Don't most CFL's contain a small amount of mercury? What are we supposed to do with them when they go bad/break/whatever? Maybe this should also come with a CFL recycling bill.
Incandescent bulbs produce more mercurcy waste than CFL.
I use CFLs here at home. Have for years. But the idea of making incandescents illegal is ridiculous.
No, it's not ridiculous. Roughly 15% of electricity produced in the USA is wasted on lighting. President Bush set a goal in the SOTU address to reduce energy consumption. Part of this process is new technologies. Another part is using less energy. Banning incandescents - especially halogens, one of the worst offenders for home lighting - will work wonders towards that second part.
Consider that there are similar bans on certain types of engines, similar bans on certain types of factory, similar bans on certain types of appliances. Sometimes society needs a push in the right direction and that's exactly what a government is supposed to assist with.
I'm actually impressed for the first time in 6 years with something the US government has done.
Re:Where's the need come from?
on
Water From Wind
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· Score: 1
Forgive me for being unaware of this impending catatrophe, but is there really an urgent issue? Is this mainly happening in Australia?
In Australia? Yes, we are in yet another round of nationwide droughts. This is pretty typical for Australia. We're one of the driest countries on the planet.
What should I be bracing myself for? Floods or droughts? I need to know what I should panic about. Thanks.
In Australia? Both. Droughts last about 5 years, then a catastrophic flood kills off whatever managed to survive the drought.
And if the droughts and floods don't get you, we've get 9 of the world's 10 most poisonous snakes, and 10 of the world's 10 most poisonous sea creatures.
Also we've got drop bears. If you seek shade beneath a tree, for god's sake, wear a hat.
This might be controversial but I think top-level domains -.com,.edu,.gov,.org,.net - are all a bad idea. It's a bad user interface. I understand the technical reasons why they exist but technology shouldn't be an excuse for a broken interface. Here are several reasons why top-levels suck.
1. They are a limited number of categories that will never satisfy everybody. The basic ones seem obvious -.org,.com,.gov,.edu,.net - but really that's not enough. In Australia we also have.asn.au and.id.au. Even that's not enough. The.xxx top-level is an attempt to corral all pornographic domains into a single top-level domain. Why stop there? Who not create.religion and.news as well? I'll tell you why not; it's a slippery slope and it'll never end. Top-level domains are attempting to use taxonomy to attach metadata to the URL and it's doomed to failure because there will never be sufficient variety.
2. It leads to cross-domain squatting. The classic example was whitehouse.com - a porn site - which caught unwary travellers who were looking for whitehouse.gov. The converse example is a company like Ebay who needs.ebay.com but what about.ebay.org? It isn't registered and Ebay is never going to be given.ebay.org, so it's stupid for the DNS to permit it as an option.
3. The geographical breakdown is equally useless. Lots of Australia companies register.com domains because it's "cooler" which means the geographical taxonomy is immediately broken. It also means an international company has to register several dozen (160+) second-level domains (.com,.co.uk,.com.au,.co.jp,.com.ca, etc). It would make much more sense to browse http://ebay/au/ because then Ebay has an international presence. Apple has the right idea here because that's exactly what they do; all their geographical top-levels redirect to http://apple.com/xy/.
4. The user shouldn't need to care. Why should a newbie to the Internet be required to type.com after the name for companies,.edu after the name for universities, etc? How would they even know? Especially given point #2 that typically there isn't going to be any variation; only one of the combinations will be valid. In fact, most browsers automatically append.com because they know the user is going to type "ebay" rather than "ebay.com". But that's fricking useless for everybody who isn't in the USA (ie, most of us).
5. Some companies straddle the line and don't fit neatly into either category. An example in Australia is Telstra - are they.com.au or.net.au? Are they.net.au when they provide network services but.com.au when they provide non-network services? In fact the distinction is as clear as mud: Telstra has both.net.au and.com.au and they mush them together as they feel like. It makes a mess of the browser security because you can be on telstra.com.au one minute and the next link will take you to telstra.net.au. User. Interface. Disaster.
