Interesting. My local supermarket is selling LED bulbs rated at 50 years! I bet the electronics give out sooner though, esp. if they are made in China.

Regarding CFL, I fitted my house out 5 years ago in all the rooms where lights tend to stay switched on for a long time (e.g. all evening) and have only had 1 blow so I count that as a win. The wiring isn't great (it's France). In rooms like the loo where the light goes on and off I still have incandescents but will move to LED technology soon.

We only have a 6kw supply to the house and heat with electricity so saving power is very important to me.

I've read it. To be honest I didn't find Gates contribution to be very inspiring, I think he has far more to say about business. I think Simonyi is way overrated.

This book sounds like an update to that work to some extent.

Most folks these days are in big 4x4s, you can hardly move around the place for them clogging up the roads.

> Here in Switzerland we don't have CAFE but almost everyone drives small fuel efficient cars

You obviously don't live in Geneva

I'm surprised at what happened but it is the same here in France and Switzerland. Almost impossible to get a new Network with Linux - the stores say they get too many returns because people can't install stuff like Outlook.

Of course I haven't RTFA but suspect this is a knapsack type problem which is NP-hard. That is a computer actually has to try all the permutations to find the solution whereas humans can usually arrive at a solution much more quickly by some kind of intuitive process that cannot be captured in software.

I worked for a bus company which ran a number of charter like routes. My boss asked me to write a program to find the most efficient way of moving groups from A to B via C etc. I never achieved the same efficiencies as the human planner the program replaced (he had left by the way).

The basic lesson is, solve the Napsack problem and the world, including DHL, UPS, FedEx will make you a millionaire.