>>Funds for buildings and for regular operating budgets come from different sources.
Some of them. When I was with the UCSD bioengineering department, we got a donation to build a new building, entirely through private sources. This didn't bother me.
What did bother me was the university running a proposal to expand the student union (the Price Center) every year, to be funded by the students, and then when they failed every time, ended up just doing it anyway.
We got a giant architectural monstrosity AND increased tuition. Win/win!
A university can both be non-profit and yet still just as money grubbing as a for-profit. In fact, since public schools have taxpayers picking up the tab, they get away with a lot of stuff for-profits wouldn't.
Every year at UCSD, our tuition payments would go up, and the university would talk about budget problems and all that. And every year a new 30 million dollar building would get built.
Well, I never had to pay tuition... but I was offended on principal.
But I've done the "small/fast OS drive" + "large/slow data drive" (well, it's actually going to be pretty fast for streaming media) before, and it's a total pain in the ass when your OS drive isn't big enough for all the stuff that installs to it by default. Then you're spending half your time uninstalling apps, and reinstalling them on the data drive when you run out of room (if you can find the disks) and shuffling apps you want to run faster onto the SSD, and basically spending much more time fucking about with your system than you get benefit from in terms of increased boot speeds. I reboot, what, once every month or so? I can go get a soda. It's way better than having to micromanage.
Basically, my threshold is about 500GB for an OS drive - that's large enough to not have to worry about installing apps onto your secondary drive, and with space to spare. At 250GB, you won't even be able to have 20 apps (especially games) installed at once on your computer, which is just crippling to me. But 500GB SSDs are still outrageously expensive. So when I build my new machine, it'll probably be on top of another RAID0 of two high speed HDDs with automatic mirroring onto the third drive.
>>HDD tech is established... it's like complaining that 1.5 TB disks cost $100 when a backup tape the same size costs $50.
Except two or three high speed HDDs in a RAID configuration will outperform a SSD on most tasks, and cost about 10x less.
I keep looking at SSDs, but their price and performance just aren't where they need to be to buy one other than... just 'cause they're cool. If they even had a 512GB model available for $200 (which is twice as much as I paid for my three 500GB drives 6 years ago), I'd probably buy one. But 512GB SSDs are still around a thousand bucks, which is just outrageous...
I use a 32" 1080p TV as a monitor, and it works just fine. Is a Best Buy el cheapo, too (http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/insignia-ns-l322q-10a/1707-6482_7-33573240.html), and beyond blurring reds (which require tweaking to get around) like a, well, TV, it does really well. I have it sitting next to my 19" Sony HS94P, which is a pretty good monitor, and it actually looks better, even after tweaking both monitors.
I'm pretty sensitive to color, DPI and flicker issues, too, and really don't have any complaints about it that could be solved by anything else under a thousand bucks.
Funny, I know several authors with checks in their bank accounts because studios bought an option to make movies based on their books.
And everyone knows about Hollywood accounting - that's why only fools ask for percentages of the movie profits, and ask for points off the receipts instead.
They have one very strong incentive not to do that. If a company sits on a work, such as a movie, and publishes it only after the copyright expires, then guess what? It is now perfectly legal to openly and honestly obtain it from BitTorrent. Even the most law-abiding citizen who ever lived would have zero incentive to purchase the work. That's a good example of a company that wants to go bankrupt.
Even though you can download books off Project Gutenberg, bookstores still do a brisk trade in the classics. Now replace that with all new and unknown authors.
And, sure, everyone would be free to make their own LOTR movies if we reduced copyright terms, but considering how much it costs to make a AAA title, it would just mean that the studios wouldn't have to pay royalties for the rights to a work any more. This isn't a good thing.
>>I work with Real Computers, and don't use a "Trash Can" or "Recycle Bin", but if some pissant sysadmin told me I wasn't allowed to alias rm to '/bin/rm -i' or ls to 'ls -F', I'd laugh in their face
Uh.
