Who says going electronic necessarily is going green?

[moz]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

I'm still angry that they made my Aquafina bottles with 50% less plastic, and now the bottle squishes in your hand when you unscrew the cap.

Wow, it must suck to live somewhere that it's not safe to drink the tap water. In Sydney a few years ago we had cryptosporidium in the main water supply so many people had to boil drinking water to be on the safe side. That was really ugly, but luckily only for a couple of weeks.

But buying water in bottles... is pretty much the defining symptom of a society focused on creating waste. Sure, a few people here reuse their bottles, or like me never buy them in the first place but reuse other people's bottles. But the whole bottled water industry is about taking a system that works efficiently (piped water costing ~$US0.30/kilolitre retail) and replacing it with an incredibly wasteful one that's more profitable. Wrap water in plastic, truck it long distances, sell it in shops, throw away the plastic. Result: someone pays $1 for $0.0002 of water. Result: huge amounts of petrochemicals used to make the bottle, run the plant, run the trucks, run the shops, run the garbage trucks and run the landfill where the bottle ends up. But GDP goes up, all bow before our magnificent GDP!

[CleverClothe]

Originally Posted by moz

Wow, it must suck to live somewhere that it's not safe to drink the tap water. In Sydney a few years ago we had cryptosporidium in the main water supply so many people had to boil drinking water to be on the safe side. That was really ugly, but luckily only for a couple of weeks.

But buying water in bottles... is pretty much the defining symptom of a society focused on creating waste. Sure, a few people here reuse their bottles, or like me never buy them in the first place but reuse other people's bottles. But the whole bottled water industry is about taking a system that works efficiently (piped water costing ~$US0.30/kilolitre retail) and replacing it with an incredibly wasteful one that's more profitable. Wrap water in plastic, truck it long distances, sell it in shops, throw away the plastic. Result: someone pays $1 for $0.0002 of water. Result: huge amounts of petrochemicals used to make the bottle, run the plant, run the trucks, run the shops, run the garbage trucks and run the landfill where the bottle ends up. But GDP goes up, all bow before our magnificent GDP!

This is exactly the point that came up in my mind. Bottled water is a huge waste and is not needed 95% off the time. You can get clean water cheaply just about anywhere you can go. And if you can't get it, bring a canteen that you reuse (metal or plastic).

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by kwjones

My motorcycle gets almost 65mpg...

I didn't do ANY of this to be "green", I did it to save money. I don't care about the "green" movement. I think it's a big Ponzi scheme and the "carbon offsets" are at the top of the list. I also think that there are pleny of common sense things anyone can do that are good for the environment and for their wallets.

In this one case, they may not be the same. Although most MCs get great mileage, most of them do not have any emissions control devices on them. As a result, the average motorcycle actually puts out more pollution, mile for mile, than a Hummer (statement made by the government rep for the American Motorcycle Association to me. Disclosure: I sold my bike, a Yamaha Virago, after learning this.)

So: You like the low mileage of a bike, but want to help the environment too? Get a bike that has electronic fuel injection, fluid-based radiator and a catalytic converter... bikes like large BMW bikes, Honda Gold Wings, even the larger highway-rated scooters. Those bikes are low-polluting. The rest may be cheap gas-sippers, but they're also pretty much just plain dirty.

[JSWolf]

delete this post

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Remmber back when you used to could flip a switch and a light came on? Now it is flip, flicker, buzz, light.
But our power bill went down $30 a month after switching otu bulbs.

One of the light fixtures here had regular bulbs in it and it was 200 watts. That was expensive to run. So we bought energy efficient bulbs and our electricity usage has dropped.

[GeoffC]

the best energy efficient light bulbs we've found are those that are rated "daylight" - they are cooler than the generally available ones (certainly those that are freebies!!!).

[ruskie]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Huh? Iirc, for laptops, Intel has an ultra-low-voltage line with 10W TDP.

I was quoting laptop CPUs... Atleast at the few build-your-own laptop makers I checked.

True, but for some people an Atom and 20GB of storage doesn't cut it, albeit, I have yet to see more mainstream notebooks with 1TB drives. I remember reading an article saying there were places where netbooks had a 30% return rate, most likely because people expected more power from them. True, a lot of this is mostly because society's been trained with "I want" instead of "I need", but it's hard to change a lifetime's worth of training overnight.

This is the first, non-atom(celeron mobile 900MHz) one... with 4gb ssd.

As for the 30% return rate it was that yeah... People expected a full blown laptop but I consider this mainly a point in failure for not being educated by the $eller.