Now you can disagree with some or all of those points. Hell, Slashdot seems to be full of nitpickers who delight in pointing out grammatical mistakes, so I wouldn't be surprised if somebody said "but without TLD our CEO will be OMG WTF, LOL". But ignore the technical details - they're just problems to solve - and look at the big picture: top-level domains are a broken user interface and no amount of patching will fix it. It was OK as the prototype but because it's the prototyp
So what is the proper response to the MOAB people? They are revealing real bugs, some of which could be exploitable. Ignoring them leads to decreased security. At the same time they have behaved very irresponsibly with regard to those bugs they have found, not notifying the vendor and providing time to fix before publication, nor following the route of immediate disclosure, the MOAB people seem to think it is all right to sit on bugs they find until the most convenient time for them to gain publicity.
Not true.
Two of the bugs had been reported to Apple one month before MOAB begun. Apple did nothing (and they've still done nothing).
One of the exploits was already in the wild (real-world machines being compromised) and MOAB simply reported it. Apple still hasn't fixed that one either.
Two bugs are related to stupid design decisions in Safari that date back two years and Apple still hasn't fixed those faults.
One bug is related to Apple's stupid practise of making the first user account an administrator and then setting lackluster permissions on system directories. Once again, known for years.
You can't blame the MOAB guys for all these problems.
The bug was demonstrated with OmniWeb but the bug is actually in WebKit, which is written by Apple. From the details for the OmniWeb exploit:
"Note that it's actually breaking WebKit, although Safari seems unaffected by this particular issue. See "Exploitation conditions" for other information related to exploitation techniques."
I'd say that one is purely Apple's problem even though people are associating it with OmniWeb.
"Nazi" is a particular group with particular views. Bush doesn't hate Jews. He is not a Nazi.
Nazi is actually a shortened form of Nationalsozialismus (National Socialism) and as such it is not a "particular group" but rather a way to describe any political party with particular views. Racism is commonly associated with the Nazi German Worker's Party but it is not the most defining characteristic of Nazism. Other characteristics include nationalism, totalitarianism, homophobia, anti-communism and limits to freedom of religion.
Fascism begins when the efficiency of the Government is more important than the Rights of the People.
Fascism is when nationalism and the economic wealth of corporations trumps the rights of the people. It has nothing to do with government efficiency. I would argue that the USA is currently a fascist nation.
Excuse my ignorance to all things Mac, but what is the difference between Boot Camp and GRUB/LILO? Can't GRUB/LILO boot a Mac OS?
BootCamp is also a partition resizer (similar to PartitionMagic) and a set of drivers for Windows to support the trackpad, the iSight, the 3D graphics, the wireless controller, etc. Possibly the drivers could be installed "for free" by downloading OEM versions but it is very convenient to stick in the BootCamp Driver CD and have everything Just Work.
The scientific community did believe in global cooling (though, that wasn't term used)
No, they didn't. Here's another article because apparently you didn't understand the Wikipedia entry:
Every now and again, the myth that "we shouldn't believe global warming predictions now, because in the 1970's they were predicting an ice age and/or cooling" surfaces. Recently, George Will mentioned it in his column (see Will-full ignorance) and the egregious Crichton manages to say "in the 1970's all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming" (see Michael Crichton's State of Confusion ). You can find it in various other places too [here, mildly here, etc]. But its not an argument used by respectable and knowledgeable skeptics, because it crumbles under analysis. That doesn't stop it repeatedly cropping up in newsgroups though. -- http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94
I note with some amusement that Slashdot is basically a newsgroup and here is the myth cropping up again. Who said climatologists can't predict the future!
If you are a skeptic you are shouted down as an idiot, an industry shill, someone not to be listened to, and now even threatened with stripping them of rank.
Except that's not what Dr Cullen asked for. That's what the Slashdot summary says, and what the right-wing blogger says, and it's entirely not what Dr Cullen said.
