Wait, one of your basic points is that they are "evil"? Sorry, but don't lead with the crazy. Did a CFL kill your dog or something?
Of course, these days the "expensive" argument is trivially proven false. And the "toxic" one is also FUD, since the risk of mercury poisoning from CFL bulbs is SO much lower than the risk of poisoning from eating food like fish that are contaminated by all of the coal power plants needed to power all of those 10x less efficient incandescent bulbs. Besides, fluorescent bulbs have been around for decades. Please show me the massive deaths that have occurred in that time. I can definitely point you to plenty of house fires, etc that occurred from incandescent bulbs.
That said, I definitely agree with a previous poster that it's pretty much stupid to make these absurd arguments against any one technology - they all have their place. There are some locations of my house that I prefer incandescents for their color temperature, response to dimming, and instant on, and, and a couple where I splurged on expensive LEDs because they are used often and will save money in the long run. And yes, there are plenty of applications for fluorescent bulbs, as well. I have some tubes in my garage that I haven't replaced since I bought the house years ago. Come to think of it, I haven't replaced a single fluorescent bulb in 5 years (out of about 5-6 in the house), while I have replaced a dozen incandescents since then.
And it doesn't exist yet beyond a promise to ship "October 2014". So my statement stands:)
If Birdi does everything it promises (*and* is still dead simple to use - honestly I mostly just want my smoke, etc detector to be completely unobtrusive until it's needed) sounds like it could be a great product. We'll see...
It doesn't adjust "once or twice a year" - it constantly adjusts based on learning from your patterns. The point is you don't NEED a constant temperature, you need the temperature to be what you want it to be when you are there. Mine has learned my patterns well enough now that it knows the usual time of day that I get up, go to work, get home, even that I usually work at home on Tuesdays, and am home more often on weekends, etc. And it also knows the forecast temperatures and outside temps (via Internet data, you don't have to set up an outdoor thermometer) so it can predict when to turn on and off to get the temperature to what you want when you are there, not just turn on and off at set times. It also has lots of other advanced features people may or may not need - like min. temp when you are on vacation (to keep pipes from freezing), auto away sensing based on motion detection, etc. It can also run fans without AC to circulate air (which saves a lot of energy, too). Additionally, the Internet connection lets me check and control it from my phone, see the exact usage patterns for the month, compare usage over time or vs. others in the same area, and take automatic software updates.
All of this has added up to enough fine tuned (and completely automated) control for me that it paid itself off after 2 years. And to call someone stupid for using technology to simplify something and save money is probably one of the most ignorant comments I have read on slashdot all week...
Yup. $3.2B might be a bit much for the usual "mass employee acquisition", though. They do have some pretty good products and patents, which probably accounts for more than the employee aspect...
Do you just mean "planned obsolescence", or something actually breaking/wearing out that that needs replacing?
I think it's just an industry recommendation since electronic components tend to wear after that long, and for something as important as a smoke/CO detector it's not worth the increased chance it won't work/be as effective after that amount of time. Might last longer than that, but for a few hundred dollars on something that just needs to work isn't that much in the scheme of things...
Uh, no, the Nest Protect is a smoke/CO sensor. That was my POINT - the Nest thermostat is cool but not all that unique (today, at least). But there isn't much out there like the Protect right now.
Oh, and as far as a Honeywell in *1992*, if you think it could do "nearly everything" the Nest can do, you don't know much about it. But I guess that's the point - it's not about flashy features, it's about reducing your energy usage without you having to do anything.
Given the market for Nest Protect is about 150 million times x3 (or more) in the US alone (and unlike thermostats, there is really currently nothing like it), it may not be that out of line. Especially since they need to be replaced every 10 years. And Nest now has a track record for fantastic products (who knows what they are working on next?)
Valuations are based more on predicted future revenue than current. Otherwise none of these recent IPOs or acquisitions would be worth *anything*.
Me, I can't wait until I can get me a touch screen for the desktop and have 3 ways to input -keyboard, mouse and touch. I love that aspect about my Surface Rt-3 ways to input.
Ok, that confirms it. Claiming you like the Modern UI on a PC that *doesn't* have a touch screen means you are clearly a MS shill.
Face it - the UI was designed for a touch screen, just like iOS or Android. Trying to use *any* of those with just a mouse and keyboard would be (and is) a disaster. They basically greatly sacrificed usability for the most widely used operating system in the world to make it look more like a struggling mobile OS. If you think about it that way it may go down as one of the worst business decisions in the history of computing (jeopardizing the entire company in an experiment).
