: instructors to gain tenure and dismantle the 'last hired, first fired' policies that fail to consider teacher effectiveness
That would be great, if not for the fact that "teacher effectiveness" either means "how popular they are in the lunch room".
I've seen all the standardized testing BS. When the testing facility boasts that tests scores are improving, and then admit (when forced to) that they changed the test, I certainly don't want them responsible for hiring and firing.
Google owns all the location addresses in the world. Yelp holds a much smaller subset. I care less for WiFi location capability (everyone has a GPS) than I do for being able to look something up.
> because Google gave up. Apparently they had no faith in WebM
Umm, *thats* what you think happened?
Maybe it was that the most used browsers on the largest platforms didn't support it, and never would? And that installing the codecs to get support was beyond the abilities of the vast majority of users? And that, in lots of tests, it consistently did worse than 264 in encoding quality? And that the implementations had little or no hardware decoding support?
Market fragmentation, obviously. And concerns about the quality.
Let's turn this question on it's head, what *exactly* is the problem if H.265 becomes the standard?
Everyone made all of these nebulous arguments over VP8/H.264. The claims at the time was that using 264 would cause all sorts of chaos in the future when we tried to read old archives, but I've failed to see a single example of this. Source code for extremely high quality 264 en/decoders can be easily found on the 'net, I've used it myself. Meanwhile the VP8 code is of moderate quality at best, and the quality of the product is lower. Is there any reason to suspect any major changes?
If not, which is my belief, then I am at a loss at so what advantages VP9 might offer, especially in light of early testing which demonstrates very low quality in comparison to HVEC.
> The difference with VP9 is that there isn't already an entrenched standard that's better
HVEC *is* entrenched. It is accurate to say it is not entrenched in the delivery channels, so far, but don't think for a second it isn't utterly dominant everywhere else in the delivery stack, even if it's not even being used yet. Consider the state of LTE three years ago, and compare it to the Qualcomm efforts.
> Now VP9 and H.265 are appearing at the same time
And in testing to date, VP9 loses, HARD. Now I don't know how much I trust these tests given that they were based on older reference releases, but the numbers I've seen show that VP9 is worse than AVC, let alone HVEC. I wait for newer tests, but I honestly don't think anything is going to change *that* much.
I think there's far too much weight being given to the royalty free issue. No one that matters cares. Every piece of consumer electronics includes dozens upon dozens of licensing deals in it - for instance, even if a TV were to support VP9, they'd still be paying for AVC, and even for HDMI for that matter. It's the way business is done. No one gives a crap unless you're talking about something like $1 or more *per device*. HVEC certainly isn't going to be that, and I can't imagine any scenario where anyone chooses one over the other due to fees.
Every indication is that this is a hail mary on Google's part, or even less, just press fluff. Like the solar panels on that Ford car.
"But the 4k over VP9 only, that's a message to producers that they must start to make their stuff available in VP9 format if they don't want to be "left behind"
The chance of that seems to be very close to zero, it is almost certain that HEVC will be "the" standard moving forward. The historical precedence here is pretty strong (VP8 v. AVC) and Google's own comments appear to be hedging their bets.
"And once that's the only format natively supported on all 4k playback devices"
Nothing is stopping any of these same playback devices supporting HEVC, and all evidence to date suggests they will, and that it's better than VP9. If YouTube were the only delivery platform you might have an argument, but to date YT is the home of low-res content.
The subject line and body are not the same thing. Having excellent sales implies nothing about whether or not it was lucrative. The opposite is also true, of course, just ask Apple, or Porsche.
The R&D effort in the SQL field is roughly zero, so it's not surprising people aren't keeping up with the latest developments in the hardware field.
It's bad enough that the only standardized access system is ODBC, designed 25 years ago when pipes were short and thin and a WAN was the next building over. If we can't get that problem fixed, what's the hope for integrating new technologies?
> no one ever really claimed that multivitamins would just flat prevent cancer.
Ha, ho! Google "Linus Pauling". His two Nobel Prizes did more to perpetuate the myth of vitamins more than anyone before or after.
> but we can't let the researchers off the hook eitherthey *chose* the language and 3 categories
Because those are three that are commonly quoted as benefits. What categories would *you* have them choose? It's effect on hair color? Fingernail length?
