A headhunter cannot submit you to anyone without your approval (if they do they open themselvs up to lawsuits from you). Many of the less scruplous shops may try to withhold the name of the company in fear that you will go after the job yourself. However if you press them, they will tell you.
What about the less scrupulous Amway-type pyramid bullcrap? Argh, I got a couple of those in the middle of the tech meltdown.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
And holy fuck, did I ever taunt the Happy Fun Ball (tm) with those ass-wipes. After the first "interview" meeting, I knew what was up, but I kept on going to them - dressed in drag, dressed as Howard Stern, coming with my own camera crew (broken and obsolete broadcast equipment) and doing fake interviews...
I hope not. I hate child porn and all that, but that doesn't mean that big brother should be watching everything.
Agreed.
But if they're gonna be watching me (I personally like Yahoo for the combination of search and headlines), I can assure them that they're going to get a hell of a show. I'll go so far as to create a spider which hunts for kitty porn ("MmMMMmm... Next we have Fluffy the Persian. She's an 8-year-old who can lick her own ass and likes it when her 30-year-old master rubs her stomach.") and then pipes keywords and sentences from that directly into Yahoo and then uses the search results to find more sites to spider.
Naturally, being my first real programming project since University, it will be released open-source in case the community happens to have suggestions on how I can improve its efficiency.
Dick around with the thermostat for a while until you figure out how you can control it with a relay. Then look in designing and programming some software to control it (add on or parallel port).
Hack the existing thermostat? Relays shorting buttons. My Honeywell CT3500 has up and down arrows for a temporary (2 hour) override of the program.
To replace the thermostat, would be very easy to control the furnace and AC by computer. Most systems use between 2 and 5 wires on a 24VAC control system.
Colors of the wires are not standardized, their names (on the thermostat or furnace) are. R is common, Y is cool, W is heat. G and B (if memory serves) are fan. Multistage systems use W1, W2, W3 and Y1, Y2, Y3 as "stages" of heat or AC. Some systems keep the heat and the AC split, so you might have Rc and Rh, where Rh is common for heat and Rc is common for cooling.
To get heat, connect R (or Rh) to W - the furnace will go through its startup rituals and fire. To get air conditioning, connect R (or Rc) to Y. Always a good idea to use an SPDT relay or switch to select mode; that way, it should be impossible for heating and cooling to be on at the same time. G and B are connected to each other to force the blower fan to run; otherwise, it's controlled by the furnace.
Make sure you don't cycle the heating and cooling too fast; usually no more than 2 cycles an hour, but check with your furnace manufacturer. Gas and oil furnaces operate most efficiently when they're running nearly continuously - which is where multistage furnaces come in.
So if you want to make it programable from your computer, that's fine, but make sure it can still turn your heat on and off without your computer, or that you have a secondary manual thermostat that won't let the temperature drop below 50.
Absolutely agree with you. My little trick, which I do whenever I'm installing a programmable thermostat, is to take the old mechanical thermostat and mount it in the utility room (or wherever else the majority of the plumbing is). Set the old thermostat to its lowest setting and connect it in parallel across the heating leads on the new thermostat (R-W wires only).
This way, if the new thermostat fails (ie. dead battery), the furnace will kick on before the pipes freeze. Would work doubly well if you've got your computer controlling the heat - even FreeBSD can crash from time to time.
Another issue - why not consider using small motion detectors to adjust the temperature? If there's no motion, you're either out or asleep, right?
Insulation is super-important; my house is 600 square feet (tiny WWII veteran's home) in Ottawa, Canada. Each exterior wall was 2x4 originally; when redrywalling a few portions, I've screwed 2x2s onto them to allow the use of 6" thick insulation. With the new windows and a load of fiberglass in the attic, my Trane XV90 rarely kicks on even in the winter; computers and household activities (cooking, etc) keep the house warm enough most of the time.
Aside: love my Honeywell CT3500. It's a simple 5-2 programmable.
Oh yeah, I think I'd like to continuously filter any fluid I'm using for this purpose, since the air/oil interface will collect dust extremely quickly.
Off the top of my head, I think I'd use a small pump (like a fountain pump) mounted below the lowest computer component; hopefully most dust will naturally sink there. Pump the oil up and out of the tank, where it can be continuously filtered through a coffee filter.
Oil comes with some problems. It is more viscous (thicker) than FC-77, so it won't circulate or flow as well, it's a lot less dense and has a lot lower specific heat. This means that it won't cool as well.
Where I worked before the dot-com collapse, we used to use Esso Voltessa in transformers and insulators - there were a variety of viscosities available; even thinner than water.
It's also a huge mess. Everything gets covered in it. It will slowly leach through even the tiniest of cracks. Any oil that collects on the ouside of the case will attract dust and dirt.
Oh my God, I can't agree more.:) It's like automatic transmission fluid, but it smells nicer!
