Saturn

Hi You've asked a fantastic question. I can't necessarily give you a direct answer (I'm not sure anyone can, but I will try to give you some info). 1. According to the web site, "The Turbonator is a non-moving vortex generator that goes inside your air intake hose, right after your air filter." A few notes here. 1. This is not a turbo charger. The turbo bit is just the name. This does NOT speed up air. This merely "swirls" it around a bit. The theory appears to be that swirling air would mix with fuel better and ignite better. 2. If you read reviews on the internet, these reviews are split into two groups - those who call the product snake oil, and those who say it improved their mileage significantly. 3. Looking at the whole debate from a purely theoretical point (and, disclaimer: I'm an IT dude not a car expert), can swirling intake air make such a difference in terms of combustion? Especially on modern fuel injected cars? Does the air keep swirling when it reaches the engine? I can't tell you that but I personally doubt it a bit. 4. You have to consider the whole psycological aspect also. People who use these sort of magic cures always have a 'feeling' that things improved, as they are suddenly focused on performance, and they 'want to believe'. If you ask me my personal opinion, I would suggest the following to improve fuel mileage: 1. If you use a gasoline vehicle, a. replace your spark plugs with new plugs (preferrably iridiums. they DO give a measurable performance and efficiency increase). Also replace the wiring harness if it is old b. Replace the air filter, service the engine. UPGRADE TO A BETTER AIR FILTER. this WILL give a performance increase - e.g. K&N (remember, more oxygen entering engine = better burn = more efficiency!) c. Switch to a better engine oil - this REALLY does have a measurable difference. If you can switch to Mobil or Havoline. Both are pretty good. d. Ensure that the timing is set correctly in your vehicle. If it's an EFI vehicle, you can ask Zakie to do a tuneup/checkup? and last but not least - analyze your driving style. Nothing contributes more to fuel efficiency than how a person drives. 99% of colombo drivers drive like morons (no offense to anyone here). By morons I mean excessive acceleration, jackrabbit starts, and so on. You might want to research on google about the concept of Hypermiling. OK it isn't necessarily applicable to Sri Lanka (we can't turn off our engine when driving behind a container truck at 70mph) but some of the concepts, ideas, and research are applicable here even.

Golly, looks like we have the same laptop

WOAH.. seriously, you run a risk of seriously damaging that machine. There is no reason for the processor to run so hot. Even in Sri Lanka, when properly installed, a typical Intel processor should run between 30 - 40 degrees (idle) and max out at around 52 or so (single core) or 55 (dual core) If your processor is running at 80 degrees, please do NOT use the PC. Possible causes for overheating: 1. Overclocked (please ensure that the CPU is running at manufacturer specs, not overclocked) 2. Inproperly seated heatsink - if the heatsink is not properly seated on the CPU its quite normal for it to massively overheat. Also, note, if for any reason you remove the CPU, you have to reseat it with a new intel approved thermal pad or OEM equivalent which, ironically, isnt available in Sri Lanka. 3. Incorrect thermal pad/paste. I recommend the original intel thermal pad or arctic silver. The thermal pad is available (sometimes) unofficially via EPSI (an intel agent). You don't need an aftermarket cooler - the stock intel cooler is perfectly capable of managing the heat levels. Try to do something about this PC or you seriously run the risk of killing it. YES, intel processors do include thermal protection but long term usage at the limits of thermal ability can damage the processor and/or board. Roasted nuts.. anyone? ) Well actually the laptops cooler is custom designed for that particular laptop. You may be able to get better results by switching to more heat conductive material (e.g. copper) but quite frankly, 1. Laptops tend to run rather hot, some brands more than others. 2. The extreme weather we experience here means virtually all laptops need external cooling (even if operated in an airconditioned environment) . As I said unity plaza have these little flat coolers which you can place your laptop on which usually solves the problem. Yes, it looks rather lame but it does the trick. Lastly, switching to a better thermal paste (e.g. arctic silver) may help but it involves the risky procedure of opening your laptop (not recommended) True. I have heard many people mention removing their PC case to keep it cool. Honestly this is not the best solution (and sometimes it makes things worse - reason is the PC is designed to suck cool air from outside (from the bottom) and push warm air outwards. When you remove the case you kill this whole system. A better solution would be to redesign the fan layout so that it is more efficient, also (obviously) use an AC.

