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Just for the record, Steam is not OLD, its still being used to this day in the form of a nuclear power plant. So everyone please stop saying Choo Choo and read this...

The uranium bundle acts as an extremely high-energy source of heat. It heats the water and turns it to steam. The steam drives a steam turbine, which spins a generator to produce power. In some reactors, the steam from the reactor goes through a secondary, intermediate heat exchanger to convert another loop of water to steam, which drives the turbine. The advantage to this design is that the radioactive water/steam never contacts the turbine. Also, in some reactors, the coolant fluid in contact with the reactor core is gas (carbon dioxide) or liquid metal (sodium, potassium); these types of reactors allow the core to be operated at higher temperatures. Read Howstuff Works here

How this post got modded insightful i'll never understand.. maybe because its anti-microsoft...

The x-box was supposed to have the higher tech and the live advantage and it bombed.

I direct you to here: the xbox outsells the gamecube everywhere except Japan. http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=11 067. If that means it bombed then the gamecube bombed too.

The x-box had it and it didn't sell. Nobody has ever in my opinion come up with a satisfactory reason for the failure of the x-box.

See point one.

Another one that amazed me is that one post said the x-box had signed the big names. Bungie and EA. Wtf? Bungie IS NOT a big name. They got 1 game and that is it. EA is big but EA signs on to anything. Getting EA to endorse your new console is like getting a hooker to go out with you for money. Even /.ers should be able to manage that.

Erm what? Xbox already had EA supporting them, and Microsoft owns bungie so obviously Bungie would be supporting Microsoft. Also, bungie only got one game? Clearly you don't know your history, Bungie was out and out the most critically successful Mac games producer ever, also making very critically successful games for pc. http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/myth2soulbligh ter/ Myth II is about as good as a computer game can possibly be. To all those who followed Halo's development, Microsofts initial purchase of them was most definitely a big thing, given that it was clear even from early dev shots that halo could be something special.

As for the graphics being amazing. Oh please. I already play at higher resolutions on my now 2yr old PC. Richer friends won't accept anything less then 1600x1200 while sony's own games like eq2 can already make use of 512mb video cards despite the fact they were not even out. Other recent games to can make use of hardware features that even top of the range pc's don't have let alone these weak consoles.

You seem to be confused about the difference between a computer monitor and a TV screen. See this article: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dtv2.htm Weak Consoles, do you realise the xbox360 has a triple core processor? How many of these do you see in your local PC shop? The current fastest dual core AMD is the 4800 X2, which is dual core 2.4ghz per core. Which costs around 800 dollars! http://shopper.cnet.com/AMD_Athlon_64_X2_4800/4014 -3086_9-31396324.html. Note: The cheaper xbox360 costs 300 dollars. Want to carry on comparing the un-comparable? I suggest you start with melons and small off-duty Czechoslovakian traffic wardens.

The 360 is lacking launch titles and has not got the mindshare with the general public.

Xbox360 Launch Line up: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6139695.html
PS2 Launch Line up: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&cl ient=safari&rls=en&as_qdr=all&q=+%22ps2+launch+lin e+up%22+worst&btnG=Search
Indeed, most people regard PS2's launch as one of the worst ever with the DC being one of the best ever. The ps2 steam rollered the DC thus meaning that the initial launch means nothing.

Since the subject should be current and timely, and cross-referenced to allow branching, I suggest a thing called the www over the 30-year out-of-date tome suggested. While how stuff works is surrounded by marketing it does offer an endless stream of topics explained in simple terms http://computer.howstuffworks.com/software-channel .htm

A group of people tried to make an open-source-friendly, Linux-based game console called the Indrema. They failed.

It can't be done. Bar codes use a checksum.

You'd have to precisely alter both the UPC/EAN code value's bars *AND* the check digit bar in order to make them match.

Also, the UPC/EAN numeric code is printed in plaintext below the bars, so if the laser refuses to scan them (as it will if the check digit bar doesn't add up) then the cashier can enter it manually (and probably see the incorrect item name/price..)

Unless you have magical caliper-eyeballs or something, I'd say you heard an urban legend..

