right. no one will ever read this since this story is already nearly a day old...
i've been using cfls for my entire house since around 1990 when they were about $20 each and the size of footballs. the current state of cfls today, especially in regard to startup time and the suggestted minimum run time is dramatically better. the core of this is the type of balast used in the bulb. if you have a "magnetic" balast, start up time to full brightness can be in the 3 or 4 second range and you need to run the bulb for a minimum of a half hour or so to ensure maximum bulb life. with the newer electronic balast, startup time is nearly instantaneous and your minimum run time is in the seconds.
so... get electronic balast cfls. more expensive, certainly... but given the dramatic price drop in all cfls over the last ten or fifteen years, still dirt cheap.
What about all the plants that you kill? They're sentient too: they have senses. How else do plants turn towards the sun?
well, assuming you're not just being a pedant, i would suggest that if you were truly concerned about the well-being of plants you would become a vegan. remember, cows eat plants. when you eat cows you kill the cow, and the plants the cow ate. add to this the dramatic inefficiency of turning plant calories into cow calories and that burger means the death of a dozen bread loaves worth of wheat.
You will discover that being a Congress Critter is not so easy... Actually it is somewhat soul destroying. Idealism burns out very quickly once you figure out that you can't change anything without compromising.
there's a popular saying amongst the anarchists: "if voting could change anything, they'd make it illegal".
the indoctrination and pressure to conform to the status quo that is applied to elected representatives is very real and goes a long way towards homogonizing government. does that mean you should not vote or run for office? no. but you probably shouldn't think that this vote or that candidate is some sort of magic bullet that will solve the nation's problems.
a better, more lasting solution is to work on building a political culture that respects individual liberties and privacy. hate unauthorized surveillance? encrypt as much as possible, even if you have nothing to hide. heck, especially if you have nothing to hide, lest privacy becomes a defacto admission of guilt. remember that, ultimately, the sate cannot enact any policy without at least the complicity of the people.
somewhere along the way 'democracy' became little more than a multiple choice test once every four years. it should be an essay exam. every day.
But seriously, does this shock anyone? If I'm getting the milk for free how is the cow gonna get paid?
yeah! it's just like when the casette tape killed the recording industry and the video tape put all the movie theatres out of business and the radio wiped out record sales. we've know this connection for years! ever since the public library put all the publishers out of business.
seriously. people buy cd's (and books and movies) as much for owning an artefact than for the actual content. people want to have personal libraries and large music collections and so they will buy books and movies. history proves it.
Say what? If Democrats were well known for exploiting paper ballots, why would they be protesting moving back to paper ballots?
i think the original poster was referring to the democratic party's 'machine' style politics of the 20's-40's. intimidation, registering dead people, graft, ballot stuffing... all that stuff. wikipedia has an acceptable article on the chicago democratic machine
here.
of course, that was 60 or 70 years ago and the shenanigans of the democratic party did not rely on the ballots being paper. but i think that was the original point.
Given such freedom, hipsters can let their inner dork out for a romp, extolling the virtues of the Arcade Fire by night and retreating to their headphones by day for a Hanson or Boston fix.
and the internet is necessary for this how? waaay back in the days when the bbs ruled the earth you could still listen to dorky music in the privacy of your own home, away from the judgemental eyes of your peers. if anything, the internet makes this sort of clandestine pleasure harder. last.fm, filesharing &c make the music you have and are actually listening to visible (and audible) by a way larger audience.
add to that the semi-permanace of an online life and things get worse. in the internet age, your tastes can leave a near-indellible electronic trail -- poorly thought out blog posts, last.fm entries &c. you used to be able to say that you were into such-and-such band 'before they sold out' or whatever and people would just have to take your word. nowadays you have to have a suitably-dated myspace post to back it up!
saying vinyl is 'dead' is like saying apple is 'dead'. just because it has a smaller market share limited to fanatics and afficianadoes instead of the top-40 masses doesn't mean vinyl ever went anywhere.
here's news for all you computer geeks: there are music geeks too, and they think pretty much the same way. just think of 7" records as the audiophile version of the command line.
Geeks don't like people who pretend a bad design is a good design. We'll tear into them
it's called 'peer review' and in the science world it's not only expected but mandatory.
my question is this: has diebold's product undergone any sort of peer review? if it's important enough for someone studying the genetic inheretance of grey hair, it's important enough for someone entrusted with running an election for the most powerful person in the world, dontcha think?
