"Even if a major part on your currrent vehicle fails every year, you're still beating how quickly a new car devalues."
Thank you! The other day I heard a radio ad pumping a new VW Jetta for $249 a month. Let's think about that... if you spend less than $249 a month or about 3 grand a year on repairs for your beater, you're coming out ahead. Pick a common vehicle that has plenty of cheap spare parts in your local junkyard, and you've got a winning combination.
It's not a perfect world, though. A beater tends to leave you stranded at the most inopportune times. They can be pretty reliable if you do preventative maintenance, but how many people do preventative maintenance on a beater? Just the economical ones, I guess.
"the burden of proof is on the plaintiff in such a case"
Be that as it may, the plaintiff can certainly make life miserable for a lot of people: http://www.petsforum.com/psw/. In this case, there was a somewhat happy ending: the plaintiff eventually lost their suit, but the defendants still spent a small fortune on their defense. Really kind of a lose-lose situation.
Can't say I'm real proud of any legal system that allows crap like this to happen. It's a step up from, say, Botswana, but it ain't the shining example of perfection.
Agreed. The vast majority of people just don't live in places where they can walk or bike to work or shop. This is largely due to post-WWII, automobile-centric urban planning. Fortunately, there is a movement back towards walkable lifestyles but right now it's pretty small scale and has a long way to go.
There are at least two types of verical turbines. In one type, "The Darrieus type is theoretically just as efficient as the propeller type, but in practice this efficiency is rarely realised due to the physical stresses and limitations imposed by a practical design."
In the other type, "Because they are drag-type devices, Savonius turbines extract much less of the wind's power than other similarly-sized lift-type turbines."
I only skimmed the TFA but the pictures make it look an awful lot like a Savonious rotor.
That's jsut it, vertical turbines can never be as efficient as horizontal (propeller style). There's a reason airplanes use horizontal propellers; they are more efficient.
The vertical does have some advantages, such as speed, noise, and putting the generator/alternator on the ground where it is easily servicable. But efficiency ain't one of 'em.
I expect the Moon does pretty well when you're on the dark side, but when you're on the sunny side I don't think it offers any radiation shielding. No magnetic field, no ionosphere.
Uhhh. Why did he organize 12 apostles and send them out on various missions then? I mean, he didn't seem terribly impressed with the Jewish organizations like the Pharisees and Sadducees (sp), but that doesn't mean he was against organization in general.
Honestly, just curious. Not trying to flamebait./me ducks
"I use CFLs outside but I wanted to replace the fixtures with motion sensing ones"
Well, to be fair I am using a crappy Wal-Mart fixture. Perhaps a motion sensor that wasn't made in a Chinese sweatshop from mass-produced, lowest-bidder components will do better with CFs.
"The first is that the bulbs still have a warm-up time"
In my experience this is entirely dependant on brand and model. I have some (GE I think) that have a totally dark delay of about 1 second, then they turn on nearly full brightness (which annoys the crap outta me). I have some older ones that come right on and take 10 seconds or so to come up to full brightness. And I have a few that slam on instantly to almost full brightness.
The fade-on effect can be reduced by using overrated bulbs. I.e., when replacing a 60w incandescent, install a CF that's a 75w equivalent. Works for me, anyway.
"The second annoyance is that I can't use them outdoors"
I have some on my back patio that have fired right up in the dead of an Idaho winter. Again, I suspect cold-weather performance depends on the brand and model.
Where they don't work is in motion-sensing fixtures. The motion-sensing circuitry expects a fully resistive load, and the CFs just freak out the circuit causing flicker or total failure to light.
Were they placed horizontal or base-up? When CFs are installed base-up, the heat from the bulb rises and tends to cook the ballast, shortening lifetime. They do a lot better in base-down or horizontal installations.
I have a huge 45w (200w equivalent) CF in my garage. Going on 3 years, still works great. And it's even base-up.
I've had a few CFs burn out within a few months, too. I think some of them just have manufacturing defects.
"Microsoft will have managed to improve upon the mostly unimproveable experience of Windows XP"
Dunno about that. I while ago I installed XP on my PC at work. After about two weeks, I managed to vastly improve the speed, responsiveness, and stability of my installation... by wiping the hard drive and putting Windows 2000 back on it.
