The Monster is in the house. I haven’t actually laid a finger on it, but I’ve been introduced.
It is currently being fed with special monster baby food — heavy windows, slow drivers, stuff like that — it is pacified with shiny plastic discs and drip-fed digits from far-distant lands.
At a hundred-billion-tera-flops a gargle-second, it’s learning fast. A lot seems to be going on.
In the meantime, sorry for the silence. I’ve been working as fast as I could on a tiny coaster-sized array of pixels with unfamiliar software, no mouse, and no ability to load up pictures to my usual storage site, or read my usual emails (except one at a time with 14 keystrokes of complexity and a 20 second wait for the next – I gave up). I dream of graphs I can’t make. I reboot the old machine, and sometimes feel normal for a half hour. Then it goes.
Space-time is being warped in my head. Things I used to do in five minutes take me all day.
Some futurists have waffled on prophesizing about the coming integration of hominid brains and silicon chips, blah-de-blah. I always thought they were bonkers. But I was wrong. My computer was already a part of my brain. I can’t think straight without it.
There was a system failure in my IQ.
To all the people who chipped in and dug deep… Thanks for rescuing me!
Soon, soon, I’ll get that monster on my desk.
And I am so looking forward to it…
; D
PS: The technical details (because I know some readers like these things) direct from the engineer:
The new computer is an i7 with a 240 GB SSD (Intel 520 series), a 1TB HDD, and a video card big enough to run Joanne’s two 30 inch screens. Have loaded Windows 7 Ultimate (sorry, but Windows 8 gets too many bad reports) and anti virus, and got on line to update drivers and operating system, so far.
Currently transferring data from the back up drive in her old computer to her new computer. All the computers in this house have two drives, using one for basically everything and one solely for backup. Hard drives are like light bulbs, failure is a matter of when rather than if. To back up we use SyncToy, a free application the Microsoft techies built for themselves to use–and unlike most Microsoft software, the interface is almost Apple-like in simplicity. We use the Windows Task Scheduler to run SyncToy once a day to synchronize (effectively back up) all the documents and data in places like My Documents and AppData\Roaming.
The main drive on Joanne’s old machine had become flaky, failing to even boot after it gets a little hot (btw, a good way to get a few extra minutes or hours from a dying drive is to put it in the freezer for an hour or two, then use it). But the backup drive in that computer seems fine so we shouldn’t lose much (anything?). Pulled that backup HDD out and put it in the new machine, temporarily in place of the 1TB HDD (just replug the cables from one drive to the other).
Endless applications to go on, including Microsoft Office, IE10, Firefox, Filezilla, Thunderbird, Notepad++, Adobe Reader. Should have her back on-line sometime tomorrow.
Joanne’s old machine was used very solidly for five and a half years, from October 2007, covering her entire blogging career. The rest of it seems ok. I’ll load a new operating system (Win 7 Pro); some small people we know have been clamoring for a computer.
Good luck with the Monster, but don’t let him/her/it take over. You’re still in charge. It will be nice to have you back.
101
She needs to add an SSD as No 1 and use the HDD as driver No 2. And that is very simple with some cheap USB based image copy systems.
00
Sigh. Toxic enslavement from the cradle.
Linux. Nobody promised that freedom would be easy.
50
She lost me at discs… what’s a disc?
40
They 12″ in diameter, made of acetate, have teensy weensy grooves in them and spin at 33rpm.
50
Mine are made of shellac and rotate 78 times every minute. You young folk with your fancy vinyl have no idea!
80
They only have two groves in them…one each side…. 😉
50
sorry, ‘grooves’.
00
Mew, everyone knows they spin at 78 RPM.
Pointy
00
Not the real ones, they spun at 78rpm. The good old scratchy sound days.
00
I believe that a disc rests upon the shoulders of 4 elephants which, in turn stand on the shell of a giant turtle – I could, of course, be wrong 😉
BTW – Welcome back Jo!
20
Abbreviation of discus. It is flat and round and when you throw it at people with sufficient force they fall over. See also, Mount Olympus.
10
Now more rectangular and called iPad.
The generation of flingable computers.
20
Can’t have you going awol Jo – we need all hands on deck – the fighting ain’t over yet.
But by God: though it’s hard pounding – we are winning!
Good luck with your new baby…………..
;^)
61
While we wait for Jo to get back into her stride, there may be some interest in watching this video of a faux ‘debate’ between Dr. Gavin Schmidt Versus Dr. Roy Spencer on Fox with Stossel. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V96k4BO2sBw#!
It’s a faux debate because Schmidt, an infamous member of ‘The Team’, along with a dozen other climate alarmists approached by Stossel, did not have the courage to debate the subject face to face, so it becomes farcical. Of course what Schmidt is most concerned about is the fact if he was debating anyone knowledgeable, they would call him on every false claim he makes.
Stossel also has Matt Ridley (now Lord Matt Ridley as of 6th Feb), who also makes some excellent points. It is a good video to share with your less technical friends.
140
Good old Gavin. His whole argument was a pile of that stuff that rhymes with his last name. If that’s all I could offer I wouldn’t dare debate anyone either.
Some of the viewer comments are a kick too.
We need more Stossels willing to put the subject in front of the public.
141
Well I agree with Gavin on one point …there’s no danger of him providing ‘good TV.’ Didn’t realise he was a pom. What a pratt.
30
The whole fire drill, with Spencer getting up from the table so Schmidt could sit down and not be appear to be debating him, was ludicrous.
I hadn’t seen Schmidt on video before. He came across like a guy you wouldn’t want to buy a used car from.
30
Ah! The joys of a new baby arriving! Setting up a new computer the way you want it is the most frustrating part of owning a computer that I’ve ever been through. But keep that sense of humor!
We’re all looking forward to having the old Joanne Nova back again, none the worse for the inconvenience. 🙂
81
Hip, hip, hooray. Hurry back Joanne!
81
The Borg are not pleased that you have been able to reacquire high level functionality/communication/data processing resources. Resistance is futile.
110
The word I hear on cyberspace is that the wharmistas are not at all happy with: a) Their subversive attempt to destroy Jo’s machine, through mass thread bombing raids, failing to close down her operation, for more than a few days; and b) the level of kindly support she has received from all of the visitors here.
Of course, what really annoys them, is that people actually made charitable donations – of money, no less.
I also hear that they are going to start an appeal for new technology of their own, and do so directly to Government.
This does not bode well. It is bound to lead to an alms race.
282
Interesting observation. Those on the other side of the cause insist on obligatory contributions. They won’t lift a finger to promote their position unless they are funded in doing so and such funding is to be extracted from those who are going to be affected by the changes they are seeking to impose.
191
That’s a great set up Joanna and the Win 8 decision is a good one. It’s rubbish.
61
I beg to differ… Win 8 on a touch enabled device rocks. The biggest frustration for reloading Win 7 is even if you install the latest RTM ISO you have a bit over a gig of updates to do. This is where things like ghost or the like come in handy as backup solutions. But I work with enterprise solutions, funded by Big CO2, so my personal perspective is a bit skewed… Don’t discount Win 8 however, as I say, once you’ve played on a touch screen device it all makes sense. Unfortunately the hardware manufacturers are lagging, and the only decently specc’d laptop is a HP 2760p i7 version with a crappy small screen. But it does the multi-monitor thing really well with the appropriate docking station, however you flinch at the price as a normal consumer.
10
How does detailed CAD work go on these “touchies” ?
00
Congrats, Jo. I’m sorry I couldn’t help. 🙁
From all of us who couldn’t, though (as well as those who could), there’s still a ton of appreciation for what you do, and an abundance of good wishes. I’m glad you are (almost) up and running again. 🙂
80
Pulled that backup HDD out and put it in the new machine, temporarily in place of the 1TB HDD (just replug the cables from one drive to the other).
Be careful doing the HDD swap and then loading windows. It’s a bastard. Sorry but it really is. When you attach your new drive which I guess will be the SSD, win will think you are cheating and tell you that you need a new licence. Be very careful. The licence notes your hardware and if you change the motherboard and HDD or other major comps it just refuses to validate.
30
“Be careful doing the HDD swap and then loading windows. It’s a bastard” ??
When I swapped to my SSD, I used “MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition 6.0” (its free) to copy the Windows system partition onto the SDD, then rebooted from the SSD, took about 20 minutes all up, and zero problems.
I’d heard some awful stories too, so I was very pleasantly surprised 🙂
I imagine that Jo had Windows installed directly to the SSD, though.
30
Glad I could help. Wish it was more, but I just couldn’t afford it. Look forward to your return to the good fight. I think we’re winning.
71
Truth tends to, Ralph. It just takes time.
Cheers,
Speedy
10
Jo,
Re Windows 8
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2013/04/duh-by-abandoning-the-pc-microsoft-windows-8-fails-to-save-the-pc.html
20
Re comments: I know of one case where the firm is switching employees to Macs as they ask.
They save time as it is usually far quicker to train the migrant than for any Windows update. It is not anti Microsoft, several have up-graded to Win8 but only allowed with the tablet screen etc. disallowed.
They trialled Win8 Server and “sent it back with rude comments”.
You can lead Microsoft to market, but you can’t teach it new tricks.
40
Yeah, great article. I like how he finishes off with this:
“I still use Word, Excel, and Powerpoint 2002 on this computer, because I have never really been happy with the new Office interface. I use no other software even remotely that old. I routinely upgrade everything I have. I dutifully upgrade Quickbooks and Norton Security and a dozen other programs every year. So to go a decade without upgrading shows how little I think of Microsoft’s upgrade strategies.”
Office 2002?
Quickbooks?
Norton!!!???
I bet hes still running XP!
I think I need to post this again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHpdgHTINik
21
Well… Some of us count things that work, are useful and no longer cause us anymore grief because we have learned their pitfalls, pratfalls and idio(t)syncrasies, as more important than new, glitzy, full of eyewash, hogwash and nonsense.
I have a computer to do useful things, not to have transparent window titles, amazingly beautiful wallpaper and functions that don’t work. Networking Windows has become increasingly nightmarish, just for one problem I don’t need more of.
I have a telephone to use when I want to talk to someone. My phone doesn’t need to pretend it’s a computer when clearly it’s not. And my computer doesn’t need to pretend it’s a smart phone when clearly that isn’t true either.
I have a very good camera for taking pictures (better quality and more control than any smart phone) and I put them on CDs or DVDs or just print them outright for mounting. I’m not an exhibitionist so I don’t need to carry them around in my pocket. I don’t need FaceBook or Twitter for the same reason.
There are some of us whose lives are not made better by ever spiraling technological complexity. Instead, how about consumer electronics that are as reliable as the several onboard computers in my 1998 Toyota Camry that just turned over 200,000 miles and is still going strong? It even still passes its biannual California smog check. If the auto industry can do that why can’t the consumer electronics industry?
For that matter, why can’t the software industry do it? But don’t answer; I know why they can’t do it. They make it too complicated to ever have one person who can understand it all. And that’s essential if it’s all to work together without trouble. And every version is more complex than the last. And there’s a good reason to avoid the new cars too if you can.
Now you can all have a go at me if you like. 🙂
110
Hey, Im an old guy now, and umm, I even remember back to the time Australia got television, not colour TV, but TV.
The link below shows a very scratchy TV ad from 1957, and yes, this was this little feller’s first incarnation before Bryce Courtenay added the catchy jingle. At the very end of this 60 second ad is an adage (from 1957 mind you) that applies here to what I believe, and also what Roy says above.
When you’re on a good thing, stick to it!
TV advertisement from 1957
Tony.
00
Great Ad Tony. Thanks for posting it.
I remember when my mother first used a fly spray. We followed the instructions on the can. We closed all the windows and left the house. My mother went around spraying then we all sat outside for half an hour. We were then allowed back into the house after my mother had gone in and opened all the windows.
Years later I found myself working at Eric Porter Film Productions in Union Street, North Sydney – Eric Porter was the creator of Louis the fly.
00
Tony,
As I watched that fly spray ad the difference between then and now struck me almost like a fist. If you sprayed insecticide anywhere near that baby now you’d likely be charged with some form of child abuse or endangerment. If you were lucky and they couldn’t find anything else to pin on you then you might get a suspended sentence or probation. In the meantime your children would have been taken away from you until you could prove you were fit parents again. And then there would be regular inspection visits from child protective services to be sure you were getting it right.
I often wonder how we all lived to grow up enough to begin making our own mistakes at raising children. They’d have a fit if they knew I was relighting the gas pilot lights in my parent’s home starting about 12 years old or that I rewired the garage for my father at about 14 — got it right too.
When I was a kid I got to see a doctor only if there was something wrong (for which I was thankful). My grandfather was a dentist so dental care was free but there was no pressure for annual checkups (for which I was also thankful). Now you’re negligent parents if you don’t take the kids to the doctor for that “well baby” checkup every year. How did we survive it all? Is there a face for confused?
Well…in spite of my obvious disdain for the nanny-state, don’t misunderstand me — it really isn’t a good idea to spray insecticide on or near the baby. But I’ll let adults make their own decisions, as they should.
30
Roy Hogue,
I think this was a popular email a while back but I think a few here might enjoy it,http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/hage5.html
10
Well said Roy,
Besides the headaches with the new stuff, I can’t imagine paying the cost to upgrade software every time THEY want us to.
