RoHS: Warum Bildschirme ausgenommen?

Joerg:

Did you also post an English version of this on the German electronics newsgroup?

I bet more of them could read it :-).

Yes, but he's pointing to something interesting. The link is to an American study of lead pollution due to CRTs in landfill. In 1995, colour CRTs and lead-acid batteries between them were estimated to produce over 90% of the lead pollution. That was despite over 80% recycling of batteries. "Other electronics" produced about 1%, a similar level to plastics and about a third of glass and ceramics.

What it it means is that the worm Euroburos has f**cked up our electronics industry for zero gain. Which we knew anyway, but it's nice having the figures.

Paul Burke

I read the pdf mentioned and IMHO it is a typical example of how to do a biased study, in this case by some FLORIDA CENTER FOR SOLID AND HAZARDOUS WASTE MANAGEMENT. When the lead content was too low they ground-up the glass much finer and voila the percentage was ten times higher.

We don't have CRTs anymore, I wouldn't buy one, neither for TV nor as PC monitor. Any my fellow citisens act the same.

Rene

"The Gnurrs come from the Voodvork oudt!"

Cheers! Rich

Hello Tim,

Well, sorry, I realized that it had gone into the wrong language group and I cancelled it only a couple minutes later. Guess that was too late.

Hello Rene,

You'd have to go into a store and look what's on the shelf there. That tells you what's selling. Over here Costco (a wholesaler which is probably similar to Migros over in your country) still had CRT monitors for TV last time I looked, about two months ago. This store never keeps anything that doesn't sell at a good clip.

Hello Ban,

That's one of the issues, there is a bias behind many studies. Still, the percentages really baffled me and here also the amount of lead from batteries. There just is no way to get over a 90% recycling rate because these are found in power-flashlight, childrens riding toys and other things where users just throw the whole thing away after it breaks.

Lead in electronic circuits is almost nothing compared to that, yet that's what the bureaucrats regulated.

Tim Wescott wrote:

Babel Fish Translation

In English: Ok one, people, the topic arose in lack of engineer Thread, fell asleep however there. Nevertheless somehow importantly, or at least I understand not, why the Buerokraten excites itself over lead plumb bob so much. Therefore I repeat it times here: I do not believe in the statement that lead glass is "not particularly environmentalharmful". Since you here us on the other side of the pond often than laissez fair in things environment see, I bring once a study from here. She is quoted in the legislation with us much and that would certainly not like that be, if someone had found a hair in the soup (which with security some industries to have tried):

Subject was "RoHS: Why screens excluded?"

babelfish.altavista.com has a lot of work to do... ;)

We had a lot of fun with babelfish some months ago. We have a break room, where a co-worker brings in snacks/chocolate bars, and it's on the honor system - you put 50 cents in the pot when you take a candy. We noticed the janitor was taking candies, but apparently didn't know to pay for it. So my co-worker put up a sign in Spanish. I took the sign, and babelfished it into German and Russian. Kept the signs up, until another co-worker from Germany noticed that "nicht frei" wasn't quite grammatically correct (is not free) : apparently "nicht frei" means "not free" as in imprisoned, not "not free" as in cost.

So the signs went down... :(

Michael

And now we know why it was named BABELfish! I have never ... never! read Babelfish output that was intelligible. Thank-you for this wonderful specimen.

Back in the 80's my German girlfriend's best friend, also German, wrote a poem, in German, about us and presented the original copy to me. Several years ago I ran the text through Babelfish, just for grins. The result was such a humorous and hopelessly convoluted mess of nonsense that I sent the translation to Imke and did not tell her the source was her poem. She didn't recognize the text.

That girlfriend was studying German/American English technical translation when we met, so she knows the turf. She also loves a good joke, so I sent the "translation" to her as well. She was unfazed: "Yeah; so what?" Precisely what my response would be if some know-nothing announced to me that resistor values are rarely what the color bands advertise. "Now you know why diplomats use human interpreters instead of computers."

Hello Michael,

Plumb bob, that's a good one :-)

With the Eurocrats I would not be surprised if they'd regulate those as well. For example, by mandating that they be calibrated once a year...

As the other Michael had already hinted automatic translation will most likely never work right. Unfortunately even professional translators use software-based tools to "ease" their job, with very noticeable consequences.

It should have said "nicht umsonst". We had that honor system in a European company but with beer. One coin if you take a bottle and when the stack is below two full crates you'd be obligated to take the money out of the basket and buy some more, then turn the remaining funds back over to the basket. Since the cost of beer was slightly lower the basket would occasionally turn enough of a surplus to buy sausages and fire up the barbeque. For some reason we were never short, there were exactly as many coins in there as there were emptied bottled (it's a full recycling loop there with high deposits).