Unix deployments at Real Institutions do actually alias rm and ls in exactly those ways for new users. Users that know enough to not want that behavior also know enough to open up their.cshrc and remove the relevant lines. They don't sanction you for removing the aliases, since they figure that if you know how to take off the training wheels, you are Clued enough to not screw yourself over elsewhere.
TFA talking about deleting the recycling bin on the desktop is exactly the same thing. He's not removing the recycling bin functionality, but just making it harder for the clueless to screw themselves over by OCDingly clearing out the bin. They can still get at the deleted files elsewhere. It just makes it harder for them to shoot themselves in the foot.
>>Can we please get off this hobby horse? The Tolkien estate isn't "censoring speech," it's protecting its trademarks, which it is required to do by law
Protecting trademarks only applies to *trademark infringements*, not all uses of a trademark.
Your world would very silly if Coca Cola, Inc., had to censor every grocery store ad offering 2-for-1 packs of Coke.
>>Therefore, if anything, the original duration of 14 years should be reduced to maintain the same balance we once had.
While I agree that current copyright terms are too long (and, de facto unlimited due to Disney's lobbying in congress), if you shorten durations too much, there's the risk of companies sitting on a work and then publishing once it drops out of copyright, so that they don't have to pay royalties. Movie companies sit on scripts and completed movies alike, all the time, for various strategic reasons. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to see them doing the same if copyright term became, say, 5 years. ("Thanks, Mr. Tolkien, for your awesome books! We'll be sure to start printing them and making movies in 2016!")
I think 25 years, with a one-time 25 year extension would be more than enough to protect the income of authors while having a healthy public domain (public domain would be 1976 now, instead of 1923).
If Snorri Sturluson was still alive, he'd slap the shit out of the Tolkien estate for ripping off his compilation of Nordic sagas that he ripped off the skalds that retold the stories that they heard from other skalds...
And if you guys have never read a biography of Snorri, you should. Besides having a kick-ass name for a troll, he lived a very interesting life, and is a good example of why, if you're looking for peace, you shouldn't dismiss your army before the battle as a "sign of good will". =)
>>Innovation in the electronics and technology industry is stagnating. What really separates a high-def TV, smart phone, or computer from one of 5 years ago? >>As much as I love my new Verizon iPhone - it's not really leaps and bounds better than my old 3GS I gave to my wife.
I agree when it comes to computers, but you're wrong about the other ones.
Smartphones: The iPhone wasn't out 5 years ago. So that's a pretty big difference. (It came out in 2007) And they've improved pretty dramatically, too.
High-def TV: 5 years ago I got my first high-def TV, which was donated to me by my father for doing some tech work for him. It was a 38" Sony Bravia CRT that weighed two or three hundred pounds. It wasn't top of the line, but it was a lot cheaper than the flatscreen options at the time. Since then we've seen the switch from CRTs to plasma screens to LCDs to LED-backlit LCDs, and now 240Hz and 3D displays. Price has also dropped pretty dramatically. You can now get a 47" LG LED-backlit flatscreen TV for eight or nine hundred dollars. I agree with you that the 3D thing is a giant meh, but the rest of it is pretty significant. You can get 30-inch TVs for a couple hundred bucks now, slap them on your computer with an HDMI connector, and have a giant monitor for your computer. 5 years ago, that would have been thousands of dollars.
Computers: My computer is now a bit over 6 years old - I bought it at the beginning of the PCI-E revolution, and have upgraded its CPU (once) and video cards annually or bi-annually since then, and it can run RIFT at high video settings with a decent framerate, so why should I go through the hassle of trying to migrate to a new machine? I've been looking at Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer, and might finally upgrade in a couple months, but there just isn't that impetus that there used to be (you can't play new games!) to build a new box. My current machine has 1.5TB of hard drive space, and so replacing it entirely with a SSD is massively expensive, and I really hate the "fast/small system drive, large/slow data drive" paradigm that some people enjoy. Simply because a lot of stuff tries to install itself on your system drive, and it's a pain in the ass to move applications after the fact.
Also, a lot of SSDs have reliability problems. If you look at the reviews on Newegg, there's usually almost as many 1-star reviews on major SSDs as there are 5-stars, with comments like, "If you do not upgrade the firmware - with destroys your data - the drive will corrupt and destroy your data."