I’m curious that no one commented on Ubuntu in the last thread…..
10
Thank goodness you didn’t call it Big Bertha, otherwise Julia would accuse you of misogyny.
60
Well done Jo and David. I certainly agree with you about the hard drive…..not a matter of if but when they will die!
30
That’s fantastic news Cherry! I’m really looking forward to what this new computer can do. Hopefully now all that junk science of the past will be replaced with real science. You might even be able to look at full data sets rather than just the bits you can use for Tea Bag political spin!
335
And maybe it will recognize your puerile prattle and immediately consign it to the trash.
170
Well gee JFC, where have you been?…. we missed you in the discussions…. really, we did. We like to have a laugh, if you know what I mean.
Do you have any empirical evidence for CAGW by the way?
You mean like for the hockey schtick?
170
I’m quite sure that, as soon as Jo gets her new machine up and running, JFC will be able to provide heaps of empirical evidence, backed by the original data, and full details of the models, so that she can have some “real science” on the machine. Or perhaps not …
50
Hang on there sonny. Climate models are not science, they are statistics.
30
Ah, but the real science will come from studying the models in order to find and observe the “adjustments”, and “correlated variations”, and other anthropogenic artifacts. This will permit us to do some forensic analysis, and some causal event correlation analysis. I didn’t mean for her to try and run the damned things. We know that produces rubbish.
20
Perhaps we can get Lew in on the deal to study the ideation that leads to such things?
20
Sorry KFC,
JO’s new computer is not a Stenograph Machine for the Third Reich’
Nun ficken aus!
70
JFC,
This time I’ll say all of it. Kiss my ass.
30
As usual JFC your gems of wisdom are something to behold and in no sense helpful. Pretty much the same as the rest of Catastrophists.
50
Your comment matches your persona..
.
.
.
void of any redeeming feature.
30
Congrats on the new hardware Jo! That thing sounds like a beast! Beware though, that SSD will make things so much faster you’ll be spoiled forever of the ‘older’ slower-drive computers. 😉
H.
40
Disappointed about your Windows 8 decision.
Remember all the hate Win98 got when it was first released? How about XP? Vista? Windows 7? They all got release hate.
Windows 8 is EXACTLY THE SAME as Windows 7 except it has a new, OPTIONAL touchscreen interface. If you dont want to use it then just stay on the desktop interface which is exactly like Windows 7.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHpdgHTINik
22
Warcroft,
Now compare that with each of Apple’s upgrades to its operating systems, where with the one exception of the move from OS9 to OSX, they have all been totally seamless, and loved by its users.
The difference is that Microsoft make software that has to try and work on a whole range of hardware from different manufacturers, with endlessly different configurations.
In comparison, Apple controls the hardware as well as the software, so you get an appliance that just works, doing the job you bought the machine to do.
But you can’t fiddle with it, and tune it, and paint go-faster stripes on it. Geeks hate that. They want to look under the hood, and change the carburetor and put fat radials on.
Different horses for different courses …
60
Jo, just don’t ever ask it to multiply six by nine.
20
I’m almost afraid to ask. But 6X9 has exactly what to do with 42?
I know, I know, it’s really too deep for anyone whose computer hasn’t been working on the question for 7.5 million years only to come up with 42 as the, “Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.”
Maybe I need to wait another 10 million years only to be wiped out 5 minutes before I get the real answer!?
Or is it that I’m not a white mouse?
Help me out here. 😉
40
Roy
I happen to know Bruce is a diehard Hitchiker’s fan and could probably quote large slabs. But if you can remember the section where the Golgafinchins’ (spelling?) B-Ark crashes on what is to become the planet earth (thereby seriously hijacking the plans of mice and men), Arthur Dent is trying to civilise the cavemen by teaching them Scrabble. (The only word they know is Arrgh, and they can’t even spell that..). In a whimsical bid to tap into Arthur’s sentient brain patterns, Ford Prefect suggests that Arthur select random tiles from the Scrabble bag to see what question he arrives at. It is, of course, “What do you get when you multiply six by nine?” To which Arthur responds something of the ilk that he always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the Universe.
In reality, of course, the Universe has excellent mathematics, which must have driven Douglas Adams, as an athiest, crazy.
Cheers,
Speedy
40
Thanks!
10
It works best in the original radio play, which IMO is still the best of all (although I liked the movie a lot). The ultimate answer 42 comes along fairly early but you have to wait right to the end of the series for the punchline. A great long running joke of the sort only Brits can do.
30
Shhhh! Mattb might hear you!!
21
but he wouldn’t understand.
21
Come guys.. mathematics, physics, etc are nothing but a human construct to define our perceived reality.
They are our way of describing what we see around us.
We only accept them as being correct, because they seems correct, or we have define them as being correct. (ie 1 + 1 = 2.. is a definition devised by humans)
How do we know that the Universe has excellent mathematics ??
20
Andy
I suppose I should have said that it all adds up. If it didn’t then life would be impossible – literally! We’ve all heard about the “Goldilocks Planet”; not too hot, not too cold, but have you any idea how important it is that ice floats? If dihydrogen oxide behaved like most molecules, the solid phase would be denser than the liquid phase. The upshot of this being that the oceans would be full of ice, from the bottom up, for significant sections of the earth’s history. Evolution would be difficult within an ice cube.
Paul Davies, in his book “The Mind of God” considers some of the many ways the universe is so user-friendly, and concludes, on the balance of probability, that we have friends (or one at least 🙂 ) in high places.
Cheers,
Speedy
40
Andy, Speedy,
I don’t think I’ll weigh in on whether the universe has excellent mathematics or not. But I’ve reached my own conclusion that it is indeed quite user friendly. From what I can see, at least this one planet teeming with life was the inevitable outcome of the thing from the beginning. Whether that means friends in high places or not I can’t say. But it surely does look that way. 🙂
Cheers
Roy
00
PS:
The math thing is intriguing, of course. But whether our mathematical understanding of the universe tells us anything about the underlying mechanism that makes it work, isn’t even an open question. Consider something like a magnetic or electric field. We have precise equations describing their behavior. But those give us absolutely no insight into the underlying mechanism. How do action at a distance forces really work? We don’t know.
I put this very question to two of the electrical engineers I worked with back in the ’80s. Both are very sharp, topnotch engineers. But neither one could give me an answer.
00
Its not that the universe has or has not got good mathematics, its that, at the moment, we seem to be doing a quite reasonable job of describing it using our invented mathematics.
Not perfect by any means though.
It is us that needs to do better, and I’m guessing we will…gradually.
10
Andy,
You’re correct about the math of course.
My implication was about whether the underlying mechanism can even be described in terms of our mathematics. The universe we can see runs on principles we understand quite well. But maybe the underlying platform that implements those principles, the stuff we can’t see, runs on some entirely different understanding of literally everything.
Our math can tell us how to do engineering wonders with the materials around us. But it doesn’t begin to show how those all important action at a distance forces actually are accomplished. 🙂
00
Roy,
You are over-complicating things. It is really very simple — gravity sucks.
10
Even where there is no atmosphere?
My goodness! Sucking has a greater stronghold on science than I thought. 😉
00
I see the red thumb bomber has been active again along with JFC. I wonder if they’re connected.
10
Nah mate…. that’s just Mattb when he can’t think of anything to say….
11
Oh looky – a thumbs down… see, told you so….
10
you are a freak.
02
Put the mirror down.
00
Question for the engineer-
If all the systems in the house have two drives, with one being used as backup, why not simply create a mirror to provide redundancy?
20
Mirrors propagate errors, they only really protect against hard errors, sometimes a backup strategy works better, having said that I use mirroring in my NAS
00
I Agree with you about errors, the only problem with your logic is that shadow copy, system state backups and even a proper backup strategy, propagate errors if they aren’t hard errors and aren’t picked up by OS maintenance checks prior to backups occurring. What Jo had was a hardware failure, nothing stops that. Redundancy and basic disaster recovery strategies reduce downtime, and that is the best anyone can do short of full hot swap RAID arrays.
00
Why anyone would corrupt such fine machinery with the prodginy of satin I don’t know.
Do yourself a favour Jo, and install a solid linux distro or 2 😉 Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, Mageia Why not dual boot or have M$ run inside inside Linux with VirtualBox and truely free yourself.
Do I sound like a priest yet? LOL
30
Some good advice Nick but you missed CentOS was that deliberate ?
10
CentOS doesn’t support i series architecture, and although it can be setup on i3, i5 not sure on i7 the performance benchmarks don’t stack up against other distros.
10
Last hardware upgrade I did for my Mint/Ubuntu box and new Mint/Ubuntu distro still has the uefi issues, considering what Jo uses her system for that would be a problem.
00
Yep. Windows is placed last in my GRUB menu. 🙂
On the other hand nobody ever said Freedom had to have a labyrinthine filesystem designed to be ignored, a two-way civil war in desktop windowing APIs, a three-way civil war in program package management systems, and a shortage of hardware drivers that puts limits on what one can do with all that freedom. 🙁
Then when you consider that it is impossible to buy a motherboard these days that does NOT have an UEFI BIOS and a TPM on board, and UEFI allows downloading BIOS updates via ethernet socket before Linux or the O/S bootloader has run, well one wonders how long one’s PC will remain owned by one’s self. I’m not saying it will happen, I’m just pointing out it couldn’t happen before UEFI but now it can.
Depending on personal needs there are still plenty of great indispensable programs that are only available on Windows, plus plenty of awesome hardware that has zero Linux driver support and can’t run in a virtual machine hyperviser. That’s why dual-booting is the only way to go.
The only time I boot windows is to play games at home and to develop software in MS Visual Studio at work. All my web browsing, emailing, Java programming, etc, is done in Linux.
Of course some would say Apple and OSX is the way to go, but for the really technically dedicated I’ve heard Hackintoshs are the best value for money; OSX installed on normal open PC hardware, so you effectively get a 30″ screen Mac for half the price Apple charges. Still no drivers for some funky hardware of course, but you can run Windows inside a VM inside a Mac inside a PC… and then it’s turtles all the way down. 😀
00
“prodginy of satin”
????????
00
Windows 7 isn’t satin or satan. It just works.
00
So good to hear your up and almost running again Jo and as Athelstan said earlier “the fight isn’t over yet”.
My many thanks to all those who helped Jo over this minor hurdle !!
20
I’m jealous, still relying on my coconut shells and string.
30
…. and I am sick to death of punch cards…
20
Glad to see some people still have good taste in computing. It seems these days people only buy laptops, or worse, Macbooks!
00
Gah ! I could have done a great machine for you, I’ve just done a monster for my dad. These days I strongly suggest Xeon processors, and server motherboards with Error Correcting Memory. It all costs about 10% more but the improved reliability is not to be sneezed at.
Perhaps I should send you some more information about backup processes as well.
————————
I’ve sent you an email. Thanks Harry – jo
20
As Tony mentioned on previous thread, dust build up can clog up the fins of the heat sync on the processor. I’ve had this problem in the past and this will produce above symptems exactly.
20
OK then, while we’re on computers, could I bring up the Internet connection speed thing here, and in mentioning this, I have to mention here what I personally do, so I hope you’ll not mind my doing that, because this is indicative only.
Now, some of you might think I’m mentioning this because I’m not a Labor supporter, hence there may be the perception that I’m flaming their new NBN just because of a political standpoint thing here.
Don’t get snowed by the spin that only fibre can deliver speeds required.
A couple of years prior to moving here to Rockhampton, (and that is now five years ago) I contacted my provider, and that was Telstra, and asked them if I could get a faster broadband speed. I was living on the Gold Coast, probably a major regional area and probably the biggest regional area outside of the State Capitals, so my guess was that the faster speed would actually be available there.
They informed me that I could upgrade to 100Mbs, which was available on the Gold Coast.
So I did.
That’s 100Mbs.
That’s almost 5 years ago now.
This is something that we are told the NBN can deliver, with the spin (political spin) sort of alluding to the fact that, well, really, the old copper system cannot really deliver those sorts of speeds, well, reliably anyway.
I was on that 100Mbs for those two years with not a problem at all. That’s a hard land line connection, no wireless or satellite, just a land line out of the hole in the wall through to a standard Modem.
So, then came the move to Rockhampton, out in the Boonies some of you might think. When we settled in and comes the time to arrange phone connection, I asked if I could remain on my same plan with BigPond, considering I was already on that 100Mbps, albeit in a major area, the Gold Coast.
Hey, said the guy, no problems. Done.
A year and a half back now, I upgraded even further, not the speed, but to a better plan.
So, here I am in (well away from the large Capital City main targets for high speed broadband connection) in far away Rockhampton. I have that 100Mbps connection, ADSL2+ Elite with a 25GB Usage, something I never even reach, because I’m not an online gamer, or download movies, well, I don’t have time for that.
That plan costs me $69.95 per Month.
Now comes the kicker.
I’ve been with Telstra since my original phone connection to a residence in 1981, and it was Telecom in those days. My original dial up internet connection was with (flightless bird) and when ADSL came in, I moved across to BigPond on its original release. I have also rolled all my connections into the one account.
Because of that, Telstra has given me three benefits. (So, sometimes, loyalty does pay off)
Each of those three benefits is a $10 credit, and they have put those credits directly to my Internet Connection, so my Monthly Bill for ADSL2+ Elite with 25GB now comes in at $39.95.
