I wonder if some of the reactions that people with allergies have when exposure is very low are trained responses. Like Pavlov's dog, ring the bell and start salivating, smell peanut butter and start choking.
My only basis for this is personal experience with chemo-therapy. After just a few rounds of treatments, just DRIVING to the hospital was enough to start me throwing up. It was bizzare and extremely frustrating to be sitting in the chair getting hooked up to a saline only IV and having to hurl. No matter how hard I tried to reason with myself, I was getting sick from the drugs that were no where near my body, much less in them and taking affect yet.
My thought is that people who have had a bad experience with a real allergic reaction have very quickly and effectively trained their brain to induce the reaction response at even the smell of the allergen.
Anyone else have similar experiences / theories about the validity of 'nut-free' zones?
ps - just to be clear, I'm not suggesting the reaction isn't happening, but just curious if it real or trained. If trained, maybe people can be trained out of it and then live less intrusive lives. BTW, 15+ years later I'm basically fine - hospitals don't bother me much, however, there is still a certain ladies deo / perfume that makes me feel queesy.
One interesting thing I have noted in the trends is how 'off the chart' the flu trends are this year - I suspect google may not be able to apply an appropriate media hype attenuator to the results this year. But this is a good thing, as google will probably aggregate the search data with media reporting data and adjust their hype-limiter so that when the next overhyped pandemic / outbreak occurs the results will be more accurate and timely than the current official sources.
So google's flu results will be validated a few days faster. People start feeling crappy, do some self diagnosis via google, then see a doctor who then files a report when then is summarized and reported by the CDC.
Skimmed the article. Joystick is used to control car as expected - forward, back for throttle/brake and left/right for left/right. Big deal.
What I was hoping they would talk about was the real challenges with drive by wire - how to maintain control when the motor stalls / battery dies. Even with power steering / braking, the mechanical link is sufficient for control at low speeds (pushing incapacitated car off the road, towing with a buddy, etc.) If the answer is just more reliable gear and road side assistance, then fine - say it. But without details about the failure modes, I'm thinking this is still vaporware.
Between 1983 and 1986 Steve Roberts travelled around America on a bike with a laptop (Tandy) 5w solar panel and a packet radio. Used payphones for dial-up. May have been the 'inventor' of texting while driving.
As for VoIP while on the road - carry a cell or sat phone and use call forwarding when not in range of a decent Internet signal. With some verification of priorities (sacrifices) you can be mobile and the envy of geeks everywhere.
"but if I could make an infinite number of perfect copies of my car while retaining my own copy, at low or no cost, what would be my incentive to use a system designed to make me lose control over my car or any other property?"
Well one reason might be that some of those perfect copies of your car may be used in ways you don't like - say running a red light. Now maybe you don't get a photo-ticket in the mail, but all the neighbours are talking about what a bad driver you are.
DRM / DPP to uphold a broken business model is bad. Agreed.
DRM / DPP to guard my personal data in a way that allows me to control who has access to it and when is at the very least interesting, may even be useful.
I can't help but think of the say "Possession is nine tenths of the law" or something like that. If the property is virtual then who has it in their hands? who can lick to get first dibs?
In the end, virtual property is neither good nor bad - it's ugly.
Only in the US can someone burn themselves stupidly with coffee, and blame McDonalds for giving them coffee that hot....I know 0 people who drink their coffee lukewarm...
McDonalds serves the hottest coffee in the industry - (because people like it that way, agreed), hotter then industry standards, and they have been warned about this and made a choice to continue serving it hot.
Allow me to introduce myself. I don't like my coffee hot and will wait until it is lukewarm - cool even, before drinking it. Now you know at least 1 person who does something different.
Stealing passwords, rooting through 'interesting' pictures aside, I take issue with these 'exposes' on bad techs. Whether its PC techs, automotive techs, or whatever. We (I was a PC repair tech for a few years) do not expect sabotage.
