I'd buy a house lock made with this mechanism. It might be difficult to get duplicate keys though. Or maybe smart-card electronic lock, that had a manual override (in case of power outage) using this.

I have also never seen this 'data' about how windmills are frivolous, and I've looked. All I can ever find are individuals that have no personal knowledge of the systems making unfounded claims. Certainly there are instances of poorly planned 'windfarms' that, because of lack/over abundance of wind don't work properly, or because of regulation and electric company resistance are cost prohibitive. Personal/home units (where they can be erected, and have proper wind conditions) can be great, especially for off grid living. It magnifies the possibilities of a solar system because it generates when the sun isn't out (like when there's a storm) using the same battery system and inverter/converter system the solar uses, so there's little added cost. If you got into solar early enough, the rebates available made the systems a great deal (in some cases, nearly free after the rebate). My system, which cost me a ton of cash, has paid for itself in under 8 years (if you don't consider that electricity rates have gone up considerably since I bought it, if you do count that it was closer to a 6.5 years for full payback, with a minimum 20+ year system lifespan) thanks to rebates and tax breaks...and the systems are far cheaper today than when I bought mine. I've also not lost hundreds (or thousands) of dollars worth of food due to numerous week long power outages, like my neighbors have.
I often consider adding a smallish wind turbine so I have more generation power, especially needed when the power goes out during a storm, which is exactly when a turbine could shine. My issue is jackhole neighbors that would likely not give 'permission' to erect the mast, or would complain about the turbine noise (reasonably or not).
So, in my semi-educated opinion, turbines CAN be a great solution when done right, and can also be economical, especially when compared to the electric company. Of course you can find instances of poor planning making them poor performers, but that's not the norm.

Related to the power outage: https://twitter.com/Oreo/status/298246571718483968

Geez, I thought we had poor city planning on the west coast in the United States. This is pretty bad.

Why create a tiny roundabout without massive YIELD notifications in the middle of a four lane intersection -- and with a crosswalk? It's a recipe for disaster. Just put up some stop signs/lights and turn it back into a normal intersection.

The only roundabouts that I know of that work (and even these have some problems) are larger, multi-laned roundabouts with a solid structure/island in the middle to prevent driving straight through it and other similar moving violations due to ignorance/impatience.

We have a decent number of larger roundabouts in California, mostly in south Orange County (as well as the Orange circle, which is more inland) and there's a couple in Long Beach. I've NEVER seen these types of problems. Reminds me of what happens when street lights go out due to a power outage.

Only when my heart stops, one thing I have over you, your vulnerable to power outages, after days of thought I know I am better off than you. I need not siftbot, hail graterbot.

In reply to this comment by siftbot:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, stinky bag of putrefying meat.
In reply to this comment by BoneRemake:
hey if one of you mods is around, let me know why siftbot cannot be downvoted ? thats just fuckin stupid.

I see 4 major problems with this...

I see is tires running on a wet glass road. The glass is a lot flatter than asphalt, and so hydroplaning will be far more prevalent unless specific tires were made to cope.

Further, the cost issue will be catastrophic. Solar panels are very, very expensive. Manufacturing solar cells these days is a fairly dirty process, with many very hazardous bi-products. Producing enough solar cells to cover even just major roads would be problematic.

There is also a huge issue of light pollution. Upward facing LEDs replacing road lines is going light up the night sky to absurd degrees, especially in the already light doused cities.

And finally, there is the issue of shifting roads. No matter where you are, soil is always moving. Look outside at the nearest street and see if you can't find a crack due to soil shearing. This will be especially bad in certain geographic locations. Breaking of the roads will require challenging repairs and custom peices to be made. Further, if the roads are replacing power lines as was suggested, power outages would occur as a result of these road breaks, and restoring power will take as long as it takes to fix the road, weeks probably, longer if there is severe damage from natural disasters, earthquakes, etc.

I love the ingenuity, but it is just not practical...

Yes, ^that is a good interim solution. In google you can select "never send to spam" for such emails.

It turns out that after that power outage we had recently, our servers got added to the spam blacklist again (because a setting on the server was reset and caused our emails to look like spam).

The setting has since been restored and we have requested that we get removed from the blacklist, so hopefully all will be right again with the world before too long.

