New Light bulb on it's way.

[Mary Fisher]

...

Mounting LEDs sounds a new quirk ...

[Mary Fisher]

Don't worry about it, he used 'but' after a comma.

[edwardwill]

Oops! I think you're referring to the rule about a comma after 'but'. Never mind - nice try.

[neverwas]

Is this the "rule" that says do not put a comma in front of the parenthetical element when a parenthetical element comes after a coordinating conjunction?

If so it is something I have only ever encountered as a "rule" from American sources; and one which escaped the notice of authors such as Jane Austen who in Pride and Prejudice included to give but 2 examples:

"I was so vexed to see him stand up with her; but, however, he did not admire her at all: indeed, nobody can, you know; and he seemed quite struck with Jane as she was going down the dance."

and

"He was beyond comparison the pleasantest man; he certainly admired her, and his situation in life was most eligible; but, to counterbalance these advantages, Mr. Darcy had considerable patronage in the church, and his cousin could have none at all."

Roger Woodham writes (with a nice, subtle example) on the BBC WS site

"A comma (,) generally indicates pauses in speech. But, when it joins two clauses, it indicates a contrast between two ideas. In speech it is normal to draw attention to this contrast by a slight pause. A comma is the usual way of indicating this, although it is not obligatory: a.. Sheila can eat anything and large quantities of it, but she never puts on weight.

b.. I'm going to make some New Year resolutions, but I don't suppose I'll keep them A comma after but would be very unusual, .....

I go along with that as plain English would militate for simpler sentence constructions.

[Man at B&Q]

That's a good answer for development work but how does he propose upgrading them in the field? A small FLASH PLD would probably be a better solution. methinks an ASIC would be overkill.

MBQ

[Mary Fisher]

Oops! I think you're referring to the rule about a comma after 'but'. Never mind - nice try.

Not at all. I know of no rule about a comma AFTER 'but'.

Perhaps you're confused ...

[Mary Fisher]

There again, I don't know everything.

Do you?

[DM]

Funnily enough an article just appeared in Photonics Spectra by the guys at Philips Lumileds entitled "Busting Myths About LED reliability".

I've not read this yet, but from a quick scan they are overdriving 1A devices at 1.5Amps and still achieving 10000 hours lifetime,and a drop of about 10% in output at end of life. Thats pretty good going

I suppose most of your comments would probably appear to fall into the Myths category according to the authors :-)

While High Power LEDs aren't quite there yet for most lighting, they are a relatively young technology and it is easy to see the room for significant improvements.

cheers

David

[Mary Fisher]

...

That's what I think too - and I believe we should support the R&D. If there's only negative feedback there won't be a demand so the technology won't be improved.

Mary

[edwardwill]

Try here -

- though why I'm doing your primary research for you, God only knows. And in answer to your second question - no, I don't know everything, but I'm pretty sure I know more than you about English usage. I defer to you, however, on lighting.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

LEDs have been around for well over 30 years.

[neverwas]

Surely all that is saying is that one should avoid *unnecessary* commas after conjunctions. Like most generalisations about the English language, it does not address the various circumstances in which a comma may be necessary or desirable. These are discussed at some length in at least one book available online:

(pages 127-128)

[Adam Aglionby]

White and blue are products of the 90`s look up Shuji Nakamura and gallium nitride, high power LEDs in big dice form have only been around since after the millenium.

Adam

[mark]

Excuse me this thread is about lightbulbs not commas,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

mark

[The Natural Philosopher]

big DIE form. Dice is the plural.

[Mike Barnes]

According to the NSOED (New Shorter Oxford Dictionary) "dice" is also a singular word and has the plural "dices". So there.

[DM]

They have indeed, now read slowly with emphasis on the bit that says High Power.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

We're still waiting for a white one.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You'd need to define 'high power'. And define the light output from them too. And their life. That is the problem with LEDs.

[DM]

... and posters who just never want to back down after making pedantic statements is a problem with newsgroups