On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 11:26:24 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 02/01/2025 20:04, rbowman wrote:
>> What isn't 'woke' these days? The language is over the top but does the
>> end result really differ from civilized behavior in the workplace?
>
> Yes. Absolutely it does.
>
> Civilised behaviour is a culture of tolerance. Woke is a culture of
> vicious intolerance towards anyone who challenges a narrow definition of
> a modern Puritanism.
>
> Civilised behaviour doesn't get you fired. Civilised behaviour doesn't
> get you blacklisted.
>
> Woke is part of the reason Trump will be president. People don't like
> being told what to think. This isn't Putin's Russia.

I understand your point but I've self-censored myself for a very long
time. My unfiltered thoughts probably would get me fired or blacklisted.

What does bother me about woke is, while I wouldn't refer to someone as a
fat, black, lesbian asshole in most conversations, not the fat, black,
lesbian asshole wants a pat on the head.

I think some of it is épater le bourgeois but I'm from the wrong
generation to be shocked by a pierced, rainbow-haired blob. I do regret
that they have achieved any political power.

I don't like musicals but I'm reminded of 'Cabaret' and what happened when
the music stopped at the Kit Kat Klub.

On 2025-01-03 11:43, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 03/01/2025 16:31, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
>>
>>> On 03/01/2025 13:32, -hh wrote:
>>>> Sea levels have already risen by 4 inches since 1993, and hard science
>>>> has found the primary energy imbalance reason why:  its anthropometric.
>>>
>>> Sea level rise has been 3mm/yr for the last 4000 years. Nothing has
>>> changed
>>
>> This source disagrees:
>>
>>      https://ocean.si.edu/through-time/ancient-seas/sea-level-rise
>>
>> Also, sea level is *not* the same all over the world. The article
>> mentions that
>> as well.
>>
>> It's an interesting read.
>>
> Well I will merely quote from the Wiki:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level
>
> "Sea level has changed over geologic time. As the graph shows, sea level
> today is very near the *lowest level ever attained*  (the lowest level
> occurred at the Permian-Triassic boundary about 250 million years ago)."
>
> "Recently, it has become widely accepted that late Holocene, 3,000
> calendar years ago to present, sea level was nearly stable prior to an
> acceleration of rate of rise that is variously dated between 1850 and
> 1900 AD."
>
> *Long before any CO2 excess was present*.

Regardless of the facts, we must throw money at the sky until all of it
stops!

--
Andrzej (Andre) Matuch
Telegram: @AndrzejMatuch
Zephyrus G14 GA401QM on Fedora 41
KDE supporting member

"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>On 2025-01-03 12:16, D wrote:
>> On Thu, 2 Jan 2025, rbowman wrote:
>>> On Thu, 2 Jan 2025 08:36:41 -0500, Andrzej Matuch wrote:
>>>
>>>> I find GNOME rather clunky whereas KDE, at least on Fedora and Nobara,
>>>> is perfect out of the box. I imagine that a lot of people who try out
>>>> Linux and face GNOME are going to wonder how to do the basics, and they
>>>> will likely find that the way extensions work is rather clunky,
>>>> especially during upgrades. Meanwhile, KDE is very familiar and offers a
>>>> ton of features they could only dream of in Windows like the desktop
>>>> effects, theming options and widgets. Unlike Cinnamon too, the widgets
>>>> in KDE actually work as they should.
>>>
>>> The Ubuntu box has GNOME. I live with it but I'm not a fan. I'd rather
>>> have a menu structure rather than the 'Show Applications' button that
>>> brings up three or four screens of unsorted stuff.
>>
>> I've been running XFCE for at least a decade and I for me it is a nice
>> sweet spot of a more comprehensive desktop environment that is also
>> fairly light on resources.
>>
>> I do not use the menu system, but only a keyboard launcher instead.
>
>I switched to XFCE when Gnome went into version 3. Not sure it is 3, but
>when they changed the paradigm and killed the menu.

