There is no democracy I can see here. Welcome to the People's Republic of Maryland.

If you watch an episode or two of Antiques Roadshow or Pawn Stars, the first thing an appraiser does is inspect the item not only for flaws but evidence of repaired flaws in the past, and knocks the price down accordingly. A perfectly preserved original is the gold standard and flaws, refinishing, and non-original modifications only. reduce its potential value to a serious collector. Painstakingly restoring an item with as close to original materials as possible can add value to a flawed item, but it will never match an untouched and well-preserved original.

These days there are all sorts of electronic goodies to emulate tube sound. Behringer makes a nice setup I have played with tinkering with old AM Ham gear. . For line level audio, they work well, and if you are working with solid state finals, they are the way to go.
   

Thanks, it looks suspiciously like the format that WUnderground uses, but with composite images.

When you get into obsolete parts, they generally fall into 3 categories. With the example of radio and TV tubes, there is a large percentage of the stock that is essentially worthless, everybody has them and nobody wants them. Compactron tubes in 1960s TVs are all over the place, but few people collect old TVs, and most have been junked. Second category is tubes which have a steady demand, but were made in large numbers, such as some of the tubes in the "All American Five" radios, and vintage ham and audio gear. The third category is tubes and parts for highly collectible gear, especially where specialized tubes were made for only a few models of equipment for a few years and are classified as Unobtainium. Some of the tubes in my Zenith Transoceanic radio fall into this category, a good used 1L6 goes for about $50 on Ebay, while I have a half a dozen perfectly good 5U4 rectifier tubes in my junk box. After a while, if a certain model of audio or radio gear has lasting appeal, the supply will eventually dry up. 6146 tubes are starting to fall into this category, commonly used as final amplifier tubes in many popular ham rigs, despite wide use in many applications.

This phenomenon happens with all types of vintage collectibles, because most examples of a particular item will have the same part that tends to fail or deteriorate.

I normally sit on Weather Underground during major weather events, normally Weather Underground holds up pretty well. Today, a couple of hours ago, they disabled a few features due to high server load, and a few minutes ago I got an internal server error.

At that age, teaching basic life skills is top priority, the 3 Rs, plus teaching kids about the way real things work. Learning how a bicycle or a lawn mower works, how to do basic car, electrical, and plumbing repairs are also life skills, as well as cooking. Computers are part of this as well, but at that age While age 7 is a little early to expect kids to fix a broken flapper valve, replace a light switch, or sweat soldering copper plumbing, employing them as a gofer, and explaining the how and why of things as they look over your shoulder primes them for later on. Same with computers, let them help you when you repair or attempt to repair all kinds of different things. Let them take apart that broken electric drill to let them see how it works, and what caused it to fail. Keep a bunch of how-to books, first aid manuals, Army Field Manuals. Kids are easily bored, but their brains soak up information like a sponge at that age.

As they get older, let them or in the case when they break it themselves make them (with appropriate supervision) do the work themselves. My first big bike was built up from a bone pile of junked bicycles by my Dad and I when I was about 7. A couple of years later, I got a new 3 speed model for Christmas, and was constantly tinkering with it, and by the time I was 10 I was able to do just about anything it needed from adjusting the brakes to repairing a bent rim.

For pure ease of use back in the days when it was legal to use a cell phone while driving, the best phone I ever had in that regard was the old style Nokia 82 series. You could dial blindly with one hand and be accurate most of the time. Things went downhill, first the tactile feedback went to hell with subsequent LG and Motorola phones, then got worse with the tiny buttons on the alphanumeric keyboard on a Blackberry style Samsung phone, which was just about unusable behind the wheel. Don't even get me started about my current phone, a basic touchscreen model with Android. Trying to use the voice command is a joke, I am not the only one who feels this way, when I ride with others when they attempt to voice dial, and as often as not become exasperated after multiple failed attempts or wrong numbers.

Before mankind invaded the west, either from Asia or North America, dry lightning caused fires were nature's way of dealing with the buildup of dry brush. When lightning did strike, the fires would burn until they ran out of fuel. Since the lightning strikes tend to be somewhat random (local topography does have an influence) every so often lightning would strike a given area, and if that area hadn't been struck in a while, a fire would clean out the old brush, so the amount of brush buildup in a given area was limited.

