aristide1 wrote:You're complaining about getting more points for no obvious reason, what's wrong with this picture?

Ok, I shouldn't have said anything - I've jinxed it now. Project 3405, 206 points. 96ppd.

More than an order of magnitude difference in ppd depending on the project!

Yeah, here a learner has to be accompanied by someone who's held a full licence for 3 years - pretty much the same. Not sure about the public transport, although I think it is generally slightly better here than there - you guys space things out so much more! I did a lot of walking as a kid though. ...

Isotopes are any of the several different forms of an element each having different atomic mass (mass number). Isotopes of an element have nuclei with the same number of protons (the same atomic number) but different numbers of neutrons. Therefore, isotopes have different mass numbers, which give t...

In other words, everything that we are emitting into the atmosphere has been here since day one, and will forever be here. Wow, how did I miss this one?! Look, you're correct if you mean that elemental atoms (or nuclei, really...) don't usually, through processes natural or specifically anthropogen...

Are f@h messing about with the points values of lots of projects, or has my computer gone nuts? My main box (a single core s754 A64 @ 2500, running XP x64 and windows command-line client) was consistently doing about 130ppd or so when I started running f@h back in the spring. But for the last few we...

Crazy stuff... I'm always shocked by stories of kids driving around at 15 and 16 in the US. Here, you have to be 17 to get a learner's licence... they may be upping the limit to 18 or 21 over the next few years. Also, you can't drive on a motorway until you've passed your test, and you can't drive f...

it's considered a highly unreliable publication and unsuitable for reference Do you wonder why it is unaccepted by most people? It's because most people don't believe what it says. No, it's not accepted for the same reasons as many other publications - because it has a history of: a) publishing pap...

Propane, you say? Hmm...

My old boss had a Prius... it was actually quite a big car really and had pretty good acceleration. I was pleasantly surprised. Still, I'd think twice about buying a car I couldn't figure out how to fix if I had to and they're pretty complicated. You used to be able to get tiny little (like, 25cc) t...

My (relatively) little 3-door Ford Focus is very quiet - my parents are always surprised to see me walk into their house because they don't hear me come down the drive... even though I go right past their living room windows. It's also pretty quiet inside unless you're accelerating hard. And I have ...

Has anyone tried installing an S2 on a card with a HSI chip? From looking at the measurements, I'm not sure if there'd be room under the heatpipes for an HSI heatsink. I've got a Gainward 7600gs AGP that I'd like to use...

Actually, somebody already figured out how to resolve that issue, but ::gasp:: it would require "effectively" raising taxes on the rich people, and we all know that rich people only get loopholes, not tax increases. The fix would be to eliminate the $97,200 (last time I checked) cap on social secur...

I don't care and nature doesn't care, huh. So why don't we let nature take its course, not try change it. Polar bears, I'm sure, have changed the planet. Why don't the polar bears try to "save" the world. (Odviously because they are not aware of anything) I beg to differ - i very much doubt that po...

It has already been done via legislation. China has had one child limit since 1979. And look where they ended up. Their economy is in great shape and they will become the number one economic superpower in the world later this century. I'm sure the old people in China are doing pretty well. I was ac...

Surely a 33bhp car would be fairly painful to drive? My old ford escort diesel was about 70bhp and often dangerously slow moving off at junctions and roundabouts. I realise this is a much lighter car, but I still reckon it'd be a total nightmare to drive with three or four people inside... Also, the...

Sterilisation is a pretty extreme approach, but the problem with reducing the reproductive rate is that most of the world doesn't have things like state pensions, a public health service or public welfare programs. This is thought to be one of the main reasons people living in comfortable conditions...

I've been working out design ideas for a fairly spacious positive-pressure case, and had decided something like this was definitely the right idea for an intake. I do like your wooden mods. I put together one of these recently, and various ideas from kell's design have stuck in my head. With quiet f...

NeilBlanchard wrote:The more appropriate term is "global climate change"

I reckon all these terms are very unfortunate. I'd much prefer something that described what the science indicates: perhaps "anthropogenic climate destabilisation"?

Sigh...

What was the book? Maybe heuristics alone will not give us an answer and we should consider anthropomorphisation of the volume itself, in the hope that we can figure out where it might _like_ to be...

Hmm.. it depends. I'd be interested to see a full report on the economics of a few projects using these things. My concern is that, in my experience, the cost-effectiveness of microgeneration systems is roughly a tenth that of utility-scale systems, and many can never pay for themselves as a result....

I've never understood why anyone would put sugar in tea. It tastes incredibly sickly to me, even with half a spoonful in there... it just becomes a completely different drink. Also it's really bad for your teeth. And I've never even heard of anyone putting sugar in green tea before - that's a strang...

in the UK you can get "green" electricity which is generated from onshore/offshore wind turbines, it's not even more expensive than normal electrons IIRC. maybe the US will catch up eventually. I didn't know this applied in other parts of the UK. In Northern Ireland, you just call up the utility an...

Hot water from solar power is here right now. So is solar heating. I owned a house a few years ago that had a large solar heating array on the roof. It worked great....in the day-time. Twenty years ago it cost $13,000. The person who bought it, thought she would "save money" when she had it install...

Wind and solar power are nice, expensive alternatives to our current energy sources. Perhaps in the future they might become "cost-effective".......but right now they are out-of-the-question for the average person. I agree to an extent about solar pv technology; the cells are far too inefficient to...

I'd recommend doing what I did and ordering a couple of extra YLs from jab-tech, above what you need, and picking out the best. Overall I originally ordered 8, of which 4 were extremely quiet, 1 was only marginally worse and 3 had a slight tonal sound, especially when held at certain angles. Probabl...

I having a great of frustration with the whole global warming alarm because I have yet to see what portion/estimate is man made and how much is occurring naturally. We should (and could only possibly) deal with the man made portion. The rest we simply have to live with. I am reminded that Greenland...

If you don't fancy the maths, I guess I also have the following suggestion:

If he doesn't believe contact surface area has any effect on the rate of heat transfer between two bodies, ask him whether he'd rather dunk his little finger or his whole arm in boiling water for ten seconds...

I can't suggest a strategy for getting through to someone too stubborn to listen to sense, but I can recommend some reading material: Rogers & Mayhew, "Engineering Thermodynamics, Work and Heat Transfer", Chapters 21 to 24 Eastop & McConkey, "Applied Thermodynamics", Chapter 16 Winterton, "Heat Tran...

When you've built your machine, be sure to get a power meter and let us know what the actual draw is!

I plan on getting a 9800 when they come out. What would I need for a psu to make sure that I can use a 9800? Well, to be honest there doesn't appear to be an answer to that at the moment since the specs aren't out. I didn't even know there was one on the horizon until just now. Rumour has it that t...