There's more to life than rail guns and dremels. Some electric motors are actually now available in non-dremel form, and there are devices that can accelerate objects quickly that are much simpler and cheaper than rail guns.
I've seen linear motors using aluminum sheets as the moving part, but the spinning of the disc means there's another problem to contend with. Unfortunately the eddy currents induced in a spinning aluminum disc by the electromagnets in the rail gun will act as a powerful brake, causing the spinning to slow rapidly.
A better bet would be to make the disc spin by having something at the rail gun exit that the edge of the disc rubs against.
I don't know why people want to use rail guns where simple mechanical devices will work though. I think it would be much simpler to have two sets of counterrotating rollers side by side, running at slightly different speeds, the disc passes through them and is accelerated forward and spun at the same time. No capacitors or coils, just two electric motors and four rollers. A mechanism similar to a printer paper feed (designed to seperate individual discs from a stack, rather than individual pages of paper) could feed discs into the rollers.
Giant muslces would need to provide a major guaranteed increase in food to be favored by evolution.
No, that's not how evolution works in situations where food is amply available (such as this one). Evolution favors the individual most likely to breed.
So, if big muscles mean more sex, then evolution favors individuals with bigger muscles as long as there is no other downside that reduces survivability or likelyhood of breeding (since food is amply available the greater nutritional requirement to support the increased muscle mass is not a downside).
Dollars to donuts, all that reprogramming does is raise the maximum boost pressure that the computer will allow before opening the wastegate.
That's not exactly "high tech", you can get the same effect by adding a bleed valve in the pressure line to the wastegate diaphragm for a dollar's worth of parts from the hardware store.
You can also disconnect the wastegate actuator and maybe get an extra 100HP for a few moments.
The problem with this kind of mod is that folks see how easily the turbo controls can be modified and think "a little is good so more is better", leading to melted pistons, blown head gaskets (if you're lucky), etc. Sometimes these things are programmed conservatively so that next year's model can boast ten more horsepower, sometimes it's because there's an inherent weakness in the engine or transaxle and they don't want to have to do a lot of warranty work.
Often these power increases come at the expense of reduced engine life, like turning up the voltage going to a light bulb to get brighter light where 10% more light can equal 50% less life expectancy.
One thing though, the 1.8 makes 250HP stock? That doesn't seem right (just going by your figure of 25HP being a 10% increase).
Around here you can rent a generator that will provide more than enough power for less than $50 a day.
I've seen the output from a rental Honda generator on an oscilloscope and it's pretty clean too. I use two of these generators to power sound
(about 3kW of amplifier output) and computer equipment for five hours on a parade float in the summer with no problems.
Add a double-conversion UPS (probably you already have one in your office) between the generator and your equipment and that will let you refuel the generator without shutting all your equipment down.
ABS systems detect lockup by comparing the wheel speeds to each other and by watching the rate of deceleration.
For example, if all of the wheels go from 20 MPH to 0 MPH, the system treats that as all wheels being locked up and not a normal complete stop.
So, it would be possible to build an antilock system for a single-wheeled vehicle. The system could also use an alternative speed input such as a radar system or maybe some kind of optical system that watches the ground surface.
The Sony has dual DVI and dual HD15 VGA inputs, although they're configured in pairs, so you can use one DVI input and one VGA input or two VGA inputs or two DVI inputs.
I have one on my desk. It's nice. I've had it for about a year. No dead pixels, decent contrast, very good anti-glare coating, nice adjustable base with a cable pass-through in the base so it even looks good from behind.
It does have an extremely quiet cooling fan in it, which I only noticed recently when we moved to a much quieter office. You won't notice the fan unless you literally put your ear against it.
I've run video into it via a Viewsonic Nextvision N6 video processor into one of the VGA inputs, and it looks better than any TV I've seen, although not as bright as a CRT TV.
TiVo tech... basically said the reason why existing TiVos do not offer SPDIF ports is that TiVo is afraid of being sued over DMCA violations because it would mean that the TiVo is making an exact copy of a digital audio signal from a program and archived on the customer's DVR.
My UltimateTV box (an older DirecTV PVR) has a Toslink optical SPDIF output, and there are DirecTV recievers on the market with SPDIF outputs, so this doesn't seem quite logical. I'm pretty sure that my parents' DirecTivo has an SPDIF output too.
Real-time two way communication between cable boxes and the cable company is illegal in some states. That's why many digital boxes have modems in them.