On a slight tangent, you can get around the poor video performance in VMWare, QEMU etc by enabling Terminal Services or RDP server, then RDPing in from the host OS. This bypasses the video emulation and can be much more pleasant (unless you're doing something that doesn't play well with RDP).
There is a GPL re-implementation of KQEMU called QVM86 or something like that. Still alpha-quality, though.
And to be honest, I generally see *no* performance improvement with KQEMU loaded vs. not loaded. A bug I'm sure, but it's been there for at least the last two versions. Anyway, sometimes I get bluescreens with KQEMU loaded, so I just don't bother. At least QEMU is faster than Bochs.
QEMU is pretty good for what it is, considering the price. Win2k runs acceptably fast, though of course XP and 2003 are dog slow. However the QEMU UI is dreadful (command line based) and the networking setup is arcane and poorly documented compared to VMWare though. Fortunately there are add-on UIs for QEMU to address one of those issues, and for the other I just stuck eth0 in a bridge and hacked the QEMU network script to create tun/tap devices and insert them into my bridge automatically. If those two things were addressed out-of-the-box, QEMU would be a much more polished product. Fast? No, but it gets the job done.
Slashdot Mirror
"Even if a major part on your currrent vehicle fails every year, you're still beating how quickly a new car devalues."
Thank you! The other day I heard a radio ad pumping a new VW Jetta for $249 a month. Let's think about that... if you spend less than $249 a month or about 3 grand a year on repairs for your beater, you're coming out ahead. Pick a common vehicle that has plenty of cheap spare parts in your local junkyard, and you've got a winning combination.
It's not a perfect world, though. A beater tends to leave you stranded at the most inopportune times. They can be pretty reliable if you do preventative maintenance, but how many people do preventative maintenance on a beater? Just the economical ones, I guess.
"hackers in Idaho"
Hey, I *am* a hacker in Idaho, you insensitive clod!
"the burden of proof is on the plaintiff in such a case"
Be that as it may, the plaintiff can certainly make life miserable for a lot of people: http://www.petsforum.com/psw/. In this case, there was a somewhat happy ending: the plaintiff eventually lost their suit, but the defendants still spent a small fortune on their defense. Really kind of a lose-lose situation.
Can't say I'm real proud of any legal system that allows crap like this to happen. It's a step up from, say, Botswana, but it ain't the shining example of perfection.
Agreed. The vast majority of people just don't live in places where they can walk or bike to work or shop. This is largely due to post-WWII, automobile-centric urban planning. Fortunately, there is a movement back towards walkable lifestyles but right now it's pretty small scale and has a long way to go.
So... when the police seize your computer, what's to stop them from seizing your SD card and using it to decrypt the contents of the hard drive?
Better put a self-destruct button on your SD card...
Let's just go straight to hex (base 16). It's where we'll end up eventually anyway -- it's the logical choice.
You forgot the "obFuturamaQuote" disclaimer.
Interesting. Please see my reply above for my reasoning though.
There are at least two types of verical turbines. In one type, "The Darrieus type is theoretically just as efficient as the propeller type, but in practice this efficiency is rarely realised due to the physical stresses and limitations imposed by a practical design."
In the other type, "Because they are drag-type devices, Savonius turbines extract much less of the wind's power than other similarly-sized lift-type turbines."
I only skimmed the TFA but the pictures make it look an awful lot like a Savonious rotor.
"I can see more efficient designs"
That's jsut it, vertical turbines can never be as efficient as horizontal (propeller style). There's a reason airplanes use horizontal propellers; they are more efficient.
The vertical does have some advantages, such as speed, noise, and putting the generator/alternator on the ground where it is easily servicable. But efficiency ain't one of 'em.
Google is so 2004. Now there's Wikipedia. ;)
"Get a rearview mirror."
87 cents at Wal-Mart. One (or rather, three) of the best investments I ever made.