I used this as my main machine for a year. It was able to run bzflag(http://www.bzflag.org) at an acceptable level and I was able to do everything I needed with it which in my case is a lot of terminal work, ssh, web browsing, image editing etc...


Of course I supplemented this with 8gb usb flash drive and server side storage for things I didn't need or was able to access through a 3g connection.


I don't believe general purpose computing(GPC) will go much farther I more think appliance like devices like an ebook reader, music player, game consoles and such is the way to go. There might be one or two GPC machines per home and used to move stuff to appliance devices. And a lot more put in the way of network storage and such.

But that's just how I think I guess.

I tend to access documents through various remote file systems(sshfs, nfs and such) or in case of my mom's laptop it's using unison to sync from the ftp server to her laptop.

There is no real reason to have super powerful GPCs. A game console with a keyboard and mouse and ability to hook any viewport would work just as well for playing games than anything else. Not to mention it would be powered off when nobody is using it.

[no.guru]

Define excess consumption. And, please, don't give the tired argument that the US consumes a much higher percentage of the world's goods than our population percentage. We also produce a much higher percentage.

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by moz

Wow, it must suck to live somewhere that it's not safe to drink the tap water. In Sydney a few years ago we had cryptosporidium in the main water supply so many people had to boil drinking water to be on the safe side. That was really ugly, but luckily only for a couple of weeks.

But buying water in bottles... is pretty much the defining symptom of a society focused on creating waste. Sure, a few people here reuse their bottles, or like me never buy them in the first place but reuse other people's bottles. But the whole bottled water industry is about taking a system that works efficiently (piped water costing ~$US0.30/kilolitre retail) and replacing it with an incredibly wasteful one that's more profitable. Wrap water in plastic, truck it long distances, sell it in shops, throw away the plastic. Result: someone pays $1 for $0.0002 of water. Result: huge amounts of petrochemicals used to make the bottle, run the plant, run the trucks, run the shops, run the garbage trucks and run the landfill where the bottle ends up. But GDP goes up, all bow before our magnificent GDP!

Originally Posted by CleverClothe

This is exactly the point that came up in my mind. Bottled water is a huge waste and is not needed 95% off the time. You can get clean water cheaply just about anywhere you can go. And if you can't get it, bring a canteen that you reuse (metal or plastic).

Gimme back my sturdy bottles! I squished another one this morning, as usual. Then it sits lopsided on my desk and threatens to topple over.

Re-using the bottles is a bad idea. Bacteria grows in the dampness. And as the plastic breaks down over a few uses, it releases carcinogens.

Bham has really good yummy water, but not where I work. For over a year, our drinking fountains were closed due to contamination. Then, they turned them back on again. No one trusts the fountains anymore. I won't drink from them, prefer to take my chances with the cancer-causing plastic!

Back on topic, I can absolutely affirm that going ebook has been better for the environment in my case. I was hard on pbooks, they seldom were fit to share after I finished slashing them into small manageable sections. (Whole books were heavy and hurt my hands) So they went to the burn pile and got turned into smoke and ashes. (No local recycling in my unincorporated neighborhood) Nowadays, the worst that happens to my books is deletion. Although I did have my first EBW1150 get hot and burn itself out, but it never actually caught fire, so no smoke.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by ruskie

I was quoting laptop CPUs... Atleast at the few build-your-own laptop makers I checked.

So was I (e.g. Core 2 Duo SU9300). Albeit, I think the ultra-low voltage processors come in a different package ideal for tablets, ultra-portables compared to the more mainstream laptop processors.

Originally Posted by ruskie

This is the first, non-atom(celeron mobile 900MHz) one... with 4gb ssd.

Ah, yes. I've forgotten the first EEE PC came with an undervolted Celeron Mobile processor.

Originally Posted by ruskie

As for the 30% return rate it was that yeah... People expected a full blown laptop but I consider this mainly a point in failure for not being educated by the $eller.

Couldn't agree more. Some retailers were advertising these as notebooks instead of netbooks and that's really the root of the problem. The article cites that retailers who sold netbooks without embellishing and were clear on the difference between a notebook and a netbook experienced less returns.

Originally Posted by ruskie

A game console with a keyboard and mouse and ability to hook any viewport would work just as well for playing games than anything else. Not to mention it would be powered off when nobody is using it.

You'd be surprised at how many people leave their game consoles on. Really a waste considering the latest game consoles (well, the Xbox 360 and the PS3) use considerably more power than your average PC. Measured with a Kill-A-Watt, the PS3 consumes more power than 3 of my custom-built computers combined.

