Light bulb, thy doom is near!

[krw]

Barak Obama Nancy Pelosi

Want another?

[Frank Warner]

Most of the kneejerks reading your post will miss the part about being

25% more energy-efficient. That means, according to sources as diverse as Mother Jones Magazine and snopes.com that a 75-watt bulb will produce the same amount of light as a 100-watt bulb used to produce.

In that sense, it IS the end of the light bulb as you know it. However, NOBODY is banning incandescent bulbs. You will still be able to buy them anywhere. The difference between then and now is that you will have to get used to rating their power in lumens, not watts. A lumen rating of 1490-2600 is equivalent to the old 100-watt incandescent light bulb, but the 1490-2600 lumen energy-efficient incandescent model that will become mandatory on January 1 consumes only 75 watts.

Frank

[Tomsic]

Good comment. But there's not much incentive to fake such a number as home energy use by category since it's so easy to check. Lots of data come from the California Energy Commission (it's paid for by the CA ratepayers on their utility bills). It's all on line for anyone to look at and critique. In other areas, utilities, energy offices and environmental advocates do studies. Sure, consultants do some of the work - but there are good consultants. The DOE did a massive lighting energy use report in 2002. It's being updated, but still a good reference for such things. It's on line here:

Tomsic

[HeyBub]

No, your point is well taken. Immediately after I hit the "send" button, two obstacles to the free market came to mind: federal and state governments. Your observations are more specific, though.

I've got to go have a lie-down.

[HeyBub]

No, no, no. Everybody knows CFLs are more efficient. But so what? A VW bug is more efficient than a Hummer, soy steaks are more efficient than prime rib, a poncho is more efficient than a tuxedo. The issue here is why should my choices be curtailed because someone else wants to kneel at the alter of "efficiency?"

What if I WANT a 100-watt bulb that only puts out 200 lumens? I might need it for my chick brooder where the heat is more needed than the light.

If (some) incandescent bulbs are not banned, why will I not be able to buy them come January? What if I wanted one of the "lifetime" bulbs that faux veteran's groups used to sell. You remember, the ones with a 10d nail as the filament and that put out as much light as a candle while scoring over 100 watts? I won't be able to buy those any more due solely to legislative fiat and that fiat is the result of my betters deciding what's good for the country or the next generation.

Bah!

[gfretwell]

Bub, you must be young. The original modems were 300 BPS As late as the 80s, the standard business modem was 1200 or 2400 BPS and the 9600 BPS modem was leased line only.

What really broke open the market was a series of anti-trust judgements against Ma Bell in court. The first step was forcing them to allow other companies equipment on common carrier lines but Ma still required that you had to rent a DDA coupler from them to connect it. Eventually they had to allow a "compliant" customer owned coupler.

The end was when the court broke up ATT.

That was what allowed the online services to become a consumer service and what created the vast array of telephone products we take for granted today. Without this breakup the internet would still be an obscure DARPA network with a few thousand users

[gfretwell]

12% of my bill works out to about 8kwh a day. Since you really only use lights about 6 hours a day that would mean I had about 1300 watts of light burning all evening. 15% of that would be a better number

Right now I have one 75w bulb, dimmed about 50%. If I stand up and start walking around I will have motion detected lighting following me around the house but a few minutes after I leave, they go out. Most of that light is on the order of 25-30 watts for each zone.

[Vic Smith]

You got most of it all wrong. It's not about "you." It's not about personal "efficiency." It's about what works to cut back on power plant generation. That significantly reduces bad emissions to the air we all breathe. No question about it. Do you think most people give a shit what you want? I can't burn leaves. Have to pay taxes for them to be picked up. Can't even smoke tobacco in a lot of outdoor places. Tough shit, I don't whine about that. I adjust.

The few light bulb weirdos were accounted for by not outlawing the use of the bulbs you desire. You're free to stock up on incandescents. Anybody is free to do that. Simple to buy a lifetime supply - enough to pass them on to your kin. But that hasn't stopped natural born whiners from whining. Nothing works for that. You can also buy a Hummer, VW bug, prime rib, tuxedo, or mega-yacht. Nobody's stopping you. It's all available. Look like you want the world to revolve around you. News flash - won't happen.

Here's what you should do. Stock up on incandescents, and put them everywhere you can on your own property. Turn them all on if you like. Nobody will stop you. It'll make you feel righteous. Important. I do something like that when I take my dogs out in the dark. I often want to piss when I take my dogs out. If it's early and there's still some traffic I walk behind the pine tree in the front yard, pull out my dick, and piss on the lawn. If there's no traffic, I stand right on the town-owned sidewalk, pull out my dick, and piss on the lawn. Feels good, real good. Nothing like pissing in the toilet. When I'm standing out there in public with my dick out, pissing on the lawn, I'm the very center of the universe. You should forget about those light bulbs, and try that. Drink a beer if you need it.

