According to this article in Wikipedia, an incandescent bulb actually releases more mercury into the environment than CF bulbs. This is because there is a minute amount of mercury in coal, which is released when it is burned for electricity. So the net result is less mercury released because less coal is burned.
Frankly, this is just a little too convenient. But it doesn't sound like a real problem anyway, since the Mercury was extracted from natural materials in the environment. If the rest of the Mercury article is correct, it seems like a bigger problem is what to do when we run out of the material, or when it becomes too expensive to extract from the minute sources that remain.
1 ) Because they aren't that expensive. 1b) Because they are already economically viable. (this is really the same as #1, so I put it as b) 2 ) Because the government's job is not philanthropy. 3 ) Because if the government subsidizes things, they only _appear_ to be cheaper. You are still paying for them via taxes. Paying for things via taxes involves extra beurocracy, which actually costs more money in the long run.
I don't understand this issue since CF bulbs are whiter than incandecent bulbs. Incandecent bulbs are orange-ish which that's why when you take a picture indoors using automatic white balance, the camera produces an orange tint. CF bulbs are slightly bluish, but not as bad as incandecent.
If you really want real white, try The GE Reveal Bulbs. My wife uses them in her art studio. (They are basically incadecent bulbs with a blue cast over them to cancel the orange)
Yes, I am talking about the lights on the pedestrian sign. But these aren't the regular bulbs used in traffic lights - not the two alternately flashing yellow light bulbs. This is an array of ultra-bright yellow LEDs that go around the sign. Ultra-bright LEDs are nice in flashlights, on key chains, and at raves. They are not appropriate in a pitch-black environment where they go from all on to all off. It is like shining a flashlight straight in your eyes.
I don't have a problem with regular light bulbs. But over the past few years I've seen strobe lights and ultra-bright LEDs and halogen lights in places where it isn't appropriate. They seem really nifty until you are driving down a back-woodsy road and somebody's halogen headlights on high-beams hit you in the face.
My mother-in-law can't drive at night because she has night blindness due to cataracts. (She just had them removed, I should ask her if it has helped). But don't optimiize the lighting so that only people with good vision can see you. That kinda defeats the purpose.:-)
Actually, I think this type of visibility is a bad idea. If you are driving at night, and something has bright flashing lights, the ONLY thing you can see is the flashing lights. Everything that you could see before now becomes invisible, because your eye has to re-adjust to the bright object. Either that, or the bright object burns into your retina and now you can't see anything else. Either way, this makes it more dangerous for the driver.
Other examples: - Near my home there is a school. The added super-bright flashing LEDs onto the standard reflective pederstrian sign. Now, whenever I drive by it at night, I am momentarily blinded just as I approach the school crosswalk. - Ever see the school buses that have the strobe lights on top? Not so bad during the day, but on an early cloudy winter morning those things are dangerously bright. It makes me blink twice as much to avoid looking right at them.
Instead of hanging a handful of 'blinkies' off the back of my bike
Do yourself a favor: Turn your blinkies around so they shine against your back. This will illuminate you so people see you, rather than shine a light into the driver's eyes. Face the LED lights toward the person on the bike so that the cars see a person on a bike, not "Hey, look at that cool...! "
Reflectors also work well because they are softer light and they only reflect what is sent out.
I know this is off-topic, but you gotta check-out the picture in the article. The young hacker spammer guy in that "Scooore!" pose is hilarious! And the older non-geek guy behind him with the bewildered look emphasizes the point.
Perhaps this will inspire many would-be advisors to send spam about how to make money fast by sending spam emails about stocks. If it works, then it will inspire more spammers to send spam about how to make money sending spam about how to make money fast by sending spam emails about stocks. Depending on the success, it might spawn a whole slew of spammers sending spam about how to make money by sending spam about how to make money sending spam about how to make money fast by sending spam emails about stocks.
The pie-in-the-sky type of results that people expect from stem cells may only be possible if we can produce these things in mass. This type of research may be the real key to viable stem cell treatments. If you want to grow back another limb, the only way to get enough genetic material is if your own body provides it.
