Well, I'm glad you're not a troll, then.
At some point in basic electronics you are
asked to compute the power used by a resistor. For some reason
engineers don't care if the devices they design use energy efficently.
You have just unjustly slandered a great many
engineers. I am not going to educate you as
to the many ways you are wrong about that,
but I can attest to having seen many engineers
worry about how to converve power rather
than needlessly expending it. I can also see
much evidence of the same in circuits whose
designers I have never met.
Pick up some batteries off the street that some one has thrown away
they average 1.2 volts. At 1.2 volts an alkaline battery still has
about 40 percent of its energy left. Design a radio to use 4.5 volts
but takes 4 batteries. Have a circuit that uses 3 batteries at a time
while rotating the unused battery at a regular interval. Then when the
voltage of the batteries drops to 1.2 volts each the circuit switches
to using all 4 batteries in series. All the batteries can be run down
to .9 volts each where they have about 10 percent of their energy left.
This idiot circuit could have been made 100 years ago.
That would have been before the vacuum tube
was invented. Please show me the design of
your system for accomplishing such miracles.
A modern radio
would test each battery, you could then mix types of batteries in a
radio.
If this is a good idea, you should develop and
market it, then reap the rewards that accrue
from such a beneficial contribution. Once you
have worked out the implementation details
and done a market study, I would like to see it,
(under a reasonable NDA, of course).
A resistor that throws away heat is only one part of an energy
wasting device.
Very true. I have used transistors to waste
energy, even diodes and vacuum tubes. I
wonder if a transmitter antenna counts as an
energy wasting device in your world view.
Perhaps what I am thinking of is instead of a resistor
you need a current limiting device.
That would be useful, too. Resistors are often
treasured for their linear E/I relation, so I would
not abandon the energy transmogrifying resistor
too soon. But a current limiter that did not have
that nasty problem of getting hot would be quite
a boon as well. What do you suppose the cost
of these parts will be? Does that matter at all
in your scheme of things?