On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 17:32:02 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> No problem, the politicians have the answer: immigration.

In countries where the native birth rate is below replacement level, the
choice is either between encouraging immigration, or suffering the greying
of your entire populace.

On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 22:13:52 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> You can read anything you like. You can never be sure that the
> digital bits your CPU sees bear any relation to the raw random data
> your sensor was picking up.

In fact, you can never be truly certain of anything at all! Is all that
we see or seem/but a dream within a dream?

On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 15:39:58 -0700, John Ames wrote:

> In fact, you can never be truly certain of anything at all!

Can you be certain of that?

On 25/10/2024 23:09, bad sector wrote:
> On 10/25/24 17:47, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 25/10/2024 22:33, bad sector wrote:
>> records don't go back to Adam and
>>> Eve and when justice is thus structurally impossible but injustice is
>>> virtually guaranteed it's all non-avenue. There has to be
>>> negotiation, war unfortunately being the last and loudest form of which.
>>>
>> This is why it is far better to simply kill all the menfolk and use
>> the women folk for sex slaves.
>>
>> No one is left to pay reparations to...
>
> Only one snag, they like hebrews and a few others trace descendence
> through the mother.

A clear case of making the women adopt a culture that doesn't

> That said, there is much we could/should have
> learned from them: "Taking only what you need on your journey, otherwise
> leave the land as you had found it". Haitians have clear-cut the
> mountains and the rains have washed all the soil off them. No tree will
> EVER grow there again.

Well that of course is plan juvenile.
We did that years ago in Britain to build ships with.
The trees however are recovering pretty well

--
"The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll
look exactly the same afterwards."

Billy Connolly

On 25/10/2024 23:39, John Ames wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 22:13:52 -0000 (UTC)
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> You can read anything you like. You can never be sure that the
>> digital bits your CPU sees bear any relation to the raw random data
>> your sensor was picking up.
>
> In fact, you can never be truly certain of anything at all! Is all that
> we see or seem/but a dream within a dream?
>
Indeed.
Welcome to the problems of metaphysics

--
"The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll
look exactly the same afterwards."

Billy Connolly

On 10/25/24 20:07, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 25/10/2024 23:09, bad sector wrote:
>> On 10/25/24 17:47, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>> On 25/10/2024 22:33, bad sector wrote:
>>> records don't go back to Adam and
>>>> Eve and when justice is thus structurally impossible but injustice
>>>> is virtually guaranteed it's all non-avenue. There has to be
>>>> negotiation, war unfortunately being the last and loudest form of
>>>> which.
>>>>
>>> This is why it is far better to simply kill all the menfolk and use
>>> the women folk for sex slaves.
>>>
>>> No one is left to pay reparations to...
>>
>> Only one snag, they like hebrews and a few others trace descendence
>> through the mother.
>
> A clear case of making the women adopt a culture that doesn't
>
>> That said, there is much we could/should have learned from them:
>> "Taking only what you need on your journey, otherwise leave the land
>> as you had found it". Haitians have clear-cut the mountains and the
>> rains have washed all the soil off them. No tree will EVER grow there
>> again.
>
> Well that of course is plan juvenile.
> We did that years ago in Britain to build ships with.

Not only in Britain, Quebec was "150 foot tall white pines as far as the
eye could see". Then your navy requisitioned AND harvested them all for
ship masts while no Quebecer had a right to touch them.

> The trees however are recovering pretty well

Trees don't grow on barren rock, reread your sig :-)

