At one time, GE (I think) made standard incandescents of a particular wattage on two different production lines, with two different filament shapes (W shaped and circular.) The W shaped filaments were a problem when the bulbs were mounted horizontally; in a fair number of them a portion of the filament would sag against another portion, causing a short and premature failure. High voltage, high wattage incandescent bulbs tend to have weak filaments and the manufacturer doesn't always get the design right. It's not a common flaw, but it can happen.
Vehicle inspections for common passenger vehicles are a waste of time and ineffective. They're guaranteed employment for garage mechanics and a drain on the economy. First off, they're annual. Is it OK to go a year with defective brakes, bald tires, broken turn signals? The driver notices these things first (or should check them more often) and either wisely fixes them or (in the common case) suffers an inconvenient breakdown. Second, the state's judgement of what is or is not an actual safety hazard is poor.
I've read no data, but if the manufacturer is doing a good job the LEDs and associated electronics should be well sealed from the atmosphere. Note that solar LED garden lights are not sealed and last for several years (and the failure point is usually battery, battery contact points, or cadmium sulphide light sensor.)
Roughly, the number of hours an incandescent lamp will run is inversely proportional to the 13th power of the voltage applied to it. Cycling has very little effect, and it's been that way for over a half century. Turnon appears to kill many a weakened lamp because an already damaged filament collapses onto a shorter portion of itself when turned off, then goes out in a blaze at turnon as a much higher specific power evaporates the filament. Without the off-on cycle, the bulb would have failed in a few hours anyway. It's the gradual evaporation of the filament, not the accumulation of thermal shock cracks, that kills the lamp. For an incandescent lamp to last 100 years, it would have to be run at about 63% of its rated voltage, which means a very dim, red, almost useless light.
By way of contrast, CFLs have inadequately specified power supplies that undergo overstress at each turnon. Since cost pressures are extreme, more durable components are not specified, so the lamps fail after a moderate number of cycles.
The cost/quality tradeoffs for incandescents are not so dramatic and their prices are so low in the first place, that it's rarely an issue.
Any country that gives away substantial goodies to its residents, and is not otherwise a horrible place to live, cannot have open borders. It will either run out of freebies or become horrible. The US will soon be both, thanks in ascending order to the 4 most recent presidents.
Just for fun, no company worth more than $100K should be allowed to own a patent (or copyright)
Patent Troll company has net worth of $90,000.
Patent Troll company gets judgement of $500 million.
Patent Troll company distributes $500 million to its owners
Patent Troll company has net worth of $90,000.
Profit!
As a design engineer, I had the choice of either searching the patent database or not, and sometimes the choice was made deliberately. Violating someone else's patent makes my company vulnerable to damages, but knowingly violating opens up the possibility of triple damages. So, subject to management advice and my judgement, I either design without looking, or look and then design in a manner to avoid infringing. I never incorporate patented material into my design, telling my company they're just going to have to negotiate terms, or not telling them and devil take the hindmost.
It should be interesting. Google's profit margins are 2 to 4 times as high as AT&T's, and the companies are comparable in size. If Google's higher margins are due to superior efficiency rather than being in a different market, a price war means AT&T's demise.
You haven't the faintest idea of what a chemical preservative is, or how to evaluate the values and risks of one.
Ascorbic acid is used as a preservative; it's essential to human life.
The benzene ring is fundamental to many life-process chemicals, including sex hormones.
Consuming food that one has canned is one of the riskiest activities an ignorant person can undertake.
Unions have this horrible habit of protecting their members no matter what
Unions protect those among their members who are raucous enough to make trouble, or whose protection makes the union leaders look good. If unions truly protected all their members through thick and thin, my sister might be alive today.
Try to take shelter inside your memory of a roller coaster ride. The widget -- durable goods -- leaves the purchaser with something physical. Someone has to manufacture, a world economy cannot exist without it. The world economy can do just fine without tourism or HBO.
There are low-expense ETFs that track the market pretty well. If you want to save yourself the time and trouble it takes to beat the general market, something like QQQ is worth consideration.
The middle class remains stagnant when the economy doesn't grow in real terms, which in turn happens when market conditions are so chaotic that companies can't plan for growth. Chaos happens when the government keeps introducing new regulations, threatens new taxes, and attacks its new enemy of the moment, as under Obama now.
Wealth is measured by net worth; disposable income is quite transitory. I don't suddenly become poor if I lose money in a given year, provided that I have a bundle to fall back on.
Save money by not wasting it. You've already admitted to wasting money by buying insurance. Do you smoke? Use illegal drugs? Consume alcohol or junk food? Use a laundromat? Live alone when you could save money by sharing an apartment? Have a big screen TV, cell phone, expensive hifi, expensive clothes, eat at restaurants or buy unnecessarily costly food? If you're just barely making it and not wasting money, there's something badly wrong with how much money you're earning.
Long distance rail travel is a combination of pork and political pressure from greenies and those afraid to fly. Commuter rail makes sense in some places (NYC, for instance), and freight rail appears to be profitable and sensible.
I looked yesterday; it's more expensive for one person to take a train Boston-NYC than to drive. Ever tried to park in either city anywhere near the train station? It's a 4 hour drive, by the way.
Computers should be the first choice for education. Cheap software, even freeware, should exist to provide almost the entire pre-college education. There's no excuse for the continued existence of mass schools, either public or private.
