No disagreement here, but there is also another issue to consider : jobs and the economy.
Most of the incandescent used in the US are also made in the US. Most if not all CF bulbs are made in China. The result is the loss of hundreds of jobs in the US, in rather uncertain times. GE claims that it is not economical for them to manufacture them here, so rather than retool existing factories is now simply buying the bulbs from Chinese suppliers and selling them in the US.
The free market is "always right." Ok, well... almost always.:)
Let GE, like the auto manufacturers, go out of business. Short-sighted companies need to fail. It's the spirit of innovation.
Of course it sucks for the workers who are unemployed, but life isn't always fair; one day, the world will no longer need unix admins. I'll have to adapt, or lose my income. They the same; you can't manufacture buggy whips forever.
Wow. Way to sneak in that lie under the radar. Politically motivated, or just simple ignorance?
In any case, no, the manufacturing and transport of CFL bulbs absolutely does not generate more CO2 than that saved by using them (assuming coal/natural gas powered, the only logical comparison in this case). Let's run some simple numbers.
Assuming an average 60-watt equivalent (12 watt nominal) CFL bulb with a lifespan of 10,000 hours, it will draw 120kWh over the course of its life. The 60-watt incandescent, if it lasted as long, would draw 600kWh. Of course, it doesn't last as long, but rather an average of 1/5 as long.
So the savings are roughly 480kWh for an 800lm fixture. That's the equivalent of over 400 liters of gasoline burned in an internal combustion engine, and that doesn't include the fuel used building, shipping and shopping for replacement incandencents, which as mentioned burn out far more frequently.
Now for some logic. How is it that a bulb which apparently requires >480kWh of energy to build/ship ($48 at $0.10/kWh) sells for a few dollars? Hint: it doesn't require >480kWh of energy to build/ship, or anywhere near that.
CFLs offer a massive net efficiency gain, and by extension, a net reduction in CO2 emissions. Even factoring in disposal costs at 5 times the manufacturing cost (silly), CFLs are a net win. So please don't spread that tripe!
Yes that's exactly what we need, yet another special interest group with it's own disruptive agenda motivated for "the good of the people."
Isn't that exactly what those other petty little dictators are doing?
Yes - precisely what they are doing. However, we are the good guys. We did not start this war.
We are the defenders - defending our systems from attacks (both legal and illegal). They are the aggressors, seeking to insert themselves.
Not to be melodramatic, but computers and the Internet are probably the single-most important human acheivement in the past 1,000 years. Free communication has the power to transform our society from warring tribes to a true global civilization, concentrating efforts to better our lives. It's the first truly accessible bidirectional network (or "peer-to-peer" as corporate/government drones like to say).
It has the power to dislodge those who seek to position themselves between productive people (for tax or ideological control). These are people who don't produce anything useful; they are simply parasites on the system. Thus, the loss of a global communication network is of little negative consequence to them.
And these are their opening shots; thousands of petty little dictators from all walks of life (government, religion, busybodies, corporate) have zeroed in their guns and are beginning to fire. If they are not stopped, the end result will be disasterous. I did not spend the last 20 years of my life building another glorified cable TV entertainment network.
We, the technically inclined... the engineers who conceptualized, and then actualized this network... we hold the cards. We build and install the equipment, we write the software, and we understand what's at stake. We need to organize, and we need to do it now.
Perhaps a worldwide RBL that completely deletes a hostile force from the Internet, based on a vote. Australian government implementing a censorship plan? No packets to any subnet associated with the Australian government until those responsible are found and punished. New bill to restrict anonymity on the Internet, forcing people to use identifying information? Let's see how well that senator does without email. After all, if he gets his way - to damage our ability to communicate - should we not get ours?
Perhaps a worldwide union of engineers for a collective maintenance; all member engineer will refuse to cooporate with unethical requests (routing to censorship hardware, violating principles of net neutrality, etc), and the union will pay their salary, and assist in finding a new position, if they are terminated for insubordination. In any case, firing an engineer is expensive. Let's make these companies hurt.
The net routes around damage... yes. But nothing is invincible. If we fail to defend it, we lose everything. If a critical mass of governments succeed in inserting themselves as gatekeepers, we have lost. Not because secure communication will be impossible... nothing can stop the individual. But because it will stop the masses. And that's all they want.
