You hear that CFLs use 1/4 the electricity for the same lighting; in my experience, I got the best results using 1/3 of the wattage (e.g. replace 60W with 20W). The main exception is my recessed overheads, where for whatever reason the 15W CFLs are brighter than the 65W lamps they replaced.
Huh. My recessed CFLs are brighter than the 65W they replaced, and I like the color better. And they don't have a delay (my GE ones do, but the ones I just picked up at Home Depot do not (can't remember the brand off the top of my head). YMMV.
The payback on CFLs through lower electrical consumption is so fast, it's probably one of the better investments you can make. Read the wikipedia article. Payback in less than 4 months, using conservative numbers.
Aside from the mercury issue (CFLs contain a couple mgs of Hg), which is real but minor, CFLs are a no-brainer. Go buy a mess of these bulbs now. I run 20+ in my house and couldn't be happier with them. Do beware of some of the crappy brands, e.g. I've had bad luck with Lights of America (with a large enough sample size).
Then, go to the One Billion Bulbs website. Kinda weak but an interesting idea.
Mike Krahulik's 2-year-old son, Gabriel, is still a little young to play videogames, but the elder Krahulik makes sure to spend time with his son and talk about whichever game Dad's playing. He even gives little Gabriel his own controller so that he'll feel included.
I initially wrote a screed to end all screeds when I read this. To the tune of Put down the controller and pick up your freeking son. Then I realized that I do stuff like exercise that takes the place of time that I could spend with my kids. But I spend 80% of my waking, non-work, before-their-bedtime time with my kids, easily. I hope, hope, hope that this (dad gaming, son just kinda watching) situation is kept to a minimum.
Ok, I'm kinda old-school. I spent a lot of time during my childhood playing my Atari 2600, Vic-20, C-64/128, Apple 2+, etc. Also spent a lot of time with an Intellivision and an Atari 5200, but I didn't own those.
I don't play any games now, except on my phone when I'm waiting for a flight or something. Between my wife, kids, jobs, reading, (non-gaming) hobbies, and exercise, I just don't have time for it. And I really don't miss it. Although they can a lot of fun (and yes, the 2600 was really fun), gaming just seems to me to be a) somewhat addictive and b) a waste of time.
Now I'm not anti-gaming, or look down on those who play games. Whatever floats your boat. Just ask yourself- often- would my life be more fulfilling if I played less often? I decided the answer was yes, and because of the addiction factor decided that my optimum was zero, and pretty much walked away.
That said, I kind of look forward to introducing my kids to videogames one day (we're at Candyland and Memory right now), and was recently pretty tempted by those 2600-in-a-joystick-for-$20 things in a store. But you can bet their game time will be rationed. There's just so much more to life (YMMV).
I post a rather diplomatic response and you come back all snotty and condescending.
When writing my MS thesis, I was precise and correct and detailed. When posting on./, and having a proposal and some other work due the same day, sometimes I devote less time and energy.
Besides, in my post I was precise and correct; I stand by my characterization of the exec. branch having "some control" over funding, for reasons already mentioned. But I concede I didn't even need to single out the exec. branch; you win the./ debate club prize on that point.
I mentioned distortion and suppression by "the government." Distortion: Whoo boy. I'll start with this masterpiece about mercury (pdf) by Pombo et al. Then you have Mr. Deutsch- there's distortion and suppression all wrapped up in one nice package. And incompetence. I'll leave you with this resignation letter.
I like how you narrowly interpreted my comments to refer to strictly to publishing. Narrow interpretation is your favorite tool, isn't it. But I am more broadly concerned with the suppression/distortion of science in the government's decision making process. Refer to the situation regarding the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change described in the last link. See also this book.
I concur that we have it better than in China. There should be a corollary to Godwin's law- if you have to compare your country to China to argue that your government isn't so bad, you lose.
