This is the difference between a self-luminant display, such as a CRT, and a reflective display, such as paper. (It's also why I loathe black-on-white for computer displays - I find it fine for reflective technologies, such as ink on paper, but horrid for self-luminant technologies, such as all computer displays I've seen.) And, technically, yes, black-on-white throws more radiation at you than white-on-black does, even when it's paper. It's just that the radiation the discussion was about is X-rays, and with paper, the radiation in question is reflected ambient light - if you're in a situation where the ambient X-ray level is high enough to be an issue, you've got worse worries than whether printing on paper is W-on-B or B-on-W. :-) (Also, X-rays don't reflect from paper very well, regardless of the colour of the paper.) (If displays throwing X-ray radiation is really a concern for you, the simple fix is to use an LCD display instead.) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

With respect to CRT (and all other self luminant displays) I find that the contrast issue really depends on the pixel size. When I am running 2048x1536 here. A black backround with white text is horrid [assuming a 1-3 pixel stroke width for text] Black on white is great. If I am running VERY low densities [such as the character generator on a 80x24 text screen] then the reverse is true [could never stand working on a VT-100 in blacc-on-white].

der> I've never seen a CRT running 2048x1536. But I've seen der> 1600x1280, and based on that, I suspect that your problem is der> that you're pushing the monitor beyond what it can actually do - der> and under those circumstances, thin vertical strokes tend to get der> lost, which does damage W-on-B worse than it does B-on-W. I find a good rule of thumb is to set a CRT to one step less than the max rated non-interlaced resolution. (Interlaced resolution ratings are completely uninteresting.) And I set the refresh rate to the lowest supported value >= 70 Hz. If you use VGA extension cord, this becomes a whole lot more important, but even without those, it seems like a good idea. On the other hand, for high resolution displays, LCD panels are a really good answer. 2000 by 1500 is available today (from Apple, at least), and you don't get any blurring if you use a digital interface. Hm... I saw a 2k by 2k monochrome display about 20 years ago -- a plasma panel (PLATO style orange dots) 4x the usual size. paul

2048x1536 (with is 4 1024x768 areas on the same glass) is what I use on some of my 21"/22" monitors. Even the lower cost ones do 1920x1440 without a problem... Check these links for the specs.... My "standard development monitor: http://www.viewsonic.com/products/desktopdisplays/crtmonitors/graphicseries/ g220fb/ [about $500] Good Dual Monitor Controller Card... http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9800/aiw9800pro/specs.html [About $300] Or For 3-D work [single monitor only] http://www.ati.com/products/radeonx800/specs.html [About $500] 1600x1200 [not 1280 which you may be confusing with 1280x1204] is what I run on my 17" screens.

If I use "blah" Notepad to open a text file at the default font size of 10pt I see 106 lines of text. This is slightly less than one might calculate because you need to subtract the taskbard,frames and other things... This is being displayed in a physical vertical area of just over 10.5 inches, to the text is being displayed nearly ACTUAL SIZE. Holding up a piece of printed paper I get about 4 lines of drift over the vertical distance. Considering that most printed material [eg. Paperback books and newspapers] will use a smaller font...I don't see why ther is any surprise about working at this resolution.....

!! I can't imagine why, unless you insist on using the same size-in-pixels for things like font glyphs even on decent-resolution displays where individual pixels are too small to see. You seem to have jumped from "this is what I run" to "I can see individual pixels on this". I see no basis whatever for such an inference. If I had a 1000dpi display available, I certainly wouldn't avoid it just because I couldn't make out individual pixels! And aside from that...1600x1200 is 2000 pixel-widths diagonally; over 17 inches, that's about 118 dpi. What's your reference for believing 118dpi is something "no [normal] human should be able to see"? I have no problem seeing detail that fine.... /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 14:43:37 -0400 (EDT) der Mouse <mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote: http://www.apple.com/displays/specs.html 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display, 2560 x 1600 pixels (100 dpi) $3299. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

Even when using classic character based environments, these high screen resolutions can come in handy.... 12 or more glass teletypes [80x24] on a single screen. Have fun with your entire DECNET [or other....] environment....

