old man emu

I find it mind-boggling just how many bytes have been created and stored since Mankind started storing information this way.

40 minutes ago, octave said:

From Feb 2027, The EU will require every battery to have a Passport. This will track every EV battery in the EU for its full life cycle from mining until its end.

Imagine the data storage requirements for all that data. Gunna use a lot of electricity.

1 hour ago, spacesailor said:

Today's schooling is heaps better than the " demobilised soldiers " who thought they could teach, by the big stick theory. 

spacesailor

Spacey, you are sounding like Grumpy Old Nasho when you talk about being hard done by during your school years. I can believe that some demobilised blokes would be carrying the mental scars of the war years, and that would have influenced theeir behaviour, but I was educated under a very strict disciplinary regime, and I hold no grudges against my teachers.

Educating kids about money??????

Kids these days have difficulty recognising coinage and notes. It's a plastic world to them.

At first sight, providing money to Wesfarmers for solar panels for its sites smells of something shoinky. However, the article says that the money is actually a loan to be repaid at commercial loan rates.

Ther problem that I see in trying to get solar panels on commercial buildings is that there has to be some way that the tennant of the building gets a benefit from the electricity generated. However, that thought can readily be changed if you say that the roof of a commercial building is space that is the building's owner, the same as floor space under the roof is the owner's to do with as wanted. So it's no business of any tennant what money the owner makes from the roof area.

Ts & Cs apply. How many times have you seen that in relation to some product? Just recently I was working through the operating instructions for a TV. I just wanted to find out what the symbols on the controller were. However,  I reckon that half of the pages of the booklet dealt with the terms and conditions of use of the TV. Pages of what was once called "fine print" but now referred to as "small font size". Of course I didn't read them. These Ts & Cs must surely only benefit the manufacturer. 

It appalls me when I see a young child in a pram fully engaged with what is showing on the screen of a mobile phone. Of course, giving a babe a mobile phone allows the mother to be fully engaged with hers, ignoring communication with the child.

The Victorian Era idea of education for the masses, which had the implied goal if producing factory fodder, is now condemned by educators whose idea of a education system fails to educate in so many areas.

15 minutes ago, kgwilson said:

The latest technology in China has chargers of more than 1 megawatt & can charge the latest batteries in under 5 minutes.

Just goes to show that the technology is advancing at an exponential rate. The point is, when will this technology be commonplace in Australia? 

I reckon that those who are Boomers or older shouldn't be too involved in the debate. The adoption of renewables will be finalised after those people have passed on. However, being stick-in-the-muds doesn't provide a legacy to their descendants. Damned if youdo. Damned if you don't.

4 hours ago, octave said:

at the moment, the grid could not support universal EV ownership.    But are you saying that the grid has reached its ultimate capacity?

I think we are talking about two different things when we are talking about providing power to a charging station. What I am thinking about is that, if it was possible to supply 1 MW to each of, say 10 chargr points, then imagine the thickness of the cable that would be needed to deliver the electricity. 

I think Trump has been enlightened.

4 hours ago, octave said:

You do have to factor in the different ways people refuel EVs.

Here is the split between urban and rural. I agree that a city-dweller can recharge overnight at home, and probably would hardly ever need to use a public charging station. However, once one is travelling a long way from home, then one has to use public chargers. Siso has indiocated that for a 10 place 100KW station you need to be able to supply a MW of demand which means a large cable to feed it and possibly a transformer. Grid access in rural areas could not accomodate that load and still keep the local town supplied. Therefore a charging station in a rural location might not be able to support more than four outlets.

19 minutes ago, Siso said:

If you have a 10 place 100KW station, That is a MW of demand

Therein lies the problem. Just look at the average petrol station. There are usually at least four pumps for a small station, and many more for teh larger ones. Therefore more vehicles can be refueled per hour with liquid fuel than can be recharged with electricity. Does the future of EVs rely on the development of exteremely rapid means of charging?

2 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

goes to show mind bending substances were rampant even then..

 

I doubt that Stoker was "using", as it took him about seven years to write the novel, during which time he had a fulltime job as a theatrical manager. He did a lot of research into dialects for saome of the ancilliary characters in the story (mostly workmen who had at times been involved in movin Dracula's stuff around.