Dr Cullen asked that meteorologists refrain from speaking with authority about climate change until they first put in the effort to learn the science of climate change. Uninformed and uneducated meteorologists who continue to mislead the public by speaking with authority about climate change should have their AMS certification revoked, lest the public thinks that the AMS is in the business of training climate change scientists. That's hardly an unreasonable request; if a nurse started giving out medical advice beyond his/her level of training then she/he would lose his/her nursing certificate. It's the same deal with a meteorologist pretending to be a climate change scientist. I think the same reasoning should be extended to all fields of expertise and all professions; it might reduce some of the uninformed noise that currently permeates our newspapers and TV channels.
More than any of the actual skeptical papers, this makes me wonder about the GW argument. If your position is so tenuous that it must be defended with ad hominem attacks and threats, I have to wonder about how correct it really can be.
However the ad hominem attacks weren't coming from Dr Cullen but rather from the right-wing blogger. I find it fascinating that you chose to believe the right-wing blogger because it reinforced your own disagreeable opinion of climate change, despite the fact that the right-wing blogger fabricated the whole thing.
But, the focus of this Slashdot article is on the person calling for decertification. And, as awfully disingenuous and biased as that site is, they have the guy dead to rights. That is not a reasonable thing to do. Calling for censorship of honest opinions is not something anybody of any political stripe should be doing and severely lowers the credibility of the person who asks that it be done.
All well and good. However Dr Heidi Cullen wasn't calling for censorship of honest opinions. That's the spin put on it by the right-wing nutcase that wrote the conspiracy rant and it's completely untrue. Dr Cullen simply wished that meteorologists who spoke with authority about climate change - be it for or against - should be required to first prove they understand the science of climate change. The revocation of AMS certification was to protect TV viewers from hearing uninformed opinions from a meteorologist speaking beyond their capacity, because TV viewers would probably think a meteorologist would know a lot about climate change, when in reality the science of meteorology and the science of climate change are like chalk and cheese.
Is it so unreasonable to expect a meteorologist - nay, any person - to understand the science of climate change before speaking with authority about climate change? I don't think so. If anything, I think education is an obvious requirement to speak with authority about any field of expertise. I'm surprised that Dr Cullen found it necessary to make the request. I'm doubly surprised that what she's asked for is seen to be controversial.
Is the blind pursuit of free speech drowning out the signal in a sea of uninformed noise? Why yes, yes it is, isn't it obvious.
You'd cringe less if you read the article. The expert being vilified here simply wished that meteorologists who spoke with authority about climate change - be it for or against - should be required to first prove they understand the science of climate change. The revocation of AMS certification was to protect TV viewers from hearing uninformed opinions from a meteorologist speaking beyond their capacity, because TV viewers would probably think a meteorologist would know a lot about climate change, when in reality the science of meteorology and the science of climate change are like chalk and cheese. I think that's pretty reasonable. I'd like that to be a standard rule for all fields of expertise. It would cut down on a lot of the uninformed editorializing that passes for journalism these days.
The right-wing blogger then went off on a conspiracy rant about how scientists are trying to drown out skeptical challenges to climate change.
Nothing to see here. It's just bloggers once again proving their (complete lack of) worth.
Secondly, let me point out that sometime in the 70's early 80's, can't remember, there were scientist crying about global COOLING!
You're right, you can't remember, so you're making it up as you go along. From Wikipedia:
It is occasionally asserted that "in the 1970's, the scientific establishment believed in global cooling" [4] and therefore we should not believe in global warming now. However, the scientific literature does not support this (see below); there is limited support from the popular press [5]. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
By the way, how far did those nations that you mention miss their goals by? Did any of them make progress toward reducing emissions (the real goal of the accords)?
Don't worry, he was lying. About half of industrialized nations reached and even exceeded their goals. More than one third have gone significantly beyond their requirements for emission reductions. David Suzuki has a nice writeup on his website.
As another comment said, conservatives now have Fox News and tal radio, while liberals have all of CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, and CNN.
I can't comment on all those stations but we do receive CNN here in Australia. It is anything but "liberal". It is the most right-wing bollocks I've ever seen.
If CNN is an example of "liberal media" then I have to laugh because it seems to me that all your news channels are right-wing and you're actually complaining about shades of right.
I admit I am Anti-DRM, but there's two sides to every viewpoint.
