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Sorry about that. :mrgrn: :oops:

From the bidder's standpoint I notice auctions ending during "primetime(7 PM -12AM)" seem to fetch more. Ditto for anything ending on weekends(preferably also during "primetime"). Conversely, I've been able to pick up some real bargains when the auction ends at something like 4AM on a...

My dental history is, well, similar. :( I didn't go to the dentist for something like ten years and I like eating sweets. One day I realized my home-made attempts to alleviate pain, including my lame attempts at fillings, weren't cutting it any more. This was when I was 29. One year and...

Strangely enough I came upon that very same article when I was learning all about fluorescents a few months back. I've found the whole subject quite a bit, well, illuminating. ;) I really like your ideas for LED lighting. They might very well be feasible in 5 years as LEDs decrease in cost...

I'm not quite sure how everyone else here is interpreting that cloud, but to me it's most definitely not as NASA described(a superhero flying through a cloud, arm up, with a saved person in tow below). I'm thinking more along the lines of a vulgar gesture particularly common especially among...

I think the $30 figure comes from what the employee actually costs the employer. A friend of mine who owns a business and has no health insurance for his employees said that right off you add about 50% to the actual hourly salary for matching Social Security, unemployment insurance, disability...

:o :o :o Anybody remember Jaws? I never went to the beach again after I saw that movie. Since I was a kid when I saw it I was even afraid in the bathtub for a few months afterwards. Assuming this picture isn't Photoshopped that guy is nuts to be anywhere near the water.

I'm surprised that it only supports 4GB of RAM. Seems like that might limit it down the road.

Especially for crap like a Britney Spears CD. :( While I find prices for DVDs slightly more justified than those of CDs it would be better if they cost the same as VHS movies. The :evil: RIAA :evil: uses piracy to justify all sorts of Nazi-like schemes such as DRM that they wish to impose...

Home Depot of all places had electronic ballasts for 40 watt T-12 tubes(I had almost given up looking). A little pricey at $21.97 each but still inexpensive enough to try. I just purchased and installed two today in the shoplights in my workroom. I'll keep the old magnetic ballasts which...

Exactly. M$ complains about piracy but keeps prices at a high enough level to make risking selling pirated software worthwhile. If M$ Office were, say, $25 for a home user you just wouldn't get people selling pirated copies on the streets for $10 to $15. Ditto for the recording and movie...

Built-in html editing. Something along the lines where you can see how a page looks in the browser, maybe add a picture or a line of text somewhere directly in the preview, and then the editor adds the appropriate code to the web page. Alternatively, you can edit the pages in text only, and...

True but hasn't technology has obsoleted many jobs in the past. Eventually society will adjust. Besides this won't happen overnight. It likely won't be fully phased in for at least two decades as you mentioned. Plenty of time for people to find another job. Look what's happening now as the...

Don't they use flat bed trucks for that even nowadays? In the scheme of things that's a very minor problem. How so? My point in bringing this up is that most of the pieces are already in place. There is no massive government investment here. Many cars are already drive by wire. Outfitting...

This idea came up in another thread but I thought it deserved a thread of it's own. What are your thoughts on automating driving? I say it's long past due and should be done as soon as possible. Since many cars are already drive by wire, so to speak, it should be fairly easy to implement via...

I'll buy into your approach Fushigi since it's better than what we have today, which are standards from maybe about 1990. Had that been done from about the time CAFE standards stabilized in 1990 or thereabouts we would be up to around 50 mpg for autos and maybe 35 mpg for SUVs. Ultimately, it...

To continue this article basically seems to sum up the current administration's attitude towards fuel economy although we wouldn't be in this position if Gore the environmentalist had pushed for CAFE standards such as I described.

One thing never mentioneed in the IDE vs SCSI debates are that 15K drives are quite a bit noisier and hotter than IDE. I know I wouldn't want a 15K or even 10K drive in any machine I'm using unless it was in another room. Then of course there are the usual cost and capacity issues. SCSI has...

This is a good way to deal with the problems I alluded to as well which I neglected to mention. As long as people who lead unhealthy lifestyles are somehow made to pay the cost of their care through "sin taxes" it's fine with me if society treats them. As for hard drugs, I'm all for legalizing...

Moynihan was a true statesman well liked by both parties. He's hardly the type of Democrat I was referring too. I was all too happy to vote for him. Rather, I was thinking of most of the local and state legislators, including one idiot City Councilman whose name I forgot who said white people...

I guess you're not too familiar with the kinds of Democrats who usually seem to get elected to office here in NYC and NYS. They are even more dogmatic than right-to-life conservatives if that's at all possible. They seem to revel in passing all kinds of silly laws designed to protect idiots...

Me as well! :wink: Since I couldn't in all good conscience vote for a Democrat either based on what the party has come to stand for I may very well end up either not voting next election or voting for a third party. BTW, this legislation appears to be a bipartisan effort. I don't call...

Although I'm not an IT professional I would probably let a business know it was in violation of the EULA. However, I wouldn't bother with a home user since they likely wouldn't get caught. Businesses should be held to a higher standard than the casual home user. Nobody here has actually said...

The only thing that bothers me about this list are the exceptions for political calls, charities, surveys, and places you've done business with in the last 18 months. Do not call should mean exactly that, and there shouldn't be an five year expiration once you register either. Just to show how...

