--- On Fri, 4/8/11, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> wrote: Hehe. And at the border the've got road blocks checking cars for illegal light bulbs. "Posession with intent to illuminate" -Ian

On 4/8/11 5:19 AM, Mr Ian Primus wrote: http://www.eons.com/groups/topic/108555-Butter-or-Oleo In Wisconsin, as a bow to dairy interests, oleo was not allowed to be bought or served in restaurants. Thus, like any good capitalistic society, Illinois businesses setup oleo depots on their side of the border for Wisconsinites to make illegal oleo runs. And the Wisconsin state police would set up check points to stop and fine oleo smugglers on the return trip. Over thirty years ago the state relented on the oleo prohibition and decided to tax oleo rather than ban it. The monies raised were to go to the promotion of dairy products.

I like that, its a good way of balance, people get what they want - and the free market gets to decide instead of the govt. The govt gets its share of the free market wheels turning and in turn, those funds go to promote the Dairy products, nice circle of beneficial circumstance. Al Kossow wrote:

most folks would say that govt is by definition "old farts." they even have special programs to try and seek out (entice?) younger employees s2 On 4/8/2011 5:47 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:

On 4/8/11 11:57 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Surely you don't believe that's the only reason. Heck, I'd personally never even considered where or how they were made. I just look at the "100W worth of light for 12W of energy" part, and it's a no-brainer. Besides...What ISN'T made by slave labor in China nowadays? I replaced all of mine about 2.5 years ago and have had one fail, and that was in an outdoor fixture. I didn't buy cheap ones. ;) I'm honestly surprised I've not lost more of them, with all the thunderstorm activity in my area. Profits. :-( -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 8 Apr 2011 at 12:03, Dave McGuire wrote: There's the ROI aspect. I could perhaps see replacing end-of-life incandescent bulbs with similarly-priced CFLs if the lifetime and price were comparable. But it's downright foolish to replace a lamp in a closet or stairway with a CFL "just because" where the lamp sees probably less than 10 hours use per year. In that case, replacing with the cheapest source of illumination, regardless of efficiency makes the most sense. You can dispose of an incandescent by tossing it into the trash. Not so for CFLs--and I suspect there are some government subsidies spent dealing with that problem. In an all-electric (we have no access to natural gas and I won't allow propane into the house) household, lighting accounts for a miniscule portion of the energy budget. You'll get far more bang for your buck by replacing the water heater with a well-insulated energy- efficient model--or by turning down the heating thermostat a few degrees during wintertime. Or by using a fan instead of central air conditioning during the summertime. Or just get rid of your big-screen plasma TV... --Chuck

On 4/8/11 12:33 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Of course. Most of the lighting in my house is in fairly heavy use. I've not replaced things like hall lights which are almost never used. There's that. Although, the one CFL that did die on me got thrown into the trash. It seemed to go just fine. ;) My power bill dropped by about $30/mo, but then there's a LOT of lighting in there, and remember there's heat removal cost (year-round in FL) as well as light generation cost. The still-functional incandescent bulbs were put into a box, where they will stay until I sell them on eBay in a decade or two. =) Not here. With ~3.5-4kW worth of computers running 24x7, we run A/C year-round. With how hot our part of Florida has become over the past 5-6 years, we'd probably still be running A/C year-round even without the computers. It's unbelievable. That's the big reason we're trying so hard to move back up north. There's that too. :) Thankfully I don't watch TV! ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 4/8/11 1:27 PM, Ian King wrote: My sentiments exactly. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

How about So Cal? I have the same issue with my servers crammed into my apartment. I'm starting to consolidate them all onto my new-to-me 2-way POWER6, so that helps, and the POWER6 as loaded as it is still "only" uses around 300W. But there's a lot of heat to go around in sunny So Cal, current weather excepted. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Jackie Fisher, who are you? Dreadnought ------------------------------------

That, or colo. But it's awful convenient having your hardware sitting in the next room when something goes wrong. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Happiness is having a scratch for every itch. -- Ogden Nash ----------------

On 08/04/11 17:03, Dave McGuire wrote: * Most Agilent test gear (made in Malaysia instead) * Canon digital cameras (most of the pro-SLRs and lenses are made in Japan, compacts are usually made in... drumroll... Malaysia) * DiscFerrets. All made in my Evil Mad Scientist Lab (tm). Well, some of the PCBs were made in China -- 0I06 boards (lighter solder mask) were made by Eurocircuits in either Germany or Holland (I forget which); the later boards were made in China. But they were *assembled* in the UK! ("And that's the important part!") Oh. You were being facetious. Never mind then. -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

On 09/04/11 01:38, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: Unfortunately it seems most of the UK manufacturing companies have gone bust, and the few who are left aren't really interested in small-scale work unless you're willing to pay well over the market rate... The Eurocircuits boards were fairly reasonably priced, and much better quality than the Gold Phoenix boards -- the soldermask is lighter, but WAY thicker and tougher. On some of the early prototypes (before I perfected the reflow profile) the soldermask started to split and crack around the FPGA. Curiously enough, I never had that problem with the Eurocircuits boards, even with the "omigosh it's burning!" reflow profile. Neither board type took well to being pre-baked, though -- it's a pretty easy way to oxidise the plating. Fixing that mess was great fun and involved a bottle of metal polish, two bottles of PCB cleaner and one of those brown rubber PCB cleaning blocks... Ick. Not gonna do that again. -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