The most telling thing for me was at a Microsoft-sponsored dev conference where the speakers were giving tutorials/demos for developing Metro apps in Visual Studio. EVERY time they had to switch between the Metro app and Visual Studio they had to follow this serpentine procedure of navigating to and clicking 3 buttons. If there was a quicker way to do it, NONE of the MS employees seem to know how
Ok, sorry, I was too harsh, honest mistake I guess:) But it's peak season in California right now for gray whales, most of which follow within a few miles of the West Coast of North America - they don't generally go anywhere near Hawaii AFAIK (I think that's mostly humpback whales?)
Gray whales have made a huge comeback so there are literally thousands (like 15k+?) of them migrating from Alaska to Baja and back from around Dec-May. Since they don't all just pick up and go on the same day, it's a fairly continuous thing over that time (whale watching tours pretty much run continuously in that season). In fact, given how many of them travel in such a small part of the ocean, gray whales (rather than other baleens like blue or humpback) are the main draw for CA whale watching tours (like the boat in TFA is used for), since people are almost guaranteed to see a few.
Gray whale watching season is Dec-May, and the peak time in LA & San Diego is right NOW (note this boat was originally from Long Beach). it takes whales more than a few days to swim 2000 miles, you know:) And they don't all do it in the same few weeks. A coworker went on a whale watching trip out of SF just last weekend and said they saw a bunch of grays.
How is this "informative"? It's completely incorrect in all ways!
Not only is this *right* in the middle of the grey whale watching season, but they (along with, BY DEFINISION all of the whales that migrate from the Arctic to Baja) do it NORTH/SOUTH, not East/West. And they also like to stay within sight of the coast line, which is why you can usually see them from many viewpoints up and down the CA coast, not just from boats.
I mean, whoever own this boat runs a business and so IMO they should rent it to the customer that pays the most (and there are MANY others anyway). My only beef is with people who make up stupid shit like this and no one even bothers to fact check it before modding it up...
Sharon Green is "a very nice place"?? Yeah, right!
It constantly gets horrible reviews for the facilities (which look nice at first but are thin-walled and run down) and the ridiculous rent. It's basically a large complex where people with too much money - probably getting a new job and being relocated - and new to the area move to without doing their research, and then usually try to move out of as fast as they can. And there is NOTHING else there within a short walking distance compared to the Mission (or almost anywhere in SF) since it's behind Stanford in a residential neighborhood.
Trying to compare it to the Mission, with its many restaurants, bars, and individual 2/3 story apt/condo buildings that are OBVIOUSLY NEVER going to turn into a 1000+ unit complex with a couple of shops and a Starbucks nearby is absurd enough to make the rest of your argument pretty hard to pay attention to:)
Transit in the Bay Area is a mess, and Google and the other tech companies using the Muni bus stops isn't helping.
I agrees with almost everything you wrote except this in fact Google and other tech companies using the Muni bus stops *is* helping. Some of those employees don't even own their own car, and if they do they aren't adding to the already painful 101 commute every day. And it's not like these buses are somehow making big differences in the Muni bus schedules. 90% of the time the stops just sit empty, anyway - a few extra buses stopping there just seems like better use of resources to me. And now that SF is going to tax the bus operators for their use they expect to make a couple million dollars a year in extra city revenue. Seems like that money could also be put to helping the transit situation...
Do you live in SF? San Francisco has rent control, so it's not really all "long time residents" who are pissed.
Just look at the protesters so far (and note the number of hoodies, knit caps and stupid hipster beards) - ie. a lot of them are the 20-somethings who don't work at Google (ie. don't make 100k+) but want to live in the city so they can spend most of their disposable income buying $12 drinks instead of paying extra rent. Face it, SF is expensive. Expensive to live, to eat, to go out. Private parking spaces can cost $400+/mo. But it's not the only place to live in the Bay Area. And you don't hear these people complaining that San Carlos or Menlo Park is also becoming less affordable. Why? Because 20-something hipsters don't want to live there. Wah wah.
And despite what people may want you to think, it's not only the tech employees who are making $100k+ a year there. According to the Chronicle, over 1 in 3 *public* city employees makes over $100k, and the article was from 3 years ago (and doesn't even count their ridiculous health benefits or pensions).
Technically the 65,915,796 residents who voted for Obama in the 2012 election?
And, as it turns out, many Republicans as well - they are just too ignorant of the actual ACA or brainwashed by their party leaders to realize they support most of the major provisions...