There are more than two sides to every viewpoint. The American media circus has convinced you that there are only ever two choices - Republican or Democrat, Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, War on Iraq or Death by Terrorism, With Us or Against Us - and you willingly accept their false black and white view of the world.
Break free of the false dichotomy. You can start by saying aloud "there are more than two sides to every viewpoint".
Why I am not surprised to see that the very forum that applauded the release of the Grey Album by Danger Mouse now thinks that sampling and mixing is bad?
Tell me about it. And just last week I noticed that one Slashdotter supported the Democrats but another Slashdotter supported the Republicans. And the week before that I saw two Slashdotters who disagreed over climate change. It's as if Slashdotters have started having differences of opinion all of a sudden. I'm sure that's never happened before. About a year ago we all said and thought exactly the same things.
3) Skeptics must be heard and not shouted down and ridiculed.
Scientists have a deep love of papers that disprove the established theory. It gets them all excited. If there was a paper that presented convincing evidence against global warming, the scientists themselves would be shouting it from the rooftops.
The problem is that people who are attempting to disprove global warming are rarely skeptical nor scientific. They're usually political and/or contrarian. That's why they're shouted down. Scientists can't stand it when non-scientists tell them that the science is all wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
The free market requires perfect knowledge. Many people aren't even aware there are choices. Ergo, it's not a free market.
Incandescent bulbs produce more mercurcy waste than CFL.
No, it's not ridiculous. Roughly 15% of electricity produced in the USA is wasted on lighting. President Bush set a goal in the SOTU address to reduce energy consumption. Part of this process is new technologies. Another part is using less energy. Banning incandescents - especially halogens, one of the worst offenders for home lighting - will work wonders towards that second part.
Consider that there are similar bans on certain types of engines, similar bans on certain types of factory, similar bans on certain types of appliances. Sometimes society needs a push in the right direction and that's exactly what a government is supposed to assist with.
I'm actually impressed for the first time in 6 years with something the US government has done.
In Australia? Yes, we are in yet another round of nationwide droughts. This is pretty typical for Australia. We're one of the driest countries on the planet.
In Australia? Both. Droughts last about 5 years, then a catastrophic flood kills off whatever managed to survive the drought.
And if the droughts and floods don't get you, we've get 9 of the world's 10 most poisonous snakes, and 10 of the world's 10 most poisonous sea creatures.
Also we've got drop bears. If you seek shade beneath a tree, for god's sake, wear a hat.
This might be controversial but I think top-level domains - .com, .edu, .gov, .org, .net - are all a bad idea. It's a bad user interface. I understand the technical reasons why they exist but technology shouldn't be an excuse for a broken interface. Here are several reasons why top-levels suck.
1. They are a limited number of categories that will never satisfy everybody. The basic ones seem obvious - .org, .com, .gov, .edu, .net - but really that's not enough. In Australia we also have .asn.au and .id.au. Even that's not enough. The .xxx top-level is an attempt to corral all pornographic domains into a single top-level domain. Why stop there? Who not create .religion and .news as well? I'll tell you why not; it's a slippery slope and it'll never end. Top-level domains are attempting to use taxonomy to attach metadata to the URL and it's doomed to failure because there will never be sufficient variety.
2. It leads to cross-domain squatting. The classic example was whitehouse.com - a porn site - which caught unwary travellers who were looking for whitehouse.gov. The converse example is a company like Ebay who needs .ebay.com but what about .ebay.org? It isn't registered and Ebay is never going to be given .ebay.org, so it's stupid for the DNS to permit it as an option.
3. The geographical breakdown is equally useless. Lots of Australia companies register .com domains because it's "cooler" which means the geographical taxonomy is immediately broken. It also means an international company has to register several dozen (160+) second-level domains (.com, .co.uk, .com.au, .co.jp, .com.ca, etc). It would make much more sense to browse http://ebay/au/ because then Ebay has an international presence. Apple has the right idea here because that's exactly what they do; all their geographical top-levels redirect to http://apple.com/xy/.
