Slashdot Mirror

I just installed a bunch of these downlights in my condo. Four 6" in the livingroom and two 4" in a hallway. They are designed to work in a regular 4" electrical box or an existing 5" or 6" recessed can. They give off a great light at 2700K in a broad spread and are dimmable which is great since the 6" ones are very bright.

I'm renovating and going LED exclusively and I'm finding out that there is now LED options for most types of fixtures. I've also installed a fluorescent circline replacement in a fixture in the bedroom and will be putting in some halogen bulb LED replacements as well.

It's more expensive than traditional bulbs but still a fraction of the total renovation budget to go LED and since I only plan on doing it once I might as well do it right. We'll see if I regret being an early adopter in 5 years or so but as it stands now I'm hoping I won't have to replace a bulb for at least 20-30 years.

Yet another strong example of Liberal Fascism at work. More examples of a government hell-bent on solving some kind of problem that would have solved itself eventually, destroying jobs and making the lives of the poor worse in the process.

I personally am not effected too much by the ban - I've already been using LED and CFL bulbs where they make sense (basically a CFL makes sense anywhere you almost never have to use the light or look at anything illuminated by it). But then I can afford a $50 light bulb instead of a 60 cent one...

What will the poor do? They will use ultra-crappy CFL bulbs that don't last any longer than an incandescent yet cost 10x as much, or else make do with discarded Christmas lights for illumination instead.

That in the end is the real tragedy of overbearing government regulations. The well off can easily find a way to skirt them while the quality of life for the poor ratchets ever downward.

If you wonder why the government is doing this, wonder no more when a government subsidy is created to funnel taxpayer money to CFL makers "for the poor".

Recommended reading, has a whole section on how choropleth maps can be manipulated to suit an agenda: http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Maps-2nd-Edition/dp/0226534219

http://www.amazon.com/The-Puzzle-Palace-Intelligence-Organization/dp/0140067485

1st edition on Amazon

• Missile Command (Google Play or Amazon)
• Missile Defense (Google Play)
• Thwaite (NES ROM with source code, runs in NES emulators for Android)

Please read this, seriously just give it a try. http://www.amazon.com/Assignment-Utopia-Eugene-Lyons/dp/0887388566

I'll never understand the fascination with beverage container designs that encourage spilling. Ever since getting a Highwave Hotjo several years ago, I've been able to keep coffee (or masala tea more often these days) next to my electronics projects all day. Its shape resists spilling and it even has a nonskid mat on the bottom. I've had mine for, gosh, probably six or seven years and it's still as good as new.

Temperature stability seems likle a great idea, but this vessel design only seems well-suited for an automotive cupholder.

The two layers of porcelain, which are separated by a hollow cavity, act as a perfect insulator for hot and cold beverages and ensure that you wonâ(TM)t burn your fingers. A silicone stopper in the cupâ(TM)s base prevents water from entering the hollow cavity when washing the mug.

So, take out the plug, fill with melted wax, replace plug, and enjoy?

Hmm... Are you willing to pay some 3 orders of magnitude more for 4 non-crap twsited pairs made of pure* 99,99999999999678774% copper, plus only the finest nylon money can buy from a factory in China, the finest gold plating in the world and a RJ-45 connector, crimped to perfection by Japanese crimping masters, with an unbreakable tab. Plus, an engineer** will personally test the cable and hand-paint arrows on it so that you know in which direction the data flows better, allowing you to experience more of your audiovisual library than you thought possible. We'll also throw in free shipping if you live in the US. If you're really lucky, your cable works just as well in either direction, so it's like playing the lottery, only better! ***

http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Cable-Version/dp/B000I1X6PM

* Purity may vary between 98,0% and 100%
** Is not guaranteed to be an electrotechnical engineer. May be some schmo who draws nice arrows, under supervision from a civil engineer or a robot who has been taught to draw arrows and is supervised by the janitor who was taught to press a red button in the event of a breach of Asimov's laws of robotics.
*** Purchasing this cable is nothing like playing the lottery, playing the lottery gives you an tiny chance of something good coming out of your investment.