--
In 10,000 years we have consumed 3/4 of the trees since coming out of
the last ice age, going from some 30 trillion huge trees to 15 trillion
toothpicks good only to cut 2x4's! This gives some sense of the dioxide
absorbing greenery and capacity-destruction but if we look for the
actual amount of wood and branches then we find 4 and 6 inch trunks
where 4 FOOTERS once were! I suspect that in terms of board-feet or
foliage we have destroyed over 80%. No need to look at Brazil for
examples of the devastation, see here
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/47679859072_c59d2aef84_z.jpg
https://mashable-evaporation-wordpress.s3.amazonaws.com/2015/12/lumber-10.jpg
http://www.ancientforest.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/I00279241-451x600.jpg
http://www.ameriquefrancaise.org/en/article-574/Saving_the_American_White_Pine.html
for an idea of what north american forests were like before our race of
locusts robbed it from the care of first-nations. Harvesting on public
(crown i.e. people's) land should require a % of very large trunk sizes
harvested, thus effectively limiting the cut when those have been
over-rarified. In addition every human being should be charged with the
planting of 1 tree per month throughout his or her life (say 1000 trees
per person), such being the TRUE SCOPE of what we have allowed
bean-counters and money-changers to do to our spaceship home.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 01:07:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 25/10/2024 23:09, bad sector wrote:
>> On 10/25/24 17:47, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>> On 25/10/2024 22:33, bad sector wrote:
>>> records don't go back to Adam and
>>>> Eve and when justice is thus structurally impossible but injustice is
>>>> virtually guaranteed it's all non-avenue. There has to be
>>>> negotiation, war unfortunately being the last and loudest form of
>>>> which.
>>>>
>>> This is why it is far better to simply kill all the menfolk and use
>>> the women folk for sex slaves.
>>>
>>> No one is left to pay reparations to...
>>
>> Only one snag, they like hebrews and a few others trace descendence
>> through the mother.
>
> A clear case of making the women adopt a culture that doesn't
>
>> That said, there is much we could/should have learned from them:
>> "Taking only what you need on your journey, otherwise leave the land as
>> you had found it". Haitians have clear-cut the mountains and the rains
>> have washed all the soil off them. No tree will EVER grow there again.
>
> Well that of course is plan juvenile.
> We did that years ago in Britain to build ships with.
> The trees however are recovering pretty well

It rains quite often on Britain, doesn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_Park#/
media/File:DSC_5948-w.jpg

This is the entire article.

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

"The cohesive Chacoan system began unravelling around 1140, perhaps
triggered by an extreme fifty-year drought that began in 1130;[28] chronic
climatic instability, including a series of severe droughts, again struck
the region between 1250 and 1450.[29] Poor water management led to arroyo
cutting; deforestation was extensive and economically devastating:[30][31]
[32] timber for construction had to be hauled instead from outlying
mountain ranges such as the Chuska mountains, which are more than 50 miles
(80 km) to the west.[33] Outlying communities began to depopulate and, by
the end of the century, the buildings in the central canyon had been
neatly sealed and abandoned.[citation needed]"

600 years, give or take, and there's not much more than brush. Even in
this area where the average annual total precipitation is 14", there are
many clear cut areas where the new pine growth is chest high. I frequently
hike in an area that burned in 2003 and there is little or no new growth.

In the US west there are many examples of overgrazing in the 19th century
that resulted in sagebrush wastelands.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 01:08:05 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Welcome to the problems of metaphysics

Next stop: that wonderful fallacy known as “you can’t prove a
negative” ...

On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 02:25:37 -0400, Paul wrote:
>> Consider a conversation I had with an HR person once, over a beer.
>> we were joking about something, and she tells me "when the resumes come
>> in, if a tech worker has been out of work for a year, I just throw out
>> their resume". She didn't read the resume, to find out what skills she
>> is throwing away. That gives you some idea, of the opinion of HR to the
>> state of the tech workers.

H.R. departments' main value is to shield the corporations from
commonsense liability. But they shield hiring managers from actually
seeing the available talent pool, and since their knowledge base is
employment law and risk mitigation, they know nothing about the field
for which they are supposed to find available talent.

Both hiring managers and job seekers are better served when they can
manage to bypass H.R.

On 2024-10-25, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

> There would not be a line on the requisition "Must know Microsoft Office",
> which is a popular bit of silliness.

Then there were the ads in 1997 calling for people with
5 years' experience in Windows 95...

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 04:38:45 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 04:38:45 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-10-25, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
> On 2024-10-25, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
>
>
>> There would not be a line on the requisition "Must know Microsoft
>> There would not be a line on the requisition "Must know Microsoft
>> Office",
>> Office",
>> which is a popular bit of silliness.
>> which is a popular bit of silliness.
>
>
> Then there were the ads in 1997 calling for people with 5 years'
> Then there were the ads in 1997 calling for people with 5 years'
> experience in Windows 95...
> experience in Windows 95...

My favorites were the ads in the Boston Sunday Globe in the early '80s
My favorites were the ads in the Boston Sunday Globe in the early '80s
looking for several years of Ada experience. At the time there wasn't a
looking for several years of Ada experience. At the time there wasn't a
working Ada compiler.
working Ada compiler.

We never paid attention to the ads HR would place for programmers until
We never paid attention to the ads HR would place for programmers until
one interviewee asked about the requirements like 'able to run copier'
one interviewee asked about the requirements like 'able to run copier'
that they had cut'n'pasted from their office drone template.
that they had cut'n'pasted from their office drone template.

