Jerry_Atrick

(Sorry about the typos.. was all done on a phone and I have fat fingers).

I did forget to mention "unless you are talking about the ludicrous Trump plan"... Yes. that is totally nuts and ethnic cleansing. In Israel? I don't recall Palestinians being subject to that... In Israel, Palestinians to have equal rights (West Bank excepted - but that is lack of enforcement, than law). No, but maybe you should ask Hamas about that.. Remember, Israel are legitimately pursuing Hamas. Hamas are alleged to choose to hide under hospitals, schools, and the like.. Even so,that does not equal ethnic cleansing. Ex. the Trump thing, I think you may want to check your facts again. I am nto sure Netanyahu has, for his entire time as PM, really supported the violence. He has since October 7, but again, the way I read it, it is not in itself to detry Gaza and display Palestinians, but to get Hamas. The Israeli army today askes the Gazan citizns to move to safer areas well before they start an operation. In terms of long planned for the resettlement of Palestinians... I think you're forgetting a few things.. Both sides wanted it all. In 1947, the Jews were willing to compromise and that laanded them in a war. In 1967, in 1978, who kept on at it. The state of Israel has many times handed bnack land they captured after being attacked as an olive branch for peace.. including the whole Sinai peninsula after the '67 war. In 1978, war was wreaked on them again. Hang on.. what for.. to eradicate Israel off the map. Is that not the very definition of both ethnic cleansing and genocide? The fact they were not competent to do it is a differnt thing altogether (US assistance didn't come to Israel until the end of the 78 war, after the US dissuaded Israel from a preventative strike as in teh case of 67, and with Israel's back against the ropes, their PM threatened to use the nukes they neither confiirm nor deny having).. So, over the long term so far, it would appear, that Israel was willing to have peaceful co-existence, but the variousl Palestinian political/military organisations were not really wanting it. The go to the 90s, and Bill Clinton has recently come out and said the Yasser Arafat effecively lied to about what it would take for a peace deal - all of Gaza, Easst Jerusalem, and 90 something (I tink it was 96%) of the West Bank was offered. At the last minute, Arafat declined the offer. If that is true, then, who is it that is not willing to reach a settlement.. So, yeah, after all this time, if I were in Israel's position, I would be sort of be wary of the whole thing. Everyone is calling for a two state solution as they have been for years.. I would suggest Israel wasn't the main barrier to this on the facts. And remember, Iran is alleged to be the financiaers and true masters of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, or whatever they are called, and their primary aim does not seem to be a Palestinian state, but the destruction of Israel, and, from the Hamas Covenant: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.' (Article 7): https://irp.fas.org/world/para/docs/880818a.htm Now, I am sure that if the feeling is mutual with the Israelies (or more accurately, in this case, the Jews), but if it is they either don't believe it, or they are incredibly incompetent.. Somehow, I think it is that the feeling is not mutual. Again, I have done this to death, but somehow, it is Israel that is the ethnic cleanser? Ask yourself this. Hamas has an ICC warrant out for targeting citizens.. That is pretty obvious. Netayahu does as well, even though under the geneva convention no one owes a duty of care to citizens in fighting combatants.. they are forbidden from targetting citizend specifically.. Now, move to the Ukraine war.. Putin has targeted citizens (bombed hospitals, schools, apartment blocks, etc) in a country that, like Israel, delinieates its military and citizens. Putin has also, at least, inter alia, wreaked colelctive punishment on citizens of Ukraine by targeting infrastructure to freeze Ukrainians in winter, etc. Yet what is his ICC warrant? Shipping some kids off to Russia: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/03/russia-iccs-arrest-warrant-against-putin-step-towards-justice/ That 80 years of legal experience seems to apply differently depending on who it is, I would suggest. That is not to say Netanyahu should not face the charge and have his day in court, but somehow, therre doesn't appear to be consistency applied. Yes, the number oif Ukrainian citizeens killed is less than Gaza, but that is also because Ukraine, like most European countries tend to protect their citizens and not use them as sheilds. That is not to say Israel is perfect or not without doing wrong. The capture of the West Bank was for a buffe to keep civilians safe and they should not have settled it.. it was a red rag to a bull, and wrong. But, on the other hand if you wage war, you may win,but if you lose, you can expect to lose terriroty, too.. But, stil, given the sensitivities here, it is is wrong. And, yes, there are instances of Israeli military war crimes - but are they systematic of individuals/groups? Israel has prosecuted military personnel for war crimes against Palestinains... I am not sure Hamas has done the same? Australia also has alleged war criminals that are not facing a court to test the evidence. I could go on.. My point was that no matter what the facts are, people's minds seem to be made up on this.. and it is ususally one way.. That seems OK for some things but not OK for others. Fopr the record, the Palestinians seem to be th pawns in this sordid affair.

Really.. Facts don;t seem to support this assertion.. If Israel wanted to ethnically cleanse Gaza, they have had the capability for a vey long time. Given that, and the soccalled genocide, you would think population numbers have been dwindling. Why, even in the war (which is it asserted Hamas include militants and those that die of normal causes), the population has increased, but the population has increased over time: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1422981/gaza-total-population/ So, even in Israel, there has been an increase in Palestinian population over time. Hardly an ethnic cleansing I would state, and apart fromt eh West Bank, they live in relative peace (lately it has been difficult yes), and with equal rights Why am I bringing this up., Because we accuse GON of being wilfully ignorant of the facts, yet on this (and others) people continue that wilful ignorance and deem it acceptable. Let's start practicing what we preach.. BTW, how many jews live in most of the Arab states these days compared to days gone by?