The Elements of Style. Your ponderous prose is an affront to literacy. Every time I see that you've posted something I wonder if you've finally realized that quantity does not equal quality. You may get paid by the word elsewhere, but not here.

I might even bother to read what you write if you would just, for the sake of all that is good in this world, be concise. ARRRGGGHHH!

How many days straight do you think you can power my air conditioning from $5 worth of electricity?

Consumer electricity pricing runs around $0.09/KwH (give or take). That means running a gizmo which draws 1000 Watts will cost you $0.09 cents an hour to run. A 5000 BTU air conditioner pulls about 1500 watts which works out to about $0.13 cents/hour. So, you could get roughly about 38 hours of cool air for $5.00; if your AC runs constantly. Most shut off for short periods so we're considering worst case scenario.

Your "rhetorical" answer to your question only reveals that you do not understand the law.

First we must remember that the rubric "corporation", includes not only Microsoft and Wal-Mart, but also universities, hospitals, churches, municipalities, and clubs. The first corporation to assert constitutional rights in the US Supreme Court was not a business. It was Dartmouth College. ("It is a small college, but there are those that love it." - Daniel Webster).

Corporations are associations of natural persons (i.e. individual human beings), who themselves have full legal capacity and who themselves bear "rights". The associates include the directors and officers of the corporation.

Granting them corporate personhood allows them to own property and enter into contracts in their roles in the association. The Latin word for a role is "persona".

Doing this allows the property and contracts to inhere in the association so that if an individual dies or retires from his role, the property and contracts automatically transfer to the next individual who holds that role. If we did not do this, the property and contracts of the association would have to go through probate if one of the associates were to die, or be deeded for every resignation, or even worse, be subject to litigation.

The underlying social logic of this type of legal structure has been laid out by Nobel Prize winning economist Douglass North. In his view the open availability of institutional structures like the corporation is one of the hallmarks of advanced societies like the US. The lack of these structures defines base state societies like Afghanistan, Syria, and Sudan. See "Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History" by North, Wallis, & Weingast.

IAAL. As Chief Justice Coke explained to King James I, (see "Prohibitions del Roy"), issues concerning the life, liberty, and property of citizens, are not decided by the King's natural reason, but by the artificial reason and judgment of Law, which is mastered only by long study and labor. But, the Law is the golden measure that protects everyone, governor and governed alike, in safety and peace.

C'mon tepples, you should know better than to believe FUD stories.

Especially since you can still buy the things, now, a whole year later.
look, it's an endangered species!

I spent all of about 4 minutes looking. All it means is that production of that form factor isn't manstream. That's not surprising, because the need for a purposefully crippled laptop is a niche market to behin with. Thankfully it is a niche that many workplaces have a need for. We have 3 such netbooks on carts running PCDemis for use with mobile Romer CMM arms for instance. There's also the potential in educational settings and the like. The mainstream wants their devices to play candy crush, and play 1080p videos off youtube. The niche buyers DON'T want the device to do that, for many differing reasons. ;)

Applications were called apps for short long before iOS 2 introduced the App Store. See, for example, Unleashing the Killer App by Downes and Mui, first published in 2000.

The beauty of digital audio is that there's always an analog connection to the device that generates the sound. That means it's always possible to introduce a filter that adjusts the volume without Spotify being able to detect it. If you're listening with headphones, get something like this. If you're listening through a receiver, use its volume control.

You are oversimplifying human psychology. For one thing, the laws have a normative function apart from the practical cost/benefit equation of getting caught, and that also affects human behaviour. As are you the situation with the carpenters; someone might walk in on them, or I might have a camera, the effect of which is much greater when I have the support of the state to prosecute them if they steal.

I can recommend you to read Liars and Outliers, by Bruce Schneier, for an extensive treatment of how trust is created and works in modern society.

