.
"The DNA was first isolated by the Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher who, in 1869, discovered a microscopic substance in the pus of discarded surgical bandages. As it resided in the nuclei of cells, he called it "nuclein".[186][187] In 1878, Albrecht Kossel isolated the non-protein component of "nuclein", nucleic acid, and later isolated its five primary nucleobases."
Again regarding the television many inventions and people are involved.
"As a 23-year-old German university student, Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow proposed and patented the Nipkow disk in 1884 in Berlin."
"By the 1920s, when amplification made television practical, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird employed the Nipkow disk in his prototype video systems. On 25 March 1925, Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion, at Selfridges's department store in London.".
A lot of good stuff has come out of Britain by a lot of good scientists, but try to calm down and learn a bit, or rather a lot more, as a lot has come out of a lot more countries too.
Also read about the magnetron too
Try the Wikipedia for each topic.
"from only Russia"
What kind of wood do you think only Russia has. Perhaps it's the price of wood rather.
On the topic.
"Modern velodromes are constructed by specialised designers. The Schuermann architects in Germany have built more than 125 tracks worldwide. Most of Schuermann's outdoor tracks are made of wood trusswork with a surface of strips of the rare rain-forest wood Afzelia. Indoor velodromes are built with less expensive pine surfaces."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velodrome
There is apparently no limit to how long and often a British prime minister can be in charge in Britain.
Is that the same with other European prime ministers, while the presidents have some limit to it, normally.
And I must admit I have never thought about that before. Never too late BoJo and what was her name.
@Yet Another Anonymous coward
Tiny and tiny, and tiny margins, it all depends on what you compare with, take these two companies for instance.
Rolls-Royce Holdings plc and ASML.
R-R / ASML (2022)
Employees 50.000 / 40.000
Revenue £13.52 billion / €21.17 billion
Net income £1.19 billion / €5.62 billion
@lglethal
I very much agree,
The Russian state, Putin, has a more or less total control of information in Russia. For us in the west it's actually very hard to grasp how complete that control is.
Russians who get all their information only from the TV are, as sad as it is, in the same position as Americans who have all their information from Fox News and similar.
Tens of millions of Russians are fully convinced they are being attacked by the west, by NATO and the fascists in Ukraine.
The propaganda against Ukraine and its people has gone on for many years.
Even among Russians living in the west there are those who rather believe in the Russian propaganda.
A lot of it, and it's very effective, they get through Facebook and similar, even Fox with Tucker have been helpful.
So it's not wrong to try to find and use even the smallest slit, gap in that propaganda wall.
Not too keen to go into reasons and real reasons, but I find it mad for any country, including Germany, to go into a stripping frenzy in a panic because of Chinese hardware.
Yes, I think we in Europe ought to be less dependent on imports and that applies to energy too.
However replacing energy imports is not much of a problem in comparison to replacing lost knowledge and lost industries.
If Germany is to about 60% Huawei and ZTE then about 40% has to be something else so there must be a choice apparently.
There are ways to compete and the best way is, I would claim, just to be better.
Sadly that often requires long time planning and education, and things like that are so damned tedious and slow to rely on, for some.
@Phil O'Sophical
Horizon Europe is an investment in research and technological development. with a budget of about 100 billion set up by the EU and some other countries.
It's not a piggy bank you join without first having an agreement on the money needed to insert into the project to take part in it.
Such details are not defined in the TCA, those details are agreed upon later should Britain join the project and in which parts.
No time frame was set, nothing about when. Just a fact.
I hope Britain will join but a lot regarding the money has to be settled first too.
Some more trust seem to have been added lately and that of course is a good thing.
PS. Do you feel Britain has to and is forced to join too, due to the "shall".
@AC- 5 times as many checks .
You must understand that the "5 times as many", is a lot of rubbish. I could, sort of, understand if you wrote "twice" as many even if that is not true either.