> IMHO they look like amateurs for not including those who take multivitamins expecting a small performance boost
Well go ahead and test it. Double blinded, of course.
> I mean, it's like studying the efficacy of a smallpox vaccine on a population that is never exposed to smallpox > it might be valid science, but who cares?
Uggg. Did you stop to think even a *little* bit about your line of argument? Here, let me demonstrate how bad it is
There is ample evidence that cyclophosphamide can cure cancer. In people without cancer, obviously it doesn't cure their cancer.
There is also ample evidence that it causes acute myeloid leukaemia, bladder cancer, hemorrhagic cystitis, and permanent infertility.
So, on the off chance that you might have cancer, should you take cyclophosphamide in the preventative role?
What, you don't think that's a good idea? Huh.
There is evidence that taking vitamins is good for people with vitamin deficiencies. In people without vitamin deficiencies, it does nothing.
There is some evidence that taking vitamins causes several health problems, including increasing risk of cancer in certain cases.
But in this case, you dismiss the outcome. Clearly the logic states that healthy people should not take multivitamins for the same reason that healthy people shouldn't take cyclophosphamide. Either that, or you need to go out and take some cyclophosphamide, just in case. Right?
Whenever I read "I'm all for [racial mixing|immigration|freedom of religion|being environmentally friendly]" it is invariably followed by some brain-dead argument that the "author" copied from a web page they read because it matched their political belief system. Let's see if that's true here.
> waste stream and the obligatory horrific mercury-caused maladies
Ahhh, the mercury argument.
There's oodles of mercury in the environment as it is. In order for it to get into you, it has to go through a long and complex process of bioconversion and concentration. So, for instance, mercury from coal burning was a huge problem in northern Canada because it concentrated in marine life and fishing was a major source of calories and protein for various indigenous peoples living in the north. So they cleaned it up. Took about a decade. Also cleaned it out of the people using a variety of methods which are widespread and well known. Here, you can start to educate yourself about reality at this page:
To put this in perspective, the amount of mercury released into the system in these cases was on the order of 10,000 times the amount if you take ever CFL in the world and smash them into the lakes in question. Basically all the mercury from all the power plants, steel mills and other coal-burning systems for 50 years was dropped into the watersheds and washed downstream into the lakes before it was even noticed.
In contrast, CFLs generally release their mercury in the home or recycling centres where it is almost 100% captured. Yes, some will make it into landfills, but even these are much better water isolated than the open countryside.
This argument, CLFs bad because of mercury, is completely and utterly bogus.
> Oladele Ogunseitan said that while
Here, let me quote the article you're reading: "harbor large amounts of nickel, another heavy metal that causes allergic reactions in as many as one in five of us upon exposure. And the copper found in some LEDs can pose an environmental "
The "large amount of nickel" is significantly less than an actual nickel, and the "copper found" is considerably less than a penny. Yet you carry those in your pocket. Nickel is present in almost every metal around you, notably your dinnerware and almost everything you cook with, and you get your water through copper pipes. Yet no one is claiming we should replace our entire food supply system.
> LEDs contain lead, arsenic
No, the glass around them does. That's why Apple, for instance, heavily advertises the fact that they use lead and arsenic-free glass.
Almost every other bit of glass around you contains both, including the one allowing light into your room, and, likely, the screen that you're looking at right now.
But this makes no difference. The lead and arsenic in the glass is not bioavailable, it doesn't "wash out" of the glass when it breaks. The reason we want lead and arsenic-free glass is to eliminate its use during manufacture, where it can be released in bioavailable forms through industrial accidents.
I'm going to write the authors and see if my suspicions are true.
> LED and breathing in its fumes wouldn’t likely cause cancer
There are no fumes inside an LED bulb. I've opened some to see what's inside.
> If people would: > - only use lights when they actually need them > - switch lights off when their done with them > - take advantage of the giant free light source outside
You don't have a house or kids do you?
People with kids will tell you that 100% of the time, kids leave the damn lights on. You can do whatever you want to try to change this behaviour, money, yelling, you name it, but nothing works. Wives are only slightly better, in my limited experience. The *first thing* mine does in the morning is turn on every light in the house, which right now is 9 bulbs on the main floor. Those were the first ones I replaced with LEDs.