>>If they really are, they probably shouldn't be. The operating and maintenance costs of those water-cooled monstrosities probably dwarf the costs of replacing them with something modern. No need to change the software.
For some reason, all these "modernization" projects are estimated to cost a million dollars and then finally complete at 50 million, and is slower and less reliable than before.
I also think you're overestimating the cost of running a water-cooled machine.
>>Maybe I wasn't clear... when you just pay the ticket, you basically plead "guilty" and waive your right to a trial. You have lost, and the "court fees" are part of the fine you have to pay.
Here in California, you have to pay the ticket in advance if you want to go to court. IIRC, it says it is not an admission of guilt.
Been a while since I got a speeding ticket... maybe 2004? It might be different now. I was doing 55MPH in a 65 (severe dust storm blowing across the I-5), got cited for 87MPH in the written ticket, and then the officer said 78MPH in court. CHP refused to release video of the traffic stop, or any other information relating to the case, as did the court. (I didn't even know where he thought he'd seen me doing over 80.) When I said that he'd contradicted himself under oath on the very item in question, the judge just shrugged and said that his salary was paid for by tickets, so he didn't care. Well, he didn't say precisely that, but something to the effect that he basically rubber stamped all tickets the CHP wrote out as long as they followed all the procedures. And that I was more than welcome to appeal (involving another 400 mile drive) if I felt like it.
I kept my mouth shut, though, since the same judge had thrown my motel owner's wife in jail for a year for signing checks for her boss. (With his permission and knowledge.) He is known locally in Shafter as a hangin' judge, who routinely triples tickets for people wasting his time. I was happy to just be found guilty.:p
Their town motto: "Come get the Shaft in Shafter!"
There is special handling on scientific evidence. Namely before something can accepted as scientific evidence like DNA, ballistics, etc, the court must have some sort backing that the science is valid. Most of the time that involves the court asking an expert for their analysis of the matter. Both sides are free to present their own experts. The OP is right; this has more to do with the officer's testimony not being able to withstand scrutiny than the validity of the GPS data. IMO, the judge by his ruling and his comment.
Except it doesn't stop the cops from using car black box data to *convict* people of speeding. (http://indianalawblog.com/archives/2005/01/law_cars_black.html)
Or, hell, using Youtube videos to retroactively charge people with reckless driving. (http://www.lsxtv.com/news/man-arrested-after-posting-195mph-corvette-video-on-youtube/)
It certainly should be usable to get people *out* of tickets. Our legal system is supposed to be biased so that more guilty people walk free than innocent people get convicted, but our tough-on-crime modern times has basically forgotten about all of that
This has ben bothering me a whole deal as well. I could never understand why it was legal to use tem in cars, as they are so distracting. Niw i see you posting that a lot of people do not notice the effect. I have always figured everyone did, but just didn't care. I have always hated CFLs at offices, grocery stores etc. and now they are invading every home.
I had trouble even dealing with our Christmas tree this year (the wife decorated it in blue LEDs), since the flickering kept distracting me. My in-laws couldn't see it, though. So I pulled out a camera and held the button down halfway to bring up a preview, and show them what I saw (kinda) - the lights noticeably turning on and off as the slow refresh rate on the camera preview heterodyned with the refresh on the LED lights.
I'd be curious to see what the actual numbers are, on people who can see the flickering. From forums online, it seems that some manufacturers are worse than others, which kind of matches my own experience. Cadillacs and some Buicks are especially bad, but I don't notice them as much on other brands. Even streetlight coming in through the blinds will bother me, as I see the light coming in through the cracks as a flickering series of lines when I move my eyes.:/
I'm guessing none of our politicians see the flickering.
>>Because LED lighting will own the market in a few years.
LEDs, CFLs, and normal florescents all suffer from noticeable flicker problems. If you can't see it, wave your finger in the air in front of one of these lights. Now do the same with an incandescent.
*That's* why I hate these kinds of lights, and now that people are starting to put them fucking everywhere (taillights of cars, street lights), it's driving me insane. There's always this one guy driving a Cadillac down the freeway that keeps grabbing my attention because his taillight is flickering so noticeably.
