Firewood comes from treesthat take decades to grow (if not longer) . We burn through it in a fraction of that time.
Even then you are assuming that new trees are planted to replace the old ones; in the UK where I am they are not. As it happens I have a large garden by UK standards, about an acre with 25-30 large trees. Three blew down in a storm two years ago; these were ~ 30 ft trees, ~ 15" diameter trunks. I do have a wood burning stove and I have already burned their wood. At the rate trees grow you would need several acres of woodland for every house to achieve a steady state just for heating. Most houses have nothing like that, not even mine, and certainly not in the UK.
the Royal Navy ranged up to 16" guns on battleships
That should be 18". HMS Furious (launched 1917) was a light battlecruiser*, one of the "Glorious" class designed with two 18" guns in single turrets. While still being buillt however the forward turret was removed and replaced by an aircraft launching ramp, though it was still classed as a battlecruiser. The firing of the remaining 18" gun turned out to be shattering to the ship so within a year the Furious was rebuilt as a complete aircraft carrier - the first ever. It went through WW2. The other "Glorious class ships were completed with 15" guns.
The surplus 18" guns were fitted to some monitors (coastal bombardment ships) or in shore batteries.
How can they simply say "oops, money was taken from your accounts" and get away with it?
They have said nothing of the sort. There is no question of customers not getting their money back, and Tesco have said so. In fact it did not even need to be said. This is the UK, not the Central African Republic, or the USA.
That's what you get when you trust a company that deals in low-price groceries and let them run a bank... They are not the same thing.
First of all, Tescos in the UK are not a "low-price groceries company". They are middle market. Low-price means Aldi and Lidl.
Secondly, the UK government guarantees to recompense customers of bank and building societies by up to 75,000 GBP if the bank goes bust. If Tesco were unable to make up for the lost money that would count as going bust. I have an account with Tesco Bank and even if I had lost anything in this hack, I would not be at all worried.
In fact I'd be more worried if my money had been lost from a large bank because so much money might be involved that the UK government might start thinking up excuses not to pay out. OTOH, if they would not even bail out a small bank then they would lose all credibility in the financial world - endangering the entire UK economy.
In 2012, an enterprising young Gizmodo blogger published the story of Shiva Ayyadurai, an MIT lecturer and renowned liar who pretends he invented email. Today, he adds another achievement to the resume, marrying Fran Drescher. Fran, you fucked up
.... Gawker probably would have lost this if they had taken it to trial. These are falsifiable claims
What is falsifiable here exactly? Let's go through it:
... an enterprising young Gizmodo blogger published the story of Shiva Ayyadurai.....
The enterprising-ness is just a matter of opinion. It's true that they published something about Ayyadurai, perhaps not the whole of his story (I guess it didn't describe his birth for example, or how he sits on the shitter) but an interesting part of it; this is a reasonable use of the term "story".
... an MIT lecturer.....
True
... and renowned liar who pretends he invented email.....
True. He certainly is a liar to make that claim, and he is renowned in that many people have heard that claim and know it as a lie. I already had heard of him as a liar and I am no-where close to the story. Lets have a hand count on it.
... Today, he adds another achievement to the resume, marrying Fran Drescher......
Is Ayyadurai claiming it is not an achievement?
... Fran, you fucked up!.....
If untrue, this would be a defamation of Drescher, not Ayyadurai.
All sounds like normal stuff for a tabloid coverage of a celebrity. Ayyadurai wanted fame - this sort of stuff is what comes with it. Ayyadurai lied - this is the kind of flak to expect.
Unlike the vast majority of plants and animals, we've actually figured out how to control our population (in the developed world, of course).
It isn't even working in the developed world. The people who actually want the Earth to become like the city of Coruscant, or like in Soylent Green, only use the relatively stable numbers of the indigenous people of the West as an excuse to import immigrants. Unfortunately the people who want this tend to be the more influential - business magnates who want the short term cheap labour, and politicians who love bigger crowds listening to them.