The transformers and other inductors inside a modern PC power supply are quite small in comparision to the monster lumps of iron and copper found in the inefficient 1970's style linear power supplies.
Additionally, the metal case of the PSU acts like a Faraday cage and keeps most of the magnetic fields inside the PSU, but it is mainly there to keep you from electrocuting yourself (PCs are one of those few items of consumer electronics that the consumer is expected to open up at some point).
You'll note that all of the coils in a transformer are wound together closely - this is due to the strength of magnetic fields decreasing rapidly (faster than the inverse square law) as you move away from the source. You can't seperate the coils by much distance and "transfer all the hundreds of watts your PC needs through the air as a magnetic field". It just doesn't work like that.
There is some electromagnetic noise from the power supply, but not very much really. Open up a piece of consumer electronics (like a Tivo or CD player for example) and you'll note that they didn't even bother to put any shielding around the PSU, because the magnetic field strength coming from it is really weak. How do they get away with it? The fields just aren't that big that they cause any problems with modern digital electronics.
Open up a dead hard drive sometime and you'll find two really really strong magnets and an electromagnetic coil in the head actuator assembly, adjacent to the sensitive magnetic media. How do they get away with it? Simple, the field is really quite small.
Unless your power supply includes the type of electromagnet used on a scrapyard crane, I wouldn't worry about it - the field is much smaller than you might think.
Your story about Cobalt shipping DOA boxes reminded me of my experience with a dead Cobalt server years ago...
The first 2700WG (the original Qube model) I ordered arrived DOA, so I went through the RMA process and returned it for a replacement. When no replacement showed up I called them again and the Cobalt rep told me they'd credited my Amex card for the purchase price (I'd returned it for a replacement, not a refund). I told him I wanted a replacement server, so he sent one out, but they never charged my card for it again.
That free server is still running on a shelf at work, albeit with much more RAM and a 30GB drive.
I have a Cheesebox, in my junk box now. I switched to a Planar Video-EX about a year ago. The cheesebox is good for what it is, but if you can pay a little more, the Video-EX has a lot more to offer.
It has a built-in TV tuner, switchable pass-thru, S-Video and composite inputs, and will output 640x480, 800x600 or 1024x768. It's available for about $120, which is a bargain for the output quality it produces.
Even a composite video source looks a lot better on a good monitor at 1024x768 than it does at the 640x480 resolution which is the only output format the cheesebox supports.
Dear pedantic Slashbots: If cable theft is stealing, why is MP3 downloading "infringement?" Face it; it's stealing
I am not a lawyer, but a possible answer to this is glaringly obvious.
Cable theft is different because it has a component called "theft of signal"; by adding another receiving device to the cable company's line you are not only recieving programming without permission, you are placing a tiny additional electrical load on the cable signal, and that's theft.
Yes, it sounds silly, but it is similar to the concept of criminal trespass to property (in the USA) which my lawyer friend tells me can start with something as minor as a single bent blade of grass.
The act of downloading copyrighted music without the rights owners' permission has no similar "theft" component (the copying costs are borne by the downloader in the form of bandwidth used and paid for by the downloader), and so the two acts are different under the law.
It is important to note that the interests of the cable company and the television programming providers, who make and hold the rights to the programs that the cable company distributes, are different. In the case of cable theft, the cable company, not the television programming rights holders will be the one pressing criminal charges against cable signal thieves.
It's not cheap to double wire a house, which is what you're talking about - DC wiring in addition to standard AC wiring (copper is not a cheap metal, and labor isn't cheap).
On top of that, your intelligent power supply might produce nice clean 5V and 12V power at its output terminals, but what about at the end of a branch circuit with varying loads? Circuit voltage would go up and down as different devices use more or less power. 4V or 10V might not be enough for a particular device. You'd have to supply a higher voltage, say 20V (or hey, why not go for 120V or 220V!) and then use a voltage regulator at the points of use to ensure your devices get the voltages they really want. Some devices need both positive and negative voltages (+/-12V, etc)... All of a sudden you need a switching power supply running from your low voltage outlet (hey, wait a minute why not use power that's already AC and can be run through a cheap transformer and rectifiers to make +/- DC power?)...
Thomas Edison tried to sell the world on DC power distribution on a large scale, and the same voltage drop issues that plagued Edison's DC power distribution system will be evident in a low voltage household DC distribution setup too.
Sure, you could just use really fat DC power wires, but have you priced heavy gauge wire lately? It's really expensive.