Here’s what really hurts here.
I’ve contacted Telstra and asked if, when the NBN comes in, could I stay with the old plan I already have, as it is the same as what the NBN might be offering. While they are not certain at this stage, the general opinion, (and this is from Telstra) is that I might be able to stay on that plan, perhaps for a year after the rollout in my area, which is still 18 Months away.
At that time, I will have been using 100Mbps for almost 7 years plus.
So, when you hear spin that only fibre can deliver these speeds, it’s crap.
I’ve had three maybe four dropouts in that time, all here at Rockhampton and due in the main to the floods here. The longest of those dropouts was for three days, and I wasn’t alone in that as all this area was down.
I’m connected from 8.30AM, usually until 1AM when it gets turned off. I’m at the computer here virtually every daylight hour, doing what I do.
I have not had a problem, other than those forced dropouts.
For an equivalent with the NBN, it will cost me around $90 and that’s the base price, and it will probably even be higher than that, and in fact, that’s something I really cannot afford.
So where you hear people scoffing about the old copper wire network, it’s spin, literally.
I know what I’m getting now.
Al that will happen is that I’ll (probably) have to pay more for the same service.
In actual fact, I’ll most probably end up going backwards, because of the cost factor.
Now, here, I had to mention my personal situation to show the point, but I would like to hear other people’s opinions on this.
Keep in mind, I already have a copper wire connection of 100Mbps, and I’ve already had it for 5 years.
That speed thing of the carrot of 100Mbps is the lure for fibre. Ring your provider now and ask if you have the capability to receive that 100Mbps.
This is another thing, just like Climate Change that has now become not what it is, but something Political.
Tony.
60
Get this – at present I am in a Third World country in a regional town – I have fibre and can get up to 100Mbps if I want it (I do not need such speeds, just as most people never will). I work remotely with a company in the USA and 6Mbps is perfectly adequate, including video conferencing.
40
Tony + 1
We have had almost the same experience with ADSL for 5 years.
I cannot think why 100Mbps is such a magical number even to a computer illiterate like myself.
Locally we’ve had some very hard questions asked about why this NBN is so,
1-Tecnologically superior.
2-Important for who?
3-Slow to roll out.
4-Will not cover most areas even in the foreseeable future.
5-Expensive with massive blowouts.
I guess these particular politicians love spending other peoples money.
40
What I have found, and this helps me as the Editor at the site I contribute at. That high speed is of wonderful assistance for me, mainly because I can have anything up to 6 to 10 tabs (and sometimes more) open at any one time, navigating back and forth. Each tab has a series of articles, and the virtue of this high speed for me is that as I open each tab, it appears virtually instantaneously, and as I navigate, every article on the home page is open, and some of them have anything up to 20 articles at a time on their home page, and more often than not, the page with everything on it opens completely before I have even opened up the next tab.
Any task I do is also all but instantaneous as well.
I would never go back.
When I originally connected to the Internet, it was dial up. and I tried downloading programs, and just one for example was the Kodak image program. It took, literally, hours. Now, similar programs are even larger, and it’s over in seconds, literally.
I have this joke (and I think you’ve all heard it) about a Microsoft Minute, eg, the small bar that says you have X minutes left to go before the program downloads. It was never right. It always took longer.
Now is exactly the same, only in reverse. It starts at X minutes and is done in seconds. You watch the Microsoft Minute indicator virtually crash as it skips minutes at a time.
I can see how the average user would in all reality have no need for 100Mbps, but in my case, it’s the optimum. I could get by without it, but it would just take me longer, considerably longer.
Tony.
20
Wow, I’m normally just a rare commenter/very silent observer, but tech is something I live, eat and breath, so forgive my voluminous comments today (probably a combination of the topic and the copious amounts of JD’s my wife and I are consuming today for no apparent reason)… And I always enjoy reading comments from the likes of you Tony (for your knowledge), AndyG (witty comebacks), Speedy (for obvious reasons) and really, the rest of the regular crew…
So onto the so called NBN. This will probably be long, but I’ll try and express my views concisely.
I am a Network Engineer for a Coal Mining company. So my views are probably skewed re AGW as I am paid after all by Big CO2… Although our company has an express policy regarding “Carbon” mitigation. But that’s something else.
NBN
Right, so from both sides of politics we have an “NBN” policy.
Position 1 is spend $45 billion +/- (well + really) up to another $45 billion for fibre to the home.
Position 2 is spend $27 billion for fibre to the node.
Why? I simply cannot understand populist view that we “need” fibre at all! Nationally based business will benefit, sure, as they get effective LAN (Local Area Network) speeds between offices. However Telehealth, which is the big push (yes I also worked for Qld Health in IT a number of years ago) in remote areas will not benefit! Why? If you look into the supposed coverage offered by FFTH/FTTN (90% vs. 93%) and compare it to mobile coverage (97%) it doesn’t seem like much. However the key word here is “population”. There are an awful lot of mobile black spots is Australia. And that’s supposedly 97% of the population! So how will Remote and Rural Health benefit? Well, apparently by bi-directional satellite links or long range WiFi. Well, currently, most remote/rural health services live off satellite, which works well when it’s not cloudy but turn to custard when it is. WiFi? Yeah great, for speeds up to about 20Mb/s (oh note the difference, MB vs Mb.. Mb = Megabits, vs. MB which is MegaBytes.. MB is 8 x faster than Mb) over a few Km, without boosters and amplifiers which also add latency, which also is inherent in satellite connections. Yes, the CSIRO has increased throughput and distance using the current Analogue TV frequencies, but this has yet to be released, let alone approved for usage.
Also, we run fibre on power poles where I work, and I can tell you, unlike power lines, fibre doesn’t like bushfires very much. The majority of the fibre for the existing NBN plan, as I understand it, is aerially mounted on power lines. Sadly, Australia is pretty prone to fires… Not to mention the issues when flooding washes away lengths of fibre buried. Fibre costs astronomically more to repair per km than copper.
Add to it the OECD report on national spending for broadband projects. Our closest “rival” for chucking money at a non-existent issue is the US, who have committed to a whopping $6 billion… Wait, what? Yep, $6 billion. No-one comes near our spending…
The next issue for me is that most of our content (save this fabulous website of course) is delivered from overseas. However we have 12 Tb data (1 Tb = 1024 x 1 Mb). So do the sums, and check the actual available bandwidth for everything that heads overseas (telephone, fax, and data, shared with NZ). Yes, routers do some wizardry with data management for delivering your traffic quickly, however it is a really finite amount bandwidth which will be maxed out in no time flat.
Basically, I see both policies regarding the NBN as a waste of money that could be better spent on things like more overseas bandwidth, and in all seriousness, medicine and health research.
/rant
91
Thanks for this gytr_r1
This looks to me like a classic case or reaction politics.
Labor was pissed off that Costello sold off (part of) Telstra and then sunk it into the Future Fund, and thank God he did do that, and did anybody watch Costello carve up Emma Alberici last night on Lateline (at this link)
Angry that they couldn’t get their hands on that money, they then went out to ruin what remained of Telstra with this monstrous white elephant called NBN, a reaction to what Costello did.
Then in reaction to that the Coalition now has to do something for fear of being painted as doing nothing.
One reaction and then a second reaction.
All for basically nothing as shown by what’s happening elsewhere as gytr_r1 says above.
I mean. They say 100Mbps and use that as the carrot, thinking there’s no way it can be done without their fibre.
Ring up your provider and ask them. I only did it on the off chance originally on the Gold Coast thinking there was no way I could be so lucky. The person on the other end of the phone didn’t dither or waffle or say maybe, or say in a year or two possibly. He said Yes and switched it on for me as I was on the phone. I was astounded.
Then when I got here to Rocky, same thing. I was thinking (going on what the media said, supporting Labor) that there was no way it was available here in regional Australia. The guy on the phone didn’t dither or waffle or say maybe, or say in a year or two, possibly. He said Yes and switched it on for me as I was on the phone.
You phone your provider and ask.
We already have it.
Now, the Labor spin is that you can only get it after their NBN goes in, and, in their efforts to cruel that part of Telstra that Costello didn’t sell, their new NBN is a Monopoly at their set prices, all way more expensive than what WE CURRENTLY ALREADY CAN GET.
So, you can see what I mean about reaction.
I’ve had it for 5 years now. Hey, what’s the fuss about?
Ring and ask.
Oh, and please watch the link. Costello doesn’t take a backward step. He doesn’t need to.
Tony.
51
As I said, I live in a Third World country and have fibre. Why is that? Healthy competition between the two main telecoms.
20
Yep, you don’t have Telstra.
12
The point John was not whether Australia has Telstra or not, but rather whether there is healthy competition.
Rather than spending countless billions (and I do mean countless) of taxpayer’s money to build services (its actually in the Communist Manifesto), don’t you think that competition would have been a better thing to work toward?
20
And competion would have done so much more cost effectively. They just love spending OPM, the more of it the better.
00
I live in Perth, and the best connection speeds offered are ADSL2+ at up to 24Mbps. We get about 12Mbps.
So Tony, if you could let me know the web site of your ISP, I’ll see if they operate in Perth, as my son would appreciate the speed!
12
John, if you have ADSL2 then there’s a chance you can get shdsl which is a100 Mb service – mind you noone is doing any DSL rollouts because of the N B N. so chances are also good that the gear in your exchange is too old, iinet in Perth is trialling VDSL now, and eftel is deploying so if you are prepared to wait a bit…
Cant hurt to call Iinet and ask?
00
gytr-r1
Then there is mobile broadband.
We started with dial up but it became hopelessly slow. After a few lightening strikes it wouldn’t even run a fax, so we went to satellite. Very slow and expensive but reliable. Storms, cloud, rain, very rarely gave a problem but slow so we went to Mobile. Good but sometimes busy. Seems to me there should be plenty of room there. At the most we need fiber to the tower.
Doug
30
We also have a 100Mb connection on coaxial copper in our offices, which are in a suburban house. It is on the cable used for cable TV, and TV needs 100MB minimum. So if you can get cable TV you have that potential for high-speed internet.
The thing about fibre though, is that for rural distribution, anybody can run a fibre cable anywhere — there is no electrical conductor, so it can be run along the bottom of a ditch, or hung from trees, or strung along fence posts, or even poked up a water pipe. So for rural folk, all it needs is for the community to buy and run the fibre cable, and arrange for an installer to connect it to the main fibre trunk, and to each house or workplace.
By the way, fibre should be capable of delivering gigabyte speeds. Where the speed restrictions lie is in the antiquated equipment in the telephone exchanges and distribution boxes. If they are increasing the costs in some areas, it is because they are trying to recover the costs of upgrading the equipment.
10
Digital TV bandwidths are more like 4 Mbps for standard definition and around 12 Mbps for HDTV (1080i/p).
Whoever told you 100 Mbps didn’t understand what they were saying or didn’t communicate what the 100 Mbps bandwidth could carry.
10
Bernd,
Good point. I was repeating what the nice lady on the phone told me. She was trying to sell us SKY cable TV. I asked her what the band width for “cable” was, and got the 100 Mbit answer. That was when we started to negotiate a price to get that bandwidth for internet traffic.
00
Engineer being David Evans Rocket Scientist ?
Macs have a UNIX clone base now and handle heavy loads better due the Unix style of passing out workload to the chips by the way. I do trust the Windows Beast goes well.
00
Just gone through the same thing as well.
One of the discovered gems was the installation of Office 2013.
Load any PDF file (unprotected)into Word, and there it is, perfect conversion including formatting.
Bliss
00
Your PC whoas prompted me to not only send $, but to disassemble and clean my crashing Toshiba. Works long, fast and cool now. Thx. Clean yours annually .
g’day
MI, USA
20
But don’t wash it in the bath … very bad kharma.
10
You can actually strip the motherboard and wash it in warm soapy water… make sure its well dry before putting things back together. Worked wonders for an old box of mine.
00
Absolutely,
In fact most premises are wired with a 2 pair cable and can have 2 phone services with no digging, using ordinary DSL 2+ that delivers something close to 50Mbit/s and using vectored dsl it delivers 200Mb/s over an ordinary 2 pair deployment.
You can do that today-connect a second service, get dsl on it and buy a load balancer/aggregator.
20
Ia
00
take your time getting to know the monster, jo, and good luck.
something to read, with links, in the meantime:
11 April: TakePart: Suzi Parker: Climate Change in Classrooms: Here Come the New Science Standards
Science teachers will soon need to adjust their curriculum
Suzi Parker is an Arkansas-based political and cultural journalist whose work frequently appears in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/04/11/new-science-standards-welcome-climate-change-and-evolution-into-schools?cmpid=wfs-fb
00
Its good to see that they lump climate science and evolution in together. Since their objection to evolution is clearly idealogical, its a pretty good bet that their objection to climate science is similarly based.
013
Hey John,
My objection to climate change is ideological too! I bet you didn’t know that.
Yep! I’m beholden to an ideology that demands a visible means of support for wild claims that people make. No pun intended but vagrant ideas, those with no visible means of support don’t measure up to the required standard.
70
Evolution seems to be a reasonable explantion of how life on Earth has progressed.
Climate Science doesn’t seem to be a reasonable explanation for anything.
20
Let me remind you John Brookes – its the THEORY of evolution. Just as its the THEORY of CAGW.
