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ROTFLMAO! :lol: :mrgrn: :lol: Thanks, Merc. I needed a good laugh after watching the depressing 9/11 ceremonies yesterday.

I've been using the software that came with my first scanner. It is basically a slightly limited version of Ulead PhotoImpact. The Photo Plus Explorer automatically makes thumbnails each time you go into a new folder. You can select pictures in each folder to be deleted, copied, or moved. I...

I don't see any need to torture or humiliate them either. If they can't be rehabilited just dump them on an island and let them fend for themselves. Long-term incarceration is a waste of money.

The thing is that the clerks always enter the cash tendered into the register, and the register calculates the change due. In fact, many of them are helpless calculating change if they don't do this. If she couldn't tell a $20 bill from a $5 bill then something is seriously wrong here. Maybe...

Except of course our resident mascot Tea. :mrgrn:

This really doesn't surprise me, and it extends to other types of technology as well. I've heard something like half the people don't know how to record on their VCR, which is one reason why they offer to sell tapes of a show right after it airs. And then you have all those digital clocks that...

Do you really expect any differently with the kinds of graduates most schools are turning out these days? I few weeks ago I went a fast food place and the total bill came to $4.36. I handed the clerk a $5 bill. She handed me back 64 cents change and $15 in bills. Putting aside that the...

I was disgusted beyond words when this whole thing started, and I was a staunch supporter of the attacks on Afghanistan. The war with Iraq is something the US cannot afford now, either financially or politically. It simply wasn't as pressing a national security concern as it was made out to be.

You have my sympathies. Something similar happened with Tiger. When we bought her into the vet the second time because the lumps on her throat weren't getting smaller, the vet basically said the situation was hopeless. She was too weak to operate on. I made the decision to make her as...

I empathize with you. Reading between the lines I can see you are very attached to your dog. I know the feeling. I can only wish for the best for both of you. If nothing else you've known for a long time that he wasn't in the best of health, and hopefully, at least on a subconscious level...

This dovetails nicely with the coming of robotic waiters in maybe 10 or 20 years. The robot can receive a signal directly from the empty glass and refill immediately. I just hope they don't extend the idea to plates or people will be fatter than ever. :lol:

I know it may seem cruel to say this, but the idiot deserved it for being such a, well, idiot. Why is it that I never cease to be amazed by the boundless depths of stupidity that we humans will sink to? I'll bet Tea is reveling in the fact that she's not a person now.

As far as I know this type of cartridge doesn't have an expiration date. I personally don't think that concept will last too long or be very popular with consumers. What happens to the poor slob who hardly uses his/her printer and then discovers one day that their nearly full $50 cartridge is...

Me too.

I've tried those steps with no luck. From what I managed to find on a few bulletin boards the kind of error I've been getting is fairly common for the 6578 cartridge but I haven't found any fix for it. Basically, the printer thinks either no color cartridge is installed, or the improper one is...

I've been going crazy the last month trying to get my printer to print consistently. The black cartridge(hp 6615) is very inconsistent-sometimes it prints fine, sometimes some lines are missing, sometimes it doesn't print at all. Not way to tell in advance since it can print fine and then a...

I wonder about that myself. I personally feel better about optical media than magnetic media, but it seems optical media isn't the long-term solution many thought it was. At least optical disks aren't affected by stray EM fields. Thus far, I've had no problems with any optical media, and most...

:lol: I doubt it. All joking aside, though, provided the system only affected those who break in, and there was adequate warning of it should the Fire Department ever need to enter the premises, there might very well have been no basis for criminal charges or a lawsuit. The government uses...

Those 100-year claims are based on testing at high temperature and humidity, and then using an equation to correct for the lifetime at 25°C and normal humidity. While this method may work reasonably well for estimating the life of ICs the correlation doesn't necessarily hold for CDs. I tend to...

IIRC crime rates stopped going up during the last term of the Dinkins administration(c. 1993). Murder rates are now at levels not seen since before I was born. This isn't to say things can't be much better, but at least I feel reasonably safe walking the streets in 90% of the city. As for the...

Yep. I read about a guy who owned a store and was sick and tired of getting broken into. One day he decided to connect his store gate to 240VAC after he closed up. Next time somebody tried to break in they were electrocuted(good solution if you ask me). Anyway, I think he served jail time...

The solution to stolen car stereos is simple-take them out when you first get the car and put a "NO STEREO" sign in your window. Now you won't have to worry about someone breaking your window or otherwise trashing your car just to steal the stereo. As a bonus, you have one less driver...

Actually, I can tell you exactly what is missing. Remember basic physics-acceleration=dv/dt and change in acceleration, also known as jerk, is da/dt. A manual shift car has lots of rapidly changes in acceleration whereas a CVT just has a initial quick build up following by a slow dropoff as...

I think you've been misled a bit here. Most trolleys and electric MUs(i.e. subway cars) aren't really constant power. Rather, they have a quick burst of acceleration up to 20 or 30 mph, often at a constant acceleration rate, and then the power tapers off really fast after that, often to less...

They said something similar when we were pushing 20 Gb/in² and then 40 Gb/in², etc. Maybe IBM will come up with another form of pixie dust. The concept is essentially correct, though. Sooner or later we will not be able to make bits any smaller. The only question is at what areal density...