A couple of hours later I wasn't welcome at slashdot any more. You can guess where that experiment ended.
in the first week i used tor my bank decided to shut me out of online banking for a week and paypal put me through a rigorous 'identity confirmation' protocol that included them depositing money in my cheuqing account, calling me at home and mailing (as in paper and stamps) a magic 5 digit code.
When I buy something there, which isn't often, and they start asking all those questions I just say they don't need it.
at a local retailer, the policy is that there is a reduced price for people who pony up all the personal info. usually it's about 2% or less. and the staff are pushy about it!
my response is to pull a $1.25 (or whatever the discount they're offering me is) and ask the cashier if s/he will give me their home phone number and address for the money in my hand. when they reply 'no' i say 'well then, i'm sure you can appreciate why i'm refusing your discount'.
another retailer in my area wants you to fill out a form at every purchase. grossly inconvenient as well as invasive. in the phone number box i always put '911-9934' on the off chance that their automated phone spam machine just might get them into a wee bit of trouble when the ambulances and fire trucks show up at the call centre for a false alarm.
Well, if any of this data supports the theory of "humans causing global warming," shouldn't you suppose that the target should not be limited to the United States?...[snip]...I also doubt that Gore will be seen as anything other then the "Creator of the Internet."
well, that's certainly a lot of fallacies in one post!
this data supports the hypothesis that co2 and temperature are related, not that coal or hummers cause global warming. straw man #1.
rich nations output a lot of co2, poor nations output a lot of co2. just because poor nations do it more doesn't mean we shouldn't address our own pollution. tu quoque.
the correlation between driving suv's less and 'class warfare' is, uh, tenuous. are you saying that if you decommission your escalade the iww has already won or something? straw man #2.
nice quip on the al gore internet thing. always a sure-fire way to discredit him regardless of the validity (or invalidity) of his argument. ad hominem.
You mean, we have no idea how to properly predict climatology?
as my grandfather used to say: "climate is what you expect, weather is what you get".
climate is all about predicting trends and is a very sound science. given massive amounts of data, identifying and determining trends is easy (well, for climatologists). the unpredictible part is figuring out the tiny bumps in the general curve, that is: weather.
i think you have 'climate' confused with 'weather'.
I reject any conclusions that could be drawn from this on the basis that it's cooler than normal in my neck of the woods.
while i recognize and respect your sarcasm, i think it's important to point out the biggest myth about 'global warming' of all: that it always means a warmer climate.
witness northern newfoundland. the area around norhtern newfoundland has gotten significantly colder in the last thirty years. why? global warming. increasing average temperatures at the poles have caused accelerated ice melt in the spring and summer. glacial melt water is frickin' cold and that water, travelling on currents to northern newfoundland, has caused a noticable drop in average temperature there.
to extrapolate this even further, if the changing climate patterns caused by 'global warming' result in the gulf stream grinding to a halt, the climate of northern europe could experience a dramatic freeze up. so, general warming can cause some localized cooling.
that's why i call it 'climate change' instead of global warming.
who isn't? the real question here, though, is are you all for your isp blocking spam for you... without your consent, approval or even, apparently, notification.
letting isp's make decisions for their customers' "own good" is a dangerous path to start on.
Yes, President Carter. Double-didgit inflation, taxes so high that they broke the econom, etc. were all Carter
uh, there was a massive energy crisis during the carter administration. a huge spanner in the economic workings of the country that just happen to ocur under his watch. blaming carter for the actions of opec is a little bit unfair.
now, if you're looking for a president who really tanked the economy, i'd suggest reagan. in his eight years he moved the national deficit from 2.5% ($80 bn) of gdp to 6% ($250 bn). if you wonder why the national debt is so out of control, it's because ron spent it all on military adventurism while cutting taxes for the upper 10%.
the u.s. government over the last several months has been a massive binge of re-classifying previously declassified historical documents. i think they've done maybe 50,000 of them. this administration has a culture of secrecy and limit of access to information and this move is nicely in keeping with that ideology.
my source on the document reclassification is here.
I guess we can trust them to run a ferry in the same way that you can trust me to accurately post to a slashdot article yet I have no clue on how to operate a high speed ferry that runs across lake michigan
holy straw man batman!
wikipedia comes with help pages and tutorials. ferry's rarely do
wikipedia mistakes can be undone. ferry mistakes can't
wikipedia is accessible for everyone to operate. ferry's aren't
wikipedia mistakes are non fatal. sometimes ferry mistakes aren't. sometimes.
virtually everyone has a computer in the their home or free access to one. ferrys are less accessible
all of this leads to a climate that encourages experimentation and learning on wikipedia and discourages it for ferrys. to equate the two is disengenious. if you want a mode of transport to compare to editing wikipedia, i'd suggest choosing driving a car.