It would be very ironic if the fear of stem cell research is what yields its ultimate success.
No, it means that the figures overlap. The 42% who live in urban areas with more than 1 million people also happen to live in urban areas. So the percent that live in urban areas with 1 million people or less is 78% - 42% = 36%. Also, the figures are from different years so they won't add-up exactly anyhow.
Which part of "pointed to the sentence" made it seem like it wasn't in the contract? Should I have posted "the contract contained a sentence?" Would that have been clearer?
I asked my would-be employer about it, and they pointed to the sentence that constrained the clause to inventions applicable to what the company produced. Since the company sold health care software I didn't feel threatened. My personal inventions don't deal in that area.
There are ways around personal firewalls, therefore personal firewalls are useless.
So says an article linked by an article linked by an article that I can't really read. Pardon me if I am not convinced.
I'm quite content with the personal firewall I have. It stops lots of outbound connections from applications that like to phone home. If there is an app on my system that searches for IE windows and uses them to surrepticiously send data out -- I'm already f*d. Fortunately, my firewall blocks IE so I'm not vulnerable to that one. (It could use Firefox though).
1) a video card does not contain a general purpose processor and is not capable of running an operating system. It contains a GPU, which is very fast for certain subsets of mathematical calculations, but that is all. It can't effectively branch, doesn't offer memory protection, etc. There are the biggest parts of a modern general-purpose CPU
2) Video cards are not tied to x86: A video card communicates with a bus like PCI or AGP. The system could be running an PowerPC chip, or a cell chip, or an x86 chip. nVidia has cards that run on all three of these environments.
3) You talk about the cell processor and the PS3, but that doesn't have anything to do with x86 being left behind. The cell processors are a massively parallel processor designed for running video games and computational problems. It will probably be inefficient (per watt and per cycle) to run a normal desktop OS on it. Not that it isn't possible, but that isn't what it is for.
4) You point out how x86 must be bad because Microsoft switched to PowerPC for the 360. So why did Apple switch to x86 from PowerPC, and suddenly everything is faster and lower power?
The 24fps and the 2,500 times per second refer to two different things. If you stop the projector from rolling, the image would remain. Each image is persistant. But if you stop the laser from moving, the image would vanish. Each "frame" is limited not by the speed of the laser, but by the length of time that the light is burned onto your retina.
IANAP. I think your observations fit well with what the parent poster was saying.
Your argument gives us only two options
Understand that both options are meant to cover the entire range of comprehensible possibilities. If you can think of any possibility that does not fall under the umbrella of one of these, then you should publish a paper, because you are thinking outside the box and you might be the next Einstein.
If gravity is indeed "wavelike" maybe that superhot system has a certain resonance that changes its behavior.
I think that would fall under possibility #1: gravity gets stronger under certain conditions. The condition you cited is resonance.
Just because some bizarre gravitational effect is being observed, it then must be this magical mysterious substance that has never been directly observed?
Actually, that sums it up quite well. I might put it this way:
1) Gravity is caused by matter 2) There exists a gravity that is not caused by observable matter 3) Therefore, that matter is not observable.
The other possibility is that (1) is wrong, but we have so much evidence confirming that, and no alternatives, so we have to continue with that as our basis.
Crowbar observed phenomena into an old mathematical model. Why not just address the fundamental theory?
I think what they just saw cannot be explained by the proposed changes to the mathematical model. So either we need a new proposal (none exist yet), or we need dark matter. I think at this point, dark matter just got a whole lot more likely.
My turn to make an analogy using Virtual Particles We could say that the concept of a "virtual particle" as a force carrier is silly. How can there be a neutral particle that just happens to show-up whenever we need it, to carry force from one thing to another. That's silly, and surely an updated mathematical model is better. And every time we see something that conflicts with the mathematical model, we can revise it so that it works again. But eventually that model fails many many times, and we revise it so often that it gets confusing and complicated. So eventually, despite our instincts saying it is crazy, we decide that it is just easier to say there is a virtual particle and move on. If it works mathematically, and it explains the pheonemon, and it is simple, then Occam's razor says use it.