That was an empirical measurement...I opened multiple windows, set them to borderless and then arranged them on my primary display as three across by four down... And I didn't even use the secondary monitor...

Am 18 Aug 2004 0:41 meinte der Mouse: Thanky, just added to my sigs :) Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 6.0 am 30.April und 01.Mai 2005 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Yeah, I know. :-( Sparkle (the machine currently behind the ftp CNAME) had its disk die some weeks back. I sent it off for warranty repair (which presumably =replacement); the result arrived yesterday. Today sparkle has been dead almsot all day while I copy multiple gigs of data around between backup areas and live drives. (I was running temporarily off another drive of about half the size.) It should be back, and, barring further trouble, will stay that way. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

In message &lt;200408190350.UAA18722(a)floodgap.com&gt; Cameron Kaiser &lt;spectre(a)floodgap.com&gt; wrote: Just what I was thinking. Here's a screenshot from my RISC PC: <http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/screen.png> ... 1152x864 in 16 million colours at 75Hz on a RISC PC600. Specs are: Acorn RiscPC600 Mk.III mainboard 202MHz StrongARM SA-110 64MB RAM 6GB Seagate hard drive Lite-ON 52x CD-ROM drive Original Acorn (actually made by Citizen) 1.6MB 3.5" floppy drive Windfall Engineering Viewfinder graphics card i-Cubed/Design IT EtherLAN600 10BaseT Ethernet card APDL ARCINv6c high speed IDE/ATA interface Morley Electronics 16-bit Uncached SCSI interface (with no devices for it *sniff*) HCCS Vision24 video framegrabber with colour decoding Second case slice upgrade 100W power supply upgrade 4-slot backplane Manufactured in 1996, though IIRC the first RiscPC rolled off the production line in 1994, so it's sort-of on topic. Me, I just think it's a nice machine :) Note the machine's LAN name (and hard drive volume label) - Kitsune - it's Japanese; it translates to "fox", hence the Pinboard backdrop image (for those of you who don't know the RISC OS terminology - think "background wallpaper"). Later. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI ... When I get a better mouse trap built, mice will be an endangered species.

Bob Shannon wrote, in part: The last time I needed one, I had it custom-wound. But that was quite a while ago, and indeed for an X/Y prototype. :) Is your monitor from a video arcade game? If so, the simplest method would probably be to find a coin-op distributor-and-repair place and buy one from them. If you look at the list at http://www.pinball.com/dist.html you should be able to find something near you... these are listed as Williams and Bally distributors, but they're likely to have access to Atari parts as well. [...] Not 100% positive about Atari machines, but I'm very confident the answer will be yes. Most of the coin-op manufacturers used a single transformer for each unit, and it drove everything - monitor, monitor heater, +5/+12/+27/-5 power supplies, lamps and lockout mechanisms on the coin door, and the fluourescent lamp and ballast on the sign atop the unit - as well as jumpers at the input end for 110/220 VAC input voltages and further jumpers for compensating for high-end or low-end line voltages. Them transformers were big heavy bastards. :) It was a pretty standard practice, so I'd be surprised if Atari didn't do it as well. If you can find an appropriate transformer for your monitor, you should be able to run lots of other goodies off of it at the same time. :) Hope this helps! -O.- (who's wondering now if I still have all those old coin-op video-game schematics lying around here somewhere...)