This novel contains probably the first mention of the use of a typewriter and a Dicta-Phone tpe of device in modern literature. The Dicta-Phone device mentioned was an Edison wax cylinder voice recorder.

11 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

Has donny just united the normally squabbling muslim countries against their comman infidel foe (USA).

No. There is too much rivalry amongst them to ever unite.

What "infidel" means:  "adherent of a religion opposed to Christianity," from Old French infidèle, from Latin infidelis "unfaithful, not to be trusted,". Originally "a non-Christian" (especially a Saracen); later "one who does not believe in religion, disbeliever in religion generally". As an adjective from mid-15c., "of a religion opposed to Christianity;" 

So it is wrong to call the USA an infidel foe. It is the USA which should be calling Muslims (and Jews) infidels.

Didn't know thatr about Dcre Stoker. The AE2 played an important part in disrupting the Ottoman Navy on the 25th April 1915. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_AE2

I think that it is a good idea if the number of different manufacturers was reduced, but with no adverse effect on production. My reason for thinking this is that if there are too many little manufacturers, the customer will run into problems getting parts or servicing. How can a mechanic be efficient if the mechanic has to be trained on a number of different vehicles. I know that now there is digital examination of vehicle faults to say what part needs attention, but the same type of part might be located in different places in differnt vehicles. It's not just a problem for EVs. The same thing can happen with any vehicle where there are many makes of vehicle.

Have you read War and Peace, The Great Gatsby, For Whom the Bell Tolls, or perhaps Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus? No doubt you have heard about these books, and maybe even seen movies based on those novels, but radio plays, movies and TV shows very often fail to reflect the actual content of those novels.

Recently I took up a copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula mainly so that I could eventually say, "Oh, yes. I've read that." What amazed me was how Stoker's story is so much better than anything produced based on the original story line. I began reading the novel with a feeling that it would be a Ho-hum horror story that focused on Dracula's blood-sucking activities. But as I read, I was drawn into a really exciting story. I suppose that I was looking for all the images that I have become accustomed to from modern depictions. What I found was that modern depictions, which begin with the 1922 German film Nosferatu, concentrate on Dracula himself - his need to avoid sunlight; that he has no reflection in a mirror nor casts a shadow, and of course his penchant for giving women bloody lovebites on the neck.

In the novel, while these things are mentioned and used to instil fear, the majority of the novel deals with four men who have seen what Dracula has done to a woman they loved, and take on the task of locating Dracula and destroying him by driving a wooden spike through his heart and cutting his head from his body, all within the aroma of cloves of garlic. The plot line is can be described as a "seek and destroy" mission, but with a lot more effort to deal with what the men are thinking an doing.

It would be unkind of me to go too deeply into the plot. All I cna say is that, if you like a really good, ripping yarn grab a copy of the book and settle down for an enjoyuable read.

I was lucky to have picked up a copy published by Penquin Books. The copy I read was the 2003 revised edition with chapter annotations, and appendices by Maurice Hindle, Visiting Fellow in the Department of Literature at The Open University, in England. If you want to read the same edition, ask your libraian to use this ISBN-13: 978-0-141-43984-6.

The earthquake bomb, or seismic bomb, or bunker buster bomb, was a concept that was invented by the British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis early in World War II. A seismic bomb differs somewhat in concept from a traditional bomb, which usually explodes at or near the surface and destroys its target directly by explosive force; in contrast, a seismic bomb is dropped from high altitude to attain very high speed as it falls and upon impact, penetrates and explodes deep underground, causing massive caverns or craters known as camouflets, as well as intense shockwaves. 

Note that the way these bombs work is first expending their momentum to get through rock layers, then detonating their high explosive charge to cause the surrounding rock to break up. I would have to think that the effectiveness of these devices would very much depend on the type of rock they had to go through. Sedimentary rock is relatively "softer" than igneous rock, so would be easier to fracture. I have no doubts that the Yanks know full well what teh rock types are overlaying the nuclear facilities they were hitting.

Let's see if we can work out some values for impact speed and the kinetic energy of the bomb at point ofinitial contact. To calculate the velocity of a falling object, you can use the formula: v = √(2gh), where 'v' is the final velocity, 'g' is the acceleration due to gravity (approximately 9.8 m/s²), and 'h' is the height from which the object is falling. In a report on the mission, I heard that the bombs were dropped from 40,000 feet, which is 12,192 metres - call it 12,000 metres.

