I believe you. Here is another story. Back in high school my shop teacher told me of a friend who was a ham and collected all sorts of RF and radio equipment. At an auction he attended, he won the bid on a box containing some type of odd radio. Well he gets it home and tears into it trying to figure out what it is. He finds an interesting but mysterious looking part and decides to call the manufacturer. They take his information telling him they would send him any information about the piece. Next day heavily armed FBI or whoever surrond his home BREAK THE DOOR DOWN and hold him and his family at gun point. They demanded the radio device and he complied. Turns out the radio wasn't a radio at all but instead some type military sattelite controller or tranciever. Sounds crazy but supposedly it was lost or misplaced.
I would not be suprised as I worked for a gentileman who bought military radio and electronic surplus equipment at auction. I told him the above story and he said it is very likely that it happend. He also accidently wound up with a sattelite tranciever but was useless without codes, and I saw it with my own two eyes. Thing is he can not legally sell it and was afraid to give it back for fear the goverment would begin to monitor him or worse, raid his home and warehouse looking for more. Allot of the stuff he sold was old military surplus radio equipment. Once you dabble in radio and begin to accumulate allot of equipment I would not be suprised if you were in fact ransacked by the CIA/whoever. They don't like the fact someone other then they can tune in.
This whole post is a real waste of time. Different devices have different voltage requirements. You would make more of a mess, how and where are you going to run the low voltage cables? Converting 120vac into x volts dc is redundant because you still need to convert the DC to the proper voltage to feed the device. My advice, get power strips and try to organize the rats nest of cables.
It's hard and expensive to change 120 down to low voltage DC with any decent efficiency, whereas efficient (>90%) DC-to-DC is cheap and straightforward. Transformers are expensive, as are high-voltage rated components.
Um.... how? There are 2 ways to change a DC voltage. Use a mechanical machine like a dynamotor or a motor generator. Or you can use a solid state switching power supply. Most AC wall warts I see today are switchers. The DC-DC inverters you are talking about are nothing more then switching power supplies. The only thing missing is the rather simple AC-DC circuit that consists of 4 diodes and a capacitor or two.
It's the current that kills you not the voltage. 200mA is around the lethal limit (Although there are all kinds of different values out there). It starts getting bad around 50mA and 100mA can cause major damage.
OT here but good info nonetheless:
DC used to be distributed locally to homes and businesses. It was only good for short runs (no more then 2 miles) from the dynamo. It is difficult to easily transmit because DC voltage cannot be easily varied by using transformers like AC. They wound up transmitting in AC and stepping the voltage down and running it through a synchronous rotary converter to obtain DC (These systems were used in NYC's subway system up until 1999!). Thanks to Tesla's invention of the poly phase system AC transmission became convenient. Also AC makes it easy to balance loads over different phases and hot legs. In DC you could not balance the current in a 120/240 setup without a dynamotor. Dc was still used after AC took over because it enabled easy speed control of a motor where as in AC you need fancy controllers.
Dc is used in point to point high voltage transmission. It allows for unsynchronized grids to be interconnected as well as grids running at different frequencies. It is not susceptible to capacitive and dielectric losses making monopole undersea and underground transmission lines practical. It is more lossy then AC in short runs and expensive so it is rather uncommon.
However it seems as though some of Abramoff's biggest clients -- brick and mortar casinos -- are really the big winners from passage of this bill, since it does not prohibit gambling in person, only online."
As always, follow the money. I have been invloved in the casino business for many years. Believe me, never mind the casinos, its all about uncle sam getting his cut. Nothing more nothing less.
I mean if you think about it snowmobiles, trail bikes, and SUV's all serve there purpose. The first two being recreational vehicles. The segway was designed to be a convenience not a recreation. SUV's always get picked on mainly because of there fuel consumption, but there are legit uses for them. Just don't get me started on the assholes with the 22 inch rims driving them like sports cars.