Governments spend billions of dollars and many years building up their credibility. Every time the justice system fails, that credit is lost. In time, if corrective measures aren't taken, the justice department finds itself bankrupt - people have zero respect for the law (because it is corrupt), and much contempt for the law. Society becomes lawless.
And not just for the commoner - government workers break the law as well, and for the same reason. Lack of respect.
I posit that debiting the "justice account" by making examples of people, we (regardless of which country) fundamentally damage society and lay burden on those who will follow. It is immoral, and must be stopped.
Can anyone quantify the difference(s) between communism, and capitalism in which the government hands out tax money, extracted at gunpoint, to various large corporations?
Is it just a question of degree (percentage points) or is there some other major difference?
With all the bad news I read about every day, it warms my heart to read about heroes. Even in terrible circumstances like this.
Thomas M. Tamm is a hero to the world and to the American public. He put the needs of the greater good above those of his own. He is fighting the fight that the vast majority of us are too scared to fight - a fight for his country, and a fight for freedom.
When the perpetrators of this current facism are vanquished, like they always are, we will look back and remember the good that rose to counter.
We humans have a funny way of demonizing pleasure and play, and this plays a role in many people's unfavorable (and skeptical) view of video games. It's not "real work."
But it is a form of exercise - not physical, like sport games - but mental. RTS games in particular demand:
- multitasking,
- concentration and short term memory,
- comprehensive learning (new units, tactics, interfaces, etc),
- some blend of both instinctive and congnitive responses (ie.
This exercises the mind and aids decisiveness, pattern recognition, timing and coordination, and all sorts of other useful skills.
Now if you'll excuse me, it's time to get back to my World in Conflict.:)
I wasn't able to find a smaller version than the 2,92 gigs one (the.torrent on Mininova).
Since I indirectly use Bell Canada's network, I'm throttled to a max of 30k/s even if this is a legal download. 2,92 gigs feels too much to me when that documentary could probably be nice enough to watch at about 700 megs... If anyone finds or publishes a smaller version, please let me/us know!:-)
This is a perfect example of political speech being hampered by throttling.
I fear the people who proposed, and those who support this law... more than I fear child predators. I fear they will harm more children (who will doubtless be tortured with prosecution for natural* acts) than child predators. I feel this; it's not academic. Does that make me illegal?
I'm starting to wonder if I'm allowed to think for myself anymore.:(
That "asshole" won my vote last election - the first time I've ever voted against the liberals. And that's saying something; oh, how I yearn for the good old days under Cretien.
Just another data point for readers out there. Spoken as an upper middle class, single man in his late 20's. Jack Layton speaks with honesty, candour, and represents values that I associate with Canada - social freedom, and modern first world economic responsibility.
Virtual memory refers to the entire hunk of addressable space, which may reside in a number of places (often concurrently) - primarily main ram, on-chip cache, or swap.
All modern end-user systems use virtual memory/pagetable to abstract program addresses from system ram. So a better question is "Why use swap on modern systems?"
And the answer is easy: because you have to (if you have insufficient ram) or because you just haven't turned it off yet.
There is one exception; a well designed VM can improve performance by paging out inactive data, even if you have "enough" ram. Paging out inactive data frees up more physical memory, allowing it to be used as disk cache. It doesn't make sense to keep (for example) system boot code or infrequently used daemons in memory when that ram is better used as disk cache while processing archives, browser cache, etc.
Most USB flash drives are very slow, and rely on heavy cacheing to make them usable. That doesn't help when you need to write large amounts of data (ie. in an apt-get update/install).
Some flash drives that advertise themselves as 10-15MiB/sec write capable peak out at only 1 or 2, and even less with small-block random I/O (since the erase-write cycle operates on relatively large blocks).
Several vendors make specialized flash drives that are somewhat more expensive (ie. 20-50% over average), but perform much better.
Won't somebody please think of the children, who will be grown-ups one day -- grown-ups shackled with the consequences of implementing this unethical system?
I just wanted to say thanks for creating and supporting such a great product. I've been buying and recommending Atheros based wifi cards for years (for both Windows and Linux applications) specifically because of your fantastic support of open systems. They are rock solid and fast.
Does anyone else here find the term "injury to a minor" in this context extremely offensive? Is it not insulting to minors who are actually put at risk of injury?
Like, for example, by people threatening to expell a minor for having a plastic butter knife, or tylenol at school?
