Richard Stallman on Free Software, Fostering Change, and the Enviroment

I had the opportunity to have lunch with Richard Stallman the other day, the founder of the free software movement. An associate had contacted me regarding a post I had written on GNU/Linux, where I suggested using the free OS would double the life of computers. I thought it would be great if Richard would give his views on the free software movement, and the environmental crisis in general. Dr. Stallman agreed.

I got both more and less than I bargained for. At both the beginning and the end of the interview, Dr. Stallman correctly states that the two problems have fundamentally little in common, the free software movement being a fight against oppression, while the environmental crisis is more of a byproduct of doing things the easy way. As I listened, I realized that I was learning not so much as how to solve the environmental crisis, but more about how to develop an effective strategy to solve a global problem. And, as outlined in the interview, free software is a serious global issue.

Richard talks about many important issues – the importance of focus, not allowing short-term steps to distract from long-term goals, how to overcome social inertia, giving users access to tools to develop and control their world, and the fact that solving one crisis doesn’t solve them all. There are a few fascinating overlaps between computers and environmental issues that are discussed, but after spending an hour with Richard, talking about 25 his years of experience in the free software movement, I found them somewhat incidental. Here’s it is.

Mjo: Do you want something to drink?

Rms: Water is fine for me.

Mjo: So my wife got a job in Cambridge, and we moved down here and I work out of my house now.

Rms: What kind of stuff? I couldn’t hear that.

Mjo: I work on different systems related to environmental problems, compliance, that sort of thing, it’s pretty interesting. And that’s how I got into the whole environmental movement.

Rms: So, are these programs custom software, proprietary software, or free software?

Mjo: They are a mix of all of them.

Rms: It’s a shame to use proprietary software. There’s nothing wrong with developing custom software, but it’s a shame to base it on proprietary software.

Mjo: I agree with you, it’s the way the systems were originally set up. So I am very interested in the relationship between computers and the environment. I have a blog of my own, and I write for some other blogs as well. So, I had a post on using ‘Linux’, and I didn’t use the proper terminology (GNU/Linux). I have educated myself since then, and I thought it would be nice after reading something about you on the Internet, I know that you have some environmental affiliations of some sort, and I thought it would be great if you could talk about them.

Rms: Well, my main area of activism is freedom for computer users. That’s not an environmental issue.

Mjo: You don’t think it is?

Rms: No. I think distinctions are useful and I don’t want to erase them. The issue of freedom for computer users is not an environmental issue. They are different issues, and both issues are important; I think it is a mistake to over-generalize them. Just because two issues are important doesn’t mean that they are similar.

Mjo: So, you don’t think the free software movement and the environmental movement share any commonalities?

Rms: That’s not what I said. I said that free software is not an environmental issue; it’s a freedom from domination issue. If you use a non-free a proprietary program, then you are under the power of the developers; that’s unjust. The proprietary software forbids the users to share, and they keep users helpless. So they are divided and helpless, and that’s wrong. The goal of the free software movement is to correct that rule, to put an end to that rule, that unjust practice.

Mjo: And it seems like you are doing a pretty good job of it.

Rms: Well, we have made a good start - it would be a mistake to say that we have all but won. We are not that close to victory, as you can see by the fact that you, for instance, use non-free software in the custom solutions that you develop. Most of your readers are using proprietary operating systems like Microsoft Windows or Mac OS, and probably most of them have never even heard of the idea that it is not just a question of choosing this product or that product - it's a question of their rights.

Mjo: I agree, I certainly had never heard of it, until I did start developing certain systems I was working on, and I did actually have to look into the free software GNU license to see what was involved.

Rms: Well, that’s good.

Mjo: Yes, so I had some exposure to it, and I read quite a bit before I met with you to familiarize myself with it.

Rms: So… there are people that when you are speaking to an audience that is interested in environmental issues, will try and cast whatever they want to talk about as an environmental issue, and I think that’s twisting things a little.

Mjo: You don’t think there’s any relationship between the two?

Rms: There’s a relationship in the sense that they both relate to ethics, justice, and how society should govern itself, which is a very broad area and includes lots of things. So I often cite the environmental movement as an analogy for the free software movement, just to show what kind of movement we are talking about. They are both movements to do something about a serious global problem, but the two problems are different problems. So, in a sense, environmental issues are a byproduct - it is very rare that anyone deliberately tries to poison the environment. That’s not generally the goal, it’s somebody who wants to do something, and the most efficient or cheapest way to do it is to poison the environment. And since he doesn’t give a damn, he does it that way. By contrast, the problem of proprietary software, the problem of software developers having power over computer users, is that they prefer it that way, as part of their business model. “Keep the users divided and helpless and that way we can make more money.”

Mjo: You’re talking about the Microsoft’s, the big vendors…

Rms: Big and small. This isn’t an issue of monopoly. To have a choice between proprietary programs is only to be able to choose your master. That’s not freedom. And it’s not really about the size of the companies involved either. It’s about what practice they there are engaged in.

The free software movement believes there are four essential freedoms that users of software should have. The four essential freedoms are:

Freedom 0 - The freedom to run the program as you wish.

Freedom 1 - The freedom to study the source code and change it, so the program does what you wish.

Freedom 2 - The freedom to help your neighbor, which is the freedom to distribute copies to others.

Freedom 3 - The freedom to contribute to your community, which is the freedom to distribute your modified program.