From the landlord's point of view, the perfect (small office) tenant is an insurance agent or a doctor's office. Anyone who has predictable and regular office hours, and won't be bringing in a lot of funny hi-tech gear, or have odd ideas about quality of service.
Speaking as a former landlord, I'd much rather have an office with some "hi-tech gear" in it than something that generates a lot of foot traffic and cars coming and going all day in my parking lot like a doctor's office.
The best tenants I ever had were a sales rep who was only in the office four days a month and an insurance agent (who did have some funny hi-tech gear, but did very little work in the office).
Landlords don't care about your office hours, since we don't live in the building. As long as your business doesn't annoy me or the other tenants or do anything illegal I don't care what you do in your rented space.
As for "quality of service", what is that? Are you referring to how often the dumpster is emptied or some non-landlord issue?
I think you're overestimating both the dynamic range of the CCD cameras used at intersections and a couple of other factors. If you look at pictures taken by these cameras, you'll see that there isn't much difference between minimum and maximum luminance - both are gray. The automatic exposure control in the camera adjusts so that the brightest part of the picture is nearly white and the darkest part will be dark gray. Anything "whiter than white" will just appear as white, not "even brighter" - there is no "even brighter" in video. So, with the 0dB difference between "bright" and "even brighter", there's nothing to detect out of the video signal.
In addition headlights on moving vehicles do not have constant apparent brightness to a fixed observer due to the road not being very smooth. Maybe you live in Wisconsin, where the roads are smooth and the taxpayers know why, but here in Illinois, a smooth road is one without too many craters. Choose a fixed observation point alongside a road and measure the observed brightness of the vehicle headlights and you'll find it fluctuating all over the place.
Furthermore, headlights that conform to US DOT requirements shine light upwards to illuminate overhead signs on the Interstate highways. European headlights have a much sharper cutoff line, above which very little light shines, which is why they're not DOT approved for use on the street anywhere in the USA.
It's unlikely that these camera systems will be used to issue headlight adjustment tickets, don't you think? Even if they were, which ticket would you prefer? I'd choose the one that requires you to show that you've had your headlights re-aligned ($10 at the local service establishment), rather than the one with a $4000 fine and possible jail time.
It's a moot point anyway, out here in the country they have these systems in place but they don't seem to influence the traffic signals at all - from what I've seen and heard, the white light on top of the traffic signal is just used to give the Public Safety Professionals advance warning that the light they're approaching is about to change or is in the middle of its cycle.
Integrate the IR emmitters into the headlight assemblies, and turn the headlights on.
The parts of the CCD elements where the image of headlights focuses in the cameras could be washed out with visible light and won't show the additional IR.
I've owned three airbag equipped vehicles and I can assure you that nowhere was this mentioned in the owners' manual. In fact, the factory service manuals don't mention this functionality either.
As someone who has been to several gay pride parades, and been in three of them, I can tell you that most of the people at these events are not dressed the way you describe in your post.
The simple fact is that your local tv news people pick the most eye catching or outrageous image from each event they cover.
A few years back the midwest AIDS Ride made a stop in a local town, and out of the hundreds of normally dressed folk the local paper found the one guy in a dress to photograph for the article.
By far the vast majority gay guys have no interest in wearing womens' clothing.
Unfortunately, due to the combined speed of both vehicles the tax disc is only visible and recognisable to a police officer traveling in the opposite direction for a short time, unless both cars are moving slowly. The sticker on the rear plate is visible to a police car from behind for a comparatively long time. On a motorway for example, a police officer can just glance at the rear plate to see if it's still valid.
No computers required. I don't understand why the government in the UK always selects the most complicated, expensive, and invasive option available for simple problems.
In the meantime, you are now eight times more likely to be mugged in London than in New York City. It used to be the other way around, but I suppose spending the Greater London police budget on computers rather than doing actual policework makes sense in some bizarre beaurocratic way.
If 10% of motorists are racking up enough minor speeding offences to lose their licenses, it might be time to reconsider the direction the UK government is moving. Once everyone's been banned from driving they'll start issuing tickets for running on a public street.
This may be an American attitude, but I think most reasonable people would agree that the government has no business knowing where my car is at any particular time unless it's involved in a crime.
No wonder there's a problem with people driving around in unlicensed cars in the UK. There's no way to tell by looking which cars are licensed or not. Hell, you can even make your own plates in the UK. My Dad did it when we lived there.
In most U.S. states we have nifty little stickers which the state sells us when we pay the registration fee. The sticker goes on the rear license plate and the police can easily see if you've got this year's sticker on your plate. You won't get far with a homemade plate either.
