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Ok - so I got really busy with work (promotion and all) for a few months, then I come back to see what's happening on the forum and its...castrated!  What happened?  My avatar and sig don't show, I go to check my profile settings and can't type anything in the sig because it instantly disappears, several of the sub-forums are just GONE.

Can somebody share?  What happened to this place?

Agreed, however - gotta come up with a structure that avoids the easy temptation of corruption and abuse of the system.  When I used to live in Florida, there was a recycling center in south FL that was subsidized by the county.  Somebody did an audit, and they found that the money the county had paid the center was far more than the center's own records showed that they had taken in in recyclables.  The owner made hundreds of thousands of dollars, and only got a slap on the hand as punishment.  Some sort of fine as I recall.

Even worse - get this - that site was found to be a source of groundwater contamination.  Leaking barrels of solvents were found "out back" of their offices - evidently they didn't want to spend the money to ship the used solvents to an incinerator facility, so just piled 'em up in the brush behind the building.  The GOVERNMENT would have paid the incineration fees - all this place had to pay for was the shipping - but that would have prevented the owner from installing those new lacquered mahogany rails on his yacht.

Another thought that's kinda related on power strips.  If you notice glitches or pixellation in your cable TV signal, and the company has already looked at it and said they found no problems, and you plug your cable into a power strip before it goes to your TV - try direct-connecting without the power strip.  The problem will often go away.  Why?  Crappy power strip, or power strip that is past it's recommended life cycle.

Matter of fact, some cable companies have listed exactly that in their "book of solutions" (that binder that the guy in India to whom the Help Desk troubleshooting job has been outsourced and is useless without).  "Do you have your cable plugged into a power strip?"   "Yes"  "Please unplug it from the power strip and plug it directly into your television or cable modem"   "We cannot be held responsible for problems originating from non-recommended equipment."

And some of 'em actually have the balls to send you a bill if the strip proves to be the problem.

It interferes with the signal. Depending on what type you get also matters.

That's sort of correct.  I'm in the telecommunications industry - work for a large manufacturer of physical layer equipment, and am an RCDD. 

Whenever we design the cable plant structure for a new building, if budget permits, ALL incoming POTS lines (Plain Old Telephone Service) are both properly grounded and run through solid-state protectors.  Further, all active electronics (routers, switches, etc.) are ALWAYS run via UPS.  Most folks never know this, because most folks never venture into Telecom Rooms (a.k.a. wiring closets).  Also, many buildings are built on a shoe-string budget, so quite often the first things that are considered optional and are quickly axed are things like UPS's and protectors.

In short - it's NOT the type that matters, it's the quality.  There are hootty protectors, and hootty UPS's..lots of 'em.  For UPS's I'd recommend APC, and some models of Belkin.  One other thing that can cause issues like described previously - connecting a power strip to a UPS.  Never, ever do that.  You may as well just throw away the UPS.  It eliminates the ability of the UPS to learn the properties of the incoming and outgoing power, which also eliminates the ability of the UPS to use the proper clamping voltage(s) in event of surge/spike.

Further - be aware that protectors, power strips, and UPS's all have finite life cycles.  They wear out, and when they do they're simply expensive (or not-so-expensive) paperweights.  I suspect that when you say "interferes with the signal" it's actually because the unit is past it's rated life-cycle, or is/was crap to begin with.

And a final thought - if you think you need a new UPS - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't pitch the old one out with the trash.  Call a recycling center or the manufacturer to determine the best way to dispose of it properly.  Like other computer parts, UPS's are full of heavy metals and really nasty hoot that leaches down through soil and gets into the water supply.  Many of these metals are never tested-for by local health authorities until strange maladies begin to occur that cause them to begin testing.  And by then it's too late.