Like Star Control II was such a great game. Who the hell on slashdot even remembers it?
It was a defining event of my childhood..:)
It goes without saying that perhaps I needed to get out more, but SC2 was one of the first games ever created with a truly brilliant storyline. One loaded with programmer humour, no less. Excellent execution, great battle, and story with lines that I (and apparently you) still remember to this day. Even the story in the readme.txt was inspiring.
This isn't intended as an insult towards you, or as a statement to offend. This is intended to inform others who may read your comment.
Your lack of quality treatment is more likely due to your own incompetence/unwillingness to seek treatment.
I also am Canadian, living in Montreal. I've lived in many towns - Ajax, Sutton, Keswick - and many cities - Toronto, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Newmarket.. If you were unable to receive timely treatment for this type of emergency (yes, emergency) in Canada, you weren't seriously seeking treatment.
Either you are lying (which seems likely; as another poster pointed out, one does not contact "Canadian medicare") or you are simply uneducated or misinformed, and couldn't find anyone nearby to help you.
Again, this isn't intended as flamebait, a troll, or simply an insult. But your story does not pass the sniff test.
If this sounds harsh (you need to be educated and informed to receive medical treatment), I'm sorry. But, it's simply a fact. You need to be an active participant in society. If you can't figure out how to call the fire department, your house will burn down. If you can't figure out how to file your taxes, you must pay someone to do it, or find someone else who can. These are your responsibilities.
Please don't trash a healthcare system that works well for 30 million others by citing a story which, at a minimum, stretches credibility.
According to at least some (scientific) experts, completely eliminating "kiddy porn" may in fact raise the sexual assault rate against minors by removing a release valve for those predisposed to such a thing.
Not that censorship is effective enough to cause such an event.
Slashdot Mirror
No disagreement here, but there is also another issue to consider : jobs and the economy. Most of the incandescent used in the US are also made in the US. Most if not all CF bulbs are made in China. The result is the loss of hundreds of jobs in the US, in rather uncertain times. GE claims that it is not economical for them to manufacture them here, so rather than retool existing factories is now simply buying the bulbs from Chinese suppliers and selling them in the US.
The free market is "always right." Ok, well ... almost always. :)
Let GE, like the auto manufacturers, go out of business. Short-sighted companies need to fail. It's the spirit of innovation.
Of course it sucks for the workers who are unemployed, but life isn't always fair; one day, the world will no longer need unix admins. I'll have to adapt, or lose my income. They the same; you can't manufacture buggy whips forever.
Wow. Way to sneak in that lie under the radar. Politically motivated, or just simple ignorance?
In any case, no, the manufacturing and transport of CFL bulbs absolutely does not generate more CO2 than that saved by using them (assuming coal/natural gas powered, the only logical comparison in this case). Let's run some simple numbers.
Assuming an average 60-watt equivalent (12 watt nominal) CFL bulb with a lifespan of 10,000 hours, it will draw 120kWh over the course of its life. The 60-watt incandescent, if it lasted as long, would draw 600kWh. Of course, it doesn't last as long, but rather an average of 1/5 as long.
So the savings are roughly 480kWh for an 800lm fixture. That's the equivalent of over 400 liters of gasoline burned in an internal combustion engine, and that doesn't include the fuel used building, shipping and shopping for replacement incandencents, which as mentioned burn out far more frequently.
Now for some logic. How is it that a bulb which apparently requires >480kWh of energy to build/ship ($48 at $0.10/kWh) sells for a few dollars? Hint: it doesn't require >480kWh of energy to build/ship, or anywhere near that.
CFLs offer a massive net efficiency gain, and by extension, a net reduction in CO2 emissions. Even factoring in disposal costs at 5 times the manufacturing cost (silly), CFLs are a net win. So please don't spread that tripe!
Interesting that they don't complain when people buy low-efficiency vehicles. Bunch of hypocrites.
Say no to double-dipping!
Yes that's exactly what we need, yet another special interest group with it's own disruptive agenda motivated for "the good of the people." Isn't that exactly what those other petty little dictators are doing?
Yes - precisely what they are doing. However, we are the good guys. We did not start this war.
We are the defenders - defending our systems from attacks (both legal and illegal). They are the aggressors, seeking to insert themselves.