A memory module does not become loose. There is no reason to expect that is the problem - at least not initially. And even if the loose module is found right away, only an overworked tech with a don't care attitude would let it leave the bench without running some kind of diagnostics (at least memtest for a while) to ensure the module wasn't further damaged by being partially inserted.
And running diagnostics costs - even if I'm not doing anything. Having a PC on the bench ties up a place where I can be working on someone else's problem. If I can't work on someone's PC because your's is running a diagnostic or install or some other long running process, then guess whose paying the bill? YOU.
As for snooping through files, that's not professional, but even professionals are human. You're sitting there waiting for an error or problem. Maybe you are stumped. You need a mental break, something catches your attention on the computer. It happens.
Stealing data, even copying music, pic's etc. Now that is bad and should be exposed and the places shut down.
TO add to the confusion, IMO, PII rules were introduced for 2 main reasons.
1) Identity theft 2) Harassment
The previously mentioned holy trinity of ID - name, DOB, gov id (SIN, SS, etc) are valuable tools to impersonate someone - typically for illegal financial gain. Into this bucket was added information like credit card numbers (I believe in Canada it is now illegal for merchants to throw out credit card slips that contain the full number - they must be shredded), bank account numbers, etc.
Addresses and phone numbers fall into the second category. While helpful in ID theft, they are not vital as often the thieves make up new addresses to prolong their discovery. However, they are valuable to marketers - and keeping them unsecured, or worse openly sharing (selling) them without the customer's permission is what generates a lot of the crap mail and phone calls we receive.
I would put email address in the second category, and IP addresses in neither.
An IP address cannot be used to open a fraudulent bank account or steal goods by charging someone else. Nor can it be used to send you unwanted solicitations. Therefore I agree with the judge that IP addresses are not PII (the reasoning is as mentioned vague).
I have bought a number of music players, cameras and other electronic gadgets and my number 1 requirement is it must use standard off the shelf batteries (namely AA or AAA). This is for a number of reasons:
1) Avoid planned obsolescence - hardwired batteries (I'm looking at you Apple) mean the product will be useless by not holding a charge long before I'm done using it. 2) Emergency power - having proprietary batteries either hardwired or not means that if I run out of a charge while on a road trip or away from my charger, then I'm hooped - I have to wait up to hours for the battery to charge.
And now:
3) Stupid vendor lock in - I have better things to spend my money on than overpriced name brand accessories / supplies.
I look forward to the day when cellphones can efficiently run on 2 or 3 AAA's.
I just bought a lower end digital camera and steered away from Panasonic as soon as I realized they did not use AA or AAA batteries. Went with a Fuji S1000 - have been happy with it so far - uses the same NiMH AA batteries I have for my Olympus camera, iRiver MP3 player, and LogicTech cordless mouse.
Your truck is $1900 / year to insure to drive to work in the city with all the options you can throw at (and that is before good driving discounts). (http://www.mpi.mb.ca/Irc/intro.asp)
Not to mention the real estate difference means you can probably sell you Calgary house and buy a much nicer house in a better neighborhood for cash.
In Winnipeg (that forgotten pergatory somewhere between North Dakota and Siberia) parking downtown is EASILY $80-$120 or more. A monthly bus pass is $72 (before the federal tax credit, which puts the net cost closer to $62 / month).
If you use your car to drive to work, expect to pay an additional $50 / month for a beater - more if you drive something new.
Running a car is $0.15 / km or more. (My Geo Metro was $0.11 including insurance, but I never did much maintenance and it ran forever on fumes). Typical commute is 10km each way, so figure another $3 / day or $60 / month (20 working days).
So, driving is over $200 / month and the bus is $60. That $140+ / month saved. Drive a nice car into the heart of downtown where parking is closer to $200 and the price difference is higher.
I bike, and so I'm saving even more. My annual commuting costs are about $500 (that includes maintaining my bike).
Years ago I started a site there to put out information about my flight sim (nothing great, in fact, nothing much any more, just a redirect to my blog).
What amazes me is that after about 3 or 4 years, I still get 1 or 2 hits with geocities.com/ehud42 in the referring URL!