Check it out: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/upc.htm

w00t! -AC

While I realize this site is about news for nerds,
How does a title like RPGs In The 'Real World'
Not make you immediately think of things asploding?

http://science.howstuffworks.com/rpg.htm/printable
To keep this semi-ontopic, howstuffworks does discuss
RPG Basics
Tactics: How Are RPGs Used?
RPGs: The Future

The section on "Firing an RPG-7" might not be so applicable... but I bet it'll beat rolling a 20 sided dice any day.

(2) Arm yourself under the protections of the 2nd amendments. We're allowed guns not just to hunt prey, protect our country from foreign invaders, and ensure our private security, but also to protect ourselves from domestic threats (meaning from within our borders.) If and when our government has become so corrupt that reform through the ballot boxes is impossible, then it is time to turn to the ammo boxes. (I don't believe we are near that point at all. When we are, a whole lot more people will be reaching for their ammo boxes.)

Is bullshit. You can go on and on about protecting yourself from Big Brother, but Big Brother has Apache nightvision gunships that'll take you and your pathetic band of idiots out in a single burst from the cannons.

If these neocon shitbags can convince America's impoverished semiliterate youth to go blast the fuck out of a bunch of Iraqi men, women, and children to protect ExxonMobil's "right" to sell Iraqi oil to the Chinese (which is why the Chinese are funding the whole operation) then they'll certainly be able to get them to fry the ass of some moderately armed and poorly trained "domestic terrorist" squad armed with their 2nd amendment weapons.

Reach for the ammo box - go ahead - just like Baader-Meinhof or James Brown - go for it - see how long you last. 5, maybe 10 minutes before they get a fix on your position and dump a MOAB on your sorry stupid hide, and they will then cheerfully rake your shattered remains with an AC-130.

IF by some bizarre chance you or your buddies somehow survive that onslaught, they'll just round up your relatives and send them off to Gitmo for "interrogation" until you surrender. Meanwhile they'll hunt you all down with helicopters and ground troops. You won't stand a chance, and when you find out your wife or daughter are trussed up naked in Gitmo ready for an "internal examination" - you'll surrender. And then they'll kill the lot of you. "Accidentally" of course.

RS

You can see a few examples. I guess Undercover Marketing is the term for this when you're not supposed to notice it. Product Placement.

Pretty much all television and radio advertising uses principles of hypnosis. The subject is not put into a sleep state, but becomes hyperattentive. Your trance induction is via the program you are watching. You pay rapt attention to this, and frequently allow your perception of reality to be at least partially suspended in order to imagine a fictional world. Then in this vulnerable state of mind you get advertisements uploaded into your brain, over and over again.

umm no? google it yourself. the octane level cannot be higher than 100. period. arbitrary scale? wtf?

this website is geared towards morons -- so this may help you out a little.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question90.htm

And in case anyone was wondering how a diesel works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/diesel.htm

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/diesel1.htm

Diesel's most certainly can suffer from pre-ignition. The difference here is that it is the direct injection timming which can cause it.

And again it isn't about increasing the fuel efficiency. Diesel and gas engines are both extremely efficient in combusting the fuels and releasing the energy they contain. What they are not so good at is converting that energy to mechanical force. Faster combustion makes for cleaner combustion and more energy imparted to pushing the cylinder

While the truck is not accelerating, the engine is still running and expending much more energy than the truck needs to keep rolling. Remember, the truck has a lot of inertia. Read this article for an idea of what is going on:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question262.htm

On the one hand it takes a lot of effort and expertise to build such systems, on the other hand both can and have to be bought usually, so I definitely see your point.

So you could argue that they could slap each other with their wallets instead of building those supercomputers. But first of all it's quite impressive that some entities are willing to invest so much money into computing power. And afterall they are not doing this because it's some kind of game - they believe that they need the processing power. Furthermore money is the dominating aspect in so many fields nowadays (especially those most people assume to be innovation driven): Cars, airplanes, watches or even sports. Just about anything related to reputation is strictly connected to a factor called money. One might argue that a Veyron is just an ordinary car powered by two upper level engines combined to a beast plus some added technology being in use since decades in other fields. What factor makes it possible to assemble such a car? Money! But still many people (even though most of them could never afford it) are fascinated by the concept. Apart from that (right here I'm not comparing cars to supercomputers anymore) they don't even question the idea of haveing a car being able to drive multiple times as fast as your average highway speed limit. They don't even care that they would run out of fuel in minutes at maximum speed. I guess that's just human nature...

