There's more to cabling than oxygen-free copper, pair twisting, and stranding/braiding. Most people seem to ignore insulation and installation ratings.
If cable is installed inside a wall without conduit, it must be rated for in-wall use. Most lamp cord and extension cords are not, as well as your typical clear-jacket lamp-cord-style speaker cable. If installed in a plenum (air-handling space, typically the space above a false ceiling in your office building), then the insulation must be plenum rated. This means that in the event of a fire, the insulation a) does not support combustion, and b) meets standards for emissions in the event of a fire. If your cabling does not meet the standards for the particular installation, then you'll have to run it in conduit.
In addition, most of your "Home Depot" cord and most audio cables are not rated for permanent installation. Usually, cable designed for permanent installation has individually insulated conductors and a durable outer jacket. (Rule of thumb: interconnects between equipment are considered temporary. If the wire runs thru a wall or is somehow fastened to a surface, then it's considered permanent.)
Don't run your cables under a rug or carpet. This is dangerous: the slight bump in the carpet can be a tripping hazard, the carpet does NOT protect and in fact increases the wear on the cable, heat dissipation is hampered by the carpet, and the cable cannot be visually inspected for damage.
Oh, and another thing about twisting pairs -- for speakers, twisting your pairs won't necessarily improve RF rejection (considering the amplitude of the signal), but will help prevent your speaker signals from inductively coupling to your other signal lines. That is, with parallel non-twisted cable, your speaker lines are not a magnet for interference, but rather are a source for it.
"...when the cable resistance becomes frequency dependent..."
I believe this is known as impedance. If I'm wrong someone will correct me, so I'm posting AC just in case.
On another note, "skin effect" really only becomes apparent at high frequencies. Low frequencies, such as those in your subwoofer channel, are less impacted by coarser-stranded cable.
When I say "restricts no idividual," what I mean is that the individual may be member of Congress leading the same in prayer, it may be a teacher leading in the Pledge of Allegiance (which currently utters the name of "God"), and it may be a validictorian calling upon God in her address, in addition to the mother quietly praying alone at home.
When I was in grade school, we said the Pledge of Allegiance, every morning, uttering the name of God. Those who objected were free to "sit it out" and not say the Pledge; they were not thought less for it.
Since we're bringing up the Constitution of the United States of America, we might as well have Amendment I in front of us for reference:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I bring your attention to the the second part of the first clause: "...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." It's amazing how many people seem to forget this little tidbit. You must understand that it applies not only to citizens but to civil service workers, teachers, students, judges, our elected leaders, our military, and anyone priviledged to call himself "American."
The doctrine espoused in this amendment is not separation of church and state, but rather, that the state shall not interfere in the affairs of the church, and no church shall direct the affairs of the government. This amendment restricts no individual from expressing his religious convictions in any circumstance or location, and guarantees the freedom to act in accordance with those convictions.
It does not bar religious education in public schools; it does not prevent the display of religious icons in public places. At the same time, it does not require any citizen to bow before a particular diety, say a particular prayer, or express a particular belief.
I snap my fingers, smoke streams from my monitor, materialising into Jeeves...
I once snapped my fingers and smoke streamed from my monitor. Unfortunately, it didn't materialize into Jeeves, and my monitor never worked after that.
Yup, that'll work. It'll turn it into a listen-only box, only useful for capturing network chatter. Since you have no TX function, you can't even request, say, a DNS lookup. You'll have no stateful connections. You'll also not be able to browse the web, since you won't be able to send any HTTP GET requests.
However, since it's still listening, someone could, theoretically, take advantage of a buffer vulnerability or some such thing, and splatter your machine with whatever garbage necessary to corrupt it.
It's just like eating and pooping -- it's not the stuff going out you worry about, it's the stuff going in. In the case of firewalls, they take care of the stuff coming in, not the stuff going out. If bad stuff can't come in, the bad stuff can't send good stuff out.
As a non-profit organization, you may qualify for special pricing of commercial products, including Microsoft stuff (apps, servers, licenses). If the price is low enough, you may actually be better off with a commercial solution instead of an open source one. That may be heresy here on Slashdot, but then again so were Galileo's teachings in the Catholic Church.