> not realizing that the heat thrown off by incandescents is anything but wasted during this half of the year
As noted elsewhere, anyone heating anything with electricity is likely on the wrong end of the loser curve. You are much, much better off replacing your light bulbs and burning slightly more gas, no matter what measure of "better" you use. And if you don't have gas, a heat pump is 3x as efficient as your light bulb?
Are you really surprised by this? Do you really think a device meant to provide light is anywhere near as efficient as one meant to provide heat at heating your home? I'm sure you read this argument on some web page, but you would do well to recall that most such web pages are created to push a political view, not a factual one.
> During the other half, we have daylight from 6am to 10pm and should scarcely need artificial lighting at all
Scarcely, or at all? There's a big difference. If you claim it's "at all", you'd be happy to have me come over and remove all your bulbs during the summer then, right?
> And what are we to do with all the specialized light fixtures that only accept specific incandescent light bulbs?
Try harder. Home Depot sells bulbs that fit in every fitting. I'm still waiting for the ones for my PAR20s (which is the weird pot-lamp that takes normal light bulbs, not the bayonet mounts) but I have LEDs or CFLs in every weird fixture in my home otherwise. PAR16's and 30's can be found anywhere.
> LEDs are maybe a bit better, but aren't ready yet
LEDs are *better* than incandescents in every way. They are ready, and are readily available too. Maybe you should read something about them before posting:
> middle class citizens can totally afford to upgrade their lighting
Yes, they can.
Median income in Canada is $38,700. It costs perhaps $250 to replace every bulb in your home with an LED - I did it for less and I have lots of bulbs. You likely spend more than that on coffee every month.
That's right, because *everything* is a conspiracy.
Note, of course, that the best-selling LEDs and CFLs are not from the same companies that made the best selling incandescents. Cree never made an incandescent, for instance.
For your conspiracy to be true, it would require new, small, poor companies to be able to outspend old, large, rich ones. But let me guess, that's part of the conspiracy too, right?
> So now, instead of heating my house with light bulbs
How's that working out for you in the summer?
> hydro and nuclear power) I have to heat it by burning natural gas
Which is much cheaper AND more efficient. Much more efficient in fact. Hydro plants are pretty good, but nuclear plants are on the order of 35% efficient, and in any event another 7% is lost on the way to your home. Total round-trip energy-to-heat is likely on the order of 60%. In comparison, only 11% of the energy in NG is "burned off" delivering it to you, and your furnace is somewhere on the order of 90 to 95% efficient.
So basically everything you claim to be a problem, which I suspect isn't true anyway, is to everyone's benefit, even yours. Maybe you should read something other than an FAQ collected by someone with a political bent before posting here with those tired old bromides?
"They argue that if the new ones really are so good, people will buy them on their own without being forced to do so"
They're free to argue this, but that won't make it true. There's literally a small moon's worth of data showing people will make *very* bad choices in order to lower up-front costs. You know, like 2-year contracts on their phones.
> To say that we will in 20 years we will use only natural gas, wind, and solar is a fool's bet.
True. You forgot hydro. And no, it's not tapped out. 50% of the world's large hydro remains undeveloped.
> Planning now for a diversified energy mix
Nuclear proponents generally hate diversification. They see all other forms of power as threats, and denigrate them at every turn with pat statements about how "this can't do that". They actually have good reason for doing this, as their throttlability is generally poor. Nevertheless, the industry does itself no favours.
The purpose of any commercial power plant is to profitably produce power. If your power system does not do that, there's no point doing it.
The cost of any power plant includes a variety of factors, including R&D. For many nations, the cost of developing commercial reactors is partially hidden in a larger military program. At a minimum, training of the engineers as part of a wider program helps, but you may additionally take advantage of things like fuel separation technologies, development of reactor technologies, and in some cases, like the USSR, the reactor designs themselves are adapted military versions.
There are only a few cases where the cost of designing the civilian technology is completely separate from the military side. Canada is one example. In this case the accounting is fairly easy; the country's taxpayers have paid about $50 billion dollars to pay one province (Ontario) to develop technology used largely only by themselves. If one adds that cost to the price of the reactors, no one would have ever built them.
