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Honestly, looking at that intersection I'm really surprised there isn't a traffic light. What might work would be a light with a sensor which only stops traffic on the main road whenever there's cross traffic, and then only when the timing cycle tells it to. They probably already know that, but...

I actually have a few of those dating from the late 1970s, IIRC. They still hold a charge believe it or not. NiCd may contain toxic heavy metals, but it can't be beat for robustness.

Regarding power, merging, etc.: We can go back and forth all day with this stuff. At the end of the day the real problem isn't power, lack of power, courtesy, lack of courtesy, etc. It's the human being behind the wheel. The sooner that is completely removed from the equation, the sooner we...

Bringing this thread back to a bit of randomness (can't stay on any one topic too long or it isn't something random anymore ;) )-I wonder if I'm capable of actually feeling cold any more. I just came back from a 45 minute ride wearing just a sweater and windbreaker. It was 40°F. Normally I'd...

Granted, but how do the cars with 200 mph top speeds I mentioned fit in here? Do you ever need that, or to get to 100 mph in 4 seconds? And from everything I've read about roads and driving, plus seen in real life, I would think 10 second 0-60 times are more than adequate. Or put another way...

That's fairly well known, actually, and something which has been going on since the days of NiCad. IMHO, things like this shouldn't even be allowed. They're misleading to the consumer. It really wouldn't surprise if it's done on purpose to keep consumers using disposable batteries. Now if...

Well, not quite universally, but almost. I've pretty much failed to see the whole appeal of the car culture myself. Those idealistic car commercials with people driving on an empty road about as lame as it gets. The reality is closer to perpetual traffic jams, nauseating fumes, road rage, and...

Are you going by your standards or your students? What's unacceptable to you might be perfectly acceptable to most of your students. I know on my CLP-510 color photos look just fine to me. And that's a fairly old printer by today's standards. I can't believe there's nothing in color lasers which...

Nichia reaches 169 lm/W! A few of their numbers are very interesting. The first sample was 161 lm/W and 9.89 lm at 20 mA. This implies a forward voltage of 3.071V and an input power of 61.4 mW. They mentioned the output of the blue chip used in this LED was 42.2 mW, hence a WPE (wall-plug...

Knowing how everything else with chip manufacturing works, I basically just feel that at a given price point the available capacity will probably go up by a factor of four each year on account of increasing density, at least until we start to bump up against real physical limits as is now...

Nothing is really resolution independent, even CRTs. A CRT with high dot pitch won't look that great either when scaled. The only reason CRTs could be scaled reasonably well is because their dot pitch was usually somewhat smaller than an equivalent-sized LCD. The solution remains making the dot...

I use those words because in many cases I've been there, done that, and for me personally it just wasn't possible. I tried living in a small town for those three semesters. The boredom and ensuing depression because of the sameness was more than I could handle. I was actually suicidal by the...

Higher resolution with a software solution really makes the most sense here. Part of the reason older people can't read small text on a screen is the pixelization. Lowering the screen resolution to make the test larger won't fix that. Rather, it makes it worse. In fact, with higher resolution...

First off, relocation is out of the question. I know myself well enough to know I couldn't stand living anywhere but a large city. I went to a college in NJ. After 3 semesters I stopped sleeping there and started commuting because I just couldn't take the boredom of being in a small town any...

Oh, I forgot to mention that one of my failed projects caused my friend who I was doing it with to lose about $20K. So besides not making either of us a dime, it cost him a pretty penny, and me about six months of my life. Think how guilty I'm feeling about that even though neither of us was at...

You're both right and wrong. Sure, most homeless have many social problems which I don't. There are a few who don't and just reached an unfortunate stage where they're unable to earn enough to support themselves for whatever reason. That would really be my problem. I have CTS so full-time work...

Not scared. I just wouldn't gain enough from it to make it worth the risk, probably still rather take a boat if it came down to it. Remember that I don't drive so that means I have no way of getting to a lot of airports. Besides, not much you can do in the way of world travel on my income. The...

Very astute, Dave. That's exactly what I was getting at, an ROI calculation. And it doesn't just apply to scientists. You can lump in musicians, actors, authors, etc. Even though I don't listen to music, very rarely read fiction, and rarely go to the cinema, I still feel all these groups need...

I actually rather like the idea. Once we get rid of copyrights the RIAA and MPAA will disappear. Hopefully all the money will go directly to the artists. I don't mind artists profiting directly off their work. What really annoys me are the bunch of parasites (executives, agents, lawyers) who...

Nice, at least on paper. Maybe this time around Samsung will actually deliver something close to schedule.

So long as we have a society of mostly morons, things like that will unfortunately be in demand. I guess that's really the heart of the problem. It doesn't take effort or brains to do something which appeals to the masses since they are both fickle and mostly illogical. It's a matter of...

I wish my 19" could do 2048x1536. The screen door effect of seeing the individual pixels annoys me. I'd probably still notice them even at 2048x1536, but that's as high as most video cards go. Where are the superresolution displays? What I would really like would be about 4000x3000 in a 21"...

I actually notice the extra tire drag while cycling over recently paved asphalt roads. It takes a few weeks for the asphalt to cure enough so that the tire drag becomes "normal". I do notice even less tire drag on the few local roads which are made of concrete. As a cyclist the main downside to...

Except that capitalism rarely works that way. A lot of success in our society has more to do with knowing the right people, or being in the right place at the right time. I know plenty of people who have busted their butts and are still poor. I personally had to take jobs at $5 an hour at times...

Article about the system. The things you mentioned drive up the cost of roads also. It's an across the board problem with public works projects which needs to be fixed. Mass transit has an additional factor going against it-a strong vested interest by many with influence to make sure it...