Both lack proof, but have reams of “scientific” piffle surrounding them and both require denial to accept. Both also rely on vilification and ad hominem to survive. Both are mispresented as fact because of “scientific consensus” and the adherents of both ignore science that is contrary to them.
On second thoughts John… perhaps you really are descended from a monkey?
31
Hi Backslider,
Not sure what you are indicating regards Evolution but there are few reliable comparisons between the theory of Evolution and the “science” of Aggressive Climate Change.
The only place that I am aware of where Evolution is viewed as pseudo science is in the US where the religion fueled discussion is on a level equivalent to that of the arguments between opposing football teams; just a lot of good fun with not much relevance.
The truth of Evolution is in the eating, so to speak. It has given investigators many opportunities to put together scientifically relevant, useful and readily confirmed hypotheses.
I know that strictly speaking I should have said: ” — useful hypotheses that have not been dis-confirmed” but the point is no credible scientists, that I am aware of, seriously call Evolution into question.
Climate science on the other hand is a fraudulent assemblage of smoke and mirrors for which someone needs to be sent to jail.
KK 🙂
01
KK – You are parroting in exactly the same way as the warmists do.
No credible scientists call CAGW into question – prove me wrong…. then put in the same effort into your “argument” and stop parroting.
20
Hi Backslider,
I take it from your response that you are a resident of the US.
To the charge of parroting I must admit to having tried recently to parody the Warmer style in a
previous thread where I responded to a series of comments that, I think, involved MattB.
Sometimes the level of debate gets so bad that all that seems appropriate is to reply to people
like Matt with some nonsense about Wooly Mammoth faeces in the ice cubes, but on the matter of
evolution I refuse to go to the desperate level of sarcasm, because the distortion of real science
is an important matter.
Evolution seems to be under attack and for the life of me I have not yet seen any sensible
discussion as to why it is wrong or irrelevant.
The fuel for Climate Change alarmism is CO2 and the fuel for Anti Evolutionary barracking seems
to be a similarly religious concept called Intelligent Design.
I have studied several scientific areas that involve Evolution in the background and what I have
seen gives absolutely nothing to dis-confirm the theory of Evolution.
Until I have seen some scientific dis-confirmation of the accepted theory of Evolution I and other
scientists outside of the US have no option but to continue to rely on it in our studies.
That is the accepted scientific method.
Can you describe what it is about evolution that you believe is not correct?
Maybe then we would have something to talk about?
KK 🙂
11
No, I am not resident of the USA – you continue in a very thinly veiled ad hom.
The simplest description as to why I call evolution into question is, particularly now with the massive advances made in molecular biology, is that its mathematically impossible.
The whole universe screams something else to me.
11
That’s just one reason. The second couples with the first, making things even more difficult for you:
The theory of evolution relies on genetic mutation and natural selection based on those mutations. The empirical evidence is that that mutations are not good for an organism. Show me a good one?
I actually believe in natural selection, however this is based on the range of variation that is already contained in the genome, not mutation.
40
Well Backslider after being labelled a parrot I do tend to become a little terse but to your point:
“you continue in a very thinly veiled ad hom”.
I don’t understand why this is viewed as an ad hom?
I have a very strong suspicion that the anti Evolutionary concept of “Intelligent Design” originated in the USA and from particular area within the States and my comment is therefore a statement of fact.
Pardon me if I am wrong but a great many US teachers took umbrage at being made to teach “intelligent” Design as part of their science courses and this is also a well known fact.
In view of what I have been able to take from the media, there is a very strong case for saying that the push to discredit Evolution is a religion based effort using Intelligent Design as the vehicle.
I have no problem at all in accepting that some people want to believe in I.D. but it must not be taught as science in schools nor given any acceptance by scientists.
That is morally and ethically wrong.
KK 🙂
12
Backslider, as to genetic mutations is needs to be appreciated that nature is not perfect and what this means in genetic terms is that the mutations you are so fearful of are already sitting there in the person next to you in the movies or on the train.
That’s the beauty of the thing. Those life forms that have an existing mutation which is useful when a new threatening problem confronts it will be the ones to survive and continue reproducing while the others don’t.
You ask: “Show me a good one?”
Examples of good ones which by chance are in direct contrast:
1. The problem of humans living in very hot areas, see Africa, has specifically encouraged the reproduction of those best able to suit that threat.
Many Africans are tall and thin which is the ideal body shape to enable heat loss and prevent heat accumulation.
2. Living in temperatures like those in the Arctic requires adaptations to make sure that heat is retained.
Body shape of those native to very cold climates is seen to involve being shorter and more robust in body shape. This reduces heat loss.
In both cases there are existing genetic mutations which can enhance the chances of survival, while those life forms which can’t adapt move to a better climate. Every one is happy.
KK 🙂
11
“The simplest description as to why I call evolution into question is… that its mathematically impossible.”
Oh lol I needed a good larf.
11
You think that is funny? The concept was originally brought to my attention by a very well respected molecular biologist. He was talking pure science, not religion.
I know that you would be far too scared to actually test your hypothesis against the purest form of science.
10
BTW Mattb – perhaps you should know that people like Stephen Hawking believe in panspermia, because that are well aware that what I said is perfectly correct. That their belief raises fundamental philosophical questions that they prefer not to talk about is somewhat more amusing than anything that I have said.
00
Here we go again… Next you’ll be telling me Noah’s ark is some sort of biblical representation of panspermia.
Panspermia did not drop off elephants and giraffes one week, and a few weeks later a blue whale randomly arrived on another piece of space junk.
I mean wikipedia even tells me Darwin was a fan.
It appears emminently plausible to be that panspermia may or may not be legit, and neither actually has any relevance to evolution.
If we are talking about untestable hypothesis though… it takes the cake.
10
That’s the thing with guys like you. You accept things on appearance rather than thought or science. That you like to spin around religion rather than discuss science shows how bigoted you really are.
I did not mention that people like Stephen Hawking well know that even with panspermia, we still simply run out of time. What else they believe, themselves knowing that, I shall leave up to you to find out…. watch out for their religion!
00
Backslider.
You request that I respond to the challenge :
” No credible scientists call CAGW into question – prove me wrong…. then put in the same effort into your “argument” and stop parroting”.
The correct scientific method is to propose a Testable Hypothesis.
There has never been a testable hypothesis put forward for the “CO2 is causing Global Warming” claim.
Because of this it fails as a scientific theory, despite media publicity and patronage by “experts” and as a consequence there is no need for any credible scientists to say anything.
That’s the scientific method and the CAGW mob studiously ignores it.
As we know, it has been cleverly done, and years ago many of us just trusted the pronouncements because they were made by scientists and not members of the left wing loonies.
We all trusted fellow scientists then; unfortunately people now mistrust science.
KK 🙂
31
I agree. Perhaps then you can point me toward the testable hypothesis put forward for evolution 🙂
21
Gladly Backslider,
The study of changes in the structural shape of the components of human and animal brains can be related to known brain functions and this study which spans a great time period is entirely consistent with the topic of Evolution as we know it.
There is also the study of change in morphology or the shape and functionality of animal, plant insect and human life forms which relies on the basic concept of evolution.
I have not read any of your other comments yet so I am hoping that there may be some comment made about where you think Evolution is inappropriate.
My point is that I have never found anything which conflicts scientifically with Evolution.
KK 🙂
11
Another task:
“Perhaps then you can point me toward the testable hypothesis put forward for evolution”?
Let’s try this:
If we want to prove that specific groups within a species are selected to survive new dangerous environmental threats, then we could say:
Hypothesis:
In any living life form which is subjected to a serious environmental change, those within the species which survive do so completely at random.
If it is shown, as it most likely will be, that survival is based on genetic makeup, then we have disproved the statement and confirmed the basic hypothesis that only adaptive species survive new threats.
In our current environment those humans with a parentally gifted insulin setting which enables them top deal with the massive calorie intake in the modern diet will tend to avoid getting Diabetes Type 2.
The threat is excess food. The penalty for not being equipped properly is D2. Part of the solution is that the mother passes on an appropriate setting for Insulin levels in the newborn. This is not a good example as it does not involve genetic mutation but it does involve differences between people and survival.
KK 🙂
11
Evolution is an explanation, nothing more. As I said, I have no problem with natural selection, which all your arguments center around. The jump from their to “evolution” is a huge one and is a leap of faith, not science.
You are unable to give evidence for it.
02
Well Backslider you talk about a well respected Molecular Biologist having an opinion on some vague undefined aspect of Evolution and earlier there was comment that the Universe was screaming at you.
That isn’t very scientific and I must ask again for the second time that you explain just where, exactly, it is that Evolution is wrong.
I suspect that you don’t like the idea that “humans are descended from apes” and yet you can’t quite come out and say it.
I also suspect that some molecular biologists are very good at what they do, but like most of us, can sometimes not see the forest for the trees.
KK 🙂
10
KK,
Let me preface what I am about to say by stating that I believe in evolution as a construct to explain species adaptation and diversity. I am not religious at all, and have no problem with either being directly descended from apes, the ape family or from a common ancestor as yet undiscovered. However, to suggest that Evolution explains fully the origins of life on Earth is another matter entirely, unfortunately one which scientists show a dogmatic adherence to which is no different, IMO, from creationism.
Nowhere in Evolutionary theory can I find any persuasive evidence to confirm the possibility of abiogenesis. The Miller -Urey experiments used to justify that amino acids (some) could be synthesized under pseudo-primordial conditions fails to really give an adequate explanation as to how life can spring from an inanimate chemical cocktail. Second, with the laws of natural selection, even if life were to evolve from a chemical cocktail, there is no explanation that I am aware of that determines how the most highly evolved single cell organism becomes a multicellular organism, since in order to do so there would have to be an advantage over and above remaining single cellular (a simpler and more resilient, self-sufficient form of life that doesn’t havecomplex needs which are subject to the vicissitudes of environment IMO), the continued presence of which down the millenia suggests that no such force exists.
So, some other agency is required to go against the entropic gradient toward more complex organisms, who are more vulnerable to their environment than single cellular organisms (which are rapid reproducers with higher resilience inherent in their simplicity of form). This is unexplained by Evolutionary theory,how to trigger the progression at this level, and even from the relative stability of the ocean environment onto the land where variation in temperature and climate extremes test homeostatic mechanisms far more than the safety of the sea even allowing for the pressure of available food supply (assuming sea plants became land based through vulcanism). I don’t believe it is scientific to allow one’s love of a theory, as elegant as Evolution may be in some eyes, and ignore its shortcomings.
10
Hi Winston
Have skimmed through your comment and appreciate the illumination which Backslider couldn’t give me.
It seems we are talking about apples and pears because I have nowhere in my past ever thought of evolution as anything but the progress of existing life forms through the ages.
I am totally unfamiliar with this new extension of Evolution into the basic building blocks of life and feel a little uneasy with the concept of dumping on Evolution simply because it does not conform.
Two scenarios presnt:
the first being that some Evolution geek has decided that Evolution explains everything and has so drawn well deserved criticism
or
someone wanting to discredit Evolution has examined evolution in terms of Molecular Biology and the origins of life in the sulphur pools and deliberately dumped on Ev and exposed it to ridicule.
The Intelligent Design issue wants to dump evolution and this has been a huge fight in the US.
I’m not wanting to be involved in those scenarios.
KK 🙂
00
Agree entirely
Just think people need to draw the line between what is explained by a theory and what isn’t, because sometimes drawing too long a bow (and applying it too broadly) makes your whole case collapse, even the parts for which there is good evidence to support. Sometimes just admitting what you don’t know or what you can’t explain damages the perception of authority, so there is a tendency to assign the theory as a fait accompli to explain any and all peripheral aspects, in this case for the evolution of life on Earth from the day dot.
There is a sophistication to the universe which mankind valiantly seeks to explain, but for which we are woefully inadequate.
20
Comment appreciated Winston,
Had to leave for a while a little earlier but while driving back it occurred to me that there was a parallel of sorts between the theories of Evolution and the old Bohr Atom Theory.
It occurred to me that to just state categorically that the Bohr theory was wrong simply because it did not explain string theory would be plainly a mischief.
The Bohr theory only went so far and did a very good job. Evolution at least in my mind limited itself to certain specifics of life on Earth in the style of Darwin and he lived a long time ago.
I would imagine that anyone looking for the origin of life might be tempted to examine the lineage of progressively simpler life forms in sulphur pools but I am fairly sure that Darwin never went anywhere near that concept and especially never to the level of molecular biology.
I was therefore a little taken aback to find that I was debating the origin and meaning of life which I did not associate with Evolution.
KK 🙂
20
Hang on there sonny.
First, its the weekend and I am also certain that we are in totally different time zones.
Second – you lack evidence for your arguments. You tell me what I am supposed to disprove and I shall.
I have actually given you two very simple things to think about and you have no comeback for them. All you have stated is something that, fundamentally, we both agree on.
00
Its not vague or undefined at all. Please again read my first post on this topic.
00
Are you serious?
Ok, let me clarify to you so you understand perfectly. Natural selection is NOT evolution. If you believe in that, then you are on safe ground and we can move on. But you should be aware that natural selection does not lead to apes growing into humans. If you are thinking that, then of course the argument leads back to origin.
00
Thanks backslider,
Now we have it:
“you should be aware that natural selection does not lead to apes growing into humans.”