Pre-Columbian Americans had to deal with this issue. They didn't have the resources to even try to fight these naturally occurring fires, so they learned not to make large investments in settlements in fire prone areas, and learned to even use wildfires to their advantage to herd game, clear land, and so on. Starting around the beginning of the 20th century, it became possible for European settlers to fight these fires using mechanized equipment to at least temporarily protect their settlements built in fire prone areas. The only problem is that instead of relatively small but frequent fires burning off a few year's accumulation of brush, you end up with one great big fire burning decades of tinder dry brush when conditions were right. Massive wildfires in Yellowstone back in 1988 underscored the folly of trying to put out all fires, and led to fundamental changes in philosophy of managing wildfires.

Even if you can't afford to buy that new car, the people who make that car still want to make you think it is a good car. After all, if you can't afford a brand new Lexus (or Camry for that matter), you might still consider buying one used, and that supports the market for the guy who is considering trading his 4 year old Lexus for a newer one. On another level, continued advertising to current customers, (like the guy who just brought the new Lexus) reassures them that they made a good decision, and makes it more likely the customer will present a positive image of the brand to those around him. That kind of word of mouth advertising is the most valuable form of advertising there is, the loss of positive word of mouth advertising in a competitive marketplace can be the kiss of death in some cases.

Advertising is not only about getting you to buy more stuff, it can also be about getting you to buy them as well. A lot of the PR and advertising related to Tech Companies is about burnishing a corporate image to impress potential investors to make new or continued investments into a company. Many of the big defense contractors, agribusinesses like ADM, oil companies, and even large consumer product companies like Coca-Cola and Proctor and Gamble advertise in this way to look attractive to investors, or to lobby for legislation favorable to their company's interests.

Amen Brother!!

I really wish this discussion would take a more serious tone than boning sheep!

I was involved in a serious car accident last May (I was the front seat passenger and the other driver was at fault), and which resulted in a compound fracture of my Tibia and Fibula. I spent 2 weeks in a trauma center followed by 3 weeks in a rehabilitation hospital, followed by months of physical therapy, and now wound care (the force of the impact ripped the front of my leg open). My most recent X-rays show incomplete healing of the Fibula, even after 8 months. While poor circulation in my legs is part of the reason I am slow to heal, even under the best of circumstances a fracture like this will result in several months of disability. Electrical stimulation is probably the next step, but orthopedic medicine in its current state doesn't have much more to offer me, and I certainly don't want to go back under the knife again if I can avoid it. Here is hoping they can bring it into the mainstream soon!!

That is, hit Play on your music source when the lion roars for the third time.

When the Lion roars for the third time.
NASA needs to do a story about Jupiter and monoliths now.

IDK, 50 million downloads at a buck apiece is quite a chunk of change, and will more than pay for the development costs and bandwidth to distribute it. The rest is gravy.

I wouldn't say that Electric Car development was at a standstill for oh those many decades between the end of the 19th century and the 1990s. Development of the Technology for electric cars has continued, the power electronics that goes into today's electric cars is closely related to that used in forklifts, golf carts, and other industrial vehicles that have been widely deployed for decades. Batteries have always been the limiting factor for developing an electric car that can compete with the range and duty cycle of an ICE powered vehicle. The development of Lithium batteries for electronic devices with several times the power density of previous Lead-Acid, Nickel-Cadmium, and Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries has brought us closer to a practical electric vehicle, but we are not quite there yet. Yes you can go a hundred miles or so with your 800 pound battery pack (if you go easy on the lights and A/C or heater) instead of 25-40 in the EV1 days, but the hard facts are that 110 pounds, or about 15 gallons of medium chain liquid hydrocarbon fuel (gasoline) in the fuel tank of my Accord will take me about 450 miles on the open highway, and 375 miles in rush hour traffic, with the headlights on, and the heater, wipers, and the stereo all going full blast. I don't want to have to worry about running the battery down if I have to take an extra service call, or have to buck a 30 mph headwind on the way home. If the electrics can deliver even a 250 mile range, that would go a long way toward making them a viable alternative to the ICE.

There is sort of a standard, and you can buy a "universal" remote at the local Wal-Mart or even CVS. The problem with Universal remotes is that they only support a limited number of features on each device. I'm with you bro, I have 4 remotes to control my patchwork home theater. My remote for the Cable Box has functions for the TV, but not my newer Blu-Ray player, and only limited functionality on the TV. I can manage to get a few functions to work on my 5.1 receiver. My TV remote has no functions for the cable box or receiver, never mind the new Blu-Ray player, and the Blu-Ray remote can control part of the TV, but not the receiver or cable box, and so on and so on....

I just gave up and dedicated a side table next to my recliner for the remotes.