Contrary to your assumptions, mini-floodlights are in fact commonly used indoors. A quick check at the websites for Lowes or Home Depot demonstrates this clearly. In fact, the fixtures into which I placed CFL mini-flood lights were explicitly designed for indoor mini-floods and held incandescent mini-floods at the time. Your assertion that the lights are used incorrectly is, quite simply, wrong. Perhaps you should tell GE and Phillips (among others) that their CFL mini-floodlights are a "f-ing stupid idea" -- they seem to have no qualms about making and selling them.

A casual perusal of a pro-CFL site makes the following statement with regards to CFL statup times:

    "Only the flood light styles start at noticeably less than full illumination, but within 20 to 30 seconds they are at over 80% illumination."

My experience is that this is an understatement -- it takes mine at least a full minute to reach 80% illumination and they don't hit 100% until about two minutes. I've read from other sources that the start up times tend to deteriorate over time, so perhaps that accounts for the difference. But the simple fact remains your assertion that all modern CFLs start up instantly is wrong. Even pro-CFL sites admit as much.

Maybe the fact that you "always end up in this sort of discussions" is due to your refusal to accept the facts of the situation?

And, incidentally, you are quite wrong. There is a difference between the CFLs with the exposed "twisty" tube and those that are enclosed. I have some mini-floodlights in my kitchen that are of the enclosed type, and it takes them at least two full minutes to achieve maximum brightness. These are GE bulbs that are only a few years old. For the first thirty seconds or so, their brightness level is about that of a night light. Quite annoying. Oh, and I went through several bulbs that burnt out within a few months before finding a set that now seems reliable.

I do have other, exposed tubes that turn on quickly. But saying all CLFs have no startup time is just plain wrong.

I agree with this last statement in that multiple apps is definitely not the way to go. However, I feel compelled to add that iTunes needs to be completely redesigned. I've had my iPad2 for about six months now, and was frankly shocked to discover just how awful is the iTunes user experience. I think many of the problems are because iTunes was written to manage DRM'ed MP3s and was later expanded to include movies, books, and photos. These other features were bolted on and do not behave consistently. (Why are MP3s, movies, and books in libraries but photos are not?)

I recently built a new PC and wanted to make it the new host for my iPad. Copying all the files over from the old PC to the new PC was easy, but getting iTunes reconfigured to match the old setup was a nightmare. This is part of the DRM legacy -- iTunes was designed to prevent the user from copying things easily to and from Apple devices. Else the users might use stuff they didn't buy through the iTunes store.

What's weird is photos I take with the iPad itself can be drag-and-dropped by Windows, but photos copied onto the iPad from iTunes are invisible. But if I edit an uploaded photo with the free photoshop app the modified photo is now visible. And this is a company known for its slick user interface? Really?

iTunes in its current form needs to die. The alleged rewrite can't come quickly enough for me.

Reminds me of a story I heard on NPR years ago. The Scottish speaker said he was at an American dinner party when someone used the term "you Brits". He kept looking around until he realized she was referring to him. He didn't consider himself British, so to answer the question, "Who is British?" he told a story that went something like this:

As a young college student attending freshman orientation at Oxford, he met a nice fellow from Wales. They discovered that, if they both spoke slowly, they could just understand each other through their strong regional accents. They both needed a flatmate and so decided to room together. Finding a flat listed in the paper at a reasonable location and price, they set forth. The woman who answered the door spoke such a thick Irish brogue that neither of them could understand a word she said. So, she fetched a gentleman from down the hall to act as interpreter. But his cockney accent was so severe they couldn't understand him, either. Eventually, he pointed at the newspaper listing, she held out her open hand, and the two of them put in the first month's rent. So, which of them is British? His conclusion was that, technically, they all were, but in practice they were all something else. He supposed the Queen was authentically British, but if anyone asks, he's a Scotsman!

I attended an astronomy conference a year ago that included a presentation from a NASA guy on the mars rovers. He had a few disparaging things to say about Lockheed-Martin, including blaming them for the Mars Climate Orbiter failure. He said their contract included a statement to recalibrate the thruster in the metric system but they failed to do so. (Of course, he neglected to mention that NASA was managing the project and failed to catch the error.) He also said one of the rovers drove by the heat shield (built by Lockheed-Martin) from the rover landing and there was a big disagreement over examining the heat shield up close to see how well it held up. Lockheed-Martin wanted the data but wanted to keep it secret on the grounds it was a proprietary design. NASA said all their data is public so it's either we drive by without looking, or we take a look and release all the data. They eventually did the latter.