Am 17 Aug 2004 16:22 meinte Teo Zenios: Which would be just an of the shelf GeForce (at 60 Hz - 2048x1536 would be possible even at 85 or 90 Hz) ... just, not with a DVI interface, since there the pixel clock is limitated to something like 1600x 1200 or so. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 6.0 am 30.April und 01.Mai 2005 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Am 17 Aug 2004 22:53 meinte Tony Duell: No Tony, you must be completely wrong. As lower as the energy gets, as more dangerous it is. You know, when they tell us that it's X-Ray, but harmless, that means they don't want to tell us the truce! *G* Well, I had my most memorable moment when I bough my condo and had it redone. I hired a friend of mine to supervise it. She's an architect and did quite a lot of similar jobs. So while we where discussing what to do, she asked me if I want an 'all off switch' in the bed room. I think I must have looked quite stupid, so she explained that this would be a switch to cut off power from the outlets and the light, and that a lot of people doing projects in a similar setting request that. When I argued, that outlets where nothing is plugged in are already off, and the same goes for the light (when if I switch it off). She told me that there are 'experts' telling people that these lines still engulf you in low frequency radio waves, and only a complete cut off will help. It took me some time to understand that ... no, that's a lie, I still haven't understood this mindset. I mean, what is it good for to 'switch off' the wires in the sealing which is usualy some 2m away from the place you rest your head,and keep the ones in the room below, that is less than a meter away, on 'full radiation power'? Or have a power outlet 'switched off' when in the same wall, just a few cm away, on the other side, is a regular one? I learned even more weiredness about that. For example you may 'shield' your bed room by having copper wire wall paper. No, not massive copper fabric, but a rather wide (>1cm) copper grid to be put on the wall before the real wallpaper, or even 'higehr quality', wallpaper that has already some wires in. I mean, beside leaving the sealing free (in most cases), even the most paranoid don't put 'em on the floor. Not to mention, that I haven't found any information aout the frequency range and so on, but as I see it, it just works because it's there, and everybody knows, that a metalic cage shields of electricity. Doesn't it? Boy I'm glad nobody told this to my mobile phone - otherwise it would stop working inside cars. Well, so much for electricity, but tha's prety 'normal' the real weirdos even got for total shielded houses and are realy concerned about 'earth waves' and 'fields'. Yeah, right, she told me, she once had a client who requestes to have a copper layer in the concrete basement (over here usualy every single house hase a basement, and usualy made of concrete). Jup, the copper should protect the family. Stupid me would be, if at all, more concerned about the radiation from the concrete itself - not realy stopable by a few embedded wires. Well, I could go on for hours. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 6.0 am 30.April und 01.Mai 2005 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

A convenience, NOT A SAFETY! , "All-OFF" is trivial to implement with X10.

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Tony Duell wrote: X10 is not suitable for any safety related use. It can not be used reliably for anything where incorrect on/off status would be hazardous. (You use it to turn off all of the lights and selected appliances, NOT to disconnect yourself from the mains!)

Actually I don't trust contractors [change intentional] at all. Too many "electricians" have swapped hot/neutral and messed up the grounds. Always verify EVERYthing. I will admit that I have never tried to repair a contractor, it might be possible, although I think some of them should just be screpped.

Am 18 Aug 2004 20:02 meinte Joseph S. Barrera III: Did already winn one :) Thanks to the fact that I'm a certified Energieanlagenelektroniker (literaly power electronics equipment engeneer), I even could testify for myself, and avoidde that some crappy expert plays down the impact :) Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 6.0 am 30.April und 01.Mai 2005 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Just one of the reasons it is a violation of most "safety codes" to plug an extension cord into an extension cord! OSHA will fine a company if this is reported. [The last time I did that was about 7 hours ago.....]