Saying "don't take nude pics if you don't want people seeing nude pics of you" doesn't really make an argument. My point is: why should we limit ourself to that narrow dichotomy when we don't need to? It's stupid and unnecessary. Sure people "are always going to do what feels good", including sharing nude pics of themselves to people they love in the expectation that they are kept private. Why should they be punished for it (by ridicule and shame) instead of (by law) the douche bag who intentionally and maliciously spread them? Yes, it's always going to be some risk having nude pics of you exist somewhere, obviously, but so what? You haven't really answered why you think it is such a good idea to allow revenge porn in the first place. Instead, you are blaming the victim, which I actually find rather distasteful -- a bit like "if you didn't want to get raped, why did you wear such a short skirt?".

Really paranoid developers don't trust that one either. We use good-old fashioned dead trees for our random numbers!

So clearly I must be imagining the Samsung WI-FI All-Share Cast Hub, Wireless HDMI Display Adapter, which...and I quote, "Mirrors phone screen on HDTV".

Religion and Science do not have to be at odds. They answer fundamentally different questions.

Science tells us how atoms interact, how planets form, how electricity works. Religion gives it all meaning, helps answer questions of morality, and fill the need of mythology in our daily lives. Joseph Campbell has written a lot about mythology in the modern day.

The 14th Dalai Lama has written about the intersection of Religion and Science in his book, The Universe in a Single Atom. One of the core concepts of the book is that if science disproves something in a religious text, then the religion should be revised.

It's really worth a read, but the trolls running around mocking people with their Flying Spaghetti Monster nonsense will never bother to see what a very reasonable religious leader has to say. They're too busy giggling to themselves about how smart and better they are than other people.

Because of the idea contained in this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot To overly clarify, the burden of proof should be on the person making the statement.

We throw the word science around a lot, but this is my view of what it really is: a method for choosing what to believe. Religion is a little bit more than this. It implies that certain methods are necessary, and states what to believe. Science does not do this directly. It does not enumerate what to believe. It only states indirectly, by saying you only should believe this if it follows these guidelines.

Some people who are rightly called scientists use the "scientific method" to choose what to believe about some subset of their life, while not using the scientific method to determine what to believe about metaphysics. IE, some people are scientists and religious. And, there are some people who would split hairs about what reason is vs what science is, whatever.

The punch line is, as a method for choosing what to believe, it comes into conflict with religions, whose implied methods are mutually exclusive with science. Not that people don't try to mix the two.

Dawkin's point is that science is a much better, by large margins, method for choosing what to believe. He might say, the only correct method. This was also the subject of Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World. The difference is that Carl Sagan manages to make his point without coming off like an obnoxious twit. I do like Dawkins, but he can seem pushy and militant.

So, science doesn't have to disprove something to suggest that you shouldn't believe it. To overly simplify it, most people would say the method, science that is, says that religious people do not have valid reasons for believing what the believe. You don't have to agree with the point, that science is a much better method, to understand the motivation. Moreover, the meta point is that if all people had a much better method for choosing what to believe, then everyone would benefit. Carl Sagan makes the point, with many cases, that irrational thought, motivated by religion, caused mass suffering.

People might read his books because he could be right, that science is a much better method, and benefit as a result. Also, I believe you don't have to fully agree with someone to learn something from them. So, they might read his books to expose themselves to a wider range of philosophies. I literally die inside with disagreement with Descartes, but he was still worth reading. However, I would suggest Carl Sagan's book more than any other book in the genre that says theistic thinking is dangerous, because he is more articulate and less obnoxious.

Rush's books, on the other hand, are intellectually light polemics stuffed end-to-end with sophistry whose goal isn't to enlighten but possibly to entertain or to gratify by validating prejudices while simultaneously branding through anger so that the reader will purchase more media from Rush. I believe that Dawkins really does believe that society would be better off if they used science to decide what to believe and not faith.