.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 02:37:52 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 01:08:05 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> Welcome to the problems of metaphysics
>
> Next stop: that wonderful fallacy known as “you can’t prove a negative”
> ...

About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.

On 26 Oct 2024 05:45:31 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
> nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
> was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.

Did he mention the Anthropic Principle at all?

That’s a controversial one. Fred Hoyle used it to predict the existence of
an energetic state of the carbon atom without which heavier elements could
not be synthesized.

On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 20:38:47 -0400, bad sector wrote:

> Not only in Britain, Quebec was "150 foot tall white pines as far as the
> eye could see". Then your navy requisitioned AND harvested them all for
> ship masts while no Quebecer had a right to touch them.

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

The people of New Hampshire disputed that. I enjoyed living there until it
started drifting left and I sought greener pastures.

On 10/26/24 1:51 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On 26 Oct 2024 05:45:31 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
>> nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
>> was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.
>
> Did he mention the Anthropic Principle at all?
>
> That’s a controversial one. Fred Hoyle used it to predict the existence of
> an energetic state of the carbon atom without which heavier elements could
> not be synthesized.

All philosophy is bullshit - including this philosophy :-)

On 10/25/24 6:17 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 01:09:38 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> Um ... even weak crypto takes a lot of CPU time to decode.
>
> A graphic illustration of strong crypto used stupidly:
> <https://github.com/corkami/pics/blob/master/binary/CryptoModes.png>.

Yes, even 'strong' crypto can be used badly.

However for MOST, even AES-128 ought to be good
enough, AES-256 even more. According to some
going away from AES is best ... Camilla or even
GPG.

Note, if you want to INDIVIDUALLY encrypt files
then OpenSSL is THE best because of SPEED. GPG
and friends, there's a long initialization period.
This is something I've had a lot of experience with.
Wrote a nice, kinda large and 'smart', 'C' app other
langs could evoke to do the hard work.

There ARE tiny diffs between the Linux and Win
versions of OpenSSL ... so search and take note
of the fine variation in the CL params. OR, well,
use large/complex pre-packaged backup apps - but
you lose a lot of fine control. Direct use of
OpenSSL works great from custom 'C', Pascal or
Python pgms (my faves).

Towards the end I did write a backup apps that
individually encrypted files. Easy to get 'em
back, AS NEEDED, afterwards. OpenSSL was the
best way. OUR files weren't especially WORTH
cracking. This was good. Banks/govt and such
may have a different perspective. Better perhaps
to zip-up large archives and encrypt those
using better-than-AES methods. DOES need kinda
a lot of mem and diskspace ....

On 10/22/24 8:21 PM, CrudeSausage wrote:
> On 2024-10-22 8:00 p.m., Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 09:18:00 -0400, CrudeSausage wrote:
>>
>>> So you're in favour of slave labour because you can get your hobby
>>> computer for less?
>>
>> Strange. I thought you wanted to take jobs away from those running those
>> manufacturing lines in the third world. Now you’re trying to sympathize
>> with them as “slave labour”?
>
> Do you purposefully misunderstand what you read? It is very clear that
> the labour being used to produce less expensive computers is slave
> labour. I have _always_ been in favour of products being sold in the
> West being produced in the West. I would _never_ advocate for anything
> sold here to be manufactured anywhere else, especially since it turns
> out to be slave labour.

With Linux, it's less "slave" labor as "dedicated volunteer"
labor.

On 10/26/24 1:38 AM, rbowman wrote:
> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 04:38:45 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> On 2024-10-25, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> There would not be a line on the requisition "Must know Microsoft
>>> Office",
>>> which is a popular bit of silliness.
>>
>> Then there were the ads in 1997 calling for people with 5 years'
>> experience in Windows 95...
>
> My favorites were the ads in the Boston Sunday Globe in the early '80s
> looking for several years of Ada experience. At the time there wasn't a
> working Ada compiler.
>
> We never paid attention to the ads HR would place for programmers until
> one interviewee asked about the requirements like 'able to run copier'
> that they had cut'n'pasted from their office drone template.

Hilarious !

Only programmers know programming. All other pretenders
just fuck it up. LOTS of pretenders these days.

Makes 'em FEEL important though !