It attacks many plastic and rubber materials including most silicone sealants. I remember it causing one type of shrink tubing to expand to about 2 times it's length. Some capacitors unwrapped themselves, and I've known some people to be mildly allergic to it.
Never experienced that sort of misbehavior with the Voltessa, a good cautionary tale to anyone: try it out on the old 486 mobo before dropping in the dual Athlon.:) And different boards will be made of different materials, so...
Then again, decorating your low-end Honda Civic with big mufflers, racing stripes, and spinny hubcaps is silly, too, but that doesn't stop a huge multi-million-dollar industry from springing up around providing those accessories for people who want to do something silly like that.
Those kinds of people don't get my respect unless they put a real engine in there. A Buick 3.8L V6 more than doubles the displacement, and fits into a 1993 Honda Civic *relatively* easily once you've cut out the floor pans, welded in a driveshaft tunnel, and converted the car to rear-wheel-drive to avoid the front-wheel-drive's *horrible* acceleration characteristics.
Or, of course, you could just put a $49 obnoxious coffee can muffler on it, start calling it a "race car" and drive around like a jackass with something to prove.
Hacking things requires skill, knowledge and a substantial investment in time and tools. Off-the-shelf mods just make you look like another boring drone who is trying to impress with their lack of originality.
Decent machines, but the power-supplies weren't up to the 24x7 operation and tended to eventually have the fans sieze up, causing the ps to overheat.
Oh yeah, big time Achilles Heel of the generic PC, assuming name brand mobo and stuff.
It's just impossible to get a good power supply in a generic PC. ("Good" means built with decent quality components, like the Astecs and Lambdas you'll find in proprietary systems. It does not mean "Comes with a ThermalTake Fan and is the choice of 14-year-olds and overclockers!".)
My best success was based on a simple formula: the power-to-weight ratio. Buy the heaviest supply marked with a given advertised wattage rating.
Then, for server use, step 2 is to open up the supply and replace all the made-in-Bangladesh-or-Taiwan-or-China electrolytic capacitors with Spragues or Nichicons rated AT LEAST 1.5x the voltage ratings of the capacitors which were in there. And then out comes the no-name 12V fan, only to be replaced with a (loud! expensive! moves a hell of a lot of air! lasts forever!) Comair Rotron 120V fan running directly off the power line. Also gives you a chance to fix the *many* cold solder joints you're likely to find in commodity power supplies. All told, usually under an hour per supply, with the new fan often costing more than the supply!
Since I started doing this, I haven't had a single failure of one of my white-box server supplies.
A hot water heater's element - on demand or tanked - is submerged at all times. Therefore, almost 100% of the heat that it produces is coupled to the water - the only loss *NOT COUPLED* to the water is the heat which travels to the ends of the element where the terminals are. Electric heating of water by immersion heaters is close to 100% efficient. (We'll ignore the heat from the water which radiates through the heater; the energy loss from the hot water will occur with both conventional and microwave heaters.)
On the other hand, the magnetron, power supply transformer, rectifier diode and capacitor a microwave heater will require *all* dissipate energy, and unless they're all submerged themselves, the heat they produce will be lost.
How much heat is that? Consider, for a second, that most microwave ovens put out something on the order of 700W of RF power... and that most of their nameplates indicate they consume 1200W-1500W to do it.
So, watt for watt, will it elevate the temperature of the water more than a conventional resistance element? I can't see how, and I have more than a few University-level engineering courses in thermodynamics, chemistry and electrical engineering under my belt. It might respond faster than trying to heat up a relatively massive heating element, but... there's the magnetron.
Consider also that the magnetron is a vacuum tube which has a filament. Unless the filament is left on 24/7 (wasteful), it will take a moment to heat up before producing microwaves. A smaller and lighter filament would heat up faster, but would probably fail sooner during the repetitive on/off cycling this thing is going to experience.
Absolutely asinine. Finally the tankless water heater has one-upped itself in stupidity. Perfect for people with more money than physics knowledge.
(I come from a Northern climate where the thermostat is set to "HEAT" for 7-8 months of the year. The heat which radiates from the imperfect insulation of my water heater is simply lost *into my house* where it reduces the duty cycle of my furnace. Yet tankless water heaters are all the rage here, and I've installed dozens of them in the past year. They only make sense for compact homes in hot climates.)
That's what we did during Basic Training - but God knows those things aren't made for comfort. They chafe, and once you've been in the field for a few weeks - well, let's just say that the risk of infection increases. Which is why it pays to carry a lot of baby wipes and Gold Bond.
Yah, but there's another issue here, which is gonna get me modded down as a troll. But it's relevent, especially in a desert climate.
Think about it: the Jews and the Muslims, both desert people, have two things in common that the "middle brother" (Christianity) has abandoned as a religious requirement: circumcision, and avoidance of pork.
First the pork. Pork spoils quickly and nearly indetectably (by smell/taste) in a desert climate.
