Search results

My brother has been stuck using an aging AMD K6-2 450 MHz machine. It's come to the point where the thing is both slow as molasses and very unstable, especially in hot weather. Me and my mom want to surprise him with a new machine for Christmas. I want to "future-proof" him as much as possible...

More detailed reply later-I just woke up and will be busy for a while soon. The real problem with aeroplanes (besides the fact that they do crash on a far too regular basis) is that they're unsustainable over the long haul. Think the fights over rail right-of-way by NIMBYs will be bad? They're...

It probably is, at least until you run up against a school of Orca.

No wonder it broke. Definitely an overheating problem, just like their video cards. :D

I just came back from Home Depot. I noticed something interesting with the n:vision CFLs regarding the output. The 14 watt "60 watt equivalent" warm whites give 900 lumens. The 3500K bright whites are 800 lumens, and the 5500K daylights are 630 lumens. Respective efficiencies in lumens per watt...

The ones which have mercury amalgam instead of liquid mercury tend to take a few minutes to come up to full brightness. However, they also tend to be able to endure more starts. Even the CFLs that seem to come up to full brightness right away actually get a little brighter as they run. In fact...

Doing things in a more analytical manner, let's say that the CFL is rated for 6000 hours. This is based on a 3 hours on, 30 minutes off cycle as most fluorescents are, so for this lamp it lasts 2000 starts. Generally, you'll get about 40% more life than rated if the lamp is left on continuously...

The problem is that the quality of those spirals is vastly inconsistent. Some makes last for their rated life or better with no problems. Others burn out soon after they're screwed in. Avoid the ones in the dollar stores. They're usually garbage. The ones Home Depot sells under the n:vision...

I hope it's nothing tax related. That's probably even worse than a lawsuit. I had an acquaintance who failed to pay about $100 in taxes in 1976. In the 1990s when they found irregularities on some of his recent returns they elected to go back. Contrary to popular belief the IRS can go back...

For now. As new homes are built or fixtures reach their end of life they can be replaced with purpose-built fixtures. The life cycle of the average mass-produced incandescent fixture from Home Depot is less than ten years. By then it either breaks, or looks like crap. When that happens, it's no...

You could put a big plastic diffuser the size of a light bulb around an LED right now if that's what you want. Of course, you'll lose 15% to 20% of the light in the process. This is why it isn't done. Just compare the lumens for a 100 watt clear and frosted bulb to see for yourself. An easy 10%...

Very easy-the spectrum is different. The luminous efficacy of the emitted spectrum of blue plus YAG phosphor white LEDs is about 330 lm/W. Furthermore, some energy is inevitably lost in the conversion of blue light to white light. These are termed Stokes losses. The least these losses can...

Hmm, terrorist attack or Angelina Jolie-tough choice... ;-) Obviously I don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about this stuff, or having conversations about it. Honestly. Most of my conversations lately center on the whole sub-prime loan debacle. If the economy goes south on account of...

Believe it or not, a lot of TGV lines have intrusion sensors all along the line to detect trespassors. And they definitely have means of detecting broken rail, whether from weather or explosion. Sure, what you describe can happen, but I'd wager to guess only once or twice. After that, security...

Terrorists won't be hitting the Chunnel or any other high-speed train anytime soon. They just don't make good targets. Put a bomb on a train and at best you'll kill a few dozen people in whatever car the bomb is in. You won't derail the train or cause a major accident because the car body will...

A few months ago my mom's doctor recommended trying tonic water. The quinine is supposed to relieve inflammation. Turns out a doctor was actually right about something for a change. I've tried it myself. It greatly helped with my carpal tunnel syndrome, and may have been the reason the foot pain...

I know on average I won't get close to what the items were purchased for. However, they have a certain "book value" which is the average of what collectors will give you for them. I'm looking to get perhaps around half that since those book values are almost always inflated. Problem is once you...

Here's the problem-we have a basement full of crap from my Dad's hobbies. Since it's worth something and neither of us are rich we can't just throw it away. However, going by typical eBay prices most of it would sell for so little after counting eBay/Paypal fees that we wouldn't do much better...

Yeah, they're all long tubes. They're all 32W 4-foot T8s except the Chroma 50, which are 40W 4-foot long T12s. We have mostly linear fixtures here with the exception of three chandeliers and about ten various table/outdoor lamps (only around a dozen standard screw-base bulbs total in the entire...

I read in the paper today that people with a BMI of 25 to 30 tend to live longer than those who are either obese or normal weight, all other things being equal. I have no idea why, but that's what the article said. Exercise and diet in the end are more important than weight, at least within...

The white balance on my camera was set to sunlight for all the shots. That's also why the daylight shot looks somewhat blue. I was trying to show the different light sources closer to how my eye sees them, rather than attempting to have neutral color balance. Here is another version of the same...

I read that link. While I certainly agree with many of the points made (the need for higher power factors in particular), the fact is thanks to capitalism, we will always be stuck with cheap, sometimes dangerous, usually less than optimal, goods in the absence of regulation. Just look at the...

Seems they're working on and off. Five minutes ago they didn't work, now they are.

Same here. The only thing that made school tolerable for me was proximity to large numbers of the opposite sex. This was more true in high school than college. In college for the most part there weren't really any who I found attractive. I won't say it's understanding on the part of my parents...

I wondered about that myself. So long as I'm not high on drugs, not drunk most of the time, don't bring over females for sex, and do a reasonable amount of chores, I'm welcome to stay at home for as long as I want. One of my cousins was home until his mid or late 40s, and only left because his...

Here's their whole line of dimmables. No bulb-shaped dimmables available in 5000K but they do have a couple of spirals. This is about the closest thread we've had where something like this might fit. What would really be nice are some reasonably-priced (i.e. <$5 each) small-base dimmable CFLs...

The prices went up on Amazon. As for shipping, first-class international to Canada would be less then $10 (I just checked on usps.com), so it would be more cost-effective for someone in the US to buy them from Costco, and ship them to you. If I were a member of Costco I'd gladly do that but I'm not.

Congratulations! Looks like you'll be doing a lot of :drinka:. Might not see you around here much for maybe another 20 years (especially if you decide to have a few more). ;-)

They're actually pretty robust. The main thing to worry about is reverse-charging. This occurs if a device is using several cells in series, and one of the cells has less capacity or less charge than the others. Voltage will first drop to 0, and then reverse as the other cells continue to supply...

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...