No problem: the high-powered Blue, Green, and white LEDs are actually made from Indium Gallium Nitride or just Gallium Nitride. The high-powered red and yellow ones are made from Indium Gallium Aluminum Phosphide.

But even so, the active LED crystal is tiny, very hard and very inert... certainly very much safer than the mercury and the rare earth phosphor dust that the public is exposed to when a florescent tube is broken. ("Mad as a hatter" = mercury poisoning)

The manufacturers of all semiconductors (ie, the guts of your computer, tv, radio, LEDs, cellphone, etc) use many process chemicals that are way more insidiously toxic than gas-chamber cyanide... but the workers have all the proper safety equipment and environment to assure that they never come in contact with these substances. The fab companies have every motive to keep the workers and the chemicals apart... it would take very much less contamination by weight of human cells or hair to poison a complete run of product, than it would of the crystalline form of GA to poison a human. Consider the multi-million dollar retail value of a single semi- trailer full of Intel's latest processor. Hell, a standard pallet full would be worth over a million

A 100 watt incandescent light bulb makes about 1700 lumens and lasts 1500 hours

A 40 watt florescent tube makes 2400 lumens and lasts 3000 hours.

20 of today's new LEDs consume 20 watts to make 2000 lumens and lasts 50000 hours

20 of 2011's new LEDs will consume

To put this in perspective: swapping LEDs for all the existing lighting in the USA would save us having to build 248terawatts of generating capacity. Not counting to mention the the additional fabrication energy savings due to the long life.

The solution to many of our global problems lie in responsible use of new technology... The LED solution would be better than what we have now, in many ways. We who can understand science and technology must help educate those who haven't a clue to stop or prevent the hysteria of the ignorant Greenies...

... Hey dude, lighten up a bit, us geekoids can really help make things better without shitting in our own house!.

Considering my current coffee consumption, I'd be pissed at any other policy.

Absolutely correct.

I run a mid-sized web development shop. A few years ago we were doing mostly retail sites. Vanilla and boring but we worked it down to a science and had some really great "modules" that made these sites super profitable for us. Of course, everything has its seedy side and with retail it was SEO.

Everybody wanted it. About 80% of our customers were of the "Do whatever, just ideminfy me" stripe. (And these are established companies paying high 5-figures for these sites). We drew our own demarcation about what we would and wouldn't do. (Excessive Internal-link structure is OK, zombie sites are not).

Now most our work is social networking.

We, too, followed the "rise" of CAPTCHA and we've been happy with our results. We always used a custom CAP for each site, and we tried to keep them relatively readable, being of the belief that making it too hard will only keep out Humans: If somebody wants to crack it, they will.

We still use them regularly. I noticed that about a year ago we actually had people begin to request them specifically. (Isn't that what Buffett said about the home mortgage mess? When the regular joe's started flipping houses, he knew it was over?)

Anyhoo, I think the real fault in CAP's is that they worked too well. They became too big of a target. Now, we try to mix and match a number of different techniques to identify humans.

Solutions range from dirt-simple: An input box named, say, "City" that has a label that reads "13 plus 8 equals:" or "What is the 3rd word on this page?"

To the more complex "what is the color of the front-door in this picture?"

We have a simple library we use for these things that pulls the questions (and, if applicable, the pics) from a Database of about 25,000 different turing tests.

The thing is, none of them are too complex. Any mediocre programmer could write an application to crack it. But your bot will probably never see that same exact question again, so it becomes irrelevant.

And, to tie it in to the parent, we chose this technique precicely because of what we learned from CAPs. Before there were software hacks, there was the "porn hack" and the "sweatshop labor hack."

In this case, when a bot the site, it's fairly difficult for it to even detect which item is the turing test. We auto-generate the location and even the name of the form field so it's always a bit different.

Only on fucking slashdot does the one guy who offers a rational opinion NOT get modded up. So far the first page of comments is mostly jokes and inane - "I'd murder the bitch too" remarks - all getting modded up.

Assholes, this is a real person with a real family, not some fucking Manga or Anime or video game.

I opened this and followed this until I found the first idiocy required to make this post.

Are you so inept or so blind that you're unable to see the benefits that Bill Gates, yes he, made to the industry that you are able to take advantage of today? Are you so unwilling to acknowledge that his business strategy, while certainly illegal in many areas, is simply brilliant?

Have you ever met him, listened to him speak in "private" or the likes?

I am guessing you are just a gibbering gibbon and, to hell with moderation points, have not one iota of a clue about who he is, what he thinks, what he's done, and what he's always been behind. You, like many, will confuse him and his ideals with that of Microsoft. Bill never really ran Microsoft, he was too much an idealist for business at that end. His "business strategy" that I mentioned earlier was putting low cost PCs into the hands of the masses so that he could offer a universal system. His DREAM was one of oneness. His ideal wasn't "open source" but one of "openly available to all who wanted to partake in the scene."

I am not going to scroll down through these messages. I am unwilling to re-post this to everyone. Bill, and read carefully and judge my posts accordingly, is not someone whom I'm close enough to call a "friend" but I have had the chance to listen to him and I have had the chance to hear what he's had to say and have had the intellect to listen to. No, not on stage. There on campus...

Now, I will say this carefully and as nicely as I can...

Don't speak until spoken too and then say only "yes sir/ma'am" as you're unaware of the positive benefits he has had (don't count the attrocities of Microsoft as even remotely his blame) to what you are fortunate enough to experience today. It may not be proper to speak the truth here at this site but the reality is that, well, that is the reality.

If you want to blame anything or anyone then blame stock holders and a loss of control. But don't you now, or ever, even remotely blame Bill until you've taken a minute away from the zealotry you have obviously fostered and actually comprehend the truth.

And, before you mod me down or whinge 'cause I'm picking on you, know that I looked for the first retarded post and responded to it and that I, of all the people here, don't now and never will, blindly make assumptions based on ideals. (Yes, I'm a Microsoft user and a Linux user, and mostly a Mac hater but I'll use one if I must.)