A quick study of desert societies of all continents will show that most of them are circumcised - Aussie aboriginals, Saharans predating Islam, etc.
Perhaps religion was merely used as a tool to promote the avoidance of these risks?
Note that circumcision has been embraced culturally in most of North America, but not in most of Europe. Most American soldiers will therefore be circumcised, most British will not.
I actually wear boxers instead of the standar-issue briefs now and it is definitely more comfortable. But anyway, now that I'm headed for the desert, I wouldn't mind having this nifty new underwear - I hope the US Army takes up this good idea. You don't realize how much you take the little things for granted until you're out in the field and out of clean pairs of underwear.
Indeed. But I had myself circumcised at the age of 22. In cold weather, no big deal. In warm weather, I definitely feel cooler and more comfortable. Remember, mankind did not evolve wearing pants of any sort; the protective benefits of the foreskin have been eclipsed by its liabilities.
This argument has been played out, but can't ever been proven. It's been used by software "pirates" for years. The regular argument is, "I'll use it if it's free, but if I have to pay, I'm not interested."
I agree wholeheartedly with that attitude; certainly it applies to music.
There are a hell of a lot of CDs out there which aren't worth the real estate on my shelf, let alone the $2.99 bargain bin price (let alone the full price of a CD), because they have only one good song which I will play only once every three or four years.
There was no way in hell I was ever going to buy that CD. So if I download the song and stick it into my mp3 directory, it does in no way cost the record company anything: after all, as I said, I would have never bought the CD anyway.
Obviously, the same can apply to movies or software.
This argument certainly doesn't make downloading copyrighted works "right", but, on the other hand, there was no way in hell I was going to buy the album/DVD/software anyway, so the RIAA/MPAA isn't losing a customer as they claim.
When I like a product, I will go out of my way to buy it and even promote it. "I downloaded Fight Club off the Internet. I didn't expect to like it, but it was incredible. So I bought the DVD. Yeah, go rent it, I promise you'll like it."
The record sales figures posted by record and film companies should attest to how many downloaders do these things.
When a zip file on Windows is not a zip file, you get some system enhancemnets you may not have wished for (or would even wish on your worst enemy).
Uhhh... no. File associations are based on extensions. It's probable that you've forgotten to turn off the Explorer "feature" of hiding extensions for known filetypes. This way, you get sexygirls.jpg.exe which appears as sexygirls.jpg, or xxx.zip.scr which appears as xxx.zip. Most people are ignorant enough to leave that "feature" enabled as per Microsoft's negligent default; furthermore, most users who are pseudo-capable with computers will click on it with the flawed reasoning that, "Well, it's a JPEG, so it can't be a virus".
Furthermore, years ago I ranted on my website that it was *very* possible to run Windows e-mail viruses, etc. under Wine. So easy that, with Red Hat 7.2's default associations which launch Wine to run DOS/Windows apps, I accidentally infected my Wine directory while demonstrating Linux freedom from virii... "Moving right along, you can see how well Linux can emulate Windows well enough to run many programs..."
That the collision would be between two very different cars is the important thing. It would be important in america, more and more people there are buying bigger and bigger cars. This is different from europe -- people there are more likely to own smaller cars.
We do have a lot more automotive diversity here (North America, not just the USA) than in Europe. In the US, there's more of a do-it-yourself spirit than I find in either Canada or Europe - Americans tend to enjoy working with their hands. This means larger, handier vehicles capable of carrying around ladders and gravel and stuff. This is part of why, I think, the SUV is more popular in the US than in Canada.
We also like to drive more. A huge percentage of family vacations involve hopping into the V8 RWD Caprice Classic or Crown Vic station wagon of yesteryear and driving halfway across the country. EPA's CAFE regulations killed the big station wagons people wanted, so the automakers responded by dropping station wagon bodies onto CAFE-exempt pickup truck frames and calling them SUVs (which are, ironically, less fuel efficient than the CAFE-banned vehicles they replaced). (Lesson here: anytime the government attempts to dictate consumer demand by forcing the discontinuation of a popular product, it will backfire somehow.)
Having said that, I'm 6'4" tall. I see lots of other 6'+ people every day here in Canada, and lots when I travel to the United States. In Europe, my height seems to be less common.
What does this mean, from a practical standpoint? Most small cars, especially those designed for European or Asian markets, don't fit me very well, and I feel clautrophobic. This, as well as the versatility, is part of why I like trucks (in particular, my 1976 Dodge Ram). In fact, the only small car I've ever been in that really felt comfortable was the Pontiac Fiero - which, of course, was designed for the American market.
So, North Americans tend to like larger vehicles for whatever reason. Smart cars will sell well here, though - there are plenty of urbanites who will like them. And if I were a smaller person who had a regular life in the city (ie. didn't collect 1950s TV sets like I do), I wouldn't need a large vehicle.
