As other people have said in other discussions, we could always harvest materials from the landfills. I think that it would be hard to harvest paper for recycling, but glass and metal should be doable. As for the gases, that would be a problem.
Honestly, the monetary cost of disposal for a bulb, when compared to our regular weekly trash, and office trash is probably so minimal, that it is not worth thinking about. The ecological cost is something to think about.
I think that you might be deliberately confusing the situation. When you talk about the cost of recycling, then you are essentially talking about the cost of manufacturing the next generation of things. The mantra of the recycling community is that recycling is often cheaper. So that only supports my argument for cheap disposable products.
Also, You've reminded me of my time in the Canadian Forces. 1 of my fellow soldiers was asking our supervisor about a certain technology that we were using. It seemed old to my fellow soldier. The supervisor insisted that it wasn't that old, and that the military wanted stable stuff that worked. My fellow soldier was thinking in terms of high tech with new features.
That being said, I mentioned the 90s, because it really was a long time ago. Companies were already getting rid of their 486s and their Pentiums. I don't think that it is unreasonable to say that those computers are outdated by today's standards.
Yeah, I think that the guy that you first replied to really meant that within a price range, a technology will improve enough that a long lasting item will not be as good as a new model 5 years from now. I doubt that he really meant that there is a Moore's Law specifically for fridges. It was more of a hypothetical thing, I think. Obviously, I can't speak for him.:^)
That being said, I'm glad that you pointed out that we are close the limits for fridge improvements. This shows that every purchase is a gamble. If we have some insight that the relevant technology will improve, then it would be better to use low quality materials for the current generation of products. If we have some insight that that technology will stay the same, then it pays to make it last 100+ years.
After reading what you said about the limits, I probably will buy a long lasting fridge.
I skimmed through it, but the gist that I got was that energy requirements have gone down, while our consumption has increased on a per capita basis. The increase in consumption is unrelated to the Slashdot discussion. Therefore, according to the person you are replying to, fridges, several years from now, will be better than they are now, and will be better for us. Therefore, it might pay off to make a shorter lasting fridge at a lower price.
It makes sense. It's just a matter of confirming the idea with actual measurements and numbers.
I agree. I read somewhere that it is actually better to use cheap bulbs that burn out quicker, than long lasting bulbs. It's because the manufacturing costs and the manufacturing energy consumption are both lower than the requirements to power that long lasting bulb.
It's counter intuitive, but it makes sense: long lasting does not automatically consume less.
If we really wanted long lasting, then we would still be using phones and hard drives from the early 90s. Do we really want that?
I am the anonymous coward that posted the original comment. Thanks for defending the view. I think that I would have never been able to do it as well as you. I only stumbled on to the idea after reading about the summary above. I get the impression that you have thought through this for quite some time.
I definitely meant it in the way that you did, but I wasn't as serious about it as you are. Now that I have read your comments, you really won me over even more.
I don't want to post off-topic, but I modded up you and the others in the discussions about special effects and elevators.
Regarding the elevator that you wrote about, are you saying that inside the "elevator", you could see 2 sets of doors; 1 set at each end of the "elevator"? You're saying that the elevator was essentially just a tunnel or room that gave the illusion of an elevator, right?
Recycling bottle and jar caps depends on what the cap is made of. Where I live, they are made of #1 or #2 plastic, which means that it can be recycled as easily as the main container.
That is what Surrey, BC, has too. There is still some thought, but we pretty much have it easy now. We used to have 3 separate things to sort, but getting the company to do it provides jobs. I think that the majority of people will pay more for recycling.
It seems that replying anonymously also undoes moderation. I guess that we have to log out to reply anonymously, while keeping the moderation in effect.
Also, there is the net cost of how often a space is used. If the cubicle is used only 50% of the time, for part time workers, then paying as much as 75% of the typical cost is still saving 25% of that cost. I hope that that makes sense.
I don't know exactly what he is talking about, but it sounds like packaged office space. Realtors make use of this, when they set up appointments with clients.