I'm trying to stop myself typing "Part P Building Regs." just to see what happens. Obviously I've failed :-) Antonio -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org

New building regs allegedly coming into force at the end of the year in the UK. They will restrict the amount of rewiring (of fixed wiring) that a normal householder (i.e. not a member of the NECEIC or similar trade body) will be able to do. Nothing can be done in the kitchen or bathroom, and only minor works (e.g. a new spur) elsewhere. Given that the number of people killed or seriously injured annually in the UK (because of a faulty installation) is approximately equal to the number of people in the US who die by drowning while jaywalking, it's pretty obvious who lobbied for this one :-) Tony's comment just reminded me of something else that you can't do for no good reason. Antonio -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org

Am 18 Aug 2004 15:44 meinte Fred Cisin: Fred, I beg to differ. For a workplace, an ALL-OFF switch is a safty measure, and for professional setings a must, at least by German work laws. And while electronic devices are a great help to measure unsafe conditions, the OFF function itself has to be provided by a classic real pair of contacts. Even more, such a switch must have it's prefered position in OFF (the position it may switch into with the least effort) and must have some protection against unwilling turning on, which must be at least some resistive force. For example, the red mushroom I have has to be turned about 90 degree and then pulled to be tunred on, while it needs just a little push to turn it of and lock it. Not a convineance, a security measure. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 6.0 am 30.April und 01.Mai 2005 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Am 19 Aug 2004 10:17 meinte Fred Cisin: Ey, always blame it on my bad english that I missunderstood you. :) And more important, on me answering a mail, before reading all others in a thread! Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 6.0 am 30.April und 01.Mai 2005 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Exactly, which also implies that if the alpha source is inside _you_, then few inches of you will screen out the radiation, i.e. the alpha particle will interact with you. True.... Actually, reducing the thermal radiation was mentioned as another benefit, in that it claims said circuit 'saved energy' as well. Agreed.... I would like to know if there's any statistically significant correlation between health problems and being a radio amateur. The point being that health problems from people who work with electrical/electronic devices could be due to stress or various other causes, but presumably amateurs, who do it for fun, wouldn't suffer from stress when they're messing about with electronics. Indeed. This is one reason I have no intention of becoming a schoolteacher. I cna think of nothing worse than trying to teach stuff I know to be incorrect (and a lot of stuff in the UK school syllabus is certainly incorrect!) to people who don't want to learn it. A total waste of time for everyone involved!. However, I am also worried that the general public don't want to learn about scientific subjects. Now admittedly in the current society, scientists are not exactly valued, but this is a different rant... -tony

At 05:06 19/08/2004, Tony Duell wrote: Well, from my time in the early 80's, when my sister was a big CB user and I was sat there on my BBC Micro... there were times when I could hear her voice coming out of my floppy drive if it was spinning at the same time she was transmitting. That was certainly a cause of stress (plus being slightly on topic!) Luckily I never seemed to get a read error :-) There is an interesting discussion of this phenomena (teaching incorrect information) in the book "the science of discworld" where it is rather bluntly entitled "Lies to children". thefreedictionary.com sums this up quite nicely: "A lie-to-children is an expression that describes a form of simplification of material. The universe, so far as we can observe, is extremely complicated. The first time one explains something to a person (especially a child), one might give an explanation that is simple, concise, or simply "wrong" ? but in a way that attempts to make the truth more understandable. (Sometimes, an explanation can accompany it, such as "This isn't technically true, but it's easier to understand.") Later on, one can admit that the first explanation was a lie, and replace it with the truth, or a more sophisticated lie-to-children, which is nearer to the truth. You can continue this process all through a persons' education." Examples given also include the answer to the question "what makes a rainbow?" - schools go to great lengths to distract kids with prisms and so forth to show all the colours in light as it shines through something, when none of it has anything to do with why a rainbow is bent into an arc, why the sun is behind you when you see the colours in front of you, why you sometimes see two rainbows, etc... An excellent read; I'd definitely recommend it. Most people don't want to learn about anything, unless it has boobs or kicks footballs... :-S

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Hans Franke wrote: Mmmmm. 8th grade. Mrs. Doll. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

Tony Duell wrote: I heard that argument for the superiority of the potentiometer at school, too. It would've been in about 1979. Wish I'd thought of the counter-argument about the sensitivity of the meter, but I didn't think of it until many years later. -- John Honniball coredump(a)gifford.co.uk