I refer you to this review of one of the more dishonest scientific episodes in recent memory, in which Patrick Michaels quite deliberately distorted Hansen's 1998 climate predictions (which, ten years later, were actually quite good). If I was Hansen I'd be pissed, too.
Care to provide any links that demonstrate with any shred of integrity why Dr. Hansen's research is crappy? And please don't waste my time with Junk Science or any other previously debunked sites.
That was an informative post, and I appreciated reading it, except for the potshot at me. You will note that I said the exec. branch had "some control" over the direction of funding. Reading your post, most (but not all) of which I did know, I stand by this characterization. Especially during this Congress, which did not impress me with its independence from the exec. branch. And clearly this Administration has exerted fairly strong control over the agencies, through appointments and direct pressure. See: James Hansen, George Deutsch, and so forth.
And besides, my main point was that the real problem is the perversion of scientific research that we are seeing.
To review: I argue that the politics of funding science is not great but is basically tolerable (with notable exceptions), while the distortion and/or suppression of inconvenient scientific results is not tolerable.
I apologize if my characterization of the funding process of the US government was not of sufficient detail for your liking.
Finally- thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for the concept of "separation of powers."
Funding certain areas of scientific research instead of others is one thing; actively suppressing or ignoring the results of said research is entirely another. The executive branch has some control over what gets researched, and I'm basically OK with that; what I'm not OK with is the government's control of the results.
Humans are natural, hence they are part of natural selection. This false dichotomy between nature and man is, frankly, just so much hippie bullshit. Seems to me that "natural" is an antonym for "synthetic." Synthetic means, depending on where you look, something like "Human-made compounds or not of natural origin."
So while humans may be natural (even though we are technically human-made), I would argue that things like boats and PCBs and trawling nets are not natural. Put another way, we became qualitatively different than other life forms around the time we started farming (at the earliest) or building factories (at the latest). Sure, life forms collectively have had a huge, "natural" impact on our planet (oxygen, soil, etc.), but can you name another *single* species that has come within several orders of magnitude of the impact that humans have? Even in the past 100 years? Is there any other single species whose impact is evident from orbit? Who has accelerated the rate of species extinction by a few orders of magnitude?
I'm not here to argue about the relative merits of this, other than to say that I summarily reject the "shit happens" argument toward extinction. With that attitude, you can pretty much say goodbye, on some timescale, to all non-domesticated mammals, birds, and most fish, because we are very good at eating them and corrupting their "natural" habitat. That leaves us with plants, insects, microbes, maybe fungus, and some other goo. At least we'll still have "Animal Planet."
Are people still using it for new deployments, and if so, why?
Inertia and familiarity. Fortunately, the barriers to switching aren't all that great, so it'll be easy enough to jump ship when/if needed. I'm one of the 80-90% of users that just needs some tables and industry-standard SQL; for almost all of my needs, I could use just about any DB backend. Yes, I know, YMMV.
I don't see this as a technical deficiency of the software. This is a business issue.
Do you have Debian and MySQL expertise? Find yourself someone business-savvy (hint: it's probably not you) and sell support for MySQL on Debian. Be your own boss (hint: make sure your business-savvy person isn't a PHB). I think MySQL AB has been pretty clear in the past that they are but a small (if central) part of the MySQL ecosystem, and they clearly want to focus on their high-margin customers. Might be a smart move, might not, but it sure opens the door to players who want to seize the other niches.
To their credit, Polling Report actually shows the full text of the polls. Because the reality is that I could conduct a poll that turned any of the numbers you cited upside down. It's all in the wording and the details ("Do you think it's OK for people to savagely club furry baby seals?" vs. "Should the government interfere with indigenous peoples' traditional family-oriented hunter-gatherer lifestyle?"). That's a lame one but you get the idea.
That's not to say that polls and surveys are useless, just that our media's interpretation and reporting of them usually is. Proper interpretation requires precision, and our MSM is not equipped to deal with that. And that pisses me off. The MSM may or may not be biased left or right, but what's far worse is that they tend to be biased toward vapidity and bad logic.