If you want to use a dumb analogy here's a better one: it's more like we live in a mansion, and someone broke in and murdered your child. But hey, you have four more, so no big loss! And why bother installing a good security system or helping the police to try to catch him I mean, it was just a nuisance at the time, and what are the odds he'll be back?
It's more like ignoring the trolls, and then eventually they figure out where you live and start killing your family members. Now you have a decision keep ignoring them and hope they will get bored, or try to stop it.
The problem with *Iraq* is there was no logical reason to go there in the first place - it had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism or Al Queda back then (though ironically it does now... Thank you W. for making things 10x worse there than it was!)
As far as Afghanistan (and raids in Pakistan, Qatar, Sudan, etc) - many of the "idiots" the GP mentions were directly involved in funding and planning dozens of terrorist attacks, so while the methods may have been sometimes idiotic, they weren't just going to go away if everyone ignored them...
I'm all for the US not being involved in these mostly pointless wars and drastically reducing the absurd and unnecessary defense budget.
But the fact remains that the primary goal of the Afghan war and the current bombings in Pakistan and Qatar is to disrupt a large and well funded terrorist group that attacked first and has as *its* goal the destruction of the US and other Western or other non-fundamentalist-Islamic nations. You can't stop a fight like that unless both sides agree to walk away. Unfortunately no one has a clue as to how to convince goth sides to do that...
Producing limbs for $100's, is *not* going to pay for the labour and consulting for a "Westerner" to do it and sustainably maintain a Western lifestyle.
Well, the trauma surgeon from the article who has saved hundreds of lives while living in the mountains in Sudan isn't worried about maintaining his Western lifestyle. He's probably just living off of some basic grants that account for about 5% of what his peers in the US are spending on their swimming pools and golf games.
But I'm not really disagreeing - just pointing out that there are also highly skilled people donating their time (and many others donating money) to make these things happen. Even $100 is not remotely affordable for a 14 year old missing a limb in the Sudan. So hopefully one of the intents/goals of this project will be to show that relatively small donations (from the "Western" point of view) can make a huge difference *IF* the money is spent efficiently!
Slashdot Mirror
CFLs are evil, expensive, toxic
Wait, one of your basic points is that they are "evil"? Sorry, but don't lead with the crazy. Did a CFL kill your dog or something?
Of course, these days the "expensive" argument is trivially proven false. And the "toxic" one is also FUD, since the risk of mercury poisoning from CFL bulbs is SO much lower than the risk of poisoning from eating food like fish that are contaminated by all of the coal power plants needed to power all of those 10x less efficient incandescent bulbs. Besides, fluorescent bulbs have been around for decades. Please show me the massive deaths that have occurred in that time. I can definitely point you to plenty of house fires, etc that occurred from incandescent bulbs.
That said, I definitely agree with a previous poster that it's pretty much stupid to make these absurd arguments against any one technology - they all have their place. There are some locations of my house that I prefer incandescents for their color temperature, response to dimming, and instant on, and, and a couple where I splurged on expensive LEDs because they are used often and will save money in the long run. And yes, there are plenty of applications for fluorescent bulbs, as well. I have some tubes in my garage that I haven't replaced since I bought the house years ago. Come to think of it, I haven't replaced a single fluorescent bulb in 5 years (out of about 5-6 in the house), while I have replaced a dozen incandescents since then.
And it doesn't exist yet beyond a promise to ship "October 2014". So my statement stands :)
If Birdi does everything it promises (*and* is still dead simple to use - honestly I mostly just want my smoke, etc detector to be completely unobtrusive until it's needed) sounds like it could be a great product. We'll see...
It doesn't adjust "once or twice a year" - it constantly adjusts based on learning from your patterns. The point is you don't NEED a constant temperature, you need the temperature to be what you want it to be when you are there. Mine has learned my patterns well enough now that it knows the usual time of day that I get up, go to work, get home, even that I usually work at home on Tuesdays, and am home more often on weekends, etc. And it also knows the forecast temperatures and outside temps (via Internet data, you don't have to set up an outdoor thermometer) so it can predict when to turn on and off to get the temperature to what you want when you are there, not just turn on and off at set times. It also has lots of other advanced features people may or may not need - like min. temp when you are on vacation (to keep pipes from freezing), auto away sensing based on motion detection, etc. It can also run fans without AC to circulate air (which saves a lot of energy, too). Additionally, the Internet connection lets me check and control it from my phone, see the exact usage patterns for the month, compare usage over time or vs. others in the same area, and take automatic software updates.
All of this has added up to enough fine tuned (and completely automated) control for me that it paid itself off after 2 years. And to call someone stupid for using technology to simplify something and save money is probably one of the most ignorant comments I have read on slashdot all week...