At 00:15 20/08/2004, Tony Duell wrote: I must agree totally. The only things school contributed to my career path was the TRS-80 Model 1's we were allowed to book time on at lunchtime and after school. [I never did find out if there was actually a class that used them.] I'd previously been doing electronics as a hobby, this shifted me into computing (with an electronics bent - I was quite happy to build up a ZX81 kit, etc) My skills ever since have been totally self-taught, and I think they are better for it. (Just makes it harder to find a new job when I can't show them pretty pieces of paper..) Rob

On Sat, Aug 21, 2004 at 12:24:10AM +0100, Tony Duell wrote: I got in a little trouble at the library when I started bringing in bits of hardware to hang on the back the public PETs (via the User Port). The powers that be were also unfriendly to machine code because they were told that it could harm the computers (this is long before killer POKEs). That was at age 11. By 13, we had a PET at home. Problem solved. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 20-Aug-2004 23:50 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -91.3 F (-68.5 C) Windchill -133.7 F (-92.09 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 11.3 kts Grid 053 Barometer 666.5 mb (11139. ft) Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

Am 18 Aug 2004 23:31 meinte Patrick Finnegan: Thinking of that, tTony might have been wron in his general assumption that weak _may_ be more dangerous... I remember some lessons about how Alpha particles are already cought to most extend by the uppermost two skin layers so and therfore, if not taken in exteme doses, can be ignored because of the continous sheding we do. Now, if you swallow it, the nature works different. Of course, again the particles get stoped withing a short distance. The atoms/molecules that stop it may get later on absorbed and cause a few problems. Still, we also have protection on the inside. It get's realy tricky if the alpa emiter is some element or part of a molecule that oir digestive system allows to pass thru ... then it get's full 'access'. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 6.0 am 30.April und 01.Mai 2005 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Am 18 Aug 2004 23:00 meinte Tony Duell: I like that example. Jup, that's exactly why I incooperated one of these nice big red mushrooms into my computerroom. Ok, it is only disconecting all outlets on the workbench wall, but that are the ones I'm concerned about. Speaking of that, there was a somewhat nice what-if documentation lately on one of the channels. The idea was that there's an alien signal found and then along the decodeing it is revealed that roswell was not about a UFO landing, but rhater that they already got a first signal back then. Now, according to this fictional story the US government started an educational offensive to teach science to the people to prepare them for the truth ... just to 'learn' that more knowledge makes the public even more frightened... What an aristocratic view. Made without any hint of irony. It must have been a perfect reasoning for the writer of that show. I mean, we all know that the US is still stuck in a mindset like in 18th century aristocratic Europe (aka the hard time to distinguish between the buerocracy, the state and the rulers in every day language, and of course the all over attitute of 'He'st he President, so he's right, and we have to support him) - hey,we all like that to some extend, but such a reasoning, does underline that mindset in an unbeatable way ... the paupers shall know need to know, otherwise it would destroy their puny minds... Anyway H. -- VCF Europa 6.0 am 30.April und 01.Mai 2005 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

On Tue, 17 Aug 2004, David V. Corbin wrote: I think, just think, not sure, but I think, just possibly, perhaps, maybe, no guarantees, Hans was being facetious. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

At 18:10 17/08/2004, you wrote: Absolutely! As we know, black holes abosrb everything[0] -including light-, so clearly they are less dangerous than the Sun, which emits lots of light. On a similar line, it is obvious that black paper will absorb more radiation. Ideally, we should also switch all of our ink to black ink too, in order to further reduce the danger of accidental irradiation through the irresponsible use of bright colours. It'd make writing these documents that I'm doing a damn sight easier too... ;) [0] Excluding X-rays & other dangerous radiation, naturally. Cheers, Ade. Be where it's at, B-Racing! http://b-racing.com