So back to the story. The reason no one "builds reactors for fun" is that they cost billions of dollars. Taking an alternate technology through to production will cost an enormous amount of money. Unless one can demonstrate that this R&D will be paid off, or they can hide it on someone else's budget (like earlier programs) then any investor is rightfully concerned about the risk/reward basis. And, in spite of what the various "miracle cure" types will tell you, this is precisely what these efforts have failed to do, utterly.
And that's the state of the union, right there.
Nuclear engineers invariably blame someone else for their problems - maybe it's the "greenies" or the money men. Invariably though, it's never themselves. That's in spite of over promising and under delivering for half a century now. Simply put, no one is willing to give them more money to "play".
Umm, why is the car in your analogy *used*? At no point is this a requirement.
"Your car has broken down and you can't fix it"
Apparently you haven't *actually read* what MS is doing.
MS is securing their communications infrastructure. This has nothing to do with their products or software.The FSF complaint is *completely bogus*.
A somewhat better analogy might be "My neighbour's house was broken into because they had poor quality locks on the door, so I'm going to change my locks for better models." The quality of your silverware is unrelated to the actions being taken.
Meh. SIO could not be hot-plugged, did not auto-load drivers, could not be hubbed, etc. It was almost, but not entirely, completely unlike USB.
I'm sure the idea of "easy to use serial bus" was inspired by his work with SIO, but then one has to consider AppleBus, ABD, A.b and many other similar designs from many other similar companies.
Slashdot Mirror
: instructors to gain tenure and dismantle the 'last hired, first fired' policies that fail to consider teacher effectiveness
That would be great, if not for the fact that "teacher effectiveness" either means "how popular they are in the lunch room".
I've seen all the standardized testing BS. When the testing facility boasts that tests scores are improving, and then admit (when forced to) that they changed the test, I certainly don't want them responsible for hiring and firing.
Google owns all the location addresses in the world. Yelp holds a much smaller subset. I care less for WiFi location capability (everyone has a GPS) than I do for being able to look something up.
> because Google gave up. Apparently they had no faith in WebM
Umm, *thats* what you think happened?
Maybe it was that the most used browsers on the largest platforms didn't support it, and never would?
And that installing the codecs to get support was beyond the abilities of the vast majority of users?
And that, in lots of tests, it consistently did worse than 264 in encoding quality?
And that the implementations had little or no hardware decoding support?
Maybe it was one of those?
> Wrong. I think it should "play politics" in this case
So do I, by supporting 264.
I'd *love* to see someone try to get money out of them.
I see a continuous stream of BS stories like this in all the blogrolling sites. /.used to filter some of these out, but no longer.
We need to stop reporting art projects as if they are real. For the good of humanity!
> What exactly is the problem here?
Market fragmentation, obviously. And concerns about the quality.
Let's turn this question on it's head, what *exactly* is the problem if H.265 becomes the standard?
Everyone made all of these nebulous arguments over VP8/H.264. The claims at the time was that using 264 would cause all sorts of chaos in the future when we tried to read old archives, but I've failed to see a single example of this. Source code for extremely high quality 264 en/decoders can be easily found on the 'net, I've used it myself. Meanwhile the VP8 code is of moderate quality at best, and the quality of the product is lower. Is there any reason to suspect any major changes?
If not, which is my belief, then I am at a loss at so what advantages VP9 might offer, especially in light of early testing which demonstrates very low quality in comparison to HVEC.
> The difference with VP9 is that there isn't already an entrenched standard that's better
HVEC *is* entrenched. It is accurate to say it is not entrenched in the delivery channels, so far, but don't think for a second it isn't utterly dominant everywhere else in the delivery stack, even if it's not even being used yet. Consider the state of LTE three years ago, and compare it to the Qualcomm efforts.
> Now VP9 and H.265 are appearing at the same time
And in testing to date, VP9 loses, HARD. Now I don't know how much I trust these tests given that they were based on older reference releases, but the numbers I've seen show that VP9 is worse than AVC, let alone HVEC. I wait for newer tests, but I honestly don't think anything is going to change *that* much.
I think there's far too much weight being given to the royalty free issue. No one that matters cares. Every piece of consumer electronics includes dozens upon dozens of licensing deals in it - for instance, even if a TV were to support VP9, they'd still be paying for AVC, and even for HDMI for that matter. It's the way business is done. No one gives a crap unless you're talking about something like $1 or more *per device*. HVEC certainly isn't going to be that, and I can't imagine any scenario where anyone chooses one over the other due to fees.