Xfce is a slammin' DE.

--
Joel W. Crump

Amendment XIV
Section 1.

[...] No state shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.

Dobbs rewrites this, it is invalid precedent. States are
liable for denying needed abortions, e.g. TX.

On 2025-01-03 15:16, chrisv wrote:
> -highhorse wrote:
>
>> Its a tool like anything else, so use the right tool for the job.
>>
>> Advocates in COLA have historically fight against the wisdom of
>> understanding that everything has its own strengths & weaknesses,
>> swimming against uses where other solutions are better.
>
> Of course, -highhorse is lying. He's a trolling asshole who gets-off
> on attacking decent, reasonable people. His solutions are better, by
> gum, and he'll ridicule anyone who thinks otherwise.
>
> According to the -highhorse troll, "Linux is what sloppy cheapskates
> who cut corners prefer to use, rather than a quality product."

I am tempted to agree with this assessment.

--
Andrzej (Andre) Matuch
Telegram: @AndrzejMatuch
Zephyrus G14 GA401QM on Fedora 41
KDE supporting member

On 2025-01-03 15:49, rbowman wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 08:41:35 -0500, Andrzej Matuch wrote:
>
>> I had a similar experience a week or so ago. I was sitting in a
>> supermarket parking lot in my new QX60 when the daughter of the guy who
>> parked to the left of me decided to open her car door wide and smack my
>> vehicle.
>
> That's something I have to watch very carefully. I've got a 2 door
> hatchback and the doors are wide enough to allow a hypothetical person to
> get in the back seat. I folded the back seats forward the day I took
> delivery of the car so that's a moot point but sometimes to avoid contact
> I have to slither out through a partially open door. When they layout
> parking lots for maximum volume they ignore about 50% of the vehicles will
> be oversized pickups that really makes the situation worse.

I always try to be considerate of the people who parked next to me but
there is a serious problem with people not returning the favour here in
Quebec. The Laurentian area where this incident happened already has a
reputation for such things. However, the least considerate thing I've
ever had happen to me was when I parked my old car close to a metro a
few years ago. For whatever reason, a person decided to park his car an
inch or two away from the driver side door, preventing me from getting
in my car. I'm sure he thought it was hilarious, but so did I when I
keyed the heck out of his car on both sides.

--
Andrzej (Andre) Matuch
Telegram: @AndrzejMatuch
Zephyrus G14 GA401QM on Fedora 41
KDE supporting member

John Ames wrote:

> D wrote:
>>
>> OpenAI are good at marketing. They will probably crash the second
>> their models do no longer improve.
>
>Sooner than that, possibly. They're absolutely *hemorrhaging* money,
>every iteration of the product takes longer and costs more to develop/
>"train,"

And, just when conserving energy and water or near the top of
society's concerns, the "data centers" use massive amounts of both.

On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 12:15:18 +0100, D wrote:

> I think this was common knowledge, but maybe this serves to prove it
> more fully? I always wonder how much DNA I have from eastern europe
> since my ancestors travelled east down to turkey. On the other hand, on
> my mothers side, my ancestors fled norway to iceland, and those guys
> were travelling more in southwestern europe. Could probably be some DNA
> from there as well.

I take much of it with a grain of salt but DNA has changed the game. I
thumbed through Mallory's 'In Search of the Indo-Europeans' last night.
It's from 1989 so he was examining linguistic and archaeological evidence
with the classic Cordedware, Funnel Beaker, Battle-Axe divisions based on
artifacts. In an amusing summary, after describing problems with the
theories of the day he admits he doesn't really have anything better to
offer.

Skeletal remains with usable DNA can help sort it out or modern
distributions. For example Jordanes' claim that the Goths originated in
Scandinavia was written off with many of his other inaccuracies. However
if you draw a heat map of the I-M253 Y haplogroup the epicenter is Västra
Götaland County, with over 50% of the males carrying it and spreads from
there. I1 hit some sort of bottleneck but then took off during the Nordic
Bronze Age. That puts a twist on the older theories Mallory looked at. The
DNA evidence is running against Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis while
supporting Gimbutas Pontic hypothesis as far as Indo-Europeans go but
that's mainly R1b and some R1a and not I.