It's not that I dislike them(I think they're cool), it's just that I tend to think that the R&D money might be better spent getting fuel cell vehicles to market sooner and speeding up the conversion to a hydrogen economy. That would also make US involvement in certain parts of the world...

Our friend Tesla first thought of and attempted this. Here is a description of how the system works. He actually built and tested a working prototype of the system in Colorado Springs c. 1899. This account of his life tells of his many experiments, including that one(scroll about halfway down...

Actually, if the voltage was high enough you might have been able to get by with very thin wires, or perhaps a large very thin flat plate the entire width of the road(like a sheet of aluminum foil). Not very significant cost-wise, and the highways should have been built better anyway to...

Just to correct one thing, the torque curve of an electric motor is way different than that of a gas engine. A gas engine has a torque curve that looks somewhat like a flattened parabola with the maximum occurring slightly under the maximum power RPM. To a first approximation it is a constant...

That was the point of suggesting inductive pickup(which necessitates AC power) and using buried, insulated cables. You could just as easily have metal rails on the surface of the road and contact shoes on the cars(just like the amusement park kiddie car rides) but should a pedestrian trip...

Unless we have another blackout I probably won't be able to see it very well anyway. Damned light pollution. Guess I'll just have to wait until 46789 AD instead, or whenever the next close approach occurs. :(

I thought hybrids don't have a direct mechanical link between the engine and wheels. I was under the impression that electrical motors drive the wheels(either directly or through a one-speed gearbox) and receive their power from the battery which in turn is recharged via the gas engine powered...

Coug, It sounds to me like you really have your heart set on the Prius, so why don't you try to nurse your car through the next year or so and just get that? Or maybe if fuel prices keep going up like they have been around here(gas jumped from $1.92 to $2.09 per gallon in one week) more...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2748609052&category=167 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2748609051&category=167

It's a shame we live in a society where there are enough dishonest people to make the honest ones suffer through nonsense like bag and receipt checking. I generally show a receipt if asked, but I believe the security guards have no power whatsoever to detain you unless they have actually seen...

You're a one-person person who happens to have lost the one person they wanted to be with. I can certainly relate to that. I'm not sure that I would want to constantly have friends calling me but from time to time I think it would be nice to have a person in my life other than my immediate...

I'm not sure how much this develop affects disk technology, if at all. Drive platters are already coated with a very thin layer of carbon(i.e. diamond) for durability, and they're already priced at commodity levels. Pure diamond for drive platters may or may not be a good thing. Let's say for...

Can't say for your specific board but my AOpen AX6B had no problem with my 100 GB Maxtor before I installed a Promise controller. Assuming the board's latest BIOS is dated 1998 or later you should be OK with anything up to 137 GB.

Merc, my mom read this thread and she wants to congratulate you on getting your own home, as do I. The pride and security of having your own place makes all the extra work and expenses worth it.

Yes, the lamps are rated at 32 watts each but how much power they consume depends upon the ballast. Here I must digress to explain the vagaries of AC power measurement. Normally you get power consumption by multiplying volts and amps. For resistive loads on an AC line or anything on a DC line...

Although I don't own a home(I just live in my parents' house) I basically treat it as if it were my own. I do plan to buy it eventually(i.e. when I can save the $400,000 it would currently cost since I don't want the burden of sending out mortgage checks each month). Anyway, since you asked...

Thar she blows, captain! :rofl: :lol: :rofl:

Cool. :D Only drawback for me is the nonrechargeable lithium cell. I hate making the battery companies rich. BTW, I was walking around last night with one of my bike headlights doubling as a flashlight. The light was from an underdriven Luxeon star but I could still light up a tree pretty...

Just some sporadic looting in some of the worse neighborhoods. Other than that people were civil. I saw many volunteers at intersections directing traffic. As I said earlier, the main downside was no A/C. If it was maybe 20°F cooler this blackout would have been nothing more than a minor...

Power went out here at 4:09PM. Just came back at 7:59AM. Almost 16 hours. Truth is the two main things that bothered me were not having AC and not having a computer(or any other means to occupy myself). It was actually nice to see the sky without the ever present light pollution. So many...

I don't mind. Since this thread's irrelevant now that the sale is over we might as well recycle it into a shaving thread. :mrgrn: And conserve electrons in the process. :wink: Do your bit for the environment. Always recycle old threads rather than starting new ones.

If I had to move every year or two I don't think I would bother unpacking. I probably wouldn't bother accumulating much stuff, either, or perhaps I would just leave it at my parents house so when the time comes that I did live in a place for more than a few years it would be there...

The more I read this thread the more I hope I never, ever have to move again. Hopefully I'll be like my brother's landlady. She lived in the same house since the time she was about 8. She just moved to Kalifornia at 84 so her niece could take care of her. Moving definitely sucks.

An 80 GB drive should probably work on a PII. IIRC, the 32 GB problem dated back to some old Pentium M/Bs with an Award 4.51PG BIOS. Anything newer should work up to 137 GB. The purpose of a Promise controller is twofold. First, it lets you use drives larger than your M/B may be able to...

In case you're interested in seeing if your password recovery program works here are the pdfs: http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/library/pdf/NN_ies1.pdf http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/pdf/NLPIP/SR/SR_DEB99.pdf