Every indication is that this is a hail mary on Google's part, or even less, just press fluff. Like the solar panels on that Ford car.
"But the 4k over VP9 only, that's a message to producers that they must start to make their stuff available in VP9 format if they don't want to be "left behind"
The chance of that seems to be very close to zero, it is almost certain that HEVC will be "the" standard moving forward. The historical precedence here is pretty strong (VP8 v. AVC) and Google's own comments appear to be hedging their bets.
"And once that's the only format natively supported on all 4k playback devices"
Nothing is stopping any of these same playback devices supporting HEVC, and all evidence to date suggests they will, and that it's better than VP9. If YouTube were the only delivery platform you might have an argument, but to date YT is the home of low-res content.
"and we'll have royalty-free video everywhere"
Unicorns and rainnbows.
The subject line and body are not the same thing. Having excellent sales implies nothing about whether or not it was lucrative. The opposite is also true, of course, just ask Apple, or Porsche.
> and installing power saving (switched) power boards
What is this for? Power boards in what?
The R&D effort in the SQL field is roughly zero, so it's not surprising people aren't keeping up with the latest developments in the hardware field.
It's bad enough that the only standardized access system is ODBC, designed 25 years ago when pipes were short and thin and a WAN was the next building over. If we can't get that problem fixed, what's the hope for integrating new technologies?
> nearly 40% of Americans can't even afford the luxury meal of the hot dog in mac and cheese
. . . they say, between puffs on their cigarette.
> no one ever really claimed that multivitamins would just flat prevent cancer.
Ha, ho! Google "Linus Pauling". His two Nobel Prizes did more to perpetuate the myth of vitamins more than anyone before or after.
> but we can't let the researchers off the hook eitherthey *chose* the language and 3 categories
Because those are three that are commonly quoted as benefits. What categories would *you* have them choose? It's effect on hair color? Fingernail length?
> IMHO they look like amateurs for not including those who take multivitamins expecting a small performance boost
Well go ahead and test it. Double blinded, of course.
> sticking with my vitamins
Google "opportunity cost".
> I mean, it's like studying the efficacy of a smallpox vaccine on a population that is never exposed to smallpox
> it might be valid science, but who cares?
Uggg. Did you stop to think even a *little* bit about your line of argument? Here, let me demonstrate how bad it is
There is ample evidence that cyclophosphamide can cure cancer. In people without cancer, obviously it doesn't cure their cancer.
There is also ample evidence that it causes acute myeloid leukaemia, bladder cancer, hemorrhagic cystitis, and permanent infertility.
So, on the off chance that you might have cancer, should you take cyclophosphamide in the preventative role?
What, you don't think that's a good idea? Huh.
There is evidence that taking vitamins is good for people with vitamin deficiencies. In people without vitamin deficiencies, it does nothing.
There is some evidence that taking vitamins causes several health problems, including increasing risk of cancer in certain cases.
But in this case, you dismiss the outcome. Clearly the logic states that healthy people should not take multivitamins for the same reason that healthy people shouldn't take cyclophosphamide. Either that, or you need to go out and take some cyclophosphamide, just in case. Right?
> I'm all for being environmentally friendly
Whenever I read "I'm all for [racial mixing|immigration|freedom of religion|being environmentally friendly]" it is invariably followed by some brain-dead argument that the "author" copied from a web page they read because it matched their political belief system. Let's see if that's true here.
> waste stream and the obligatory horrific mercury-caused maladies
Ahhh, the mercury argument.
There's oodles of mercury in the environment as it is. In order for it to get into you, it has to go through a long and complex process of bioconversion and concentration. So, for instance, mercury from coal burning was a huge problem in northern Canada because it concentrated in marine life and fishing was a major source of calories and protein for various indigenous peoples living in the north. So they cleaned it up. Took about a decade. Also cleaned it out of the people using a variety of methods which are widespread and well known. Here, you can start to educate yourself about reality at this page:
http://ec.gc.ca/mercure-mercury/default.asp?lang=En&n=DCBE5083-1
To put this in perspective, the amount of mercury released into the system in these cases was on the order of 10,000 times the amount if you take ever CFL in the world and smash them into the lakes in question. Basically all the mercury from all the power plants, steel mills and other coal-burning systems for 50 years was dropped into the watersheds and washed downstream into the lakes before it was even noticed.