At first I was a little skeptical that moon mining would yield anything worthwhile, so I went looking and found this:
n emoon.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/lunar/school/near_earth/mi
I expect the Moon does pretty well when you're on the dark side, but when you're on the sunny side I don't think it offers any radiation shielding. No magnetic field, no ionosphere.
Please correct me if I'm wrong...
"Which Jesus was against"
/me ducks
Uhhh. Why did he organize 12 apostles and send them out on various missions then? I mean, he didn't seem terribly impressed with the Jewish organizations like the Pharisees and Sadducees (sp), but that doesn't mean he was against organization in general.
Honestly, just curious. Not trying to flamebait.
If you still need to refuel every so often, might as well use one of these in your car:
h tm
http://www.ceic.unsw.edu.au/centers/vrb/overview.
"How much fun would an article be was bullet proof? There would be nothing to say about it."
So that explains why we never see stories about Kevlar jackets.
"I use CFLs outside but I wanted to replace the fixtures with motion sensing ones"
Well, to be fair I am using a crappy Wal-Mart fixture. Perhaps a motion sensor that wasn't made in a Chinese sweatshop from mass-produced, lowest-bidder components will do better with CFs.
"The first is that the bulbs still have a warm-up time"
In my experience this is entirely dependant on brand and model. I have some (GE I think) that have a totally dark delay of about 1 second, then they turn on nearly full brightness (which annoys the crap outta me). I have some older ones that come right on and take 10 seconds or so to come up to full brightness. And I have a few that slam on instantly to almost full brightness.
The fade-on effect can be reduced by using overrated bulbs. I.e., when replacing a 60w incandescent, install a CF that's a 75w equivalent. Works for me, anyway.
"The second annoyance is that I can't use them outdoors"
I have some on my back patio that have fired right up in the dead of an Idaho winter. Again, I suspect cold-weather performance depends on the brand and model.
Where they don't work is in motion-sensing fixtures. The motion-sensing circuitry expects a fully resistive load, and the CFs just freak out the circuit causing flicker or total failure to light.
Were they placed horizontal or base-up? When CFs are installed base-up, the heat from the bulb rises and tends to cook the ballast, shortening lifetime. They do a lot better in base-down or horizontal installations.
I have a huge 45w (200w equivalent) CF in my garage. Going on 3 years, still works great. And it's even base-up.
I've had a few CFs burn out within a few months, too. I think some of them just have manufacturing defects.
"Microsoft will have managed to improve upon the mostly unimproveable experience of Windows XP"
Dunno about that. I while ago I installed XP on my PC at work. After about two weeks, I managed to vastly improve the speed, responsiveness, and stability of my installation... by wiping the hard drive and putting Windows 2000 back on it.
Never looked back.
Latency is no problem if you use some kind of simplex PTT (Push-To-Talk) interface, as if you were talking over walkie-talkies.
I guess most users would hate that, though.
"caress pile of shiny stones"
Hope inflation doesn't make your shiny stones worth about 1/2 what you paid for them.
Me, I stock ammo. In TEOTWAWKI, some things just have intrinsic value.
On a slight tangent, you can get around the poor video performance in VMWare, QEMU etc by enabling Terminal Services or RDP server, then RDPing in from the host OS. This bypasses the video emulation and can be much more pleasant (unless you're doing something that doesn't play well with RDP).
There is a GPL re-implementation of KQEMU called QVM86 or something like that. Still alpha-quality, though.
And to be honest, I generally see *no* performance improvement with KQEMU loaded vs. not loaded. A bug I'm sure, but it's been there for at least the last two versions. Anyway, sometimes I get bluescreens with KQEMU loaded, so I just don't bother. At least QEMU is faster than Bochs.
QEMU is pretty good for what it is, considering the price. Win2k runs acceptably fast, though of course XP and 2003 are dog slow. However the QEMU UI is dreadful (command line based) and the networking setup is arcane and poorly documented compared to VMWare though. Fortunately there are add-on UIs for QEMU to address one of those issues, and for the other I just stuck eth0 in a bridge and hacked the QEMU network script to create tun/tap devices and insert them into my bridge automatically. If those two things were addressed out-of-the-box, QEMU would be a much more polished product. Fast? No, but it gets the job done.