Maybe there is no dark matter. Maybe it is a virtual conceptual thing that will lead us to a better solution. But for now, the alternate models have failed and this is where we stand.
I wonder if this is a startup company, and they are actually using this to hire people. Similar to how Google posted challenges on billboards a few years ago, as part of a pre-interview process. The people who solved the problems and contacted them were given job interviews.
Maybe they are looking for people who will come-in, prove why it won't work, then to hire those people.
Most car AC units have an energy coefficiency of somewhere around 400% - for every one watt of power used four watts of heat are removed
Apples and oranges. That "efficiency" is a completely different measurement than the efficiency of an energy generating system which is the amount of energy produced to the amount of energy consumed. Since air conditioners produce no power, they have an efficiency of 0%.
Actually, my physics teacher demonstrated how to get energy out of magnets.
I've never seen that experiment before. Based on what you said, the power is not coming from the magnets: it is coming from the force of your pushing. The energy to light the LED came from that burrito you ate earlier in the day.:-)
Don't discount it. Remember it onyl takes a tiny weak spark to get massive amounts of power out of gasoline.
It requires a spark, fossilized carbon-based life, and 100,000 years of the sun beating down on the earth to produce the gasoline. You just released stored potential energy from the sun. And we still haven't created an engine that can get 100% of the energy back out of that gasoline. And of course, in the end, the gasoline is gone.
A more complete analogy to what these guys are claiming is this: they can burn the gasoline, then still have the gasoline left over.
That is exactly his point, and you missed it. All the things this "character" does are not theft - you can't steal a seat in a movie theater, nor did he steal a spot on the train, nor did the subway or bus. Neither the movie company, nor the subway, nor the bus lost any material goods as a result of those actions. So they aren't theft.
The point is that by not paying for something just because it isn't a material good, doesn't make it any less of a crime, and doesn't mean that there isn't financial impact. People seem to think that if it isn't a physical stolen piece of property that nobody is hurt, but it isn't true.
That's right. 100base-T and gigabit ethernet are pointless. Why have a LAN that is faster than the internet?
Is there some strange reason that Slashdotters think that the only use for wireless networks is browsing the Internet? None of you have ever used wireless to print, or copy a file off a server, or play a LAN game, or stream video, had more than one wireless device running?
Imagine you're the person in charge of setting up these wiretaps.
I've imagined that situation many times. My most conservative response would be to resign. My most extreme would be to sabotage. Probably, I would do sometihng in between. Gather information, resign, then go to the press. The funny thing is that I haven't heard of a single case of this happening at any of the telecoms. Why is that?
Maybe those who did were silenced? I'm not sure I would believe that without evidence. Maybe Americans are just that shallow? I'm more willing to believe that one.
I just want to know where the whistle blowers are. Do people ignore their core beliefs from 9am to 5pm?
Are those judges conservatives, or republicans? Because the last 6 years have shown us that republican != conservative, and democrat != liberal. (As though that was ever the case, but this administration is the most blatent example)
Slashdot Mirror
CFL mercury use
According to this article in Wikipedia, an incandescent bulb actually releases more mercury into the environment than CF bulbs. This is because there is a minute amount of mercury in coal, which is released when it is burned for electricity. So the net result is less mercury released because less coal is burned.
Frankly, this is just a little too convenient. But it doesn't sound like a real problem anyway, since the Mercury was extracted from natural materials in the environment. If the rest of the Mercury article is correct, it seems like a bigger problem is what to do when we run out of the material, or when it becomes too expensive to extract from the minute sources that remain.
Good question. This is what I figure:
1 ) Because they aren't that expensive.
1b) Because they are already economically viable. (this is really the same as #1, so I put it as b)
2 ) Because the government's job is not philanthropy.
3 ) Because if the government subsidizes things, they only _appear_ to be cheaper. You are still paying for them via taxes. Paying for things via taxes involves extra beurocracy, which actually costs more money in the long run.
I don't understand this issue since CF bulbs are whiter than incandecent bulbs. Incandecent bulbs are orange-ish which that's why when you take a picture indoors using automatic white balance, the camera produces an orange tint. CF bulbs are slightly bluish, but not as bad as incandecent.