For me, there actually is packaged office space that actually is about a 10 minute walk from my home.
It's a great deal on a day by day basis. You get a desk, a seat, and office. I think that you can get temporary land line use, too. You can make use of the conference room.
I think that it's a pretty good secret in America and Canada. An acquaintance, in my writing group, wrote about that situation in his detective novel. He described a situation where there was receptionist and how people in the office never knew who the person in the corner office was. According to his description, none of us knew how that could possibly happen, because we didn't understand that he was talking about packaged office space. We all might have known about packaged office, but Canadians and Americans typically think about coworkers working in the same general office.
In the context of this discussion, I would only use it, when I'm doing work that I don't enjoy. If I'm running an e-commerce business, that I would enjoy, then I would want that to happen at home.
If I have a boss that wants me to bring my work home with me, then I would rather have the packaged office space to separate me from his work.
Another good time to use packaged office space is when you need a large number of people to come by to pick up stuff or drop off stuff. There will be more parking there [hopefully!] than at your home. You can protect your privacy by not giving out your home address.
That's interesting. I've never heard of a situation when somebody commented to undo a negative mod. I guess that I'm so used to modding people up, that I forget that some people still want to mod people down.
Thanks for pointing me to the article! I still think the person had it wrong.
The classifier is for counting the individuals, and while the collective nouns are used for referring to the group. For example, your herd of cattle might have 5 head of cattle.
I'm glad that you said that. I literally had no clue that he meant that. I assumed that tails had ripped off. I assumed that the electrified fences must have had barbs on them that somehow snagged the deer. I know. It's crazy, but it never dawned on me that he misspelled something.
That's why I hate it when people don't bother proof reading and using dictionaries for spell checks.
Maybe it would be cool to have the gourds or coconuts break off after absorbing the toxins, and then float to the surface. They could be harvested more easily...maybe.
Thanks for the reply. You must get tired of discussing these issues.
Regarding allowing the pricing to clear the markets, I agree with you. In fact, I agree with all you said. I want to create jobs overseas to help people, and to make life better.
The problem that I have is the time frame in which it occurs. Typically, a company can literally just fire people and move overseas, if I understand correctly. It's all based on the idea that the owners and innovators are the people who took the only risks. That's not true. Every person who took on a career with the company could have potentially taken another job, assuming, of course, that the person has the potential for learning it. So to just move the company overseas is very disruptive.
Regarding private navies and piracy, that is very clever. I never thought of private navies. I'm very supportive of market-based solutions, if it really does work.
This discussion reminds me of my friend who talks about his right to buy things at the cheapest prices. I that that is great, but I also think that it isn't fair to allow somebody to compete with less restrictions [e.g. minimum wages, work place safety, handicap ramps and washrooms and parking, etc.]. By allowing you to buy those t-shirts for $1, we are essentially, but not literally, allowing "you" to lower your costs, without allowing "me" to lower my costs. Local businesses and workers support the local health care systems and educational systems, whether we want the government to be involved or not. Foreign countries don't support these systems, and thus offer lower prices.
By globalization, I meant that increased international trade would encourage debt to be transferred as you mentioned. Now that I read your second reply, I'm starting to think that I really don't know what I'm talking about.
Countries could still have trade without free trade. For things like art, I have no problems with trading tax free, but for commodity items, I'd be a bit more hesitant. The problem with free trade is that it favours those who don't play by our rules, whether those rules are good or bad. This creates an unbalanced playing field. We have minimum wage laws and high housing prices [which are caused by other laws]. That automatically makes it easier for other countries to compete against us. That's not fair.
To see the absurdity of this, imagine the government saying, "If your workers [whether they be local or international] have a higher cost of living, then you must pay a higher wage, whereas if they have a lower cost of living, then you are welcome to pay them as little as possible.". That would allow your employer to pay you $100/hour, since you own a nice home, and then pay your shantytown neighbour as little as possible. We could bring back a mild form of slavery, where the slaves would have the lowest standard of living, and thus be paid nothing. It would be worth while, because the employer, through the generosity of his heart, is giving them free work experience.