Yup. $3.2B might be a bit much for the usual "mass employee acquisition", though. They do have some pretty good products and patents, which probably accounts for more than the employee aspect...
Do you just mean "planned obsolescence", or something actually breaking/wearing out that that needs replacing?
I think it's just an industry recommendation since electronic components tend to wear after that long, and for something as important as a smoke/CO detector it's not worth the increased chance it won't work/be as effective after that amount of time. Might last longer than that, but for a few hundred dollars on something that just needs to work isn't that much in the scheme of things...
Uh, no, the Nest Protect is a smoke/CO sensor. That was my POINT - the Nest thermostat is cool but not all that unique (today, at least). But there isn't much out there like the Protect right now.
Oh, and as far as a Honeywell in *1992*, if you think it could do "nearly everything" the Nest can do, you don't know much about it. But I guess that's the point - it's not about flashy features, it's about reducing your energy usage without you having to do anything.
Thermostat, not thermometer. DUH.
Given the market for Nest Protect is about 150 million times x3 (or more) in the US alone (and unlike thermostats, there is really currently nothing like it), it may not be that out of line. Especially since they need to be replaced every 10 years. And Nest now has a track record for fantastic products (who knows what they are working on next?)
Valuations are based more on predicted future revenue than current. Otherwise none of these recent IPOs or acquisitions would be worth *anything*.
Even a commercial product could be classified as "military grade" if it meets a specification put out by the military.
Yep. You can have the military grade steaks, I'll still with USDA grade Prime ;)
Exactly. "Military grade" sounds impressive and all, but "movie/game production grade" mocap would be a lot better technology for, oh, GAMING.
Me, I can't wait until I can get me a touch screen for the desktop and have 3 ways to input -keyboard, mouse and touch. I love that aspect about my Surface Rt-3 ways to input.
Ok, that confirms it. Claiming you like the Modern UI on a PC that *doesn't* have a touch screen means you are clearly a MS shill.
Face it - the UI was designed for a touch screen, just like iOS or Android. Trying to use *any* of those with just a mouse and keyboard would be (and is) a disaster. They basically greatly sacrificed usability for the most widely used operating system in the world to make it look more like a struggling mobile OS. If you think about it that way it may go down as one of the worst business decisions in the history of computing (jeopardizing the entire company in an experiment).
The most telling thing for me was at a Microsoft-sponsored dev conference where the speakers were giving tutorials/demos for developing Metro apps in Visual Studio. EVERY time they had to switch between the Metro app and Visual Studio they had to follow this serpentine procedure of navigating to and clicking 3 buttons. If there was a quicker way to do it, NONE of the MS employees seem to know how
Ok, sorry, I was too harsh, honest mistake I guess :) But it's peak season in California right now for gray whales, most of which follow within a few miles of the West Coast of North America - they don't generally go anywhere near Hawaii AFAIK (I think that's mostly humpback whales?)
Gray whales have made a huge comeback so there are literally thousands (like 15k+?) of them migrating from Alaska to Baja and back from around Dec-May. Since they don't all just pick up and go on the same day, it's a fairly continuous thing over that time (whale watching tours pretty much run continuously in that season). In fact, given how many of them travel in such a small part of the ocean, gray whales (rather than other baleens like blue or humpback) are the main draw for CA whale watching tours (like the boat in TFA is used for), since people are almost guaranteed to see a few.
That's not true at all
Gray whale watching season is Dec-May, and the peak time in LA & San Diego is right NOW (note this boat was originally from Long Beach). it takes whales more than a few days to swim 2000 miles, you know :) And they don't all do it in the same few weeks. A coworker went on a whale watching trip out of SF just last weekend and said they saw a bunch of grays.
How is this "informative"? It's completely incorrect in all ways!
Not only is this *right* in the middle of the grey whale watching season, but they (along with, BY DEFINISION all of the whales that migrate from the Arctic to Baja) do it NORTH/SOUTH, not East/West. And they also like to stay within sight of the coast line, which is why you can usually see them from many viewpoints up and down the CA coast, not just from boats.
I mean, whoever own this boat runs a business and so IMO they should rent it to the customer that pays the most (and there are MANY others anyway). My only beef is with people who make up stupid shit like this and no one even bothers to fact check it before modding it up...
Sharon Green is "a very nice place"?? Yeah, right!