Oh.. yeah.. and all the other stuff that you think he is doign that is great.,. and how he is needed to tame the lefties, etc.... So much for not caring who does it as long as it gets done

Was that AI generated?

These days there's plenty of wind everywhere

Someone's gotta keep an eye on us!

Has anyone heard from @willedoo, lately. Apparently last visited Feb 3, but I can't recall seeing a post from him lately. Hope all is OK.

Tonight, at the pub I stay in while in London, I am having the old favourite - El Greco burger. It is a burger with Halloumi cheese and chorizo sausage.. so Cypriot rather than Greek, and Spanish... Nothing technically Greek about it, but it is quite yummy. Once a week, washed down with an Aussie shiraz.. Yummo. They joke I have a personal chef here.. By the time I have taken my bags to the room and back, the burger is on "my" table... Love it.

Depends on what the pint is?

Yes, the internet is awash with similar photos. BTW, although small and probably designed to drive up sales for the auction house, a study has found battery life to be better than claimed, so used BEVs may not be a bad idea, after all. I guess the RACV/Q/NRMA and other state auto clubs could devise as part of their car inspections, a way to measure battery condition (if they haven't already)?: https://www.drive.com.au/news/electric-car-batteries-lasting-longer-than-expected-according-to-new-study/

Definitely, but there has been progress, and this is the first time I know of a government actually funding the development of a siter designed to get it over the line for power generation. There's no such thing as a free lunch. I haven't read too much about the engineering challenges of fusion, let alone the physics and chemistry challenges, but there's no such thing as a free lunch. If Fusion provides virtually limitless power off the smell of an oily rag, the cost is embedded somewhere.. and my guess is it will all be in engineering. The extrreme temperatures will either require massive advances in materials science and/or lots of maintenance of the plant.. the heat to manage is in the millions of degrees - and at that magnitude, it is little difference if it is Kelvin or Celcius. So, for now, the question is still should Australia go nuclear or not? There are advantages and disadvantages - that is for sure. It depends on how one sees them. Personally, I would love Australia to go nuclear - I am still in touch with my old contacts and the software likely tp be selected would be what I used to work on; and because it's so specialised, there aren't a lot of people who know it. So, for me, I would have a ready made income stream and then part time consulting well into retirement (like what a people who I know are doing now). But, looking at the economics to the country, it doesn't stack up. Securoty of supply also doesn't stack up. It is far easier to sabotage a few central power stations than a distributed generation network. Conversly, of course, it is harder to protect a distributed generation network than a few central generation stations, but self-sufficiency, even at the industrial level more than compensates that. Others see it differently; that is OK.. I am actually quite happy either way, but if it were my money or I had a fiduciary responsibility with other peoples' money (something governments seem to have lost sight of, if they ever had sight of it), then I would not be going nuclear in Australia. Even the new build my daughter is working on could hardly be called cost-efficient.

Ahhh but they are "good" business people, apparently, and of course good business people are better with other people's money

Blimey.. Best of luck.. hope it wasn't the restless night's sleep that dislodged it

Elon Musk has submitted a $100bn bid for open AI (Chat-GPT) Anti-trust laws would probably block it normally.. let's see what happens

Donald Trump to halt enforcement of law banning bribery of foreign officials - https://on.ft.com/4aRjwb9 via @FT

Bloody Sydney! (From a Melbournite) :-)

Maybe it will actually talk...

I am writing an app by hand in Java, using a framework called Spring Boot (to learn it).. I wrote a POJO (Plain Old Java Object) and am using a Web framework called Spring Boot, with JPA (Java Persistence Architecture) and a few other bits and bobs. I typed into Chat-GPT something like "Please write me a PJO and the Spring Book/JPA persisitence of a <widget> that does x, y, and z... It was a complex-ish spec and I watched it do its stuff. It was very close to what I wrote. Some things needed a tweak, and there was something it did better than I did... But, it took me about 4 hours to write the simple POJO with all the necessary features and compile it ready for testing. It took me less than 5 minutes to write the spec and it took about 3 minutes for it to generate everything.. And it took me about 10 miutes to refine it. That is a pretty big time saving operation. I was surprised at how it was able to generate something so close to how I envisaged it.

Not quite.. But I am going to play with it a bit more on an industrial level with a real programming language and application infrastructure/architecture. The difference in quality between Chat-GPT4 compared to Chapt-GPT3 is quite amazing.. it has definitely been a leap. The firm I work for allows us to use a different LLM for things like taking meeting notes and minutes, and it is remarkably good. We can also do presentations and the like, too, but IO have not yet tried it. There is no question, IMHO, it is the biggest disruptor since the industrial revolution and has the capacity to put a lot of people out of workl - even cerebral activities. There will not be the need for peop[le there is today. I am glad I am near retirement.

The point was the AEC official was alleged to have been telling people to vote Libs before they cast their vote.. if he was suiccessful, a recount would have made no difference. Goit a link? Would like to take a look

Actually, AI in the form of a certain large language model (LLM) that shall rename anonymous came to my aid this morning (arvo, AEST time). I like to don the tools and was having a problem with some code in a script to repair some data issue, and I was getting a run time error I just couldn't work out. Asked the said LLM a couple of questions, and voilla, not only the answer, but the code to copy and paste to boot. And it works! Saved heaps of time, and I learned a new function in the language I as using to boot.

Actually, there was an AEC official allegedly trying to infuence the Werribee by election vote.. and surprise, it was to the Liberals... But, once the allegation was raised, the official was promptly dispatched (from the polling area - not from life on earth): https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/push-for-review-into-shambolic-werribee-byelection-count-20250209-p5lapb.html

Geez, GON.. seriously... The AEC doesn't distribute preferences. It counts them. You don't have to be a supported of Q'Anon, do you?