I don't have cable, which is about $60 a month here. The only things I buy from iTunes are Colbert Report and Daily Show; together that's $20 a month for all the shows (16 of each). Add Netflix for $20, and eMusic for $10, and I have as much entertainment media as I want, fully legal, no DRM on the music, for $50 a month, $10 less than cable.
Yes, I know I don't get the 10 billion channels cable would offer me, but that's a good thing.
... but for now Oracle has carved itself out a nice niche being a premiere database player, along with IBM's DB2.
Oracle's problem, though, is that they are being driven upmarket by their lower cost competitors. This is is the same dynamic that led to PCs destroying the minicomputer industry and started to threaten Intel, until they (wisely) realized that they couldn't abandon the low-margin part of their business. Clayton Christensen wrote a pretty good book about this; here's a very good talk by him.
The question is, how must faster are the low-cost DBs (MySQL, Postgres, MSSQL, etc.) improving with respect to customers' needs? That's the key item that will determine Oracle's fate. Oracle's Linux strategy is an interesting move; I can't profess to be smart enough to predict how it'll pan out.
No, my wife's work, at present, is raising kids. So she tends to bring them wherever she is going. We have three; 3 + 1 = 4 (3 + 2 = 5 on the weekends).
I usually ride my bike to work, or take our beater car.
Mmm logic dictates no such thing. Minivan is used to take 3 kids to preschool and other activities. Minivan does not go to work (work is raising the kids). 1+ kids usually go to grocery store. Same with errands. If no kids, parent(s) take smaller, older, beater car that gets decent mileage, looks like crap, and is paid for.
Huh? My minivan gets better mileage than SUVs with equivalent capacity. It also has a lower center of gravity and bumper height. It does weigh a lot, though.
And driven with few passengers? Do you think people buy minivans for the looks? Our minivan rarely goes anywhere with less than four people. That's why we got a minivan.
There's something in the American psyche these days that demands they leave every job half done.
That's convenient.
There is/was something in the American Administration that demanded that it botch every single aspect of Iraq war planning, from the general idea (Al's a threat! Let's attack Iggy!), to the lack of a plan to keep the peace (as the Shinseki episode so cleary demonstrates).
It may be hard for you to understand, but some people oppose the war, and did so from before the start, because it was a bad idea, poorly implemented.
"BOSTON - Wednesday November 22, 2006 - Governor-elect Deval Patrick and Lieutenant Governor-elect Tim Murray announced today the creation of 15 Transition Committee issues working groups that will help shape the new administration's policy agenda as it prepares to take office on Jan. 4, 2007.
Continuing in their grassroots outreach, Patrick and Murray also announced that the working groups would conduct a series of Community Meetings across the Commonwealth over the next several weeks to seek public input for their agenda.
"During the campaign, Tim Murray and I made it very clear that we will be seeking good ideas from Democrats, Republicans, Independents and anyone else, and we will listen to those ideas and pick the best ones to help move our Commonwealth forward. These Community meetings are the first step in the process," said Patrick.
The meetings will be convened by the co-chairs of the working groups and will include the members of those groups and will be open to the public. The findings from each working group will be filed as a report and delivered to the Governor- and Lt. Governor-elect by December 15th."
So there's not too much an MS plant can really do. That said, I would've appointed someone from our good friends from Novell, which is at least headquartered here in MA. They are at the intersection of Open vs Closed right now (for better or worse). If I can attend the Technology meeting I'll try to bitch about this.
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If your electricity came from burning oil (easiest way to compare) at 33% efficiency:
.33 = 1,080 kWh thermal to produce (oil -> electricity).
1 CFL saves 360 kWh over its life (delta of 45W times 8000 hours). That took 360 /
A gallon of gas contains about 36 kWh of energy (sorry for the weird units; I should have gone to BTU to start). So 1 CFL saves 30 gallons of gas.