A few years of university-level dynamics classes will probably limit the sales of these things to engineers and scientists, however. While I like 'em and I think they're neat, I'd be terrified driving around in one.
Mass always wins.
Why the concept of winning? Dunno. But in any inelastic collision, momentum is conserved - and goes from the large object to the small object. This means that the small object will undergo the most drastic acceleration or deceleration - causing all sorts of injuries to the occupants. The only way to change that is to make it an elastic collision, which will require a hell of a lot of crush space (which I don't see the Smart car having, given its small size).
A friend with a BMW Isetta (the little one, not the bloated 600cc version) gets tickets in San Francisco for parking perpendicular to the curb, never mind the fact that the car is designed for it.
Isetta. Now that's a scary car. There's no crush space at all in those things, and the handling is horrible - especially the smaller 3-wheeled version. But they're a fun car - I'd love to have one because the BMW logo on it would piss off snobs.
Until the cops are clued, the law doesn't matter as long as paying a parking ticket is less costly than fighting it, if your time is worth anything.
I don't think it's an issue of clueless cops. There's a very good reason why you have to parallel park facing the same direction as traffic (at least in most jurisdictions): your brake light assemblies contain red "cat eye" reflectors. If you're not parking with the rear of the car facing the headlights of approaching traffic, your car is very hard to see, and it becomes a dangerous obstruction in the roadway.
Of course, this isn't a problem if the microcar is parked between two adult-sized vehicles, but what if they leave?
One could argue that parking on a lit street, it shouldn't be any problem which way you park. But drivers get accustomed to the shapes of certain things (like taillight reflectors) and drive habitually - it'll take them a moment longer to react to the unexpected shape. They might also panic, thinking the vehicle is pulling into or out of traffic based on its awkward position. The streetlight could go out.
Call your local police and ask them if it's illegal to parallel park your car backwards with respect to the traffic on that side of the road. Same reason - people expect red reflectors, not amber or headlights, as they approach your vehicle.
Along those lines, every year or two depending on how dusty the driving has been, I pull the taillight assemblies out of my cars and my truck, and I throw them into the dishwasher on the crystals and plastics setting. Really makes a startling difference in the brightness of the reflectors and the appearance of the vehicles.
They already do, methanol from Home Depot. Alcohol in the form of a fifth of vodka. And lighter fluid is sold in containers of lighter fluid in drug stores everywhere.
Methanol, ethanol, butane or naptha. Any one of them, with appropiate air/fuel mixture and adjustments to compression pressures, would probably fuel it quite well.
Problem, though. Control of temperatures, pressurized gases, liquids, etc. would probably (conservatively) be 100 times more difficult than current (as in, contemporary, not in terms of dq/dt) engineering problems involving batteries. Neglect, for a moment, the inevitable design and manufacturing errors causing recalls: Drop your cellphone, crack a turbine blade. Two weeks later in your pocket, the engine grenades. It's like hydrogen cars - neat idea from a technical standpoint, but suicidally stupid in the real world.
Heck ATI still doesn't have an acceptable Windows driver for that product.
Newsflash: ATI doesn't have an acceptable Windows driver for *any* product.
How many times have you had ATI software lock up a machine? I've even had it trash partition tables on crash.
Absolute garbage. Even though the hardware is good quality and theoretically does what I need, the cards are useless.
At the very least, they should be open-sourcing drivers for obsolete products.
Don't ask me about the time I installed over 150 ATI AIW Pros at a Toronto TV station... then had *no end* to the problems when Windows 2000 came out and they wanted to upgrade a year later.
Unless they start to take their responsibilities to produce working (and free of silly UI "embellishments" which makes ATI's MultiMedia Center look like it was designed by a 14-year-old anime fan with Downs Syndrome) software for their hardware, their hardware shall remain utterly useless, and I shall continue to warn people away from it.
Not Kirk Cameron, no. But the fundamental irony of the conservative religious right is best summed up in the wisdom of a T-shirt: "Jesus was a liberal Jew".
Off-topic, but posting near the top in the hopes of a response.
Does this torrent work? I've only played with BitTorrent just a little bit, but I wanted to download a TV movie that I missed and this was the only place I've found it. No dilution of copyright is intended; just wish to "borrow the VHS cassette from a friend who recorded it".
But the number and combination of mutations required to restructure the entire neck and jaw so that your trachea could be behind your throat... just too unlikely.
How about radical plastic surgery to fix the problem? Nah... would probably made Saturday nights pretty lonely.
Slashdot Mirror
A headhunter cannot submit you to anyone without your approval (if they do they open themselvs up to lawsuits from you). Many of the less scruplous shops may try to withhold the name of the company in fear that you will go after the job yourself. However if you press them, they will tell you.