Hybrids make their own electricity. See here

I read an article many years ago about them doing this to live human patients. Via a fiber cable brain wet-ware implant, a blind man was able to discern colors and rudimentary objects. He did have a short seizure during the interview; however, once the subject got passed that he immediately requested that the researchers continue.
Unfortunately this was so long ago I cannot remember the magazine or relocate the article. But googling artificial vision shows a few parts of history and HOWSTUFFWORKS has a full set of details

http://health.howstuffworks.com/artificial-vision. htm

Even more FYI...

Though movies are shot at 24 fps, each frame is lit twice:

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-proje ctor4.htm

My question is, have there been any experiments done with induced mutation, combined with natural selection, to establish benchmarks for the end-to-end evolutionary process under controlled conditions?

For example, has anyone bombarded bacteria with cosmic rays in a laboratory, and made a note of how long it takes for speciation to occur? (For that matter, has anybody been able to trigger speciation in a lab at all?)

The work of Herman Muller who was a pioneer in these radation bombardment experiments:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/muller.html
http://www.aboutnuclear.org/view.cgi?fC=History,Ha ll_of_Fame,Hermann_Joseph_Muller
http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1946/ (he received the Nobel prize for inducing mutations through radiation bombardment)
Another example of mutation inducing experiments:
http://www.ansinet.org/fulltext/jbs/jbs14269-271.p df (http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:762TTjEpLBAJ: www.ansinet.org/fulltext/jbs/jbs14269-271.pdf+mull er+%2B+flies+%2B+radiation&hl=en)

Some more general links:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/evolution5.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.htm l (recorded examples of speciations)

Google and ye shall find :)

Digiscents gave us iSmell, and Color Kinetics gave us Surround Light.

Both of these techologies required special hooks to be used within the game code. It's worth noting that DigiScents went out of business and Color Kinetics does not seem to market Surround Light any more.

I still have an iSmell T-shirt from the 2000 Game Developers Conference. Heh.

Doc,

Looking around I have found a couple of possibilities. I think that heat engines might not be the best way, given that (in my head) the stored hot water cannot be recycled into the system very efficiently. I'm probably wrong about that. Anyways, from what I've read, the underlying heat engine is very efficient, it just has a limited range of applications (submarines!). I'm also intrigued by this Quasiturbine engine. It is said it can be configured as a steam engine: Store superheated water in a nice insulated place and use it to drive your electrical system. Perhaps the way to go?

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/quasiturbine.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiturbine
http://www.howstuffworks.com/stirling-engine.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine
http://www.stirlingengine.com/

Doc,

Looking around I have found a couple of possibilities. I think that heat engines might not be the best way, given that (in my head) the stored hot water cannot be recycled into the system very efficiently. I'm probably wrong about that. Anyways, from what I've read, the underlying heat engine is very efficient, it just has a limited range of applications (submarines!). I'm also intrigued by this Quasiturbine engine. It is said it can be configured as a steam engine: Store superheated water in a nice insulated place and use it to drive your electrical system. Perhaps the way to go?

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/quasiturbine.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiturbine
http://www.howstuffworks.com/stirling-engine.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine
http://www.stirlingengine.com/

"I used to think D&D was cool, but then I found out this gets me much more respect than my original mint condition Dungeon Master's Guide ever did!"

While I would love to have a stereolithography 3d rapid prototyping system, and would love for them to be common, the photopolymer plastic these operate on is quite difficult to produce and therefore rather expensive (~$800/gallon). The non-leaking X/Y/Z table is relatively easy to come across or build if you have a good garage machine shop, and though ultraviolet lasers are easy to find online, the prices are not ( Photonics Industries Intl., Inc., Market Tech, Inc. ) which typically means "quite pricey".

That being said, I can imagine a paper-fiber-reinforced-plastic system using standard hobby epoxy and normal printing paper, where the layers are cut out on an X/Y table and assembled in a stack, then manually soaked in epoxy... that could provide a similar result (minus the nice transparent effect) with much less cost. It would have caveats and problems like alignment and structure of the paper version before epoxy, and it would have a shearing weakness tendancy parallel to the layers, but even stereolithography isn't intended for final product.