Where is your dump?
You hear that CFLs use 1/4 the electricity for the same lighting; in my experience, I got the best results using 1/3 of the wattage (e.g. replace 60W with 20W). The main exception is my recessed overheads, where for whatever reason the 15W CFLs are brighter than the 65W lamps they replaced.
Huh. My recessed CFLs are brighter than the 65W they replaced, and I like the color better. And they don't have a delay (my GE ones do, but the ones I just picked up at Home Depot do not (can't remember the brand off the top of my head). YMMV.
The payback on CFLs through lower electrical consumption is so fast, it's probably one of the better investments you can make. Read the wikipedia article. Payback in less than 4 months, using conservative numbers.
Aside from the mercury issue (CFLs contain a couple mgs of Hg), which is real but minor, CFLs are a no-brainer. Go buy a mess of these bulbs now. I run 20+ in my house and couldn't be happier with them. Do beware of some of the crappy brands, e.g. I've had bad luck with Lights of America (with a large enough sample size).
Then, go to the One Billion Bulbs website. Kinda weak but an interesting idea.
I initially wrote a screed to end all screeds when I read this. To the tune of Put down the controller and pick up your freeking son. Then I realized that I do stuff like exercise that takes the place of time that I could spend with my kids. But I spend 80% of my waking, non-work, before-their-bedtime time with my kids, easily. I hope, hope, hope that this (dad gaming, son just kinda watching) situation is kept to a minimum.
Just my nosy parenting advice for the day.
Ok, I'm kinda old-school. I spent a lot of time during my childhood playing my Atari 2600, Vic-20, C-64/128, Apple 2+, etc. Also spent a lot of time with an Intellivision and an Atari 5200, but I didn't own those.
I don't play any games now, except on my phone when I'm waiting for a flight or something. Between my wife, kids, jobs, reading, (non-gaming) hobbies, and exercise, I just don't have time for it. And I really don't miss it. Although they can a lot of fun (and yes, the 2600 was really fun), gaming just seems to me to be a) somewhat addictive and b) a waste of time.
Now I'm not anti-gaming, or look down on those who play games. Whatever floats your boat. Just ask yourself- often- would my life be more fulfilling if I played less often? I decided the answer was yes, and because of the addiction factor decided that my optimum was zero, and pretty much walked away.
That said, I kind of look forward to introducing my kids to videogames one day (we're at Candyland and Memory right now), and was recently pretty tempted by those 2600-in-a-joystick-for-$20 things in a store. But you can bet their game time will be rationed. There's just so much more to life (YMMV).
I post a rather diplomatic response and you come back all snotty and condescending.
./, and having a proposal and some other work due the same day, sometimes I devote less time and energy.
./ debate club prize on that point.
When writing my MS thesis, I was precise and correct and detailed. When posting on
Besides, in my post I was precise and correct; I stand by my characterization of the exec. branch having "some control" over funding, for reasons already mentioned. But I concede I didn't even need to single out the exec. branch; you win the
I mentioned distortion and suppression by "the government."
Distortion: Whoo boy. I'll start with this masterpiece about mercury (pdf) by Pombo et al. Then you have Mr. Deutsch- there's distortion and suppression all wrapped up in one nice package. And incompetence. I'll leave you with this resignation letter.
I like how you narrowly interpreted my comments to refer to strictly to publishing. Narrow interpretation is your favorite tool, isn't it. But I am more broadly concerned with the suppression/distortion of science in the government's decision making process. Refer to the situation regarding the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change described in the last link. See also this book.
I concur that we have it better than in China. There should be a corollary to Godwin's law- if you have to compare your country to China to argue that your government isn't so bad, you lose.
I refer you to this review of one of the more dishonest scientific episodes in recent memory, in which Patrick Michaels quite deliberately distorted Hansen's 1998 climate predictions (which, ten years later, were actually quite good). If I was Hansen I'd be pissed, too.