--Vic

[HeyBub]

I wish I was young. An actual federal regulation prohibited modems from working at the speeds over (if I remember) 56K.

Even today, most modems operate at 2400 BPS. And there are millions of them. (Think ATM machines).

[despen]

...

And here your post turned to art. Something all us men can understand.

Bravo.

[BobR]

I don't know about, some of the Democrats go pretty cheap.

[BobR]

.

Quite the contrary, how much of an inroad to the lighting market do you believe the CFL's would have made if not for these studies and the resulting big nanny government mandate on incadecent bulbs? Seriously, you want to quote anything that comes out of the biggest nanny state in the country...California or the DOE, a department established Carter to end our dependence on foreign oil?

I hate to Ass-U-Me anything but assuming that the studies are correct does that justify the government throwing out the millions of dollars that manufacturers have invested in manufacturing facilities to make good quality and inexpensive lighting products in favor of new, unproven and very expensive alternatives that may or may not prove better over the long haul. Has the governments actions been to the consumer's benefit or has their passing laws that favor one product at the expense of another guaranteed the consumer will pay far higher prices for the CFL's that might have occured if they had to actually compete for market share?

[BobR]

Which straw broke the camel's back, the first or the last? Which of the unending list of government rules, regulations, and mandates will finally get your attention that your back is about to break? Will it be when one day they come to your house and arrest you for pissing on the lawn using evidence from DNA that they got from the piss?

[krw]

Street congresscritters?

[gfretwell]

The 56kb was not a federal regulation it was simply the limitation of one channel of a T-1 line (actually 64kb) minus the overhead necessary to move data on it. That limit still exists on a dial up line. You do quite a bit better with ADSL but that is a different breed of cat and the data is not moving through the switched network. It gets split out before you get to the switching equipment.

I have been away from the ATM business for 20 years but I would be surprised if they are still running on SDLC lines. I would expect them to be on the network with the rest of the bank system and going out in their broad band traffic. I really don't know for sure tho. I just threw away a couple of old bisync modems a while ago because I couldn't get a bite on Ebay. I also had a 9600 BPS modem that was either bisync or async. All of them could either be leased or dialup.

[HeyBub]

Like a stick of gum cheap.

[krw]

No, the "original" modems were 110bps, or in the case of IBM, 134.5bps.

53K bps, due to power levels, thus cross-talk, required for the extra symbols needed to get to 56K bps.

Right. The line negotiations (those buzzes and beeps at the beginning) for the simpler modems save more line time than the few bits transmitted, cost. I would imagine the number of 56K modems in use is quite small.

[gfretwell]

CFLs started selling because they got cheap enough for the numbers to look reasonable. If they are three times more efficient (using Harry's number) a 60w equivalent bulb saves you about .67 cents an hour at a

15 cent a kwh rate (about as high as it gets in the US, some places are less than a dime). If the bulb costs 5 bucks you break even at around 1000 hours. Since CFLs draw a lot more current when you turn them on this may not really work out that well and if the bulb is cycling a lot and it won't last as long. CFLs also have a problem being mounted base up, particularly in a recessed can. LEDs are an interesting product without he mercury problem but they still have the early end of life problem that plagued CFLs when they were new. Some of this can be blamed on power line surge problems. Harry probably does not see as many thunderstorms as we have in Florida. I know the UK people who come here in the summer are usually hiding under the bed the first time they are in one of those summer squalls with a couple of "flash/bang" lightning strikes a minute for a half hour or so. They think the bloody bosch are bombing them again. My neighbor lived here for 20 years and never really got used to it. If you don't have extensive surge protection lots of stuff gets blown up, including your CFLs.

[Frank Warner]

Actually, the light bulb manufacturers themselves pushed for new efficiency standards. They wanted to advance, but knew that marketing would just be a race to the bottom without an imposed level playing field. As long as one manufacture could sell cheap inefficient bulbs, they all would have to in order to compete.

So they lobbied for the regulations. The government didn't force them to do anything they didn't already want.

Indeed. While you're at it, tell those damn kids to get off your lawn.

Frank

[krw]

No, there is/was an FCC regulation disallowing 56K (53K max for V.92). The

56K "limit" isn't T-1 speed (1.5Mb) limited, rather audio channel limited (8kHz x 16b).

Depends on the ATM, I'm sure. The ATM at the QuickieMart (I'm sure the vast majority of them) are dialup. At one time they were 1200bps, but they could easily be 2400bps, now. The issue is connect speed, so the lines can be turned around quickly.