In some U.S. states, depending on the type of vehicle, the plate itself expires (i.e. the plate is stamped with the two-digit year). For those unfamiliar with U.S. license plates, they're made of sheet steel with the numbers and expiration embossed as well as painted in reflective paint.
In either case, the plate (and sticker) is produced and issued by the state and counterfeiting either is not terribly easy.
So the cops can scan a queue of traffic for license validity just by driving past... What a complete waste of money! Talk about inappropriate application of technology! If the plates (or stickers stuck on the plates) showed when the vehicle registration expires the cops could just use their eyes and look at the license plate. No chips, no detector boxes, no scanners, just stickers.
we have Dell LCD's here, and they do burn in... it's *very* irritating. a reboot has fixed it, up to now...
If a reboot fixes it, it's not burn in. Burn in is a permanent condition where you can see the image all the time, on old CRTs and even new plasma panels you can even see the burned in image when the display is turned off. What you're describing is probably some kind of display adapter problem.
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I've seen linear motors using aluminum sheets as the moving part, but the spinning of the disc means there's another problem to contend with. Unfortunately the eddy currents induced in a spinning aluminum disc by the electromagnets in the rail gun will act as a powerful brake, causing the spinning to slow rapidly.
A better bet would be to make the disc spin by having something at the rail gun exit that the edge of the disc rubs against.
I don't know why people want to use rail guns where simple mechanical devices will work though. I think it would be much simpler to have two sets of counterrotating rollers side by side, running at slightly different speeds, the disc passes through them and is accelerated forward and spun at the same time. No capacitors or coils, just two electric motors and four rollers. A mechanism similar to a printer paper feed (designed to seperate individual discs from a stack, rather than individual pages of paper) could feed discs into the rollers.
No, that's not how evolution works in situations where food is amply available (such as this one). Evolution favors the individual most likely to breed.
So, if big muscles mean more sex, then evolution favors individuals with bigger muscles as long as there is no other downside that reduces survivability or likelyhood of breeding (since food is amply available the greater nutritional requirement to support the increased muscle mass is not a downside).
That's not exactly "high tech", you can get the same effect by adding a bleed valve in the pressure line to the wastegate diaphragm for a dollar's worth of parts from the hardware store.
You can also disconnect the wastegate actuator and maybe get an extra 100HP for a few moments.
The problem with this kind of mod is that folks see how easily the turbo controls can be modified and think "a little is good so more is better", leading to melted pistons, blown head gaskets (if you're lucky), etc. Sometimes these things are programmed conservatively so that next year's model can boast ten more horsepower, sometimes it's because there's an inherent weakness in the engine or transaxle and they don't want to have to do a lot of warranty work.
Often these power increases come at the expense of reduced engine life, like turning up the voltage going to a light bulb to get brighter light where 10% more light can equal 50% less life expectancy.
One thing though, the 1.8 makes 250HP stock? That doesn't seem right (just going by your figure of 25HP being a 10% increase).
I've seen the output from a rental Honda generator on an oscilloscope and it's pretty clean too. I use two of these generators to power sound (about 3kW of amplifier output) and computer equipment for five hours on a parade float in the summer with no problems.
Add a double-conversion UPS (probably you already have one in your office) between the generator and your equipment and that will let you refuel the generator without shutting all your equipment down.
A search for biography "johan svendsen" yields plenty of results.
For example, if all of the wheels go from 20 MPH to 0 MPH, the system treats that as all wheels being locked up and not a normal complete stop.
So, it would be possible to build an antilock system for a single-wheeled vehicle. The system could also use an alternative speed input such as a radar system or maybe some kind of optical system that watches the ground surface.
The original Macs were fanless, but after the analog board heatsink debacle everyone and his brother was selling a cooling gadget for them.
I have one on my desk. It's nice. I've had it for about a year. No dead pixels, decent contrast, very good anti-glare coating, nice adjustable base with a cable pass-through in the base so it even looks good from behind.
It does have an extremely quiet cooling fan in it, which I only noticed recently when we moved to a much quieter office. You won't notice the fan unless you literally put your ear against it.
I've run video into it via a Viewsonic Nextvision N6 video processor into one of the VGA inputs, and it looks better than any TV I've seen, although not as bright as a CRT TV.
My UltimateTV box (an older DirecTV PVR) has a Toslink optical SPDIF output, and there are DirecTV recievers on the market with SPDIF outputs, so this doesn't seem quite logical. I'm pretty sure that my parents' DirecTivo has an SPDIF output too.