Care to provide any links that demonstrate with any shred of integrity why Dr. Hansen's research is crappy? And please don't waste my time with Junk Science or any other previously debunked sites.
Cheers.
That was an informative post, and I appreciated reading it, except for the potshot at me. You will note that I said the exec. branch had "some control" over the direction of funding. Reading your post, most (but not all) of which I did know, I stand by this characterization. Especially during this Congress, which did not impress me with its independence from the exec. branch. And clearly this Administration has exerted fairly strong control over the agencies, through appointments and direct pressure. See: James Hansen, George Deutsch, and so forth.
And besides, my main point was that the real problem is the perversion of scientific research that we are seeing.
To review: I argue that the politics of funding science is not great but is basically tolerable (with notable exceptions), while the distortion and/or suppression of inconvenient scientific results is not tolerable.
I apologize if my characterization of the funding process of the US government was not of sufficient detail for your liking.
Finally- thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for the concept of "separation of powers."
Cheers.
Funding certain areas of scientific research instead of others is one thing; actively suppressing or ignoring the results of said research is entirely another. The executive branch has some control over what gets researched, and I'm basically OK with that; what I'm not OK with is the government's control of the results.
Except that the stubby thing is attached to a computer.
I believe that
So while humans may be natural (even though we are technically human-made), I would argue that things like boats and PCBs and trawling nets are not natural. Put another way, we became qualitatively different than other life forms around the time we started farming (at the earliest) or building factories (at the latest). Sure, life forms collectively have had a huge, "natural" impact on our planet (oxygen, soil, etc.), but can you name another *single* species that has come within several orders of magnitude of the impact that humans have? Even in the past 100 years? Is there any other single species whose impact is evident from orbit? Who has accelerated the rate of species extinction by a few orders of magnitude?
I'm not here to argue about the relative merits of this, other than to say that I summarily reject the "shit happens" argument toward extinction. With that attitude, you can pretty much say goodbye, on some timescale, to all non-domesticated mammals, birds, and most fish, because we are very good at eating them and corrupting their "natural" habitat. That leaves us with plants, insects, microbes, maybe fungus, and some other goo. At least we'll still have "Animal Planet."
Are people still using it for new deployments, and if so, why?
Inertia and familiarity. Fortunately, the barriers to switching aren't all that great, so it'll be easy enough to jump ship when/if needed. I'm one of the 80-90% of users that just needs some tables and industry-standard SQL; for almost all of my needs, I could use just about any DB backend. Yes, I know, YMMV.I don't see this as a technical deficiency of the software. This is a business issue.
Do you have Debian and MySQL expertise? Find yourself someone business-savvy (hint: it's probably not you) and sell support for MySQL on Debian. Be your own boss (hint: make sure your business-savvy person isn't a PHB). I think MySQL AB has been pretty clear in the past that they are but a small (if central) part of the MySQL ecosystem, and they clearly want to focus on their high-margin customers. Might be a smart move, might not, but it sure opens the door to players who want to seize the other niches.
To their credit, Polling Report actually shows the full text of the polls. Because the reality is that I could conduct a poll that turned any of the numbers you cited upside down. It's all in the wording and the details ("Do you think it's OK for people to savagely club furry baby seals?" vs. "Should the government interfere with indigenous peoples' traditional family-oriented hunter-gatherer lifestyle?"). That's a lame one but you get the idea.
That's not to say that polls and surveys are useless, just that our media's interpretation and reporting of them usually is. Proper interpretation requires precision, and our MSM is not equipped to deal with that. And that pisses me off. The MSM may or may not be biased left or right, but what's far worse is that they tend to be biased toward vapidity and bad logic.
I'm right there with you.
I don't have cable, which is about $60 a month here. The only things I buy from iTunes are Colbert Report and Daily Show; together that's $20 a month for all the shows (16 of each). Add Netflix for $20, and eMusic for $10, and I have as much entertainment media as I want, fully legal, no DRM on the music, for $50 a month, $10 less than cable.