BS, there is a limit to how many times we can split a hair and in the end it is a bit pointless.
KK 🙂
00
“you should be aware that natural selection does not lead to apes growing into humans.”
Why not? It did somewhere along the lines.
11
Prove it.
02
Perhaps KK, but then, here is one to think about:
How many bombardier beetles do you suppose blew their own arses off until they got it right?
01
Slider – I’m not sure you know what a scientific theory is. When you say “Let me remind you John Brookes – its the THEORY of evolution.” I’m not sure you realise that:
“Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge. This is significantly different from the word “theory” in common usage, which implies that something is unsubstantiated or speculative.”
11
And just on this – I think that it IS important to note that some people have extremely strongly held religious views and have their entire perception of science based around these views. In this case one can see that BackSlider is such a person. I’m not saying that just because he thinks AGW is a crock because of his religion that it means AGW is not a crock. There are most likely some things I hold similar views to BS on even though he only holds them because of his god.
11
You actually have the whole thing back to front, 100%. Think about that.
Whatever my beliefs are (which I know you are 99.9% wrong on) they are not formed through or based on religion.
00
No, its a “theory” when it sounds good (if you like) but there is no empirical evidence to support it. Evolution and CAGW are in the same boat in that respect.
I’m sure that you are happy with whatever you are quoting… I’m also sure that it comes from somebody who believes something they have no evidence for.
00
No that is not what a scientific theory is. You learn this in like year 9 or 10 science. You should try it.
00
I love definitions…
“The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence”
“Scientific evidence is evidence which serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis. Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence and in accordance with scientific method.”
“Empirical evidence is a source of knowledge acquired by means of observation or experimentation.”
“Observation is an activity of a living being, such as a human, which is necessary in order to receive knowledge of the world or about the environment through the senses, which often later involves the recording of data via the use of scientific instruments.”
“An experiment is an orderly procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis”
mmmm. I wonder where projections via computer modelling fits into the “theory” of CAGW, as they are not observations nor experiments and certainly not evidence….
20
So Mattb, are you going to argue with what Heywood presented?
Looks pretty good to me……..
00
Correct. They are statistics…. and we all know what they say about those. Actually, they go even further and step into voodoo fortune telling…. man, I’m giving statistics a bad name here, sorry!
11
Heywood didn’t say anything about evolution?
00
We are talking two different things here. The scientific theory as you are referring to includes EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE. The theories such as CAGW and evolution do not. Two different classes of theory sonny.
11
Yes there are resaons that the evidence that exists never seems to satisfy some people.
00
I note you don’t even think there is empirical evidence that the Arctic is largely surrounded by continental land masses! It is pretty hard to put forward evidence for evolution when you are in denial of Asia, North America and Europe!
01
That is really pathetic. The fact instead is that you do not accept that the Arctic also has a massive open ocean.
00
What evidence?
00
lol
00
Anyway BS which comet did the Elephants turn up on? And where are humans in the fossil record?
Instead of arguing me, why don’t you instead educated me as to where all the existing species came from, given they didn’t use to exist, and a whole heap of very similar but now extinct things did used to exist. I’m all ears. (or at least if there was a genetic advantage to being all ears I would be so pretty soon).
10
from my last post it would appear that grammar and spelling are no longer useful traits.
10
You should ask Stephen Hawking which comet the elephants came on – he believes in that guff, not I.
Thats a very good question. Where do you suppose they are? How far back are you able to track human civilisation?
00
Has Hawking ever said that he thinks evolution is bulldust and panspermia brought the elephants. No. You appear to be saying that. You appear to be saying evolution is rubbish and panspermia is the real deal. So where are the elephants from?
you don’t seem to have answered my question “why don’t you instead educated me as to where all the existing species came from, given they didn’t use to exist, and a whole heap of very similar but now extinct things did used to exist.”
10
I intend no offense to anyone by saying this. But now I think you see why I don’t debate evolution with anyone.
For the record — where things come from and how they got here is a really interesting pair of questions to me. But it’s simply not so important to daily life as to justify fighting over it as so many are doing. We have football games for that.
00
KK,
Your diabetes example is an interesting one. I was married for over 30 years to a childhood onset type 2 diabetic. Our son is now diabetic as well. So I’ve learned a lot about the disease, perhaps more than I ever wanted to know.
First of all, diabetes is an autoimmune situation in which the body attacks the small clusters of cells in the pancreas that produce insulin and literally destroys them. It’s about a vicious as you can get.
There is a known genetic predisposition for diabetes. However, it does not guarantee that you will ever actually become diabetic, so there is some other factor (or factors) involved.
Your example of diet putting stress on the body that might lead to diabetes is simply not supported as far as I know. There is a known link with obesity. However, what you eat has noting to do with it directly. The normally functioning body produces insulin at need with no trouble. Remember, our genetic makeup is inherited from those early humans who might have a feast one day and famine the next, depending on the luck of the hunters.
The other factor (or one of them) is trauma. It can be either physical or emotional. This is also something that acts on all of us in general. Our surroundings put various stresses on us all the time. And stress can trigger something genetic that was previously dormant or it can stop the action of something that was previously active. Environment can and does actually modify what you would think is immutable, genetically determined traits.
The evidence for trauma being the trigger for diabetes is considerable. It can be seen in both my late first wife and our son. The question is, what other triggers are there and how can you prevent them from doing their dirty work.
People also develop type 2 as they age. Although this may be type 2 in its effect, its cause is simply the normal degradation of body function with advancing years.
I will be interested in your thoughts about this if you’d care to respond. You obviously have some knowledge about it and I’m never too old to learn.
00
Roy
It was discovered after World War 11 that there was a mechanism by which mothers transmit their particular insulin setting to their offspring.
In nature this is very reasonable since it gives the offspring an immediate and useful adaptation to its’ expected environment.
This discovery was just a chance thing and came from a situation called the ‘Dutch Winter Hunger” which created an extreme insulin setting in women who became pregnant during that awful stage of the war.
Europe was very short of food and the children of the Dutch winter hunger appeared quite normal, in terms of insulin settings because even after the war for a long time, people lived on very short rations. Food was scarce.
It was only much later when food became plentiful and even excessive, that the disconnection between the inadequate insulin production and the glucose levels in their blood stream became a problem and this sort of echoes your comment about it happening later in life.
If you look up Dutch Winter Hunger you will find a long winded and pretty useless discussion about molecular biology which is quite relevant to the science but useless in terms of explaining the problem. This ref is more useful in highlighting the problem:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16873799
There were two issues found: one was that not every woman who was pregnant during that period passed on the low insulin setting.
This was found to be due to the process of foetal development for which there are critical periods.
What this means is that at the time in the womb when the insulin setting is created the baby gets the current experience of the mother.
If the mother is right in the worst of the DWH then a low insulin setting occurs.
If the woman is experiencing an adequate food intake and then offspring insulin settings would be relatively normal.
Later analysis revealed the “critical period” idea which has been very useful in understanding foetal development.
Inherited characteristics like eye colour are genetic, where certain rules are found.
For example, two parents, one with light hazel eyes and the other with brown eyes will find that offspring have darker eyes because the eye colour gene for brown is dominant. This process is not the same as we are discussing for insulin mechanisms and glucose tolerance.
The DWH discovery was also later confirmed by analysis of what happened in Britain in the same time period.
Two weeks ago I was talking with a fellow who was 72 years old and had an Irish background.
He had a client who was Aboriginal who appeared to be a male but who insisted on identifying as and living as a female and had gone to extremes to achieve that end. I introduced him to the idea of the “Critical period” which was so important in understanding gender mismatches and needed to talk about the diabetes DWH concept.
It was only later when he ordered lunch that someone else at the table asked him how his diabetes was going that I put the pieces together, but did not ask him about it.
It is possible that he was born in Ireland in about 1940-41 when food would not have been plentiful.
Must go, work calls, but will read the rest of the other comment soon.
KK 🙂
00
Hi Roy,
Just started to go through the rest of your comment..
Sorry to hear about your situation which is unfortunately shared by many around the world.
Your comment : “Your example of diet putting stress on the body that might lead to diabetes is simply not supported as far as I know”
In answer Roy, I understand that for Type 2 the main issue is the mismatch between insulin processing capability and the glucose blood levels.
Anecdotally I have heard of Aboriginals who came into town after a life time of living on meager rations in the bush.
Many of them developed diabetes while on high glucose intake but it was found that when they reverted to their original bush tucker that the diabetes retreated.
There is also Diabetes 1 which I have no idea about.
Diabetes 2 is associated with obesity, true, but obesity is associated with hi glucose levels due to excessive food intake.
KK 🙂
00
KK,
Thanks for you concern for my past situation. I do appreciate it. But I’m now well beyond those times, thankfully.
Type 1 as I understand it is diabetes controllable by diet or non insulin drug management. I know very little about it.
It appears to be the obesity itself that can trigger type 2 diabetes and maybe type 1. From everything I’ve learned I’m confident that the cause of the obesity isn’t the culprit but instead, the stress of the obesity on something in the body is the real trigger.
I have no doubt that the Dutch findings are recorded accurately. But I’m not sure the conclusions are correct, although it tends to support the theory that trauma can actually alter genetics. Does that change take place before conception or after? Interesting question.
I got tutoring from every doctor I could once the seriousness of diabetes sunk in and there are big gaps in the picture. It isn’t in doubt that stress can alter what would otherwise happen because of your particular genes but what this can or cannot do is very much up in the air. But the link to some form of trauma was told to me by two practicing physicians.
For reasons you certainly understand I’m not going to address anecdotal data. I will stick with the position that what you eat cannot by itself cause diabetes — unless of course, you poison yourself or something along that line. Obesity by itself cannot — because it clearly does not — always cause diabetes either. And remember, some obese people are that way even on very strict diets and their problem has nothing to do with what they eat. Diabetes strikes them too. For many of them simply being more physically active every day would help a lot.
This is incorrect.
I don’t know what you mean by, “…insulin processing capability…” In type 2 a once normal pancreas has stopped producing sufficient insulin. Usually it will stop production altogether although it varies from patient to patient. And sometimes the pancreas will produce more or less according to its own whim, making management very difficult.
Insulin is the catalyst (enzyme) that allows your body to control blood glucose level by causing excess glucose to be stored in the liver. When the glucose level begins to drop below a certain level the liver releases it back into the bloodstream. When insulin isn’t produced according to the current need your glucose level rises without being regulated at all. You begin to feel bad and very thirsty. High glucose level is a dangerous condition that can lead to coma and death.
At the other extreme, if the diabetic gets a little more insulin than required, it doesn’t stop working, it still does its job and you go into insulin shock and can lose consciousness within a short time. This is less destructive than being too high but it has devastating long term consequences. And is deadly if you’re driving.
Keith, I don’t know all the answers. But the world is full of misinformation about diabetes. Shade of climate change, huh? And the world is full of health experts selling their own ideas about diabetes. I get News Max Magazine’s daily email newsletters because every now and then they report something I wouldn’t see anywhere else. The same for WorldNetDaily. But I wouldn’t take the slightest bit of medical information from them or their paid advertisers for anything. If their information about diabetes was good or their products actually worthwhile, every primary care physician and endocrinologist in the world would be selling it to their patients.
Diabetes is very serious stuff. When you’re diabetic the disease controls all the decisions you make from then on. You don’t eat, decide to go anywhere, decide when to go to bed or when to get up again and other things without considering your disease. You don’t even drive without considering it. It’s far too serious to be the subject of so much misunderstanding.
🙂
10
Hi Roy,
While I have commented as freely as I can on the aspects of Type 2 diabetes with which I am acquainted,
I want say that in terms of the other items you raised about diabetes and trauma and other genetic
issues relating to diabetes, I am totally ignorant and can’t comment.
The main thing that jumps out at me is that T2 seems to be predominantly related to excess glucose and too little exercise.
I would be interested to find out what happens when the reverse of the Dutch Winter Hunger situation occurs.
I think we have a bit of research to do here and hope that diabetes can be given a research boost because it is really needed.
KK 🙂
01
Hi again, Keith,
Excess glucose isn’t the problem. The problem is loss of ability to cope with glucose. You body should be able to cope with sugar as fast as you eat it. In the diabetic that ability is gone due to destruction of the cells that produce the glucose regulator, insulin. When a highly complicated finely tuned machine loses it’s ability to control a critical function, all hell breaks loose. Glucose is critical to everything — every cell depends on getting it metered out to it by a blood glucose level that stays within narrow bounds. Consider it the fuel pressure in your fuel injected engine. Too high or too low and the engine runs badly or not at all.
That’s the whole thing in a nutshell.
10
surprisingly “good” news at Point Carbon today!
Carbon may fall below 1 euro if vote blocks EU plan-IHS Global
LONDON, April 12 (Reuters) – European Union carbon permits could fall below 1 euros a tonne if the European Parliament votes against a Commission plan to remove some permits from the Emissions Trading System (ETS), analysts at IHS Global said…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.2273026?&ref=searchlist
German economy ministry still opposes EU carbon permit plans
BERLIN, April 12 (Reuters) – The German economy ministry said on Friday it continued to oppose withdrawing some CO2 emissions permits from the market to shore up the EU’s trading scheme after the country’s environment minister signed a joint letter with European colleagues supporting such a plan…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.2272408?&ref=searchlist
U.N. commissions study into launching CDM rescue fund
LONDON, April 12 (Reuters Point Carbon) – The United Nations main climate body has commissioned a study on how best to establish a fund to tap up sovereign wealth funds and prevent the world’s biggest market for carbon offsets – the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism – from collapsing…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2273150?&ref=searchlist
01
What? 34 odd posts and no one has made a Skynet joke yet?? 😛
00
The Met Bureau in the UK will be livid. They have been asking for a new computer for ages and they have not got it.