Your body is made of lots of little parts. Most of your parts are screwed up. These can help make new parts to replace those broken parts. Any questions?
It sure as hell won't get Windows Vista out the door any sooner.
and it will get the release after windows vista to you probably not at all. if a private buyout aims to increase ms's profitability by slashing its 'wasteful' r&d budget (as the article states) then you can expect a bought-out microsoft to offer less compelling products less frequently.
ultimately such a manoeveur would be a long term disaster. but, of course, if there's one thing the free market excells at, it's sacraficing long term interests for short term gains.
Slashdot Mirror
right. no one will ever read this since this story is already nearly a day old...
l amp#Other_CFL_technologiesh ting_daylighting/index.cfm/mytopic=12050
i've been using cfls for my entire house since around 1990 when they were about $20 each and the size of footballs. the current state of cfls today, especially in regard to startup time and the suggestted minimum run time is dramatically better. the core of this is the type of balast used in the bulb. if you have a "magnetic" balast, start up time to full brightness can be in the 3 or 4 second range and you need to run the bulb for a minimum of a half hour or so to ensure maximum bulb life. with the newer electronic balast, startup time is nearly instantaneous and your minimum run time is in the seconds.
so... get electronic balast cfls. more expensive, certainly... but given the dramatic price drop in all cfls over the last ten or fifteen years, still dirt cheap.
here are some fine sources for my statements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_
http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/lig
it's here: scroogle.org
yeah. paypal set the bomb off themselves. now, if anyone complains about paypal's service, they instantly become a suspect in a 'terrorist' act.
great way to guarantee customer satisfaction!
well, assuming you're not just being a pedant, i would suggest that if you were truly concerned about the well-being of plants you would become a vegan. remember, cows eat plants. when you eat cows you kill the cow, and the plants the cow ate. add to this the dramatic inefficiency of turning plant calories into cow calories and that burger means the death of a dozen bread loaves worth of wheat.
but, you're probably just being a pedant.
well, i doubt real bullies would play this game anyways, since the objective is defeat bullies, not be one.
if anything, the game has the potential to have a strong message of empowerment for all those kids who spend recess stuffed into lockers.
"Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill"
obviously said by an adult!
So true, anyone who thinks that CS will prepare you for accurately shooting a weapon, or pressure under fire, is on crack.
including these guys?
there's a popular saying amongst the anarchists: "if voting could change anything, they'd make it illegal".
the indoctrination and pressure to conform to the status quo that is applied to elected representatives is very real and goes a long way towards homogonizing government. does that mean you should not vote or run for office? no. but you probably shouldn't think that this vote or that candidate is some sort of magic bullet that will solve the nation's problems.
a better, more lasting solution is to work on building a political culture that respects individual liberties and privacy. hate unauthorized surveillance? encrypt as much as possible, even if you have nothing to hide. heck, especially if you have nothing to hide, lest privacy becomes a defacto admission of guilt. remember that, ultimately, the sate cannot enact any policy without at least the complicity of the people.
somewhere along the way 'democracy' became little more than a multiple choice test once every four years. it should be an essay exam. every day.
yeah! it's just like when the casette tape killed the recording industry and the video tape put all the movie theatres out of business and the radio wiped out record sales. we've know this connection for years! ever since the public library put all the publishers out of business.
seriously. people buy cd's (and books and movies) as much for owning an artefact than for the actual content. people want to have personal libraries and large music collections and so they will buy books and movies. history proves it.
i think the original poster was referring to the democratic party's 'machine' style politics of the 20's-40's. intimidation, registering dead people, graft, ballot stuffing... all that stuff. wikipedia has an acceptable article on the chicago democratic machine here.
of course, that was 60 or 70 years ago and the shenanigans of the democratic party did not rely on the ballots being paper. but i think that was the original point.
and the internet is necessary for this how? waaay back in the days when the bbs ruled the earth you could still listen to dorky music in the privacy of your own home, away from the judgemental eyes of your peers. if anything, the internet makes this sort of clandestine pleasure harder. last.fm, filesharing &c make the music you have and are actually listening to visible (and audible) by a way larger audience.
add to that the semi-permanace of an online life and things get worse. in the internet age, your tastes can leave a near-indellible electronic trail -- poorly thought out blog posts, last.fm entries &c. you used to be able to say that you were into such-and-such band 'before they sold out' or whatever and people would just have to take your word. nowadays you have to have a suitably-dated myspace post to back it up!
mod parent up!