And that's pretty much how we arrived where we are. GM et al would buy up trolley (nowadays termed light rail) lines, not maintain them, cut service, etc. Eventually they would shut the line down due to the "poor ridership" which occurred on account of their neglect. They would replace it with...

Thank you, Tim. The numbers for the big dig in Boston are even more obscene. $14.6 billion for 7.5 miles of underground roads. Literally a money pit. All that money spent and the travel times you mentioned are worse than a typical express subway train. Regarding modern subway costs, here's...

This isn't a light rail system. And light rail systems often don't make money because it seems politicians purposely put them in places where they're doomed to failure just to say "we tried and it won't work so let's just keep everyone in their cars." BTW, no form of transportation makes money...

The total output of the locomotives was 25,000 HP, (about double normal) and they were running a much shorter trainset (3 cars instead of 8 or 10). Both things were necessary to reach the speed record. In regular service the locomotives develop 12,000 but only about 8,000 HP of that is needed to...

$20 million and up but that's not much more building a road (and maintenence is less). Speaking of roads, I remember the cost for Boston's big dig was obscene. And the DOT spent something like half a billion on a highway interchange in Texas IIRC. around $20 million 512 per set but two sets...

It may be old news to me as it happened in April but I'm still blown away by the videos. I thought it was kind of funny that they had to use a jet for the aerial shots. Remember that this is not a maglev. It's regular steel wheels on steel rails just like any subway. Same track guage in fact...

I wonder if there's one person who does the voices for all the female reporters. It certainly seems like it. And yes, the "reporter voice" is exceedingly annoying.

Yep, that's exactly how I feel. When I'm in a car with someone driving 75 mph on a long trip I feel bored just watching them drive. I couldn't imagine trying to hold that speed for the whole trip if I were the one driving. And it annoys the engineer in me that the law should require that I do...

Now see why I have no desire to drive? I probably wouldn't be as lucky as you, given that this is your first ticket in 7 years. If I had gotten a license, in all likelihood it would probably have been revoked by now, along with a good amount of jail time, and a nice pile of speeding tickets. I...

Funny but I was thinking the same thing.

The NYC subway opted for radar-based speedometers because they're more accurate and reliable than wheel-driven ones, so, yes, they can be very accurate.

Britney Spears is nouveau riche white trash. Always has been, always will be. Six months of her income and I'd be set for life. What a shame. I don't care to go any place so remote that I need a car to get there, so I'm not limiting my options at all. Besides, you can go a lot more places than...

I'm with you there. This is doubly true for me because I live in the largest city in US. Moving anywhere else would seem boring by comparison. Besides, if it doesn't have a subway or four seasons I wouldn't be interested. I just don't want to get into the expensive hassle of car ownership or...

Agreed. Giga-anything means one billion or 1,000,000,000. The operating systems have had it wrong for years, and are the ones who should change how they report disk capacity. It all started when software designers started called 1024 bytes a kilobyte because 1024 was close enough to 1000 that...

I remember getting down to 140 after my first semester in college because the food wasn't palatable. That's a BMI of around 20 for my height, and yes, I did look anorexic. I could see my ribs. For me 160 to 165 is ideal, perhaps 170 now that I have more muscle mass. A guy I knew in high school...

5' 9.5" 195-205 lbs My BMI usually hovers right near the line between being overweight and obese but a lot of the weight is due to muscle mass in my legs from years of cycling. That's why computing BMI on the basis of weight and height is a poor method. In truth I am overweight, no denying it...

Actually the loss figures are closer to 20% to 25%, depending upon the fixture. The best T5 linear fixtures using aluminum mirrors only lose about 5% of the light. Don't forget that unless you have a bare CFL hanging from the ceiling there will be fixture losses there also. Let's just say that...

Actually it's around 5800K. Due to the filtering of the atmosphere it appears as roughly 5500K when directly overhead, or as low as about 2500K just before sunset/sunrise. Average appearance is probably around 5000K. The sun appears yellow simply because the sky is blue. It's all a matter of...

Funny but I also see a collector's market for old light bulbs. Obviously nobody who intends to use it will pay $100 for a light bulb. The only reason people still use incandescents is because the initial purchase price is less than the other options. Once they're no longer made the price will...

Basically, that's my take on Apple stuff as well. Sure, very nice industrial design, cool factor, etc. but the price and proprietary everything are the big show stopper. Yes, it looks better, perhaps is made better, but not worth the extra $ for most people. As Merc said, if you want...

Sorry to bump such an old thread but I recently tried version 0.72 available here. My main reason for trying this was because EMM in cmd hasn't been working for some time (I think it happened after I upgraded my video card). My DOS-based PCB CAD program sometimes needs EMM when working on a...

Let's see, 30 hours of constant output runtime on 3AAAs equals about 0.135 watts (assuming that the AAAs are 1200 mAh and average 1.25V). Even if we assume decent LEDs (80 lm/W) and 100% conversion (i.e. no regulator losses), that's at best 10.8 lumens. In practice I'd say it's closer to 5. No...

I think it's bad simply because linear fluorescent is 50% more efficient than CFLs. Besides that, the tubes last anywhere from 3 to 5 times as long, depending upon brand. And when the tube goes bad you just throw away the tube, not the tube along with the entire ballast as with CFLs. It's not...

Actually, isn't that Lumileds you're thinking of? ;) They're the ones who hyped their K2 for months before it was available. When it finally was, it turned out to be a bust. Cree usually delivers production product within 18 months after it first appears in the lab. Same here. SLC are also more...

Interesting. Despite it's present wide-spread use, flash RAM is by no means necessarily the path to the future. Perhaps MRAM or something like this will be used instead. I don't see anything inherent in this technology which necessarily requires a spinning disk, though. I tend to think for...