Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 05:24, 22 December 2008

Binary Prefixes

One thing I've learned...stick to your guns.

--Wtshymanski 17:47, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Clarity

Your comment on "virtual ground" page has got me wondering about the general quality of technical articles. Do you have examples of poor wiki entries? --wikirpg (talk) 08:32, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

==Misplaced Pages is like a "mercado libre" of information, or more like maybe a flea market. WFPMWFPM (talk) 03:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

D&S plugs and Wylex Plugs

It may interest you to know that I was an electrician in the 1970's who regularly encounterd both D&S sockets and (more rarely) the Wylex sockets in many domestic instalations (The D&S plug almost exclusively in council accommodation. That D&S practically gave the sockets away to developers during the 50's and 60's was well documented at the time). I actually stocked both types of plug. Had you checked the disussion page, you would have discovered that the Wylex plug had been discussed independently of my efforts.

The D&S plug cost £3.95 at a time when standard 13 Amp plugs could be found for less than £1. The Wylex plugs (and I am having to strain my memory here) were IIRC around £2 to £2.50 a go, but I doubt we sold more than 4 or 5 a year. We sold several dozen D&S plugs a year being the only electrical store that stocked them in the area. 20.133.0.13 (talk) 13:56, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Mains power systems

OK, what exactly in Liberia am I supposed to look at as referenced in your edit summary? Further, how do you figure the text does not violate the policy of WP:NOTHOWTO, and since it is unreferenced WP:V? Or are you going with the thread on the talk page, which would violate WP:OR? Also, please not that Misplaced Pages fails as a WP:RS, so we cannot reference articles with Misplaced Pages references. Thanks. Aboutmovies (talk) 15:59, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh you horrible little man. Go away. Liberia had a civil war, you know, and it did destroy their electrical infrastructure. Go fix a Pokemon article. --Wtshymanski (talk) 00:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me? Not only at this point are you exercising ownership of the article, but now you are being incivil and have leveled a personal attack. Please reconsider your actions and remove your comment here, and revert at the article. Aboutmovies (talk) 04:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup of Solar panel

Thank you for cleaning up solar panel. I saw the mess it was in and was going to add the cleanup template (as I don't know how to revert yet), but you got to it first. The Fiddly Leprechaun (talk) 21:20, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

C22.2 NO. 152-M1984

I declined the speedy deletion you proposed for C22.2 NO. 152-M1984 as it does not meet any of the speedy deletion criteria. If you believe this article does not belong on Misplaced Pages, please take it to AfD. A prod has been previously declined (see the article talk page). Thanks! Karanacs (talk) 17:49, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

This is an omission in the criteria for a speedy deletion, then. I shall fire up the ponderous machinery for an AFD, then. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:51, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

AC networks

Regarding the partial revert. The way it reads now, it is giving the impression that Europe is largely fragmented and that energy trading cannot go on, while the fact of the matter is that Europe is largely unified, and there are ongoing efforts to grow the unified networks to absorb neighboring networks. The UCTE grid has 22 countries on it. IPS/UPS spans 8 time zones and is synchronous, from CIS states in europe to asian territories on the Pacific. The scale of current AC networks is not appreciated.

It is true that HVDC interties are an alternative, but the article leaves that it is the only alternative, leaving the impression that AC networks cannot be grown further due to instabilities created over great distances. That also isn't true.

It's a bit of a muddle and I don't know how much detail you want to give the reader inside the scope of this article, but it really does give wrong impressions about the scale and outlook for wide area AC networks. I think that's pertinent to the scope of the article. -J JMesserly (talk) 17:03, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

The High voltage direct current article is not the place to talk about ac networks. That's well done at Wide area synchronous grid which is a good link to have in the HVDC article at that point. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:58, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Sure. But the HVDC article authors bring up limitations of AC networks as a justification for greater utilizaiton of HVDC. I happen to favor buildout of wide area HVDC networks, but the case that the HVDC article is making is misleading. My point is that to the extent that the article wants to make the case, it should do so in an accurate fashion. That's not happening now. -J JMesserly (talk) 19:19, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Power factor

I would like to learn more about your ideas regarding the range of Power Factor, which I have always understood to be a value between -1 and 1. My impression is that you believe the correct range for Power Factor is between 0 and 1. Could you explain more? Your range puzzles me, because power factor is usually considered to be the ratio of watts (measured over some integer number of periods) which of course can be either positive or negative, to volt-amps (measured over the same number of periods), which is by definition positive.

