Posts by C 2

Re: This nearly happened in 2012

Its not even close to wildly overstated.

The power grid in the US has something like 5% redundancy, and the largest transformers have no backups or spares whatsoever. These are transformers that are not only built overseas, but they also have lead times of between a year an 18 months. Just a handful of these keep North America up and running.

What are the odds of multiple utilities going bankrupt and not being there to pay for or install said monster transformer by the time it has been manufactured?

From there it probably goes to shit a whole lot faster than 18 months anyways. Bronze age is probably optimistic.

We have options people!

So wood burning *can* be a clean process if done right.

Luckily for us its is pretty cheap to do AND because Rocket Mass Heaters are super cheap to make (AFAIK there are no commercial unit at this time) many people are building them into their homes. A huge advantage is that an RMH re-burns the smoke, extracting pretty much ALL of the chemical energy out of wood, almost nothing but CO2 and water come out of the chimney, at around 90F.

One woman stuck her face into the exhaust and could faintly smell wood burning. But I digress, people who use these things are finding that they are using around 1/8th (or less) wood to heat their homes for a winter (in Montana!) and they are staying more comfortable doing it. Also they have no problem with creosote buildup, that is part of what gets re-burned in normal operation.

This site has diagrams and such:

http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp

And then there's wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_mass_heater

RE: If it was going to end

You know someone wrote an excellent article here:

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/December_21,_2012#Top_Methods_of_Destruction

They've even got a lovely picture of the 'doomsday asteroid'.

Re: 'idiotic command line crap'

Funny you should mention that, I have to resort to "idiotic command line crap" an awful lot in windows (Vista or 7) these days, its horrid.

These days under Linux hardly ever, especially Linux Mint, its pretty polished these days. Also you should see how fast it runs on older hardware.

Re: Sir

Methinks it is in the way this whole issue is phrased ..

"The good prof is in London at the moment for the "Planet Under Pressure" conference, where she presented a paper on Wednesday dealing with how best to do away with the evil of scepticism and get the human race to focus all its efforts on saving the planet."

The planet doesn't need saving, it'll be just fine. We OTOH ... will be nothing more than a very interesting layer in the fossil record, if we don't save our own wasteful butts.

What's more <rant>

I've often wondered if we are capable of screwing this up bad enough to bring earth up to Venus like temps of around 800 degrees. Then again as a race we aren't being very proactive about ANYTHING. I imagine our electrical grid and other technology we depend upon, but don't protect, might be wiped out by a massive solar flare like the Carrington Super Flare back in 1869. A smaller event could easily wipe out most of our electrical grid, leaving it down until replacement parts can be built .. the multi-million $$ parts at the critical points of failure have a 1+ year lead time, and utilities are too cheap to keep a spare on hand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_%28electricity%29#Aging_Infrastructure

</rant>

Cheers

Re: Global Payments Download.

Who's to say the password wasn't 'GUEST'.

Another way to put that ...

"If the dinosaurs had a space program, they would still be here." - http://nss.org/

This is my email sig, share and enjoy.

RE: OTEC

Right, but what the Saudis can use is the upside-down land version of an OTEC, that has a byproduct of a year round greenhouse. It can also generate electricity 24/7/365. Pretty good for solar, huh?

I encourage skepticism, but you might want to read how before you go into 'complete disbelief mode'. There's even pictures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower

These are well within our ability to build, and have been for at least 30 years, despite the enormous tower at its center. Although the tower is a pretty expensive part. Namibia has eight of these in the planning stage. Two more are in the permit stage in the SW of the US. Alternate designs are available that use a buoyant chimney, cutting the build cost significantly.

110%

That's all? They've gone down then.

RE: rich trekkie

... is an oxymoron

A gentleman and a scholar!

That is all.

The anser is to ...

show these idiots what they are doing the the rest of the world.

Businesses and Internet sites for that matter have the RIGHT to refuse to do business with anyone for any reason, at least in the US. So no this is not censorship. This would be exercising one's rights.

These organizations and politicians who are so accustomed to stomping all over everyone else's rights to further whatever greedy goals they've got .. its time they got a taste of what they have been dishing out.

RE: Troi and Riker

... were 2nd and 3rd most irritating. It was a close, but Troi wins 2nd.

I think you missed something..

The last bit about how big their business is and how this isn't hurting them ..

**

"Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business. We understand there are many differing opinions on the SOPA regulations."

Go Daddy says it registers, renews or transfers a domain name every second. It is responsible for well over a third of all .com domains registered today, not including its resellers' sales.

**

Its pretty obvious bluster, they are hurting and they are afraid of anyone figuring that out.

Continue the attack!!

Another option..

If you're looking at the most effective way of saving or capturing energy for the money spent consider building a cheap solar space heater. The *most* effective value for the money spent I have seen is to build large panels using 2 or 3 layers of black aluminum window screen as the collector. Basically this stuff has the maximum surface area per Kg/ pound / whatever, so that as its temperature goes up, it heats the air around it very quickly. Convection does the rest, or a small fan (powered by a small PV panel) can assist.

I found a comparison of several designs here:

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/Space_Heating.htm#ActiveAir

More collected data here:

http://www.n3fjp.com/solar/comparisonhotair/comparisonhotair.htm

RE: TOLD YOU SO.