Dude, you need to do something about the extreme heat. Besides slowly killing all the internal components, you run the real risk of the machine catching fire The machine freezing is 99% due to heat. P4m's sometimes freeze instead of throttling down, when overheating (could be other motherboard components also running too hot causing freezing) Here are some suggestions: Get a laptop cooler: Unity plaza has some laptop coolers - these are panels you place the laptop on which have USB connection and fan(s) which will cool the bottom of the laptop. Alternatively, if you use your laptop on a table only, put something small under the front (so the laptop is at an angle and air can go under, cooling it) and put a small PC/case fan near the processors air intake (this is the hottest area). A simple fan can rapidly bring down the temperature to manageable levels. Also use a software program to monitor hardware temperatures (e.g. speedfan). Your hard disk should not go above 36 degrees celcius and your processor should stay under 50. If either goes higher, shut down the PC as you risk physical damage. You have a mobile CPU. Set it to its lowest speed option and allow it to speed up automatically if needed. Seriously, heat (and moisture) kills PCs in Sri Lanka. And its a shame to have a PC die when you could have done something. The P4 2ghz mobile gets surprisingly hot. I have one in my laptop. Also most laptops have poor cooling. HP's are particularly bad LOL @fuzzo does Intel have a warranty re: motherboards and capacitors? I have an Intel board (d865...) where most of the capacitors appear to have leaked from the top?

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=931_1173069221 This video will make you hallucinate (try it) best results if you try fullscreen :)

http://www.wreckedexotics.com/special/veyron/ $1.6 Million Bugatti Veyron Smashed The unnamed driver is said to have lost control of the 1,000 hp, 253mph supercar when it hit a patch of standing water on the B375 near Shepperton, United Kingdom. The four-wheel drive Veyron then aquaplaned and crashed nose first into a ditch by the side of the road. It is not known whether any other vehicles were involved although Surrey Police have no record of the accident, suggesting the driver arranged himself for the car to be recovered. Doubtless the embarrassed owner is lying low and contemplating the sort of repair bill only a wrecked $1.6 million supercar can create. . http://i18.tinypic.com/2vrze5f.jpg http://i16.tinypic.com/2lk5y88.jpg TG's video of a Veyron doing 407km/h http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjZub6AOue8