It is sad to see it go in a mild, nostalgic sort of way.
RIP. May your users find happier places to display their wares without the annoying ads...
So this sounds like one of those "so obvious, no one thought of it" questions - if Google is so concerned about precious mW that it standardizes on 12V hardware to reduce current losses of sending 5V & 3V power from the powersupply to the board, why do the CPU's have fans???? The side view of the chasis seems to suggest that with a few minor tweaks the units could rely on passive cooling and use the data centre / container fans for air flow.
1) Move hotter components like the CPUs to the front and replace fans with larger passive heat sinks. 2) RAM modules lined up to ensure proper airflow to the back of the chasis, chipset heat sinks lined up accordingly. 3) HD's laid over top of voltage regulators with appropriate heatsinks 4) power supply and battery at the rear.
Have the hot air return duct work arranged at the back of the rack with appropriate holes and seals so that the units make a good connection to maximize airflow.
Cool! I have been able to do this for many years - especially when I'm tired. I remember in an intro-psych course many years ago the professor showing some kind of image and discussing how people see. I believe it was either the 'count the dots in a grid' illusion or the test your eyes for some disease simple grid image (if the lines are not straight you have a visual problem). Anyway, I asked what it meant when the image faded - as I was tired that day in class, I was able to hold still enough to have the image fade to gray. Seems that was not a normal question - lots of students laughed and the prof made some back handed comment possibly regarding potential substance abuse and that is was not possible for people to hold their eyes still enough.
I always assumed it was simply a stimulus refresh issue, like when you wear something (watch / glasses) and after awhile you can no longer feel it. This is the first time I have ever heard someone actually mention that it happens with eyes.
When Sam Walton died, Walmart did take a big hit in quality, but profits continued to rise.
Which is kind of my point - By the time Sam died, Walmart was big enough to not suffer a drop in customers - people went to Walmart, not Sam Walton's store.
Apple is big enough to not suffer too much when Steve moves on, but I think the point of the article is musing over how many people by stuff Steve Jobs talks about, vs stuff made by Apple. If there are enough people who buy Steve's stuff regardless of the name on the box, then Apple may have an interesting transition when he moves on.
Sounds like a lesson in business I (and others I know) learned the hard way. When the company is the guy, then when the guy goes, so does the company.
For anyone out there contemplating taking over a small business run by one or two people, think carefully. Most of their customers are probably loyal to the people - not the company or name. Once the existing ownwers leave so will the good-will / business / "loyal" customers and you'll be stuck with the warranty claims, unsatisfied customers and a deeper hole then if you had started out cold.
Once Steve leaves, Apple _WILL_ take a hit. They are large enough that it probably won't be fatal, but it will be a hit none the less. Compare Apple to IBM, GM, Walmart, pick any bank - I cannot name any of their CEO's and probably few others can as well. Those companies are riding on their name and products - not their CEO's fame.
One more point - our power is hydro electric - which isn't perfect, but is arguably better then coal or other fossil fuel burning. Consumers here pay $0.06 / kWh. So charging electric cars is CHEAP!
Here's the thing I don't get. How come electric car manufacturers don't run pilots in my home town of Winnipeg.
Ok, so the -35C in January is a little hard on the batteries, and the auxillary heating systems might not be able to keep up. But have any of you ever been to Winnipeg, specifically downtown and looked at the outdoor parking lots??!?! They almost ALL have electrical outlets for drivers to plug their cars in! We already have the infrastructure in place!
Battery UPS in your PC case... stores power for power outages and uses the battery during startup cycles, thus spreading the draw from the grid to less used times.
Expensive. Overkill.
Put a timer in the dishwasher, laundry machine and/or clothes dryer to run them at night. Cheaper. Much bigger impact. Works well with newer hourly billing systems that are coming online.
EU just made incandescent lights illegal.
Which is just ignorant. This is just short sited politicians grasping for easy political points. Now you have replaced a cheap product with an expensive one - that fails miserably if used incorrectly (any light that gets turned on / off frequently, lights that are outside when its really cold, in any house where more of the utility bills are spent heating the house then cooling it). Again, hourly billing combined with education would be better then government controlled dumbing down the issues.