Oh, I wonder how many DID claim years of experience
with the non-existent DOD Ada compiler ??? The Bosses
would not have had a CLUE ........ :-)

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
> Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>> Weak cryptography is easy to fix. The hard part to fix is weak random
>>> numbers.
>>
>> Other way round. A bad RNG can be swapped out for a better one with
>> little or no impact on anything else.
>
> Unfortunately, you can never be sure your RNG is good.

You can’t be 100% certain of anything. There’s a 2^-256 chance someone
could guess an AES-256 key in a single try, for instance. But you can be
certain enough for practical purposes.

Accidents (DSA-1571, Sony) and compromises (Juniper, Crypto AG) happen;
so does cryptanalysis (Enigma). But the majority of vulnerabilities are
not cryptographic in nature.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

On 26/10/2024 08:01, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
> On 10/26/24 1:51 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On 26 Oct 2024 05:45:31 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
>>> nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
>>> was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.
>>
>> Did he mention the Anthropic Principle at all?
>>
>> That’s a controversial one. Fred Hoyle used it to predict the
>> existence of
>> an energetic state of the carbon atom without which heavier elements
>> could
>> not be synthesized.
>
>
>   All philosophy is bullshit - including this philosophy  :-)
>
>
That is the reaction of 99% of those who are exposed to it.

But it isn't. It has tools enabling you to think in extremely different
ways.
The problem is most people think it purports to reveal Truth, but it
doesn't. It is however and interesting study of Lies.

--
The lifetime of any political organisation is about three years before
its been subverted by the people it tried to warn you about.

Anon.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 26/10/2024 08:01, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>> On 10/26/24 1:51 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> On 26 Oct 2024 05:45:31 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>>
>>>> About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
>>>> nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
>>>> was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.
>>>
>>> Did he mention the Anthropic Principle at all?
>>>
>>> That’s a controversial one. Fred Hoyle used it to predict the existence of
>>> an energetic state of the carbon atom without which heavier elements could
>>> not be synthesized.
>>
>>
>>   All philosophy is bullshit - including this philosophy  :-)
>>
>>
> That is the reaction of 99% of those who are exposed to it.
>
> But it isn't. It has tools enabling you to think in extremely different
> ways.
> The problem is most people think it purports to reveal Truth, but it doesn't.
> It is however and interesting study of Lies.

Another advantage is familiarity with arguments and lines of reasoning. If
I had a penny for every time some technologist thought that he came up
with a brand new argument, for it only to turn out that it was discussed
1000 years ago, I'd be rich!

On 10/26/24 02:38, rbowman wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 20:38:47 -0400, bad sector wrote:
>
>> Not only in Britain, Quebec was "150 foot tall white pines as far as the
>> eye could see". Then your navy requisitioned AND harvested them all for
>> ship masts while no Quebecer had a right to touch them.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Tree_Riot
>
> The people of New Hampshire disputed that. I enjoyed living there until it
> started drifting left and I sought greener pastures.

What I didn't know until a few years ago when I looked deeper into it is
that the Co2 absorbed by the leaves is then STORED in the wood so the
trillions of six foot diameter trunks all over the place stored vast
amounts of dioxide. Gone. My wife's paternal grandfather remembered
that in winter they would ignore the roads burried in snow and would
move about on horse-drawn sleighs "beelining through the forests under
the branches of hundred footers". Gone. Personally I've surpassed my own
thousand-per-person standard, now approching 1200 planted.

On 2024-10-26, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 02:37:52 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 01:08:05 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> Welcome to the problems of metaphysics
>>
>> Next stop: that wonderful fallacy known as “you can’t prove a negative”
>> ...
>
> About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
> nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
> was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.

This contrasts with your typical math text book, which starts out with
a few pages of trivial statements before making the jump to the edge
of the universe, cued by that magical phrase "It is obvious that..."

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

rBowman: Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than nothing?'
in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' . . . my head started to hurt.

As the cosmos goes from infinitely hot/dense to infinitely cold/sparse,
"residual eXergy" (potential entropy) fuels both "life" (games) & gravity.

On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 08:47:01 -0400, bad sector wrote:

> The responsibility for protecting its own falls on sovereign governments
> so when oriental cheap-labour combined with subsidies allowed them to
> undercut then western governments should have countered not by
> subsidising (you cannot cut out a hole) but by completely interdicting
> those imports.

That’s how things used to be done in the bad old days, when most of the
“consumer” goods we take for granted were rare and expensive luxuries that
could be afforded only by the rich. That is, where they existed at all.

Do you really want to go back to those days?