Law of unintended consequences in full effect: Regulations that are written with no real understanding of the side effects.
Or, some people are just against change. I switched to CFL's as my older bulbs died which took about two years. Since then (now about 5 years) I've replaced two of the CFL's. They really do seem to last forever. At the dump you can deposit them in a separate container so that the mercury is recycled.
I've had mine in my closet and in my bathroom for about 5 years now and haven't replaced one of them yet. I have some better (i.e. more expensive ones) which are bright almost immediately. And I have some cheap ones which seem to take a while before they get bright.
Your argument is a little exagerated -- 5 million florescent light bulbs in the same landfill??? And as far as the mercury is concerned, at the current use of coal for electricity production, 5 times the amount of mercury is spewed into the air to power the difference in electricity needed for incandescent lightbulbs. And given that most counties have alternatives to disposing of the CFL bulbs so that no mercury is dumped in the landfill, the mercury argument doesn't cut it.
The Apollo program cost 98 billion in constant 2008 dollars. The bank bailout cost 750 billion. The Apollo program brought prestige, an increased interest in science, pumped up the economy and made us the most admirable nation on earth. The bank bailout brought us ridicule and disgust in the banking system and in the financial system itself. It makes me appreciate JFK all the more.
Owners of Microsoft devices over the years have always felt more compelled to whack their machines. Their next patent application will be for a "kick" gesture and finally a "throw out of window" gesture.
The kick gesture will be determined by acceleration followed by the battery being displaced or the screen cracking.
The Throw out of Window gesture will be determined by a quick acceleration, loud audible sounds not found in the audible dictionary and the loss of gravity followed by a sudden deceleration.
I wonder how much the reliance on PHP affects their performance. I know they have a PHP compiler in place and probably cache byte code in places where it's not compiled, but it still makes be wonder if PHP is/could be a bottleneck. And I think they were complaining about mysql at one point too. They've done a lot to speed it up but there are some limitations they just couldn't get around.
Zuckerberg never said anything about HTML5 performance. That was mashable. The header is very misleading. Zuckerberg was talking about mobile vrs desktop.
The answer is Eclipse, Java, the JVM, and Swing. Works great on Linux. I even think recent versions of Swing are coded to OpenGL for graphics acceleration.
You know what they say, Write Once and Run Everywhere (meaning Gnome, KDE, XFace, etc).
This is what I was thinking too. The problem, IMHO, is Oracle. I think they've scared everyone into thinking that the JRE will be limited in some way and legally encumbered so that they can monetize it. I'm not sure that's in their best interest.
Still, it's currently the best option for cross platform compatibility. Unfortunately, they never really figured out how to make Swing easy (and I say that after writing 1.3 million lines of code over the last 12 years).Oh, and while we're at it, date/time as all screwed up as is BigDecimal! Oracle, please, you can't be serious.
The patent appears to cover multi-finger gestures but, only in conjunction with a follow-up gesture (http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/13/apple-awarded-limited-patent-on-pinch-to-zoom/) Thanks to http://slashdot.org/~dhammond for pointing that out.
Thank you. It would seem that that patent would be easily avoided if you don't have the second contact after a period of time. In other words, pinch to zoom itself is not patented by Apple. It's only in conjunction with the second contact. I wasn't even aware of a second contact gesture in my Galaxy S. I wonder if the jury mis-understood the patent?
First of all, there was clear prior art which the Jury ignored or misunderstood.
Second of all, the Jury was clear that the amount of the damages was "to send a signal". Patent damages cannot be punitive.
Thirdly, since there are estimated to tbe 250,000 patents involved in the making of a smart phone, the value of 7 cannot be 1 billion dollars, even if they are of higher value that others.
Finally, a patent for a rectangle with rounded corners? Really? That won't hold up in appeal. Sorry.
In my experience, if you are kicked off a flight "for cause," they will not refund your money. And if (as I suspect) his wife could have flown, but chose not to board before him, they won't refund her money either.
This may be true, but all they need to do is find a sympathetic jury and I doubt that would be difficult here.
I agree. They did what they were paid to do and when they found no threat they let him on the plane. In my opionion, the issue is with Delta and specifically the pilot.
He was kicked off by the pilot of the plane which is completely within Delta's prerogative since you have no right to fly on their planes.
You're probably right, which is a sad state of affairs, but they had already taken his money with the agreement to provide the service he paid for. He had not broken any laws or even the terms of the agreement. It's not that I think it was smart what he did. When I went to East Germany in 1987 I made sure I didn't wear an anti-communism t-shirt at the border. The sad thing is, we are now doing and allowing the things we used to decry with the former Soviet Block.
Where did he go out of his way to be a jackass? He expressed his opinion with using offensive words or directing it at anyone in particular. When asked he changed his shirt so that short-sighted passengers would feel comfortable. Please explain.
I think the US holds the lead in libel laws (Hot Coffee at McDonalds, etc).
I really hope we can dial it back but once power is granted as we did in the "Patriot" Act it is rarely given up. But we've done it before and perhaps we can do it again.
You see the depth of the problem we are dealing with here? It's sad because the US would have so much going for it and really has done so much for science, space, medicine and quality of life. It was a great place to grow up in the 70's but it's really heading in a bad direction now.
Slashdot Mirror
Well put.
I agree that LED's don't make financial sense, but CFL's do. I don't know the costs in the states, but in Germany they are between 2 and 3 euros.
Law of unintended consequences in full effect: Regulations that are written with no real understanding of the side effects.
Or, some people are just against change. I switched to CFL's as my older bulbs died which took about two years. Since then (now about 5 years) I've replaced two of the CFL's. They really do seem to last forever. At the dump you can deposit them in a separate container so that the mercury is recycled.