Slashdot Mirror
At one time, GE (I think) made standard incandescents of a particular wattage on two different production lines, with two different filament shapes (W shaped and circular.) The W shaped filaments were a problem when the bulbs were mounted horizontally; in a fair number of them a portion of the filament would sag against another portion, causing a short and premature failure. High voltage, high wattage incandescent bulbs tend to have weak filaments and the manufacturer doesn't always get the design right. It's not a common flaw, but it can happen.
Vehicle inspections for common passenger vehicles are a waste of time and ineffective. They're guaranteed employment for garage mechanics and a drain on the economy. First off, they're annual. Is it OK to go a year with defective brakes, bald tires, broken turn signals? The driver notices these things first (or should check them more often) and either wisely fixes them or (in the common case) suffers an inconvenient breakdown. Second, the state's judgement of what is or is not an actual safety hazard is poor.
I've read no data, but if the manufacturer is doing a good job the LEDs and associated electronics should be well sealed from the atmosphere. Note that solar LED garden lights are not sealed and last for several years (and the failure point is usually battery, battery contact points, or cadmium sulphide light sensor.)
Roughly, the number of hours an incandescent lamp will run is inversely proportional to the 13th power of the voltage applied to it. Cycling has very little effect, and it's been that way for over a half century. Turnon appears to kill many a weakened lamp because an already damaged filament collapses onto a shorter portion of itself when turned off, then goes out in a blaze at turnon as a much higher specific power evaporates the filament. Without the off-on cycle, the bulb would have failed in a few hours anyway. It's the gradual evaporation of the filament, not the accumulation of thermal shock cracks, that kills the lamp. For an incandescent lamp to last 100 years, it would have to be run at about 63% of its rated voltage, which means a very dim, red, almost useless light.
By way of contrast, CFLs have inadequately specified power supplies that undergo overstress at each turnon. Since cost pressures are extreme, more durable components are not specified, so the lamps fail after a moderate number of cycles.
The cost/quality tradeoffs for incandescents are not so dramatic and their prices are so low in the first place, that it's rarely an issue.
Why is it that any politician who wants a change characterizes it as "reform"?
Any country that gives away substantial goodies to its residents, and is not otherwise a horrible place to live, cannot have open borders. It will either run out of freebies or become horrible. The US will soon be both, thanks in ascending order to the 4 most recent presidents.
Patent Troll company has net worth of $90,000.
Patent Troll company gets judgement of $500 million.
Patent Troll company distributes $500 million to its owners
Patent Troll company has net worth of $90,000.
Profit!
As a design engineer, I had the choice of either searching the patent database or not, and sometimes the choice was made deliberately. Violating someone else's patent makes my company vulnerable to damages, but knowingly violating opens up the possibility of triple damages. So, subject to management advice and my judgement, I either design without looking, or look and then design in a manner to avoid infringing. I never incorporate patented material into my design, telling my company they're just going to have to negotiate terms, or not telling them and devil take the hindmost.
Exxon-Mobil has a larger market cap than Apple, and 2.5 times the sales.
It should be interesting. Google's profit margins are 2 to 4 times as high as AT&T's, and the companies are comparable in size. If Google's higher margins are due to superior efficiency rather than being in a different market, a price war means AT&T's demise.
You haven't the faintest idea of what a chemical preservative is, or how to evaluate the values and risks of one.
Ascorbic acid is used as a preservative; it's essential to human life.
The benzene ring is fundamental to many life-process chemicals, including sex hormones.
Consuming food that one has canned is one of the riskiest activities an ignorant person can undertake.
Unions protect those among their members who are raucous enough to make trouble, or whose protection makes the union leaders look good. If unions truly protected all their members through thick and thin, my sister might be alive today.
I wish you had been around the night I spent puking Carvel's spoiled product.
Try to take shelter inside your memory of a roller coaster ride. The widget -- durable goods -- leaves the purchaser with something physical. Someone has to manufacture, a world economy cannot exist without it. The world economy can do just fine without tourism or HBO.
The British Navy was used to ensure that England's claims to North Sea oil overwhelmed Norway's claims. If that's not government policy, nothing is.
There are low-expense ETFs that track the market pretty well. If you want to save yourself the time and trouble it takes to beat the general market, something like QQQ is worth consideration.
The west is having trouble because cowardly politicians won't stand up to destructive fucks like you.
The middle class remains stagnant when the economy doesn't grow in real terms, which in turn happens when market conditions are so chaotic that companies can't plan for growth. Chaos happens when the government keeps introducing new regulations, threatens new taxes, and attacks its new enemy of the moment, as under Obama now.
Wealth is measured by net worth; disposable income is quite transitory. I don't suddenly become poor if I lose money in a given year, provided that I have a bundle to fall back on.
Roughly half of all American households own stocks.
Your claim of fixed class division is contrary to well documented fact.
Save money by not wasting it. You've already admitted to wasting money by buying insurance. Do you smoke? Use illegal drugs? Consume alcohol or junk food? Use a laundromat? Live alone when you could save money by sharing an apartment? Have a big screen TV, cell phone, expensive hifi, expensive clothes, eat at restaurants or buy unnecessarily costly food? If you're just barely making it and not wasting money, there's something badly wrong with how much money you're earning.
Long distance rail travel is a combination of pork and political pressure from greenies and those afraid to fly. Commuter rail makes sense in some places (NYC, for instance), and freight rail appears to be profitable and sensible.
I looked yesterday; it's more expensive for one person to take a train Boston-NYC than to drive. Ever tried to park in either city anywhere near the train station? It's a 4 hour drive, by the way.
Thanks for proposing slavery.
Computers should be the first choice for education. Cheap software, even freeware, should exist to provide almost the entire pre-college education. There's no excuse for the continued existence of mass schools, either public or private.