What about the less scrupulous Amway-type pyramid bullcrap? Argh, I got a couple of those in the middle of the tech meltdown.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."And holy fuck, did I ever taunt the Happy Fun Ball (tm) with those ass-wipes. After the first "interview" meeting, I knew what was up, but I kept on going to them - dressed in drag, dressed as Howard Stern, coming with my own camera crew (broken and obsolete broadcast equipment) and doing fake interviews...
he says he's a recent grad... find a roommate, move into a cheaper apartment, don't go out drinking, don't spend money to have fun.
Or he could learn to drink alone, like the rest of us who have homes and mortgages and no lives.
(Oh God, help me, know any cute Jewish boys? Send them to this site.)
I hope not. I hate child porn and all that, but that doesn't mean that big brother should be watching everything.
Agreed.
But if they're gonna be watching me (I personally like Yahoo for the combination of search and headlines), I can assure them that they're going to get a hell of a show. I'll go so far as to create a spider which hunts for kitty porn ("MmMMMmm... Next we have Fluffy the Persian. She's an 8-year-old who can lick her own ass and likes it when her 30-year-old master rubs her stomach.") and then pipes keywords and sentences from that directly into Yahoo and then uses the search results to find more sites to spider.
Naturally, being my first real programming project since University, it will be released open-source in case the community happens to have suggestions on how I can improve its efficiency.
Dick around with the thermostat for a while until you figure out how you can control it with a relay. Then look in designing and programming some software to control it (add on or parallel port).
Hack the existing thermostat? Relays shorting buttons. My Honeywell CT3500 has up and down arrows for a temporary (2 hour) override of the program.
To replace the thermostat, would be very easy to control the furnace and AC by computer. Most systems use between 2 and 5 wires on a 24VAC control system.
Colors of the wires are not standardized, their names (on the thermostat or furnace) are. R is common, Y is cool, W is heat. G and B (if memory serves) are fan. Multistage systems use W1, W2, W3 and Y1, Y2, Y3 as "stages" of heat or AC. Some systems keep the heat and the AC split, so you might have Rc and Rh, where Rh is common for heat and Rc is common for cooling.
To get heat, connect R (or Rh) to W - the furnace will go through its startup rituals and fire. To get air conditioning, connect R (or Rc) to Y. Always a good idea to use an SPDT relay or switch to select mode; that way, it should be impossible for heating and cooling to be on at the same time. G and B are connected to each other to force the blower fan to run; otherwise, it's controlled by the furnace.
Make sure you don't cycle the heating and cooling too fast; usually no more than 2 cycles an hour, but check with your furnace manufacturer. Gas and oil furnaces operate most efficiently when they're running nearly continuously - which is where multistage furnaces come in.
energy is getting expensive. I just broke $100 for gas/electricity last month.
Hahahaha... Guess you're not in the snowbelt. :)
So if you want to make it programable from your computer, that's fine, but make sure it can still turn your heat on and off without your computer, or that you have a secondary manual thermostat that won't let the temperature drop below 50.
Absolutely agree with you. My little trick, which I do whenever I'm installing a programmable thermostat, is to take the old mechanical thermostat and mount it in the utility room (or wherever else the majority of the plumbing is). Set the old thermostat to its lowest setting and connect it in parallel across the heating leads on the new thermostat (R-W wires only).
This way, if the new thermostat fails (ie. dead battery), the furnace will kick on before the pipes freeze. Would work doubly well if you've got your computer controlling the heat - even FreeBSD can crash from time to time.
Another issue - why not consider using small motion detectors to adjust the temperature? If there's no motion, you're either out or asleep, right?
Insulation is super-important; my house is 600 square feet (tiny WWII veteran's home) in Ottawa, Canada. Each exterior wall was 2x4 originally; when redrywalling a few portions, I've screwed 2x2s onto them to allow the use of 6" thick insulation. With the new windows and a load of fiberglass in the attic, my Trane XV90 rarely kicks on even in the winter; computers and household activities (cooking, etc) keep the house warm enough most of the time.
Aside: love my Honeywell CT3500. It's a simple 5-2 programmable.
Oh yeah, I think I'd like to continuously filter any fluid I'm using for this purpose, since the air/oil interface will collect dust extremely quickly.
Off the top of my head, I think I'd use a small pump (like a fountain pump) mounted below the lowest computer component; hopefully most dust will naturally sink there. Pump the oil up and out of the tank, where it can be continuously filtered through a coffee filter.
Oil comes with some problems. It is more viscous (thicker) than FC-77, so it won't circulate or flow as well, it's a lot less dense and has a lot lower specific heat. This means that it won't cool as well.
Where I worked before the dot-com collapse, we used to use Esso Voltessa in transformers and insulators - there were a variety of viscosities available; even thinner than water.
It's also a huge mess. Everything gets covered in it. It will slowly leach through even the tiniest of cracks. Any oil that collects on the ouside of the case will attract dust and dirt.Oh my God, I can't agree more. :) It's like automatic transmission fluid, but it smells nicer!