Gimbutas also had the theory that Neolithic Europe was a peaceful
matriarchal paradise worshiping goddesses before those damn Indo-European
males showed up.

Then you have the Migration Period to really mix things up.

On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 12:30:44 +0100, D wrote:

> Reminds me of old Saabs. Those had what you could call a bumper!

What era? The only Saab I drove was a girlfriend's. It was a 92 or maybe a
93, I forget which. It did have a bumper of sorts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagmar_bumper

Those were bumpers!

Trivia: The Dagmar the bumpers were named after was an actress's stage
name that went back to a TV show we alwayes watched, 'Mama', aobut an
extended Norwegian family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_(American_TV_series)

On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 11:43:48 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:

> What if you are new and don't know the name of the applications?

What if you're old and don't remember the name of the application? What
was that remote desktop thingie again?

On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 11:32:57 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:

> I have a friend that got a new, very well paying, job at some job with
> IBM hardware and doing new things with it (including buying more
> hardware). Financial or bank sector.
>
> They need hardware that is immensely capable and runs full time in some
> sectors.

Interesting, because there is a document about timekeeping on IBM
mainframes that I got from Bitsavers, dated about 1986, which recommends
rebooting if you want to turn daylight saving on or off.

On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 11:52:55 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Linux is good all by itself. Doesn't need advocacy.

That’s a naïve attitude, let’s face it.

The proprietary companies can afford multi-million-dollar advertising
campaigns to tell everyone how wonderful they are. No Open Source project
can compete with that.

All we have is word of mouth, from actual customers using the product in
real-world applications. You’d think that would count for more, but it
doesn’t.

On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 12:19:27 +0100, D wrote:

> Interesting! Clearly I live in a corner of the IT space that is way, way
> too fashionable. I am of course aware of postgres, but have not
> encountered it for many years.

It's come a long way and is also popular in the cloud. Do you want to pay
for SQL Server, DB2, or Oracle when there is a very capable free database?
If you don't want to get your hands dirty Amazon will do the heavy lifting
for a small hourly fee.

https://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/

On Fri, 3 Jan 2025, chrisv wrote:

> John Ames wrote:
>
>> D wrote:
>>>
>>> OpenAI are good at marketing. They will probably crash the second
>>> their models do no longer improve.
>>
>> Sooner than that, possibly. They're absolutely *hemorrhaging* money,
>> every iteration of the product takes longer and costs more to develop/
>> "train,"
>
> And, just when conserving energy and water or near the top of
> society's concerns, the "data centers" use massive amounts of both.

I am surprised that eco-fascists are not protesting against the big IT
corporations. But most likely that would not result in higher taxes and
more power to socialist politicians, so that is probably why they are
ignored.

I would think that eco-fascists would also demonstrate against
crypto-mining, but no, airplanes, who release ridiculously small amounts
of CO2, that's apparently the problem.

On Sat, 3 Jan 2025, rbowman wrote:

> On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 12:30:44 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Reminds me of old Saabs. Those had what you could call a bumper!
>
> What era? The only Saab I drove was a girlfriend's. It was a 92 or maybe a
> 93, I forget which. It did have a bumper of sorts.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagmar_bumper
>
> Those were bumpers!
>
> Trivia: The Dagmar the bumpers were named after was an actress's stage
> name that went back to a TV show we alwayes watched, 'Mama', aobut an
> extended Norwegian family.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_(American_TV_series)

This is a beautiful bumper:

https://www.startpage.com/av/proxy-image?piurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fe%2Fe5%2FSaab_900_GLE_%282%29_%28crop%29.jpg&sp=1735951735T1b8aa114fd353d88b4d34fd3554f5b9455c5317dadea52d972489e1e4be614a0
..

