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That's probably the dumbest, most hysteria-driven, most short-sighted decision I've ever seen in my life. Fusion isn't going to online by 2022 even by the most optimistic projections (even 2050 seems optimistic). Exactly what are they going to use to generate power? They better hope for super...

Television could be vastly improved by just getting rid of the commercials. If people see at the end of their program a quick announcement "This program sponsored by company A, makers of widget B", they might actually be inclined to buy the product. Most commercials have exactly the opposite...

Harold Camping He "predicted" the end of the world in 1994 also.

Now that this guy is 0 for 2 predicting the end of the world, I suggest a new holy book. This one sounds good.

6:01 PM and I'm still here. Not that I was expecting any different. ;)

Will you at least let him bath/go to the bathroom? What are you using to keep him immobile? Man, I hope I never get on your bad side. :-o

You know something, time, your mention of LNG buses just reminded me of a whole sequence of events which actually more or less proves what I just wrote. As you're undoubtedly aware, back in the late 1800s/early 1900s, trolleys served essentially the same function buses do today. And they...

Putting aside the huge risk of contaminating drinking water supplies from hydrofracking natural gas, I'm not sure the supplies are abundant enough to make much of a dent in oil supplies. Assuming they are, and assuming we can find a better way to extract the natural gas which doesn't put water...

Sorry you feel that way. And the position you described actually is closer to that of what you might describe as the tree-hugger crowd, of which I'm most definitely not. These people want to keep our modern standard of living, but say no to every single thing which fails to meet their...

Chewy, mass transit is certainly expensive, but it doesn't cost much money or take much time to build separated cycle tracks. I realize those probably wouldn't be of much use to you personally given your commute distance, but for a lot of people who currently drive a few miles, suddenly biking...

Yes, because that's the only thing which will get people off oil for good. Funny how I remember you bitching like crazy about the subsidies the government gives for solar, wind, etc. I guess subsidies are fine in your book if they're for something you personally use, but not for something...

Bozo, The real solution is just to lessen the need to travel. Live closer to work, telecommute, buy locally grown food, etc. And electrics are more than ready for prime time. Much of the charging would be do overnight, when power plants actually have energy to spare. You don't need to...

Chewy, My last post is more an idea of what we could do if we built the right infrastructure, not what is. The present reality is that lots of people have few alternatives to driving, unfortunately. My question is why isn't the government doing everything in their power to change that in the...

Wasn't Congress just talking about eliminating the $2 billion in tax breaks it gives to the oil industry? A special tax break equals a subsidy, which in turn equals lower prices at the pump than would otherwise be. Given all the negatives associated with fossil fuel use, subsidizing it is...

Never mind just teenagers. For distances of about 5 miles or less, if you're not carrying much cargo, a bike isn't a bad way to get around. That's doubly true in large cities. I make as good or better time on most of my bike trips than you would by car. And I have at times gone 20 miles each...

There actually are some technical reasons to back up Merc's disdain for WD: "Western Digital's construction makes drives particularly vulnerable to shocks and pressure. Unlike other manufacturers, WD does not secure the hard drive axle with a separate screw to the drive cover. Because of this...

You discovered that also. I've been lusting after the Rohloff from the day I saw it. Stick that on a velomobile, along with the Schlumpf high-speed crankset with planetary gears, and you have a nice, super-wide range drivetrain with no derailleurs. Doing some math, I figured use the 2.5X...

Yeah, but then I wouldn't know exactly how much further or faster I'm going. :-D Speaking of further and faster, if money were no object, I would be riding one of these.

Yeah, you both noticed that big drop in elevation also. :-D Kind of funny when you think about it. I should show it to the NYCDOT. I think the real reason it occurred might have to do with the sudden change in antenna orientation and possibly the shock from hitting the ground. That might...

Actually, the GPS is pretty sucky as a speedometer which is why I also have a bike computer. The speed readings bounce around by about 1 mph even if you maintain a steady speed. I'm mainly using the GPS to record my rides. I'm interested, for example, in my average speeds over the same roads...

I literally don't even remember the last time I puked, that's how long it's been. And I don't remember the exact date that I last fell off my bike for any reason at all except that it was before 9/11. Yep, going on at least 10 years with no "hit the ground" bike accidents whatsoever. Two...

If cell phones no longer work I'll consider that a positive effect.

Speaking of systems going a long time, didn't Greg know someone who was still using something like an 8086 (and this was only a few years ago IIRC)?

Yep-still in service after all these years, and still fast enough for most of my day-to-day needs. This is the longest run I've ever had on the same system. And I've been using a 200 GB Maxtor as the boot drive from day 1. The drive already had I think 2 years on it when I installed it in...

I've been using the same system since June 2006. Thus far, I've never had anything except a CPU fail in all the machines I've owned. I tend to think my usage patterns are why. The biggest source of stress for electronic components is being turned on and off. Besides creating current surges...

http://cgi.ebay.com/2-PC-Li-Ion-3-0V-200mAh-Button-Cell-LIR2477-New-BuySAFE-/300552377991?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45fa515687

AARP's stance against retesting elderly drivers is that it's "prejudicial". Instead, they might support periodic retesting of ALL drivers. This wouldn't be a bad idea in my opinion, but practically speaking it would be a nightmare. It's a shame more people aren't honest enough with themselves...