It's like you assume the EU in its despair having lost you have decided to punish you with 5 times as many checks.
The reality is that you are, as so many other countries a third country and you are treated like other third countries like the USA or South Africa.
I cannot remember the name of the Tory MP who came out with that "5 times" rubbish but he compared two EU "countries" , perhaps NI to the Netherlands where NI has this special relation with the EU, like the special relation NI has to Ireland, which the UK has not as May's solution was rejected in Britain.
But personally I find it odd and hard to understand why you can fold for something as ridiculous like 5 times.
The world is not that complicated. The EU was built to get rid of red tape and border controls internally because it makes business more efficient.
But outside is outside, and it goes both ways. Trading with the UK got more complicate for the EU too, and more so if the UK started to control that border traffic, but according to der Mogg it's not worth it, as it's slow and expensive.
Brexit means Brexit, just get over it, the worst is yet to come.
> Strangely enough, the more we've been 'investing' in 'renewables', the higher our bills have risen..
Yes some people seem to totally forget that the goal is to cut the pollution from energy production around the world.
Working out the cheapest way of producing energy regardless of pollution is not what it is about.
That is something we have been experts at for a very long time.
@Jellied Eel
To be honest your comparison between sailing ships and windmills is just silly.
It wasn't the lack of wind that ended that period. Too much wind was the end of some of course, but not even the problem with the wind coming from the wrong direction was the problem. We know very well how the currents and the wind streams work around the earth.
The problem was the amount of people needed to sail those ships and that is hardly the problem with windmills producing electricity to day, rather the very opposite.
You mention the clipper ships but those disappeared long before the real sailing cargo workhorses of the sea had to go.
Even today some shipping companies use/experiment with those wind driven "spinning funnels" on modern ship
For those gone times this video is one of the very best (narrative by Irvin Johnson) there is on YouTube, if not the only.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tuTKhqWZso
One thing I find funny is how often adult people when writing about wind and sun just have to mention that the sun doesn't shine during the night and that there is no wind when there is no wind. I would guess quite a few kindergarten aged kids now that too.
"I don’t think Denmark is more windy than for example Liverpool, from memory:-)"
I don't know either, but I am sure there are statistics available for that. A woman I knew (my mother) who spent a year in Denmark long ago told me cycling was nice downwind but often turned to dragging the bike with you upwind.
Denmark has got this reputation for wind because they have a lot as a percentage. Right now 48% but the sad fact is that the rest they need is by burning stuff and importing from Norway and Sweden, but they also then export to Germany and the Netherlands right now.
They, like other Nordic countries also have some solar power.
Denmark is less green than the other Nordic countries until they add wind and cut down on thermal power and there is a limit to that as there isn't wind all the time. With some nuclear power they could become very green in my books.
https://en.energinet.dk/energisystem_fullscreen/
@Jellied Eel
I am for nuclear in comparison to oil and gas, but I just cannot see any intelligence in dumping 'renewables' at all.
Have a look at the Nordic grid. Sweden is constantly able to export electricity like mostly Norway too due to wind and hydro.
Finland is very dependent on nuclear due to less hydro and wind but still get at times as much from wind and hydro.
https://www.svk.se/en/national-grid/the-control-room/
And here the French grid because it's well made.
https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source
@MrZoolook
That is the tragedy of a two party system. Most Americans are center when it comes to what they expect from the society in form of education, healthcare, workers rights and infrastructure and so forth but due to the two party system it's always one or the other and the paranoid have nowhere to go but to try to take over one or the other.
In "many party" countries run by coalition governments the mad ones form their fringe parties to the far right or the far left and tend to be less dangerous if as loud.
Less batshit among the Democrats to reveal my view, not to be too diplomatic.
And add to that the great plague of the English speaking world, Rupert, back in time called "Red Rupert" as he kept a bust of Lenin in his rooms, to quote the Wikipedia.