saying vinyl is 'dead' is like saying apple is 'dead'. just because it has a smaller market share limited to fanatics and afficianadoes instead of the top-40 masses doesn't mean vinyl ever went anywhere.
here's news for all you computer geeks: there are music geeks too, and they think pretty much the same way. just think of 7" records as the audiophile version of the command line.
it's called 'peer review' and in the science world it's not only expected but mandatory.
my question is this: has diebold's product undergone any sort of peer review? if it's important enough for someone studying the genetic inheretance of grey hair, it's important enough for someone entrusted with running an election for the most powerful person in the world, dontcha think?
in the first week i used tor my bank decided to shut me out of online banking for a week and paypal put me through a rigorous 'identity confirmation' protocol that included them depositing money in my cheuqing account, calling me at home and mailing (as in paper and stamps) a magic 5 digit code.
and i still use tor. every day.
because a police state is far less convenient.
at a local retailer, the policy is that there is a reduced price for people who pony up all the personal info. usually it's about 2% or less. and the staff are pushy about it!
my response is to pull a $1.25 (or whatever the discount they're offering me is) and ask the cashier if s/he will give me their home phone number and address for the money in my hand. when they reply 'no' i say 'well then, i'm sure you can appreciate why i'm refusing your discount'.
another retailer in my area wants you to fill out a form at every purchase. grossly inconvenient as well as invasive. in the phone number box i always put '911-9934' on the off chance that their automated phone spam machine just might get them into a wee bit of trouble when the ambulances and fire trucks show up at the call centre for a false alarm.
well, that's certainly a lot of fallacies in one post!
as my grandfather used to say: "climate is what you expect, weather is what you get".
climate is all about predicting trends and is a very sound science. given massive amounts of data, identifying and determining trends is easy (well, for climatologists). the unpredictible part is figuring out the tiny bumps in the general curve, that is: weather.
i think you have 'climate' confused with 'weather'.
while i recognize and respect your sarcasm, i think it's important to point out the biggest myth about 'global warming' of all: that it always means a warmer climate.
witness northern newfoundland. the area around norhtern newfoundland has gotten significantly colder in the last thirty years. why? global warming. increasing average temperatures at the poles have caused accelerated ice melt in the spring and summer. glacial melt water is frickin' cold and that water, travelling on currents to northern newfoundland, has caused a noticable drop in average temperature there.
to extrapolate this even further, if the changing climate patterns caused by 'global warming' result in the gulf stream grinding to a halt, the climate of northern europe could experience a dramatic freeze up. so, general warming can cause some localized cooling.
that's why i call it 'climate change' instead of global warming.
that you couldn't close a tab that wasn't at the front, that's what.
who isn't? the real question here, though, is are you all for your isp blocking spam for you... without your consent, approval or even, apparently, notification.
letting isp's make decisions for their customers' "own good" is a dangerous path to start on.
uh, there was a massive energy crisis during the carter administration. a huge spanner in the economic workings of the country that just happen to ocur under his watch. blaming carter for the actions of opec is a little bit unfair.
now, if you're looking for a president who really tanked the economy, i'd suggest reagan. in his eight years he moved the national deficit from 2.5% ($80 bn) of gdp to 6% ($250 bn). if you wonder why the national debt is so out of control, it's because ron spent it all on military adventurism while cutting taxes for the upper 10%.
the u.s. government over the last several months has been a massive binge of re-classifying previously declassified historical documents. i think they've done maybe 50,000 of them. this administration has a culture of secrecy and limit of access to information and this move is nicely in keeping with that ideology. my source on the document reclassification is here.
holy straw man batman!
- wikipedia comes with help pages and tutorials. ferry's rarely do
- wikipedia mistakes can be undone. ferry mistakes can't
- wikipedia is accessible for everyone to operate. ferry's aren't
- wikipedia mistakes are non fatal. sometimes ferry mistakes aren't. sometimes.
- virtually everyone has a computer in the their home or free access to one. ferrys are less accessible
all of this leads to a climate that encourages experimentation and learning on wikipedia and discourages it for ferrys. to equate the two is disengenious. if you want a mode of transport to compare to editing wikipedia, i'd suggest choosing driving a car.yes. what about the unborn babies??
and it will get the release after windows vista to you probably not at all. if a private buyout aims to increase ms's profitability by slashing its 'wasteful' r&d budget (as the article states) then you can expect a bought-out microsoft to offer less compelling products less frequently.
ultimately such a manoeveur would be a long term disaster. but, of course, if there's one thing the free market excells at, it's sacraficing long term interests for short term gains.