Arctic ice is floating and hence, unlike glacial and continental ice it has a limited range of total thickness - you can look it up.
Sorry, why didn't the writer of the article (or at least the summary here) look it up and quote it to us? The GP's point was that an area seems to be meaningless without a thickness being given (which his mention of 1um was surely meant only to highlight, not as a serious suggestion *). The same point brought me up short too when I read TFA.
* Technically, it is a Reductio ad absurdum, a valid debating tool.
Re: "small, little-known African country": -- Liberia has more land area than Portugal or Hungary or Austria. -- Liberia is well-known to USers as a destination for freed slaves in the 19th century... Seems like the author of the article could use a broader perspective.
You could do with some broader perspective too. Not everyone in the World is interested in a 19th century destination for freed US slaves, even if it interests some Americans as such. In the UK here I doubt that one person in 20 could point to it on a map or even know that it is in Africa. It did have a claim to fame once as having the largest fleet of merchant ships in the world (as a flag of convenience). Land area has nothing to do with it.
Oh, before you accuse me of narrow-mindedness, I am a bit exceptional in that I once had a Liberian GF, who claimed descent from those slaves, and said there was a lot of tension today between such descendants (who tend to form the upper classes) and the "natives" of Liberia because obviously the slaves did not neccesarily originate from Liberia. The ex-slaves were imposed on the natives by the USA in a fit of idealism; in fact it was a USA colony although that can only be whispered as the USA is supposed to be against colonialism. The capital Monrovia was named after the US president Monroe, and the flag is obviously inspired by the Stars and Stripes.
My GF said that the whole place is a shit-hole, in a state of more-or-less permanent civil war, gang warfare and broken infrastructure. She never wanted to go back there again.
writing in short, concrete sentences and making concrete plans with friends using specific times and dates, rather than just 'tonight',
That contradicts itself. Just saying "tonight" as a lot shorter than "at 8pm this evening at the third table on the left in the Smallville McDonalds, but if that is full, then at the fifth table on the right in the Smallville Starbucks".
I tend to use long sentences because I am a fairly precise person (I wrote semi-legal engineering specifications at one time) and I usually find that I include some "ifs", "buts" and caveats to cover different eventualities and to close off possible misinterpretations; there I go - I've just doubled my next year's car insurance premuim.
Using MEPIS, they were able to hold onto older hardware that was still serviceable, just needed a lightweight OS
I am using Mepis now. It is/was brilliant. However it is now defunct - has not been updated since 2011 (although the underlying Debian has of course). As its desktop is KDE, it can hardly be called lightweight either. I'm preparing to change to Devuan with Xfce.
Quite. Only last night I was reading Joseph Conrad's "The Arrow of Gold" written 1919, where he describes two gawkers (Blunt and his mother, themselves middle=class) come to watch a high society painter (Henry Allègre) and his mistress on their morning ride in the Bois de Boulogne.
Mr. Blunt and his indiscreet mother.. had one more chance of a good stare.... [Allègre and his mistress] came riding very slowly abreast of the Blunts....[The girl's] expression was serious and her eyes thoughtfully downcast... Mr. Blunt had never before seen Henry Allègre so close..... Blunt was.... wondering if [Allegre would] take off his hat. But he did not. Perhaps he didn’t notice. Allègre was not a man of wandering glances.
They do not put a value on any behaviors. There is nothing inherently "bad" about not looking at other people. In fact, maybe it is the other way around
Yes; maybe the down-and-outs are looking for rich people to mug.
A failing with older people's sight (and some younger ones) is reducing contrast due to increasing clouding of the eye's lenses and/or aqueous humour. Glasses cannot correct for that.
Except if the UK runs into the Ecuadorian embassy there will be an international incident.
Who has suggested that?
Uh, common sense? A foreign embassy is, for all intents and purposes, sovereign land of the foreign country....