I don't think that it is right for the government to enact laws to protect us, which makes us uncompetitive, while the workers overseas compete for low paying jobs. They live in places where there are lower costs of living, only because there are lower standards of living. By allowing the consumer to pay less, the consumer ends up spending that money on more things, which is usually good, but in theory can end up spreading the money around pitifully.
I think that, in general, it isn't healthy to have all jobs of a certain kind to be shipped overseas. Some people just aren't cut out to be technical or to be in management. Some people, for better or for worse, are only good with grunt work. Also, when we have a variety of jobs, it allows us to have flexibility in the economy. For example, there are a lot of jobs out there are great for transients, who through bad luck, need a temp job. Having a variety of jobs will allow him to do that.
Laissez-faire market advocates are always telling the riff-raff to go get a job. Well, okay, but what would you have us do, when we can't do the jobs that are available? You could blame us for not finding the perfect job, but sometimes things just don't work out well.
Laissez-faire market advocates are always talking about control of their own money, and dealing with risk on their own, either through good insurance plans or whatever. If that is you, then surely you agree to ban all government services and let the market protect you from overseas invaders? You don't expect the government to protect your ships from pirates, do you?
If you see some value in some government services, then hopefully you can see some value in government protecting the economy as well.
Slashdot Mirror
As other people have said in other discussions, we could always harvest materials from the landfills. I think that it would be hard to harvest paper for recycling, but glass and metal should be doable. As for the gases, that would be a problem.
Honestly, the monetary cost of disposal for a bulb, when compared to our regular weekly trash, and office trash is probably so minimal, that it is not worth thinking about. The ecological cost is something to think about.
I think that you might be deliberately confusing the situation. When you talk about the cost of recycling, then you are essentially talking about the cost of manufacturing the next generation of things. The mantra of the recycling community is that recycling is often cheaper. So that only supports my argument for cheap disposable products.
Ah. I found the link.
"Why making bulbs last longer often does not pay"
I will never be able to confirm his numbers, but from what I could tell, they really make sense to me.
That's a good point. I'm using a LTS of Kubuntu.
Also, You've reminded me of my time in the Canadian Forces. 1 of my fellow soldiers was asking our supervisor about a certain technology that we were using. It seemed old to my fellow soldier. The supervisor insisted that it wasn't that old, and that the military wanted stable stuff that worked. My fellow soldier was thinking in terms of high tech with new features.
That being said, I mentioned the 90s, because it really was a long time ago. Companies were already getting rid of their 486s and their Pentiums. I don't think that it is unreasonable to say that those computers are outdated by today's standards.
Yeah, I think that the guy that you first replied to really meant that within a price range, a technology will improve enough that a long lasting item will not be as good as a new model 5 years from now. I doubt that he really meant that there is a Moore's Law specifically for fridges. It was more of a hypothetical thing, I think. Obviously, I can't speak for him. :^)
That being said, I'm glad that you pointed out that we are close the limits for fridge improvements. This shows that every purchase is a gamble. If we have some insight that the relevant technology will improve, then it would be better to use low quality materials for the current generation of products. If we have some insight that that technology will stay the same, then it pays to make it last 100+ years.
After reading what you said about the limits, I probably will buy a long lasting fridge.
I skimmed through it, but the gist that I got was that energy requirements have gone down, while our consumption has increased on a per capita basis. The increase in consumption is unrelated to the Slashdot discussion. Therefore, according to the person you are replying to, fridges, several years from now, will be better than they are now, and will be better for us. Therefore, it might pay off to make a shorter lasting fridge at a lower price.
It makes sense. It's just a matter of confirming the idea with actual measurements and numbers.
I agree. I read somewhere that it is actually better to use cheap bulbs that burn out quicker, than long lasting bulbs. It's because the manufacturing costs and the manufacturing energy consumption are both lower than the requirements to power that long lasting bulb.
