What is a COB Light?

[dandee]

I keep seeing that word "COB" used for LED flashlights lately.

What do they mean by using the word "COB"? (I remember when COB was part of an ear of corn, and none of them lit up) :)

[Tekkie®]

[e-mail] posted for all of us...

Google returns Circuit On Board. You know how to use it?

[Dove Tail]

It is an acronym for "Chip on Board" Here is an explanation

"Relatively new to the LED market, chip on board (COB) LEDs offer many advantages over the standard options. COB LEDs are basically multiple LED chips (typically nine or more) bonded directly to a substrate by the manufacturer to form a single module. Since the individual LEDs used in a COB are chips and not traditionally packaged, the chips can be mounted such that they take up less space and the highest potential of the LED chips can be obtained. When the COB LED package is energized, it appears more like a lighting panel than multiple individual lights as would be the case when using several SMD LEDs mounted closely together."

This will give you even more information.

[hubops]

.. anything else you want us to google for you ?

John T.

[mike]

Youbetcha. Hows about googling "helpful" "tolerant" "considerate" "courteous"...

[James Wilkinson Sword]

The cob I've herd is "corn on the cob" LED lights. It's just the shape. It's shaped like a corn on the cob, or a tin can. LEDs on the circular sides, and on the flat end. Got one in my living room.

[hubops]

try dictionary.com You're welcome. John T.

[dandee]

Sometimes I wish the web did not even exist. The newsgroups were the original internet. Back then, people discussed things without referring to web pages. Not only do I still prefer the newsgroups, but ever since they implemented HTTPS (secure sites), I can not access most websites. It's a long and rather complicated process involved, which I dont care to discuss in detail. I will only say that due to my location, I have very limited access to the internet. The newsgroups work, email works, but the web is extremely limited. Something to the order of 1 out of 30 websites actually load properly. And google does not work at all anymore, nor does Bing. (Yahoo search still works though).

In the end, not everyone online is able to use all the high tech gadgets, and high speed internet that they keep forcing upon us, whether we want it or not. 15 years ago, websites were just text and pictures and they were useful. Now we have scripts, and huge executible files and megs of security to protect us from all them scripts and executibles, and worthless bloat, so the actual content is lost in all the garbage. These days, to obtain 1K of useful content requires 5 megs of downloading before the page can load. I do my best to avoid the web anymore, because it's very frustrating and a huge waste of time.

[hubops]

Yikes ! I thought that I was quite late going from dial-up to high-speed - about 12 years ago - dial-up was becoming futile back then ! And because my first high speed was cellular - very expensive ! - I still needed to carefully watch my usage. One thing that helped greatly - I bought a used laptop and made use of the high speed at the library and coffee shops. - once or twice a week. I would save links and email a list to myself - used a "download helper" to save humourous and music Utube videos and other stuff like big pdf instruction manuals etc. I didn't think that google was ever slow - but all the top hits that the searches returned would be fancy paid-for sites - so I learned to scroll down and look for edu or wiki or less commercial hits. John T.

[TimR]

I haven't tried AltaVista in a long time, but that used to be my go-to.

[hubops]

a quick google search for the wiki info :

AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own search engine. On July 8, 2013, the service was shut down by Yahoo! and since then, the domain has redirected to Yahoo!'s own search site.[2]

[dandee]

Going back to Alta Vista is what got me using Yahoo. At least Yahoo works, and works without the httpS crap. Yahoo must be part of Amazon.com because the first ten links are always Amazon, but I've learned to skip those and otherwise it works fairly well.

At least yahoo dont ask me to "prove I'm a real person" using Captchas like Google started doing, and without java script enabled, they never loaded. That started a few months ago, and is when I quit using google completely. I found Bing dont load at all, either. There is one called Metacrawler that DOES work too, but it's sort of lacking in some ways, so I use Yahoo first..

[dandee]

At my location, dialup is all there is. Max speed is around 36KPS. If that's not bad enough. connecting with Windows XP limits connection to about 10 minutes use, before connection fails to transfer data. But connecting with Windows 98, works fairly good, but limits browsers to Firefox 3.x. (which of course cant handle HTML5 or most HTTPS, and gives constant script errors).

I cant even use a cellphone at my location, NO SERVICE. The only way I could get fast internet would be to spend around $150 per month for a satellite dish, which could require installing a tall pole to mount the dish, at a cost of several thousand to install. I'm retired and on a fixed income. The dish is NOT gonna happen.

Yea, I have an old laptop with XP, which I can use if I drive about 6 miles. I can use the library, a fast food restaurant, or a local bar to get their WIFI. I can even use that from in my car if I park close to the building. I too make a list of videos I want to download and save from utube, and download large PDF manuals and other large files from there. But I cant post to the newsgroups from them places. Being winter, I cant sit in my car spending hours in freezing weather to connect to many websites that are posted on the newsgroups, nor am I willing to waste time typing inside a restaurant, and there is no way in heck that I'll type from inside my car.

The bottom line is that I have very limited internet access. At home I really only have my email and the newsgroups. So, when I ask "What is a Cob light", I'm only looking for a sentence or two, cuz I want to learn. That's how the newsgroups once worked, long before the web even existed.

One note of caution, Google is a dangerous as far as spying on people, and Facebook is probably worse. I dont care to use FB, but I was using google till they began asking me to prove Im a real person. Apparently they were not able to track me to their satisfaction, because of my slow connection and use of Win98. I just said "goodbye google"....

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

You get get up to 9.x (maybe higher) with KernelEX . It does support some new features like the fullscreen API.

I have had satellite internet (Starband, around 2001). It was nearly unusable because of the high and variable latency.

[snip]

[dandee]

I have kernel-ex installed. It is helpful with some stuff, but not browsers. I have tried numerous versions of FF beyond 3.x, and they are very unstable, or dont work at all. By default, FF 2.x was the limit without kernel-ex. With it, FF 3.x works, but nothing higher. Some of them load, but not properly in all cases. Lots of crashes and errors.

Then again, I doubt any of those old versions of FF would work well today with all the security issues and HTML5. Even my laptop that I use at WIFI spots (with XP), began acting flakey recently because I was using FF 18.x. I finally had to upgrade that to a newer version, which works but runs sluggishly because it's so bloated and that laptop is an older and slower computer. (And I'm still not using the newest version of FF on that laptop).

I keep asking when this will all end? Why is all this bloat and complex junk needed, just to read some text and see some pictures? What ever happened to the old web that was useful? I suspect they are doing this to force everyone to keep buying new computers and operating systems. In all honesty, I can use my old Win98 computer to do anything I can do on any newer computer, and it does it well. I can watch videos and everything. Win98 had some limitations with USB support though.

What really bugs me is that I cant even read a Wikipedia site anymore because of the security crap. Why is all this security needed, just to read a simple page of text and some pictures? The answer to that is IT'S NOT NEEDED. It's only needed because of all the scripts and CSS junk that's being used these days. The internet was much more secure before they began adding all that junk. And before they allowed Facebook and Google to track everyone online.

We need to go backwards if the web is going to continue being useful, but I dont see that happening, because Google, Facebook, and some others would lose money.....

[Colonel Edmund J. Burke]

Something you should shove up yer bum maybe??