[Greg Anos]

The problem with electronic devices vs the environment is - 1. obsolesce, and 2. durability. The more the equipment gets churned, the worse for the environment. That's why I'm trying to learn Linux. A EEE PC Atom processor is enough CPU, for just about anything of importance. Vista, for example, takes more resources that an complete working computer did 10 years ago. And that's just to boot, not to do anything! The computer of 10 years ago did word processor, spreadsheet, internet, games of the period, even SD video, with less resources than Vista by itself.

Look at E-ink book readers. When the li-ion battery goes, most likely it'll become junk because there won't be a replacement battery. Same for most portable devices.

Me, I'm looking forward for the new NorhTech x86 portable computer. Cheap, modular and you can get it run on AA batteries, which means it'll live until the screen gives out....maybe several decades...

[ruskie]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

That's why I'm trying to learn Linux. A EEE PC Atom processor is enough CPU, for just about anything of importance.

Don't really need to learn Linux to use it ;) It is just that easy. Hence the EEE Easy to learn, Easy to use, Easy to play or something along those lines. If you need any help with GNU/Linux learning though lemme know in PM or if you prefer I'm on IRC(chat.freenode.net) or Jabber(ruskie@codemages.net). The same goes to anyone else.

Look at E-ink book readers. When the li-ion battery goes, most likely it'll become junk because there won't be a replacement battery. Same for most portable devices.

In my case Hanlin V3 the battery is a cell phone compatible battery various Nokia models and I highly doubt those will go out of sale anytime soon. The devices that will have problems are those that use built-in batteries or that use not well known battery formats. The Nokia formats seems to be quite popular for projects. I.e. Openmoko Freerunner uses one, the V3 uses one.

Me, I'm looking forward for the new NorhTech x86 portable computer. Cheap, modular and you can get it run on AA batteries, which means it'll live until the screen gives out....maybe several decades...

I'm waiting for an Open Pandora(http://www.openpandora.org) and ARM based netbooks. I don't mind a LiPO or LiIon batteries. They can last if used properly. And chances of buying a replacement aren't that bad as well.

I'm not to hot on x86 compatible arches anyway and would love an ARM based desktop if it could run the stuff I generally want to run which is a game or two at times as well.

I think a LiPO or LiIon battery would still outlast a NiMH/NiCd AA over time and thus reduce the amount of garbage.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

The problem with electronic devices vs the environment is - 1. obsolesce, and 2. durability. The more the equipment gets churned, the worse for the environment.

In fact, planned obsolescence is a problem with quite a number of product lines, not just electronics. So is the recycling stream for those products... simply put, neither has been well-developed, because it was always considered "anti-consumerism," "anti-profit," and therefore "anti-business."

Although it would obviously mean a sea-change in the way products are manufactured and recycled, and the way business is done, it's a change that simply needs to be done.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

In fact, planned obsolescence is a problem with quite a number of product lines, not just electronics. So is the recycling stream for those products... simply put, neither has been well-developed, because it was always considered "anti-consumerism," "anti-profit," and therefore "anti-business."

Although it would obviously mean a sea-change in the way products are manufactured and recycled, and the way business is done, it's a change that simply needs to be done.

Planned obsolescence .....

The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labor and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

[ruskie]

I'd like to post this little jewel I just stumbled upon at:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05...lmer/comments/
original article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05...peace_ballmer/

Missing the point, as usual

By Ken Hagan Posted Wednesday 27th May 2009 17:42 GMT

Jobs Halo

"While governments across the globe are debating climate-saving policy, it is disappointing that innovative IT companies who stand to profit handsomely from tech solutions that reduce [greenhouse gases] are sitting on the fence when it comes to advocating for science-based greenhouse gas emissions cuts,"

Er, no. What's disappointing is that so-called 'green' organisations are wasting their time bullying the millions of consumers of electricity rather than effectively lobbying the few hundred producers and their governments. Asking the entire human race to voluntarily lower their energy consumption to levels last seen in the 19th century is not unadjacent to asking the entire third world to either stay dirt poor or perhaps even die off. It won't happen. On the other hand, switching to CO2-neutral forms of electricity generation and an infrastructure that plugs in rather than burning fuel is both economically and technically feasible.

If you are worried about global warming, choose nuclear next time you need to replace a power station and choose the electrical alternative next time you need to replace some infrastructure. By 2050, you'll find that there's bugger all left of that smelly fossil-fueled equipment cluttering up society and the national carbon footprint is less than half of what it is today. Since you didn't replace anything before its time, it won't have cost you much either. Actual energy consumption will almost certainly have risen, but that's not a problem if it is generated cleanly.

If you don't like that plan then you aren't terribly concerned about global warming.