I have switched about 60-75% of my lights to CFLs. The remaining 25+% are not suitable for CFLs - mainly because of the short duty cycle, but also because of the -30C environment they need to operate in. (I also have a couple fixtures that look better with a clear incandescant bulb - more sparkle.)
Green design homes
Green is such a loose word. I presume you mean better insulated, sealed, naturally lit, etc. The market is demanding these and so they are being built.
Light timer switches with built-in motion sensors and other such devices.
These would be neat, except that they dramatically shorten the life of CFLs. Sort of like driving a Prius at full throttle. You can claim to be using less energy, but the increased replacement rate of the CFLs will negate any benefit.
More efficient solar energy. Windows with solar collectors built-in as well as LED lighting so that daylight can continue unabated.
Goes back to better designed homes. For now, solar engery can be captured quite easily by simply increasing the number and size of windows that face South (for US, Canada, Europe, etc.). This also reduces the number of lights required.
The list goes on. Anything that prevents a 250 watt drain on the grid during peak times will reduce the problem dramatically if millions of homes participated. Say 2 million homes used 250W/hr less at peak times for any given grid supply area: 500MegaWatt hour savings. That's a lot of savings.
A small change I'd like to see is more physcial on/off switches and fewer clocks!!!. In my kitchen the range, microwave and radio in the kitchen all have a clock! In my den the TV (with a built in CLOCK - who uses their TV as an alarm clock???), VCR (with a CLOCK), DVD and Receiver are all on standbye (I have now put them on a powerbar with a switch). I'd like to see more appliances that go back to performing just their basic function. And then let me decide what functions I want where.
Slashdot Mirror
What did the kid say to the cops that made the cops pursue bomb disposal and authorities recommend family counseling?
I wonder if some of the reactions that people with allergies have when exposure is very low are trained responses. Like Pavlov's dog, ring the bell and start salivating, smell peanut butter and start choking.
My only basis for this is personal experience with chemo-therapy. After just a few rounds of treatments, just DRIVING to the hospital was enough to start me throwing up. It was bizzare and extremely frustrating to be sitting in the chair getting hooked up to a saline only IV and having to hurl. No matter how hard I tried to reason with myself, I was getting sick from the drugs that were no where near my body, much less in them and taking affect yet.
My thought is that people who have had a bad experience with a real allergic reaction have very quickly and effectively trained their brain to induce the reaction response at even the smell of the allergen.
Anyone else have similar experiences / theories about the validity of 'nut-free' zones?
ps - just to be clear, I'm not suggesting the reaction isn't happening, but just curious if it real or trained. If trained, maybe people can be trained out of it and then live less intrusive lives. BTW, 15+ years later I'm basically fine - hospitals don't bother me much, however, there is still a certain ladies deo / perfume that makes me feel queesy.
We all know that 2+2=5.
One interesting thing I have noted in the trends is how 'off the chart' the flu trends are this year - I suspect google may not be able to apply an appropriate media hype attenuator to the results this year. But this is a good thing, as google will probably aggregate the search data with media reporting data and adjust their hype-limiter so that when the next overhyped pandemic / outbreak occurs the results will be more accurate and timely than the current official sources.
So google's flu results will be validated a few days faster. People start feeling crappy, do some self diagnosis via google, then see a doctor who then files a report when then is summarized and reported by the CDC.
meh. Pushed far enough, radios have been illegal in Manitoba for years....
Skimmed the article. Joystick is used to control car as expected - forward, back for throttle/brake and left/right for left/right. Big deal.
What I was hoping they would talk about was the real challenges with drive by wire - how to maintain control when the motor stalls / battery dies. Even with power steering / braking, the mechanical link is sufficient for control at low speeds (pushing incapacitated car off the road, towing with a buddy, etc.) If the answer is just more reliable gear and road side assistance, then fine - say it. But without details about the failure modes, I'm thinking this is still vaporware.
