Sky

What I currently have is a TV that can tune digital TV signals, and an outdoor antenna on a 60 foot tower. The problem is, where I live the broadcast signals are so weak I can get exactly 1 channel at best even with that antenna tower, and even that channel is spotty. What would you recommend in the way of a powered amplifier to boost what signals the antenna can receive so there's plenty of signal for the TV to tune in?

If it matters, I'm in the US when it comes to electrical ratings and broadcast frequencies.

What did Yahoo do this time? A week ago I was looking at questions here on Y!A and everything was working just fine (relatively speaking). Yesterday I go back to it and suddenly everything is different. The page layout is changed, but that's insignificant. The links to questions I've already looked at won't change color any more. I've seen this on a couple other websites and it's annoying as hell. If I go into the browser options and set it to force the custom colors of the browser, the links change color appropriately. But set it back to display the pages as normal, and links on Yahoo pages don't change color. I can't keep the options set to display custom colors because it disables other parts of the page coding and the pages don't display correctly, but letting Yahoo pages display themselves as programmed prevent me from knowing which questions I've already looked at.

Why would anyone do something so stupid? It's domain-wide, not just on Y!A, and makes Yahoo pages even MORE user-unfriendly than they already were. Go back to the way the page coding used to be written, when it worked well, and stop messing with it!

Why is it some questions I go to here on Y!A don't give me any answer box at the bottom where I can write in an answer? I'm not even talking about questions that are closed which have a best answer chosen, which usually have the answer box still available. I'm talking about recent questions that have no best answer chosen and should be open for answering, but when the page is done loading there is no box at the bottom for me to click into to write an answer. Also, any questions like this also have no "Comments" link under anyone else's replies for me to click on and read comments or give one of my own. It doesn't seem to be a matter of people blocking my username because the exact same thing happens if I use one of my other accounts to go to the same question, as well as when a question is by someone who has a brand new account and that question is the first thing they've done on Y!A.

What's going on here?

As in, "Though reviewers regularly bash the midsize Camry sedan for a lack of driver engagement, it’s typically among the best-selling models..."

What is driver engagement?

This question is for psychologists/psychiatrists, and sociologists can also chime in. (Please mention your qualifications as well since I'm looking for answers from professionals.)

Is there a term in psychology that refers to when a person, under threat of the most terrible punishment, is forced to love someone they terribly fear, somebody who claims to love them too but could turn on them in the most horrible ways in response to the slightest disobedience or even just a whim? Also, is there a difference when the one they fear is a personal relation (ie. mate, spouse, family member) or a public authority figure (ie. the people of North Korea being forced to love Kim Jong with prison or execution being the penalty if they don't)?

And whether or not there is a specific term for a relationship like this, what are your professional thoughts and opinions about such a relationship?

(I'm asking again because the first try got no responses. I'm having an ongoing debate with someone and this information would be helpful.)

Why do they keep trying to fix something that isn't broken? The last time they revamped Y!A the "My Saved Searches" function quit working. For every one of my saved searches it comes up with an error message that says, "We did not find results for xxxxxx." As a result I had to save a bookmark for every one of my searches as entered into the "Search Answers" bar at the top of the screen.

And now the regular Search Answers function isn't working. No matter what I try or how many times I refresh the screen, it will not show me the newest questions, meaning listed starting with the most recent first. Even when tabbing away to "Relevance" or something and going back to the "Newest" tab, it keeps the same list of questions that are many years old. Y!A has become absolutely useless.

Is there a way for me to undo or take back a flag from a question that didn't deserve it or to alert Y!A admins to disregard my flagging? The one it was intended for was being flagged for multiple repeat postings (12+ times of the same thing) but I didn't pay attention when I went to the wrong tab in my browser and ended up flagging a good question.

This is directed at the people who made changes on Y!A recently. The changes you made are absolutely terrible and have made the site as user-unfriendly as could be. It used to be there was a convenient "Recommended" button at the top of the page under my profile box; that is no longer there. With a lot of hunting I was able to find that on the home page under the "Answers" tab there is a customizing feature where I could make the Answers list show only Recommended things. It should not be that difficult.

And for my saved searches, that function is absolutely unusable any more. They show absolutely EVERYTHING that matches my saved searches from the past 5 or 6 years with no way to sort it and show only the most recent things. With some tweaking of the saved search details to narrow it down to the last 7 days and show only things that are open questions, it displays nothing even though I know there were new questions posted just yesterday before these changes took place on my browser. (It must have refreshed the page layout and gotten rid of the old display scripts.)

I used to find enjoyment in coming here and answering questions that matched my interests and knowledge, but now it's nothing but frustration that is really making me think there are much better things I can do with my time than waste it here trying to make this crappy layout work for me.

Why would you do this? And who thought these changes would be for the better?

Today I go to Y!A and the main headers such as "Recommended" and "Newest" are gone, and I have to hunt around just to find where I can go to my saved searches. When I get there, I'm seeing questions from literally 4 years ago, and no apparent way to display only the most recent and/or open questions. My question is directed at the Yahoo administrators: why do you keep messing with things that work and making changes that don't need to be made, especially once people are used to the previous "new" look? Just stop it. All you're doing is pissing people off.