It constantly gets horrible reviews for the facilities (which look nice at first but are thin-walled and run down) and the ridiculous rent. It's basically a large complex where people with too much money - probably getting a new job and being relocated - and new to the area move to without doing their research, and then usually try to move out of as fast as they can. And there is NOTHING else there within a short walking distance compared to the Mission (or almost anywhere in SF) since it's behind Stanford in a residential neighborhood.
Trying to compare it to the Mission, with its many restaurants, bars, and individual 2/3 story apt/condo buildings that are OBVIOUSLY NEVER going to turn into a 1000+ unit complex with a couple of shops and a Starbucks nearby is absurd enough to make the rest of your argument pretty hard to pay attention to :)
Transit in the Bay Area is a mess, and Google and the other tech companies using the Muni bus stops isn't helping.
I agrees with almost everything you wrote except this in fact Google and other tech companies using the Muni bus stops *is* helping. Some of those employees don't even own their own car, and if they do they aren't adding to the already painful 101 commute every day. And it's not like these buses are somehow making big differences in the Muni bus schedules. 90% of the time the stops just sit empty, anyway - a few extra buses stopping there just seems like better use of resources to me. And now that SF is going to tax the bus operators for their use they expect to make a couple million dollars a year in extra city revenue. Seems like that money could also be put to helping the transit situation...
Do you live in SF? San Francisco has rent control, so it's not really all "long time residents" who are pissed.
Just look at the protesters so far (and note the number of hoodies, knit caps and stupid hipster beards) - ie. a lot of them are the 20-somethings who don't work at Google (ie. don't make 100k+) but want to live in the city so they can spend most of their disposable income buying $12 drinks instead of paying extra rent. Face it, SF is expensive. Expensive to live, to eat, to go out. Private parking spaces can cost $400+/mo. But it's not the only place to live in the Bay Area. And you don't hear these people complaining that San Carlos or Menlo Park is also becoming less affordable. Why? Because 20-something hipsters don't want to live there. Wah wah.
And despite what people may want you to think, it's not only the tech employees who are making $100k+ a year there. According to the Chronicle, over 1 in 3 *public* city employees makes over $100k, and the article was from 3 years ago (and doesn't even count their ridiculous health benefits or pensions).
Technically the 65,915,796 residents who voted for Obama in the 2012 election?
And, as it turns out, many Republicans as well - they are just too ignorant of the actual ACA or brainwashed by their party leaders to realize they support most of the major provisions...
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/01/business/la-fi-mh-obamacare-20131001
And now to spend another trillion dollars on the question...
If you want to use a dumb analogy here's a better one: it's more like we live in a mansion, and someone broke in and murdered your child. But hey, you have four more, so no big loss! And why bother installing a good security system or helping the police to try to catch him I mean, it was just a nuisance at the time, and what are the odds he'll be back?
It's more like ignoring the trolls, and then eventually they figure out where you live and start killing your family members. Now you have a decision keep ignoring them and hope they will get bored, or try to stop it.
The problem with *Iraq* is there was no logical reason to go there in the first place - it had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism or Al Queda back then (though ironically it does now... Thank you W. for making things 10x worse there than it was!)
As far as Afghanistan (and raids in Pakistan, Qatar, Sudan, etc) - many of the "idiots" the GP mentions were directly involved in funding and planning dozens of terrorist attacks, so while the methods may have been sometimes idiotic, they weren't just going to go away if everyone ignored them...
I'm all for the US not being involved in these mostly pointless wars and drastically reducing the absurd and unnecessary defense budget.
But the fact remains that the primary goal of the Afghan war and the current bombings in Pakistan and Qatar is to disrupt a large and well funded terrorist group that attacked first and has as *its* goal the destruction of the US and other Western or other non-fundamentalist-Islamic nations. You can't stop a fight like that unless both sides agree to walk away. Unfortunately no one has a clue as to how to convince goth sides to do that...
Actually, at their intended ranges an arrow is more accurate.
Producing limbs for $100's, is *not* going to pay for the labour and consulting for a "Westerner" to do it and sustainably maintain a Western lifestyle.
Well, the trauma surgeon from the article who has saved hundreds of lives while living in the mountains in Sudan isn't worried about maintaining his Western lifestyle. He's probably just living off of some basic grants that account for about 5% of what his peers in the US are spending on their swimming pools and golf games.
But I'm not really disagreeing - just pointing out that there are also highly skilled people donating their time (and many others donating money) to make these things happen. Even $100 is not remotely affordable for a 14 year old missing a limb in the Sudan. So hopefully one of the intents/goals of this project will be to show that relatively small donations (from the "Western" point of view) can make a huge difference *IF* the money is spent efficiently!