Yes, I know I don't get the 10 billion channels cable would offer me, but that's a good thing.
... but for now Oracle has carved itself out a nice niche being a premiere database player, along with IBM's DB2.Oracle's problem, though, is that they are being driven upmarket by their lower cost competitors. This is is the same dynamic that led to PCs destroying the minicomputer industry and started to threaten Intel, until they (wisely) realized that they couldn't abandon the low-margin part of their business. Clayton Christensen wrote a pretty good book about this; here's a very good talk by him.
The question is, how must faster are the low-cost DBs (MySQL, Postgres, MSSQL, etc.) improving with respect to customers' needs? That's the key item that will determine Oracle's fate. Oracle's Linux strategy is an interesting move; I can't profess to be smart enough to predict how it'll pan out.
I think you skipped the kind that actually pay attention to their kids. They just don't make the news much.
As the Devil usually isn't in the altruism business, I would expect that we would be asking his usual fee, either explicitly or through deception.
So, my choice: So long, been nice to know ya.
You certainly made an interesting choice for an analogy.
No, my wife's work, at present, is raising kids. So she tends to bring them wherever she is going. We have three; 3 + 1 = 4 (3 + 2 = 5 on the weekends).
I usually ride my bike to work, or take our beater car.
Mmm logic dictates no such thing. Minivan is used to take 3 kids to preschool and other activities. Minivan does not go to work (work is raising the kids). 1+ kids usually go to grocery store. Same with errands. If no kids, parent(s) take smaller, older, beater car that gets decent mileage, looks like crap, and is paid for.
Huh? My minivan gets better mileage than SUVs with equivalent capacity. It also has a lower center of gravity and bumper height. It does weigh a lot, though.
And driven with few passengers? Do you think people buy minivans for the looks? Our minivan rarely goes anywhere with less than four people. That's why we got a minivan.
There's something in the American psyche these days that demands they leave every job half done.
That's convenient.
There is/was something in the American Administration that demanded that it botch every single aspect of Iraq war planning, from the general idea (Al's a threat! Let's attack Iggy!), to the lack of a plan to keep the peace (as the Shinseki episode so cleary demonstrates).
It may be hard for you to understand, but some people oppose the war, and did so from before the start, because it was a bad idea, poorly implemented.
So that's what killed Lisp mindshare (?).
No, I wasn't thinking of that one per se. Gee, I had forgotten all about the FSF (Boston based) in this context.
Though, for that matter, I would not want to see RMS in the working group- his people skills could use a little, uh, refinement.
The group in question is a working group charged with "helping Deval and Tim form a comprehensive agenda for the administration."
More info here:
"BOSTON - Wednesday November 22, 2006 - Governor-elect Deval Patrick and Lieutenant Governor-elect Tim Murray announced today the creation of 15 Transition Committee issues working groups that will help shape the new administration's policy agenda as it prepares to take office on Jan. 4, 2007.
Continuing in their grassroots outreach, Patrick and Murray also announced that the working groups would conduct a series of Community Meetings across the Commonwealth over the next several weeks to seek public input for their agenda.
"During the campaign, Tim Murray and I made it very clear that we will be seeking good ideas from Democrats, Republicans, Independents and anyone else, and we will listen to those ideas and pick the best ones to help move our Commonwealth forward. These Community meetings are the first step in the process," said Patrick.
The meetings will be convened by the co-chairs of the working groups and will include the members of those groups and will be open to the public. The findings from each working group will be filed as a report and delivered to the Governor- and Lt. Governor-elect by December 15th."
So there's not too much an MS plant can really do. That said, I would've appointed someone from our good friends from Novell, which is at least headquartered here in MA. They are at the intersection of Open vs Closed right now (for better or worse). If I can attend the Technology meeting I'll try to bitch about this.