Between 1983 and 1986 Steve Roberts travelled around America on a bike with a laptop (Tandy) 5w solar panel and a packet radio. Used payphones for dial-up. May have been the 'inventor' of texting while driving.
and between 2002 and 2004 Teresa and Sterling were road warriors in a modified 2003 Lance 1121 on a 2004 Ford F-550 (they upgraded while on the road). Their primary network connection was a MotoSat DataStorm which seemed to work well when stationed.
As for VoIP while on the road - carry a cell or sat phone and use call forwarding when not in range of a decent Internet signal. With some verification of priorities (sacrifices) you can be mobile and the envy of geeks everywhere.
"but if I could make an infinite number of perfect copies of my car while retaining my own copy, at low or no cost, what would be my incentive to use a system designed to make me lose control over my car or any other property?"
Well one reason might be that some of those perfect copies of your car may be used in ways you don't like - say running a red light. Now maybe you don't get a photo-ticket in the mail, but all the neighbours are talking about what a bad driver you are.
DRM / DPP to uphold a broken business model is bad. Agreed.
DRM / DPP to guard my personal data in a way that allows me to control who has access to it and when is at the very least interesting, may even be useful.
In the end, virtual property is neither good nor bad - it's ugly.
McDonalds serves the hottest coffee in the industry - (because people like it that way, agreed), hotter then industry standards, and they have been warned about this and made a choice to continue serving it hot.
Allow me to introduce myself. I don't like my coffee hot and will wait until it is lukewarm - cool even, before drinking it. Now you know at least 1 person who does something different.
Stealing passwords, rooting through 'interesting' pictures aside, I take issue with these 'exposes' on bad techs. Whether its PC techs, automotive techs, or whatever. We (I was a PC repair tech for a few years) do not expect sabotage.
A memory module does not become loose. There is no reason to expect that is the problem - at least not initially. And even if the loose module is found right away, only an overworked tech with a don't care attitude would let it leave the bench without running some kind of diagnostics (at least memtest for a while) to ensure the module wasn't further damaged by being partially inserted.
And running diagnostics costs - even if I'm not doing anything. Having a PC on the bench ties up a place where I can be working on someone else's problem. If I can't work on someone's PC because your's is running a diagnostic or install or some other long running process, then guess whose paying the bill? YOU.
As for snooping through files, that's not professional, but even professionals are human. You're sitting there waiting for an error or problem. Maybe you are stumped. You need a mental break, something catches your attention on the computer. It happens.
Stealing data, even copying music, pic's etc. Now that is bad and should be exposed and the places shut down.
TO add to the confusion, IMO, PII rules were introduced for 2 main reasons.
1) Identity theft
2) Harassment
The previously mentioned holy trinity of ID - name, DOB, gov id (SIN, SS, etc) are valuable tools to impersonate someone - typically for illegal financial gain. Into this bucket was added information like credit card numbers (I believe in Canada it is now illegal for merchants to throw out credit card slips that contain the full number - they must be shredded), bank account numbers, etc.
Addresses and phone numbers fall into the second category. While helpful in ID theft, they are not vital as often the thieves make up new addresses to prolong their discovery. However, they are valuable to marketers - and keeping them unsecured, or worse openly sharing (selling) them without the customer's permission is what generates a lot of the crap mail and phone calls we receive.
I would put email address in the second category, and IP addresses in neither.
An IP address cannot be used to open a fraudulent bank account or steal goods by charging someone else. Nor can it be used to send you unwanted solicitations. Therefore I agree with the judge that IP addresses are not PII (the reasoning is as mentioned vague).
I have bought a number of music players, cameras and other electronic gadgets and my number 1 requirement is it must use standard off the shelf batteries (namely AA or AAA). This is for a number of reasons:
1) Avoid planned obsolescence - hardwired batteries (I'm looking at you Apple) mean the product will be useless by not holding a charge long before I'm done using it.
