But this still makes me giddy for the future of Medicine.

LED flashlights are great. But for indoor lighting? Have any of you tried reading a book (you remember them, on dead trees) under them? I've used a commuter bus that's put in LEDs, and it's *dreadful*, bluish, eyestrain city.

And none of the compact fluorescents I've seen have the warm color of incandescent. *bleah* Time to stock up on bulbs....

                mark

I had video games as a kid, and was always reading at a much higher level than most of my peers.

Video Games had nothing to do with my poor grades, it was the fact that I didn't like to do the work.

You're mostly right, but only because the technology is young. LEDs have been around for nearly 50 years, but it's only been recently that we've been ramping up the power to general lighting requirements.

That said, here are the potential advantages over CFL:

1) Higher efficiency. Yes, CFLs and LEDs are roughly equivalent right now, but the potential for LEDs is much greater. As added incentive, heat is a limiting factor for LEDs, so there's more than one motivation to improve efficiency.

2) Longer life. This is related to the efficiency, as too much heat decreases life. Expect life to increase dramatically as time goes on.

3) Dimming control. Still in its infancy, but some LED bulbs can be dimmed in the same way as incandescents. I can't use CFLs in touch lamps for the same reason.

4) Color control. Currently sucks, but the technology allows for better control than CFLs, especially when it comes to dimming.

5) Manufacturing capability. This is a big unknown, but many are predicting that the price will drop dramatically, just like we've seen with other semiconductor products. Personally, I think this might take a while since we don't really know what it will take to make bright, color-corrected LED bulbs.

6) Form factor. LEDs can conform better to the incandescent form factor. This advantage is also slightly debatable because of heat controls: liquid cooling and heat sinks are being put on LED bulbs right now ... if that's continues to be the case then the shape of the bulb might be quite odd for some time. The nature of using a collection of individual lights also places strange limitations on the form factor, which is why flood lighting is one of the early form factors that works well.

7) Public image. CFLs have (mostly wrongfully) gotten a bad reputation for bad color quality, flickering, warm-up, and mercury. It remains to be seen how the public views LEDs, but many of these (except for color, for now) don't apply.

8) Rugged. I've saved this one for last. Incandescent and CFL light bulbs are much more fragile than LED bulbs, which makes shipping them from overseas (where manufacturing costs are lower) much more effective. It also increases the applications that can use LEDs.

Notice that most of these are still only theoretical. Stick with CFLs for now, or expect to pay a lot more for something with few advantages.

Maybe by the time your CFLs burn out the LED technology will have caught up.

How about 21 bytes?

C:\>debug
-a 0100
0D39:0100 MOV AH,09
0D39:0102 MOV DX,0108
0D39:0105 INT 21
0D39:0107 RET
0D39:0108
-e 0108 'Hello world!$'
-r cx
CX 0000 :15
-n hello21.com
-w
Writing 00015 bytes
-q

C:\>HELLO21.COM
Hello world!
C:\>dir hello.com
17/03/2010 10:48 22 HELLO21.COM

mad scientist? No-where near, lol.

What I have is something SO basic and simple it's ridiculous. Here's an analogy:

Imagine a world where people only knew about birds when they were flying overhead, and so, because of that, they defined birds not just for what they are, but also by the ACT of flying.

Imagine that this then caused problems when it came to fully understanding other animals and objects that can also fly.

Imagine then, that someone came along later - (800 years later!), and pointed out that within the language itself, (i.e. how it is used), a bird, (or any other object), and the act of flying are treated completely SEPARATELY from each other, and therefore defining a thing, (a noun), by it's application, is simply inconsistent with the rules of the language, and therefore wrong.

Because of this, that person then wondered if such a thing, a bird, could actually EXIST independently of such an act, and then, after some exploration, found that they DID. (He found them simply sitting there on the ground or in their nests, and even walking around - they were not flying, yet they still (obviously) exist).

Because of this, people then were fully able to recognise and understand how all the things that can fly, are now fully related to each other within the language, and so can now fully understand and define them for what they are.

And it was all because of the way they defined one thing in a manner that was inconsistent with its use within the language.

Such is the nature of the problems I've found, (and am trying to write a paper about).

>>>Maybe you should have tried a different brand then? I have CFLs in almost every fixture in the house.

Which brand?

In my experience ALL the brands (Philips, GE, Lights of America) have a warmup time, unless you buy one that don't have the instant on function. (Instead they sputter and flicker for 2-3 seconds.) I've tried to find the non-instant-on CFLs but they don't seem to be made anymore. Bottom Line: After ~15 years of CFL use I've reached the conclusion they simply are NOT an identical replacement for incandescents. There are too many flaws, like trying to use a netbook when what you really need is a full-sized laptop or desktop.

It's not just the "War on Terror." It's all the wars. We face no external threats, militarily speaking. It's time for us to discard our empire.

...for stalkers.

Time to ban!

If somebody were willing to come up with a billion dollars in cash, they could buy the top 100 people in the PostgreSQL project, and that would cramp it severely for a couple of years.

That said, Monty took VC money, which is basically legalized loan sharking. Taking VC money results, in the overwhelming majority of cases, in the complete screwing of the borrower. Monty was one of the lucky few who managed to get a fortune out of that situation, which makes his whining utterly unseemly.

"Octopodes" would be the correct plural if octopus were an ancient Greek word, but since it's not, octopuses is it. "Octopi" just makes you look both pretentious and ignorant at once, a feat which may cause people to think you're a libertarian. Avoid this fate.

Quoth Archangel Michael :

Holy crap. I'd think a being like yourself would have better things to do than post on Slashdot.

Okay, hadn't seen those but the radios still have an antenna that if currently embedded in the glass could be restored to an external location with ease.

My point was that the complaint about standard and Sat radios was a non-issue.

Sitting back and waiting does not lead to much technological advancement. Taking on an ambitious project tends to inspire many advances.

The idea is not to catch asteroids along the way. Rather, the craft would catch one large asteroid of sufficient mass to provide all the raw material needed for the journey. Using an asteroid saves the huge cost of lifting this massive raw material into space.

Disclaimer: I am a member of the LDS Church, but I do know LDS (Mormon) theology somewhat. Suicide isn't considered an "unforgivable sin". The official policy is to assume that a suicide victim's soul isn't damned to hell or any of that nonsense. Quite a few years back we had a suicide in our immediate family, and although sad and shocking, the person was buried in their temple clothes. What that means is that it was assumed that they were (for a lack of a better phrase) sick in the head and made a bad judgment, and therefore either forgiven or simply not at fault. I firmly believe that person is enjoying all the benefits that heaven has to offer!