In contrast, CFLs generally release their mercury in the home or recycling centres where it is almost 100% captured. Yes, some will make it into landfills, but even these are much better water isolated than the open countryside.
This argument, CLFs bad because of mercury, is completely and utterly bogus.
> Oladele Ogunseitan said that while
Here, let me quote the article you're reading: "harbor large amounts of nickel, another heavy metal that causes allergic reactions in as many as one in five of us upon exposure. And the copper found in some LEDs can pose an environmental "
The "large amount of nickel" is significantly less than an actual nickel, and the "copper found" is considerably less than a penny. Yet you carry those in your pocket. Nickel is present in almost every metal around you, notably your dinnerware and almost everything you cook with, and you get your water through copper pipes. Yet no one is claiming we should replace our entire food supply system.
> LEDs contain lead, arsenic
No, the glass around them does. That's why Apple, for instance, heavily advertises the fact that they use lead and arsenic-free glass.
Almost every other bit of glass around you contains both, including the one allowing light into your room, and, likely, the screen that you're looking at right now.
But this makes no difference. The lead and arsenic in the glass is not bioavailable, it doesn't "wash out" of the glass when it breaks. The reason we want lead and arsenic-free glass is to eliminate its use during manufacture, where it can be released in bioavailable forms through industrial accidents.
I'm going to write the authors and see if my suspicions are true.
> LED and breathing in its fumes wouldn’t likely cause cancer
There are no fumes inside an LED bulb. I've opened some to see what's inside.
> If people would:
> - only use lights when they actually need them
> - switch lights off when their done with them
> - take advantage of the giant free light source outside
You don't have a house or kids do you?
People with kids will tell you that 100% of the time, kids leave the damn lights on. You can do whatever you want to try to change this behaviour, money, yelling, you name it, but nothing works. Wives are only slightly better, in my limited experience. The *first thing* mine does in the morning is turn on every light in the house, which right now is 9 bulbs on the main floor. Those were the first ones I replaced with LEDs.
> not realizing that the heat thrown off by incandescents is anything but wasted during this half of the year
As noted elsewhere, anyone heating anything with electricity is likely on the wrong end of the loser curve. You are much, much better off replacing your light bulbs and burning slightly more gas, no matter what measure of "better" you use. And if you don't have gas, a heat pump is 3x as efficient as your light bulb?
Are you really surprised by this? Do you really think a device meant to provide light is anywhere near as efficient as one meant to provide heat at heating your home? I'm sure you read this argument on some web page, but you would do well to recall that most such web pages are created to push a political view, not a factual one.
> During the other half, we have daylight from 6am to 10pm and should scarcely need artificial lighting at all
Scarcely, or at all? There's a big difference. If you claim it's "at all", you'd be happy to have me come over and remove all your bulbs during the summer then, right?
> And what are we to do with all the specialized light fixtures that only accept specific incandescent light bulbs?
Try harder. Home Depot sells bulbs that fit in every fitting. I'm still waiting for the ones for my PAR20s (which is the weird pot-lamp that takes normal light bulbs, not the bayonet mounts) but I have LEDs or CFLs in every weird fixture in my home otherwise. PAR16's and 30's can be found anywhere.
> LEDs are maybe a bit better, but aren't ready yet
LEDs are *better* than incandescents in every way. They are ready, and are readily available too. Maybe you should read something about them before posting:
http://maurysrandomproductreviews.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/leds-cree-and-ikea-ledare-60w-replacements/
> middle class citizens can totally afford to upgrade their lighting
Yes, they can.
Median income in Canada is $38,700. It costs perhaps $250 to replace every bulb in your home with an LED - I did it for less and I have lots of bulbs. You likely spend more than that on coffee every month.
Stop whining.
> I'm blaming the bulb makers
That's right, because *everything* is a conspiracy.
Note, of course, that the best-selling LEDs and CFLs are not from the same companies that made the best selling incandescents. Cree never made an incandescent, for instance.
For your conspiracy to be true, it would require new, small, poor companies to be able to outspend old, large, rich ones. But let me guess, that's part of the conspiracy too, right?