4. The user shouldn't need to care. Why should a newbie to the Internet be required to type .com after the name for companies, .edu after the name for universities, etc? How would they even know? Especially given point #2 that typically there isn't going to be any variation; only one of the combinations will be valid. In fact, most browsers automatically append .com because they know the user is going to type "ebay" rather than "ebay.com". But that's fricking useless for everybody who isn't in the USA (ie, most of us).
5. Some companies straddle the line and don't fit neatly into either category. An example in Australia is Telstra - are they .com.au or .net.au? Are they .net.au when they provide network services but .com.au when they provide non-network services? In fact the distinction is as clear as mud: Telstra has both .net.au and .com.au and they mush them together as they feel like. It makes a mess of the browser security because you can be on telstra.com.au one minute and the next link will take you to telstra.net.au. User. Interface. Disaster.
Now you can disagree with some or all of those points. Hell, Slashdot seems to be full of nitpickers who delight in pointing out grammatical mistakes, so I wouldn't be surprised if somebody said "but without TLD our CEO will be OMG WTF, LOL". But ignore the technical details - they're just problems to solve - and look at the big picture: top-level domains are a broken user interface and no amount of patching will fix it. It was OK as the prototype but because it's the prototyp
Not true.
Two of the bugs had been reported to Apple one month before MOAB begun. Apple did nothing (and they've still done nothing).
One of the exploits was already in the wild (real-world machines being compromised) and MOAB simply reported it. Apple still hasn't fixed that one either.
Two bugs are related to stupid design decisions in Safari that date back two years and Apple still hasn't fixed those faults.
One bug is related to Apple's stupid practise of making the first user account an administrator and then setting lackluster permissions on system directories. Once again, known for years.
You can't blame the MOAB guys for all these problems.
The bug was demonstrated with OmniWeb but the bug is actually in WebKit, which is written by Apple. From the details for the OmniWeb exploit:
I'd say that one is purely Apple's problem even though people are associating it with OmniWeb.
<disbelief>Who are you? And what have you done with Zonk?</disbelief>
Note to moderators: it's insightful the first time, it's redundant the millionth time.
Because those rights are supposed to be inalienable for all men.
Australia has been asking that David Hicks be released for about 4 years now.
Sure sure, everybody knows that reality has a known left-wing bias.
Nazi is actually a shortened form of Nationalsozialismus (National Socialism) and as such it is not a "particular group" but rather a way to describe any political party with particular views. Racism is commonly associated with the Nazi German Worker's Party but it is not the most defining characteristic of Nazism. Other characteristics include nationalism, totalitarianism, homophobia, anti-communism and limits to freedom of religion.
Fascism is when nationalism and the economic wealth of corporations trumps the rights of the people. It has nothing to do with government efficiency. I would argue that the USA is currently a fascist nation.
BootCamp is also a partition resizer (similar to PartitionMagic) and a set of drivers for Windows to support the trackpad, the iSight, the 3D graphics, the wireless controller, etc. Possibly the drivers could be installed "for free" by downloading OEM versions but it is very convenient to stick in the BootCamp Driver CD and have everything Just Work.
Except I never wrote that second phrase you put in quotes. You were not quoting me and you were not quoting Dr Cullen, so who were you quoting?
You are pathetic.
Dr Cullen said nothing of the sort.
Dr Cullen is a woman.
No doubt, and Dr Cullen merely asks that people first be knowledgeable of the science. Hardly an unreasonable request.
It's pretty clear you haven't read what Dr Cullen wrote. Take a minute to read it before commenting further; it's less than 500 words.
No, they didn't. Here's another article because apparently you didn't understand the Wikipedia entry:
I note with some amusement that Slashdot is basically a newsgroup and here is the myth cropping up again. Who said climatologists can't predict the future!
Except that's not what Dr Cullen asked for. That's what the Slashdot summary says, and what the right-wing blogger says, and it's entirely not what Dr Cullen said.