Shouldn't that be "iTOLD you so" ?

Actually ...

The Dodo where tough and not tasty. Plus they were mean.

Sorry to rain on that parade, have a pint.

RE:Printer inks and toner

This sounds similar to what the printer companies do to people here in the US. I'm not sure which it is, but I suspect HP, Cannon, Epson, Brother, etc are selling the printers at cost or maybe lower, and the ink and toner is definitely their cash cow.

The answer is to do a bit of research on the web, if you are buying an ink-jet printer, you can find a 'Continuous Ink System' for many models. A CIS is basically a set of tanks with ink in them that sits outside the printer and is attached to a modified set of ink cartridges via a small set of tubes.

This amounts to ink anywhere from 75% to 90% less than what you'd pay if you bought the manufacturers ink at retail. You'll want to see if you can find reviews of course.

Note that the ink tank MUST be level with the printer or you'll get siphoning one way or the other, which is really messy.

As for toner some cartridges can be refilled/tweaked, the Brother HL-2040 is a good example of this.

Vista?

I dunno if I'd use the word 'run'...

Then again if they had 11,000 techs and 11,000 computers I'm sure it would work out.

RE: hey OEMs, here is specification for you

All well and good, but consider that windows has always been and will very likely always have security holes like swiss cheese .. some big enough to sail a cruise ship through.

Oh and BTW has anyone else realized that it is probably a lot simpler to write malware that either steals, or scrambles the 'signature' from Micros~1's bootloader(s). Chaos would ensue.

Which makes this whole UEFI signed bootloader business a big hassle with pretty much zero benefit. In other words just so much fluff.

So why not just use a mechanical/electrical switch to prevent or enable flashing the BIOS? Then at least the motherboard would be secure against the nasties that now re-write the BIOS.

As for windows .. pffft .. just fix it as per usual, it is after all the premier malware distribution software.

Hiding in this picture

There are 23 ninjas hiding in this picture.

Boron + hydrogen? -- Carbon12 then to He4 x3

Technically, the p-B11 reaction is a fusion-fission reaction. The proton and boron-11 fuse to temporarily create an unstable isotope of carbon-12, which then fissions to create three helium-4s. However, the same can be said about the deuterium-tritium reaction, which fuses to produce an unstable helium-5 and then fissions into a helium-4 and a neutron. Like wise with deuterium-helium-3, or practically any fusion reaction. There are a few pure fusion reactions. For example, when two deuteriums fuse they will usually either produce a Tritium and a proton, or a helium-3 and a neutron, but there is a very small chance that they will stick together to form a helium-4 with the excess energy carried off by a gamma ray. This would be a fusion reaction with no subsequent fission. But this reaction happens purely by chance. There is no way to make this particular outcome happen more often. It’s just part of the random nature of quantum mechanics that decides which outcome occurs. There is no fuel combination that produces only these kind of pure fusion reactions.

Snipped from:

http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/are_you_sure_pb11_fusion_isnt_fission

@Zippy

You DO realize that human activities spew roughly 130 TIMES the amount of CO2 that volcanoes do year on year right? And that number is rising.

.. thought not.

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15.html

For a good laugh

You should see one try to run that way .. positively makes girls in tight leather skirts look manlier.

Alas I could find no examples on the InterGoogle.

Human 'contribution'

FWIW the human race contributes about 134 *times* (not 134%, but 13400%) the CO2 that volcanoes do annually, as of the USGS study in 2007. This number varies slightly as volcanic emissions are somewhat erratic, and human emissions are on the rise. This is with data on modern volcanic emissions.

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15.html

In summary that's volcanoes 200 Million tonnes/year vs. humans 28.6 Billion tonnes/year.

Volcanoes are credited with bringing the earth out of the 'snowball earth' phase of its history via co2 emissions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth#Evidence

http://www.geosc.psu.edu/courses/Geosc320/Joe_and_Mark%27s_Snowball_Earth.pdf

I'm not getting into other factors such as albedo (roads, deforestation and buildings) and particulates or aerosols (skin flakes, diesel exhaust, dust, sulfur dioxide etc); however this suggests that 6billion humans can *easily* have quite the effect on our climate.

I'm a T-Mobile subscriber

Everything ATT touches turns to shit. It is very likely that I'll jump ship if this takeover goes through. I guess having a phone provider with great customer service could only last so long .. sigh.

Thanks for the tip about Sprint.

Recovering files..

"Its amazing what you can pick up with just simple scraping software."

Agreed, but if you don't want it found, you can use any number of utilities to overwrite the drive, or just its free space. Especially if said hard drive is to be sold.

www.Ccleaner.com comes to mind.

sigh

A lousy $5M .. and our government spends $600+ billion on bombs and guns (every year), what a bunch of psychopathic thugs.

@ John Smith 19

"You mean *poison* the chocolate factory."

I thought it was the Slurm factory. Slurm is from an episode of Futurama, it is a *highly* addictive drink, made .. well check out the video..

http://www.220.ro/caAo8xdv5U/Futurama-S02E04-Fry-The-Slurm-Factory

It even has Oompa Loompas