This is assuming that the rupturing fault is closer to Africa and Spain than the US.
Now if a previously unknown fault (and there's more that we don't know about the ocean floor than we do) were to rupture near to the New York shore, you can say buh-bye Manhattan. At least Africa will get about 10 hours notice.
Evacuate NYC in 10 hours? Sure, just tell them the Mets & Yankees are playing an exhibition game in Buffalo with FREE BEER & HOT DOGS.
There are two types of ad-supported software that I consider tolerable:
1) Installation that places an icon on the desktop for another product but DOES NOT actually perform the installation of that product;
2) Software which features banner ads wholly contained in a portion of the software but which DOES NOT leave any adware component running after the software is closed, and which DOES NOT launch additional windows to display advertising (like Slashdot).
Why do I say they are tolerable? Because in the first instance, it is optionally installed by the user, and in the second instance it is not obtrusive and in no way inhibits your ability to use the software/product and does not interfere with any other software packages (except for Slashdot, which inhibits my ability to use ANY other software).
Spurs and loops on the interstate highway system are given three-digit identifiers where the last two digits reflect the primary route they join. An odd first digit represnts a spur; an even first digit represents a loop or bypass.
There's also an I-405 in Oregon, running through downtown Portland.
But this is all off-topic, so I'll take my karma hits now.
Because the guys jump into using it so quickly, they learn faster through trial and error. The pace of learning with girls is a lot slower due to their desire to know how stuff works first.
Just to a Google search for cable burn-in. You'll be surprised at the hogwash you'll find. Supposedly, audio cables won't sound "proper" until they've been "burned-in."
It may be true that there is a capacitive charge on the cable (due to the inefficiencies of the dielectric, but that's beyond the scope of my ability to explain), and the degree of the charge may affect the sound quality. I'll agree that this is possible. BUT -- and this is a big but, at least as big as Roseanne Barr's -- this charge will vary with the signal that is present on the cable. You might be able to capacitively charge the cable, but that charge will change as soon as a signal is applied. It may increase or decrease. It will do this very rapidly, and the result a few seconds after listening to a particular musical selection will be no different than if the cable had not been precharged.
If there is such a phenomenon as "burn-in" on cables, it would represent a breakdown of the dielectric strength of the insulation, which in turn would cause signal strength degradation and increase coupling. This degradation might not be equal in all frequencies, and therefore represents a discoloration of the audio signal from its source to its destination. I can think no case where "burn-in" would improve the integrity of the signal. It might improve the listener's perception of the signal, based on the listener's personal preferences, but it certainly wouldn't improve the integrity.
"Digital Ready" headphones -- for digital ears?
on
Truth in Advertising?
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, I don't know how many headphones I've seen in packages blaring "DIGITAL READY." Yet they only have connections for ANALOG signals.
Even if someone came up with a pair of headphones that had an S/PDIF or AES/EBU interface, it would still have to have a DAC and an analog transducer, because my ears are not digital nor will they ever be. What's that you say about cochlear implants? Well, there's still has to be a DAC between whatever and your nerves/brain.
So don't give me this crap about "digital" headphones. There isn't any such thing now, and I don't see how there ever can be.
You can't look at the top rated model and decide that it is the best one long term. The ratings in a CR review represent how the products performed during the test. The ratings do not necessarily represent the best products.
CU doesn't rank based only on quality, reliability, and longevity; a big factor in the ranking is price. That which CU feels provides the best value for the money will rank the highest.
There may be a product that outperforms and outlasts all the competition, but if it also outprices the competition (in the mfgr's favor) then it's not going to be top-rated.
The Sears stuff often ranks high not because it's better, but because it is less expensive than models of comparable quality.
The only thing more frustrating than trying to figure out why something doesn't work when it should -- is trying to figure out why something works when it shouldn't.
Before investing a lot of money in reduced-energy lighting, you should (have) spent it on insulation for your "very old" house.
Sealing drafts and insulating walls, floor, and ceiling to the greatest practical degree will provide a greater energy cost savings per unit of currency spent than high-efficiency lighting fixtures or any other "energy efficiency" exercise. It should always be your first course of action.