Suddenly you ask for one and it is there within the week.
Just shows how the big oil funding favours the sceptics to heavily whilst the poor old government agencies just don’t know where the next billion is coming from…
10
PS. Can you post a pic? I want to see how it compares with that tatty little thing the BoM have to get by with.
00
Keith, pop the link in a comment with the image button and if it doesn’t show, I’ll edit so it does. Jo
11
Jo, I think Keith may have been referring to your new baby that we’re all dying to see.
01
Uh… it’s just a computer.
It’s a small plain box with 3 lights and a DVD drive on the front.
Surely not very photogenic.
They just don’t make `em like they used to (thank heavens).
11
Keith L
“They don’t know where their next billion is coming from…”
I think they do, and so do you.
Us.
Cheers,
Speedy
10
Just a point of interest, SSD’s have a finite read/write cycle. They auto-trim, which means you don’t need to defrag (actually, you really don’t want to defrag, cause it shortens their life drastically). Find out who the manufacturer is of the SSD and download their toolkit so you can keep an eye on the life of the drive. If you also move the swap file (virtual memory) from the system partition or C:\ drive, to the SATA secondary drive, you’ll extend the life of the SSD. It may take a little performance hit, and it’ll nag you about crash dumps, but it’s a consumer level PC, not a server.
20
A friend was given a new puter with windows 8 – I soon found a free download that you install and it then looks just like windows 7.
BTW – one good thing out of microsoft is Windows Security Essentials – it’s microsoft’s own, free, virus checker. It runs quietly in the background, updates itself automatically – never had a problem with it, and it’s free.
20
Worth every cent then … 😉
00
My latest laptop WAS Windows 8 …. until I spilled coffee on it and killed it 🙁
I am overseas and can only get a hold of Spanish language machines. I was really impressed with how simple (and free!) it was to convert the Windows 8 machine over to English. Windows 7 was a big job.
00
What language keyboard does your Spanish machine have? Trying to use a French keyboard when you are a touch typist produces a very strange result.
00
It has a Spanish keyboard, however I am accustomed to it… not that much different to regular English.
00
Sorry you missed the opportunity to change over to Windows 8. With a new machine, and Windows 8 pre-loaded, the drivers would have been up to date.
One of the features of Windows 8 that I like is that I get a task bar at the bottom of both my monitors.
32
That’s why I switched to Linux 13 years ago. It takes me about about 30 minutes set up a fully functioning desktop computer with all the productivity and office software fully installed. No drivers to download. No antivirus to install. Automatic updates of all software and applications. Cost $zero. It also runs brilliantly on 5-10 year old hardware.
11
I have a ten year old box here that was pretty average in its time (ran Windows XP) that very happily runs Linux in its retirement. It uses so few resources that its amazing! Set up was a breeze… just installed, connected to the internet automatically without any bother and Bob’s your aunty.
30
If you keep OS and S/W on the SSD and data on the hdd, I’d get another HDD just for backups.
00
All that kerfuffle for just a failing hard drive eh ! A hard drive that was properly backed up too.
It has been a learning experience though. Lots of good and hard won PC advice aired & shared in the process.
21
Good grief Jo, get a Mac.
43
Thank you Jo for your great site and insights. The new baby monster will be needed to handle the exponential growth that is sure to happen here as more people begin waking up.
“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. – Winston Churchill
30
When the engineer referred to ‘Joanne’s two thirty inch screens’ – I had a mental picture quite unbecoming of a climate skeptic…
Its alright – I’ve taken the tablets now…
20
Roy Houge they do make electronics like that, its called Apple, my old iMac still runs as it did in the last decade when it was made, about when your Toyota was, wont run the new flashplayer but not through age rather processor make! Im looking to upgrade myself, to a used intel iMac! I dont understand why anyone still uses windows?? as the engineer said “an Apple like simplicity” I dont do unwarranted complications! In canada I can get a used 24 inch 3+ghz core duo imac with 4 g ram and 1 TB hd for $900 ! Any contributors here from big oil??
21
Perhaps I can help you to understand the why of Windows.
The most important reason is that roughly 90% of the workstation systems out there are Windows based. That means a lot of people know, understand, and support them with software, hardware, and the like. The hardware is cheap and multi sourced. Agreed, the software is a mixed bag but even the really good few percent is a huge amount of software.
Apple is totally and completely out of the question because you MUST do things the Apple way with Apple “approved” hardware. Objective C simply can’t do what I need to do the way I need to do it. The Apple approach simply will not support the kinds of things I must do. If you must develop specialized highly interactive software that interfaces to third party hardware as I do, your only choice is to use a Windows box.
Before the Linux crowd starts asking why not Linux. I would ask, have you ever tried to get a vendor to create a driver to his proprietary hardware for Linux? Do you really want to be responsible for creating and supporting drivers for tens of thousands of third party products? All based upon a platform that exists in countless of largely unsupported and unsupportable dialects? I thought not. Neither do I.
As bad as Microsoft and Windows is, they are vastly superior to any vendor and operating system I have worked with in my over four decades of software development. I have worked with more of them than I care to remember.
Now, if all you need to do is what Apple permits you to do, then by all means use Apple. However, no matter how good that may be, if it doesn’t do what you must do the way you must do it, you simply can’t use Apple.
You see, not everyone does only what you do the way you do it. Sometimes there are real and valid reasons for doing different things in a different way. You can even make a good living and create satisfied customers that way. THAT is what I have done starting before Apple, Unix, Linux, Microsoft, and the microcomputer chip even existed.
31
The whole case in a nutshell. You are up the creek if you need to do something the vendor didn’t anticipate. And whether it was intentional or just accidental doesn’t really matter, the PC anticipated a whole world that no one else even understands to this very day. And Microsoft, even with their problems and getting worse, lets you take advantage of that.
32
@Lionel:
A comment from someone who has absolutely no idea about Linux.
Linux runs on 73% of mission critical servers. Linux runs 76% of cloud-based servers.
80% of the world’s smartphones run on Linux (Android)
Linux is a Unix-like kernal – not an operating system. The userspace, desktop environment etc is interchangeable with several other unix-like operating systems such as BSD and HURD.
There are only two main variants of desktop Linux debian-based (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint) and RPM-based (Red Hat, SuSe). The only real difference is the packaging systems.
Any modern Linux distro has outstanding hardware driver support for the vast majority of devices. Many vendors eg nVidia and HP provide excellent native linux drivers for all their products.
The Linux community is happy to create free drivers for any hardware if the vendor is willing to share information.
11
Ahh the Linux devotee.. Sorry to burst your bubble mate but define mission critical.
I can tell you that the company I work for, plus every other I have worked for over the last 20 years has had on average maybe 1 or 2 Linux boxes (not counting vm hosts, but that’s changing to hyper v as well) in the enterprise. Most global companies outsource their web services. Behind their ingress point are thousands of win based servers. So I’ll see your web servers and raise them by a factor of 50-90, for enterprise. Our site alone runs more than 80 windows servers. And we’re just your average multinational mining company. This is one site, not a datacenter,nor a corporate office. The datacenter relies on win boxes for exchange gateways (something no other vendor can offer) SQL servers, terminal servers, application servers, file servers, intranet servers.. Why? Because it has full vendor support, is reliable, and knowledgeable support guys in house are dime a dozen.
I used to be a Linux fan right up until I had critical errors on a mission critical server. Recompiling kernels sucks, as someone mentioned before, driver support is rubbish. It’s false economics to use a free OS when the products you need to run your business aren’t ever going to get ported, and you can’t do a bare metal recovery in under 2 hours.
02
You have absolutely no understanding of what Mission Critical means – especially ones that are LIFE CRITICAL to both people and corporate entities dependent upon it. If the software cannot/will-not run, the people die and/or the corporate entity goes out of business. I have worked in that environment for most of my professional life.
To have to rely on a pack of amateur hackers working for free for such things is the same as playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun – not really a wise plan to say the least.
Oh, some of the hackers do a good job but, since their efforts are for free, what you see is what you get. The provider has ZERO liability or risk for errors of omission or commission and will most often deliver too little, too late, and of very low quality. Free is a much too high price to pay for such crap by many orders of magnitude!
It is hard enough to produce quality life critical software with highly paid highly competent people. To expect more from a random bunch of ragtag renegade hackers working for free is over the top absurd.
32
Amateurs? Working for free? That’s MS propaganda Male Bovine Excrement.
There are more Ph.D’s (ie, computer scientists) working on Linux than
there are working on Windows. The respective counts a few years ago were
42 and 0 (zero).
It’s probably why Linux is so virus resistant. Most Linux developers are
very highly paid, highly qualified programmers and researchers, working
for companies such as IBM, Redhat, Cisco, Boeing, and many more.
The
on OpenBSD do even better.
Have you heard of OpenBSD? No? Go see their website Their OS is the world’s most secure.
10
Software is like sex. Doing it for money doesn’t always make it better. Working for money is no great guarantee of quality. In the world of proprietary software you may run into
* software shipped out the door before it is ready in order to to meet the demands of marketing.
* software where the codebase is full of code which nobody understands because the guy who wrote it didn’t document it properly and was sacked in a corporate restructuring three years ago.
* software with serious flaws held together with crazy patches where everyone involved is just thankful that nobody outside the company will ever get to look at the source code and see how truly awful it is.
* crippleware which encrypts itself, wastes machine cycles repeatedly checking its own license and environment, and which disables itself every time it has trouble getting through to the license server.
* a binary compiled to work with 8 year old libraries which needs recompiling, but the company you bought it from wants you to buy the latest version at vast expense instead.
* software deliberately incompatible with standards with unnecessary patented and copyrighted features included purely in order to lock you in with legal threats and create perpetual dependence on one vendor.
* an essential piece of very useful and unusual software which your business absolutely depends on which is no longer being properly maintained because the company that wrote it went broke and disappeared.
At least with free software all the crazy corporate compromises and efforts to screw the customer and screw other corporates and hide the boils on the corporate butt are all gone. And the code can be freely inspected so you know what you are getting. Yes some free software is crap written by amateurs. But the kernel is in the other category.
———————————————
Windows free since 2007
00
bananabender,
Just a comment about all those devices running Linux and variations — they have the benefit of the manufacturer having taken control of the kernel code they adopt, rigorously testing it and taking responsibility to see that their products work.
The kind of work Lionell and I both do does not provide that kind of support unless we do it. We don’t want to do it. It’s just an extra millstone around our necks and we have enough of those already.
I don’t stay away from the open source free stuff for no reason. It provably has an additional burden and accompanying cost.
12
It is not just a millstone, it is an entire flour mill along with the water wheel, dam, and reserve water pond to maintain. It is easier to start from scratch and do it right.
22
Hi Jo,
I see that you are running on WordPress. Have you seen this?
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/huge-attack-on-wordpress-sites-could-spawn-never-before-seen-super-botnet/
Looks somewhat ominous!
Steve
11
After some experience in a world that is actually interested in security I can only say that real security is too much of a pain for most people to put up with. No matter how you form passwords, if someone can sit there and do an uninterrupted trial and error search for the one that works, then they will get in. The length and composition of the password can, at best, only slow down the search. It’s an improbable task with just one or a few computers. But with 90,000 of them each tackling a separate part of the possible password space and not encumbered by human keyboard speed…they’re in.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use good passwords. Long ones (30 – 40 characters) composed of arbitrary characters are the most secure. They are also the most impossible to use.
So what to do that no one wants to do?
1. Use 10 or 15 characters minimum, formed out of arbitrary pronounceable syllables, making them easier to remember. You can remember “oogmoffenskomp” easily but who would guess it? There are utilities (or were) that can generate such passwords for you. A Google search should locate them if there still are any. Change it frequently. Mix upper and lower case if you want or numerals and special characters. But remember that keeping it long, arbitrary and changing it often is the key to success.
2. The next trick is more to the point. When a wrong password user name pair is entered most systems will: either permit you to keep going indefinitely, and dutifully tell you each time you failed; or they will finally lock the account because of all the failures and tell you about it. They seldom ring an alarm that someone monitoring system integrity can see. The better practice is to stop accepting even the valid user name and password after a certain number of free misses (5 if you’re serious, 10 if you’re really clumsy), say nothing to the user except the same message as before and stay in this locked out state for a random length of time after the last attempt to get in, valid or not. The harder a password cracker works at this the more time it wastes because every new attempt resets the time delay. And did I mention sounding an alarm that someone will be paying attention to? Someone watching is the best security measure of all. And letting the bad guy stay in the dark lets you work on getting their location and identification while the trail is hot.
3. Realize that no matter what you do, someone could get in by dumb luck with as little as one try. This possibility tells me that even user names, especially Admin, so favored by so many, really ought to be changed to something arbitrary as well. Two locks are harder to crack than one.
10
I did a little searching for password generators.