Dr Cullen asked that meteorologists refrain from speaking with authority about climate change until they first put in the effort to learn the science of climate change. Uninformed and uneducated meteorologists who continue to mislead the public by speaking with authority about climate change should have their AMS certification revoked, lest the public thinks that the AMS is in the business of training climate change scientists. That's hardly an unreasonable request; if a nurse started giving out medical advice beyond his/her level of training then she/he would lose his/her nursing certificate. It's the same deal with a meteorologist pretending to be a climate change scientist. I think the same reasoning should be extended to all fields of expertise and all professions; it might reduce some of the uninformed noise that currently permeates our newspapers and TV channels.
However the ad hominem attacks weren't coming from Dr Cullen but rather from the right-wing blogger. I find it fascinating that you chose to believe the right-wing blogger because it reinforced your own disagreeable opinion of climate change, despite the fact that the right-wing blogger fabricated the whole thing.
All well and good. However Dr Heidi Cullen wasn't calling for censorship of honest opinions. That's the spin put on it by the right-wing nutcase that wrote the conspiracy rant and it's completely untrue. Dr Cullen simply wished that meteorologists who spoke with authority about climate change - be it for or against - should be required to first prove they understand the science of climate change. The revocation of AMS certification was to protect TV viewers from hearing uninformed opinions from a meteorologist speaking beyond their capacity, because TV viewers would probably think a meteorologist would know a lot about climate change, when in reality the science of meteorology and the science of climate change are like chalk and cheese.
Is it so unreasonable to expect a meteorologist - nay, any person - to understand the science of climate change before speaking with authority about climate change? I don't think so. If anything, I think education is an obvious requirement to speak with authority about any field of expertise. I'm surprised that Dr Cullen found it necessary to make the request. I'm doubly surprised that what she's asked for is seen to be controversial.
Is the blind pursuit of free speech drowning out the signal in a sea of uninformed noise? Why yes, yes it is, isn't it obvious.
You'd cringe less if you read the article. The expert being vilified here simply wished that meteorologists who spoke with authority about climate change - be it for or against - should be required to first prove they understand the science of climate change. The revocation of AMS certification was to protect TV viewers from hearing uninformed opinions from a meteorologist speaking beyond their capacity, because TV viewers would probably think a meteorologist would know a lot about climate change, when in reality the science of meteorology and the science of climate change are like chalk and cheese. I think that's pretty reasonable. I'd like that to be a standard rule for all fields of expertise. It would cut down on a lot of the uninformed editorializing that passes for journalism these days.
The right-wing blogger then went off on a conspiracy rant about how scientists are trying to drown out skeptical challenges to climate change.
Nothing to see here. It's just bloggers once again proving their (complete lack of) worth.
You're right, you can't remember, so you're making it up as you go along. From Wikipedia:
Of course he isn't.
Adolf Hitler won the popular vote.
Don't worry, he was lying. About half of industrialized nations reached and even exceeded their goals. More than one third have gone significantly beyond their requirements for emission reductions. David Suzuki has a nice writeup on his website.
I can't comment on all those stations but we do receive CNN here in Australia. It is anything but "liberal". It is the most right-wing bollocks I've ever seen.
If CNN is an example of "liberal media" then I have to laugh because it seems to me that all your news channels are right-wing and you're actually complaining about shades of right.
There are more than two sides to every viewpoint. The American media circus has convinced you that there are only ever two choices - Republican or Democrat, Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, War on Iraq or Death by Terrorism, With Us or Against Us - and you willingly accept their false black and white view of the world.
Break free of the false dichotomy. You can start by saying aloud "there are more than two sides to every viewpoint".
Tell me about it. And just last week I noticed that one Slashdotter supported the Democrats but another Slashdotter supported the Republicans. And the week before that I saw two Slashdotters who disagreed over climate change. It's as if Slashdotters have started having differences of opinion all of a sudden. I'm sure that's never happened before. About a year ago we all said and thought exactly the same things.
Scientists have a deep love of papers that disprove the established theory. It gets them all excited. If there was a paper that presented convincing evidence against global warming, the scientists themselves would be shouting it from the rooftops.
The problem is that people who are attempting to disprove global warming are rarely skeptical nor scientific. They're usually political and/or contrarian. That's why they're shouted down. Scientists can't stand it when non-scientists tell them that the science is all wrong.