At the risk of saying even more than I should say to convey my point, to put it on its head, the point is, if you didn't use science to arrive at your current belief, you shouldn't believe it.

He had previous shipping-industry experience and liked the job for the first six months, but then he said the productivity rate abruptly doubled one day from 250 units per hour for smaller items to 500 units per hour.

Speed it up a little!

I read a study once (in this excellent book) that students who took classes about logical fallacies were no more able to recognize fallacies after the class than before. So I think it helps to at least have a class that discusses concrete applications, rather than abstract critical thinking.

Similar to this class, if they talk about abstract things like class hierarchies or introspection, everyone will be bored. But if they talk about making games (or whatever teenagers are interested in) then some people might learn some things.

Progress in what sense? Perhaps you will want to look into some history there? The very point of "progressive" these days is to not be obvious.

Yeah, great, Everything I really Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten.
http://www.amazon.com/Really-Need-Know-Learned-Kindergarten/dp/034546639X

It's not a terrible idea to codify good behavior. Those of us who don't believe in inherent good and evil -- rather that things are "good" or "evil" based on what happens to us when we do them -- could easily teach ourselves that stealing is good. We'd steal things, and we'd benefit from the theft, and we'd possibly not feel the consequences. Stealing sure seems good when you're young and short-sighted.

It takes some experience to understand that making stealing "evil" (as opposed to it just being evil) is because we can all produce more grain and tend our animals easier if we don't have to sleep with one eye open.

You need a STABLE environment for hundreds of millions of years, and probably oceans, not lakes.

Not according to Hollywood: Red Planet (2000)

Good point about Microsoft not known for providing decent support.

Sports bra heart rate monitors are old hat, you can even get them on Amazon. Comments show that they provide great support even for large chested ladies, and are thin enough your nipples still show through.

I'm not sure I would wear a bra that told me I was overeating. I am thinking that one would stay in the closet, especially when I felt most like overeating.

He's not talking about an ANCD or other transfer device. He's talking about our Common Access Cards (CAC), by which we authenticate to DoD resources on the Web. The CAC has an encryption chip embedded in it, as well as some storage for certificates. I have a Smartcard reader attached to a USB port on my computer. When I need to get into a military website, I place my CAC in the reader. Windows 7 and 8 have built-in drivers for smart cards, and the web site will send a request for authentication to my computer. It will intercept the request and ask me to unlock my CAC. I enter my PIN, the CAC does it's PKI thing with my private certificate, and I have access to the website.

Most, if not all, federal agencies are moving to the Multi-factor authentication model, where we not only have to have the "something I know" piece, but the "something I have" piece, in this case, the CAC.

Or the method of monitoring the exits of airports in Neal Stephenson's REAMDE.

For each station, we have (priced at Newark):
$40 Raspberry Pi B w/ NOOBS SD card.
$25 Camera module
$34 Piface display/control (seriously? why? aren't they controlled over the network? why aren't they headless? Oh, right: because this whole project is advertisement for Piface, even though their hardware contributes nothing of value to it...)

Making a total of $99 at each station. That's not counting ethernet cable, switches, and for no obvious reason, a separate 5V PSU for each Pi -- I left that out of the per-station cost, because anyone sane would use one power supply for multiple stations.

Now for $99, I can damn sure buy a cheap digital camera for each station, (and an SD card for each of them, if necessary), and have larger sensors, better glass, and crazy features like not being fixed-focus vs. the Raspberry Pi camera module. Sadly, remote shutter is not a common thing on the sort of cheap camera we're looking at, so some hardware hacking (*gasp*) might be required, and many camera models have issues like automatic power off that will make your life miserable -- so for an arbitrary cheap camera, this is better in some ways, worse in others, and not necessarily better on the whole. But with CHDK, we can beat it easily.

