He must be even older than me, the poor fucker.

To add to what Hamsterdan said, it's distortion, or rather the way they distort (clipping distortion) when overdriven. A transistor clips into a pure square wave; up, over, down, with no corners. A tube rounds the corners making the sound completely different. What's different is the way they distort.

That's why you'll see bands (usually bar bands) with a small amplifier with a microphone in front of it. The small amp is a tube amp, and its output is then amplified (with as little distortion as possible) by a big transistor amp.

More affluent musicians just use banks of 1000 watt Marshalls, which use tubes.

(I was reading just the other day that a vacuum tube will still handle higher voltages than semiconductors. Or something like that.)

They will indeed, as well as heat and radiation. Tubes handle those well and transistors don't, but transistors are even more resistant to kinetic energy than tubes are for electricity and heat.

You never have to worry about your tube amp overheating, but transistor amps need cooling and thermostatic cutoffs. But you can physically abuse your transistor amp all you want and it won't complain.

Vacuum tubes are still used in several applications, and they didn't include mercury.

Yes, your microwave has a tube and your guitar amp may, but they still emit more mercury into the atmosphere than transistors because they take more power and much of your electricity comes from coal, which emits vast quantities of mercury.

I have incandescent bulbs that have lasted twenty years without being changed. I have had CFLs that last a month, in the same socket that the previous incandescent lasted for years.

I'm sorry for being so truthful but you're a fucking liar. I'm 61 years old and never saw a bulb in use last much longer than a year. Shelf life? Sure. Are you a politician? Or a PR guy for BP or Mobile? CFLs plural that lasted a month? I've been using them for a decade and never saw any like that.

Peddle your lies somewhere else. Oh, wait, I read on. It gets better.

When an incandescent bulb breaks, you release highly toxic nothing gas and some bits of tungsten. When a CFL breaks, you call in the hazmat team to deal with it.

LOL. Incandescents have no toxic gasses, and Bullshit on your hazmat, too. Who's paying you to lie like that?

I'll skip the rest of the laughable bits and ROTF over this: "The important measure is not current but wattage, since that's what is used in billing. According to this they use 1/3 to 1/5 as many watts."

Do you know where you are, dudus? Wattage is voltage times amperage and everybody here knows that. Take your troll to reddit, morons there are stupid enough to swallow your bullshit.

Have a nice day, shill.

Of course it was. :)

LOL.

Former CFL proponents are already starting to admit that CFLs have problems now that LEDs are becoming more common.

The problems with CFLs are that LEDs are even better. I haven't had an incandescent in my house for a decade, but I'll be switching to LED. They're superior to CFLs like CFLs are superior to incandescents.

any culture other than their own is "junk culture" to many. the japanese govt has initiatives to repel things like hanryuu (korean wave) and make people more interested in japanese culture/content and thus creating a demand for more. hard to do when K-Pop groups are releasing albums in japanese (does that make it J-Pop?) and the fact that japanese tv sucks (not all, but most) to the point that no one overseas would want to watch it even if they could understand it. i know more than a few early-20s girls that are watching 'The Walking Dead' and are more interested in reruns of 'Dr House' than the new (second) season of 'Doctor X'

Apparently you aren't from Illinois (or apparently New Jersey either). Illinois' two previous Governors went to prison for bribery, one a Republican and one a Democrat.

A pox on both their houses. My guess is that neither party wants net neutrality, which would be OK if we had some real competition in ISPs. If you think we actually have "right" and "left" here you're crazy. Today's USA is yesterday's USSR; a one party (with two factions) police state.

The only difference between the two factions is whose campaign contributions and other bribes they're taking.

"economic stimulus", AKA "they want more of our money". regular sales tax will be raised from 5% to 8% in april too.
vending machine product prices will change, ill be looking for a riot to join.

I'm sure he wants to crack down on people's freedom of expression, but his comments are so bizarre that I'm not at all convinced he knows what he's talking about. "Ignorant" and "evil" are not mutually exclusive, which I suppose is better for the rest of us ... Anyway, there's no need to bring age into it. Politicians of any age are much of a muchness.

The combination of your post and your .sig is sadly hilarious.

Throwing popcorn is NOT assault,

Well it actually is.

and certainly doesn't warrant deadly force.

Only if the popcorn was thrown with such force that it cause mortal injury could it be considered deadly, lethal, popcorn. But it was probably thrown to say "hey, your being a dick, here is a ridiculously harmless act of assault".

It would seem that America is a place where dicks can shoot you with bullets.