Recent Activity

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  Tech News After Lunch Wednesday

  Who do you think is doing the cable cutting? This cable cutting basically does 2 things, and which one the motive is would give clues to who it is: someone may want to prevent information from going into or coming out of the middle east, similar to the government of burma shutting off the internet. If it is something like this, then this is juts a preemptive tactic before cutting off phone lines and news services.

  on the other hand, it could be someone who wants to damage the economy of these countries: maybe some anarachist group. This will affect americans who outsource to the middle east, especially india, and of course all the countries affected by the loss of internet.

  What do you think?
  
  

  Posted 07 Feb 08 in Before and After

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  World News Before Lunch

  @yahoo

  I wonder how cutting 1,000 jobs at a company not doing well (at least the stock price) affects the economy... I'm guessing all of these people will easily find jobs since they are well educated, and yahoo probably gave them at least 1 month's salary when they left.

  
   

  Posted 30 Jan 08 in Before and After

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  More efficient uses for energy

  also, fluorescent lightbulbs are a great way to reduce electrical, residential energy consumption, and it's economical. You can return your investment on buying 1 fluorescent lightbulb in about 5 months, from a reduced electric bill. You save about 50 cents a month on electricity (in memphis with 5 cents/kilowatt hour, some of the lowest electricity in the nation), and this doesn't even address the savings in air conditioning- a normal bulb is about 290 degrees, while these are a cool 105. Did I mention their lifetime is 16 times longer than incandescent? One last piece of math- if you replaced 20 100 watt incandescents with 20 23 watt fluorescents, these lights being on an average of 5 hours a day, you save about $140 a year (5 cents/kilwatt hour)- savings of about $1600 over the lifetime of the 20 bulbs. Multiply this 50,000 people, that's 7 million a year in the pockets of consumers, to pump into the economy.

  Posted 21 May 07 in Alternative Energy

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  Water Modification/Hydrogen on Demand

      http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/18/autos/bc.fuel.hydrogen.reut/index.htm

  this is something new being researched- scientists want to put pellets of gallium and aluminum into tanks- then you pour in water, and it creates hydrogen (which turns back into water in the engine), aluminum oxide and gallium. The last two are nontoxic, and can be recycled as they have many commercial uses. Of course, I don't know what kind of processes are required to get aluminum and gallium, and what kind of energy that requires.

  Posted 21 May 07 in Alternative Energy

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  Renewable Energy Community

   Hello all,
  I have been very seriously interested in renewable energy, lowered energy consumption, etc for about 6 months now, and I noticed that there is no large, active community of people discussing these things (if there is, please let me know). I want to list some information I'd like to see in a large community, as well as some issues I'd like to see more people, in one place, address.
  
  -What jobs involving renewable energy are available?
  -What should I study in college to get into the field of renewable energy?
  -What are the local, state, and federal statistics on the use of renewable energy (including percentage residential, taxes, etc)
  -What local, state and federal subsidies are available that promote renewable energy?
  -What local, state and federal subsidies are going to non-renewable energy?
  -What laws are in place to reduce consumption or promote renewable energy? how can I cast my vote?
  -What local laws are in place to promote renewable energy, and reduce consumption? Will this work in my city?
  -What companies are involved with renewable energy? Can I buy stock from these companies?
  -What private companies are responsible for creating non-renewable energy? Can I buy stock (to vote at stockholder meetings)?
  -What activist groups can I participate in locally? If there isn't one, is there a national group that has a charter I can use to start one?
  -What is the voting record, regarding renewable energy, of my local/state/federal politician? How can I contact these people, and what should I say? Are there any petitions I can sign?
  
  Basically I see small groups like these everywhere, with no more than 10 or 20 people, who are talking about the issues but doing very little to change them. I also find it very hard to find answers to the above questions, being scattered across the internet, somewhere, or in some public document hidden in city halls and libraries. I am ready to sign petitions, buy shares in renewable energy companies, contact my representatives, be active in community groups, get a job dealing wit renewable energy, change my lifestyle, and much more. If I could easily do all these things, I'd do them right now.
  So a question to all of you- would you do some of the things I mentioned above? What would you look for in a large renewable energy community/forum? Does one already exist? Are you ready to do something about our problems, but you just don't know where to go?

  Posted 21 May 07 in Alternative Energy

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  Media Center for living room

  I don't really know if 'gadget freaks' is the right place to post this, but I was also wondering if it's difficult to upgrade from a video card that's on the motherboard to a separate one- do new video cards have separate outputs for monitors/TVs and stuff?

  Posted 12 Apr 07 in Gadget Freaks