I note your comment that "power flows in both directions", which is of course true for instantaneous power. But when we are discussing power factor, the power we are concerned with is the average power, which is instantaneous power averaged over an integer number of periods -- the Misplaced Pages article correctly shows this as a horizontal pinkish line in its graphs. Average power is usually positive, i.e. it usually flows from the nominal source to the nominal load. But it certainly can be negative - if you're not sure about this, just do a quick calculation of watts with 180 degrees between the voltage and current waveforms. Indeed, with the increasing number of microgenerator sources in the grid (photovoltaic, etc.), it is becoming more common for the power that flows through a revenue meter to be positive during part of the day and all of the night, but negative during the times of day when there is strong solar radiation available. So in the case of true PF=W/VA, W can be positive or negative but never larger than VA, and the correct range for PF is -1 to 1.

Is there any possibility you were confused by the terminology used back when displacement power factor dPF=cosine(angle between voltage and current) was commonly used? dPF is equal to true PF if both the voltage waveform and the current waveform are sinusoidal. These days, there are so many non-linear loads that the current is often highly distorted, so true PF is a much better measure for most purposes. (dPF is still the correct measurement to use if, and only if, you are choosing the size of power factor correction capacitors.) The possible confusion, in dPF, is that it was conventional to use a "+" or a "-" to indicate leading or lagging - somewhat misleading and mathematically inaccurate, of course, because it made the assumption that the power flow was in the expected direction. But, for dPF, it was a good enough assumption from the 1920's through the 1980's or so.

Some background (so you don't dismiss me as a crank!): I am the President of Power Standards Lab in California, the author of the Electric Power Measurements article in the Encyclopedia of Electrical Engineering, a Senior Member of the IEEE, the author of various texts on measurements in the electric power grid, etc., so I am at least a little familiar with this topic. With best wishes - Alex McEachern AMcEachern (talk) 15:19, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

NowCommons: File:Nelson Bipole Thyristors.JPG

File:Nelson Bipole Thyristors.JPG is now available on Wikimedia Commons as Commons:File:Nelson Bipole Thyristors.jpg. This is a repository of free media that can be used on all Wikimedia wikis. The image will be deleted from Misplaced Pages, but this doesn't mean it can't be used anymore. You can embed an image uploaded to Commons like you would an image uploaded to Misplaced Pages, in this case: ]. Note that this is an automated message to inform you about the move. This bot did not copy the image itself. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 19:59, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Transistor

I know how 'not even wrong' works. I've been trying to beat concrete into shape for a bit intermittently. It was getting long enough that people feeling compelled to add their fact couldn't find that it wasn't already there, which is the second stage of that phenomena. Good luck. --Speedevil (talk) 17:51, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Authorlink

On what basis did you revert the authorlink? Vijay Sood is the author of the book, and the fact is that the authorlink I specified is the link to his page. Perhaps you misunderstand what authorlink is for? -J JMesserly (talk) 07:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

File:Serial character transmission.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Serial character transmission.png, has been listed at Misplaced Pages:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Skier Dude (talk) 07:54, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Please see...

Talk:History of personal computers#Removing Heathkit section Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Wtshymanski, for bringing this to my attention. I was surprised how mad I have become about Maury's comments in the discussion section. I think he might have a revenge nuerosis because he could not afford a Heathkit back in the day!! haha. I'll find some citations. Cuvtixo (talk) 21:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Radio

Bill in Winnipeg: I find it hard to believe that your removal of the entire history of radio was deliberate. The sections deleted bear no apparent relation to your comments in the edit summary. If your concerns do indeed entail the deletion of major portions of the article, it would be best to open a discussion on the talk page. However, I would prefer to think the massive deletion was unintentional. Hertz1888 (talk) 05:24, 22 December 2008 (UTC)