It's counter intuitive, but it makes sense: long lasting does not automatically consume less.
If we really wanted long lasting, then we would still be using phones and hard drives from the early 90s. Do we really want that?
HI!
I am the anonymous coward that posted the original comment. Thanks for defending the view. I think that I would have never been able to do it as well as you. I only stumbled on to the idea after reading about the summary above. I get the impression that you have thought through this for quite some time.
I definitely meant it in the way that you did, but I wasn't as serious about it as you are. Now that I have read your comments, you really won me over even more.
Keep it up.
Hi Dan.
I don't want to post off-topic, but I modded up you and the others in the discussions about special effects and elevators.
Regarding the elevator that you wrote about, are you saying that inside the "elevator", you could see 2 sets of doors; 1 set at each end of the "elevator"? You're saying that the elevator was essentially just a tunnel or room that gave the illusion of an elevator, right?
Putting them in the shower is an interesting idea. I wonder where we could put them, other than the lawn and compost.
Putting them in the toilet seems like a logical solution, because the peanuts would prevent the water from splashing as much, I think.
Recycling bottle and jar caps depends on what the cap is made of. Where I live, they are made of #1 or #2 plastic, which means that it can be recycled as easily as the main container.
I was taught that #7 is compostable. I learned that when I volunteered at a festival in Vancouver, BC. Isn't #7 compostable for you guys?
Yes, of course. Don't you know? On Slashdot, we are Liberals, Libertarians, or Conservatives, until we need to face the music.
That is what Surrey, BC, has too. There is still some thought, but we pretty much have it easy now. We used to have 3 separate things to sort, but getting the company to do it provides jobs. I think that the majority of people will pay more for recycling.
Or better yet, let the free market handle it!
It seems that replying anonymously also undoes moderation. I guess that we have to log out to reply anonymously, while keeping the moderation in effect.
Also, there is the net cost of how often a space is used. If the cubicle is used only 50% of the time, for part time workers, then paying as much as 75% of the typical cost is still saving 25% of that cost. I hope that that makes sense.
I don't know exactly what he is talking about, but it sounds like packaged office space. Realtors make use of this, when they set up appointments with clients.
For me, there actually is packaged office space that actually is about a 10 minute walk from my home.
It's a great deal on a day by day basis. You get a desk, a seat, and office. I think that you can get temporary land line use, too. You can make use of the conference room.
I think that it's a pretty good secret in America and Canada. An acquaintance, in my writing group, wrote about that situation in his detective novel. He described a situation where there was receptionist and how people in the office never knew who the person in the corner office was. According to his description, none of us knew how that could possibly happen, because we didn't understand that he was talking about packaged office space. We all might have known about packaged office, but Canadians and Americans typically think about coworkers working in the same general office.
In the context of this discussion, I would only use it, when I'm doing work that I don't enjoy. If I'm running an e-commerce business, that I would enjoy, then I would want that to happen at home.
If I have a boss that wants me to bring my work home with me, then I would rather have the packaged office space to separate me from his work.
Another good time to use packaged office space is when you need a large number of people to come by to pick up stuff or drop off stuff. There will be more parking there [hopefully!] than at your home. You can protect your privacy by not giving out your home address.
I hope that that helps.
Ah, I see. Thanks for the example.
I guess that I forget those examples, because I skim past them quickly, and because somebody bothered to keep them modded down.
That's interesting. I've never heard of a situation when somebody commented to undo a negative mod. I guess that I'm so used to modding people up, that I forget that some people still want to mod people down.
Cancel an underrated? Don't you mean you meant to cancel an overrated? I'm not trying to be rude. I'm genuinely curious.
Thanks for pointing me to the article! I still think the person had it wrong.
The classifier is for counting the individuals, and while the collective nouns are used for referring to the group. For example, your herd of cattle might have 5 head of cattle.