5 years today since my father passed away. Doesn't seem that long ago.

Unfortunately, it's basically going to come down to the same situation as Chernobyl-anyone involved in the cleanup/containment is going to go in knowing they're not going to survive long. IIRC a few thousand workers sacrificed themselves in this way ( 100,000 according to wikipedia )...

Intrinsically Safe Nuclear Reactor Designs On other news, the workers left the site, apparently because of high radiation levels. This is inching closer to a 7 than a 6 at this point.

Those pictures are haunting. Entire settlements wiped clean as if they've never existed. This just drives home the point that Earth does what it wants and we're all just tenants here.

The French are indeed experts on nuclear power, with nuclear plants generating 78% of the electricity produced in France. What the French and Japanese did was standardize on certain components to make nuclear power more cost effective. The US has a history of one-off designs. This is one...

I agree, SD. Watching the news coverage on CNN and elsewhere, it's almost like they're hoping for a meltdown, sprouting things like previous nuclear accidents have always gotten worse before they've gotten better. My educated guess here is we've had partial meltdown. I'd say the rods melted...

If this had been further south and hit Tokyo full force it would have been an unprecendented disaster. I'm amazed how far the tsunamis spread. There was even some flooding in NJ two nights ago (saw it on the news, I guessed it was related to the quake but they didn't say). This all drives...

I finally found a great, free, third party defragger called MyDefrag. Current version is 4.3.1. The program is completely customizable via scripts. It has several default scripts for both data disks and system disks which do a great job. I managed to defragment some volumes where Windows...

I tried but unfortunately my M/B is so old that any SATA drives can't be seen in native DOS mode.

The specs say it uses 5 watts maximum ( see manual, page 48 ). I would imagine it uses a lot less if the unit is turned off but left plugged in. Even at 5 watts, it would take at least a few days to drain a car battery. I'm surprised you can't enter addresses from a PC. My Legend HCx lets me...

Seriously, when you were out of work, you should have considered telling the bank you were having trouble meeting your mortgage payments even if you weren't. You might have had your loan modified to more favorable terms. You know the old saying-if you can't beat the system, you may as well...

:beer: Happy Birthday, Doug! :b-day:

Actually, I really don't go to those types of sites. There's still a remote chance of picking up a virus which could attack my drives even staying on legitimate sites.

If you want to place a monetary value on the "lost" space, it would be about 12.5 cents since I paid $99.99 for the drive. Certainly not worthwhile from a money perspective. In fact, I would imagine just using NTFS compression for my backup folders I would gain many times the lost space...

I'm anal about stuff like that. It's small in terms of percentage, yes. But I also remember the days when 2.5GB equalled a few good-sized hard drives. It also annoys me on another level-namely sloppy bookkeeping on the part of Windows. I might understand reserving some amount of space on a...

Regarding the wire gauge for the power LEDs, probably 18 gauge is fine. The controlling factor is more having the wire physically strong enough to pull through the attic without breaking. I'd say 18 gauge is good enough for that. 22 or even 24 gauge would handle the current just fine, but...

Well, no direct solutions to this but I hit upon an indirect one - use exFAT. Windows doesn't mysteriously mark space as in use when it isn't with exFAT. From what I'm gathering the only downsides are no built-in compression ( I wasn't planning to compress any folders anyhow ), and possibly...

Yes, you would need an independent wire for each LED, but you could mount the control board inside the chandelier. The ten wires would run to the control board. The only thing which needs to run outside the chandelier is the pair of wires supplying power. Everything inside the chandelier is...

Not a problem. You could just run a pair of wires from the low-voltage flicker control board to wherever you have the power supply. Total wires coming from the chandelier for both flicker and illumination would be four-all low-voltage.

You could do that. Perhaps put another set of LEDs next to the high-powered primary ones, and wire those to a small flicker control board which is placed inside the chandelier. You could probably also fit the power supply for this ( small 120 VAC to 5VDC or 12 VDC converter ) inside the...

Umm, yeah. The only issue with hollow tubes as opposed to solid rods is worse heat dissipation. I probably need to experiment a bit here to see how warm the LED would get. A tube with 1/8" walls might be good. We can mount the LED on a circular piece of aluminum ( or even a copper penny ) on...

No, shouldn't be an issue. The LED ballast is sending DC to the LEDs. There aren't an RF or other issues with DC. You can probably put the ballast a mile away from the chandelier without any problems. The only issue is for the wires to be heavy enough to carry the current without heating...

I'm surprised how bright the bottles look even with the sun lighting the room. BTW, I found a nice dimming ballast for this project which will make our lives worlds easier: http://www.newark.com/roal-electroni...ver/dp/69R7347 It works on a standard lamp dimmer. A little pricey but well worth...