A UPS is generally a battery designed to keep your computer running in the event of an environmental power failure. It has to cool itself, since the charging up generates a lot of heat (feel your cellphone battery while it's charging once . The fans usually make the noise.

Any UPS the size of a surge protector won't give you much. The most valuable feature you can have on them is the shutdown-command that they can give the computer if there's a power-outage.

If you're worried about your motherboard / PSU failing due to a power surge, all you need is a surge protector as far as I'm concerned. The only component of the computer that might suffer damage from an instant shutdown is the hard-drive, and in the case of desktop computers, the damage is unlikly.

Make sure you buy a quality surge protector. $20-30 more isn't a lot to pay, and you don't want the cheap ones

In reply to this comment by chilaxe:
Demon_IX, Thanks for the advice on the UPS thread.

When you say UPS are loud, are you referring to the beeping when the power goes out, or to normal noise that they make?

Are you referring to the big box ones that have their own LCD screens, or to the smaller ones that look basically like normal surge protectors?

In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
I'd recommend something like a Surge Protector and not a UPS. Those things are loud, heavy, expensive and not very useful for home users.

i would have been using a UPS but the UPS died. UPS is mainly to give you time during a power outage. I have no ideas about a surge protector except you obviously need a good one.

Wasn't there a sift talk post in the last several months from a sifter who had serious computer damage from a power outage, like their motherboard was fried? (It was a different post from Nibiyabi's above-linked harddrive-on-fire post.)

Where I live outside of San Francisco, we have momentary power outages several times a year. I'll enjoy not having work disrupted by my computer turning off whenever that happens.

My understanding is that power disruptions aren't very good for electronic equipment, and some people claim they can occasionally contribute to harddrive failures.

My best advice is don't get one. Unless you have a server that has to be online at all times, then it's basically not worth it. If something has been damaged by a power outage (which very rarely happens), it's your PSU, so get a new one, maybe a really good one, so it won't get damaged in the future and that will be that.

UPS are only for servers in my mind.

That is a fantastic idea. I imagine rainy days are like their version of "power outages", except they would then have their old electric lights as back-up.

>> ^HadouKen24:Assuming the falsehood of something does indeed require faith - faith in that the assumption is true. the only way you could say that you do not need faith would be if in fact you knew for certain. since you don't you require an (active) belief.

Just as the common and scientific definitions of theory are used to confuse the issue, I think you are treating operational and the philosophical certainty as if they are the same thing, they are not.

When you enter a room at night, you do not have philosophical certainty that flipping the light switch will illuminate the room, but you do not, in practice question the value of flipping the switch every time, because your experience provides you operational certainty that that is what happens when the switch is flipped.

If you had faith that the switch will illuminate you would then continue to flip the switch until the light comes on, but you don't have faith, merely operational certainty, and when it fails (bulb dead, breaker blown, power outage) you do not cling to the assertion that it should work, you abandon your operational certainty, and find the problem.

My acceptance of scientific knowledge is the same. If something did work better for finding out what is true I would use that, but as long as science is working I'll use it until/unless it fails, or is superseded, no faith required.

This is from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_Resonance_Imaging
The magnetic field and the associated risk of missile-effect accidents remains a permanent hazard — as superconductive MRI magnets retain their magnetic field, even in the event of a power outage.



Looks like it doesn't turn off even when turned off.

First of all, have you ever seen telephone wiring? It is 22ga at most. So drawing too much current you risk actually burning out some wiring. It is going to be a major pain if it is inside the wall (assuming your house doesn't burn down) and even more costly if the phone company has to come out and fix something from your house to the street.

Ok, so the local loop is about 20mA to 50mA fixed current and about 1kohm of loop resistance. All the phones used to be fully powered by the phone line, including some with glowing number keys. Modern cordless phones obviously need plugged into the wall because they use way more than a few mA. In fact, the charging of the batteries is way more then that.

You could probably steal enough power from the phone lines to run something like an LED lamp. Maybe even your iPod. But you are not using the phone line for the proper purposes and are definitely breaking some laws. Also in a power outage you could be dropping the local area phone line up to the transformers to a dangerously low level and making it hard for others to use the phone to do such things as call 9-1-1.

Buy some candles you freaks.