Most mass produced hydrogen comes from steam reforming of natural gas (methane) giving you hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Nuclear plants could help make hydrogen with super heated steam. Thing is we still need the methane and end up with allot of CO. Hydrogen is a pain in the ass. Propane isnt that bad. Unfortuantly it is not produced from any natural process that I am aware of. The best fuels are liquid at room temprature. So our best bet is mentanol/ethanol and/or bio diesel. Electric would be my firt pick for favorite because parking my car in the sun charges it up with solar panels for free. And that is something the oil companies fear.
Never mind price, how about pictures of it actually working?
LBO has developed unique laser-based projection technology, which uses computational algorithms and novel optical techniques to allow miniature lasers to display video images in real-time using the diffractive nature of laser light.
Right and my wife is Angelina Jolie. Besides less then real-time is too slow for me.
Understand that there is no glass, no prisms, NO MOVING PARTS, and no need for fans to provide heat dissipation.
I also understand that lasers come from a magical place where there is no physics and optics.
In addition, it runs on less than 1.5W at full power and less than 350mW while displaying typical video images (50% average pixel amplitude. There is also an infinite focus, meaning that no matter how close or far away, there are no optics to adjust for a clear picture.
It slices it dices it even makes you coffee! Seriously anyone with an optical engineering degree care to explain this to me? Last time I saw anything close to a laser projector it needed water cooled lasers, two rotating mirrors (one vertical and one horizontal) optics to focus it and it still looked like shit. This looks like nothing more then vapor technology to dupe unsuspecting investors out of there money. Like my dad used to say if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. I call bullshit on this one.
"The only problem is, this will put the oil companies out of business."
If you think about it why would they let themselves go out of business? Who is to say they wont buy out bio firms and farms working on alt fuels? Trust me, one day driving by exxon and shell farms producing the raw material for ethanol and bio diesel.
The other night I was traveling over a very desolate bridge here in NYC. Upon reaching the toll booth the clerk was watching a DVD on one of those portable players. She had next to it a stack of Netflix envelopes. I chatted with her a bit and learned on her graveyard shift she would watch up to 4 or 5 movies to pass the time.
Listen I don't want to sound like an ass hole but where the fuck do you think that monthly fee goes? An mmog server can not be hosted on some kids computer with a cable modem. It takes clusters of servers which cost money to run. It also requires huge amounts of bandwidth which also costs allot of money. I concider the initial cost of the game for all the coding and content that went into the game. The 10-15 a month I spend is for the ability to play with 10,000+ other people on the same server. It also provides the necessary funds for added content, bug fixes and patches not to mention the people who maintain the servers to keep them up.
I agree with you first comment about the game industry. The industry needs to die and from it small independent studios will emerge from the dust and find new ways to publish there games. We don't need madden 2006, ridge racer 6, quake 4 or any of the other mindless sequal titles that come out every year or so. I purchased half life 2 not only because it was a fun and interesting game to play but the value added from the mod community as well as online play. Valve has it right, easily distribute the content (although not perfect) and let the community creat new and exciting mods with your game extending its value.
One a side note there is no two phase power used for distribution today. The proper term your lookig for is called a 3 wire single phase system (120/240 volts).
Now as for 2by4's problem: Sounds like you have some bad power supplies that are acting up. It is a possibility that that particular phase might have noise on it or "dirty power" caused by other equipment or wiring problems. Some buildings have 277/480 mains(or sometimes in canada 346/600) and then have seperate stepdown transformers throughout the building for 120/208 service. They can cause problems if there are winding failures or are improperly wired (wrong taps). Have you tried using a volt meter and take a voltage measurement on the suspected outlet? I also would like to know how you know that the outlets are on a different phase as they are usually never marked. How many other machines are plugged into that outlet other then the 5? Have you tried plugging another known good machines into that outlet along with the effected equipment and see if it is affected in the same manor?
