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Take a look at the plans by Comcen, a smaller ISP that I'm with. Their new ADSL2+ plans throttle off-peak bandwidth down to 2Mbps all the time, even if you haven't exceeded your quota!

See the plans here. Click a plan to get more information, where it will say "Off-Peak Speed: Speed is slowed to 2000Kbps (2Mbps) during off-peak only". All but one of the plans has a permanent throttle on night-time bandwidth.

What if you're a professional who wants to sync or back-up data to your work at night? What if you're a techo like me doing after-hours remote maintenance over a VPN? If you're with this ISP, you won't get a choice, you'll be throttled, even if your physical link can do over ten megabits!

As a counter point to the parent poster:

The majority of driving jobs for mining equipment (http://www.comcen.com.au/~heretic/humour/img/upsi dedown.jpg) go to women (millions of dollars of equipment, where time is money and trucks are running 24/7). Not only do they drive the trucks but support vehicles as well. Personnaly I know twice as many professional female drivers than male drivers.

Granted, driving skills around here are far above average anyway, it is an almost daily occurance that you will be sharing the road with anything from road trains http://home.tiscali.nl/~rtmeulen/rtmfotografie/fil es/reizen/aussie98/pics/road%20train.jpg,http://ww w.ausfuel.com.au/images/Volvo%20cruising.JPG,http: //www2.cemr.wvu.edu/~wwwasph/pictures/rdtrain.jpg , mining trucks http://www.comcen.com.au/~heretic/humour/img/what_ ute.jpg to APC's. The general procedure for getting people out of the way (of exceptionally wide loads) is for a cop to drive on the wrong side of the road with lights flashing. Mind you, this is on a 100km highway (where your going ~110km/h and the cop is going 40-50km/h) which doesn't leave a whole lot of time to get off the road.

I'd say women can drive just fine.

As a counter point to the parent poster:

The majority of driving jobs for mining equipment (http://www.comcen.com.au/~heretic/humour/img/upsi dedown.jpg) go to women (millions of dollars of equipment, where time is money and trucks are running 24/7). Not only do they drive the trucks but support vehicles as well. Personnaly I know twice as many professional female drivers than male drivers.

Granted, driving skills around here are far above average anyway, it is an almost daily occurance that you will be sharing the road with anything from road trains http://home.tiscali.nl/~rtmeulen/rtmfotografie/fil es/reizen/aussie98/pics/road%20train.jpg,http://ww w.ausfuel.com.au/images/Volvo%20cruising.JPG,http: //www2.cemr.wvu.edu/~wwwasph/pictures/rdtrain.jpg , mining trucks http://www.comcen.com.au/~heretic/humour/img/what_ ute.jpg to APC's. The general procedure for getting people out of the way (of exceptionally wide loads) is for a cop to drive on the wrong side of the road with lights flashing. Mind you, this is on a 100km highway (where your going ~110km/h and the cop is going 40-50km/h) which doesn't leave a whole lot of time to get off the road.

I'd say women can drive just fine.

One alternate plan is to use cheap titanium dioxide to make less efficient solar cells that are significantly less expensive. Titanium dioxide is used to tint paint white and is available cheaply in bulk. While researchers are working on increasing the efficiency through nano particle techniques, do it yourselfers have made progress.

That's completely not true - at least, not for decent quality rechargeable alkalines, which have a much lower internal resistance than normal alkalines due to the use of higher-quality electrodes (reference here), which means they will last longer in high-current draw situations, like digital cameras, but still nowhere near as long as NiMHs, which have a much lower internal resistance. (One manufacturer shows 1950 mAh for 30 mA, 1500 for 125 mA, 1200 mAh for 300 mA, and 750 mAh for 500 mA).

Rechargeable alkalines also last much longer if they're constantly recharged. Deep-discharge cycles will drain about 50% of the battery's capacity in about 10-15 recharges. Shallow-discharge cycles will extend that number to about 100 or so. It's not NiMH quality, but if you buy one rechargeable alkaline and it lasts you as long as 50 disposable alkalines, well, then it's damned cheaper, isn't it?

Decent rechargeable alkalines have a very good use: low current drain devices, and devices that are not tolerant to low battery voltages. Remote controls, clocks, even Game Boys, are all very good locations for rechargeable alkalines.

hello all of you. I have a homemade 6" refractor, and 50 mi east of LA out here in the mountains is where i travelled last night to watch the moon show. I brought along my WATEC WAT-902H CCD camera and I must of took over 200 exposures into my laptop during the 2 minute interval. i've been painstakingly going thru the images and i think i may have found a winner. please look at it and tell me what you think. I do not have any fancy enhancment software so if anyone out there can enhance this please let me know via email. thanks, John M. image url: http://24.5.74.115/astro/scans/imag0134.jpg