Well I would say this - a modern GPU is an incredibly complex super computer in its own right, and as I said, the manufacturers do overclock most GPU's right out of the box (at least a little bit) to help them stay competitive in group comparisions. You CAN overclock a little bit, but as I said before you must use extreme caution. Basically at full load the GPU heatsink should not be too hot to touch confortably (and obviously you should have a high quality fan) Overclocking can cause chip damage due to heat/thermal migration/etc (as in the transistors and components within the chips are physically damaged due to being run out of spec) Let me tell you something which may surprise you: When a manufacturer makes a particular chip, e.g. a Pentium 4, they don't set out to make a 2GHZ p4, 3GHZ p4 etc. What they DO is make a batch of P4's and TEST the chips at various speeds the ones which are OK at highest speeds are given higher ratings vs those which aren't stable at lower speeds. manufacturers tend to be conservative when rating chips - i.e. they will rate a chip a bit lower than what it is capable of but this depends on each manufacturer (typically intel chips are rated much more conservatively than AMD chips for example) that said, as far as GPU's go - its hard to say because: Lets take an NVIDIA made by MSI. Yes, it uses an NIVIDIA chip but theres every possibility that MSI have overclocked it at a firmware level themselves (so that their card will be faster than the same NVIDIA card by Gigabyte. What I would suggest is this: 1. Check up on the OFFICIAL specs from the CHIP maker of your card for your particular chip: i.e. see nvidia's web site for the official specifications on that particular card. 2. If your manufacturer (MSI) HAS not overclocked the card, then go ahead and increase it a bit. If it is already overclockedyou can still increase but use extreme caution. 3. Another easy thing to do as far as overclocking (either GPU's or CPU's) is to do a google search for overclocking info for that particular chip When overclocking a particular chip, take the following into consideration: 1. The specific chip manufacturing process (in microns) - smaller (in theory) means better overclocking) For example a 45nm CPU is easier to overclock than a 65nm version of same CPU 2. Check the stepping code (for CPUs) SO: if you want to overclock, look to the budget end of the spectrum (this should apply to graphics cards also in theory) And on the subject of graphics cards, most are quite powerful and you don't necessarily need to overclock with lower resolutions (unless, as you say, you are using a massive monitor). When you are considering overall performance, your PC is only as fast as the slowest component (same could be said for cars?) i.e. lets say you have the ultimate graphic card but a crappy CPU, then you will still experience poor performance. Similar situation occurs with good CPU/cheap graphics card. If you are the victim of hacking, and you are locked out of your account, usually hotmail/yahoo will help you reset the password/etc However, the simplest policy is to be careful. HOW PEOPLES EMAIL PASSWORDS ARE STOLEN 1. Social engineering (emails saying log in here etc) and or javascript exploits 2. Keyloggers (secret programs which record your every keystroke) and malware. Yes they exist 3. Network sniffers (harder, but usually work for unsecured logins e.g. basic pop logins 4. cookie exploits 5. physical access to a machine where the password is saved. There must be other ways, this is what comes to mind right now...

HOW TO HACK A GUY'S EMAIL ACCOUNT 1. Download remote keylogger/packet sniffer with filtering and email built in 2. Compromise a remote third party machine to act as a forwarder 3. write custom trojan 4. use complex social engineering to deliver payload (send email which says naked pictures here, open) 5. enable keylogger/packet sniffer and filter for login's 6. email results to you via compromised forwarder machine HOW TO HACK A GIRLS EMAIL ACCOUNT 1. Phone her up 2. Say aney dharling, WOT's Your Email Password?

http://englishrussia.com/?p=725 MCDONALDS drive in RUSSIA http://www.cagle.com/news/WheresOsama/images/cagle00.gif Similarities between bush and osama

BUT CAN IT DOUBLE UP AS A SIM CARD if necessary :)? 30 MILLION??!?!?!?!? in a country with somany people starving and war and chaos they want to spend 30 million on this? u know what, if they have so much money cant they just build us some proper roads?! SHH!! Man, don't give em any ideas!!

Dude Instead this long process of registry hacking, can't you could just download coolbits? (google for it) Coupla notes for all you would be h4x0rz... 1. Overclocking is dangerous. Make sure your card has an on board fan, and be reasonable. e.g. try a few MHZ increase as oppsed to a 100% increase. 2. You CAN fry your card if you don't know what you are doing. 3. Overclocking your card may or may not help game speed (if the CPU is the bottleneck for example) 4. Look for real world performance gain and weigh the cost vs benefit - i.e. if you have to run your card smoking hot just for a few FPS increase.. is it worth it (yeah, don't bother answering all you die hard gamers who would do anything for fps ) 5. Consider other overclocking - for example overclocking your CPU may have a more significant improvement in performance...? Don't get me wrong I'm all for performance and crazy mods but sometimes it's a bit better to know what you are doing. Also... if you must do this, use coolbits, don't mess around with the registry unless you know what you doing!! not necessary. In the right circumstances, overclocking can massively increase the performance of your PC. For example a P3 550MHz is capable of running at 733mhz with a 133mhz bus, whichever way you look at it that is one hell of a performance gain. (the chip alone runs much faster, also the whole system is sped up by being run on a faster bus (memory speeds are increased for example). Then of course there are the core2 duo chips which are massively overclockable. As a matter of fact many modern motherboards are partially overclocked from the factory itself, same for components like memory. Lastly (this may shock you but) most modern graphics cards are slightly overclocked. That's how manufacturers gain a slight edge over each other with the same GPU. "In some circumstances, overclocking is like adding a turbocharger to your car"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5P5Az7AKD4Y But ours are better!

