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In practical terms depression means deflation, not inflation. My mom's house might end up being worth less than the $52K she paid for it in 1978. I have no idea what it'll mean as far as bank deposits. Maybe the bank will give me ten cents on the dollar when I go to take it out, but with...

There's really no place to park your money now so that you'll win. Stock market? We all see where that is going. Savings/money market? You lose with inflation. Real estate? Still heading down. Gold? If you're lucky you'll keep up with inflation but don't expect to actually make anything...

Same here. I'm not currently in the market for a house, but I know they still have a way to go down in most parts of the country. My mom's house was purchased for $52K in 1978. Historically housing prices keep up with inflation in the long term but not necessarily in the short term. Anyway...

I commuted 2 hours/70 miles each way to college and 1.5 hours/20 miles each way to high school. Both experiences made me realize that I wouldn't want to do that with a job. I had and needed the summers off just to recuperate from the sheer exhaustion of my schedule. Doing that 52 weeks a year...

Bottom freezer models make a lot of sense. If/when our 1978 vintage fridge goes, we'll be seriously taking a lot at something like that. The only main disavdvantage of gas stoves is the need to run a gas line wherever the stove will be. This generally isn't something a DIYer should attempt...

The major stumbling block to living off-grid right now is that the typical means used for generating power (solar and wind) do so intermittantly whereas most people need power continuously. What's needed is some sort of relatively cheap system to store perhaps two or three days worth of power...

If you're going for higher end then you probably already know that stainless steel looks nice, is durable, etc. This is especially true for the tubs of washers/dryers. I've seen refrigerators with LED lights and all the digital goodies. Anyway, if possible try to buy everything as a group...

With SSDs, controllers are the drive in a much bigger way than with magnetic disks. Most flash memory chips of a given type (MLC or SLC) performs pretty similarly, say with a factor of 2 or 3 from best to worst. The controller and the algorithms used make all the difference between drives...

The city these days is a far cry from the cesspool typically seen in those Death Wish movies from the 70s or 80s. Granted, a lot of it used to look that way, a bit of it still does, but by and large everything's pretty clean. The people on the subways aren't gross for the most part. Crime...

I don't care what they do, but like I said don't expect to see me much either if I have to provide my own transportation. Remember that I DON'T need a car where I live. I certainly won't go through the bother of getting one for the convenience of family members wishing to see me. It's actually...

I know the batteries in the RAV4 EV are lasting 200,000 miles or more. And the new lithium cells from A123 Systems are unkillable if you ask the RC people (I have a pair and they're so great I'm planning to use them in a bike light). The key to long battery life is to keep from discharging...

The power companies already have systems which can turn heavy loads like EV chargers on only at night, after the peak load has passed. And a 40 mile each way commute was easily possible with the lead-acid batteries of the first EV1 in the early 1990s. With the NiMH pack the range increased to...

You know what my answer to that is? It's basically the same answer I've given to relatives who move hundreds of miles away and then might invite me or other family members to some event. If you want to move into some middle of nowhere place I never even heard of where no reasonable public...

Well, I'm not a big fan of diesel trains, either. With the current cost of diesel the Class 1 freights would actually save money by stringing up wire and going with straight electric operation. Besides saving in energy costs, electric engines easily last twice as long as their diesel...

Hybrids are the latest media darlings but IMO they're mostly hype. I'm no fan of either the Prius or the Tahoe. So you gain a few MPG, mostly in city driving. Good I suppose but the extra cost and complexity probably outweighs the fuel savings. And for all GM did to make the powerplant of...

Yep, basically once SSDs reach price parity with magnetic disks, there will not be any premium performance market. For now some users are willing to pay a premium for either an SSD or a 15K magnetic disk only because these are much faster than commodity drives. But when commodity drives are...

The amount of force increases with the square of the wind speed. And I'd guess the system currently stops at category 5 because there are few hurricanes powerful enough to merit another category (although that may change as we're leaving a century of relatively low hurricane activity-hence the...

