[PLUG-TALK] Re: [PLUG] Redhat changes, fedora

Jeme A Brelin jeme at brelin.net
Thu Nov 6 00:02:03 UTC 2003


On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Russ Johnson wrote:
> I don't think Josh has a problem with downloads, per se. However, the
> information should be available in as may forms as possible.

Right.  Let's put it on some T-shirts and hire people to shout it from
street corners.  Surely that'd be a good thing, right?

> I can hear you know telling us that it's wasteful because of the
> resources it takes up. Downloads take as much, if not more. Once the CD
> is produced, it will take a finite amount of resources.

Hold that thought.

> Downloading requires LOTS of electricity. Every device the bits travel
> through takes power. If I'm downloading from a remote server, then the
> bits can easily go through 100 devices, all using power.

Uh huh... and if you consider the resources used by each machine for this
one download, it would be generous to say that 1/100th was going toward
each download... so that's 1 machine's power for the time it takes to
download the data (let's say a full hour).

Hold that thought.

> I'd estimate that it's about a wash as far as which method is "cheaper"
> on an environmental scale.

Uh huh.  Pressing the CD, printing the manuals, boxes, and stickers, and
transporting this shit to stores ALONE is more power than the download of
each copy.

Add to that the cost to recycle the materials, construct them in the first
place, deal with industrial pollutants, handle the never-recyclable shit
like the shrinkwrap, the CDs and the jewel cases...  And add to all that
the incremental incidentals this adds to the shipping businesses,
warehousing companies, printers, presses, etc.

It's a nightmare of complexity for very little gain.

But with the internet, the incremental addition of more transactions (or
even more protocols) increases the value of the system with almost no
incremental cost increase.  That's why you don't have to pay per
transaction.  But you certainly pay every time something gets shipped here
or there.

While cost is not always a good indicator of waste (since there are MANY
so-called "externalities" that aren't counted against the books), in this
case it shows pretty well that more resources are consumed by one than the
other.

> > Sure, not everybody has good bandwidth, but quite frankly, if you don't
> > have the bandwidth, why run a multi-user networking operating system?  And
> > how are you going to keep on top of updates?  Or contribute to the support
> > community?
>
> So now you are advocating being a snob? I'm shocked.

I have no idea where you got that.

> Anything less than a DSL line isn't good for major downloads, yet a
> person on dialup can contribute to support, get updates, etc.

Go to install-fest.  Join a LUG.  Lots of ways to get your initial install
without media.

> The catch here is that they don't HAVE to contribute. Many do, but it's
> not a requirement. About the only penalty is bad juju.

Bad juju makes a bad world.  You want a good world, you HAVE to
contribute.

Don't work to make things better, can't bitch when they're bad.

J.
-- 
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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