Great, now I have to build one of these... so much for my free time.

I Hate You.

My understanding is the 1st 3 are the geographic area from whence applied for the card. Yes. I was born in Pennsylvania, but my card was issued in Illinois.

Not hypocritical at all.

A cell phone is trackable even when its owner is not talking on it.

This article provides a good outline on what happens. Basically, there's a control channel, through which your phone communicates whenever it's got a battery in it. Your phone listens for an SID (System Identification Code) on this channel, and tells the appropriate MTSO (Mobile Telephone Switching Office) "Hi, I'm here". The MTSO has to know where you are, so that it can route incoming calls to the device.

All that's happening here is that the traffic monitoring folks are listening in on the back-channel communications between a large number of cell phones and base stations, and using the changes in location (as averaged over a large number of devices) to guesstimate the average speed of traffic. Individualized cell phone tracking is useless for a traffic flow application, so it's actually highly likely that the traffic folks are telling you the truth when they say that individual data isn't being logged, and that only aggregate data is being recorded.

The technology's nothing new - a system like this is necessarily a part of any wireless phone system, otherwise your phone couldn't ring when someone called you. No such agency is now permitted to do such a thing domestically (a sentence that can be parsed in at least eight ways, all of which are true), but they probably don't, because everyone else who's also interested in individualized tracking, is already doing this, has been doing this for years, and is using other tricks in software to locate their targets to within a few meters, all in real-time. They aren't using the traffic-control folks' data, because they don't need it.

Who are you calling a dumbass, me or the parent.

I got my information from here: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lcd3.htm

The printable version has it all on one page. Repeat after me: the web isn't print. There's no reason to split this into 6 pages.

I'm seeing standard and predictable fare (not necessarily a bad thing) in posts for this article. There are basically two camps; those who just want a cell phone that sends and receives calls reliably (that's where I am); and those who love the extra features and want the coolest gadgetry they can blend with their cell phones.

My thoughts:

• reliable calls. Please fix cell phone technology before you add cameras and video to my phone! I've heard the argument it's the manufacturers of the phones doing this, not the providers. I don't care! Clearly the phone manufacturers and providers talk (unless, maybe they're using cell phones), and collaborate on what goes into new cell phone designs.

  There has been a recent emergency in my family and I was totally frustrated by the number of dropped calls, unintelligible conversations, etc. I endured with people on the other end using cell phones.

• it isn't the cell phones that are the problem, it's the implementation of the networks. I don't care! If I'm buying cell phone service, I assume it's an end-to-end solution. If you want to know more about how cell phones work, look here. It's an interesting read, you'll learn a lot about how cell phone technology works, but you won't find out why or how they would fix quality problems with the technology.

• combining is just a bad idea. I remember one time combo TV-VCRs on the market. I asked a friend why he'd bought it. He shrugged, said it just seemed cool, and more convenient. But what happens if the VCR breaks? (It did, btw). Same for combo-cell phones. More stuff in one device means more opportunity for some piece to break, leaving you with awkward devices that don't do everything you bought it for.

• related to point previous, there's the compromise in quality of added functionality. If I'm dishing out $900 for a do-all gadget and it takes pictures, it'd better be at least 4Mpixel with a Leica lens and variable focus (I don't want infinite depth of field in all of my pictures).

• for the total cost of this new gadget (I'm loathe to call it a phone) I could buy: a very good 4M pixel camera; an iPod; and a cell phone. I know people argue for the convenience of them all in one. I don't buy that. The all-in-one invariably compromises in form factor. It's not an ideal form factor for a phone, it's not an ideal form factor for a camera, and it's not for an mp3 player.

  Yeah, it's not as convenient to carry multiple gadgets around, but it's not nearly as inconvenient as people want to make it out to be to strengthen their all-in-one argument.

• pay-for services. I didn't even know about this one until recently, but lots of these combo gadgets are designed to suck more money out of you. For example, the ads show people sharing pictures and videos with their camera phones, but it turns out that's not part of the basic service, you pay as you go to send pictures. What a ripoff (why isn't that just part of the service minutes?)!