It attacks many plastic and rubber materials including most silicone sealants. I remember it causing one type of shrink tubing to expand to about 2 times it's length. Some capacitors unwrapped themselves, and I've known some people to be mildly allergic to it.Never experienced that sort of misbehavior with the Voltessa, a good cautionary tale to anyone: try it out on the old 486 mobo before dropping in the dual Athlon. :) And different boards will be made of different materials, so...
Then again, decorating your low-end Honda Civic with big mufflers, racing stripes, and spinny hubcaps is silly, too, but that doesn't stop a huge multi-million-dollar industry from springing up around providing those accessories for people who want to do something silly like that.
Those kinds of people don't get my respect unless they put a real engine in there. A Buick 3.8L V6 more than doubles the displacement, and fits into a 1993 Honda Civic *relatively* easily once you've cut out the floor pans, welded in a driveshaft tunnel, and converted the car to rear-wheel-drive to avoid the front-wheel-drive's *horrible* acceleration characteristics.
Or, of course, you could just put a $49 obnoxious coffee can muffler on it, start calling it a "race car" and drive around like a jackass with something to prove.
Hacking things requires skill, knowledge and a substantial investment in time and tools. Off-the-shelf mods just make you look like another boring drone who is trying to impress with their lack of originality.
Decent machines, but the power-supplies weren't up to the 24x7 operation and tended to eventually have the fans sieze up, causing the ps to overheat.
Oh yeah, big time Achilles Heel of the generic PC, assuming name brand mobo and stuff.
It's just impossible to get a good power supply in a generic PC. ("Good" means built with decent quality components, like the Astecs and Lambdas you'll find in proprietary systems. It does not mean "Comes with a ThermalTake Fan and is the choice of 14-year-olds and overclockers!".)
My best success was based on a simple formula: the power-to-weight ratio. Buy the heaviest supply marked with a given advertised wattage rating.
Then, for server use, step 2 is to open up the supply and replace all the made-in-Bangladesh-or-Taiwan-or-China electrolytic capacitors with Spragues or Nichicons rated AT LEAST 1.5x the voltage ratings of the capacitors which were in there. And then out comes the no-name 12V fan, only to be replaced with a (loud! expensive! moves a hell of a lot of air! lasts forever!) Comair Rotron 120V fan running directly off the power line. Also gives you a chance to fix the *many* cold solder joints you're likely to find in commodity power supplies. All told, usually under an hour per supply, with the new fan often costing more than the supply!
Since I started doing this, I haven't had a single failure of one of my white-box server supplies.
This is asinine.
A hot water heater's element - on demand or tanked - is submerged at all times. Therefore, almost 100% of the heat that it produces is coupled to the water - the only loss *NOT COUPLED* to the water is the heat which travels to the ends of the element where the terminals are. Electric heating of water by immersion heaters is close to 100% efficient. (We'll ignore the heat from the water which radiates through the heater; the energy loss from the hot water will occur with both conventional and microwave heaters.)
On the other hand, the magnetron, power supply transformer, rectifier diode and capacitor a microwave heater will require *all* dissipate energy, and unless they're all submerged themselves, the heat they produce will be lost.
How much heat is that? Consider, for a second, that most microwave ovens put out something on the order of 700W of RF power... and that most of their nameplates indicate they consume 1200W-1500W to do it.
So, watt for watt, will it elevate the temperature of the water more than a conventional resistance element? I can't see how, and I have more than a few University-level engineering courses in thermodynamics, chemistry and electrical engineering under my belt. It might respond faster than trying to heat up a relatively massive heating element, but... there's the magnetron.
Consider also that the magnetron is a vacuum tube which has a filament. Unless the filament is left on 24/7 (wasteful), it will take a moment to heat up before producing microwaves. A smaller and lighter filament would heat up faster, but would probably fail sooner during the repetitive on/off cycling this thing is going to experience.
Absolutely asinine. Finally the tankless water heater has one-upped itself in stupidity. Perfect for people with more money than physics knowledge.
(I come from a Northern climate where the thermostat is set to "HEAT" for 7-8 months of the year. The heat which radiates from the imperfect insulation of my water heater is simply lost *into my house* where it reduces the duty cycle of my furnace. Yet tankless water heaters are all the rage here, and I've installed dozens of them in the past year. They only make sense for compact homes in hot climates.)
Men: KY used recreationally is quite effective at preventing the growth of schmega cheese.
I was circumcised when I was 22. I love it so much.
That's what we did during Basic Training - but God knows those things aren't made for comfort. They chafe, and once you've been in the field for a few weeks - well, let's just say that the risk of infection increases. Which is why it pays to carry a lot of baby wipes and Gold Bond.
Yah, but there's another issue here, which is gonna get me modded down as a troll. But it's relevent, especially in a desert climate.
