I'm absolutely not afraid of new technology, I love new technology, but only if new means better.
It does actually happen that new turns out to be worse or not entirely thought through, and then it's perfectly reasonable to oppose it.

I just mentioned one, they emit poisonous gases. Nothing that will outright kill you and I haven't taken out mine, but I'm not very fond of things that kill me in the long run.
And they do take longer to turn on, I replaced the lightbulb in my bathroom with a CFL and it takes several minutes until it has reached it's full potential, at first the bathroom is still somewhat dark.
Plus, they die faster if you turn them on and off, the 10 years or however many hours it says on the package may be true if you never turn them off. I had to replace one lately that I bought maybe 3-5 years ago. That's not even half of the 10 years they advertise on the package and it was on a lamp that i hardly turned on in the last two years as well.
Not exactly what I would consider superior technology, all my hopes rest on LEDs now but so far they seem to cost 20€ and upwards if you want anything more than a decorative one that cannot light up an entire room and I had some problems finding ones that fit into my lamps, most of them have weird connectors.

I generally agree, but this only works if the EU does think things through and considers all angles, if they just go on a hunch or a popular movement without thinking about the consequences then this can be really bad.

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If you're thinking about mercury (quecksilber, not the planet or the Roman deity), there's so little of it in fluorescent lights that you'd have a more realistic chance of dieing by accidentally cutting yourself with the glass that contains it.
What I find odd though is that while lightbulbs were responsible for less than 1% of all electricity use, the EU decided to ban them for environmental reasons.

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In that phrase I was referring to the gases the laboratory found that they apparently emit while they're turned on. Just too bad that I can't find an english link but there is also this nice video of a proud Texan talking about them.

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It's Eurovision Day!

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Yay!

Mindnumbing stupity, halogen lamps, and debates about issues no sane person understands such as common agricultural policy and currency / sovereign debt. It is all so beautiful in its cleverness.

Europe shall have peace forever. Peace as long as we can channel the energy of the amorphous masses towards these diversions, and divert the malcontent of the 'Angry Men' towards nonsense symbolic strife over flags and anthems and 0.42% of our budget.

One would want to re-instate grand ideology or religion for the same effect, but there's no consensus about which one, nor ought there to be any, because strife and competition is precisely Europe's strenght, it's dynamism. So what could be more clever than to maintain strife but divert unwanted offspill into gayfabulous infights about national contestants of a songfestival.

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Rewrite the bailout terms now or we revoke Jedwards citzenship stranding them on the continent forever mwah ha ha ha ha ha

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Ah no. Now you made me Google that. Curse you!

I really would pay 86 billion just to be able to unsee this mess, unworthy of a universe with even the remotest chance of a living god or a single innocent soul.


Youtube Video

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If only.

Haven't we suffered enough?

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bread and circuses?

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The new is actually overall better than the old. Cheap CFL's still need to wait a few minutes to reach full light intensity but other than that it really isn't that bad.

Send a link about that poisonous gas emissions that is in English. My translator isn't working. Also a report from one lab does not equal proven fact. This needs to be verified and double checked by multiple independent laboratories before you can start saying "it produces poisonous gases" as a fact.

The concept that it is releasing gas does not make sense to me period. It can't be gas within it because if there was a leak the CFL would not work anymore. The only thing it produces is light. The only I can think of is that perhaps some crappy CFL's have toxic paint covers that are used to "soften" the light output that might be getting vaporized by the heat produced after a while.

Your anecdotal evidence about your CFL isn't really compelling. Idk if you bought a cheap one or not or if it was just a dud or if your own bias is reluctant in remembering the times you turned it on and off to reinforce your perception of the CFL technology.

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The one in my bathroom is from Osram and it certainly wasn't cheap, it still takes about 3 minutes to reach full intensity, which is a difference between a dimly lit and a bright white room. I also heard that they don't nearly last 10 years if you turn them off and on somewhat often, which is underlined by the one in my living room failing after less than 5 years. I'm not sure, but it's even possible that I had to replace them a few years ago already.
How often I turned it on and off shouldn't matter because on the package it says they last about 10 years, so if they break after about half that time that's pretty weird.
I didn't change anything to suit my perception of CFLs, I've got a new lamp that I use almost exclusively now, it's also got CFLs by the way.