When I'm signed in to Y!A, my icon/avatar doesn't show. It's the plain gray silhouette of a person indicating that no icon was ever assigned for my account (which I did). If I'm signed in with a different account or not logged in at all and am looking at a question or answer I wrote, my icon shows just fine. I know it's set on my account because I can see the tiny version of it in the upper right corner next to my name. What gives?

I'm having a debate with a friend. The topic is, if a small computer repair/sales service installs bootleg software (cracked or otherwise) on a computer the customer wants built, either by customer request or by the business offering it, and then somehow gets found out by authorities for making money off a project that involved installing that bootleg software, what are the legal penalties?

I say the business owner would go to jail.

He says the feds don't bother with people like that.

What's the correct answer? Answers from practicing attorneys, prosecutors, or those with a background in copyright law or other related areas of expertise are most appreciated.

Where I live I have terrible amounts of mosquitoes, and also tiny biting flies/gnats that burrow down into my dogs' fur to bite for blood. I know any product containing DEET is dangerous to [non-human] animals. And I've tried Advantix to keep mosquitoes off them since it claims to kill and repel mosquitoes, but to quote my coworkers, it didn't work worth a broke dïck. I also tried some brand of dog-safe bug repellent from the pet store and that didn't work at all either.

So, is there any product, whether from the pet store or otherwise, that is safe to use on dogs and is effective at repelling mosquitoes and biting flies?

I may be behind the times, but I like what I like. And I like using POP3 email so that I can download email messages and store them locally rather than keeping them on a remote server as with IMAP. I've used Outlook Express for many years and have a ton of old messages saved, all categorized into folders the way I want. But last year I retired one old windows XP computer and my other one died, leaving me with a new computer running Suse Linux since I'd been wanting to move away from Windows products. I have Thunderbird on it, but the Linux version of TB is buggy and TB is not compatible with my old OE email database (.dbx files).

So, is there another email program that can be set to access the store folder from Outlook Express, read from and save to the .dbx files, use the database exactly as OE did, and keep the database files compatible with OE in case I ever switch back? It doesn't matter if it's Linux or Windows based, because I can run a windows-based program in Wine (windows emulator). Thanks!

For all you camera users who use a Black Rapid brand (or knockoff brand) camera strap, do you use it when there is an external flash on the camera's hot shoe? If so, how well does that work to have the flash on? Is it easy and convenient or is it awkward and annoying? I'm trying to decide whether or not to buy a Black Rapid strap, but whenever I'm at an event with my camera the external flash is almost always on. With a regular neck strap it can be kind of annoying because the flash makes it top heavy so the camera wants to flip forward, a problem I remedy by using a small cat collar to make a cross strap on the neck strap which I can tuck under the flash and hold it up. I just want to know if a Black Rapid will make things easy by having the camera held off to my side and dangling upside down.

When talking about a light-emitting diode, how do you personally pronounce the acronym LED?

1. Each letter separately, as in ELL-EE-DEE.

2. As one word LED, rhyming with bed and sounding like the toxic soft metal lead.

3. I never use the acronym and always say all the words light-emitting diode.

4. Something else (please describe), or variable between the first 3 depending on the context of the conversation or however the wordy noises fall out of my face at that moment.

Note that I might cross-post this in the "Words & Wordplay" and/or the electronics or science categories if there isn't enough response here in the Polls section.

Over the summer I ran a dehumidifier in my basement and collected the distilled water in a drum for use in my humidifier in the winter. It's the ultrasonic style humidifier so I wanted water with zero mineral content. The dehumidifier was brand new so it was completely clean, and the drum I used is a 55 gallon plastic drum that originally contained a disinfecting caustic cleaner in it, which I very thoroughly rinsed out with city water (which has a high chlorine content). I thought everything would be perfectly sanitary and I'd have a collection of perfectly distilled water, but when I went to use it for the first time I found it smells like a musty dish rag.

Is there anything I can put into the drum of water to disinfect it and eliminate the smell which will be safe when it's vaporized through the humidifier? I've considered bleach but I've read several sources that said that's hazardous to do.

Here's what I'm working with. My old windows XP computer was decommissioned so I can use it for other purposes, and the replacement I was using (also with XP) has since died. I'm now using a new computer running Suse Linux 12.2, and I have my hard drives from the Windows computers installed into it so I can use my files. That includes all the MS Outlook email saved data (.iaf and .dbx files).

Is there a Linux email program that will not just import (ie. copy) those old emails, but can actually make use of those Outlook email storage files if I set it to use that folder? I don't want to lose my old emails, want to continue using and updating the email storage files in case I revert back to using Outlook on a windows PC, and I greatly prefer to use POP mail to store the emails locally rather than using IMAP and keeping email stored on the server.

I have not found a way to make Thunderbird access those old files (or import them for that matter), and Kmail (KDE mail) will import them as a copy into its own storage folders but not directly access and use the old Outlook storage files. A search for email programs like this has turned up nothing.

Here's what I want to do: I want to order custom photo checks, the kind that rotate from check to check between 4 different images that I upload when ordering. I've found several websites for ordering checks like this, but when looking up reviews on them, every one has a history of complaints of terrible customer service, misprinted checks that they won't correct, huge hidden fees, multiple and/or unauthorized charges to the credit card that placed the order and/or the checking account associated with the checks, and poor quality checks.

What is the best website/business for ordering checks like this? I want to do business with a place that will not rip me off, will list all the fees that go into the final total, and will provide good customer support if there's a problem with my order.