Real-time two way communication between cable boxes and the cable company is illegal in some states. That's why many digital boxes have modems in them.
Additionally, the metal case of the PSU acts like a Faraday cage and keeps most of the magnetic fields inside the PSU, but it is mainly there to keep you from electrocuting yourself (PCs are one of those few items of consumer electronics that the consumer is expected to open up at some point).
You'll note that all of the coils in a transformer are wound together closely - this is due to the strength of magnetic fields decreasing rapidly (faster than the inverse square law) as you move away from the source. You can't seperate the coils by much distance and "transfer all the hundreds of watts your PC needs through the air as a magnetic field". It just doesn't work like that.
There is some electromagnetic noise from the power supply, but not very much really. Open up a piece of consumer electronics (like a Tivo or CD player for example) and you'll note that they didn't even bother to put any shielding around the PSU, because the magnetic field strength coming from it is really weak. How do they get away with it? The fields just aren't that big that they cause any problems with modern digital electronics.
Open up a dead hard drive sometime and you'll find two really really strong magnets and an electromagnetic coil in the head actuator assembly, adjacent to the sensitive magnetic media. How do they get away with it? Simple, the field is really quite small.
Unless your power supply includes the type of electromagnet used on a scrapyard crane, I wouldn't worry about it - the field is much smaller than you might think.
I have a JBL rackmount amplifier sitting in my living room right now and it's over 22" deep.
Most pro audio rack case manufacturers make cases that are deep enough to accommodate most rack mount PC systems.
The first 2700WG (the original Qube model) I ordered arrived DOA, so I went through the RMA process and returned it for a replacement. When no replacement showed up I called them again and the Cobalt rep told me they'd credited my Amex card for the purchase price (I'd returned it for a replacement, not a refund). I told him I wanted a replacement server, so he sent one out, but they never charged my card for it again.
That free server is still running on a shelf at work, albeit with much more RAM and a 30GB drive.
It has a built-in TV tuner, switchable pass-thru, S-Video and composite inputs, and will output 640x480, 800x600 or 1024x768. It's available for about $120, which is a bargain for the output quality it produces.
Even a composite video source looks a lot better on a good monitor at 1024x768 than it does at the 640x480 resolution which is the only output format the cheesebox supports.
I am not a lawyer, but a possible answer to this is glaringly obvious.
Cable theft is different because it has a component called "theft of signal"; by adding another receiving device to the cable company's line you are not only recieving programming without permission, you are placing a tiny additional electrical load on the cable signal, and that's theft.
Yes, it sounds silly, but it is similar to the concept of criminal trespass to property (in the USA) which my lawyer friend tells me can start with something as minor as a single bent blade of grass.
The act of downloading copyrighted music without the rights owners' permission has no similar "theft" component (the copying costs are borne by the downloader in the form of bandwidth used and paid for by the downloader), and so the two acts are different under the law.
It is important to note that the interests of the cable company and the television programming providers, who make and hold the rights to the programs that the cable company distributes, are different. In the case of cable theft, the cable company, not the television programming rights holders will be the one pressing criminal charges against cable signal thieves.
On top of that, your intelligent power supply might produce nice clean 5V and 12V power at its output terminals, but what about at the end of a branch circuit with varying loads? Circuit voltage would go up and down as different devices use more or less power. 4V or 10V might not be enough for a particular device. You'd have to supply a higher voltage, say 20V (or hey, why not go for 120V or 220V!) and then use a voltage regulator at the points of use to ensure your devices get the voltages they really want. Some devices need both positive and negative voltages (+/-12V, etc)... All of a sudden you need a switching power supply running from your low voltage outlet (hey, wait a minute why not use power that's already AC and can be run through a cheap transformer and rectifiers to make +/- DC power?)...
Thomas Edison tried to sell the world on DC power distribution on a large scale, and the same voltage drop issues that plagued Edison's DC power distribution system will be evident in a low voltage household DC distribution setup too.
Sure, you could just use really fat DC power wires, but have you priced heavy gauge wire lately? It's really expensive.
From the landlord's point of view, the perfect (small office) tenant is an insurance agent or a doctor's office. Anyone who has predictable and regular office hours, and won't be bringing in a lot of funny hi-tech gear, or have odd ideas about quality of service. Speaking as a former landlord, I'd much rather have an office with some "hi-tech gear" in it than something that generates a lot of foot traffic and cars coming and going all day in my parking lot like a doctor's office. The best tenants I ever had were a sales rep who was only in the office four days a month and an insurance agent (who did have some funny hi-tech gear, but did very little work in the office). Landlords don't care about your office hours, since we don't live in the building. As long as your business doesn't annoy me or the other tenants or do anything illegal I don't care what you do in your rented space. As for "quality of service", what is that? Are you referring to how often the dumpster is emptied or some non-landlord issue?
