Search results

Look, I really don't think CAFE standards are the best way to go about this but that's what the government chose. Had I been in charge, I might have went with a fuel tax instead. Even Clocker was on board for that. Or perhaps simply emissions regulations. But the end result would be the...

Having a car isn't a birthright. I'd like to live in a penthouse on Park Avenue but guess what? I can't afford it, so I don't. I can't afford a car, either, so I do without (wouldn't want one in their current incarnation anyway but that's another story). That's what good old capitalism is all...

First off, read this. You're going on the incorrect assumption that car buying habits are going to remain the same as they were in the period from the early 1990s through about 2006. You're wrong. Trends come and go in any industry. The SUV was by and large a silly fad which is thankfully on...

If there's any one constant in business it's that you generally have to more heavily advertise things people don't want as opposed to things they do. The automotive market is no different. In the absence of any advertising, the majority of car buyers would just care about getting from point A...

I think at this point the "hydrogen highway" concept is as dead as a door nail. It offers no advantage whatsoever over today's much better batteries, and has lots of drawbacks (extra complexity, cost, the need to carry a very dangerous fuel). Sure, electrics need charging stations. If enough...

Sorry to hear the bad news. :( As for your brother, I also don't understand why people don't save. I've heard of former brokers who are now desperately looking for any work. Seems strange to me. If I made half a million a year for five or ten years like lots of these guys did I'd be set for...

Reading through some other links, there has been some success making sure the registry key HKLM/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/WindowsNT/CurrentVersion/Drivers32/aux = wdmaud.drv. Mine had some junk file name in there. I fixed it via Regalyzer since Regedit wasn't working. Everything is back to normal...

Update: System is still doing the same thing. No malware whatsoever found with Spybot S&D, Malwarebyte's Antimalware, Avast Antivirus, AdAware, or HijackThis. All that was found was tracking cookies and a little other relatively harmless stuff. Forgot to mention that Google searches have...

Well, it turns out that 32-bit Vista already has the tools to use RAM over 4GB. They just aren't enabled by default. But doing so might be violating your license agreement. (very interesting article discussing a lot about how Windows accesses memory)

If figured it might be something along those lines. So far though I haven't encountered any problems with no pagefile. I guess in the cases you must have a pagefile for Windows to work properly, putting it on a RAMdisk makes a lot of sense.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but why does one need a pagefile at all these days? I've disabled mine in XP ever since I went from 1 GB to 2 GB. At 2 GB it didn't appear to be needed. Now that I have 3 GB I almost never come close to using all my physical memory, let alone needing a...

I've been experiencing the same thing for a long time but ironically today everything appears fast. :scratch:

Congrats as well! :beer: We may disagree on a lot of stuff, but it makes the forums more interesting, and keeps all of us honest.

There are a lot of factors which determine whether or not trains can successfully replace cars for local transit. Population density is one. The higher the population density the more cost effective it becomes to build a comprehensive mass transit network. And the more comprehensive the...

Yep, that's the hard truth of it. Left to their own devices, corporations would plunder natural resources, pollute the planet, and in general transfer most of the wealth to those few on top in the interests of profit. Overall this is obviously not a good thing. We're ending an era where...

Are you sure it's not reverting to something like 256-color (8-bit) mode rather just changing gamma levels? 8-bit color will look just as craptastic as a poor gamma setting. especially on an LCD. Anyway, if this is the case a friend of mine recently had the same problem. He went nuts trying...

Honestly, I didn't even know who Colbert was until yesterday. Shows how little I care about pop culture.

I wonder exactly how it malfunctioned? I hope not in the way I'm thinking. :erm: In order to reduce the deficit NASA's budget will be cut considerably. Last I heard this is what they will be using:

Those radio buttons are grayed out on my machine. I think it's because my processor (Athlon XP 3200) doesn't support DEP.

Actually, 38 days. I just was doing this out of morbid curiosity to see how long the system would remain stable. I remember max with Windows '98 was about 10 days, and usually it started getting flaky after about 5. System was actually pretty stable with XP although the commit charge kept...

Chkdsk shows no problems. In fact, Dtemp shows no reallocated sectors at all, meaning the drive hasn't even needed to use any of its spares thus far. I think I'll install SP3 (original install was SP2) and hope that'll fix the problem. BTW, the update manager has had SP3 among the hotfixes...

Event viewer shows winlogon as the source of the problem. Interestingly, now regedit comes up for about 5 seconds, and then disappears. I'm trying the procedure Merc linked to. Will post if I find anything.

Forget it then. Not worth it just to be able to get a few programs working. I can run Windows Commander from my other machine and sync backups through my network if need be. And I've already downloaded an alternate registry editor. I was hoping maybe someone else here had seen this problem...

I just finished an online virus scan (Kaspersky). No malware found. I think you're right at this point, Dave. It's probably something OS related. Now how can I do a reinstall without losing my already installed programs and settings? That's really what's motivating me to fix this problem...

That's exactly what is happening. The start menu also disappears, and explorer.exe momentarily disappears from the list of processes in the task manager. Fushigi, Same thing when trying to run cmd from the task manager except the shortcuts and start menu don't disappear (but cmd doesn't...

No AV on my system. I don't have it because I don't really go to sites or do anything where I'm likely to pickup viruses. Besides, if it's malware of some sort, why didn't Spybot pick it up? I don't think this is a virus or trojan. Some of the things I found regarding viruses causing this...