"So I repeat the question. If Chinese tech is bad, what tech is good"
The answer is Nordic tech from Ericsson and Nokia, the number 2 and 3 in network equipment manufacturing in the world.
Had those two companies been able to compete on price with Huawei then it would have been those two from the beginning.
This is nothing new and some might remember that Trump did not only suggest the USA to buy Greenland but also Nokia or Ericsson.
@VoiceOfTruth
Lets look at the bright side, all that happened was that Windows was delegated to a desktop OS and a just about server OS.
Meanwhile Linux will run on the smallest and biggest hardware there is, and on old and new desktops too.
And "Linux on the desktop" become super democratic, it's not up to OEMs and computer shops but fully up to us.
We, and we alone, decided the year of Linux on the desktop.
And lets be honest with grandma and grandpa they will have exactly the same problems fixing anything on Windows too, and in fact I have found that there is a million things that can go crazy with a Windows screen just by accident (or a cat stepping across the keyboard), less so with Linux.
About 10 years ago I found a linux desktop on display in a computer shop and decided to hang around for a while. Eventually one guy came, looked at me, and said - "that is called Linux but it's for experts only, but we have something much more suitable for you, Sir, and it's called Windows, please follow me.".
We had a longer more honest discussion later, and he was a Linux user at home, but he told me they didn't really want to sell any Linux because they were afraid they would have to spend lots of time explaining things to customers.
And that Windows was so much easier. If a problem, the first you would ask was if it was already more than two years old and the warranty gone - and look at what we have over here now.
And you could always just shrug you shoulders and say - yes well it's Microsoft you know, so sorry, or suggest they leave it there or bring it in, and we will see if anything can be done, but it could be expensive and there is this base cost too always.
And if somebody complains about graphics then just sell them a new "better" card.
So lets stop worrying, and at the sound of "always look on the bright side of life".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLqzLEB3E0
@Elongated Muskrat
I think we can assume there are quality differences in the steel produced long ago and now and in between.
The first tool we had to transform something was fire so it's not surprising that we talk about the bronze age followed by the iron age.
The Wikipedia has some of ancient steel production in different parts of the world like this:
"In Sri Lanka, this early steel-making method employed a unique wind furnace, driven by the monsoon winds, capable of producing high-carbon steel."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel#History
"An early iron-age trader isn't going to have one of those on the back of his coracle."
Yes I agree with that, but any stone age kid knew that if you blow on it too hard it will blow out, and papa will get angry, but if you blow on it just right it will start burning and everybody is happy, because that is how we made fire. Some seem to think this was invented only once and then that invention was just stolen and copied for the rest of the world.
As for metals, we kept on burning, and keeping fire in the same place surrounded by stone of different types for thousands of years and eventually among those ashes people somewhere found interesting stuff, metals like copper.
Working out that different stones might contain different stuff is not that hard to grasp and getting the idea of applying more heat is not that hard to understand and achieve either.
We are simply very good at underestimating our ancestors, or to put it another way we are very good at overestimating ourselves, and when it gets really annoying we introduce the space guys and gods.
This reminds me of a movie about us in the stone age, out looking to find fire to bring home.
And because it was long ago we walked like having arthritis, clumsy and slow, also stupid enough not to understand water wasn't good for fire.
Such a bloody stupid assumption, it's like going to the third world expecting kids to be slower and more clumsy than in some more modern western suburb.
@steelpillow
"independently discovered over and over again is absurdly untenable.".
Why would that be untenable. I find it more untenable that every invention was invented only once and then, as the article writes, - " ,, knowledge of the metal had made its way to the region".
We know of lots of more modern invention that were invented at the same time in several countries.
Any suggestion where and when in the world the first shoe and the first boat was invented.
But I also think we have been roaming the world a lot and for a long time.
And I don't think kids born 50.000 years ago were less intelligent than kids born today.
(at least I don't believe a modern crocodile to be more intelligent than one born 50.000 years ago.)
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