I think there's a sabb with an even wider one, but cannot find it. I saw
it in a garage many decades ago.

On Sat, 3 Jan 2025, rbowman wrote:

> On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 12:19:27 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Interesting! Clearly I live in a corner of the IT space that is way, way
>> too fashionable. I am of course aware of postgres, but have not
>> encountered it for many years.
>
> It's come a long way and is also popular in the cloud. Do you want to pay
> for SQL Server, DB2, or Oracle when there is a very capable free database?
> If you don't want to get your hands dirty Amazon will do the heavy lifting
> for a small hourly fee.
>
> https://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/
>

I think all the ones that use traditional databases I encountered are
using either mysql, mariadb or sql server for linux which I think was free
for a while. Sql server for linux was a joke. The company was offered help
to migrate to mysql or mariadb, refused, since they were microsoft
loyalists, and continued to live with downtime every month, rather than
switching.

On 2025-01-03 17:47, chrisv wrote:
> John Ames wrote:
>
>> D wrote:
>>>
>>> OpenAI are good at marketing. They will probably crash the second
>>> their models do no longer improve.
>>
>> Sooner than that, possibly. They're absolutely *hemorrhaging* money,
>> every iteration of the product takes longer and costs more to develop/
>> "train,"
>
> And, just when conserving energy and water or near the top of
> society's concerns, the "data centers" use massive amounts of both.

Conserving energy and water is only important to those of us who aren't
tasked with spying on everyone.

--
Andrzej (Andre) Matuch
Telegram: @AndrzejMatuch
Zephyrus G14 GA401QM on Fedora 41
KDE supporting member

On 2025-01-03 19:06, D wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 3 Jan 2025, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> On 02/01/2025 20:04, rbowman wrote:
>>> What isn't 'woke' these days? The language is over the top but does the
>>> end result really differ from civilized behavior in the workplace?
>>
>> Yes. Absolutely it does.
>>
>> Civilised behaviour is a culture of tolerance. Woke is a culture of
>> vicious intolerance towards anyone who challenges a narrow definition
>> of a modern Puritanism.
>>
>> Civilised behaviour doesn't get you fired. Civilised behaviour doesn't
>> get you blacklisted.
>>
>> Woke is part of the reason Trump will be president. People don't like
>> being told what to think. This isn't Putin's Russia.
>
> This is the truth. What we are seeing is a big reaction against the mind
> virus. In europe, a big part of the reaction is against immigration and
> eco-fascism.

You probably wouldn't have so much immigration in Europe if the people
in charge in the United States weren't so determined to start wars
everywhere.

--
Andrzej (Andre) Matuch
Telegram: @AndrzejMatuch
Zephyrus G14 GA401QM on Fedora 41
KDE supporting member

On 03/01/2025 18:37, -hh wrote:
> On 1/3/25 11:43 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 03/01/2025 16:31, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
>>> The Natural Philosopher wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
>>>
>>>> On 03/01/2025 13:32, -hh wrote:
>>>>> Sea levels have already risen by 4 inches since 1993, and hard science
>>>>> has found the primary energy imbalance reason why:  its
>>>>> anthropometric.
>>>>
>>>> Sea level rise has been 3mm/yr for the last 4000 years. Nothing has
>>>> changed
>>>
>>> This source disagrees:
>>>
>>>      https://ocean.si.edu/through-time/ancient-seas/sea-level-rise
>>>
>>> Also, sea level is *not* the same all over the world. The article
>>> mentions that
>>> as well.
>>>
>>> It's an interesting read.
>>
>> Well I will merely quote from the Wiki:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level
>>
>> "Sea level has changed over geologic time. As the graph shows, sea
>> level today is very near the *lowest level ever attained*  (the lowest
>> level occurred at the Permian-Triassic boundary about 250 million
>> years ago)."
>>
>> "Recently, it has become widely accepted that late Holocene, 3,000
>> calendar years ago to present, sea level was nearly stable prior to an
>> acceleration of rate of rise that is variously dated between 1850 and
>> 1900 AD."
>>
>> *Long before any CO2 excess was present*.
>
> Yes, the rate of raise was nearly stable **before** the Industrial Age.
>
> Which is the point:  the contemporary acceleration in the rate of rise
> is a change, and it is coincident with the advent of the Industrial Age.
>
But LONG before any distinctive rise in CO2, which really dint start
until post WWII