I was not asking "who has suggested there will be an nternational incident?". I was asking "who has suggested the UK 'runs' into the embassy?". As you say, that would be totally unacceptable in this over-blown case.
Even when, some years ago, an official at the Libyan embassy shot a London policewoman (she was defending the embassy from rioters) dead from a window, the UK did not storm the embassy. Most people thought they should have though.
Similar results have been found in rural areas, which means that the demand for increasing broadband service to a minimum level may be high among people with lower incomes.
I live in a rural area of the UK (my speed is 2.2 Mbps) and the issue is not being able to afford no better - that is all that is available down the end of a long copper line.
The are going to have to do a lot of road digging to put in cable before anyone around here gets any better, rich or poor.
And in rural UK the well-off outnumber the "poor". Most agricultural jobs have gone and the poor have gone to live in towns; their cottages have mostly been modernised and extended for better-off commuters. I live in what was once a forrester's cottage for example, extended to three times its original size.
Except if the UK runs into the Ecuadorian embassy there will be an international incident.
Who has suggested that?
How about I and the US government sit outside where you live and hint that I'll drag you off and make you disappear.
Now on an unrelated note you suddenly get a call that you're facing rape charges in Sweden, better start putting your affairs in order.
Why is Assange any different from anyone else facing criminal charges in the USA, Sweden or anywhere else? If it is OK for anyone facing criminal charges to shelter in the nearest Ecuadorian embassy then Ecuador had better start building some massive accomodation blocks by its embassies around the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Firewood comes from treesthat take decades to grow (if not longer) . We burn through it in a fraction of that time.
Even then you are assuming that new trees are planted to replace the old ones; in the UK where I am they are not. As it happens I have a large garden by UK standards, about an acre with 25-30 large trees. Three blew down in a storm two years ago; these were ~ 30 ft trees, ~ 15" diameter trunks. I do have a wood burning stove and I have already burned their wood. At the rate trees grow you would need several acres of woodland for every house to achieve a steady state just for heating. Most houses have nothing like that, not even mine, and certainly not in the UK.
And what idiot entrusts a computer store with sensitive data?
Garry Glitter
Unknown [price?] at present,
But Musk is claiming it is cheap. OTOH GP, defending the stuff, said it's not cheap.
the Royal Navy ranged up to 16" guns on battleships
That should be 18". HMS Furious (launched 1917) was a light battlecruiser*, one of the "Glorious" class designed with two 18" guns in single turrets. While still being buillt however the forward turret was removed and replaced by an aircraft launching ramp, though it was still classed as a battlecruiser. The firing of the remaining 18" gun turned out to be shattering to the ship so within a year the Furious was rebuilt as a complete aircraft carrier - the first ever. It went through WW2. The other "Glorious class ships were completed with 15" guns.
The surplus 18" guns were fitted to some monitors (coastal bombardment ships) or in shore batteries.
* A sub-class of battleships
How can they simply say "oops, money was taken from your accounts" and get away with it?
They have said nothing of the sort. There is no question of customers not getting their money back, and Tesco have said so. In fact it did not even need to be said. This is the UK, not the Central African Republic, or the USA.
That's what you get when you trust a company that deals in low-price groceries and let them run a bank... They are not the same thing.
First of all, Tescos in the UK are not a "low-price groceries company". They are middle market. Low-price means Aldi and Lidl.
Secondly, the UK government guarantees to recompense customers of bank and building societies by up to 75,000 GBP if the bank goes bust. If Tesco were unable to make up for the lost money that would count as going bust. I have an account with Tesco Bank and even if I had lost anything in this hack, I would not be at all worried.
In fact I'd be more worried if my money had been lost from a large bank because so much money might be involved that the UK government might start thinking up excuses not to pay out. OTOH, if they would not even bail out a small bank then they would lose all credibility in the financial world - endangering the entire UK economy.
I didn't invent email either.
No, I did.
No, I did.
No, I did.
I didn't invent a lot of things. Where's my $750,000?