In addition headlights on moving vehicles do not have constant apparent brightness to a fixed observer due to the road not being very smooth. Maybe you live in Wisconsin, where the roads are smooth and the taxpayers know why, but here in Illinois, a smooth road is one without too many craters. Choose a fixed observation point alongside a road and measure the observed brightness of the vehicle headlights and you'll find it fluctuating all over the place.
Furthermore, headlights that conform to US DOT requirements shine light upwards to illuminate overhead signs on the Interstate highways. European headlights have a much sharper cutoff line, above which very little light shines, which is why they're not DOT approved for use on the street anywhere in the USA.
It's unlikely that these camera systems will be used to issue headlight adjustment tickets, don't you think? Even if they were, which ticket would you prefer? I'd choose the one that requires you to show that you've had your headlights re-aligned ($10 at the local service establishment), rather than the one with a $4000 fine and possible jail time.
It's a moot point anyway, out here in the country they have these systems in place but they don't seem to influence the traffic signals at all - from what I've seen and heard, the white light on top of the traffic signal is just used to give the Public Safety Professionals advance warning that the light they're approaching is about to change or is in the middle of its cycle.
The parts of the CCD elements where the image of headlights focuses in the cameras could be washed out with visible light and won't show the additional IR.
I haven't tried it, but why not?
No, it's not.
I've owned three airbag equipped vehicles and I can assure you that nowhere was this mentioned in the owners' manual. In fact, the factory service manuals don't mention this functionality either.
The simple fact is that your local tv news people pick the most eye catching or outrageous image from each event they cover.
A few years back the midwest AIDS Ride made a stop in a local town, and out of the hundreds of normally dressed folk the local paper found the one guy in a dress to photograph for the article.
By far the vast majority gay guys have no interest in wearing womens' clothing.
Have you ever been on a train or in any other type of vehicle? They move! Sometimes not very smoothly.
What's to stop the phone from sensing every pothole in the road or expansion joint in the train tracks as user input?
This really seems useless in a real-world application.
Unfortunately, due to the combined speed of both vehicles the tax disc is only visible and recognisable to a police officer traveling in the opposite direction for a short time, unless both cars are moving slowly. The sticker on the rear plate is visible to a police car from behind for a comparatively long time. On a motorway for example, a police officer can just glance at the rear plate to see if it's still valid.
No computers required. I don't understand why the government in the UK always selects the most complicated, expensive, and invasive option available for simple problems.
In the meantime, you are now eight times more likely to be mugged in London than in New York City. It used to be the other way around, but I suppose spending the Greater London police budget on computers rather than doing actual policework makes sense in some bizarre beaurocratic way.
If 10% of motorists are racking up enough minor speeding offences to lose their licenses, it might be time to reconsider the direction the UK government is moving. Once everyone's been banned from driving they'll start issuing tickets for running on a public street.
This may be an American attitude, but I think most reasonable people would agree that the government has no business knowing where my car is at any particular time unless it's involved in a crime.
In most U.S. states we have nifty little stickers which the state sells us when we pay the registration fee. The sticker goes on the rear license plate and the police can easily see if you've got this year's sticker on your plate. You won't get far with a homemade plate either.
In some U.S. states, depending on the type of vehicle, the plate itself expires (i.e. the plate is stamped with the two-digit year). For those unfamiliar with U.S. license plates, they're made of sheet steel with the numbers and expiration embossed as well as painted in reflective paint.
In either case, the plate (and sticker) is produced and issued by the state and counterfeiting either is not terribly easy.
So the cops can scan a queue of traffic for license validity just by driving past... What a complete waste of money! Talk about inappropriate application of technology! If the plates (or stickers stuck on the plates) showed when the vehicle registration expires the cops could just use their eyes and look at the license plate. No chips, no detector boxes, no scanners, just stickers.
we have Dell LCD's here, and they do burn in... it's *very* irritating. a reboot has fixed it, up to now...
If a reboot fixes it, it's not burn in. Burn in is a permanent condition where you can see the image all the time, on old CRTs and even new plasma panels you can even see the burned in image when the display is turned off. What you're describing is probably some kind of display adapter problem.