Fuzzo: Any idea about what price the quad core will debut at locally? Also.. what are the rough prices for Core2duo entry level? I'm getting crazy quotes from dealers.. almost as if they say the first number over 30 k that enters their mind :) On the subject of core 2, are allendale processors such as the E4300 available here? what are the rough pricing? Just a note - (correct me if im wrong) but if you are buying asrock, make sure you buy a board with a good chipset for dual core/core2 and dual channel ram. Some boards have VIA chipsets which aren't as good performance wise as the intel chipset? Personally I am wary of Asrock as they are a new company (though may be a renamed older company)? I would stick to known boards (e.g. MSI, GB, Asus, etc) BUT - fuzzo says they are good, and lots of people here and elsewhere use them without a problem... BUT ensure you get the right chipset (with support for core2/dual channel ram). Steer clear of VIA (unless you are going for a budget solution) (no offense to via - they are good for budget end/low power consumption/amd processors but they suck for intel IMO) EDIT: Via make amazing miniature boards for P3 and other 'older' processors, and are quite active in the mini pc/silent pc/car pc area..

Fascinating video from the 80s about the Internet. talks about cool stuff like emoticons :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n4fDgmrF3o

Interesting article on Toyota in USA... Why Toyota Is Afraid Of Being Number One It's overtaking Detroit—with trepidation. Now, the carmaker is relying on ever-savvier PR to avoid the U.S. backlash it dreads Ask consumers why Toyota may soon be the largest automaker in the world, and they will point to the Camry. Or the Prius. Or the rav4. (It's the cars, stupid.) Ask manufacturing geeks, and they'll tell you it's about just-in-time production and a maniacal focus on constant improvement. (It's the engineering, dummy.) But there's another drama behind the carmaker's tire-squealing momentum. It's a story that might be called: How Toyota is winning the hearts and minds of America. With a deft combination of marketing, public relations, and lobbying, Toyota has done a remarkable job over the past 20 years of selling itself as an American company. That drives the Big Three to distraction. Here's Chrysler communications chief Jason Vines: "The thing I resent is Toyota wrapping themselves in the American flag," he says. "We still employ more people and contribute more to the economy." Who cares what Detroit thinks? Well, strange as it sounds, Toyota does. Its executives may privately relish victory at the expense of General Motors (GM ), Ford (F ), and Chrysler (DCX ), but here's the truth: Toyota is afraid to be No. 1—or at least what that implies. And not just because one of its slogans is "Run scared." It's because the extra scrutiny could undo much of the hard work of the past 20 years. "We constantly need to think about the potential backlash against us," Toyota CEO Katsuaki Watanabe tells BusinessWeek in an exclusive interview. "It's very important for our company and products to earn citizenship in the U.S. We need to make sure we are accepted." Full article at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/conte...week+exclusives EDIT:Sorry I posted this under ask an expert-general - meant to post it under general. Can an admin move it there please?

http://www.biggercheese.com/comics/0662.png Why girls are not allowed to play with action figures!! reverse donuts in a maruti 800

http://www.ordena.com/digg/sinkhole.html OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sad. This looks like a set up - almost someone doused it in gas via the blue can in the pic and lit it up. Sigh. Waste of a good car

http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/02/23/air...alisingly-close A French designer of engines for Formula One racing cars has turned his attention to creating an engine that runs on, and emits, only air! By all accounts, this is no pie-in-the-sky dream invention either - as the vehicle’s release is slated for later this year. With a top speed of 110kph (68mph) and a range of about 200kms (125miles), it looks to be an entirely useable commuter, and more. In fact, once the initial model is on the market, there are plans for a hybrid version - a car that will use a small amount of fuel to generate the compressed air required for the main engine - resulting in a 4,500km range (2,800 miles) from just one tank of fuel!