I live in Germany and the CFL's for standard sizes cost 2-3 euros. Where are you paying $23? Seems like a lot.
I've had mine in my closet and in my bathroom for about 5 years now and haven't replaced one of them yet. I have some better (i.e. more expensive ones) which are bright almost immediately. And I have some cheap ones which seem to take a while before they get bright.
Your argument is a little exagerated -- 5 million florescent light bulbs in the same landfill??? And as far as the mercury is concerned, at the current use of coal for electricity production, 5 times the amount of mercury is spewed into the air to power the difference in electricity needed for incandescent lightbulbs. And given that most counties have alternatives to disposing of the CFL bulbs so that no mercury is dumped in the landfill, the mercury argument doesn't cut it.
The Apollo program cost 98 billion in constant 2008 dollars. The bank bailout cost 750 billion. The Apollo program brought prestige, an increased interest in science, pumped up the economy and made us the most admirable nation on earth. The bank bailout brought us ridicule and disgust in the banking system and in the financial system itself. It makes me appreciate JFK all the more.
It clears says it's a patent application:
another random user writes with news of a patent application from Microsoft
Owners of Microsoft devices over the years have always felt more compelled to whack their machines. Their next patent application will be for a "kick" gesture and finally a "throw out of window" gesture.
The kick gesture will be determined by acceleration followed by the battery being displaced or the screen cracking.
The Throw out of Window gesture will be determined by a quick acceleration, loud audible sounds not found in the audible dictionary and the loss of gravity followed by a sudden deceleration.
I wonder how much the reliance on PHP affects their performance. I know they have a PHP compiler in place and probably cache byte code in places where it's not compiled, but it still makes be wonder if PHP is/could be a bottleneck. And I think they were complaining about mysql at one point too. They've done a lot to speed it up but there are some limitations they just couldn't get around.
Zuckerberg never said anything about HTML5 performance. That was mashable. The header is very misleading. Zuckerberg was talking about mobile vrs desktop.
Zuckerberg didn't say HTML5 wasn't ready. They stuck in a mashable quote hoping to make it look like it was Zuckerbergs.
Zuckerberg did say native but he was clearly talking about mobile apps (which are of course native).
C'mon Slashdot, that kind of stuff really makes you look bad.
The answer is Eclipse, Java, the JVM, and Swing. Works great on Linux. I even think recent versions of Swing are coded to OpenGL for graphics acceleration.
You know what they say, Write Once and Run Everywhere (meaning Gnome, KDE, XFace, etc).
This is what I was thinking too. The problem, IMHO, is Oracle. I think they've scared everyone into thinking that the JRE will be limited in some way and legally encumbered so that they can monetize it. I'm not sure that's in their best interest.
Still, it's currently the best option for cross platform compatibility. Unfortunately, they never really figured out how to make Swing easy (and I say that after writing 1.3 million lines of code over the last 12 years).Oh, and while we're at it, date/time as all screwed up as is BigDecimal! Oracle, please, you can't be serious.
Oops, I have to correct myself on that. It appears that that was a different patent which patents multitouch with a second gesture.
The patent appears to cover multi-finger gestures but, only in conjunction with a follow-up gesture (http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/13/apple-awarded-limited-patent-on-pinch-to-zoom/) Thanks to http://slashdot.org/~dhammond for pointing that out.
Thank you. It would seem that that patent would be easily avoided if you don't have the second contact after a period of time. In other words, pinch to zoom itself is not patented by Apple. It's only in conjunction with the second contact. I wasn't even aware of a second contact gesture in my Galaxy S. I wonder if the jury mis-understood the patent?
"Appeal"
First of all, there was clear prior art which the Jury ignored or misunderstood.
Second of all, the Jury was clear that the amount of the damages was "to send a signal". Patent damages cannot be punitive.
Thirdly, since there are estimated to tbe 250,000 patents involved in the making of a smart phone, the value of 7 cannot be 1 billion dollars, even if they are of higher value that others.
Finally, a patent for a rectangle with rounded corners? Really? That won't hold up in appeal. Sorry.
Would if kill you to click on the link? Sheesh!
In my experience, if you are kicked off a flight "for cause," they will not refund your money. And if (as I suspect) his wife could have flown, but chose not to board before him, they won't refund her money either.
This may be true, but all they need to do is find a sympathetic jury and I doubt that would be difficult here.
I agree. They did what they were paid to do and when they found no threat they let him on the plane. In my opionion, the issue is with Delta and specifically the pilot.
He was kicked off by the pilot of the plane which is completely within Delta's prerogative since you have no right to fly on their planes.
You're probably right, which is a sad state of affairs, but they had already taken his money with the agreement to provide the service he paid for. He had not broken any laws or even the terms of the agreement. It's not that I think it was smart what he did. When I went to East Germany in 1987 I made sure I didn't wear an anti-communism t-shirt at the border. The sad thing is, we are now doing and allowing the things we used to decry with the former Soviet Block.
I see you didn't read the article.
Where did he go out of his way to be a jackass? He expressed his opinion with using offensive words or directing it at anyone in particular. When asked he changed his shirt so that short-sighted passengers would feel comfortable. Please explain.
I think the US holds the lead in libel laws (Hot Coffee at McDonalds, etc).
I really hope we can dial it back but once power is granted as we did in the "Patriot" Act it is rarely given up. But we've done it before and perhaps we can do it again.
You see the depth of the problem we are dealing with here? It's sad because the US would have so much going for it and really has done so much for science, space, medicine and quality of life. It was a great place to grow up in the 70's but it's really heading in a bad direction now.