You're also right that one laboratory doesn't prove a thing but if there is a rumour of that sort, the EU should be checking it or prove it wrong if they have already checked for such problems´ as long as they want to force us to use CFLs.

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The life expectancy is always going to be an average under ideal conditions. I really don't know what to say other than you might have gotten a dud not representative of the average CFL bulb.

The difference in quality from CFL's 10-5 years ago is probably different than the quality of CFL's today. The public transition did not occur until this past decade so the standards might not have been exactly up to par as they should have been.

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Europe sucks.

You all can continue with your EU stuff so long as you bury your heads in the sand and ignore the obvious, that America owns Europe.

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"Gee ACIN, why do you act like you are so embarrassed of America all the time?"

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But really, consider how independant Europe really is. I am sure the United States could get a country like Bosnia which owes its very existence to us to commit hiri-kiri with a smile on its face. And honestly, almost all of Western Europe owes its existence to the United States. One can clearly see a multitude of ways in which the United States controls and runs Europe: NATO is effectively an American figurehead, especially after the Cold War, after the Cold War the UN has but one superpower to lead it (The UN is even based in the United States!), and countless treaties and alliances between European countries and the United States bind Europe in servitude to the United States.

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You compare the difference in quality to the quality and uhm?

Ok, joking about a hickup aside, it's not always true that quality increases over time, the higher demand and the attempts to cut costs to offer things cheaper, stay more competitive and/or get more profit can often lead to a decline in product quality. Compare a power drill from 15 years ago to one of the cheap, plastic ones they sell for 20 bucks today, for example, heck, my dad has one that is older than me and it still works better than some of his newer ones. Similar trends can be found in the graphics card market, where demand for more graphics power and lower prices drives the quality of parts down which causes them to be louder and a few other problems. NVidia had used some cheaper materials for a while which lead to a huge problem with loads and loads of chips failing because the heat would slowly make them fall apart.

As such I wouldn't find it surprising if the cheap glue they use in China would emit gases once the bulb becomes hot, that one of the manufacturers wanted to investigate the problem would make one think that they don't find this report as incredible as you do. Incidentally I just managed to find an english article on it.

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Who cares, it isn't about lightbulbs it's about someones pet-project that MUSS SEIN. Nobody understands why, and by who, but in true DDR fashion it was imposed

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Lol yeah, 1AM typing at it's best.

Kinda, sorta, maybe. When the market expands dramatically, shortcuts are done to fulfill the demand as soon as possible. When the market is entering a slower growth as people are generally transitioning from incandescent to CFL's growth is slower, more manageable and shortcuts are not as implemented as much. Since the old bulbs are banned, the real thing to look at is how fast the demand within the CFL market has expanded.

Also, looking back on past products is only somewhat useful as well. The only stuff that can stick around after decades of use is the well crafted stuff. Planned obsolescence and cheap manufacturing isn't some new thing to happen since the 1980s. If we look far enough back into the depths of video game history, we can obviously see that the vast majority of games on the N64 were not all the same quality as Zelda, Goldeneye, Mario 64 etc... it is an error to say that video games were much better way back in the day because of games x, y and z while ignoring all the crappy ones lost to time just as it is a mistake to say that bulbs or power tools were way better back in the day because x,y and z tools I have.

I thank you for the English article but it still lacked heavily on facts. Specifically what the actual findings were. All it said was some germans found these nasty chemicals and that the british are telling everyone everything is still fine. What exact is producing these chemicals? How are they emitted? It's hard to trust a report that doesn't actually provide a report but instead is a vague two sentence warning.

Stop being so conspiratorial Frag. The situation is completely clear and only someone who is ideologically blinded cannot see how the day to day politics actually occurs.

Why: Because Europe and the US are sick of being dependent on foreign oil and lawmakers want to look good to public about attempting to do something about it.
Who: Lawmakers that have been successfully lobbied by environmental special interests, CFL manufacturers and/or those who feel that drastic action needs to be taken about the greater issues surrounding the light bulb situation such as energy efficiency and climate change.

CFL's really are a whole lot more efficient than incandescent, it is almost disgusting how much energy the old light bulbs waste. If it saves energy, than it reduces oil consumption, if it does that, then it is in the nation's long term interest to promote it.

Cue, "leftist cult", "random Nazi term" or some sort of conspiracy insinuation.

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