I'm glad that you said that. I literally had no clue that he meant that. I assumed that tails had ripped off. I assumed that the electrified fences must have had barbs on them that somehow snagged the deer. I know. It's crazy, but it never dawned on me that he misspelled something.
That's why I hate it when people don't bother proof reading and using dictionaries for spell checks.
I tried to ask questions in your journal, but the latest entry seems to be archived. Are you still available for questions?
Maybe it would be cool to have the gourds or coconuts break off after absorbing the toxins, and then float to the surface. They could be harvested more easily...maybe.
Thanks for the reply. You must get tired of discussing these issues.
Regarding allowing the pricing to clear the markets, I agree with you. In fact, I agree with all you said. I want to create jobs overseas to help people, and to make life better.
The problem that I have is the time frame in which it occurs. Typically, a company can literally just fire people and move overseas, if I understand correctly. It's all based on the idea that the owners and innovators are the people who took the only risks. That's not true. Every person who took on a career with the company could have potentially taken another job, assuming, of course, that the person has the potential for learning it. So to just move the company overseas is very disruptive.
Regarding private navies and piracy, that is very clever. I never thought of private navies. I'm very supportive of market-based solutions, if it really does work.
This discussion reminds me of my friend who talks about his right to buy things at the cheapest prices. I that that is great, but I also think that it isn't fair to allow somebody to compete with less restrictions [e.g. minimum wages, work place safety, handicap ramps and washrooms and parking, etc.]. By allowing you to buy those t-shirts for $1, we are essentially, but not literally, allowing "you" to lower your costs, without allowing "me" to lower my costs. Local businesses and workers support the local health care systems and educational systems, whether we want the government to be involved or not. Foreign countries don't support these systems, and thus offer lower prices.
By globalization, I meant that increased international trade would encourage debt to be transferred as you mentioned. Now that I read your second reply, I'm starting to think that I really don't know what I'm talking about.
Countries could still have trade without free trade. For things like art, I have no problems with trading tax free, but for commodity items, I'd be a bit more hesitant. The problem with free trade is that it favours those who don't play by our rules, whether those rules are good or bad. This creates an unbalanced playing field. We have minimum wage laws and high housing prices [which are caused by other laws]. That automatically makes it easier for other countries to compete against us. That's not fair.
To see the absurdity of this, imagine the government saying, "If your workers [whether they be local or international] have a higher cost of living, then you must pay a higher wage, whereas if they have a lower cost of living, then you are welcome to pay them as little as possible.". That would allow your employer to pay you $100/hour, since you own a nice home, and then pay your shantytown neighbour as little as possible. We could bring back a mild form of slavery, where the slaves would have the lowest standard of living, and thus be paid nothing. It would be worth while, because the employer, through the generosity of his heart, is giving them free work experience.
I don't think that it is right for the government to enact laws to protect us, which makes us uncompetitive, while the workers overseas compete for low paying jobs. They live in places where there are lower costs of living, only because there are lower standards of living. By allowing the consumer to pay less, the consumer ends up spending that money on more things, which is usually good, but in theory can end up spreading the money around pitifully.
I think that, in general, it isn't healthy to have all jobs of a certain kind to be shipped overseas. Some people just aren't cut out to be technical or to be in management. Some people, for better or for worse, are only good with grunt work. Also, when we have a variety of jobs, it allows us to have flexibility in the economy. For example, there are a lot of jobs out there are great for transients, who through bad luck, need a temp job. Having a variety of jobs will allow him to do that.
Laissez-faire market advocates are always telling the riff-raff to go get a job. Well, okay, but what would you have us do, when we can't do the jobs that are available? You could blame us for not finding the perfect job, but sometimes things just don't work out well.
Laissez-faire market advocates are always talking about control of their own money, and dealing with risk on their own, either through good insurance plans or whatever. If that is you, then surely you agree to ban all government services and let the market protect you from overseas invaders? You don't expect the government to protect your ships from pirates, do you?
If you see some value in some government services, then hopefully you can see some value in government protecting the economy as well.