Put another way, you can spend $500 to squeak out one extra mile-per-gallon in your car, but if the gas tank leaks you'd better fix that first. Same thing goes with your house -- fix the leaks before tweaking the system.
I am agreeing with you, BUT it may be that in his locale, it's cheaper to heat with another source of energy such as gas, coal, oil, kerosene, gasoline, jet fuel, hydrogen, or anhydrous ammonia than it is to heat with electric lighting fixtures.
If he's using electric heat, then there's no point in using flourescents to save energy, since all the light that is produced eventually turns into heat anyway as it strikes objects in the room. As you said, a flourescent provides less thermal energy to the room, requiring the heating system to make up the difference.
So does the acoustic energy produced by his monitor speakers.
I do like the idea of one poster who suggested using flourescent for day-to-day living, and switching to incandescent when using the audio equipment.
Since I'm rambling on, I might as well say something about the audible noise of flourescents: if a fixture is particularly noisy, it's probably using a magnetic ballast which has a loose winding. Replacing the ballast either with a new magnetic one or an electronic one should quiet it down (the electronic one will require changing out the tubes, too).
As the parent poster stated that he lives in an old house, he will realize a greater return on investment -- and significantly lower energy use -- by sealing and insulating his home if it is not already.
Um, the NM stands for "Non-Metallic." It's not shielded. Go to Home Depot and take a close look at the NM cable there, it's non-twisted pair, non-shielded. Ripe for RFI/EMF. The same goes for knob-and-tube, but those conductors are spaced further apart, compounding the problem. Not to mention that the insulation is probably old, brittle, and falling off the wires creating other more serious concerns.
Armored cable (AC, MC, or MC-lite) or conduit are, effectively, shielded wiring systems.
Slashdot Mirror
darn spastic trigger finger!
Mad is Yoda, think I.
There's more to cabling than oxygen-free copper, pair twisting, and stranding/braiding. Most people seem to ignore insulation and installation ratings.
If cable is installed inside a wall without conduit, it must be rated for in-wall use. Most lamp cord and extension cords are not, as well as your typical clear-jacket lamp-cord-style speaker cable. If installed in a plenum (air-handling space, typically the space above a false ceiling in your office building), then the insulation must be plenum rated. This means that in the event of a fire, the insulation a) does not support combustion, and b) meets standards for emissions in the event of a fire. If your cabling does not meet the standards for the particular installation, then you'll have to run it in conduit.
In addition, most of your "Home Depot" cord and most audio cables are not rated for permanent installation. Usually, cable designed for permanent installation has individually insulated conductors and a durable outer jacket. (Rule of thumb: interconnects between equipment are considered temporary. If the wire runs thru a wall or is somehow fastened to a surface, then it's considered permanent.)
Don't run your cables under a rug or carpet. This is dangerous: the slight bump in the carpet can be a tripping hazard, the carpet does NOT protect and in fact increases the wear on the cable, heat dissipation is hampered by the carpet, and the cable cannot be visually inspected for damage.
Oh, and another thing about twisting pairs -- for speakers, twisting your pairs won't necessarily improve RF rejection (considering the amplitude of the signal), but will help prevent your speaker signals from inductively coupling to your other signal lines. That is, with parallel non-twisted cable, your speaker lines are not a magnet for interference, but rather are a source for it.
"...when the cable resistance becomes frequency dependent..."
I believe this is known as impedance. If I'm wrong someone will correct me, so I'm posting AC just in case.
On another note, "skin effect" really only becomes apparent at high frequencies. Low frequencies, such as those in your subwoofer channel, are less impacted by coarser-stranded cable.
When I say "restricts no idividual," what I mean is that the individual may be member of Congress leading the same in prayer, it may be a teacher leading in the Pledge of Allegiance (which currently utters the name of "God"), and it may be a validictorian calling upon God in her address, in addition to the mother quietly praying alone at home.
When I was in grade school, we said the Pledge of Allegiance, every morning, uttering the name of God. Those who objected were free to "sit it out" and not say the Pledge; they were not thought less for it.