2) Emergency power - having proprietary batteries either hardwired or not means that if I run out of a charge while on a road trip or away from my charger, then I'm hooped - I have to wait up to hours for the battery to charge.
And now:
3) Stupid vendor lock in - I have better things to spend my money on than overpriced name brand accessories / supplies.
I look forward to the day when cellphones can efficiently run on 2 or 3 AAA's.
I just bought a lower end digital camera and steered away from Panasonic as soon as I realized they did not use AA or AAA batteries. Went with a Fuji S1000 - have been happy with it so far - uses the same NiMH AA batteries I have for my Olympus camera, iRiver MP3 player, and LogicTech cordless mouse.
Move to Winnipeg - seriously.
Your truck is $1900 / year to insure to drive to work in the city with all the options you can throw at (and that is before good driving discounts). (http://www.mpi.mb.ca/Irc/intro.asp)
Not to mention the real estate difference means you can probably sell you Calgary house and buy a much nicer house in a better neighborhood for cash.
We may never boom, but we don't bust either.
In Winnipeg (that forgotten pergatory somewhere between North Dakota and Siberia) parking downtown is EASILY $80-$120 or more. A monthly bus pass is $72 (before the federal tax credit, which puts the net cost closer to $62 / month).
If you use your car to drive to work, expect to pay an additional $50 / month for a beater - more if you drive something new.
Running a car is $0.15 / km or more. (My Geo Metro was $0.11 including insurance, but I never did much maintenance and it ran forever on fumes). Typical commute is 10km each way, so figure another $3 / day or $60 / month (20 working days).
So, driving is over $200 / month and the bus is $60. That $140+ / month saved. Drive a nice car into the heart of downtown where parking is closer to $200 and the price difference is higher.
I bike, and so I'm saving even more. My annual commuting costs are about $500 (that includes maintaining my bike).
20MBit? Big spender there. Depending on the length, Cat3 with pigtailed splices should be fine....
You will have to TRY to screw up a hand rolled Cat6 cable enough to have problems carrying a 20MBit signal.
Years ago I started a site there to put out information about my flight sim (nothing great, in fact, nothing much any more, just a redirect to my blog).
What amazes me is that after about 3 or 4 years, I still get 1 or 2 hits with geocities.com/ehud42 in the referring URL!
It is sad to see it go in a mild, nostalgic sort of way.
RIP. May your users find happier places to display their wares without the annoying ads...
So this sounds like one of those "so obvious, no one thought of it" questions - if Google is so concerned about precious mW that it standardizes on 12V hardware to reduce current losses of sending 5V & 3V power from the powersupply to the board, why do the CPU's have fans???? The side view of the chasis seems to suggest that with a few minor tweaks the units could rely on passive cooling and use the data centre / container fans for air flow.
1) Move hotter components like the CPUs to the front and replace fans with larger passive heat sinks.
2) RAM modules lined up to ensure proper airflow to the back of the chasis, chipset heat sinks lined up accordingly.
3) HD's laid over top of voltage regulators with appropriate heatsinks
4) power supply and battery at the rear.
Have the hot air return duct work arranged at the back of the rack with appropriate holes and seals so that the units make a good connection to maximize airflow.
Cool! I have been able to do this for many years - especially when I'm tired. I remember in an intro-psych course many years ago the professor showing some kind of image and discussing how people see. I believe it was either the 'count the dots in a grid' illusion or the test your eyes for some disease simple grid image (if the lines are not straight you have a visual problem). Anyway, I asked what it meant when the image faded - as I was tired that day in class, I was able to hold still enough to have the image fade to gray. Seems that was not a normal question - lots of students laughed and the prof made some back handed comment possibly regarding potential substance abuse and that is was not possible for people to hold their eyes still enough.
I always assumed it was simply a stimulus refresh issue, like when you wear something (watch / glasses) and after awhile you can no longer feel it. This is the first time I have ever heard someone actually mention that it happens with eyes.
When Sam Walton died, Walmart did take a big hit in quality, but profits continued to rise.
