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In the UK, you can still buy a 64Oz Club Hammer or a 16Oz Rubber Mallet, and a 800-pound gorilla is still a 800-pound gorilla

Not sure I've seen hammers sold by the Oz here.

Here you go, B&Q - http://www.diy.com/departments...

And Wickes as well - http://www.wickes.co.uk/Produc...

And the 800lb gorilla is an adopted American phrase: when we condescend to do imperial, we don't half-arse it so we measure body weight in stone.

Its still the same, regardless of the reason.

I can go to my local hardware store and buy an Light Switch for £2.25 ($2.80) and it will sit, maintenance free, in my living room wall for several decades and uses zero electricity for the switch itself. Unless you are outside my house and can see the light that it controls you have no idea if it is switched on or off and thus if I am probably at home.

I can order one and buy one that connects via my wifi for $49.99 (£40.20) that I control via my mobile 'phone, so always using a not-disclosed amount of electricity. How long will Belkin support the switch through their servers ? If they did support it for 10 years I would be surprised, so in a few years I will need to replace it with something new. Some of these also demand some sort of subscription. Whoever operates the servers know the state of the switch and how it has changed recently and so if it is likely that I am not at home .... if not send round their mate Burglar Bill.

I would be surprise if Sodium Hydroxide got you on a watch list anywhere. In the UK you can buy it in granular form at the large DIY chain stores (hardware store if you are state side), for example

http://www.diy.com/departments...

Quick check shows all the local stores have it in stock. Spending a day driving around I could accumulated in excess of 20kg of the stuff in a day using cash if I wanted.

Don't forget this the UK; crowbars may be a bit difficult to come by.

Pretty much any anyDIY store will have them :)

I agree with most of what you wrote, nevertheless, it is true that CFLs can take a long time to warm up.

It is a particular problem for the physically smaller CFLs. Manufacturers are doing all they can to get the size down so that they fit in the same space as an incandescent bulb, but as they reduce the size so the startup time seems to increase.

These small bulbs are the ones that are particularly difficult to replace with CFLs. Mind you, if I had my tinfoil hat handly I would probably claim that GE and the like are deliberately obstructing the adoption of CFLs by making conventional bulbs smaller and encouraging light fitting manufacturers to make their fittings smaller to suit.

The other problem I have is that the centre of the region from which the light is emitted is always further from the base of the light fitting than with an incandescent bulb. Even the most compact CFLs have this problem. It isn't the size of the tube that is at fault. It is the size of the bulbous plastic bit just behind (which I believe contains the ballast).

The effect is that when you put a CFL in a conventional light fitting, the light emerges at the wrong angle. It is particularly noticable with uplighters.

Having said that, I'm replacing all of the incandescent bulbs in my house with CFLs.

And they ARE cheap.

Infact, I was looking around B&Q this weekend for a shower and found that for some crazy reason, the electric showers on show were _cheaper_ than mixer showers (electric showers were 120-200ukp, mixer showers were more like 180-300ukp).

Meanwhile, electric on-demand water heaters to replace a hot water cylinder + immersion heater are nowhere to be found... very strange.

And i think you get 30% off through grants:
http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav/nav.jsp?action=d etail&fh_secondid=9330400&fh_location=%2F%2Fcatalo g01%2Fen_GB%2Fcategories%3C8530236%2Fcategories%3C 9050001&fh_eds=%C3%9F&fh_refview=lister&ts=1159984 743563

This is a bran dnew thing, saw one in the store at the weekend, looks pretty sturdy, im sure there are downsides, but you can now walk into your high st UK store and order a wind turbine. I can imagine them dropping in price big time over the next 5 years.

I want a solar powered light bulb.

So go buy one then, what's stopping you?
There's a fair selection at the B&Q store in Britain, here

I love how out of puritanical fear that people will get drunk (and probably have sex) we put something that will instead make them blind or dead. What a country.

They do that in Britain too; although here it has a lot more to do with the fact that spirits are taxed to the gills... quote:-

"The excise tax today, literally today, on a 70 cl bottle of Sainsbury's vodka in Aberdeen is 84 per cent."

Needless to say, you don't get charged that if you pop over to B&Q for some luridly-coloured purple alcohol.

No B&Qs in the US.
However The Home Depot use exactly the same store layouts/staff uniforms/color schemes/carts/baskets/logos, etc.
In fact, they're so identical that there's clearly plaigarism involved by one side somewhere...

Note the identical color schemes at Home Depot's website and B&Q's website

Hey,

Who shall reward them? If you want to reward them, that's fine. But why should I be forced to do so? To compel me to reward them amounts to a gross imposition on my own liberties.

I believe the idea is you only reward them (i.e. give them money) if you use thier invention.

Let me put ut another way... say you invent something simple, but which no-one has come up with before. For example, a work bench which has a vice in the middle.

In a world without IP, that work bench is simply two bits of wood, some metal legs, and some plastic handles. Value: Less than £10. And that's a high estimate.

But during production, value is added to those bits of wood, metal and plastic. Thier value increases from £10 to £30.

That increase is caused by IP.

In other words, the inventor of the bench has contributed two thirds of it's value. In a world without IP, he would have no right to any of that.

Inventors should be rewarded because it is thier product (IP) which turns raw materials (wood and metal) into products (work benches) people want.

Why shouldn't you compensate them, when you benefit from thier work?

Michael