I once had a Pulsar. Was a light car therefore fast/fun.. Technically I only had one Sunny, not 2 - it was a (factory modified I think) B12 - came with nice wheels and a B13 engine I think. Right now I have this idea of purchasing a Maxima one day but people tell me its a bad idea.. Or a V8

Aiptek have some great 'pen type' cameras - they are over 1 megapixel and produce reasonable images (better than most phone cameras). They make one particularly nice one which accepts SD memory. unfortunately they dont ship directly to SL so if you want one you have to get someone to ship it to you.

http://www.atheist-community.org/images/ca...1420C111474.jpg http://www.enkidu.cx/stumble/beever/

Well they handle thousands of companies worldwide, and have been in business for quite a while. It's unlikely they'd cheat anyone (not worth it)

Both are equally good but lately Nvidia has pulled ahead in the race.. Also, they have a serious presence in the chipset segment.. For what it counts, here are my thoughts: CPU - INTEL and AMD both are good. UP until the Core2, AMD processors tend to be faster, cheaper, better, but core2 beat AMD fair and square. That said the latest versions of the quad core chips from AMD promise to be more efficient. With the move to 65 (and 45 nm process) most of us are cautiously optimistic about AMD's future in chip building. Speaking of chips, AMD's quad core CPU's are quite interesting (from a design perspective) but sadly aren't beating core 2. On a slightly related note - AMD have a new agent in Sri Lanka. Can't remember who the company was but they were sponsoring the Vista launch. MAINBOARD - GB, Asus, MSI, just about all are pretty good. Some of the NVIDIA chipset mobo's have spectacular performance. Intel make good boards ( Fuzzo ) which are suprisingly bargain priced here in SL. Asrock (a recent entrant) are relatively good. Tip: I recommend buying a board from a known manufacturer (GB,MSI,ASUS etc) with a good chipset: if you are using Intel chips, buy an Intel chipset. Make sure you buy a chipset which is Core2 ready. Nvidia also make spectacular chipsets but there may be compatibility issues. RAM - Kingston is the leader... that said, again most modern ram makers are OK. Samsung especially who produce the stuff by the ton Tip:Buy at least 1 - 2 GB of RAM, make sure it is PC1066 at least, and get a good brand like Kingston - their valuram is quite... er... economical? VGA - NV, ATI, both are OK. SIS are bearable in the value segment, and Intel make do in the onboard areas Tip: buy a PCI Express motherboard and card. AGP is obsolete. HDD - Hitachi are quite popular... others are also fine.. TIP: Get 7200RPM or higher, and make sure you USE A HARD DISK COOLER. THIS is a must in sl. SOUND CARDS - doesnt really matter these days as most sound is onboard SPEAKERS - again, not very important, depends on your taste MONITOR - VIEWSONIC - yes I agree, viewsonic do a great job. Aside from them Samsung are OK. NETWORK - dlink & netgear are quite popular, another brand called planet are popular for routers here. KEYBOARD - generic/anything will do. Get one that has soft keys as this is less of a strain on your hands CD/DVD/RW - NEC are known for brilliant burners, pioneer are popular for compatibility. Buying a CDRW makes no sense, go for a dvd burner, preferrably 16x +/- capable MOUSE - Waccom make nice tablets, on the value side genius also make great pointing gear. CASING - If you are setting up a modern PC get one with lots of space, good airflow and a CPU air intake (for C2D etc) also you forgot to mention PSU one of the most important components!! well... again, hard to say as nobody has official brands here just generic chinese crap

Bye white one, paint it black