You can buy drainage pipes for the shower that are basically heat exchangers. Cold water is passed through them (in countercurrent with the water draining from the shower) before it goes to the shower head. Of course, you still have to add some hot water in the mixing faucet, but thermal energy is saved.

Google: shower heat exchanger

Bert

"Until Apple came along, hardware and software companies armed themselves with patents to ward off threats from trolls, or as a defensive measure alone. "

It is not a defense again trolls. Your own patents don't give you any right to do what you're doing. A patent gives a right to forbid others. So, if you infringe a troll's patent, your own patent portfolio won't help. As a troll doesn't do anything productive himself, he won't be infringing so you can't check your own patent portfolio to get leverage in that area.

"Worse, they are using these patents to try and secure billions as 'security money' instead of competing in the markets based on the superiority of their products."

I don't know how that would work, and I don't think that Apple's billions originate from much else than sales of their products and operation of their stores.

"A patent regime does not sit well with the FOSS philosophy"

I'm a patent attorney and I agree with the issue that there should be no patents on software. Patents are there to avoid people from innovating because it is cheaper to copy than to invest in research and development. That doesn't hold for software area, where people are innovating anyway. Also, in contrast to a regular patent, a software patent doesn't teach the person skilled in the art (a developer) very much. Finally, once a patented product is sold the patentee no longer has any control over it. People are free to do with it what they want. Not so with software. And with software, it probably won't run on your machine, and won't interact with what you want, and you're not free to modify it.

I also agree with the lubricous amounts of money for damages in case of infringement.

Bert

Emotional responses are partly learned, I believe. Think of muslims or christians or macho's that are easily offended by something.

Bert

Thanks.
Back in the early nineties I bought a neural network program to play with. I couldn't get it to learn anything (except for the XOR etc. examples) even when it was so easy (range of boiling points of hydrocarbons depending on the number of carbon atoms. Predict the boiling point of the next one). So when I read about advances in computing power I knew that wasn't the reason. Your remark on back propagation could be the explanation because that was what this network did.

Bert

You think everyone in a household needs his own vacuum cleaner? Each his own living room to be heated? Lots of stuff (such as food) is cheaper in bigger packages. Etc. etc. etc.

Bert

You must have voted for Clinton back then. He was the one who got the government's finances healthy, after Reagan and Bush sr.

Do you dare to take a look at the facts, in particular the graph?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Bill_Clinton

Bert

Do you know there are countries where it is an offense to show on TV a tiny bit of a normally covered body part anyone has and/or has seen before, but showing violent movies and dead people is not?

So yes, an open lifestyle is Evil whereas crushing someone's skull is fine (as long as it is not yours or mine).

Bert
Warning: There was sarcasm in this post (albeit not directed to the parent poster).

Then going public like he did was all that was needed. Not his resignation.

Bert

I'd rather have that baker bake and that mechanic repair cars. Would you want an unqualified person to do your job? The problem is that you can become a politician without qualifications. They don't need a pass a test to show they're capable of logical reasoning, have a modicum of knowledge etc.

Bert

Aren't you assuming he's free to answer that question? ;-)

Bert

The conversion of Nitrogen to C14 is caused by a neutron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C14_dating. Being not charged, it tends to be rather insensitive to magnetic fields.

Chance that you're religious: above average.

Bert

"We have no idea how much carbon14 was around in the past. By assuming anything its just pseudo science. But if we tell the truth then anyone claiming another truth wins so we have to lie."

ACs (C=xtian/Coward? Oh well) are not likely to educate themselves. Should you want to do a Truth or Dare: Do google where C14 comes from. You'll be surprised.

(And don't you really understand counting? Tree ring counting? Varves counting. If you fell a tree, you can count the rings? You can do a C14 determination for each ring? You can use other (older) trees with overlapping age ranges and hence overlapping ring patterns to continue getting values for older ages? You can go on doing that? You can do the same for varies, which is what the Japanese did. And being scientists, they cross-reference such values for various sources. And when you do that real science, all your post is reduced to BS.

Bert
"By assuming anything its just pseudo science."
But assuming your holy book is correct, doesn't make it a pseudo religion, does it? Nope, it is the one true religion. All the other thousands of gods have been made up, but yours is real. Yup.

...that their favorite deity is all powerful. That he would sort it out once the bad guy is dead. But noooo, the deity is not powerful enough. He needs this puny follower to do it. If only they really believed their deity was all powerful, they could rest assured that justice would be done in the end.

What religion needs to be defended? Only very weak ones, I can only assume. One without a real god behind it, otherwise they'd pray the desired results into reality instead of having to pick up a gun.

Bert

"As for evidence God exists? It's everywhere... *literally*. You might simply not see it because you aren't looking for it..."

If you are looking for it and see Yagolah everywhere, please take a picture for me in such a case. For example, if you see a rainbow tagged "Jesus", post the picture. So I can check that it wasn't Thor or something. Don't want to risk pissing a god off by praying to the wrong one or using the wrong name.

Bert

An important aspect in the defense of creationism is lying/making up facts that you could debunk yourself. Here we observe the AC doing it in action.

"Scientists have been breeding fruit flies for millions of generations of them"

The shortest generation time for fruit flies is 10 days (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster) That's 36 generations per year. If scientists have bred fruit flies for 100 years, that's 3600 generations. That is a bit short of "millions".

Now, in the real world, the population of a species is much, much larger than what scientists have in a lab. Only of some endangered species (tigers, panda's?) we may have more animals in captivity than in the real world. Despite the relatively small numbers, a large number of mutations has arisen nonetheless. With selection pressure, these could eventually lead to new species.

Not that any of the above will change your mind. Brainwashing from an early age: That's highly effective. You're probably proud of your delusion and will try to forget this confrontation with facts and logic as soon as possible so that it doesn't have any effect on your "thinking".

Bert