It'd be great if we had $120 a station -- for that money, we can easily rock CHDK. $99 is just on the edge, but I think you can find CHDK-compatible Canons for less (e.g. this one; note that other colors are cheaper, but very limited quantity, and without more research, I'm not sure that any of them will actually have firmware revisions supported by CHDK) -- if so, or if we can agree that the combination of better image quality, extra features, and reduced ethernet hardware, is worth a few extra bucks, you should have two options:
1. use USB hubs with CHDK's PTP extensions to control multiple CHDK-loaded cameras from each Raspberry Pi -- this will allow staggering individual cameras for the true bullet-time effect where the viewpoint revolves around a slow-motion (not completely frozen) subject, as well as the all-at-once mode described in TFA, and any combination.
2. forget the Raspberry Pis, and control the cameras using CHDK's USB remote shutter capability -- this is very simple in the all-at-once case, as you can simply wire 48 USB ports to a single 5V PSU, and switch it on and off. The proper effect is a little more complicated, but still no-CPU-required, e.g. use a single debounced pushbutton to generate a pulse, and clock source + a half-dozen 8-bit shift registers to sequence that pulse to all 48 USB cables. Or use a microcontroller with those shift registers to generate the pulse and the clock -- by varying the clock, you speed/slow the ratio of subject motion to viewpoint motion. Or use a microcontroller with enough GPIO to control all the cameras directly.

And this book

Actually, typos have nothing to do with anyone's linguistic skills. If you want to improve your linguistic skills, you buy something like this, not a spell checker.

At least he's not a neckbeard like you...

would it be possible to generalize this design to drive an array, of -- say -- 10 or 20 RGB LEDs ?

Sure. Addressable LED strings are cheap, and widely used for annoying blinking holiday decorations. If you don't want to solder, here's an assembled USB light string controller.

When doctors or nurses use their knowledge of anatomy in order to torture or conduct medical experiments on helpless subjects, we are rightly outraged. Why doesn't society seem to apply the same standards to engineers?

Whenever I read something like this, I immediately think of Florman's "Existential Pleasures of Engineering" despite the title, Florman's book is rooted is actually a spirited apology for the engineering profession in an age where everyone was lamenting all the modern horrors that those damned engineers could have prevented if they had just be more ethical.

As Florman notes, there has been a large focus for the past half-century on making engineers more ethically aware, and it's mostly pointless. Despite what most people seem to believe engineers are not philosopher kings any more than Technology is some sort of self-sufficient, self-empowering beast working counter to the benefits human society. Both do exactly what the rest of society tells (read: pays, begs, and orders) them to do, and nothing more. And while you don't see many engineers saying this -- because when someone tells them that they run the world and hold the future of all man kind in their hands, people are disinclined to temper their ego and deny it -- we only do what the suits pay us to do, and if we don't do that they fire us and move on to someone else who will.

Let's ask this another way: why aren't business men considering the ethical implications of their investments? Why aren't militaries, bureaucracies, and governments considering the ethical implications of their orders? Why isn't the average person taking five minutes to understand a problem now so he doesn't demand government, the market, and God on high give him an answer that he's going to hate more than the original problem a year from now?

Every profession has ethical considerations. More ink has been spilled and time spent on the subject of ethics in engineering and practical sciences than any discipline save medicine. And yet it does not solve the problem and will not solve the problem because that is not where the problem lies.

Not only is there no ban on firearms in DC, there is not citation you can give to back up your claims. Please prove me wrong.

Done and done. Check out Emily Gets Her Gun, which is a book about the topic. Asshole.

Emily Gets Her Gun is a book on the topic. The author tried to get a handgun permit in DC and detailed the obstruction she was given by the city government, who is acting as though the handgun ban was never overturned.

This mitigates the problem a little bit...

I have too many factual objections to that essay than I really have space to list here. I'll start by pointing you here: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/want-to-know-about-nazi-germanys-real.html

For a more direct, if slightly drier source, you could also consider reading Mein Kampf: http://www.amazon.com/Mein-Kampf-Adolf-Hitler/dp/0395925037/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386185965&sr=8-1&keywords=mein+kampf

If that's not enough I could go on a rant about how confused you are about modern liberals.

