When I install Windows, I work hard to set up everything exactly as I like on install day. Then I make a backup of the OS partition - which has only programs, no photos, videos, etc. - using Acronis TrueImage. Then I proceed as normal, and when something gets screwed up, I just restore from backup. This completely undoes any effects of winrot, and the system immediately feels like it was installed that day. What I usually do then is update my applications and settings, and immediately make a new backup. A full restore takes about 4 minutes, and a backup with max compression takes something like 12. I find this so convenient that I use no antivirus. When I start to suspect that I may have installed malware, I just restore from a backup, and four minutes later, my system is perfect. I've been doing this since Win2K days, and if this method weren't available to me, I wouldn't be using Windows.

It depends on the start mechanism of the ballast. Rapid start and programmed start ballasts give very good electrode life, but at the cost of reduced efficiency. Instant start is most efficient, but it substantially reduces electrode life. Given that lamps are generally rated for substantially longer life with programmed start than instant start, electrode life must be the limiting factor in at least some cases.

That's a useful chart, but it shows that the growth of coal in Germany is far larger than the total portion of solar. So if you want to call that growth a "fluctuation," you should call the contribution of solar a "rounding error" or something. What I learned from the chart is that in Germany, the burning of household trash produces twice as much power as solar, and this is growing much faster than solar. I bet it's also costing the customers far less and provides other benefits, like municipal hot water. So yes, Germany is having a bit of a trash burning revolution, and I applaud this. The solar thing though, I don't think that's going so well for Germany.

Soo, their CO2 output in increasing, their energy prices are highest in Europe, and a broad coalition, which includes the chancellor, is now pushing to have the program cancelled. ... SUCCESS!

Um, you tell me about the coal burning plants that Germany shut down, and I'll hunt down the links for the 12 ginormous coal-burning powerplants that have opened up since 2010. The largest of these are designed to burn fucking lignite (brown coal, the dirtiest thing we have ever used for power in the history of mankind). This is not 1812, it was 2012. CO2 emissions are growing faster in Germany than anywhere else in Western Europe, while US emissions are sinking over the same timespan. Germany acts like it's some model citizen because everyone loves to hear about solar this and that, but most of their power comes from coal. Also, most of their new capacity comes from coal. Every year this decade, even the proportion of German power that has come from coal has increased. Yeah, coal. For this I hardly think they deserve any congratulations.

Who thinks it's okay to sit on their phone?

You can flip this around and ask what company bases their product on theoretical ideas about how people ought to use it rather than watching the way people actually do? I don't think it's sensible to drop a phone in water, but that hasn't stopped companies from making phones that are water and drop resistant. People in the real world also tend to put their phones in their back pockets, especially bigger ones that may not fit comfortably in a front pocket, and that inevitably means they get sat on. A company that makes a phone that's likely to be sat on needs to make it durable enough to hold up when that happens, or they'll be rightly criticized for failing to produce a quality product.

Yes, that's a premium price for a 28" 4K display. Dell is currently selling theirs for $430. Note, though, that the relatively inexpensive 28" 4K displays are using TN rather than IPS, which is a big reason they're relatively cheap.

Increased efficiency could actually help with cost, even if it makes the actual LEDs more expensive. First of all, improved efficiency would reduce the number of individual LEDs needed for a given amount of light, which would counteract some of the increased cost. Second, the LEDs are only a small part of the package, and improving their efficiency would make everything else easier. It would mean cheaper power electronics, which reduces cost. It would also mean less waste heat, which would mean a smaller heat sink, which is the single biggest thing in most LED lights.

And those electrodes are probably a big reason many people have much lower than expected lifespan for their CFLs. The electrodes undergo a lot of wear during the initial power surge when the light is turned on, so ones that are turned on and off many times per day will die long before their rated lifespan.

Yep, coorelation != causation.

Correlation is necessary but not sufficient to scientific proof of causation. To prove causation you need to have a theoretical model allowing you to construct experiements which, with variables controlled for, produce fresh demonstrations of the posited effect. There have been laboratory experiments demonstrating the "greenhouse" effect of CO2 levels since the late 1800s.

Correlation + theory + well-designed experiments + confirming results = causation

Science often starts with observed correlations. But not always. Sometime the theory comes first. It's only on putting all the parts together that science can speak with confidence about causation. If we use the "corelation != causation" slogan as if it refutes all science which follows from observation of correlations, we entirely miss the point.

religion concerns the ultimate causes of things and, again, by definition, science cannot tell you about them

To whom here is this not obvious nonsense? In systems of geometry we have axioms "by definition." So if you're doing a problem in Euclidian terms, parallel lines don't meet in space. But if you're doing the problem in real, relativistic space rather than an Euclidian idealization, lines that start out parallel locally, and each continue absolutely straight, sometimes do.

Science is not any single geometry, and so has no fundamental set of definitional axioms. There are descriptions of the scientific method, by Popper and others, that generalize about falsifiability and so on. But even those don't exhaust the space of possible science, let alone establish axioms for it. The branch of physics called "cosmology" very properly, and fruitfullly, is concerned with the origin of the universe; and there is a branch of biology concerned with the origin of life. There is no axiom accepted by science that forbids scientific inquiry into origin questions.

My undergrad work was in English and psychology, my grad work in philosophy, and it's done me fine. There's never been an instance where I wished I'd had a computer "science" class. Nor have my most capable colleagues been from computer science, on the whole. The comp sci grads tend to have very narrow views of how to do things, which doesn't work out so well in the real world. You have to like to learn to be good here. The liberal arts are far more capable of cultivating that attitude. Comp sci folks, in my experience, only want to learn enough to get a job. Once they show up on the job they're remarkably uncurious. So they can't keep up with changes in tech and programming methods and style. Also, they tend to be uninventive.

Anyone working with tech should have a class in basic logic, as well as a good command of written English, and know how to closely read a book. Beyond that, it's all just getting experience, preferably in the real world, not from exercises based on idealized and unworldly environments. Those who deeply understand computers do not, as a rule, become professors of it. The rewards are so much better elsewhere.

I wish that people would stop this silliness about population controls. Have you been asleep for 40 years? Right now, in an age when European politicians are pulling out their hair trying to get people to make more kids, it's hard to find an industrialized country that it making children at the replacement rate. Many countries are actually shrinking, including populous ones like Japan, Italy, Russia, etc. Many more would be shrinking were it not for immigration. In countries like Mexico that are traditional sources of emmitrants, fertility rates are plummeting as well. It turns out that all you need is a bit of prosperity, urbanization and female education, and you can quickly generate negative population growth rates. If there's a reason to worry about global population, it's that we won't have enough kids to care for the world's retired.

Danger Will Robinson!

Do yourself a favor; avoid the hostile Latvians at Mikrotik and use UBNT's Edge Router! [And hey, I've got nothing against Latvians - a colleague is Latvian and the nicest guy ever. Dunno, perhaps it's something in the water, but wow Normis is out there - as are most of the other 'Tik guys.]

Seriously! The feature set of EdgeRouters is pretty full and there's nothing I can't do on ER that I could [and used] on 'Tik.

Plus you get a real Linux underbelly - if you can't do it in the CLI, you can probably find a way to do it in Debian.

-Greg