Since we're bringing up the Constitution of the United States of America, we might as well have Amendment I in front of us for reference:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I bring your attention to the the second part of the first clause: "...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." It's amazing how many people seem to forget this little tidbit. You must understand that it applies not only to citizens but to civil service workers, teachers, students, judges, our elected leaders, our military, and anyone priviledged to call himself "American."
The doctrine espoused in this amendment is not separation of church and state, but rather, that the state shall not interfere in the affairs of the church, and no church shall direct the affairs of the government. This amendment restricts no individual from expressing his religious convictions in any circumstance or location, and guarantees the freedom to act in accordance with those convictions.
It does not bar religious education in public schools; it does not prevent the display of religious icons in public places. At the same time, it does not require any citizen to bow before a particular diety, say a particular prayer, or express a particular belief.
I snap my fingers, smoke streams from my monitor, materialising into Jeeves...
I once snapped my fingers and smoke streamed from my monitor. Unfortunately, it didn't materialize into Jeeves, and my monitor never worked after that.
Yup, that'll work. It'll turn it into a listen-only box, only useful for capturing network chatter. Since you have no TX function, you can't even request, say, a DNS lookup. You'll have no stateful connections. You'll also not be able to browse the web, since you won't be able to send any HTTP GET requests.
However, since it's still listening, someone could, theoretically, take advantage of a buffer vulnerability or some such thing, and splatter your machine with whatever garbage necessary to corrupt it.
It's just like eating and pooping -- it's not the stuff going out you worry about, it's the stuff going in. In the case of firewalls, they take care of the stuff coming in, not the stuff going out. If bad stuff can't come in, the bad stuff can't send good stuff out.
As a non-profit organization, you may qualify for special pricing of commercial products, including Microsoft stuff (apps, servers, licenses). If the price is low enough, you may actually be better off with a commercial solution instead of an open source one. That may be heresy here on Slashdot, but then again so were Galileo's teachings in the Catholic Church.
Check out TechSoup.
This is assuming that the rupturing fault is closer to Africa and Spain than the US.
Now if a previously unknown fault (and there's more that we don't know about the ocean floor than we do) were to rupture near to the New York shore, you can say buh-bye Manhattan. At least Africa will get about 10 hours notice.
Evacuate NYC in 10 hours? Sure, just tell them the Mets & Yankees are playing an exhibition game in Buffalo with FREE BEER & HOT DOGS.
There are two types of ad-supported software that I consider tolerable:
1) Installation that places an icon on the desktop for another product but DOES NOT actually perform the installation of that product;
2) Software which features banner ads wholly contained in a portion of the software but which DOES NOT leave any adware component running after the software is closed, and which DOES NOT launch additional windows to display advertising (like Slashdot).
Why do I say they are tolerable? Because in the first instance, it is optionally installed by the user, and in the second instance it is not obtrusive and in no way inhibits your ability to use the software/product and does not interfere with any other software packages (except for Slashdot, which inhibits my ability to use ANY other software).
Spurs and loops on the interstate highway system are given three-digit identifiers where the last two digits reflect the primary route they join. An odd first digit represnts a spur; an even first digit represents a loop or bypass.
There's also an I-405 in Oregon, running through downtown Portland.
But this is all off-topic, so I'll take my karma hits now.
What do you get when road rage meets a flamewar?
Because the guys jump into using it so quickly, they learn faster through trial and error. The pace of learning with girls is a lot slower due to their desire to know how stuff works first.
This applies to relationships, too.
Perhaps if they put pictures of naked women in the EULA people might read it ("just for the articles," of course).
Then again, they might never get past the EULA in which case they wouldn't be violating it, would they?
"By reading this agreement you automatically consent to be bound by its terms."
Just to a Google search for cable burn-in. You'll be surprised at the hogwash you'll find. Supposedly, audio cables won't sound "proper" until they've been "burned-in."
It may be true that there is a capacitive charge on the cable (due to the inefficiencies of the dielectric, but that's beyond the scope of my ability to explain), and the degree of the charge may affect the sound quality. I'll agree that this is possible. BUT -- and this is a big but, at least as big as Roseanne Barr's -- this charge will vary with the signal that is present on the cable. You might be able to capacitively charge the cable, but that charge will change as soon as a signal is applied. It may increase or decrease. It will do this very rapidly, and the result a few seconds after listening to a particular musical selection will be no different than if the cable had not been precharged.