So no correlation with CO2 at all.
Try not to be a climate denier

--
Truth welcomes investigation because truth knows investigation will lead
to converts. It is deception that uses all the other techniques.

On 04/01/2025 00:38, D wrote:
> You should be happy that you (most likely) have never tried to park in a
> european garage located in the old parts of town.

My current car is simply too wide to fit my current garage

--
How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.

Adolf Hitler

On 04/01/2025 00:43, D wrote:
> Negro has also become a symbol word.

You have to be really uneducated and thick not to know it simply means
'black'.

--
How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.

Adolf Hitler

On 04/01/2025 00:47, D wrote:
> I would think that eco-fascists would also demonstrate against
> crypto-mining, but no, airplanes, who release ridiculously small amounts
> of CO2, that's apparently the problem.

The moment you realise that the green movement is not rational, but
emotional, you realise it can have no real substance, or they wouldn't
have to use emotional arguments.

--
How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.

Adolf Hitler

On 04/01/2025 01:27, Andrzej Matuch wrote:
> Conserving energy and water is only important to those of us who aren't
> tasked with spying on everyone.

Conserving energy and water is only important to those of us who haven't
got enough.

--
"It is an established fact to 97% confidence limits that left wing
conspirators see right wing conspiracies everywhere"

On 04/01/2025 01:36, Andrzej Matuch wrote:
> You probably wouldn't have so much immigration in Europe if the people
> in charge in the United States weren't so determined to start wars
> everywhere.

Actually, its mainly Russia and Iran behind it all these days

--
"It is an established fact to 97% confidence limits that left wing
conspirators see right wing conspiracies everywhere"

On 2025-01-03 21:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 04/01/2025 01:27, Andrzej Matuch wrote:
>> Conserving energy and water is only important to those of us who
>> aren't tasked with spying on everyone.
>
> Conserving energy and water is only important to those of us who haven't
> got enough.

My comment was sarcastic. Clearly, conserving energy and water are
important, but the state turns a blind eye to corporations like
Microsoft and Google who offer cloud services that also monitor the
activities of those who subscribe.

--
Andrzej (Andre) Matuch
Telegram: @AndrzejMatuch
Zephyrus G14 GA401QM on Fedora 41
KDE supporting member

On 1/3/25 3:34 AM, rbowman wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 00:49:59 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> Find an old International Harvester truck ... SOLID steel all
>> through. Parts may be tricky though ...
>
> My '86 F-150 is reasonably solid. I was sitting in it reading in a parking
> lot when a woman trying to park backed into it. I didn't even bother to
> get out to see if she'd done any damage. That was the front bumper. If
> she'd backed into the step,n,tow bumper on the rear her problems might
> have been greater.

I knew a guy who made bumpers out of two large
wooden utility poles he'd cut to size and shape.
Older Chevy 3500 series. Looked 'rugged', kinda
'back-country'. Damned things were a good 8" thick
and about 12" tall. No little old lady was gonna
so much as dent them in a parking-lot oopsie.

There was one local outfit that had a mid 50s
IH truck, converted kinda as a tow. The gearing
was low, lower and REALLY low. SAW it split a
large tractor in half once trying to pull it
out of a canal. Real "American Iron".

Hmmmm ... older vehicles and parts ... it comes
to mind that NOW a lot of those parts might be
re-created on demand using 3-D metal printing
with just minimal finishing after. Could make a
biz out of that .... how much would someone with
a nice '33 Packard pay for a new piston or ring
set or bearing ??? Just need the orig specs.