You haven't given us enough information to agree or disagree with your conclusion. How have the fixtures saved you money? Do you need to turn the lights in the garage on every time you enter it? If your motion controlled lights turn on during daylight hours, isn't that wasting electricity? What about the energy needed to monitor the passive IR signal for the motion detection? If you don't go down into the basement for a week, why is it saving you electricity to monitor the staircase unnecessarily?

It seems like a simple light switch would do as well as your motion detection system and save you even more electricity. Or is there still more information you didn't post?

The other item is your statement that incandescent bulbs handle on/off cycling better than LEDs? Where did you get this information? Incandescent bulbs almost always fail during the initial power surge during turn on. LED bulbs last for 50,000 to 100,000 hours and don't have a problem with turning on and off. The LED driver circuit shouldn't have a problem either.

If a LED has a MTBF of 50,000 hours and you use your light 1 minute each and every day, your LED bulb would be expected to last over 8000 years. (50K*60/365=8219)

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Most of these systems are alternative ways of authenticating to Windows, but not the only way. (Most of the biometric systems require an enrollment process that is optional.) Most people will still have an Administrator account that uses the traditional password method.

~~(Mod -1 for too many uses of the word "most")

Not unless you can print a picture that will show different levels of reflection to the near-infrared wavelengths.

If you've seen a thermal images of a house showing where the heat loss is, compare that to the normal image of the house. This method is using the equivalent of a thermal image.

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A good engineer believes in redundancy...

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Why would they be paying an extra $4000 every two years?

That $4000 is the difference between the 13 SEER model and the 16 SEER model. He said he would recoup that money in two years, so every two years after that would be a savings of $4000, or $2000 every year by switching to the more efficient model.

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Actually, it's 8M Pounds for the Petabyte...

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Directional antennas are not new. But configuring an array of directional antennas to precisely cover the seats in the lecture hall to minimize the number of users on any single access point is a new and novel way to deploy wireless access.

Deploying the same number of omnidirectional antennas in the same space would lead to massive overlap, interference, and clients unnecessarily switching between APs when they perceived a stronger signal from a different AP.

I haven't heard of a high density environment purposely set up this way therefor I think it is indeed newsworthy.

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Citation? Where do Japanese schoolchildren have to cover their ears several times each hour? Where is this schoolhouse that can't be relocated from the end of some flightpath? This schoolhouse has been subject to some loud jet noise for over 50 years and they haven't moved it? Or is this an attempt to drum up some anti-military sentiment? (Wikipedia only lists 39 overseas Air Force locations not counting the ones closing in Afghanistan.)

Nothing was lost? All the work that the government workers could have been doing during the shutdown was lost. All the revenue from the National Parks were lost. Two weeks food inspections, drug inspections, VA claims processing were lost . Worldwide confidence in the US and the US dollar was lost. US credit rating was compromised with the possibility of higher interest rates on new deficit. Scientific tests will have to be thrown out and restarted.

You might not be personally affected, but plenty of money and confidence has been lost during the past three weeks.

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Adding a copy of the referenced material would be allowed by the Fair Use provision of the Copyright law.

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: [...] reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; [...] http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

And posting something on the internet does NOT automatically make it public domain. Just because you see it on a web page does not mean you are free to copy it.

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Adding a copy of the referenced material would be allowed by the Fair Use provision of the Copyright law.

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: [...] reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; [...] http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

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That is a terrible version of the program!!! Almost unwatchable. Try this one instead: Richard Feynman - The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out

Wrong. They were labelled 13+ when that was the standard. When the standard changed to over 14, he changed the packaging to meet the new requirement.

He even offered a recall for any of the old 13+ packages. Of over 175,000 units sold, fewer than 50 were returned by consumers.

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Last night I sent my Gmail account an email from my ISP email system, then waited for it to show up. Nothing. So I resent it. Second time nothing.

The email contained two screen captures I needed at the office. The subject line was "Steve on telework". Nothing obvious that would trip Postini's spam filter. It is now 24 hours later and neither has shown up. I wonder how many other emails I don't get.

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