If there is such a phenomenon as "burn-in" on cables, it would represent a breakdown of the dielectric strength of the insulation, which in turn would cause signal strength degradation and increase coupling. This degradation might not be equal in all frequencies, and therefore represents a discoloration of the audio signal from its source to its destination. I can think no case where "burn-in" would improve the integrity of the signal. It might improve the listener's perception of the signal, based on the listener's personal preferences, but it certainly wouldn't improve the integrity.
Yeah, I don't know how many headphones I've seen in packages blaring "DIGITAL READY." Yet they only have connections for ANALOG signals.
Even if someone came up with a pair of headphones that had an S/PDIF or AES/EBU interface, it would still have to have a DAC and an analog transducer, because my ears are not digital nor will they ever be. What's that you say about cochlear implants? Well, there's still has to be a DAC between whatever and your nerves/brain.
So don't give me this crap about "digital" headphones. There isn't any such thing now, and I don't see how there ever can be.
You can't look at the top rated model and decide that it is the best one long term. The ratings in a CR review represent how the products performed during the test. The ratings do not necessarily represent the best products.
CU doesn't rank based only on quality, reliability, and longevity; a big factor in the ranking is price. That which CU feels provides the best value for the money will rank the highest.
There may be a product that outperforms and outlasts all the competition, but if it also outprices the competition (in the mfgr's favor) then it's not going to be top-rated.
The Sears stuff often ranks high not because it's better, but because it is less expensive than models of comparable quality.
Heisensoftware: Programs that are believed to exist but no one seems to know where. Such as Duke Nukem Forever.
The only thing more frustrating than trying to figure out why something doesn't work when it should -- is trying to figure out why something works when it shouldn't.
Being Slashdot, I would of expected better. Not best, just better.
*everyone* knows you buy 'a used mobo offa eBay.'
/sarcasm
Before investing a lot of money in reduced-energy lighting, you should (have) spent it on insulation for your "very old" house.
Sealing drafts and insulating walls, floor, and ceiling to the greatest practical degree will provide a greater energy cost savings per unit of currency spent than high-efficiency lighting fixtures or any other "energy efficiency" exercise. It should always be your first course of action.
Put another way, you can spend $500 to squeak out one extra mile-per-gallon in your car, but if the gas tank leaks you'd better fix that first.
Same thing goes with your house -- fix the leaks before tweaking the system.
I am agreeing with you, BUT it may be that in his locale, it's cheaper to heat with another source of energy such as gas, coal, oil, kerosene, gasoline, jet fuel, hydrogen, or anhydrous ammonia than it is to heat with electric lighting fixtures.
If he's using electric heat, then there's no point in using flourescents to save energy, since all the light that is produced eventually turns into heat anyway as it strikes objects in the room. As you said, a flourescent provides less thermal energy to the room, requiring the heating system to make up the difference.
So does the acoustic energy produced by his monitor speakers.
I do like the idea of one poster who suggested using flourescent for day-to-day living, and switching to incandescent when using the audio equipment.
Since I'm rambling on, I might as well say something about the audible noise of flourescents: if a fixture is particularly noisy, it's probably using a magnetic ballast which has a loose winding. Replacing the ballast either with a new magnetic one or an electronic one should quiet it down (the electronic one will require changing out the tubes, too).
As the parent poster stated that he lives in an old house, he will realize a greater return on investment -- and significantly lower energy use -- by sealing and insulating his home if it is not already.
The only thing that scares me is that you didn't specify where the duct tape was: the garage... or the bedroom?
Um, the NM stands for "Non-Metallic." It's not shielded. Go to Home Depot and take a close look at the NM cable there, it's non-twisted pair, non-shielded. Ripe for RFI/EMF. The same goes for knob-and-tube, but those conductors are spaced further apart, compounding the problem. Not to mention that the insulation is probably old, brittle, and falling off the wires creating other more serious concerns.
Armored cable (AC, MC, or MC-lite) or conduit are, effectively, shielded wiring systems.