There's a fairly significant portion of the populace that can see the flicker on these things, and ever since I started bitching (out loud) about being bothered by it, my wife has started seeing it too. I'll growl while driving on the road, and she'll point at a car three ahead and two to the right and say, "Oh, that guy, isn't it?" Not that she's especially happy about it - it bothers her that it bothers her too, now. =)
>>you are a home owner, call your local utility (PG&E for me) and have them check the incoming power.
Hmm, that's a good tip. In our house, lights on certain circuits blow out a lot faster than others. In the bathroom/hallway/closet circuit, we've replaced 20 light bulbs in the past 9 months. Elsewhere in the house, we replaced some of the lights when we moved in, and haven't had trouble past that.
(The number would have been higher, but we eventually gave up on replacing the lights, and just deal with the dark, since replacing them is a total hassle.)
I'll see if PG&E can examine it. Maybe they're good for something other than raping its customers.
>>On the contrary.. many Slashdotters do believe that they are experts on everything because they can just "wiki" it and always seem to have some resolve that the "experts" should have done.
Yeah, exactly my point. And people arguing against them will be using the press releases from BP or whatever for their counterargument.
Reading some of the internet discussion threads on Gasland have been equally depressing to me. Half the people are quoting Gasland right back in the discussion threads, and half are quoting the petroleum industry's reports on fracking.
Part of wisdom is knowing what you don't know about something. If you haven't put at least 100 hours into studying an issue, so that you can at least have mastered the basics of it, you really shouldn't be chiming in with your own opinion on highly technical and obscure issues like deepwater blowout preventers. I'm sure somebody will say that this isn't enough to master the basics, but 100 hours of intensive study on a subject is more time than you get in a normal college class (which typically give 40 hours of lecture in a quarter, and maybe an equal amount of homework), though quality varies wildly.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Exactly, without narrow-minded right-wing whiners Socialism would work just great.
I know! Speak truth to power, comrade.
If we had every school kid in America contribute an idea to the design of this supercar, just imagine how fast it could go!!
>>Funds for buildings and for regular operating budgets come from different sources.
Some of them. When I was with the UCSD bioengineering department, we got a donation to build a new building, entirely through private sources. This didn't bother me.
What did bother me was the university running a proposal to expand the student union (the Price Center) every year, to be funded by the students, and then when they failed every time, ended up just doing it anyway.
We got a giant architectural monstrosity AND increased tuition. Win/win!
A university can both be non-profit and yet still just as money grubbing as a for-profit. In fact, since public schools have taxpayers picking up the tab, they get away with a lot of stuff for-profits wouldn't.
Every year at UCSD, our tuition payments would go up, and the university would talk about budget problems and all that. And every year a new 30 million dollar building would get built.
Well, I never had to pay tuition... but I was offended on principal.
>>I miss when /. had really good trolls. Remember them?
I blame Natalie Portman getting pregnant.
I haven't seen anyone wanting to cover her in hot grits for a while now.
Right.
But I've done the "small/fast OS drive" + "large/slow data drive" (well, it's actually going to be pretty fast for streaming media) before, and it's a total pain in the ass when your OS drive isn't big enough for all the stuff that installs to it by default. Then you're spending half your time uninstalling apps, and reinstalling them on the data drive when you run out of room (if you can find the disks) and shuffling apps you want to run faster onto the SSD, and basically spending much more time fucking about with your system than you get benefit from in terms of increased boot speeds. I reboot, what, once every month or so? I can go get a soda. It's way better than having to micromanage.
Basically, my threshold is about 500GB for an OS drive - that's large enough to not have to worry about installing apps onto your secondary drive, and with space to spare. At 250GB, you won't even be able to have 20 apps (especially games) installed at once on your computer, which is just crippling to me. But 500GB SSDs are still outrageously expensive. So when I build my new machine, it'll probably be on top of another RAID0 of two high speed HDDs with automatic mirroring onto the third drive.
>>The combination literally means everyone on earth has earned a Nobel prize.
