• 4 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • You can theoretically. Unfortunately, you are not considering the land difference.

    More to the point, the absolute political nightmare of buying and getting permission to use so much land.

    It is a nightmare for both. But rare to see the amount of land needed for the power station, have to argue about arable use. Whereas, it’s pretty hard in the UK to locate the solar without others claiming land is lost. Farm land mainly as that is the cheap build option. (pricy land, lower labour).

    But even brownfield land. Once you have the area to host something like this. You are usually talking about close to populated areas. And just about every NIMBY crap excuse is thrown up about history or other potential use. Meaning, at best you end up with some huge project that takes decades. With a vague plan to add solar generation to the roof.

    Honestly I agree. It should be fucking easy to build these plants. Farming should be updating. And honestly can benefit from well-designed solar if both parties are willing to invest and research.

    But we have been seeing these arguments for the last 20 years. And people are arseholes, mostly.

    And this is all before you consider the need for storage. Again solvable with hydro etc. Theoretically easy. But more land and way way more politics and time. If hydro the cost goes insane. And the type of land become more politically complex. If battery, you instantly get the comparison of mining and transport costs. So again more insane politics.



  • Sounds logical on a just consider it level.

    But us old farts know better.

    The nation went metric in 1965 joined the EU in 1975.

    You know how all road signs are reflective. Well, back then that did not exist. Reflective roadsigns started in the early 1980s.

    Add to that, most major roads end up replacing the signs every several years.

    And the simple fact is No If in the 80s we decided to double sign (as other nations did. Every nation in the EU did it at some point. France was well before road signs, 1795 I think. But the rest of the EU could not agree on anything before the 1940s. Almost all of them had their own versions of imperial like units divided over regions based on political power.

    It was not until the early predecessor to the EU post ww2 that most of Europe changed.

    If we started in 1980 by displaying km plus mph on all signs. (Rounded to the nearest unit). The original change would not have cost any more than current spending. Buy now, most major roads would have had many replacements, likely dropping the mph.

    We would still see some dual signs in very low use back roads.

    But when did you last see a non-reflective sign. Because that is as often as you would see MPH only signs. At 0 extra spending.


  • Just to be clear. The UK is full metric as far as EU rules are concerned.

    Heck, as far as the SI is concerned, so is the US. We both changed in the 70s. SI just required all other units to be defined based on metric. The UK and US do this. And the EU just requires all trade to be available as a metric option.

    What you actually use to communicate in nation non-sales is your own business. Heck, we can even sell in your own units as long as we also offer conversions on request. (according to EU. I think the UK required display in metric at some point. )

    We and the US are just too stubborn to use the better units.



  • Yes, that can be a grey area, but it would be a start.

    Yep lets remember. Under that rule. The NHS bus passes.

    Advertising really only has to not be provable false. The ASA has way less power when claims are questionable or down to interpretation.

    Does a Mars a day help you work, rest and play. Well, obesity and increased risk of type 2 diabetes would say hell no. If a politician claimed sugar treats helped you work, rest and play. He would be dragged over the coals in the media.

    But technically. As a type one diabetic. Without access to sugar (refined carbs) exercise is very able to kill me via hypoglycaemia. And all mammals need energy. So technically it’s true. But full of crap at the same time.

    Yeah you may be too young to remember that advert. I have no idea I dont think Ie seen it since the 90s. But it’s still legal today.


  • I agree. But can see how this will go.

    If it gets the votes. (Hard because most have gotten fed up with these things achieving nothing)

    Parliment will have a discussion. Argue about how impossible it is to define truth from a government prospective. (IE without looking like censorship)

    Then never being it up again.

    Unfortunately this is the sort of problem that needs answers before letting government discuss it. And then needs grass roots support to force it forward.

    And honestly. I don’t think the UK is capable of that any more. NHS creating and post war social housing was likely the last time we were.



  • Only if those device makers are willing to use it. And that has always been the tightrope linux has walked.

    Its very history as a x86 platform means it has needed to develop drivers where hardware providers did not care. So that code needed to run on closed hardware.

    It was bloody rare in the early days that any manufacturer cared to help. And still today its a case of rare hardware that needs no non free firmware.

    Free hardware is something I’ll support. But it is stallman et als fight not the linux kernel developers. They started out having to deal with patented hardware before any one cared.




  • proprietary

    Well related to the owner is the very definition of proprietary. So as far as upstream vs not available for upstream is concerned. That is what the term is used for in linux.

    So yep by its very definition while a manufacture is using a licence that other distributions cannot embed with their code. Marking it proprietary is how the linux kernal tree was designed to handle it.

    EDIT: The confusion sorta comes from the whole history of IBM and the PC.

    Huge amounts of PC hardware (and honestly all modern electronics) are protected by hardware patients. Its inbuilt into the very history of IBMs bios being reverse engineered in the 1980s.

    So as Linux for all its huge hardware support base today. It was originally designed as a x86(IBM PC) compatible version of Unix.

    As such when Stallman created GPL 3 in part as a way of trying to end hardware patients. Linux was forced to remain on GPL 2 simply because it is unable to exist under GPL 3 freedom orientated restrictions.

    The proprietary title is not seen as an insult. But simply an indication that it is not in the control of the developers labelling it.