jinnantonnixx

And that's the difference in time at the legal maxima. Contrary to intuition, real-world journeys might be faster with a 60 limit, but time will tell. It'll be interesting. Yes, and it's been studied and known about for years. The irony is that the person(s) causing the phantom jams are long gone by the time the wave has formed. They've braked, caused a reaction behind, and this progressive reaction has been amplified until a compression wave has appeared. When this happens, traffic stops behaving as particles, and behaves like a wave. Research labs are knee deep in traffic flow research, and all the information points to a more uniform speed = better flow on congested roads.

The stretch is 32 miles long. The additional time to cover that distance at 60mph rather than 70mph is an extra four and a half minutes, assuming you are able to achieve a steady 60/70mph respectively. In practice, you'll probably find that the travel time will be quicker with a 60mph limit than a 70mph limit, at busy times. To find out why, research the cause of phantom traffic jams. Yes, it's counter-intuitive, but some things are. Traffic Flow Dynamics: Data, Models and Simulation (Kesting, Arne)

Not necessarily. The idea behind traffic flow dynamics is that the aim (believe it or not) is for all traffic to travel at the same speed. This is impossible of course, but it is the aim. If it's badly implemented, though, it won't work. Look for the section 'viscosity', It's fascinating stuff. MIT Mathematics | Traffic Modeling

You might find that a reduced speed limit will make the traffic flow faster by reducing the concertina/slinky effects on traffic. Quite often phantom traffic jams ("jamitons") are reduced at lower speeds and the traffic flows better.

Megapixels are a marketing tool. Well, that's a bit glib, but there are so many other factors people overlook, but they still fixate on the megapixels. My first proper DSLR was an Olympus E10. The software/firmware was awful, playback was tedious, but it took fantastic photos. It was 'only' a 4M camera, but I recently looked at some of the photos I took and was still impressed with the crispness, clarity and detail. It was a brilliant camera, built like a tank. I'm a Canon user, but I really like Olympus. Actually, I wish I'd kept it as it has a leaf shutter which is virtually silent - ideal for quiet situations (weddings etc). My current camera is a Canon 20D, pretty ancient by today’s standards, though I do have some nice lenses (28-75 f2.8) and a nice L series 70-200. I thought about upgrading, but haven't bothered as the camera is still good. I shot a wedding last year alongside my friend who used a Nikon D800. We both used RAW and you wouldn't be able to pick out which was which from the final pictures. The main weak spot with the 20D is its terrible predictive auto-focus. It's awful. On to phone cameras, it's a valid comparison with DSLRs, but it's all about tools for the job. There's nothing more convenient than a pocket camera, especially one that's built in to a phone, and under the right conditions a camera phone is perfectly good. Try syncing three remote flashes for a ultra-wide action strobist shot and you'll be using your DSLR. As an aside, I used to be a bit of a film buff, doing my own B&W developing and printing. I've got a Meopta Axomat in the attic if anybody wants it. Technically my best film shots were on Delta 100 film developed in Ilford FX-39, but these were difficult to print. The most consistent photos I made were from truely ancient HP5 film in Agfa Rodinal, a 100+ yearr old formulation. And at that time, I was convinced that digital wouldn't overtake film for a long, long time. I didn't see that coming.

The Daily Mail is a joke - that's a fundamental axiom - but for sheer, 100-octane lunacy, you'd be hard pressed to trump the Express. Exhibit A, M'lud. Booming Britain: Joy for millions as house prices rise six months in a row | UK | News | Daily Express

Help-to-buy is a crazy policy. It is insane. It is irresponsible. The housing recovery: built on sand | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian Even the slowest of minds can see that this is a cynical state-funded policy to try and shore up house prices. The Daily Mail and their ilk will no doubt rejoice at the theoretical increase of the wealth of their readers, but it's never been adequately explained why not being able to afford a place to live is a good thing. But hey ho. Matt will like this: Inside Westminster: George Osborne

It's a bit trickier as the credit card payment was not directly to the retailer - it was through an intermediary, Paypal in this case. The CC company could argue that their obligations have been fulfilled - they have transferred the funds to Paypal and there is no relationship between you (the CC holder) and the seller. There is a chance that this might apply: Can I claim on my credit card when something goes wrong? - Which? However, I suspect that you are out of luck. I really hope you're not, of course, but I have a bad feeling about this. Our guide to credit card protection under law: section 75 Look for the 'paypal' section.