I have a bunch of desktop reflow ovens for assembly, the CFL's do NOT like them at all, they all start to rapidly dim during the HEAT process of the ovens, not sure - must be a lot of noise or something, the ovens are on a different circuit so its not a voltage drain. Philip Pemberton wrote:

On 08/04/2011 17:34, Jules Richardson wrote: True, there's a lot of nasty stuff used in making CFLs, more than in incandescents. Dave's mention of 100W of light for 12W of power is way off. I'm not sure he believed that, but it's not far from what some manufacturers have claimed. The truth is that a typical /new/ CFL will give an improvement of at best about 5:1 (equivalent of a 100W incandescent from a 20W CFL) and the light output drops a lot over time. That's why over here manufacturers are now supposed to quote the light output rather than the equivalent wattage, and if they make comparisons are supposed to also state the light output of whatever incandescent they're comparing it to. I doubt many consumers have much clue about light output numbers, though. Wikipedia says over the life of a CFL the output drops to typically 70%-80%. My own measurements say it's much worse than that, and I've had to replace CFLs that emitted less than 50% of their original output. It's possible to get "daylight" CFLs that are better if a little more expensive, and it's possible for a premium price to get ones that have an almost continuous spectrum, as needed by photographers. But most "daylight" ones, even ones sold at twice the price of "ordinary" CFLs, have a pretty awful colour balance and a lot of gaps in the spectrum. You can see the effect on some artificial dyes on artificial fabrics, which can actually look a completely different colour (not just a different shade) between daylight and CFL light. Nightmare for graduation pictures (I had to re-shoot a whole set once because the hoods on some gowns came out gold instead of green). Worst of all (for a photographer) is that different brands can have different phosphor mixes and need radically different correction filters. Over here CFLs are required to be marked (at least on the packaging) with a colour rendering index number that denotes how "good" they are on a scale of 1-100. Most score 60 or so. Some "daylight" ones score between 70 and 80. Really good ones score up to 90. Incandescents easily score 100. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jules Richardson" <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 12:34 PM Subject: Re: OT: Incandescent lamps get a reprieve, possiblly I was in Kmart the other day (hate that store) and they had some 100W equivalent bulbs in the check out line so I looked at them and I could swear they calculated those savings using 10,000 hour bulb life. The few CFL bulbs I have puchased lasted a couple times the life of a good regular bulb (crappy bulbs last a few months), nowhere near the time period they are supposed to last.

On 4/8/11 12:44 PM, Richard wrote: I agree 100%. The warmth or color caste issues are moot, with dozens of colors of CFLs available, but the point is, the public should make the choice, not the government. This "nanny government" crap is really getting out of control. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

*facepalm* ...and I do not know if it is because of this stupid SC legislation, or the responses to it on this list. -- Will

On 08/04/11 20:23, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: Oh, we'd love to only pay $5/gal. Current UK prices are around the ?1.20/litre mark. One gallon is about 4.55 litres, giving: 4.55 * 1.20 = ?5.46 / gallon Now we convert to US Dollars at the prevailing market rate ?5.46 * 1.63830 USD = $8.94512. For sake of argument, let's round that up to $8.95. I think I've made my point......... -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

On 4/8/11 8:22 PM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: He's back!! -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Fri, 8 Apr 2011, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: Nah, the world is going to end next year, so they'll never get the chance. *rolls eyes* g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On Friday 08 April 2011, Richard wrote: What's funny, is that incandescent bulbs aren't really getting banned. The law requires blubs that are something like 25% more efficient. Halogen (filament-based) bulbs will still be legal, as well as any incandescent that someone figures out how to make more efficient. Of course, everyone doesn't bother looking at what's happening, and says OMG! CHANGE! WTF! Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

--- On Fri, 4/8/11, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: I've had to replace a lot of them too. Due to the fact that I usually forget to turn the lights off in the basement (shop area has normal flourescents, but the basement main lights are standard edison base), I installed CFL's, thinking it would save a little electricity. They haven't lasted very long - and as they've died I've put the incandescents back in. What's troubling to me about CFL's is that a couple of the failed ones have been burnt and blackened around the base. One was melted badly. While I know the risk of fire is low, it's still troubiling to see the electronics fail so catastrophically. And these were GE branded bulbs (not like GE actually makes, the things, but still). So, those CFL's have all died in about two and a half years. I think there is still one left. The standard flourescent fixtures I installed eight years ago are still working perfectly, on their original bulbs. Basically, the only way they're going to achieve their goal of getting everybody to use CFL's is to ban the alternatives. CFL's just don't work properly - and if they don't ban incandescents, nobody would use them. As for proper disposal - I never even thought about it. I've been chucking them in the trash - like I'm sure everyone else does. So, in summary - using resources to make hazardous material containing devices that don't last long in their intended purpose, necessitating replacement, plus the fact that maybe 1% of those failed devices gets disposed of properly... Yup! Sounds environmentally friendly to me! -Ian