If you really want real white, try The GE Reveal Bulbs. My wife uses them in her art studio. (They are basically incadecent bulbs with a blue cast over them to cancel the orange)
Yes, I am talking about the lights on the pedestrian sign. But these aren't the regular bulbs used in traffic lights - not the two alternately flashing yellow light bulbs. This is an array of ultra-bright yellow LEDs that go around the sign. Ultra-bright LEDs are nice in flashlights, on key chains, and at raves. They are not appropriate in a pitch-black environment where they go from all on to all off. It is like shining a flashlight straight in your eyes.
:-)
I don't have a problem with regular light bulbs. But over the past few years I've seen strobe lights and ultra-bright LEDs and halogen lights in places where it isn't appropriate. They seem really nifty until you are driving down a back-woodsy road and somebody's halogen headlights on high-beams hit you in the face.
My mother-in-law can't drive at night because she has night blindness due to cataracts. (She just had them removed, I should ask her if it has helped). But don't optimiize the lighting so that only people with good vision can see you. That kinda defeats the purpose.
Other examples:
- Near my home there is a school. The added super-bright flashing LEDs onto the standard reflective pederstrian sign. Now, whenever I drive by it at night, I am momentarily blinded just as I approach the school crosswalk.
- Ever see the school buses that have the strobe lights on top? Not so bad during the day, but on an early cloudy winter morning those things are dangerously bright. It makes me blink twice as much to avoid looking right at them.
Do yourself a favor: Turn your blinkies around so they shine against your back. This will illuminate you so people see you, rather than shine a light into the driver's eyes. Face the LED lights toward the person on the bike so that the cars see a person on a bike, not "Hey, look at that cool...! "
Reflectors also work well because they are softer light and they only reflect what is sent out.
Macintosh is the new Linux.
I know this is off-topic, but you gotta check-out the picture in the article. The young hacker spammer guy in that "Scooore!" pose is hilarious! And the older non-geek guy behind him with the bewildered look emphasizes the point.
Perhaps this will inspire many would-be advisors to send spam about how to make money fast by sending spam emails about stocks. If it works, then it will inspire more spammers to send spam about how to make money sending spam about how to make money fast by sending spam emails about stocks. Depending on the success, it might spawn a whole slew of spammers sending spam about how to make money by sending spam about how to make money sending spam about how to make money fast by sending spam emails about stocks.
The pie-in-the-sky type of results that people expect from stem cells may only be possible if we can produce these things in mass. This type of research may be the real key to viable stem cell treatments. If you want to grow back another limb, the only way to get enough genetic material is if your own body provides it.
It would be very ironic if the fear of stem cell research is what yields its ultimate success.
No, it means that the figures overlap. The 42% who live in urban areas with more than 1 million people also happen to live in urban areas. So the percent that live in urban areas with 1 million people or less is 78% - 42% = 36%. Also, the figures are from different years so they won't add-up exactly anyhow.
Yes, the Hatian Aeronautics and Space Administration has really dropped the ball.
I asked my would-be employer about it, and they pointed to the sentence that constrained the clause to inventions applicable to what the company produced. Since the company sold health care software I didn't feel threatened. My personal inventions don't deal in that area.
There are ways around personal firewalls, therefore personal firewalls are useless.
So says an article linked by an article linked by an article that I can't really read. Pardon me if I am not convinced.
I'm quite content with the personal firewall I have. It stops lots of outbound connections from applications that like to phone home. If there is an app on my system that searches for IE windows and uses them to surrepticiously send data out -- I'm already f*d. Fortunately, my firewall blocks IE so I'm not vulnerable to that one. (It could use Firefox though).
Huh?
1) a video card does not contain a general purpose processor and is not capable of running an operating system. It contains a GPU, which is very fast for certain subsets of mathematical calculations, but that is all. It can't effectively branch, doesn't offer memory protection, etc. There are the biggest parts of a modern general-purpose CPU
2) Video cards are not tied to x86: A video card communicates with a bus like PCI or AGP. The system could be running an PowerPC chip, or a cell chip, or an x86 chip. nVidia has cards that run on all three of these environments.