I heard on a special on hyperhurricanes that they're planning to go up to 8, probably using 20 or 25 mph increments: Category 6: 176 mph to 200 mph Category 7: 201 mph to 225 mph Category 8: > 226 mph Under the revised system Katrina was very briefly category 7. So far there has been no...

It looks likely to hit west of NO this time, but it still won't be a picnic. Radar shows the storm to be nearly the size of the entire Gulf. And yes, it may become a Cat 5 or even Cat 6 (sustained winds > 175 mph) before it makes landfall.

Done. Done. Done. I agree with the point you so delicately drove home here, and most websites work fine in other browsers. I'm having a huge problem with my Yahoo email however. It's as slow as sh*t in Opera. As I just mentioned in Dave's XP Antivirus 2008 thread, I really hope they get...

I've had this, XP Antivirus 2009, and I think MS Antivirus 2008 pop-ups more in the last week than ever before. It seems the SOBs are really persistent. And nothing seems to be able to prevent these pop-ups from happening despite using Spywareblaster, Spybot S&D, and AdAware. The only safe...

Some decent 12V power bricks can exceed 80% efficiency. The best bet is to get one with fairly high current capability (i.e. over 10 amps). Since it has to be fairly efficient at high currents to keep from melting, that means it uses heftier active elements (MOSFETs, diodes). This will mean it's...

I recently was bothered by something called MSAntivirus 2009 which redirected me to a site attempting to get me to download malware. Anyway, I came to the conclusion that I should have been selectively blocking cookies but never got around to it. Today I started adding sites to my blocked cookie...

Vacation time and working hours are two good points to negotiate. If it were up to me I'd rather work 3 longer days than 5 regular ones. Four day weekends all the time would be a nice perk. Having the company pay for your housing, especially if you need to relocate to an expensive area, is...

Living in an area with many Asians, I can tell you for a fact that you'll occasionally have someone college age who might pass for 11 or 12. This isn't as common as it used to be with the better nutrition nowadays, but nevertheless some of these girls are both tiny and have childlike features...

Just for kicks I connected my mom's HDTV to the roof antenna a few months ago. Yes, I did pull in quite a few stations, even some from areas where I could never pick up an analog signal. It seems to me that DTV might well carry further than NTSC in the absence of things like mountains (obviously...

Interesting article on resolutions. Based on my own viewing habits (I watch my mom's 40" 1080p HDTV from about 4 feet) I would benefit from 1440p. However, much closer to the screen and the sides fall out of my view. Therefore, resolutions higher than 1440p probably wouldn't be of much use as...

It's a shame the movie makers and TV makers can't get on the same page once and for all regarding aspect ratio. While 1.85:1 might be passable on a 1.77:1 screen in that you don't have huge black bars, 2.4:1 isn't. My guess it this is all part of a ploy to get people to upgrade again when they...

I personally can't wait until it's all HD digital. I'm tired of a gazillion different formats being used, especially with commercials, whenever I watch a program in HD. First you'll have the program in regular HD filling the entire screen (or maybe not if the producers don't know what they're...

Putting aside the environmental aspects of lower power processors, I'd like to see them for the ease of cooling. It would be nice to have multi-core processors running at a decent clock speed, but dissipating 10 watts or less. That means passive cooling would be possible. Couple that with a...

I agree that NBCs coverage stinks. If you didn't know any better you would think all the Olympics had was beach volleyball, swimming, diving, and gymnastics. It's a pity one of the big networks has to have a virtual monoploy on coverage. That being said, it is exactly the fact that I see most of...

Not to mention that in general when a product needs heavy advertising to sell it's proably a case of a company trying to sell what they feel like making as opposed to what the consumer wants. Good products sell themselves via word of mouth.