Which is kind of my point - By the time Sam died, Walmart was big enough to not suffer a drop in customers - people went to Walmart, not Sam Walton's store.
Apple is big enough to not suffer too much when Steve moves on, but I think the point of the article is musing over how many people by stuff Steve Jobs talks about, vs stuff made by Apple. If there are enough people who buy Steve's stuff regardless of the name on the box, then Apple may have an interesting transition when he moves on.
Sounds like a lesson in business I (and others I know) learned the hard way. When the company is the guy, then when the guy goes, so does the company.
For anyone out there contemplating taking over a small business run by one or two people, think carefully. Most of their customers are probably loyal to the people - not the company or name. Once the existing ownwers leave so will the good-will / business / "loyal" customers and you'll be stuck with the warranty claims, unsatisfied customers and a deeper hole then if you had started out cold.
Once Steve leaves, Apple _WILL_ take a hit. They are large enough that it probably won't be fatal, but it will be a hit none the less. Compare Apple to IBM, GM, Walmart, pick any bank - I cannot name any of their CEO's and probably few others can as well. Those companies are riding on their name and products - not their CEO's fame.
One more point - our power is hydro electric - which isn't perfect, but is arguably better then coal or other fossil fuel burning. Consumers here pay $0.06 / kWh. So charging electric cars is CHEAP!
Here's the thing I don't get. How come electric car manufacturers don't run pilots in my home town of Winnipeg.
Ok, so the -35C in January is a little hard on the batteries, and the auxillary heating systems might not be able to keep up. But have any of you ever been to Winnipeg, specifically downtown and looked at the outdoor parking lots??!?! They almost ALL have electrical outlets for drivers to plug their cars in! We already have the infrastructure in place!
Battery UPS in your PC case... stores power for power outages and uses the battery during startup cycles, thus spreading the draw from the grid to less used times.
Expensive. Overkill.
Put a timer in the dishwasher, laundry machine and/or clothes dryer to run them at night. Cheaper. Much bigger impact. Works well with newer hourly billing systems that are coming online.
EU just made incandescent lights illegal.
Which is just ignorant. This is just short sited politicians grasping for easy political points. Now you have replaced a cheap product with an expensive one - that fails miserably if used incorrectly (any light that gets turned on / off frequently, lights that are outside when its really cold, in any house where more of the utility bills are spent heating the house then cooling it). Again, hourly billing combined with education would be better then government controlled dumbing down the issues.
I have switched about 60-75% of my lights to CFLs. The remaining 25+% are not suitable for CFLs - mainly because of the short duty cycle, but also because of the -30C environment they need to operate in. (I also have a couple fixtures that look better with a clear incandescant bulb - more sparkle.)
Green design homes
Green is such a loose word. I presume you mean better insulated, sealed, naturally lit, etc. The market is demanding these and so they are being built.
Light timer switches with built-in motion sensors and other such devices.
These would be neat, except that they dramatically shorten the life of CFLs. Sort of like driving a Prius at full throttle. You can claim to be using less energy, but the increased replacement rate of the CFLs will negate any benefit.
More efficient solar energy. Windows with solar collectors built-in as well as LED lighting so that daylight can continue unabated.
Goes back to better designed homes. For now, solar engery can be captured quite easily by simply increasing the number and size of windows that face South (for US, Canada, Europe, etc.). This also reduces the number of lights required.
The list goes on. Anything that prevents a 250 watt drain on the grid during peak times will reduce the problem dramatically if millions of homes participated. Say 2 million homes used 250W/hr less at peak times for any given grid supply area: 500MegaWatt hour savings. That's a lot of savings.
A small change I'd like to see is more physcial on/off switches and fewer clocks!!!. In my kitchen the range, microwave and radio in the kitchen all have a clock! In my den the TV (with a built in CLOCK - who uses their TV as an alarm clock???), VCR (with a CLOCK), DVD and Receiver are all on standbye (I have now put them on a powerbar with a switch). I'd like to see more appliances that go back to performing just their basic function. And then let me decide what functions I want where.