I agree, it's the same where I live (in Montreal), we get A LOT of snowfall each year, and almost all of the traffic lights I see these days are of the LED variety. I suspect that these traffic lights were simply designed to work in winterized conditions whereas the ones in the midwest of the US are not. As far as I know, the city does not spend any time clearing snow off the lights, BTW. They don't ever seem to need servicing of that type in the winter.

The actual link where to buy the wallwart was pretty deep linked from Marvells website. This is apparently the official place to buy these things: http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-22-sheevaplug-dev-kit.aspx

This is an artist from the 1950's, and his work really struck a chord with me as a computer scientist (and the son of a machinist). Check out some of his stuff: http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/02/media-artzybasheffs-machinalia.html http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/02/media-artzybasheffs-neurotica.html