• I keep hearing the argument that we can just buy a phone if that's all we want. But, I'm not finding that to be true. I've been to kiosks where they don't offer any non-enhanced phones. They may be out there, but they're not easy to find -- and the sales force out there isn't inclined to be helpful around this, they're making their big bucks by selling the bling.

Bottom line: (at least for me) I just want a phone that does a very good job of being a phone.

Bulb Efficiency (lumens per watt)

• Incandescent: 14-17.5 [1]
• White LED: 29-37.5 [1]
• Fluorescent: 50-100 [2]

[1] Why LEDs can be 10 times as efficient as incandescents in some applications but not in general home lighting!
[2] Are fluorescent bulbs really more efficient than normal light bulbs?

I'm a bit surprised at those fluorescent numbers... I don't have the box to one of my fluorescent bulbs handy to double check that, but I do know that while not as hot as incandescents, they become very hot to the touch when in use. I've never touched a lamp sized LED bulb however.

One disadvantage of fluorescents is that they contain mercury. Newer fluorescents may have found a way around this however; I'm not sure.

Not surprisingly, many of the websites I saw talked about future improvements in LED tech with goals around 100 lumens per watt.

Interesting. I've never heard of such a thing. But wouldn't you need to replace a substantial part of the engine itself?

"Because hydrogen has a much lower energy density and burns much faster and hotter than gasoline, compression ratios can be increased, and more air is mixed with the fuel to keep combustion temperatures and exhaust emissions down. Most hydrogen engines run lean (air-to-fuel ratio of 30:1 or more)," - that's very non-standard for internal combustion engines isn't it? About twice normal? What effects would that have, i.e. would you have to rework all the sensors etc that control air intake and exhaust? It seems like you'd need an engine custom built for this, and you'd still need all the advances in storage/compression that fuel cells need as well.

I found a couple articles saying that the Wankel engine or a quasi-turbine engine is better performing for a hydrogen internal combustion engine than a piston design.

http://www.monito.com/wankel/hydrogen.html/

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/quasiturbine.htm/

WiMAX supports repeaters in much the way the 802.11 standards do. In concept these can be used to reduce LOS problems. There's a diagram of the idea here.

WiMAX is not a competitor or successor to 802.11 anything, and TFA misrepresents it in saying it is. It's more a competitor to DSL, cable, and Broadband over Power Lines.

You are to hung up on fossilised carbon, which we don't need. Carbon that is exchanged between the biosphere and the atmosphere completes a full cycle in decades. You may want to take a quick glance at the carbon cycle.

I agree that theoretically we won't need it future,although we're still heavily reliant on it and that shows no sign of change in the near future. But I was using it as an example - the carbon cycle may be only a few decades but that doesn't change the fact that it takes millions of years for coal and the other fossil fuels to form. This is why just saying 'the earth is a closed system and will renew whatever we use' isn't a valid argument - it may well be true but it happens on such large timescales that its irrelevant to human beings.

I challange you to name at least a few resources that:

are absolutely vital to us.

are not renewable, even using more advance technology than we have today.

are not replacable by renewable resources.

are readily available in relatively close proximity in space.

Platinum for example. http://science.howstuffworks.com/asteroid-mining1. htm
Its well known to be fairly rare and expensive due to a limited supply on earth.

Look the whole point of mining in space is not because we will totally run out of resources on earth, its not some desperate last-resort. The point of it is that there's vastly more (mostly) mineral wealth out there than we have on earth, enough to completely revolutionise the economics of pretty much everything. For example one of the roadblocks to large-scale production of fuel-cell cars at the moment is the shortage of platinum. The other reason is that no matter how efficient we recycle, we don't have enough resources on earth to get all 6 billion people alive today up to the current standard of living of the developed world, let alone the future.

Plus the whole thing has the added benefit that we could shift mining off earth eventually and not have to suffer all the environmental damage it brings. Even though none of this will happen for decades the space programs today are undeniably laying the groundwork for it all.

No, what you've got is a really, really expensive pencil and paper.

Not quite, the previous poster wants pressure sensitivity. You are describing this: http://www.howstuffworks.com/magna-doodle.htm

I was wondering if the ground line was a major reason for this. He does not live in Tokyo, but he does live in a nearby suburb of it.