A good way to determine if the equipment is on the same phase: get 2 three prong grounded plugs (L5-15 nema standard) on each plug connect a single long wire to the gold looking screw (thats the hot terminal). Now you can connect the two leads to a volt meter or a series of 2 light bulbs (make sure they are wired in series for voltages as high as 240). Now go and plug one plug into one outlet and another plug into another outlet. If you get any power you are on two different phases. If you get no power then you are on the same phase. your setup looks like this : =0-------------[voltmeter/bulbs]---------------0= If you use a volt meter, you should see about 208 volts.
And one more thing. Not all 3 phase systems are the same. Some areas use the 240 delta setup with one phase center tapped and grounded to form the neutral. This gives you only one phase to provide 120 volts. From only two of the 3 hot legs to ground will you get 120 volts. From the third you get about 160 or 170 volts known as the bastard voltage. Sometimes an electrican will make a mistake in a 3 phase breaker box and accidently wire a 120v circuit to the bastard leg. make sure you have between 110 and 125 volts.
Sealing the shaft for a vacuum would defeat the maintenece free part. Every door would have to have a seal which would definatly be high maintenence. Perhaps a blower or fan of some sort to help relieve the piston effect.
Think for a minuet. What if some malicious individual decides to show those smug bastards how secure OSX really is? Someone in theory could develop a worm or virus to exploit some vulnerability in OSX. Then all the OSX users in there ignorant bliss will finally wake up and realize Internet security is for all to practice not just windows users. The GP poster is taking the preemptive approach and not taking any chances. He also might have a LAN and wants a central point of protection for all his systems. I hope you keep your firewall on at all times and not just at your leisure. Security is an on going process not a quick fix or OSX.
Screw the big chains. Everyone and there brother will first goto the big chains in search of one. Go check your local mom and pop toy stores. I got my 360 four days before christmas with the games I wanted.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe you. Here is another story.
Back in high school my shop teacher told me of a friend who was a ham and collected all sorts of RF and radio equipment. At an auction he attended, he won the bid on a box containing some type of odd radio. Well he gets it home and tears into it trying to figure out what it is. He finds an interesting but mysterious looking part and decides to call the manufacturer. They take his information telling him they would send him any information about the piece. Next day heavily armed FBI or whoever surrond his home BREAK THE DOOR DOWN and hold him and his family at gun point. They demanded the radio device and he complied. Turns out the radio wasn't a radio at all but instead some type military sattelite controller or tranciever. Sounds crazy but supposedly it was lost or misplaced.
I would not be suprised as I worked for a gentileman who bought military radio and electronic surplus equipment at auction. I told him the above story and he said it is very likely that it happend. He also accidently wound up with a sattelite tranciever but was useless without codes, and I saw it with my own two eyes. Thing is he can not legally sell it and was afraid to give it back for fear the goverment would begin to monitor him or worse, raid his home and warehouse looking for more. Allot of the stuff he sold was old military surplus radio equipment.
Once you dabble in radio and begin to accumulate allot of equipment I would not be suprised if you were in fact ransacked by the CIA/whoever. They don't like the fact someone other then they can tune in.
Mrcowcow seems to have a weak spot for free ipods too.
electrolysis efficiency - ~80%
Fuel cell efficiency - ~80%
total loss is 40% of your input giving us 60 % efficiency. 55%-80% are the figures for todays steam generation plants.
WOW thats pretty heavy for a game.
j/k
In japan only old electronics sell you
This whole post is a real waste of time. Different devices have different voltage requirements. You would make more of a mess, how and where are you going to run the low voltage cables? Converting 120vac into x volts dc is redundant because you still need to convert the DC to the proper voltage to feed the device. My advice, get power strips and try to organize the rats nest of cables.
It's hard and expensive to change 120 down to low voltage DC with any decent efficiency, whereas efficient (>90%) DC-to-DC is cheap and straightforward. Transformers are expensive, as are high-voltage rated components.
Um.... how?
There are 2 ways to change a DC voltage. Use a mechanical machine like a dynamotor or a motor generator. Or you can use a solid state switching power supply. Most AC wall warts I see today are switchers. The DC-DC inverters you are talking about are nothing more then switching power supplies. The only thing missing is the rather simple AC-DC circuit that consists of 4 diodes and a capacitor or two.