Filling in the formula we have v = sqrt (2 x 9.81 x 12,000) = sqrt (235440) = 485.22 m/s (1746 kph)

A bunker buster bomb weighs 13607 kg.

The kinetic energy of the bomb at first contact is KE = 1/2 * m * v², where KE is the kinetic energy, m is the mass of the object, and v is the velocity of the object. 

KE = 0.5 x 13607 x (485.22)^2 = 1,601,805,483 Joules

 One joule is equal to the amount of work done when a force of one newton displaces a body through a distance of one metre in the direction of that force.

And from here on I'm lost, except to say that at point of contact, that bomb has a lot of energy to lose before it stops.

9 minutes ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

Chump -as much as he is one - is not stoopid.. You don't get to that position becuase you are. But that doesn't mean his aims are wholesome, either. His aims could be quite evil.

Hmmm.   He's an evil genius???

The Americans have this bee in their bonnets that every country MUST function as a democracy based on their concept of democracy. What if a country has a long history of some other form of social organisation that has been developed over millenia? The US form of democracy has only been in operation for 250 years, and communism for only about 125 years. 

We have seen how false the operation of the democratic process is in the USA. Is it little wonder that countries with other forms of social organisation want no part of it?

That's what they said were the only devices that could destroy that underground facility.

So much for waiting "two weeks" to either talk or fight. Will Saturday, June 22nd, 2025  live on in History as a Day of Infamy? Are the events of today Iran's Pearl Harbour?

I think it's time for Australia to tell the USA:  "P!ss off. Get your military off our soil. You can't be trusted to maintain global security. Call yourself the World's Policeman? You are the World's Terrorist."

To give you an idea of what was involved in those raids, watch this video from time stamp 1:52 to see how the bombs work and what the results are likley to be. Take notice of the information of how multiple bombs are used to "drill" down into a structure. Trump said that the bombers dropped "full loads" of bombs, which suggests the drilling procedure was employed.

Sometimes circumstances beyond our control dictate oor outcomes. The computer that I had which was running WIN 10 got the Royal Order of the Rigid Digit. So I had to but a new one. Luckily I the computer shop offered me a reconditioned one for $495. It has 8 GB of Ram, a 256 GB SSD drive and 1 TB of SATA storage and WIN 11 installed. I don't know what all that means, but I'm told that it will be sufficient unto my needs. I had to buy a personal copy of MS-Windows. I also bought and external hard drive caddy into which the shop fitted the hard drive from my very original computer. The shop was able to retrieve recent data from the hard drive in the computer that failed. 

I've got everything connected, but I have to work out how to move folders onto my desktop from where they are held. But that's a job for later. I've also got to activate the spellchecker to overcome the current plague of keyboard mis-strikes that seems to be affected some of us.

Apart from a bit of a different look about it, I haven't had a problem with WIN 11. But then, I haven't explored it much either.

Apart from a very few who are in goal for white collar crime, or for a one-off offence, the majority of persons in goal suffer from lack of education. A lot are more illiterate than your average First Grade primary school kid. That illiteracy means they can’t get permanent employment, so exist on “the dole”. 

That sort of existence has been happening for several generations now and has become a sub-culture. Lack of education and its accompanying poverty lead to criminal activity. 

Attempts at rehabilitation whilst in goal fail because education is not provided until the end of sentence is approaching, by which time the person has become enmeshed in another sub-culture, that of the prison yard. 

16 minutes ago, Grumpy Old Nasho said:

What's wrong with instructing the judges to impose much heavier sentences ... 100 days community service for robbery should be replaced with 500 days in jail ... 8 years in jail for manslaughter should be replaced with 20 years in jail ... 25 years for murder should be replaced with 35 years ... and abolish parole, it's useless.

Have you ever got a traffic ticket, or a parking ticket? I bet that if you had, you’d bitch about the heavy penalty.

I’d say that an EV mower’s battery and motor would probably be lighter, or equals in weight to an ICE with battery and fuel.

There is a only one thing I have against an EV mower, and all battery-powered devices in general, is that once the stored energy has been used, it takes more time to replenish the energy than simply pouring a liquid into a tank. 

It’s OK if the job has been done and the battery can be being charged when it is not required to complete a job, but running out of power in the middle of a job is like getting a Three-Cornered Jack in your underdaks.