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Response To California's Large-Screen TV Regulation
An anonymous reader writes "It's great that unelected bureaucrats in California are clamoring to save energy, but when they target your big-screen TVs for elimination, consumers and manufacturers are apt to declare war. CEDIA and the CEA are up in arms over this. Audioholics has an interesting response that involves setting the TVs in 'SCAM' mode to meet the energy criteria technically without having to add additional cost or increase costs to consumers. 'In this mode, the display brightness/contrast settings would be set a few clicks to the right of zero, audio would be disabled and backlighting would be set to minimum. The power consumption should be measured in this mode much like an A/V receiver power consumption is measured with one channel driven at full rated power and the other channels at 1/8th power.' This is an example of an impending train wreck of unintended consequences, and many are grabbing the popcorn and pulling up chairs to watch."
That's no longer permitted in the US.
(Apart from being a good ruling for civil liberties and privacy, Kyllo's also interesting for its strange 5-4 split: the majority, pro-civil-liberties, opinion is by Scalia, joined by Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"If you want people to use less electricity charge" We all saw how well this worked when gas prices hit $4. People are not willing to drive less or even willing to drive sanely.
"Motorists drove 112 billion fewer miles during the 13-month period between November 1, 2007 and November 30, 2008 compared with the year-prior period, the U.S. Department of Transportation said"
http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/22/news/economy/gas_use/?postversion=2009012215