Think about it: the Jews and the Muslims, both desert people, have two things in common that the "middle brother" (Christianity) has abandoned as a religious requirement: circumcision, and avoidance of pork.
First the pork. Pork spoils quickly and nearly indetectably (by smell/taste) in a desert climate.
A quick study of desert societies of all continents will show that most of them are circumcised - Aussie aboriginals, Saharans predating Islam, etc.
Perhaps religion was merely used as a tool to promote the avoidance of these risks?
Note that circumcision has been embraced culturally in most of North America, but not in most of Europe. Most American soldiers will therefore be circumcised, most British will not.
I actually wear boxers instead of the standar-issue briefs now and it is definitely more comfortable. But anyway, now that I'm headed for the desert, I wouldn't mind having this nifty new underwear - I hope the US Army takes up this good idea. You don't realize how much you take the little things for granted until you're out in the field and out of clean pairs of underwear.Indeed. But I had myself circumcised at the age of 22. In cold weather, no big deal. In warm weather, I definitely feel cooler and more comfortable. Remember, mankind did not evolve wearing pants of any sort; the protective benefits of the foreskin have been eclipsed by its liabilities.
I agree wholeheartedly with that attitude; certainly it applies to music.
There are a hell of a lot of CDs out there which aren't worth the real estate on my shelf, let alone the $2.99 bargain bin price (let alone the full price of a CD), because they have only one good song which I will play only once every three or four years.
There was no way in hell I was ever going to buy that CD. So if I download the song and stick it into my mp3 directory, it does in no way cost the record company anything: after all, as I said, I would have never bought the CD anyway.
Obviously, the same can apply to movies or software.
This argument certainly doesn't make downloading copyrighted works "right", but, on the other hand, there was no way in hell I was going to buy the album/DVD/software anyway, so the RIAA/MPAA isn't losing a customer as they claim.
When I like a product, I will go out of my way to buy it and even promote it. "I downloaded Fight Club off the Internet. I didn't expect to like it, but it was incredible. So I bought the DVD. Yeah, go rent it, I promise you'll like it."
The record sales figures posted by record and film companies should attest to how many downloaders do these things.
When a zip file on Windows is not a zip file, you get some system enhancemnets you may not have wished for (or would even wish on your worst enemy).
Uhhh... no. File associations are based on extensions. It's probable that you've forgotten to turn off the Explorer "feature" of hiding extensions for known filetypes. This way, you get sexygirls.jpg.exe which appears as sexygirls.jpg, or xxx.zip.scr which appears as xxx.zip. Most people are ignorant enough to leave that "feature" enabled as per Microsoft's negligent default; furthermore, most users who are pseudo-capable with computers will click on it with the flawed reasoning that, "Well, it's a JPEG, so it can't be a virus".
Furthermore, years ago I ranted on my website that it was *very* possible to run Windows e-mail viruses, etc. under Wine. So easy that, with Red Hat 7.2's default associations which launch Wine to run DOS/Windows apps, I accidentally infected my Wine directory while demonstrating Linux freedom from virii... "Moving right along, you can see how well Linux can emulate Windows well enough to run many programs..."
That the collision would be between two very different cars is the important thing. It would be important in america, more and more people there are buying bigger and bigger cars. This is different from europe -- people there are more likely to own smaller cars.
We do have a lot more automotive diversity here (North America, not just the USA) than in Europe. In the US, there's more of a do-it-yourself spirit than I find in either Canada or Europe - Americans tend to enjoy working with their hands. This means larger, handier vehicles capable of carrying around ladders and gravel and stuff. This is part of why, I think, the SUV is more popular in the US than in Canada.
We also like to drive more. A huge percentage of family vacations involve hopping into the V8 RWD Caprice Classic or Crown Vic station wagon of yesteryear and driving halfway across the country. EPA's CAFE regulations killed the big station wagons people wanted, so the automakers responded by dropping station wagon bodies onto CAFE-exempt pickup truck frames and calling them SUVs (which are, ironically, less fuel efficient than the CAFE-banned vehicles they replaced). (Lesson here: anytime the government attempts to dictate consumer demand by forcing the discontinuation of a popular product, it will backfire somehow.)
Having said that, I'm 6'4" tall. I see lots of other 6'+ people every day here in Canada, and lots when I travel to the United States. In Europe, my height seems to be less common.
What does this mean, from a practical standpoint? Most small cars, especially those designed for European or Asian markets, don't fit me very well, and I feel clautrophobic. This, as well as the versatility, is part of why I like trucks (in particular, my 1976 Dodge Ram). In fact, the only small car I've ever been in that really felt comfortable was the Pontiac Fiero - which, of course, was designed for the American market.
So, North Americans tend to like larger vehicles for whatever reason. Smart cars will sell well here, though - there are plenty of urbanites who will like them. And if I were a smaller person who had a regular life in the city (ie. didn't collect 1950s TV sets like I do), I wouldn't need a large vehicle.