Contact Ayyadurai and say you did not invent it before he did. He will be delighted to pass it over to the right person.
In 2012, an enterprising young Gizmodo blogger published the story of Shiva Ayyadurai, an MIT lecturer and renowned liar who pretends he invented email. Today, he adds another achievement to the resume, marrying Fran Drescher. Fran, you fucked up
What is falsifiable here exactly? Let's go through it :
The enterprising-ness is just a matter of opinion. It's true that they published something about Ayyadurai, perhaps not the whole of his story (I guess it didn't describe his birth for example, or how he sits on the shitter) but an interesting part of it; this is a reasonable use of the term "story".
True
True. He certainly is a liar to make that claim, and he is renowned in that many people have heard that claim and know it as a lie. I already had heard of him as a liar and I am no-where close to the story. Lets have a hand count on it.
Is Ayyadurai claiming it is not an achievement?
If untrue, this would be a defamation of Drescher, not Ayyadurai.
All sounds like normal stuff for a tabloid coverage of a celebrity. Ayyadurai wanted fame - this sort of stuff is what comes with it. Ayyadurai lied - this is the kind of flak to expect.
Unlike the vast majority of plants and animals, we've actually figured out how to control our population (in the developed world, of course).
It isn't even working in the developed world. The people who actually want the Earth to become like the city of Coruscant, or like in Soylent Green, only use the relatively stable numbers of the indigenous people of the West as an excuse to import immigrants. Unfortunately the people who want this tend to be the more influential - business magnates who want the short term cheap labour, and politicians who love bigger crowds listening to them.
What's selfish is those asshats who have more than two [children] (on purpose).
Bin Laden's father had 56. Bin Laden only had about 25 himself; such restraint.
Surely you are not suggesting that billionaire arabs should alter their lifestyle?
Arctic ice is floating and hence, unlike glacial and continental ice it has a limited range of total thickness - you can look it up.
Sorry, why didn't the writer of the article (or at least the summary here) look it up and quote it to us? The GP's point was that an area seems to be meaningless without a thickness being given (which his mention of 1um was surely meant only to highlight, not as a serious suggestion *). The same point brought me up short too when I read TFA.
* Technically, it is a Reductio ad absurdum, a valid debating tool.
Re: "small, little-known African country": ... Seems like the author of the article could use a broader perspective.
-- Liberia has more land area than Portugal or Hungary or Austria.
-- Liberia is well-known to USers as a destination for freed slaves in the 19th century
You could do with some broader perspective too. Not everyone in the World is interested in a 19th century destination for freed US slaves, even if it interests some Americans as such. In the UK here I doubt that one person in 20 could point to it on a map or even know that it is in Africa. It did have a claim to fame once as having the largest fleet of merchant ships in the world (as a flag of convenience). Land area has nothing to do with it.
Oh, before you accuse me of narrow-mindedness, I am a bit exceptional in that I once had a Liberian GF, who claimed descent from those slaves, and said there was a lot of tension today between such descendants (who tend to form the upper classes) and the "natives" of Liberia because obviously the slaves did not neccesarily originate from Liberia. The ex-slaves were imposed on the natives by the USA in a fit of idealism; in fact it was a USA colony although that can only be whispered as the USA is supposed to be against colonialism. The capital Monrovia was named after the US president Monroe, and the flag is obviously inspired by the Stars and Stripes.
My GF said that the whole place is a shit-hole, in a state of more-or-less permanent civil war, gang warfare and broken infrastructure. She never wanted to go back there again.
writing in short, concrete sentences and making concrete plans with friends using specific times and dates, rather than just 'tonight',
That contradicts itself. Just saying "tonight" as a lot shorter than "at 8pm this evening at the third table on the left in the Smallville McDonalds, but if that is full, then at the fifth table on the right in the Smallville Starbucks".