I can't believe it. I just checked my inbox and the bastards sent me another message: Dear eBay User, During our regular update and verification of the accounts, we couldn't verify your current information. Either your information has changed or it is incomplete. Please update and verify your...

Now that you brought it up I do remember that thread so sorry about posting again for the same topic. Two warnings can't hurt, though. It's a shame there's so many scam artists out there that you need to keep on your toes all the time.

I don't know that it means anything Mercutio, but your last post was the 11111th in the B&G.

I'm posting this to serve notice to everyone here that if you receive a message similar to the following that appears to be from eBay it is false. A sign on page asks you for personal information or they threaten that your account will be closed. DO NOT fill out any information. This is a way...

That pretty much sums it up. I seem to go in spurts where I'll post a lot on SR and then disappear for a while. I'm a bit more consistent on SF because I can usually find one or two topics of interest. A year ago I think my SR post count was about 200 ahead of my SF one. It was only about 60...

I still post at SR occasionally. The problem is that there just aren't too many topics that hold my interest there any more, and too low a signal to noise ratio. Also, it seems that trolls pop up a bit too often for my tastes. Eugene really needs some industrial strength troll spray.

I've been getting those in my Yahoo inbox occasionally. Also, I've gotten a few things with attachments that the Yahoo virus scan says have virii. Needless to say those are consigned to the bit bucket. I don't get it either. Span and telemarketing are two things which I just can't fathom...

Funny you mentioned that because former Mayor Guiliani adopted "Our city can kick your city's ass" as New York's unofficial motto.

Isn't most of the filtering done on the server side? I know Yahoo seems to block quite a bit of junk mail on it's own. With the dozen or fewer spams I get a month in my Yahoo inbox I generally add the domain name(rather than the complete address) to my personal block list(also taken care of by...

It seems that since evidence on global warming is becoming irrefutable the powers that be are simply choosing to ignore it. This article tells the disturbing truth.

Ahem. I beg your pardon. New York City is spotlessy clean. So clean in fact that we have an abundance of all sorts of unique, native wildlife. Where else can you find rats the size of small dogs and cockroaches as big as your hand? Do you honestly think all these fine creatures would choose...

Thinking about this topic my opinion here is the same as it is regarding extreme overclocking(not to be confused with regular overclocking which is really just running your processor at the best speed it can do without any fancy cooling)-why bother? In six months a single processor system will...

Very interesting analysis Clocker, and thanks for sharing it. I wish PCs were common when I was in school. It would be nice to share some of my projects with everyone here. I still have most of them. Maybe one of these days I'll scan them and use OCR software to digitize them.

Not a bad idea. It must kill the batteries pretty quick though. A 118W, 127 couple cooler running at 9.6 volts draws around 7 amps. Even with the highest capacity NIMH batteries that's only about 12 minutes run time. Peltiers have a way to go before they're practical in battery powered...

20% efficiency in a production cell isn't bad. No mention of cost though. Until these things approach the cost of conventional roofing they probably won't appeal to the average home owner, although I plan to do a cost analysis eventually and see what the payback period would be.

When I used to work repairing taximeters the part of my job that I hated the most was talking to customers on the phone. Besides the fact that most of them had an IQ lower than the room temperature they just weren't pleasant people to talk to(who is when something breaks?). Sometimes I would...

Another thing also. The fan would slow down once the cat got caught by it. It doesn't.

You're right. I remember when I put up two ceiling fans at my sister's place and then had to adjust the balancing weights. These were small masses, less than an ounce each, and not too far from the center. Even so, until they were correctly positioned they still exerted enough torque to make...

We're getting Time Warner which includes the local channels. We also have a roof antenna so reception shouldn't be a problem, although the 5" B&W in my workroom can no longer pull in any channels expect WPIX with it's own antenna thanks to 9/11. My reasons for thinking about HDTV are twofold...

I could imagine that changing a keyboard port would be a PITA. One of my "tricks of the trade" is to use a good quality solder sucker(also called a solder pump). You heat the solder at the joint to be removed(sometimes you need to add a little fresh solder for good heat conduction) until it...

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I'll dig up Mercutio's thread and research some of the links provided here and there. No big hurry since I borrowed my mom's 13" spare TV in the meantime. I'll go to a few stores, compare pictures, choose the set I want, and then wait for a good price on...

No offense taken. My sister's views are close to yours on this subject, although I'm starting to think that her fairly regular depressed moods are in part caused by the incandescent lighting in her house. ;) Ditto for my brother. My guess is there are two reasons you're not happy with the...

Thanks to an improbable set of circumstances I'm in the market for a new television. Last night I was cleaning my room, and rearranging things to accomodate a large used file cabinet which I just finished painting. I had three very small cabinets which were going to be replaced by the large...

I'm guessing by all the goop splattered everywhere one of the electrolytic or even ceramic caps got an internal short, heated up, and exploded. That probably caused R6(the big metal oxide power resistor) to overheat and burst into flames. Very common failure mode. The power supply is probably...

As far as those interesting and/or famous that I've met personally, I can't say I've had any conversations. I saw Nicholas Cage in person once. I was riding my bike around 10 one night and noticed a bunch of bright lights around a private house. I asked what they were doing, and they said...

The reasons the light is not exactly the same are fourfold, possibly fivefold. First of all, the CRI of 90 means that the light is still deficient in some wavelengths. Second, the sun is a point source as opposed to a diffuse one. Third, ambient sunlight can be as intense as 130,000 lux, or...