All of a sudden my machine refuses to run regedit and cmd. All that happens when I try to run them is that all the shortcuts on my desktop disappear for a few seconds, and then reappear. Same thing when I try to run Windows Commander (a Windows management program similar to the old DOS-based...

It's a good idea to put in low voltage DC circuits regardless. If you ever go with solar panels then you can use the panel output directly for things like lighting, without using an inverter to convert to 120VAC. I think the standard for compatibility with solar panels would be 48VDC but I'll...

I know for a fact some parts of NYC have streetlights over 100 years old. And those cobra-style lights which are just about everywhere date from the late 1940s/early 1950s (except the ones destroyed by drivers). Most still have decades of life left in them. 200 years is a long time but not...

Those all use 5mm indicator-type LEDs which at best dim to 50% brightness after a few thousand hours (really bad ones can dim in a few weeks). Power LEDs like Crees or Luxeons use silicon encapsulant and really do last 50,000 hours or more. I have a Luxeon which has been running since January...

Believe me, a small minority here have been doing exactly that but unfortunately the powers that be for the last 8 years don't want to hear it. Maybe the new guy will do things differently, or at least we can hope. It looks like Australia is getting the brunt of this unfortunately but be aware...

I couldn't agree more. Also, to add to what Fushigi said, I agree that illegal drugs present a huge problem if they're made legal and people drive or operate machinery under their influence. However, we already have this problem with legal prescription drugs, many of which similarly impair...

I wouldn't say we're on the verge of making LEDs much cheaper, but this is a step in the right direction. Let's not forget that the die isn't the most expensive part of an LED. The package is what costs the most. Power LED packages are coming down in price but still high relative to the die...

The problem with my father was eating both the wrong foods, and more importantly eating too much food (he was close to 300 pounds in the end). There is no familial hyperlipidemia. He was fat, plain and simple. In fact, from what I've read most of the cases of high cholesterol are from being...

Some articles (and there's plenty more if google "overuse of prescription drugs"): Dangers of overuse of prescription medication Prescription Drug Use in America: The Startling Numbers And Their Implications Too Much Medication Prescription Drug Marketing Promotes Overuse

I'm obviously not an expert in those areas but I've done lots of research on the subject before reaching my conclusions. I've also seen the side effects of medication on my parents. My father never questioned what the doctors told him to take. I really wish he would have. He might well be...

The thing is we're going at it from the wrong angle. We've tried laws and enforcement. It doesn't work. If it did, then why do so many people try drugs, and why do they sometimes get hooked? To continue to do things the same way but expect a different result is the very definition of...

If you count the legal drugs, yes. And many legal drugs have long-term side-effects as bad or worse than illegal ones. Lipitor was responsible in large part for my father's death. IMO it's the legal drug problem we should go after first. I see far too many people stoned or otherwise out of...

One thing to remember is that alcoholism was at an all-time high during prohibition. Outlawing something doesn't make it go away. In fact, it makes it more attractive to some segments of the population. I dare say if we legalized all hard core drugs, not just marijuana, then drug abuse would...

This might be of help. Spamming was a problem on CPF until the new policy was put into effect. Specifically, here's what was done: In an effort to reduce spam in the forums by new members who only register in order to post spam, restrictions have been imposed on all new registrations. 1)...

Now that's the really puzzling part. I totally don't understand why an elite athlete like Phelps would take anything which might affect his performance or health. I won't touch cigarettes or weed for those reasons, and I'm not even an athlete. I just can't see shortening your life by a decade...

I don't get it either. Smoking weed isn't any worse than smoking cigarettes. It shouldn't even be illegal. Granted, I don't condone it, but then I don't condone smoking either. The only reason he is being chastised for this is because weed is against the law. Maybe if there's enough outrage...

This gives new meaning to the phrase "revenge is a dish best served up cold".

Nuclear fission is the best bet for now, nuclear fusion perhaps 50 years from now. Solar and wind can certainly find a lot of niches where they would work also but they'll never supply more than 25% of our power combined (and that's an optimistic estimate). Geothermal and tidal are a few more...

Let's take global warming out of the equation for a minute. Are there other good reasons to stop using fossil fuels? I can certainly think of a bunch: 1) Pollution for burning fossil fuels has greatly increased cancer and asthma rates. Both illnesses are very costly in terms of medical care...

It wasn't the death toll of 9/11 that mattered. As horrific as it was, that many people die in traffic accidents in under 4 weeks. Rather, it was the collateral damage, both in terms of actual physical damage, and damage to the economy. The physical damage was well into the tens of billions...

It'll work just fine. Any charger which charges regular NiMH well will work with Eneloops. Eneloops are no different than any other NiMH battery as far as charging or discharging goes. The difference is that they are formulated to lose less charge when sitting around.

The MH-C9000 is worth getting just for the break-in function alone in my opinion. This function allows you to enter battery capacity. The charger then charges at a C/10 forming charge for 16 hours, rests one hour, discharges at C/5 to determine battery capacity, and finally recharges at C/10...

Best thing for cells is to avoid cheap timed chargers (I think the charger which comes with Eneloops is like that). Even though charging current is low, they can overcharge cells. Another thing to avoid are chargers which charge cells in pairs. While they might be OK if used only for devices...

Another clue that the batteries are low-self discharge is usually a capacity rating of 2000 to 2150 mAh compared to "regular" batteries which are around 2500 mAh. Here is a lot more info on LSD cells