Not to be melodramatic, but computers and the Internet are probably the single-most important human acheivement in the past 1,000 years. Free communication has the power to transform our society from warring tribes to a true global civilization, concentrating efforts to better our lives. It's the first truly accessible bidirectional network (or "peer-to-peer" as corporate/government drones like to say).
It has the power to dislodge those who seek to position themselves between productive people (for tax or ideological control). These are people who don't produce anything useful; they are simply parasites on the system. Thus, the loss of a global communication network is of little negative consequence to them.
And these are their opening shots; thousands of petty little dictators from all walks of life (government, religion, busybodies, corporate) have zeroed in their guns and are beginning to fire. If they are not stopped, the end result will be disasterous. I did not spend the last 20 years of my life building another glorified cable TV entertainment network.
We, the technically inclined... the engineers who conceptualized, and then actualized this network... we hold the cards. We build and install the equipment, we write the software, and we understand what's at stake. We need to organize, and we need to do it now.
Perhaps a worldwide RBL that completely deletes a hostile force from the Internet, based on a vote. Australian government implementing a censorship plan? No packets to any subnet associated with the Australian government until those responsible are found and punished. New bill to restrict anonymity on the Internet, forcing people to use identifying information? Let's see how well that senator does without email. After all, if he gets his way - to damage our ability to communicate - should we not get ours?
Perhaps a worldwide union of engineers for a collective maintenance; all member engineer will refuse to cooporate with unethical requests (routing to censorship hardware, violating principles of net neutrality, etc), and the union will pay their salary, and assist in finding a new position, if they are terminated for insubordination. In any case, firing an engineer is expensive. Let's make these companies hurt.
The net routes around damage... yes. But nothing is invincible. If we fail to defend it, we lose everything. If a critical mass of governments succeed in inserting themselves as gatekeepers, we have lost. Not because secure communication will be impossible... nothing can stop the individual. But because it will stop the masses. And that's all they want.
Governments spend billions of dollars and many years building up their credibility. Every time the justice system fails, that credit is lost. In time, if corrective measures aren't taken, the justice department finds itself bankrupt - people have zero respect for the law (because it is corrupt), and much contempt for the law. Society becomes lawless.
And not just for the commoner - government workers break the law as well, and for the same reason. Lack of respect.
I posit that debiting the "justice account" by making examples of people, we (regardless of which country) fundamentally damage society and lay burden on those who will follow. It is immoral, and must be stopped.
Can anyone quantify the difference(s) between communism, and capitalism in which the government hands out tax money, extracted at gunpoint, to various large corporations?
Is it just a question of degree (percentage points) or is there some other major difference?
Are you seriously comparing firearms, power tool, caustic cleaning products, and the fuse box to porn?
Seriously?
With all the bad news I read about every day, it warms my heart to read about heroes. Even in terrible circumstances like this.
Thomas M. Tamm is a hero to the world and to the American public. He put the needs of the greater good above those of his own. He is fighting the fight that the vast majority of us are too scared to fight - a fight for his country, and a fight for freedom.
When the perpetrators of this current facism are vanquished, like they always are, we will look back and remember the good that rose to counter.
We humans have a funny way of demonizing pleasure and play, and this plays a role in many people's unfavorable (and skeptical) view of video games. It's not "real work."
But it is a form of exercise - not physical, like sport games - but mental. RTS games in particular demand:
- multitasking,
- concentration and short term memory,
- comprehensive learning (new units, tactics, interfaces, etc),
- some blend of both instinctive and congnitive responses (ie.
This exercises the mind and aids decisiveness, pattern recognition, timing and coordination, and all sorts of other useful skills.
Now if you'll excuse me, it's time to get back to my World in Conflict. :)
I wasn't able to find a smaller version than the 2,92 gigs one (the .torrent on Mininova).
Since I indirectly use Bell Canada's network, I'm throttled to a max of 30k/s even if this is a legal download. 2,92 gigs feels too much to me when that documentary could probably be nice enough to watch at about 700 megs... If anyone finds or publishes a smaller version, please let me/us know! :-)
This is a perfect example of political speech being hampered by throttling.
Net neutrality is mandatory for democracy.
I fear the people who proposed, and those who support this law... more than I fear child predators. I fear they will harm more children (who will doubtless be tortured with prosecution for natural* acts) than child predators. I feel this; it's not academic. Does that make me illegal?
I'm starting to wonder if I'm allowed to think for myself anymore. :(
Scary times.
* scientific definition, not legal definition.