Kind of like the "Time Person of the Year" for 2006?
>>HDD tech is established... it's like complaining that 1.5 TB disks cost $100 when a backup tape the same size costs $50.
Except two or three high speed HDDs in a RAID configuration will outperform a SSD on most tasks, and cost about 10x less.
I keep looking at SSDs, but their price and performance just aren't where they need to be to buy one other than... just 'cause they're cool. If they even had a 512GB model available for $200 (which is twice as much as I paid for my three 500GB drives 6 years ago), I'd probably buy one. But 512GB SSDs are still around a thousand bucks, which is just outrageous...
>>IMHO SSD's should be used as "something in between your HDD and your memory"
You're talking about what is essentially Vista/Win7's readyboost feature, using flash as a cache between RAM and HDD.
You could do this now. Just buy an external SSD and plug it in.
>>If Microsoft suddenly get good ad blocking - as in, really good ad blocking, they could completely cut off all oxygen from Google.
You do realize that "tracking protection" (what TFA is about) and "ad blocking" are two different things, right?
It is entirely possible to block tracking without blocking ads, and vice versa.
In Firefox terms, it is the difference between Ghostery and AdBlock Plus.
I use a 32" 1080p TV as a monitor, and it works just fine. Is a Best Buy el cheapo, too (http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/insignia-ns-l322q-10a/1707-6482_7-33573240.html), and beyond blurring reds (which require tweaking to get around) like a, well, TV, it does really well. I have it sitting next to my 19" Sony HS94P, which is a pretty good monitor, and it actually looks better, even after tweaking both monitors.
I'm pretty sensitive to color, DPI and flicker issues, too, and really don't have any complaints about it that could be solved by anything else under a thousand bucks.
Funny, I know several authors with checks in their bank accounts because studios bought an option to make movies based on their books.
And everyone knows about Hollywood accounting - that's why only fools ask for percentages of the movie profits, and ask for points off the receipts instead.
Even though you can download books off Project Gutenberg, bookstores still do a brisk trade in the classics. Now replace that with all new and unknown authors.
And, sure, everyone would be free to make their own LOTR movies if we reduced copyright terms, but considering how much it costs to make a AAA title, it would just mean that the studios wouldn't have to pay royalties for the rights to a work any more. This isn't a good thing.
>>I work with Real Computers, and don't use a "Trash Can" or "Recycle Bin", but if some pissant sysadmin told me I wasn't allowed to alias rm to '/bin/rm -i' or ls to 'ls -F', I'd laugh in their face
Uh.
Unix deployments at Real Institutions do actually alias rm and ls in exactly those ways for new users. Users that know enough to not want that behavior also know enough to open up their .cshrc and remove the relevant lines. They don't sanction you for removing the aliases, since they figure that if you know how to take off the training wheels, you are Clued enough to not screw yourself over elsewhere.
TFA talking about deleting the recycling bin on the desktop is exactly the same thing. He's not removing the recycling bin functionality, but just making it harder for the clueless to screw themselves over by OCDingly clearing out the bin. They can still get at the deleted files elsewhere. It just makes it harder for them to shoot themselves in the foot.
>>Can we please get off this hobby horse? The Tolkien estate isn't "censoring speech," it's protecting its trademarks, which it is required to do by law
Protecting trademarks only applies to *trademark infringements*, not all uses of a trademark.
Your world would very silly if Coca Cola, Inc., had to censor every grocery store ad offering 2-for-1 packs of Coke.
>>Therefore, if anything, the original duration of 14 years should be reduced to maintain the same balance we once had.
While I agree that current copyright terms are too long (and, de facto unlimited due to Disney's lobbying in congress), if you shorten durations too much, there's the risk of companies sitting on a work and then publishing once it drops out of copyright, so that they don't have to pay royalties. Movie companies sit on scripts and completed movies alike, all the time, for various strategic reasons. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to see them doing the same if copyright term became, say, 5 years. ("Thanks, Mr. Tolkien, for your awesome books! We'll be sure to start printing them and making movies in 2016!")
