Quote Originally Posted by Husar View Post
You compare the difference in quality to the quality and uhm?
Lol yeah, 1AM typing at it's best.

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.
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.

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.
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.

Quote Originally Posted by Fragony View Post
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
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.