It's the current that kills you not the voltage. 200mA is around the lethal limit (Although there are all kinds of different values out there). It starts getting bad around 50mA and 100mA can cause major damage.
OT here but good info nonetheless:
DC used to be distributed locally to homes and businesses. It was only good for short runs (no more then 2 miles) from the dynamo. It is difficult to easily transmit because DC voltage cannot be easily varied by using transformers like AC. They wound up transmitting in AC and stepping the voltage down and running it through a synchronous rotary converter to obtain DC (These systems were used in NYC's subway system up until 1999!). Thanks to Tesla's invention of the poly phase system AC transmission became convenient. Also AC makes it easy to balance loads over different phases and hot legs. In DC you could not balance the current in a 120/240 setup without a dynamotor. Dc was still used after AC took over because it enabled easy speed control of a motor where as in AC you need fancy controllers.
Dc is used in point to point high voltage transmission. It allows for unsynchronized grids to be interconnected as well as grids running at different frequencies. It is not susceptible to capacitive and dielectric losses making monopole undersea and underground transmission lines practical. It is more lossy then AC in short runs and expensive so it is rather uncommon.
However it seems as though some of Abramoff's biggest clients -- brick and mortar casinos -- are really the big winners from passage of this bill, since it does not prohibit gambling in person, only online."
As always, follow the money. I have been invloved in the casino business for many years. Believe me, never mind the casinos, its all about uncle sam getting his cut. Nothing more nothing less.
I mean if you think about it snowmobiles, trail bikes, and SUV's all serve there purpose. The first two being recreational vehicles. The segway was designed to be a convenience not a recreation. SUV's always get picked on mainly because of there fuel consumption, but there are legit uses for them. Just don't get me started on the assholes with the 22 inch rims driving them like sports cars.
I read that vicious male dog(s) can be easily distracted by a female dog in heat.
Step 6. Ban any and all use of music and video that automatically loads and plays.
Most mass produced hydrogen comes from steam reforming of natural gas (methane) giving you hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Nuclear plants could help make hydrogen with super heated steam. Thing is we still need the methane and end up with allot of CO. Hydrogen is a pain in the ass. Propane isnt that bad. Unfortuantly it is not produced from any natural process that I am aware of. The best fuels are liquid at room temprature. So our best bet is mentanol/ethanol and/or bio diesel. Electric would be my firt pick for favorite because parking my car in the sun charges it up with solar panels for free. And that is something the oil companies fear.
Never mind price, how about pictures of it actually working?
LBO has developed unique laser-based projection technology, which uses computational algorithms and novel optical techniques to allow miniature lasers to display video images in real-time using the diffractive nature of laser light.
Right and my wife is Angelina Jolie. Besides less then real-time is too slow for me.
Understand that there is no glass, no prisms, NO MOVING PARTS, and no need for fans to provide heat dissipation.
I also understand that lasers come from a magical place where there is no physics and optics.
In addition, it runs on less than 1.5W at full power and less than 350mW while displaying typical video images (50% average pixel amplitude. There is also an infinite focus, meaning that no matter how close or far away, there are no optics to adjust for a clear picture.
It slices it dices it even makes you coffee! Seriously anyone with an optical engineering degree care to explain this to me? Last time I saw anything close to a laser projector it needed water cooled lasers, two rotating mirrors (one vertical and one horizontal) optics to focus it and it still looked like shit. This looks like nothing more then vapor technology to dupe unsuspecting investors out of there money. Like my dad used to say if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. I call bullshit on this one.
"The only problem is, this will put the oil companies out of business."
If you think about it why would they let themselves go out of business? Who is to say they wont buy out bio firms and farms working on alt fuels? Trust me, one day driving by exxon and shell farms producing the raw material for ethanol and bio diesel.