I think 25 years, with a one-time 25 year extension would be more than enough to protect the income of authors while having a healthy public domain (public domain would be 1976 now, instead of 1923).
If Snorri Sturluson was still alive, he'd slap the shit out of the Tolkien estate for ripping off his compilation of Nordic sagas that he ripped off the skalds that retold the stories that they heard from other skalds...
And if you guys have never read a biography of Snorri, you should. Besides having a kick-ass name for a troll, he lived a very interesting life, and is a good example of why, if you're looking for peace, you shouldn't dismiss your army before the battle as a "sign of good will". =)
>>Innovation in the electronics and technology industry is stagnating. What really separates a high-def TV, smart phone, or computer from one of 5 years ago?
>>As much as I love my new Verizon iPhone - it's not really leaps and bounds better than my old 3GS I gave to my wife.
I agree when it comes to computers, but you're wrong about the other ones.
Smartphones: The iPhone wasn't out 5 years ago. So that's a pretty big difference. (It came out in 2007) And they've improved pretty dramatically, too.
High-def TV: 5 years ago I got my first high-def TV, which was donated to me by my father for doing some tech work for him. It was a 38" Sony Bravia CRT that weighed two or three hundred pounds. It wasn't top of the line, but it was a lot cheaper than the flatscreen options at the time. Since then we've seen the switch from CRTs to plasma screens to LCDs to LED-backlit LCDs, and now 240Hz and 3D displays. Price has also dropped pretty dramatically. You can now get a 47" LG LED-backlit flatscreen TV for eight or nine hundred dollars. I agree with you that the 3D thing is a giant meh, but the rest of it is pretty significant. You can get 30-inch TVs for a couple hundred bucks now, slap them on your computer with an HDMI connector, and have a giant monitor for your computer. 5 years ago, that would have been thousands of dollars.
Computers: My computer is now a bit over 6 years old - I bought it at the beginning of the PCI-E revolution, and have upgraded its CPU (once) and video cards annually or bi-annually since then, and it can run RIFT at high video settings with a decent framerate, so why should I go through the hassle of trying to migrate to a new machine? I've been looking at Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer, and might finally upgrade in a couple months, but there just isn't that impetus that there used to be (you can't play new games!) to build a new box. My current machine has 1.5TB of hard drive space, and so replacing it entirely with a SSD is massively expensive, and I really hate the "fast/small system drive, large/slow data drive" paradigm that some people enjoy. Simply because a lot of stuff tries to install itself on your system drive, and it's a pain in the ass to move applications after the fact.
Also, a lot of SSDs have reliability problems. If you look at the reviews on Newegg, there's usually almost as many 1-star reviews on major SSDs as there are 5-stars, with comments like, "If you do not upgrade the firmware - with destroys your data - the drive will corrupt and destroy your data."
>>If they really are, they probably shouldn't be. The operating and maintenance costs of those water-cooled monstrosities probably dwarf the costs of replacing them with something modern. No need to change the software.
For some reason, all these "modernization" projects are estimated to cost a million dollars and then finally complete at 50 million, and is slower and less reliable than before.
I also think you're overestimating the cost of running a water-cooled machine.
>>Imagine the hilarity that would have ensued had it been Boon-Ga Boon-Ga that was rigged instead of Whack A Mole.
Berlusconi loves that game!!
>>Maybe I wasn't clear ... when you just pay the ticket, you basically plead "guilty" and waive your right to a trial. You have lost, and the "court fees" are part of the fine you have to pay.
Here in California, you have to pay the ticket in advance if you want to go to court. IIRC, it says it is not an admission of guilt.
Been a while since I got a speeding ticket... maybe 2004? It might be different now. I was doing 55MPH in a 65 (severe dust storm blowing across the I-5), got cited for 87MPH in the written ticket, and then the officer said 78MPH in court. CHP refused to release video of the traffic stop, or any other information relating to the case, as did the court. (I didn't even know where he thought he'd seen me doing over 80.) When I said that he'd contradicted himself under oath on the very item in question, the judge just shrugged and said that his salary was paid for by tickets, so he didn't care. Well, he didn't say precisely that, but something to the effect that he basically rubber stamped all tickets the CHP wrote out as long as they followed all the procedures. And that I was more than welcome to appeal (involving another 400 mile drive) if I felt like it.