A few years of university-level dynamics classes will probably limit the sales of these things to engineers and scientists, however. While I like 'em and I think they're neat, I'd be terrified driving around in one.
Mass always wins.
Why the concept of winning? Dunno. But in any inelastic collision, momentum is conserved - and goes from the large object to the small object. This means that the small object will undergo the most drastic acceleration or deceleration - causing all sorts of injuries to the occupants. The only way to change that is to make it an elastic collision, which will require a hell of a lot of crush space (which I don't see the Smart car having, given its small size).
A friend with a BMW Isetta (the little one, not the bloated 600cc version) gets tickets in San Francisco for parking perpendicular to the curb, never mind the fact that the car is designed for it.
Isetta. Now that's a scary car. There's no crush space at all in those things, and the handling is horrible - especially the smaller 3-wheeled version. But they're a fun car - I'd love to have one because the BMW logo on it would piss off snobs.
Until the cops are clued, the law doesn't matter as long as paying a parking ticket is less costly than fighting it, if your time is worth anything.I don't think it's an issue of clueless cops. There's a very good reason why you have to parallel park facing the same direction as traffic (at least in most jurisdictions): your brake light assemblies contain red "cat eye" reflectors. If you're not parking with the rear of the car facing the headlights of approaching traffic, your car is very hard to see, and it becomes a dangerous obstruction in the roadway.
Of course, this isn't a problem if the microcar is parked between two adult-sized vehicles, but what if they leave?
One could argue that parking on a lit street, it shouldn't be any problem which way you park. But drivers get accustomed to the shapes of certain things (like taillight reflectors) and drive habitually - it'll take them a moment longer to react to the unexpected shape. They might also panic, thinking the vehicle is pulling into or out of traffic based on its awkward position. The streetlight could go out.
Call your local police and ask them if it's illegal to parallel park your car backwards with respect to the traffic on that side of the road. Same reason - people expect red reflectors, not amber or headlights, as they approach your vehicle.
Along those lines, every year or two depending on how dusty the driving has been, I pull the taillight assemblies out of my cars and my truck, and I throw them into the dishwasher on the crystals and plastics setting. Really makes a startling difference in the brightness of the reflectors and the appearance of the vehicles.
They already do, methanol from Home Depot. Alcohol in the form of a fifth of vodka. And lighter fluid is sold in containers of lighter fluid in drug stores everywhere.
Methanol, ethanol, butane or naptha. Any one of them, with appropiate air/fuel mixture and adjustments to compression pressures, would probably fuel it quite well.
Problem, though. Control of temperatures, pressurized gases, liquids, etc. would probably (conservatively) be 100 times more difficult than current (as in, contemporary, not in terms of dq/dt) engineering problems involving batteries. Neglect, for a moment, the inevitable design and manufacturing errors causing recalls: Drop your cellphone, crack a turbine blade. Two weeks later in your pocket, the engine grenades. It's like hydrogen cars - neat idea from a technical standpoint, but suicidally stupid in the real world.
Heck ATI still doesn't have an acceptable Windows driver for that product.
Newsflash: ATI doesn't have an acceptable Windows driver for *any* product.
How many times have you had ATI software lock up a machine? I've even had it trash partition tables on crash.
Absolute garbage. Even though the hardware is good quality and theoretically does what I need, the cards are useless.
At the very least, they should be open-sourcing drivers for obsolete products.
Don't ask me about the time I installed over 150 ATI AIW Pros at a Toronto TV station... then had *no end* to the problems when Windows 2000 came out and they wanted to upgrade a year later.
Unless they start to take their responsibilities to produce working (and free of silly UI "embellishments" which makes ATI's MultiMedia Center look like it was designed by a 14-year-old anime fan with Downs Syndrome) software for their hardware, their hardware shall remain utterly useless, and I shall continue to warn people away from it.
Why? He's not liberal.
Not Kirk Cameron, no. But the fundamental irony of the conservative religious right is best summed up in the wisdom of a T-shirt: "Jesus was a liberal Jew".
Kirk Cameron is HOT now!
Too bad he only has eyes for Jesus, though.
Which means he's into liberal Jews. Where's Joe Lieberman when you need him?
Kirk Cameron?
Hahahaha... No. Jeremy Miller.
Does this torrent work?
I guess so, it just came to life. Guess there are other Growing Pains fans out there. (My reason? An old crush on one of the cast members.)
Off-topic, but posting near the top in the hopes of a response.
Does this torrent work? I've only played with BitTorrent just a little bit, but I wanted to download a TV movie that I missed and this was the only place I've found it. No dilution of copyright is intended; just wish to "borrow the VHS cassette from a friend who recorded it".
But the number and combination of mutations required to restructure the entire neck and jaw so that your trachea could be behind your throat
How about radical plastic surgery to fix the problem? Nah... would probably made Saturday nights pretty lonely.