That "asshole" won my vote last election - the first time I've ever voted against the liberals. And that's saying something; oh, how I yearn for the good old days under Cretien.
Just another data point for readers out there. Spoken as an upper middle class, single man in his late 20's. Jack Layton speaks with honesty, candour, and represents values that I associate with Canada - social freedom, and modern first world economic responsibility.
Virtual memory refers to the entire hunk of addressable space, which may reside in a number of places (often concurrently) - primarily main ram, on-chip cache, or swap.
All modern end-user systems use virtual memory/pagetable to abstract program addresses from system ram. So a better question is "Why use swap on modern systems?"
And the answer is easy: because you have to (if you have insufficient ram) or because you just haven't turned it off yet.
There is one exception; a well designed VM can improve performance by paging out inactive data, even if you have "enough" ram. Paging out inactive data frees up more physical memory, allowing it to be used as disk cache. It doesn't make sense to keep (for example) system boot code or infrequently used daemons in memory when that ram is better used as disk cache while processing archives, browser cache, etc.
Most USB flash drives are very slow, and rely on heavy cacheing to make them usable. That doesn't help when you need to write large amounts of data (ie. in an apt-get update/install).
Some flash drives that advertise themselves as 10-15MiB/sec write capable peak out at only 1 or 2, and even less with small-block random I/O (since the erase-write cycle operates on relatively large blocks).
Several vendors make specialized flash drives that are somewhat more expensive (ie. 20-50% over average), but perform much better.
One is here: OCZ Turbo USB 2.0
Won't somebody please think of the children, who will be grown-ups one day -- grown-ups shackled with the consequences of implementing this unethical system?
I just wanted to say thanks for creating and supporting such a great product. I've been buying and recommending Atheros based wifi cards for years (for both Windows and Linux applications) specifically because of your fantastic support of open systems. They are rock solid and fast.
Kudos!
In war, every side needs casualties. A side without casualties isn't committing war, they are committing a massacre.
Does anyone else here find the term "injury to a minor" in this context extremely offensive? Is it not insulting to minors who are actually put at risk of injury?
Like, for example, by people threatening to expell a minor for having a plastic butter knife, or tylenol at school?
Like Star Control II was such a great game. Who the hell on slashdot even remembers it?
It was a defining event of my childhood.. :)
It goes without saying that perhaps I needed to get out more, but SC2 was one of the first games ever created with a truly brilliant storyline. One loaded with programmer humour, no less. Excellent execution, great battle, and story with lines that I (and apparently you) still remember to this day. Even the story in the readme.txt was inspiring.
I'd give anything for a sequel by Fred and Paul.
This isn't intended as an insult towards you, or as a statement to offend. This is intended to inform others who may read your comment.
Your lack of quality treatment is more likely due to your own incompetence/unwillingness to seek treatment.
I also am Canadian, living in Montreal. I've lived in many towns - Ajax, Sutton, Keswick - and many cities - Toronto, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Newmarket.. If you were unable to receive timely treatment for this type of emergency (yes, emergency) in Canada, you weren't seriously seeking treatment.
Either you are lying (which seems likely; as another poster pointed out, one does not contact "Canadian medicare") or you are simply uneducated or misinformed, and couldn't find anyone nearby to help you.
Again, this isn't intended as flamebait, a troll, or simply an insult. But your story does not pass the sniff test.
If this sounds harsh (you need to be educated and informed to receive medical treatment), I'm sorry. But, it's simply a fact. You need to be an active participant in society. If you can't figure out how to call the fire department, your house will burn down. If you can't figure out how to file your taxes, you must pay someone to do it, or find someone else who can. These are your responsibilities.
Please don't trash a healthcare system that works well for 30 million others by citing a story which, at a minimum, stretches credibility.
Not even a mention for Windows Mobile?
Not that I care either way (though my current phone is an HTC TyTn II), but interesting how quickly it fell in popularity over the last year.
And how exactly do you propose that governments go about doing that? Because I assure you, they'd be very interested in the answer.
Uh, no. That last thing any modern government wants to do is eliminate a source of fear in the population.
According to at least some (scientific) experts, completely eliminating "kiddy porn" may in fact raise the sexual assault rate against minors by removing a release valve for those predisposed to such a thing.
Not that censorship is effective enough to cause such an event.
This is the government my countrymen are fighting and dying for?
No thanks.