I tend to use long sentences because I am a fairly precise person (I wrote semi-legal engineering specifications at one time) and I usually find that I include some "ifs", "buts" and caveats to cover different eventualities and to close off possible misinterpretations; there I go - I've just doubled my next year's car insurance premuim.
In a little while they'll get a great offer from Microsoft and Apple, free computers, devices and software
I'm still waiting for my offer.
The move to Linux or any other FOSS is a political/ideological issue.
As opposed to moves to Microsoft products being a financial incentive/bribery issue.
microsoft-pays-nfl-to-use-surface
microsoft-back-to-trying-to-bribe-people-to-use-bing
Using MEPIS, they were able to hold onto older hardware that was still serviceable, just needed a lightweight OS
I am using Mepis now. It is/was brilliant. However it is now defunct - has not been updated since 2011 (although the underlying Debian has of course). As its desktop is KDE, it can hardly be called lightweight either. I'm preparing to change to Devuan with Xfce.
if push comes to shove (e.g. you're hungry and in a hurry), a big mac will eventually cross your mind.
How do you know what comes into my mind? WTF is a big mac anyway?
... News at 11.
Quite. Only last night I was reading Joseph Conrad's "The Arrow of Gold" written 1919, where he describes two gawkers (Blunt and his mother, themselves middle=class) come to watch a high society painter (Henry Allègre) and his mistress on their morning ride in the Bois de Boulogne.
Mr. Blunt and his indiscreet mother .. had one more chance of a good stare. ... [Allègre and his mistress] came riding very slowly abreast of the Blunts. ...[The girl's] expression was serious and her eyes thoughtfully downcast. .. Mr. Blunt had never before seen Henry Allègre so close. .... Blunt was .... wondering if [Allegre would] take off his hat. But he did not. Perhaps he didn’t notice. Allègre was not a man of wandering glances.
Things have always been so.
They do not put a value on any behaviors. There is nothing inherently "bad" about not looking at other people. In fact, maybe it is the other way around
Yes; maybe the down-and-outs are looking for rich people to mug.
Perhaps to them all of us peasants look the same?
Not the peasant girls.
put your glasses on.
Ignorant comment.
A failing with older people's sight (and some younger ones) is reducing contrast due to increasing clouding of the eye's lenses and/or aqueous humour. Glasses cannot correct for that.
Except if the UK runs into the Ecuadorian embassy there will be an international incident.
Who has suggested that?
Uh, common sense? A foreign embassy is, for all intents and purposes, sovereign land of the foreign country....
I was not asking "who has suggested there will be an nternational incident?". I was asking "who has suggested the UK 'runs' into the embassy?". As you say, that would be totally unacceptable in this over-blown case.
Even when, some years ago, an official at the Libyan embassy shot a London policewoman (she was defending the embassy from rioters) dead from a window, the UK did not storm the embassy. Most people thought they should have though.
Similar results have been found in rural areas, which means that the demand for increasing broadband service to a minimum level may be high among people with lower incomes.
I live in a rural area of the UK (my speed is 2.2 Mbps) and the issue is not being able to afford no better - that is all that is available down the end of a long copper line.
The are going to have to do a lot of road digging to put in cable before anyone around here gets any better, rich or poor.
And in rural UK the well-off outnumber the "poor". Most agricultural jobs have gone and the poor have gone to live in towns; their cottages have mostly been modernised and extended for better-off commuters. I live in what was once a forrester's cottage for example, extended to three times its original size.
Except if the UK runs into the Ecuadorian embassy there will be an international incident.
Who has suggested that?
How about I and the US government sit outside where you live and hint that I'll drag you off and make you disappear.
Now on an unrelated note you suddenly get a call that you're facing rape charges in Sweden, better start putting your affairs in order.
Why is Assange any different from anyone else facing criminal charges in the USA, Sweden or anywhere else? If it is OK for anyone facing criminal charges to shelter in the nearest Ecuadorian embassy then Ecuador had better start building some massive accomodation blocks by its embassies around the world.