I'm not bragging about anything. I just wanted to see if anyone on TWC was getting more than the advertised 16 Mbs. By the way, my service was down most of yesterday. When it came back I did a few more bandwidth tests. Best result was 26695 Kbps. I read up a little more about so-called...

It was the original one on mine also until I refreshed the page.

No, just standard which was recently bumped from 10 to 16 Mbps. This surpised me because prior to the most recent speed bump I was getting just under 10 Mbps late nights (and usually less other times). Now I'm getting 20+ Mbps late nights. Maybe they just opened the pipe all the way, figuring it...

After getting in the area of 10 Mbps for the last year or so I had heard RoadRunner bumped the speed to 16 Mbs. Turns out I'm even getting a bit more than that: Anyone else experiencing similar speeds now?

What wattage were you using? The regular 14 watt ones are actually smaller than an incandescent lamp in many cases. I think Home Depot also carries these. They look like a regular bulb. The downside is that they're only available in up to 14 watts, and likely use the same slow-starting amalgam...

Don't know about Osram but there are generally about six months to 1 year in between a lab announcement and actual product with Cree. The GE outdoor lighting sounds exciting: "The GE outdoor LED area light improves visibility and quality of light versus standard HID systems by providing a...

One interesting difference between the regular and downlight type CFLs besides the longer starting time is the lumens. The 14 watt warm white downlights are 640 lumens. The regular 14 watt soft whites are 900 lumens. The losses are undoubtedly due to the reflector and the enclosure but it can be...

No, I was referring to their 4-packs of standard 14 watt spirals. Our local Home Depot usually has them. They would work just fine in a downlight also although you might lose some lumens compared to a CFL with a reflector. They look like this:

Won't do anything for the smell however. If this smells as bad as the gas tools the local gardeners use I wouldn't want to be anywhere within 100 feet. Cool robot though. Am I the only one thinking it would look and sound like a giant mosquito if you added another pair of legs, wings, and a long...

Yes, the downlight type CFLs usually use a mercury amalgam to better deal with the temperatures. It's also better for fixtures with frequent starting. The downside is the long warmup time. The 4 pack of 14 watt CFLs I had recommended has no such problem. They come to about 75% brightness pretty...

MPJA has a whole bunch. You need 12 volts and I'd say around 4 amps. This one might do.

That might be a timer of some sort. Either way, so long as the circuit doesn't use an electronic switch then a CFL should be OK. If you hear a click right before the lamps go off then it's using a mechanical relay and all is well. It it's totally silent then it might be using a triac. This may...

Tim, if you get fairly low wattage CFLs (i.e. 13 or 14 watt which is equivalent to 60 watt incandescent), then it shouldn't be a problem in your open fixtures. Home Depot has a great line of n:vision CFLs. I have a pair of 14 watt ones operating in a totally enclosed fixture with no problems. It...

No, I'm against people feeling they're entitled to live in a certain way just because artificial factors have made that way of life possible in the past. The era of cheap energy and sprawl is coming to a close. There's just no way the free markets you love can sustain it. Government shouldn't...

You're 100% right but hasn't the model for business in the US in the last decade been "private profit, public risk"? When you have companies like Walmart who actually tell their employees how to get Medicaid and welfare subsidies instead of paying them a living wage, well, you don't think other...

Speaking of socialism, you conveniently left out a few socialist aspects of government which you probably benefit from: 1) The home mortgage interest deduction is effectively the government paying part of your mortgage interest in the form of reduced taxes. If a similar break was available to...

Price parity I'd say within two years for notebook drives, perhaps 3 to 5 for desktop drives. I'd be willing to pay a 50% premium at this point for SSD, and I'm cheap. I imagine there would be a huge market even at 100% premium. Let's not forgot hard drives were once $300 items even on the low...

Flash without a doubt takes the cake. It may fail your second criteria sometimes, but I say it's still bad doing what it's designed to do because animated .gifs and scripting can be made to do practically the same thing. Now that I've been on broadband for a few years I've almost forgotten how...