I saw some footage of Schuey on skis - he looks like a highly proficient skier. The media don't have many facts, so they speculate. It fills air time and inches of webspace. It's probably just a horrible accident - just bad luck. It comes out of the blue - a few of us went off-piste (snowboarding) and one of our crowd wiped out and broke several ribs on hidden rocks under deep snow.

You can't really go by the kWh figure, that's the energy used by the fridge over (presumably) the year, not it's power rating. It's useful for comparing against other fridges. For specifying instantaneous power consumption it's less useful. The kWh rating is the energy used over time, the watt rating is the power. Furthermore, a fridge doesn't run all the time, it fluctuates based on its thermostat, so that's another variable. However, we can make an average calculation if we know the hours in a year (8766) and the kwh rating P(w) = 162000 / 8766 which gives about 18.5W on average, over the year. The peaks are anyone's guess but it's unlikely to be anywhere near that of another kitchen appliance. You might get by with a car battery and an inverter for a while. A mini-UPS would certainly fit the bill.

Sadly lacking. You forgot cyclists, middle-class house prices (and the 'joy' caused by their inexorable rise) and gypsies. Warming up with this headline: Surely the ultimate Daily Mail headline? | Stephen Tall

I think we're on the 'return to normal' bit of the graph. [ATTACH=CONFIG]22102[/ATTACH]

I can think of several things that this diagram covers.

About 2,800 miles a year on that bike. I use 3-in-1 and wipe down and re-oil regularly. http://www.biketechreview.com/forum/1-general-discussion/21680-comparison-of-chain-lubes#22156 I've got a KMC SS chain (no change-up loops). It's got a bit of stretch on it, so I might think about a tensioner rather than moving the wheel back every so often. Chain = £8, Shimano sprocket = £4. Cheap commuting.

This is my commuter bike. Vitus Bikes Dee-29 city bike 2013 It's unusual as it's a single speed with disks. I added mudguards and changed the 18T sprocket for a 16T to get the speed up. My route is mostly canal path with stone dust, mud, salt and grit so simplicity is key here, with no gears and mechs to wear out. Change the chain and sprocket once a year and that's it.

FreeNAS - storage and streaming, combined with Owncloud plugins for personal cloudy access. Perfect. FreeNAS For Home - FreeNAS Project

Here's me going to work. Nah, just kidding.

I think I've found my new favourite distro - SolydXK | Home of SolydX and SolydK There's a KDE version (SolydK) and XFCE version (SolydX). If not a fan of KDE (too busy and feature-rich for my needs) and XFCE has always seemed a bit old fashioned - until I saw the Whisker menu. The Whisker menu is excellent. It's very much like the Cinnamon menu from Mint. SolydXK's founder is the same guy who maintained Mint's LMDE spinoff. The home edition of SolydX/K is based on Debian testiing, but with an additional testing stage. Show-stopping bugs are held back (you can see this with apt). This means it's a good mix of new software but with very few bugs and glitches. It also means it's a rolling release. I've been using SolydX for three weeks and haven't found a single bug. It's very lightweight and is fast on my old i3 laptop. All device drivers (including the notorious Broadcom wireless) load and are configured automatically. Nice. The only change I made was replacing Thunderbird with Evolution as Evolution's integration with Gmail and Google calendar is better. If I was to recommend a distro for someone coming from Windows, this would be it. The business version (KDE only) is based on Debian stable. Spatry does a Youtube review. SolydX - SolydK -

Never heard of it - but it sounds good. Any links? This stuff should be wiki-fied. The queries involving marks are crying out for more indexes.

Apologies for quoting myself, but I've seen a distinct benefit from regularly rebuilding the indexes (not reorganising/reindexing). This also creates fresh stats so that the query optimiser can generate better execution plans.

It says here that the Winklevoss twins (who own a whole pile of bitcoins) are advising people to buy loads of bitcoins. They should be thanked for their altruistic advice.

Obligatory bubble chart......

If you believe that, you must be crackers.

Countering the hoax/conspiracy crowd.... Moon landing hoax - RationalWiki And in the spirit of providing a balanced argument, I present a strong case for the hoax. Fake Moon Landings The moon landings are fake!