I kept my mouth shut, though, since the same judge had thrown my motel owner's wife in jail for a year for signing checks for her boss. (With his permission and knowledge.) He is known locally in Shafter as a hangin' judge, who routinely triples tickets for people wasting his time. I was happy to just be found guilty. :p
Their town motto: "Come get the Shaft in Shafter!"
Except it doesn't stop the cops from using car black box data to *convict* people of speeding. (http://indianalawblog.com/archives/2005/01/law_cars_black.html)
Or, hell, using Youtube videos to retroactively charge people with reckless driving. (http://www.lsxtv.com/news/man-arrested-after-posting-195mph-corvette-video-on-youtube/)
It certainly should be usable to get people *out* of tickets. Our legal system is supposed to be biased so that more guilty people walk free than innocent people get convicted, but our tough-on-crime modern times has basically forgotten about all of that
I had trouble even dealing with our Christmas tree this year (the wife decorated it in blue LEDs), since the flickering kept distracting me. My in-laws couldn't see it, though. So I pulled out a camera and held the button down halfway to bring up a preview, and show them what I saw (kinda) - the lights noticeably turning on and off as the slow refresh rate on the camera preview heterodyned with the refresh on the LED lights.
I'd be curious to see what the actual numbers are, on people who can see the flickering. From forums online, it seems that some manufacturers are worse than others, which kind of matches my own experience. Cadillacs and some Buicks are especially bad, but I don't notice them as much on other brands. Even streetlight coming in through the blinds will bother me, as I see the light coming in through the cracks as a flickering series of lines when I move my eyes. :/
I'm guessing none of our politicians see the flickering.
>>Because LED lighting will own the market in a few years.
LEDs, CFLs, and normal florescents all suffer from noticeable flicker problems. If you can't see it, wave your finger in the air in front of one of these lights. Now do the same with an incandescent.
*That's* why I hate these kinds of lights, and now that people are starting to put them fucking everywhere (taillights of cars, street lights), it's driving me insane. There's always this one guy driving a Cadillac down the freeway that keeps grabbing my attention because his taillight is flickering so noticeably.
There's a fairly significant portion of the populace that can see the flicker on these things, and ever since I started bitching (out loud) about being bothered by it, my wife has started seeing it too. I'll growl while driving on the road, and she'll point at a car three ahead and two to the right and say, "Oh, that guy, isn't it?" Not that she's especially happy about it - it bothers her that it bothers her too, now. =)
>>you are a home owner, call your local utility (PG&E for me) and have them check the incoming power.
Hmm, that's a good tip. In our house, lights on certain circuits blow out a lot faster than others. In the bathroom/hallway/closet circuit, we've replaced 20 light bulbs in the past 9 months. Elsewhere in the house, we replaced some of the lights when we moved in, and haven't had trouble past that.
(The number would have been higher, but we eventually gave up on replacing the lights, and just deal with the dark, since replacing them is a total hassle.)
I'll see if PG&E can examine it. Maybe they're good for something other than raping its customers.
>>On the contrary.. many Slashdotters do believe that they are experts on everything because they can just "wiki" it and always seem to have some resolve that the "experts" should have done.
Yeah, exactly my point. And people arguing against them will be using the press releases from BP or whatever for their counterargument.
Reading some of the internet discussion threads on Gasland have been equally depressing to me. Half the people are quoting Gasland right back in the discussion threads, and half are quoting the petroleum industry's reports on fracking.
Part of wisdom is knowing what you don't know about something. If you haven't put at least 100 hours into studying an issue, so that you can at least have mastered the basics of it, you really shouldn't be chiming in with your own opinion on highly technical and obscure issues like deepwater blowout preventers. I'm sure somebody will say that this isn't enough to master the basics, but 100 hours of intensive study on a subject is more time than you get in a normal college class (which typically give 40 hours of lecture in a quarter, and maybe an equal amount of homework), though quality varies wildly.