Try this one for pronounceable passwords.
01
correct horse battery staple
00
Most entry is through software vulnerabilities than through password cracking,
particularly from creation of stack overflows. (see “Smashing the Stack for Fun
and Profit” somewhere on the Internet …)
32-bit hardware running 32-bit software is particularly vulnerable through the
stack-overflow exploit. 64-bit hardware with properly written 64-bit software
is much harder to infiltrate because the memory area containing the uploaded code
forming the stack or buffer overrun can be, and in a good system is, set to be
non-executable, so the hardware does not run the code. It can still crash the system
but that is preferable to having it high-jacked.
For this reason, 64-bit Unix-based systems (Linux systems are not alone) are much
more resilient than Windows NT systems have proven to be. Even Windows 7 is easily
hacked because Microsoft kept it strongly “backwards compatible” so it contains a
lot of 32-bit DLLs for that backwards compatibility, all of it prone to being hacked.
The attack profile is moving away from the buffer/stack overflow to web-based cross-site
scripting attacks using browsers as the main entrance to a system. Here, Internet
Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are the main targets and fare about the same. The problem
here is to seduce the user and that is unfortunately too easy.
If you want a really secure system, use OpenBSD. The group claims only two successful
exploits enabling unauthorised entry in over ten years. MS can’t beat that. But then
you should also restrict yourself to a text-mode or command-line interface and
not use a graphical web browser which can interpret programs but use something like lynx.
As an aside: the Internet runs on Unix, mostly Linux, some SunOs, some BSD. Without these
there would be no Internet, and if one could be cobbled together from Redmond’s product,
nor would it be anywhere nearly as reliable as it is. Google uses nothing but Linux.
Amazon too. It’s not just because it’s free.
00
Sophocles,
No argument from me. The discussion of passwords started from the link discussing large numbers of computers (90,000) attacking the well known administrative accounts of Word Press. A compromised password is very dangerous because it gives the attacker legitimate looking entry to very highly privileged accounts. So if you can get in that way you have virtually free reign to do as you want. And you look like the legitimate administrator so suspicion may not be raised for some time. In the meantime you’ve done your damage and are gone again.
00
Find an old copy of Windows XP and load it up. You will be a lot better off.
00
Charles,
Microsoft has been very good at preventing an older version of Windows from being installed over a newer one. I tried every trick I could. I even tried reformatting the system drive (C:) but nothing would do that either, not even a bootable format utility. The system drive is apparently sacred. I wrote off a laptop because it had Vista and I couldn’t get XP on it.
If you know how to do it I would definitely like to know.
Thanks
Roy
10
Hi,
There are a plethora of sites detailing a step by step approach to upgrade Vista to XP (here is one example ) Just enter “how do I upgrade/downgrade Vista to XP” in your Search box in the browser for more.
Reformatting you C: drive is one way but you will need an XP install disk that is bootable (not an upgrade disk) There are sitre that tell you how to create one of these and some even have downloadable versions.
11
James,
Thanks for the tip.
The laptop that I wrote off was eventually loaded up with windows 7 and now serves other purposes. I did have the full XP install disk since the machine had been upgraded to Vista. I was trying to get back to XP shortly after Vista was available. I’m no longer certain but the Vista installation probably was one of the last couple of beta releases. That’s how early in the game this was.
It’s unfortunate that you have to jump through hoops and over hurdles to undo your OS and get back to safety.
It’s interesting that PC Mag starts out assuming that the recovery console is automatically installed and available, since, in fact, it was not installed on any computer I’ve had anything to do with unless I made a point of finding the setup program and running it manually. On XP the recovery console does not get you drivers for SATA disks and you have to go looking for them and then get them installed correctly. The installer will run just fine but the console command interpreter will crash after booting up. For me the recovery console is not worthwhile enough that I would put up that fight.
I wonder if this same trick can be used to put XP or 7 back on top of 8.
00
My daughter went to University and we found that almost all of the work she had to do was to be submitted in .doc format. The University system wouldn’t accept anything in .docx format and wouldn’t even allow my daughter’s new laptop (with Win7) to log on.
I scrubbed the laptop HDD, installed Win XP SP2 with all up-dates downloaded, installed MS Office 2000 amongst other apparently archaic programs so that she could function in an equally archaic system!
It wasn’t her fault that a relatively new OS and related programs wouldn’t work, it was the fault of the University and we had to live with it.
She graduates in May!
40
Simple fix to this: select “save as” and select “word 2003 compatible .doc”
Or words to that effect.. Same for excel and PowerPoint.
10
Thank you, JoNova, for all your efforts to expose the roots of the corruption of government science that were first revealed in Climategate emails in Nov 2009.
Best wishes learning to make the new computer work for you, instead of you working for the computer !
– Oliver K. Manuel
30
LOL:
U.N. commissions study into launching CDM rescue fund
LONDON, April 12 (Reuters Point Carbon) – The United Nations main climate body has commissioned a study on how best to establish a fund to tap up sovereign wealth funds and prevent the world’s biggest market for carbon offsets – the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism – from collapsing…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2273150?&ref=searchlist
10
Instead of stealing outright they might get the job done by just putting all the UN documents behind a pay wall like POINT CARBON. That way those who really think the UN is worth something would be funding it and the rest of us would be out from under the stink of it soon because it would collapse for lack of sufficient interest.
I wish… 😉
20
So now that you are back up to speed, can you please start pushing for the release of CG3?
It has been weeks. The blogosphere deserves a real update and real data.
10
I’ll second that motion.
00
Seeing as that we’re discussing computers and all that, this popped into my inbox overnight:
What’s the Best Microsoft Office Alternative?
10
There you go, an example of difficulties with atlernates, the last post was done using Opera, which appears, from the result, to have a different interpretation of meta tags that instead of having Open Office as a single hyperlinked tag applied it to the whole paragraph. That would be a negative for Opera compared to Firefox.
00
Ah, Wordperfect; those were the days. I spent hours every week trying to convert Wordperfect documents to MS Word, because there were a lot of tables. MS word was hopeless for tables. Curiously Wordperfect converted MS Word documents very well.
When you have to waste an enormous amount of time just to conform to Microsoft’s direction, you rapidly loose any liking for their products. Don’t start me on the problems caused by dropping Excel files into Access!
I switched to Apple after Vista, and have never regretted it. Their software may look simple, and it is to use, but often have much greater capabilities lurking if you dig deeper.
Libre office is OK if you want that sort of thing.
00
You can’t be serious. Microsoft stuff is perfect and everyone knows it. 😉
00
Not as flash looking as MS Office but has the advantage of a wide range of inport/export filters, a good range of templates both open source and 3rd party and is part of the Open Source Community.
But as with any software, user needs are what should determine what you use and that can only be done by a clear & realistic analysis of what you need the package to do followed by extensive research on what package most fits your requirements.
00
I hope you don’t mind if I come in here and (again) change the subject.
This is just sickening.
Remember how I’ve been mentioning the UN’s CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) part of the original Kyoto Protocol. It’s where foreign companies can invest their money into Developing Countries to assist them in a number of ways. As part of that, those Companies are then eligible for CO2 Credits that they can then utilise to offset their emissions for their core operation in their Home Country.
Here we have a case in Uganda, and the following is just a short excerpt from the link below:
While this is disgraceful it is indicative of what this whole CAGW thing has become.
Developed World economies have gotten out of this type of Colonialism, because we are supposedly better than this, and they couldn’t afford the bad publicity when it was brought to notice.
Years ago people would have jumped on something similar to this just on the assertion that it might have happened.
Now, those same thinking people will scoff at this, say it didn’t happen, or call for proof first, or make excuses for it, because this is the result of something (CAGW) that they approve of.
See how opinions have changed.
The whole article is at this link:
Grotesque greedy Green land grabs
Tony.
41
Colonialism is alive and well in Africa – a set of countries whose borders and governments were created by the European imperialists to begin with.
Even now Australia has SAS soldiers and ASIS agents patrolling the towns and villages of sub-Saharan Africa ostensibly looking for Al Qaeda cells, but given the history of the last 24 years I think we know how that generally turns out. Look for a USA/UK/Aus coalition invading another African country within 5 years, anywhere with oil and uranium and probably Nigeria or Uganda. But I’m sure the people will greet us as their liberators, haha.
It’s all part of the new cold war with China, who’ve also been schmoozing every national government in Africa that they can.
Even if the terrorism cover story were true, it’s imperial condescension to treat these countries as incapable of policing their own turf. No sign of a “train the trainer” approach there, it’s imperialism all the way.
This new report from Uganda is not the first time I’ve heard of natives being driven off their land by international bankster mercenaries. Of course if nobody is allowed into this area it will make unsupervised random auditing of carbon uptake rather difficult won’t it? Hahaha, I am joking, auditing carbon sinks on the ground for their actual uptake was considered too difficult and error prone (according to David Evans) back in the early noughties and it sounds like verification has not improved since then.
Nobody is going to audit these sinks to see if they’re worth the paper they’re (not) printed on.
Carbon project registries can remove a project once it has been sold, but…
So there is not much to stop the offsets themselves being rorted by a “fractional reserve” style system where only a fraction of the carbon credits offered are actually backed by a unique carbon sink asset.
Rent the same tree 10 times per year to 10 different clients via 10 different shell companies registering 10 different project IDs and make sure nobody can prove you knew the duplication was happening. Since any potential regulator will be created by the same UN body that created (and benefits from) the trading system, just like with the deregulated financial system nobody is going to be asking too many tough questions. It’s easy money.
Charging money for an insignificant and uncontrollable natural process. A scheme to monetize land. Genius.
Oh for the days when “bank robbers” robbed banks.
31
I personally know people in the plateau states of Nigeria where Islamic violence has become endemic who would love to be invaded by the West.
11
Currency-wise they have been schmoozing a lot more than just Africa… us ferinstance.
00
Did you mean this story?
Now here is Australia dumping the USD as reserve currency for its transactions with China, and scarcely a peep out of Washington???
Presumably oil is the main attraction so any lesser commodity fleeing the greenback doesn’t earn admonition?
10
Did you really expect Obama to care? He’s all about screwing the dollar any way he can get away with it. 🙂
10
I didn’t say Obama, I said Washington, i.e. the long-lived bureaucrats, Treasury, departments, and economic inner circles of the federal government.
Obama is a teleprompter reader.
But yes, devaluing the dollar would appear to be their “SHTF Plan”.
00
Andrew,
Don’t underestimate Obama. If he cared then there would be action. He very carefully surrounds himself with like minded and very loyal stooges.
Just sayin! 🙂
00
And China probably smiled behind her back.
http://invisiblechildrensupporter.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/nato-turns-into-ioto-as-it-spread-to-the-east/
“India, which has served as chair of IOR-ARC since 2011, will turn over the chair to Australia in 2013. Under India’s chairmanship, the United States became a dialogue partner, and with close U.S. military ally Australia in charge from 2013-2015, IOC-ARC cooperation with NATO can be expected to grow even closer. The other IOR-ARC dialogue partner is China, and the politics behind America’s entry into Indian Ocean regional bloc politics can only be seen as a further attempt by Washington and its allies to resurrect the old George F. Kennan Cold War-era anti-Soviet «containment» policy and apply it to China.”
00
When you’re back to normal Jo, you may want to take a closer look at the goings on here: it’s really time they close the doors and start again.
10
Jo, this is deeply creepy – “climate change” to be a mandatory core topic in children’s education in the USA:
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/04/12/new-science-standards-have-americas-educational-publishers-turning-page/
Children will not be able to reason for themselves about such a multifactorial and complex subject from the principles of science they will have been taught by that age. They will simply be told what to think. This is Orwellian power politics, pure and simple.
40
Refusal by the British Met and Others on the AGW bandwagon, to answer questions in Parliament. Refusal to answer a question in the House of Commons is rather serious and not to be taken lightly.
40
I finally figured out that you meant the meteorological office, and hopefully they will get hauled over the coals for this. Here in Britain the default meaning of “the Met” is the Metropolitan Police force, ie those in London. In New York it means the opera.
20
Will be good to have you back. You are a valuable contributor to rationality in current affairs.
—-
Thanks 🙂 Jo
20
Rocky, it would be serious if the media was not so far left leaning. Or if subsequent conservative governments were expected to drag the biased before parliament for harsh judgement.
20
Jo,http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/is-the-uk-grid-approaching-instability/
O/T but might be up Tony of Oz’s alley
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/is-the-uk-grid-approaching-instability/
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TonyfromOz,
100 mbs on ADSL2+? Nonsense. The best the technology can deliver, under optimum conditions is 25 mbs, but that is uncommon. But for most purposes, including watching streaming video, in HD it is enough.
Joanne,
You should have got an Apple and run your legacy windows program’s using windows virtual machine under Parallels. I made that move years ago. Oh well, what is done is done.
00
Actually you probably could get 100 mbs on ADSL2+ by multiplexing multiple phone lines. It may not be as silly as it sounds since people are disconnecting their unused landlines as they go fully mobile. Especially with 4G being rolled out. So there could be free copper pairs available to do this for the 10-20% of people who seem to be prepared to pay for very fast home data rates.
And maybe there are ways to squeeze even more data down the copper pair.
One day my landline phone went out. It turned out to be a physical line break between the junction box and my house. But my broadband was still working!