Currently the large majority of the US phone network is copper. Due to the "time sharing" that was invented about 100 years ago the max speed possible is 56k over a normal phone line. Even that requires some interesting math discoveries.

DSL bypases the time sharing and gives a straight hard line directly to the central office. The reason for the distance limits on DSL is due to distortion over long copper lines. The longer the line, the more distorted the original signal gets. This is why they farther you are from the central office, the slower the speeds you get. How Stuff Works has some info on this.

In order to get faster, the phone companies are installing fibre. I remember reading somewhere that that is what Japan has essentially done. It is still called DSL since it is from the phone company and is stil a digital line. Verizon, my local phone company, is currently working on installing fibre to the home. Already, we qualify for DSL, where a few years ago we did not. (Currently we have cable by Cox.) Hmm... Their 3mb DSL service is a bit cheaper than the 5mb Cox service. They have a DSL 768k/128k for $15/month. That is much better than our old 56k dial up that cost $20/month. So it is improving. We don't yet qualify for their fibre service, it hasn't been put out to this area yet. However, the fibre service they are offering 15mbps for $45. They are also offering HDTV over those connections. By the way, I live in a relatively unpopulated area. Fairfax County, VA. 1 Million people, 395 square miles. We have under 1000 people per kilometer^2 compared to Tokyos 13400.

As I understand it, the largest delay was due to the telcos wanting to make sure they didn't have to open up their brand new fibre networks to rivals. Probably since they wouldn't be able to pay off the investment of fibre at whole sale prices.

http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?se ction=distribution&id=2615
http://www22.verizon.com/FiosForHome/channels/Fios /HighSpeedInternetForHome.asp

I don't know what to think of it myself but according to Marshall Brain and howstuffworks.com the Revolution will be about as powerful as the XBox360, but it will also have a PPU in it. That's pretty cool if true.

Come on ppl. This is plasma propulsion, this is not magnet whatever thruster! It is also not much different from fusion plasma propulsion (You need an energy source to ionize gas, duh!!!) Plasma propulsion has been around for a while. Do you think these sorry excuses for editors would approve this article for slashdot news? http://science.howstuffworks.com/fusion-propulsion 2.htm. Of course not, because this is just encyclopedic... meaning it is not breaking news!

If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet).

Nice work with the selective quoting, bub.

Very next line:

But the average temperature in Antarctica is -37C, so the ice there is in no danger of melting. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing.

If we raise the average temperature on Earth by 37C, we'll probably all be dead anyway, so the flooding will be kind of irrelevant.

>> Saddly a handful will probably survive it.. most likely the rich ones who can aford to hoard boats

If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet).

Methinks the human race isn't the only "fucking stupid" one around here.

Oh, so that is what the bridge will be singing.

Yeah gene splicing is way cool, remember that goat that's mammograms now produce spider silk,
the strongest silk in the world for bullet proof vests (could you use carbon nanotubes for a vest?)

http://www.howstuffworks.com/news-item38.htm

Why the hell aren't you guys talking about incorperating this into a mech or exoskeleton?
all those elestic leg projects...just ignored.

What about the suction cup gloves? for spiderman manuvers?
I mean christmas is so close and ... and

Side note: Drum brakes are easier than discs. If you can do discs, you won't have any problem w/ drums.

While I haven't had to play with drum brakes, I could only assume they'd be more difficult to deal with given the sheer number of parts (at least according to HowStuffWorks). A disc brake system is pretty trivial, and really the only reason why drum brakes are still used is because they're cheaper (more parts, but none are as expensive as a big chunk of iron for the disc).

My truck has rear drums, so eventually I'll play with them. My car goes through pads and rotors much more quickly (mostly because I do the bulk of my driving in my car, and because I occasionally take it out to the track), so that's where I've had all of my experience.

Here are some interesting links that tell more about how carbon dating works. The link you posted is just creationist talk and not even the best of its kind. You need to know more about the intrinsics of the method before you can judge the scientific merit.

science.howstuffworks.com/carbon-14.htm

230nsc1.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/cardat.html

www.c14dating.com/int.html

No. Premium gas is not higher quality. It's higher octane. A car that needs higher octane will not run properly on lower octane. It's how the engine is designed.

Read up on what octane actually is about:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question90.htm

My electric shaver recharges this way, and i've been wondering why we don't just have a pad that we can toss our electric gadgets onto for recharging.