So buy a cable. Gosh, some people expect everything to be just handed to them.

Yep, I've been doing that for years and my i7 laptop still compiles nearly as fast as my desktop. They make devices to help with that: http://www.amazon.com/b?node=2243862011

Though I don't quite get the Lenovo docking station which wraps plastic around the cooling vents in my work laptop.

yes, for sale on amazon for $466,
http://www.amazon.com/Epson-V11H423020-Moverio-See-Through-Wearable/dp/B007ORN0LS

2 stars from 5 reviews.

these are nothing like google glass. this is like saying "i know you wanted a new bicycle, but this fruit cup is for sale NOW and at a lower cost!"

i know the level here is low recently... but an old product is news? with an hour long commercial introduction before the no-infomation video?!?!

here is the fucking product page link http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Moverio/Home.do (with no information such as file type, etc)

and here is the $500 amazon page selling it with fucking reviews http://www.amazon.com/Epson-V11H423020-Moverio-See-Through-Wearable/dp/B007ORN0LS

Use regular cable trays but cover the bottom/sides with peel-and-stick brick wallpaper/contact paper Sounds stupid but just might work -- cheap too..

I like these trays better.

I might not bother trying to find beautiful trays, but instead find regular ones, then decorate!

Take something like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003AU3HG6?ie=UTF8&camp=213733&creative=393185&creativeASIN=B003AU3HG6&linkCode=shr&tag=preinheimerco-20&qid=1386087250&sr=8-5&keywords=wire+tray

Then put these underneath: http://www.whatisblik.com/shop/explore?theme=77

Turn your office ceiling into a pacman arena!

The book were published in 2009, the agent that prevented her entry specifically referred to a hospitalization that took place in 2012. How did they know about events that should be shielded under patient privacy laws and took place years after publishing of mentioned book? Unless you can point to a source describing her 2012 hospitalization that were publicly available at the time of her entry denial, then I'd say that her story have a very interesting place in this matter.

Well, that is the current dream of many.. find ways to have all the benefits of operating in the US without paying for it. Taxes are something that it is in one's best interest to have other people paying.

I don't mind paying taxes, and wouldn't mind paying a standard VAT to sell anywhere in the US. But the local US sales tax laws are a complete clusterfuck. When I'm selling books in various locations, I have to dig up the tax rate for that location It's a hassle, but doable, but some states are really fucked up.

New York is one of them.

Sales tax varies depending on which county, in some cases which city or which part of the city you're in. Tax rates coded to zip codes don't work...some zipcodes span localities with wildly varying sales tax rates. I'lliinois is better, but still, rates vary depending on whether you're in Chicago proper, one of the suburbs, or one of the localities downstate.

Multiply this complexity by 50 states and you begin to realize what a complete clusterfuck it is for any small online buisiness to try and cope with. Shipping a package to Bumblefuck, Nebraska? What's the sales tax? How about Buttfuck, New York? Good luck.

Impose a national VAT of x percent, and kick back some or all of it to the states, and ban local sales taxes of any kind. This needs to be vastly simplified. Even if it were 50 states and 50 different sales tax rates that would be doable, but with many dozens of different sales tax venues with varying rates in New York alone, and plenty of states like Illiinois with a few cities that impose their own surtax to the state rate, figuring this crap out is a nightmare on the best of days. If every state is allowed to impose its taxes on all online folks, only the big players like Amazon will be able to cope. The rest of us, and most new startups, will crumble under the burden.

Where do you get warehouses from?

I buy my warehouses on Amazon.com

"it would be a lot easier to steal from a drone"

Steal from a drone?

First time around, order item (A):

Next time around order item (B): http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Strike-Anywhere-Matches-1-Box/dp/B00DII0BA0/>

Crouch in the bushes and use (A) to catch the drone. Then resell it on eBay. Use (B) to burn (A) to get rid of the evidence.

will be this.