One more thing -- the same conference included a presentation by a professional astronomer who had overseen the building of an observatory in Chile. He had disparaging things to say about NASA -- that their cost estimate was 10X over what he eventually spent on the project. Guess it all depends on your point of view.

How about a quote from Red Dwarf: "A cancerous polyp on the anus of humanity." Seems to fit better.

In combination with any other medication that may have already been issued by parents, or by the school nurse, it can have adverse effects. In combination with large amounts of caffiene it may have other reactions. On an empty stomach, and in an overactive child on a hot day at recess (where this happened), especially if their digestive system is a bit weaker than others, it could be very bad indeed, leading to vomiting (which it did) and blood pressure issues (which were monitored as a just-in-case failsafe).

Any medication given to a child without explicitly consulting the packaging and at the order of a doctor can have harm, far more so in uncontrolled combinations of other medicines, and various foods (or lack there of). This is exacerbated when time release medicines are chewed and release rapidly.

Here are the coordinates: http://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Derweze&params=40_15_8_N_58_26_23_E_scale:10000

John Paul Stevens is a conservative. He appears "left" only in comparison to the hard right composition of the rest of the court.
Ummm, No. Anybody who thinks the framers of the US Constitution didn't intend to limit the federal govt. powers is not a conservative(Stevens also didn't bother to read the Federalist Papers either if his dissent of DC v Heller is any indication.)

Wrong prefix. Some were made to 50Mt with a theoretical of 100Mt (Tsar Bomba).

And I wouldn't want to be in the same ocean as a nuke burst. Hydraulic forces can hurt, especially at any distance where the explosion would be visible through the water.

You do realize you can do .NET development in and for Linux ... RIGHT?

Sure it can! See nuclear summer.

I guess the part where you were answering to a message about a family of clueless users must have confused me. I thought you were actually answering to that message ;)

I was answering that message. That's why I never said the clueless users themselves should perform the setup or administration of such a device. Had I said such a thing, that would be incompatible with the subject matter of clueless users. Instead, I originally left that part open-ended.

But at any rate, take a chill pill.

Chill pill? I can point out the fact that you made a false assumption without getting upset. In fact, that's what I did. Had I called you names etc. your response would make more sense.

Since I didn't, it looks like you're clutching at straws to find some objection to something I said now that your original one was shown to be invalid. Ego is amusing that way. I have one too, you know, so I'm aware of its petty and subtle little tendencies. I'm all too aware of the fact that these go totally unexamined in most people, who usually resent having them pointed out since they are so convinced it's some kind of contest.

If you think I actually care that much about your omissions, you're really overthinking it.

You made a false assumption and proceeded as though the assumption were valid. I pointed out that this had happened. Whether you care about that, or whether you wish to see that this is an easy mistake that is entirely preventable is entirely your business. I wouldn't dream of telling you what you should do with this information.

Just know that if you or anyone else makes false assumptions about me while conversing with me, I will correct them. My interest in accuracy is not a personal interest in you, how you feel, or how much you care. That again is your self-importance (aka ego) getting involved in a factual matter. It does provide a nice excuse to tell me how much thinking I am permitted to do before you judge that I am "really overthinking", but I disregard that the same way I'd expect you to (rightly) disregard any attempt of mine to tell you what you should do with information I provide.

Screen burns is not an issue. I've owned a plasma TV for more than 4 years now. I've tried to produce screen burns with static images with bright parts, but after 48 hours there was hardly anything. You might see something for 3 seconds, but after those 3 seconds its gone forever.

And the resolution thing is bullshit, when it comes to sharpness on video, high refresh rate is everything.

I may seem unlogical, however my 1024x768 plasma has sharper image when it comes to videoes than a 1080P LCD. This is because of the high refresh rate and that plasma has subpixels.
LCD is sharper when it comes to still images, but I still wouldn't show my DLSR images on a LCD TV because the huge lack of colors and contrast.

I think you should go and buy a plasma just to try yourself!