3) You talk about the cell processor and the PS3, but that doesn't have anything to do with x86 being left behind. The cell processors are a massively parallel processor designed for running video games and computational problems. It will probably be inefficient (per watt and per cycle) to run a normal desktop OS on it. Not that it isn't possible, but that isn't what it is for.
4) You point out how x86 must be bad because Microsoft switched to PowerPC for the 360. So why did Apple switch to x86 from PowerPC, and suddenly everything is faster and lower power?
The 24fps and the 2,500 times per second refer to two different things. If you stop the projector from rolling, the image would remain. Each image is persistant. But if you stop the laser from moving, the image would vanish. Each "frame" is limited not by the speed of the laser, but by the length of time that the light is burned onto your retina.
I think your observations fit well with what the parent poster was saying.
Understand that both options are meant to cover the entire range of comprehensible possibilities. If you can think of any possibility that does not fall under the umbrella of one of these, then you should publish a paper, because you are thinking outside the box and you might be the next Einstein.
I think that would fall under possibility #1: gravity gets stronger under certain conditions. The condition you cited is resonance.
Actually, that sums it up quite well. I might put it this way:
1) Gravity is caused by matter
2) There exists a gravity that is not caused by observable matter
3) Therefore, that matter is not observable.
The other possibility is that (1) is wrong, but we have so much evidence confirming that, and no alternatives, so we have to continue with that as our basis.
I think what they just saw cannot be explained by the proposed changes to the mathematical model. So either we need a new proposal (none exist yet), or we need dark matter. I think at this point, dark matter just got a whole lot more likely.
My turn to make an analogy using Virtual Particles
We could say that the concept of a "virtual particle" as a force carrier is silly. How can there be a neutral particle that just happens to show-up whenever we need it, to carry force from one thing to another. That's silly, and surely an updated mathematical model is better. And every time we see something that conflicts with the mathematical model, we can revise it so that it works again. But eventually that model fails many many times, and we revise it so often that it gets confusing and complicated. So eventually, despite our instincts saying it is crazy, we decide that it is just easier to say there is a virtual particle and move on. If it works mathematically, and it explains the pheonemon, and it is simple, then Occam's razor says use it.
Maybe there is no dark matter. Maybe it is a virtual conceptual thing that will lead us to a better solution. But for now, the alternate models have failed and this is where we stand.
I wonder if this is a startup company, and they are actually using this to hire people. Similar to how Google posted challenges on billboards a few years ago, as part of a pre-interview process. The people who solved the problems and contacted them were given job interviews.
Maybe they are looking for people who will come-in, prove why it won't work, then to hire those people.
A more complete analogy to what these guys are claiming is this: they can burn the gasoline, then still have the gasoline left over.
That is exactly his point, and you missed it. All the things this "character" does are not theft - you can't steal a seat in a movie theater, nor did he steal a spot on the train, nor did the subway or bus. Neither the movie company, nor the subway, nor the bus lost any material goods as a result of those actions. So they aren't theft.
The point is that by not paying for something just because it isn't a material good, doesn't make it any less of a crime, and doesn't mean that there isn't financial impact. People seem to think that if it isn't a physical stolen piece of property that nobody is hurt, but it isn't true.
That's right. 100base-T and gigabit ethernet are pointless. Why have a LAN that is faster than the internet?
Is there some strange reason that Slashdotters think that the only use for wireless networks is browsing the Internet? None of you have ever used wireless to print, or copy a file off a server, or play a LAN game, or stream video, had more than one wireless device running?
802.11N is more about range and reliability than bandwidth. Besides, do you think that 640k is enough for everyone?
Maybe those who did were silenced? I'm not sure I would believe that without evidence.
Maybe Americans are just that shallow? I'm more willing to believe that one.
I just want to know where the whistle blowers are. Do people ignore their core beliefs from 9am to 5pm?
Are those judges conservatives, or republicans? Because the last 6 years have shown us that republican != conservative, and democrat != liberal. (As though that was ever the case, but this administration is the most blatent example)
Anybody know where I can buy keyboards that don't have Windows keys?