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Comment Re:Yeah! (Score 1) 123

Well the how of the burning is significant. Think of the smoke produced burning oil in a Diesel engine des vs lighting a pan of it on fire in your garage. The combustion could be just slightly bad instead of extra bad. Otherwise, agreed. Better to turn it into smoke and CO2 than kill the sea critters.

Comment Re:Yes! (Score 1) 478

VW is one of the few makes for which you can get your own fully functional scanner (not just OBDII) for a relatively reasonable price: VAG-COM (I didn't come up with the name). It lets you interact with pretty much everything in the car with their hardware dongle and software and a laptop. It's still a little bit steep for what's essentially a serial-to-USB converter, but I suppose you're mostly paying for their reverse-engineering time.

Comment Re:Dimmer Savior! (Score 1) 569

I tried some Feit Electric brand ones in my can fixtures attached to an electronic Lutron dimmer with no luck. The dimmer must have some kind of check for load or something because it would just blink its indicator. That bums me out because my wife insists on having a dimmer (exactly that dimmer) in that room which means we're stuck with 360W of halogens for now.

Comment Re:I'd want to store it in a hydro tank... (Score 1) 275

There aren't a lot of mountains or really any kind of elevation changes in SW MN (where most of the wind turbines are) so that means towers or some other method of creating elevation. I'm guessing you'd need either many small tanks or some really really huge ones to store any measurable amount of energy. Maybe there's some way the water storage could be built into the turbine's tower to save on costs. Like some others have said, this works best for places with some hills or mountains.
Businesses

Submission + - CompUSA to close over half of its stores.

Joh Shaw writes: "DALLAS, Feb. 27, 2007 — As part of its plan to realign the organization, CompUSA today announced a comprehensive strategy to improve the company's financial status. The realignment includes a cash infusion, store closures, major expense reductions and a corporate restructuring. As part of CompUSA's realignment strategy, the company will receive a $440 million cash capital infusion. The financial boost will be designated to improve the company's balance sheet. "Based on changing conditions in the consumer retail electronics market, the company identified the need to close and sell stores with low performance or non strategic, old store layouts and locations faced with market saturation. The process began last week with the closing of four CompUSA stores and over the next 60-90 days, the company will close a total of 126 stores in the United States to focus on initiatives that enhance its top performing locations," said Roman Ross, chief executive officer, CompUSA. Saw this coming from a mile away. http://www.dailytech.com/CompUSA+to+Close+Nearly+1 30+Stores/article6258.htm"
Movies

Submission + - BitTorrent video download store falls flat

seriouslywtf writes: We've all heard about BitTorrent going legit this week with legal movie and TV show downloads. Ars Technica took a look at the service to see how useable it was and ran into a few snags, including not being able to download or even open the video files on some computers. However, the ones that they did manage to open varied a lot in quality. Overall, they blame DRM. From the article:

Without knowing whether browser compatibility and dysfunctional video files are a rare occurrence or not, it's hard to say whether BitTorrent's service is a good one overall. Our initial experiences have been disappointing and frustrating, and guess what the culprit is once again? DRM. Why the DRM failed to work on 50% of our purchases is not clear, but whatever the cause, it's simply unacceptable.
The Internet

Submission + - FFII warns Parliament: Don't put yourself in jail

podmokle writes: Members of an European Parliament Committee are voting on a criminal measures directive aimed at combatting intellectual property rights infringements. Precise context: counterfeit and piracy cases. The FFII found out that the websites of two Members of the Committee infringe copyright (deep links to rolex image, use of unlicensed Apple icons) and they would become criminals under the amendment provisions they propose. I think its real fun to watch boomerang legislation. Usually they are very experienced in causing 'collateral damages' for others.
Censorship

Submission + - Is your website banned in China?

tcd004 writes: "Is your site banned in China? FP Passport recently profiled a new online service, Greatfirewallofchina.org, which tests any website from a server based inside the Middle Kingdom, and reports back whether or not the page is available. Passport also notes that the Great Firewall reveals Chinese censorship whittles down websites to block out individual pages, instead of always applying a site-wide block. The site keeps a running log of each test so Censorship trends over time can be easily tracked."

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