The other night I was traveling over a very desolate bridge here in NYC. Upon reaching the toll booth the clerk was watching a DVD on one of those portable players. She had next to it a stack of Netflix envelopes. I chatted with her a bit and learned on her graveyard shift she would watch up to 4 or 5 movies to pass the time.
Better yet, free condoms.
Penis pudding
Listen I don't want to sound like an ass hole but where the fuck do you think that monthly fee goes? An mmog server can not be hosted on some kids computer with a cable modem. It takes clusters of servers which cost money to run. It also requires huge amounts of bandwidth which also costs allot of money. I concider the initial cost of the game for all the coding and content that went into the game. The 10-15 a month I spend is for the ability to play with 10,000+ other people on the same server. It also provides the necessary funds for added content, bug fixes and patches not to mention the people who maintain the servers to keep them up.
I agree with you first comment about the game industry. The industry needs to die and from it small independent studios will emerge from the dust and find new ways to publish there games. We don't need madden 2006, ridge racer 6, quake 4 or any of the other mindless sequal titles that come out every year or so. I purchased half life 2 not only because it was a fun and interesting game to play but the value added from the mod community as well as online play. Valve has it right, easily distribute the content (although not perfect) and let the community creat new and exciting mods with your game extending its value.
One a side note there is no two phase power used for distribution today. The proper term your lookig for is called a 3 wire single phase system (120/240 volts).
Now as for 2by4's problem:
Sounds like you have some bad power supplies that are acting up. It is a possibility that that particular phase might have noise on it or "dirty power" caused by other equipment or wiring problems. Some buildings have 277/480 mains(or sometimes in canada 346/600) and then have seperate stepdown transformers throughout the building for 120/208 service. They can cause problems if there are winding failures or are improperly wired (wrong taps). Have you tried using a volt meter and take a voltage measurement on the suspected outlet? I also would like to know how you know that the outlets are on a different phase as they are usually never marked. How many other machines are plugged into that outlet other then the 5? Have you tried plugging another known good machines into that outlet along with the effected equipment and see if it is affected in the same manor?
A good way to determine if the equipment is on the same phase: get 2 three prong grounded plugs (L5-15 nema standard) on each plug connect a single long wire to the gold looking screw (thats the hot terminal). Now you can connect the two leads to a volt meter or a series of 2 light bulbs (make sure they are wired in series for voltages as high as 240). Now go and plug one plug into one outlet and another plug into another outlet. If you get any power you are on two different phases. If you get no power then you are on the same phase. your setup looks like this : =0-------------[voltmeter/bulbs]---------------0=
If you use a volt meter, you should see about 208 volts.
And one more thing. Not all 3 phase systems are the same. Some areas use the 240 delta setup with one phase center tapped and grounded to form the neutral. This gives you only one phase to provide 120 volts. From only two of the 3 hot legs to ground will you get 120 volts. From the third you get about 160 or 170 volts known as the bastard voltage. Sometimes an electrican will make a mistake in a 3 phase breaker box and accidently wire a 120v circuit to the bastard leg. make sure you have between 110 and 125 volts.
Sealing the shaft for a vacuum would defeat the maintenece free part. Every door would have to have a seal which would definatly be high maintenence. Perhaps a blower or fan of some sort to help relieve the piston effect.
Elevator repairmen know how to get it up.
Think for a minuet. What if some malicious individual decides to show those smug bastards how secure OSX really is? Someone in theory could develop a worm or virus to exploit some vulnerability in OSX. Then all the OSX users in there ignorant bliss will finally wake up and realize Internet security is for all to practice not just windows users. The GP poster is taking the preemptive approach and not taking any chances. He also might have a LAN and wants a central point of protection for all his systems. I hope you keep your firewall on at all times and not just at your leisure. Security is an on going process not a quick fix or OSX.
Screw the big chains. Everyone and there brother will first goto the big chains in search of one. Go check your local mom and pop toy stores. I got my 360 four days before christmas with the games I wanted.
Or a ninja looter.