TonyMcC

If you have the original installation disc then I would uninstall the printer and then install it again.

Other factors certainly do have a huge impact on the height of tides. In some river estuaries the narrowing of the river and its reducing depth result in water "piling up". In the UK the estuary of the river Severn gives the second highest tidal range in the world because of this phenomenon. This concentration of the water also sets up a tidal wave known as the Severn Bore which travels miles up the river Severn and on which people like to surf. There is plenty of information if you google" Severn bore". I will just mention I spent some months in the Maldives where the tidal range was only about 1 metre. Just as well really as the islands of the Maldives are only a metre or two above sea level!

Mr Skeptic, is your tongue very often in your cheek - or do you just like big bangs as well as big pools of water?

Put simply microwave ovens heat materials by agitating molecules that are not rigidly held in place. In liquid water the molecules are quite free to move and this movement generates heat. In ice and materials such as ceramics the molecules are held rigidly in place and hardly respond to the microwave energy and thus do not heat up to any extent. Plastic usually lies between these two extremes and heats to some extent. The amount of heat generated varies according to the actual plastic formula used.

If you are looking to make something that will work out of interst in electricity and electronics rather than making something that might be commercially viable (i.e. make money) then I wish you success. Best of luck - enjoy yourself.

In a sense perhaps you could say that neither north or south poles exist? Either that or each atom when aligned has its own north and south pole. What I am getting at is that the magnetic lines of force are considered continuous loops. where they are trapped inside magnetic material they have no, or little, effect but where the field breaks into the air and the effect is noticeable we say a pole exists. If I put two bar magnets in contact end to end NSNS how many poles have I actually got?

You can have a battery free option by making the tip a permanent magnet. In fact you can buy one, just google - magnetic screwdeiver -. In order to get a useful amount of magnetism using a charged capacitor you would (IMO) need a coil of many turns with high resistance. Many turns to provide the magnetisn, the high resistance to prevent a rapid discharge of the capacitor.

If you looked from a great height at people going into and out of (say) a shop you might wonder why they don't organise themselves better by all going in one door and out of the other.

It seems to me that you really have to get completely qualified in medicine before you can be useful enough to command respect and a high salary. There are a large range of jobs within engineering and a large range of qualifications. You can reasonably quickly be earning money at a lower level and at the same time work at improving your qualifications and job prospects. If you are going to get your qualification via university and full time study then medicine is probably the more financially rewarding alternative (IMO)

As the song says "Stir it for a hundred years or more, turn out coffee coloured people by the score".

Is the generator part of the circuit showing a step in voltage so that after a time equal to 5L/R the current will simply equal V/I amps? Or are we considering what happens as the input voltage rises at a constant rate from one value to another? I'm not really into differential equations but, without capacitance, I'm a bit puzzled by the reference to an oscillation being suppressed over time. Sorry if I'm out of my depth.

I was very upset when I had to retire at age 55 due to ill health. A good friend who was about 15 years my senior and had had to do the same when he was 55 gave me some very good advice:- "Aim for contentment and stop striving. All you really need to be happy is someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to". That was good advice and now, some 18 years later, I have to say that the last 18 years have been the happiest of my life. Life is not all about how important you are or how many possessions you have: there is more to life than that.

Mr Skeptic - If you made a pool of water the correct size (about the size of the Atlantic Ocean) the water would slop back and forth rythmically producing much larger level changes at the edges than in the centre. These large changes in level could make your "idea" even more efficient.

The machine has two parts that must move relative to each other - the moon and the ring. If you take any generator the force needed to maintain the relative movement between stator and rotor will increase if it delivers power. For example if you really want to squeeze the most miles / gallon out of a car it pays to switch off as many electrical components as you can. The car's alternator will be stiffer to turn the more items take power and so the engine will have to work harder.

Idea 1 - I think the ring would rotate with the moon thus preventing the generation of electricty (unless it is held in place by huge anchoring pylons). If you got it working and managed to get copious amouts of energy from it this would gradually change the speed of the moon and alter its orbit. (You can't get energy out without putting energy in).