> The 60watt Cree I recently bought were actually too bright for me
I recently replaced 3 Philips 60W incandescents with two Ikea 60W and one Cree 60W. The LED's are MUCH MUCH brighter:
http://maurysrandomproductreviews.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/leds-cree-and-ikea-ledare-60w-replacements/
Look at the 3rd picture.
> So now, instead of heating my house with light bulbs
How's that working out for you in the summer?
> hydro and nuclear power) I have to heat it by burning natural gas
Which is much cheaper AND more efficient. Much more efficient in fact. Hydro plants are pretty good, but nuclear plants are on the order of 35% efficient, and in any event another 7% is lost on the way to your home. Total round-trip energy-to-heat is likely on the order of 60%. In comparison, only 11% of the energy in NG is "burned off" delivering it to you, and your furnace is somewhere on the order of 90 to 95% efficient.
So basically everything you claim to be a problem, which I suspect isn't true anyway, is to everyone's benefit, even yours. Maybe you should read something other than an FAQ collected by someone with a political bent before posting here with those tired old bromides?
"They argue that if the new ones really are so good, people will buy them on their own without being forced to do so"
They're free to argue this, but that won't make it true. There's literally a small moon's worth of data showing people will make *very* bad choices in order to lower up-front costs. You know, like 2-year contracts on their phones.
> To say that we will in 20 years we will use only natural gas, wind, and solar is a fool's bet.
True. You forgot hydro. And no, it's not tapped out. 50% of the world's large hydro remains undeveloped.
> Planning now for a diversified energy mix
Nuclear proponents generally hate diversification. They see all other forms of power as threats, and denigrate them at every turn with pat statements about how "this can't do that". They actually have good reason for doing this, as their throttlability is generally poor. Nevertheless, the industry does itself no favours.
The purpose of any commercial power plant is to profitably produce power. If your power system does not do that, there's no point doing it.
The cost of any power plant includes a variety of factors, including R&D. For many nations, the cost of developing commercial reactors is partially hidden in a larger military program. At a minimum, training of the engineers as part of a wider program helps, but you may additionally take advantage of things like fuel separation technologies, development of reactor technologies, and in some cases, like the USSR, the reactor designs themselves are adapted military versions.
There are only a few cases where the cost of designing the civilian technology is completely separate from the military side. Canada is one example. In this case the accounting is fairly easy; the country's taxpayers have paid about $50 billion dollars to pay one province (Ontario) to develop technology used largely only by themselves. If one adds that cost to the price of the reactors, no one would have ever built them.
So back to the story. The reason no one "builds reactors for fun" is that they cost billions of dollars. Taking an alternate technology through to production will cost an enormous amount of money. Unless one can demonstrate that this R&D will be paid off, or they can hide it on someone else's budget (like earlier programs) then any investor is rightfully concerned about the risk/reward basis. And, in spite of what the various "miracle cure" types will tell you, this is precisely what these efforts have failed to do, utterly.
And that's the state of the union, right there.
Nuclear engineers invariably blame someone else for their problems - maybe it's the "greenies" or the money men. Invariably though, it's never themselves. That's in spite of over promising and under delivering for half a century now. Simply put, no one is willing to give them more money to "play".
"Ah, I finally get to use a car analogy!"
Umm, why is the car in your analogy *used*? At no point is this a requirement.
"Your car has broken down and you can't fix it"
Apparently you haven't *actually read* what MS is doing.
MS is securing their communications infrastructure. This has nothing to do with their products or software.The FSF complaint is *completely bogus*.
A somewhat better analogy might be "My neighbour's house was broken into because they had poor quality locks on the door, so I'm going to change my locks for better models." The quality of your silverware is unrelated to the actions being taken.
"they're basically pissing on the entire box-package software development industry"
Based on an underlying argument that is entirely unrelated.
If MS decided to install encryption on their own telephone system, I'm sure the FSF would put out the same, equally unrelated, press release.
And /. would slavishly run it for them.
Meh. SIO could not be hot-plugged, did not auto-load drivers, could not be hubbed, etc. It was almost, but not entirely, completely unlike USB.
I'm sure the idea of "easy to use serial bus" was inspired by his work with SIO, but then one has to consider AppleBus, ABD, A.b and many other similar designs from many other similar companies.