My wish has been granted!

As for efficiency, I'll refer you to DansData, because he knows the answer to everything.
  Your Answer Here

Some of these, especailly the "Aki", ranks among the all time greats of things fashioned by repeatedly being beaten by the stupid stick.

There were mood rings; and, one of my favs, pet rocks (I keep mine in my shoe). Then there was/is the virtual pet.

Stupid though they be ya gotta admire the chutzpa to market this stuff. Somewhere in a virtual heaven Willy Loman is smiling down on Nokia.

The premium you pay for a hybrid right now is pretty large and the gas you save doesn't make up for it over the life of the car. But in a couple of years, it might. Right now, the extra cost is basically due to three things:

The first is demand since there is a mild panic about gas prices right now, but that will change in a few years, even if gas prices don't go down much (though I think they will go down some).

The second is the batteries, and that won't change much, so there will probably always be a premium for that reason, unless some dramatic battery technology improvement comes along.

The third is the extra complexity of the car in general and the fact that it's new technology that the industry hasn't figured out how to make cheaply yet. I'm fairly confident time will change this as well. For one thing, if you look at the mechanism that the Toyota Prius uses, you'll see that it's really clever. The Power Split Device that they use is actually fairly simple, and it acts as a replacement for a transmission. The power split device doesn't actually seem much more complicated than a traditional transmission, and it is even missing some of the complicated parts of a traditional transmission, like a torque converter or a clutch. I could imagine that eventually this thing could be just as cheap to make as a regular tranmission, or possibly even cheaper.

So what this all adds up to is that my guess is that the premium for a hybrid will not ever go away completely because you will always have to have batteries, but the premium you pay for a more fuel-efficient car could drop to only a $1000 or $2000 above what you'd pay for the equivalent non-hybrid car. If/when that happens, hybrids will become financially worth it.

Personally, I think it's likely that we will reach a point in the near future (maybe even in the next 5 years) where hybrid cars will become the better alternative financially. And when that happens, they will reach a sort of critical mass: their increased popularity will mean more and more models will be introduced, which will in turn lead to the kinks being worked out, making them an even more attractive option.

And for that reason, I think buying a hybrid can be more than a political statement. The more people buy hybrids, the more motivated the auto industry will be to spend money on R&D for hybrids, and the sooner they will reach critical mass. So, if you buy a hybrid, it wouldn't be unreasonable to take the view that part of your money went to accelerating the adoption of hybrids. You can think of it as not just a political statement but your contribution towards making hybrids mainstream and ultimately reducing the fuel consumption of the average car.

"It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."
 
--Alfred Whitehead

"Ask them [members of the younger generation] HOW the things work, and they have no idea."

Duh.. obviously they've never heard of This Site!!

There's a gigantic difference between how each display actually 'displays' an image.

  In a CRT, Cathode Ray Tube, you have a phosphorescent screen that gets lit up by a ray gun. The gun is in the back of the monitor and fires forward, one line at a time (which is why larger monitors are generally much deeper in size, the gun has to be further back to paint the whole screen). Refresh rate is basically how fast this ray gun can draw lines across your screen in sequential order. Better refresh rates (75hz and up) look more solid and less flickery and are therefore easier on your eyes.

  Now, in an LCD, you have layers of crystals which act as gates between colored layers of plastic. The 'dead pixel' syndrom happens when every layer of this grid gets locked to 'on' or 'off' in one point. The LCD has a few backlights and a diffusion layer to scatter the light so it shines evenly on the display. It's when all the gates on every layer are open that you get a white pixel (i.e. you're seeing the backlight directly) and when they're all off you see a black pixel (no light is coming through any layer).

  These are extremely simplistic definitions but it should give you some idea of the difference. A much more interesting explanation is given here: howstuffworks/lcd.

Solar cells in the roof that power the ventilation are available, e.g. in the Maybach, but also in some Audis and probably others, if I'm not mistaken. There's not much in it in terms of fuel savings, even for the most efficient hybrids, since the sun just supplies a maximum of about 1kw/m^2 acount here, and solar cells are only about 30% efficient. Given the limited space on the roof, you'd have to park your car for quite some time before you could get it rolling just once from the solar power.