I was told by the tech that the ADSL signal actually uses only one wire of the copper pair. The line break happened to be in the other wire.
So without knowing the detailed electronics required to carry the ADSL signal, perhaps a way could be found to use both wires of the pair to carry data. That would be a very cheap way to double the current rate.
20
Peter,
Maybe you might be correct about the actual speed of delivery of service.
However, when I asked if I could actually receive that 100Mbps speed connection here in Rockhampton, after having it at my former home on the Gold Coast, the man said yes immediately, and connected me while we were on the phone, and I have now had that speed connection for more than 5 years.
There is a point worth making here.
They can say that you have a 100Mbps speed, and they can charge you accordingly, and you may not receive that actual speed, but the same will apply if and when the new NBN comes in, when they can also say the same thing, and charge you accordingly.
Without actually having a speed checker installed, how would you ever know, with a 100% certainty.
All I can go on is what they told me, what they charge me for, and then what I can check for myself as the indicated speed of connection.
That is shown when you click on Settings, and then Control Panel, and then Network Connections and then Local Area Connection. When you do that the text box opens and shows you the Status of your Connection, and in that window the speed of your connection is indicated, in much the same manner as what is shown at the following image, which shows your comment with your question, a time clock and that Local Area Connection Status box. That box indicates the speed of my connection here, 100Mbps.
Again, I’m only going on what I have been told and what is being detected by my computer, but if it says 100Mbps, then I guess that’s what I (might) be getting.
Oh, and yes, so it can’t be thought that I might be trying to con you, I waited for the Duration to click over to the exact hour and then saved the image.
Link to Screen Image of Time and Speed
Tony.
00
There may even be some out there who scoff where I mentioned (above at Comment 27) that I am receiving this service for only $39.95, so just to show that I’m not actually being a little loose with the truth, here’s an image of my latest account, and for privacy purposes I have just deleted the part that gives my full email address.
Sometimes, loyalty has benefits, and people scoff at Telstra.
The Labor Monopoly NBN won’t give me the same service for the same price.
Image of Internet Account
Tony.
00
Hehehee. Ahh, well, there’s probably no way to let you down slowly, Tony.
Go to this site. http://www.ozspeedtest.com/bandwidth-test/
If you have a popup blocker in your browser you might need to allow this site a free pass.
Pick the test mirror for your ISP or an ISP nearest to you in your State.
Then click the 3MB or 9MB sized test and wait for the download test window to finish. It will report your measured effective line speed and download speed.
This will be a bit different every time you run it. Your line speed is the maximum “line speed” over two or three test runs.
The network settings window you’ve been getting your connection speed figure from is exactly what it says it is: your Local Area Connection. That’s what’s sensed by the computer’s network socket. That’s just on the cable between the back of your computer and the router/modem. The 100Mbps goes no further than that – not even as far as your wall socket.
10
Andrew,
oh yes, I totally agree with that. I know that there’s no way known I’m getting that 100Mbps, but my point here is that the 100Mbps is what has been offered, what they say I am getting, and what I am paying for.
NBN are saying the exact same thing. They say they will give you speeds of 100Mbps.
Surely the same will apply when the NBN comes in. They will say yes, I will pay for it, and when I open that same box, it will indicate the same thing.
THAT is the point I am attempting to make here.
Tony.
00
Tony I think the NBN people are saying “up to 100Mbps.”
00
Hi Tony,
I think you misunderstood Andrew’s point. The theoretical max speed for ADSL2+ is 24Mbps (currently, ignoring VHDSL which can do 52-85Mbps depending on the cable used). You are not being offered 100Mbps by Telstra in you are on ADSL2+, so if they told you this they were wrong. Your network connection is showing the speed between your Network Interface Card (NIC) in your computer and your router.
This speed would remain the same even without an internet connection, or even if you had the NBN. On my PC this screen shows 1Gbps because I have an NIC and a router that support Gigabit speeds on my home network. This doesn’t impact my internet speed though as the bottleneck for this is the copper line which is what limits my speed.
The point that you are trying to make about the theoretical maximum and the actual speed achieved is accurate, but any fibre option is likely to reduce this number considerably, the gold-plated Labour NBN more-so than the sensible Liberal NBN.
Hope that clarifies things a bit.
10
Thanks Naed,
I basically knew that, and I understand I’m labouring the point here, but the average person in the street will look at what they are being told about this NBN and say, “Wow, 100Mbps. I’ll have to get that,” basing their decision on a political point of view they follow.
They’ll just sign up to it, (well most aren’t) and they’ll only be getting something that is already basically available, if you can see my point here.
Tony.
10
Okay, I see your point, but it needs some caveats.
You can get a 100Mbps *line speed* to your wall socket with Fiber-To-The-Home. There’s 310,000 households in Slovakia that have a 100Mbps line to their wall plug.
Compare the average speed tests from Australia and Slovakia and you’ll find the Slovaks are overall getting a quicker deal.
But I think (and hope) what you’re saying is that in practice a download won’t actually use the whole line speed because there is always some other node further “upstream” that is the bottleneck in that data flow.
You would just have to read through the Whirlpool.net.au forums and see what download speeds people actually get on the NBN.
You say “they’ll only be getting something [on the NBN] that is already basically available”. But… One recent reply says he gets a 9.4MB/s (75Mbps) actual download speed from iTunes. As more and more get connected in the suburbs the backbone links will get more congested so this speed may not last forever.
Another reply said he got upwards of 3MB/s (24Mbps) actual download speed even from a USA-based web site. Considering 24Mbps is the maximum laboratory line speed of ADSL, that proves you can get actual download speeds via the NBN that are physically not possible with ADSL over 1km of copper.
Whether that is worth the price of an NBN connection is another story entirely.
20
Jo,
I tried to ask this up thread, but don’t find the question.
Seeing that it has been more than a few weeks since the Climategate 3 release of passwords, is it unreasonable for skeptics to be wondering why there have been no substantive updates or even partial releases of data?
I would be interested in knowing your take on this and what interested observers might expect in the next week, weeks, months, etc.?
Congratulations on acquiring a new computer. I am pleased to have played my small part in that. I look forward to reading your response on this issue.
Respectfully,
21
Big conrats to Aussie golfer Adam Scott.
10
I think there is a new Hockey Stick in the making … witness today’s (The West) story about Antarctic ice melt being the fastest in 1,000 years:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/16729019/antarctic-ice-melt-quickening/
Lead author is Eric Steig. If that name sounds familiar, it should … he is one of the main participants on RC:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/eric-steig/
00
You forgot to mention the most innovative and trendy feature of your new machine. It is powered by biofuels!
…
It runs on chocolate!
30
“The new computer is an i7 with a 240 GB SSD (Intel 520 series), a 1TB HDD, and a video card big enough to run Joanne’s two 30 inch screens.”
Total overkill!
IIRC, Einstein put it best:-
“No amount of tetra-valent, quad-cored, Silicon can ever prove me right; a single ZX81 (with 16K RamPack + elastic band) can prove me wrong!”
And proving that those silly-consensualists have been, and are still, barking up the wrong tree (singular) is something our hostess excels at!
If you’d asked me Joanne, I could have given you (for a mere £200 Scottish) a sufficiency of computing power (with an acoustic coupler thrown in for free) that would enable you to continue eviscerating the madness that has seemingly overtaken major portions of the environmental movement!
10
Anyone who isn’t using their home computer for playing the latest 3D action games or running distributed parallel protein folding simulations for disease research is not using more than 0.001% of their computer.
We have a glut of computer power available. Nearly every home PC is total overkill for its actual usage. But the power has to be available to cope with peak demand for short periods, which is only going to happen in action games or possibly in million-row spreadsheets.
Having two 30″ screens seems like overkill though for some jobs it is fast becoming the norm, such as on a trader’s desk or for software development, where you want to see a lot of contextual information for what you’re working on.
As for the acoustic coupler, well by my calculations it would take 25 minutes to download the ~230KB of this web page with all graphics over a 1200 baud acoustic modem, not that this really matters as I reckon you’re just bragging about your beloved museum piece that you wouldn’t part with even if Jo could use it. 😉
And yes, Windows XP will boot on an 8Mhz 20MB RAM system, but it takes 30 minutes and then uses 100% CPU power when “idle” so it is totally useless.
00
tuned into the final hour of the following last nite & couldn’t believe the nonstop attacks on tony abbott. the program can be listened to in segments, so the final hour is available on its own if u want to hear it. callers would start attacking abbott the minute they called in, and those in the studio would interject the idea abbott was a mysoginist & try to get the caller to agree and so on. there is no way this program should be on taxpayer-funded media:
14 April: ABC “Sunday Nights with John Cleary: The Issue: Christians in Politics
http://www.abc.net.au/sundaynights/stories/s3736706.htm
however, what got me going was Cleary or someone else in the studio saying two things came out of last week’s news – the coalition would have an NBN and an ETS. i must have missed the ETS debate/announcement, if, indeed, there was one. Ewa at Bloomberg seems to think cap & trade is finding “favor” in australia! hellooo. does anyone know of any Coalition statement on an ETS last week?
15 April: Bloomberg: Ewa Krukowska: Europe Braces for Verdict on Climate Chief’s Carbon Plan
The European Union’s 54 billion- euro ($71 billion) cap-and-trade system may be undermined if the bloc’s Parliament votes against Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard’s temporary rescue plan tomorrow…
The ETS is the bloc’s main tool in meeting greenhouse gas- reduction targets, which it does by issuing companies with tradable permits that they must surrender to cover their emissions or pay a fine.
***While cap-and-trade programs are gaining favor in countries including Australia and South Korea, U.S. legislation for a market stalled in 2009 even with support from President Barack Obama…
Poland’s Environment Minister Marcin Korolec disagrees with his counterparts in countries including Germany and the U.K. who say eight years of climate action will be lost without backloading.
“What creates a serious threat for the existence of our most cost-efficient climate-policy instrument is precisely undermining its market character by political intervention through backloading,” Korolec said by e-mail…
(Pat: OF COURSE, THE BANKERS LIKE A HIGH PRICE!)
The controversy over the carbon market rescue plan highlights the underlying problem of the EU emissions system, which is the lack of flexibility and the complexity of the decision-making process in the 27-nation bloc, according to Paolo Coghe, an analyst at Societe Generale SA in Paris.
Europe’s pollution-reduction cap for 2013-2020 was set before the economic crisis and stepping it up would require a legislative process that usually takes at least two years. Its carbon market doesn’t have a price floor or ceiling.
“It’s not about the price just being set at 5 euros or 50 euros,” Coghe said. “It’s obvious that if the price is 50 euros people will think twice before they burn coal instead of gas and this will provide the drive to achieve long-term policy objectives.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-14/europe-braces-for-verdict-on-climate-chief-s-carbon-plan.html
00
14 April: Bloomberg: Sally Bakewell: Clean Energy Investment Falls 22% as Subsidy Cuts Stall Projects
Clean energy investment slid 22 percent to its lowest level in four years as nations pared subsidies for technologies from wind turbines to solar power and financing in China and Brazil stalled.
The $40.6 billion invested in the industry in the first three months of this year was lower than any quarter since 2009 and compares with $52 billion in the same period last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
“The last 18 months have seen a number of significant support programs launched in the aftermath of the financial crisis come to an end,” said Michael Liebreich, chief executive officer of the London-based research company.
The decline indicates the pressure on wind and solar power manufacturers from Yingli Green Energy Holding (YGE) Co. Ltd. to Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS), which are suffering from a plunge in prices due to increased competition and excess production capacity. Photovoltaic modules in March were 81 percent below the 2008 levels.
Investment in renewables, energy efficiency and energy- smart technologies fell 54 percent in the U.S. to $4.5 billion and by 15 percent in China to $8.8 billion in China. Europe saw a 25 percent drop to $13.4 billion with investment in Spain alone falling 96 percent compared to last year…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-14/clean-energy-investment-falls-22-as-subsidy-cuts-stall-projects.html
according to the above, China is down by 15%, yet:
28 March: Xinhuanet China: Where China leads, we will follow: Australian Climate Minister
Australia’s climate change minister Greg Combet has described China’s climate change action as a model for other nations to follow and condemned western media for its failure to highlight China’s leadership in positive climate action, at a key Ministerial Dialogue in Sydney.
In a keynote speech delivered to experts from both countries at the Australia China Climate Change Forum at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Combet said China is moving towards a low- carbon path at an ‘astonishing’ pace.
“In 2005, China had next to no renewable industry. It now leads the world in wind, solar and hydro power. China is the world leader when it comes to renewable energy investment…
A world leader in renewables investment, China plans to increase its renewable energy power capacity by 167GW by 2015, an overall increase of 68 per cent from 2010.
Estimates place the commitment at almost 2 trillion RMB…
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2013-03/28/c_132269245.htm
00
Once all those programs are installed and setup just like you want them why don’t you create a system image to put on your backup drive. If you need to reinstall or your SSD dies then you can get back up and running a lot faster. A couple of free options are:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/
http://clonezilla.org/
I’m not affiliated with either.
Cheers
10
We had hoped to contribute towards the chocolate fund but our A/C won’t cooperate for some reason. Will keep trying as we really appreciate what you do.
Best wishes from a Chocoholic!
00
Small choc. purchase seems to have been accomplished…A$10. I wish we could buy A$10,000 worth of choccy but not possible at present.
20