Is not the problem the fact that a clock attached to the moving bar and a clock attached to the fixed table will not be running at the same at the same rate?

I think the whole idea of suicide bombing is unsettling because it is contrary to to what we in the West accept as something a human being would do. Even at a time of war when speaking to fighting men who doubtless were prepared to put their lives on the line George S. Patton said " The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his". Even so called suicide missions always had some sort of escape route however perilous. When we see actions outside of what we expect of human beings it is natural to wonder with how much humanity should their actions be judged and punished (if the attempt was thwarted).

It seems to me that most suicide bombers would say they are religious and act in a religious cause. Presumably they believe in God and accept his all powerful nature. Presumably they believe He created the world and all that is in it and could, if he so wished, alter things. Most suicide bombers try to kill as many people as possible without regard to their victims individual religions or "sinfulness". It seems to me that a successful bombing will kill people that God would not want killed. I wonder how a bomber would reply to God's question "How dare you kill the good that I have created?"

You certainly need a logical mind. A person with a logical mind could reasonably be expected to become proficient at other branches of mathematics (IMO). However, as an ex club chess player, other branches of mathematics don't seem to have much bearing on the game. A good memory is almost as important as a sense of logic. There are various ways of starting a game (known as openings) and you break away from a known opening at your peril. You will almost certainly have weakened yourself in a way that the player who has studied that opening already knows how to exploit. Similarly there are various known ways to wrap up a game (the end game) using, for instance, pieces in combination. The person who remembers these can play faster and set traps more easily. The middle game is where a sense of logic comes into its own but if you start the middle game weakened by a poor opening it will be an uphill struggle.

OK granpa, looks like you might have got me. The formula usually used to calculate inductance is :- L=N^2(uA)/1 . For a straight piece of wire N is given the value of 1 (not zero). As you say the amount is tiny. For example if you are considering a circuit in that amount of detail you would have to include resistance of connecting wires and capacitance between leads forming parts of the circuit etc.. If dealing with more than 1 inductor you would have to calculate mutual inductance however far apart the inductors were. A very simple way of looking at it is the impossibility of making a complete circuit out of a straight wire. Your circuit would have one loop! In fact I'm not too sure whether we should say the inductance we are talking about is that of a single loop that the straight wire forms part of. Anyway looks like you are right - you nit picker you! lol (From another grandad).

Neil - With regard to the last point the inductance is a physical property of the wire or more usually coil. It is rather like resistance is a physical property of a piece of material. Taking a coil wound around some magnetic material to cover the factors involved we can say that inductance depends on number of turns of wire, diameter of coil, the coil length and the type of material it is wound on. If you have a straight piece of wire it has no inductance at all. For more details you could go to http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_15/3.html

Have you noticed how many couples have very similar facial features? Perhaps some men chose a partner who reminds them of their mother? Perhaps some men are over fond of their own image in a mirror? Either of these could be a cause of instant attraction.

Dave - At one time I was an examiner writing and analysing multiple choice questions. Part of the analysis involved what is known as Index of Discrimination. This Index shows how the question being considered is answered by the examination high scorers compared to how it is answered by the low scorers. Believe it or not for some questions more low scorers would give the correct answer than high scorers. We would say the question had a negative index of discrimination. Such questions would be carefully considered and the incorrect answer chosen by the high scorers would usually be rewritten before the question was used later in another exam. The whole point of the exercise was to make sure nobody was tricked out of giving a correct answer. After all there is no point in constructing an exam with the idea of tricking people into giving incorrect answers!

I didn't know, but found this link, http://sagavyah.tripod.com/id7.html, which says Jews believe Non Jews can go to heaven.

Random series of numbers is a funny thing. There are tests for randomness and you can buy tables of random numbers. However you could produce a series of numbers using something like a die and by chance it could fail a test for randomness! Computers often use some sort of mathematical computation to produce a series of numbers that appear random but strictly speaking are not.