All four of these are freedoms, not requirements, so you are not required to do any of these things. You have the freedom; you can do what you wish. It does not mean you are required to do anything. If you don’t have these freedoms that means that the users are kept divided and helpless, unable to share with each other, unable to take control of the software. With free software, the users both individually and collectively have control. You are free to take control of your copy. You can do this personally as a programmer if you are a programmer or if you want to learn some programming; but you can also persuade or pay someone else to do it for you, so you don’t have to be a programmer to use this freedom. The freedom to publish your modified version means that we can work together to control the software. So the users have control individually (if they choose to exercise it, because exercising it takes work), and the users collectively also control the software. So you might choose to exercise your personal direct control, but you can also decide to only excise it when it’s important. You might decide a program is good enough, so you leave it to others. You decide how much you participate in the collective decision making. This is a kind of democracy.

Free software is democratically developed software, proprietary software is a dictatorship.

To understand what these four freedoms mean and why they are important, think of recipes. People who cook are accustomed to cooking recipes freely, whenever they wish; well that’s freedom zero. They are also accustomed to studying the recipes and thinking about them and changing them; that’s freedom one. They also are accustomed to handing out copies of the recipes -- that’s freedom two -- and they are also are accustomed to handing out copies of their modified versions of their recipes (if they want to take the trouble, that is more work). Well that’s freedom three. It’s the same four freedoms, and that should be no surprise, because the programs and the recipes are both works of knowledge, meaning they are used for jobs, to do the tasks in your life. With proprietary programs, you don’t control them, they control you. And if you are not free to share them, then you can’t be a member of the community of cooperation. So people must have these four freedoms for recipes, and also for software.

Thus, the free software movement is a movement against unjust power. We started out, I started the movement in 1983, and all I did in 1983 was to announce a plan. What I started in January 1984 was the development of a complete software system that would be free. The idea was to escape from the subjugating software by switching to free software, but we would have to develop it first. There was hardly any free software in June 1983; today, because of the free software movement, there is a wide range of free software. There are operating systems, there are developers, and no software developer has power over you.

We are building a new kind continent in cyberspace, the free world. It was impossible to be free in the old world, because every program had a lord. So the only way to be free was to escape, to migrate to a free world, which we had to build first. And because it’s a virtual continent, there’s room for everyone - everyone can move to this free virtual world to take advantage of this freedom. And there are no indigenous peoples in cyberspace, the only indigenous people were the old software sharing community, of which I was part… so the result is… unlike in the Americas, these continents really are there for everyone.

Mjo: Do you think that the free software movement might be… I’m trying to make the connection between sustainable development and free software.

Rms: Well, sustainable development definitely has a connection with free software.

Mjo: How so?

Rms: Well, the use of proprietary software is not development at all, it’s just colonization. Proprietary software developers are essentially colonial lords in cyberspace; they try to establish their dominion over users’ computers, and thus over their users and their computers. And you could never trust them, because they could be putting malicious features in your software. Both Windows and Mac OS both contain malicious features designed to restrict the users, and they are increasing them.

Mjo: I agree, don’t you think its getting it’s getting worse and worse, particularly in the last few years?

Rms: Much worse, because they have gained so much power than they are using it to gain more power.

Mjo: Do you think that their power is threatened by the free software movement?

Rms: They can see that they are threatened, that their dominion is threatened, but at the same time although they can see it, it hasn’t yet taken over most of their dominion.

Mjo: But it’s going in that direction.

Rms: We hope, but you can’t predict the future, and underestimating the enemy is a recipe for losing. So it would be a terrible mistake to take for granted that freedom will win.

Mjo: But you must feel pretty good about it…

Rms: I don’t really know whether we are going to win, because that depends on you and your readers. But the point is that the use of subjugating software is not development, because that is a technology that the local community is not allowed to understand, repair, adapt or extend, it’s not really under the control of the people that live in that world. While free software is under the control of the local people anywhere in the world, and everyone is using it. So the use of free software is development, because people are using technology than they can control. Only free software constitutes development, everything else is colonization. You got to have the control over the software you are using or you are being colonized, so yes, when we get to the question of sustainable development, free software is relevant, directly relevant, to the extent that the development involves computer technology.

You will find people who are into single issue politics who make their issues out to be the be all and end all of life and they say that solving this problem will miraculously make all of life wonderful. But I’m not going to make that mistake. Free software is a vital issue for people who use computers, but there are lots of vital issues in freedom that aren’t particularly related to computers. And there are other kinds of issues such as protecting the environment, which are different kinds of issues, which are also important, and they sometimes relate to computers but not always. So we shouldn’t over simplify the world. This is not a matter of one question.

Mjo: Yes, and you don’t think that’s solving the proprietary software problems, or the environmental problems, will make life wonderful for everyone.

Rms: No I don’t. The world has a lot of issues in it and solving one social problem doesn’t automatically solve all the others. So I don’t want to say that, if we switch to free software, that will make all of life wonderful, but it will eliminate one form of evil subjugation that it going on.

Mjo: You are surprisingly low key about it, you’re very equanimous. Did you get my analogy about the coffee makers?

Rms: No I don’t remember it.

Mjo: One of the questions that I thought would be interest was the relationship between the linking of free software and hardware. It seems that the free software movement thinks that is not a good idea… I’m talking about the tivoization of software.

Rms: Oh right, well that stops you from controlling the software.

Mjo: Yes, and I agree and I think that might be some pretty heavy environmental repercussions from that happening. Say you have a washing machine, and there’s a circuit board in there, and there’s a program that runs the software to wash the clothes. But, you don’t know what the software is…

Rms: Yeah, it’s proprietary.

Mjo: Right, so if it was free software, maybe some guy could figure out a way to get the clothes washed the cheapest, using the least amount of energy or water. Well, that would be great because you could upload it into your washer, and the world could save a billion gallons of water.

Rms: You’re right, on the other hand he could also find a way to wash the clothes that would make them dirtier, but he likes it better for some other reason. I think people should be in control, but we also need environmental regulations. Regulations to stop people from polluting, and laws restricting what we can do, are important. However, you can’t expect that placing people totally under the power of large businesses is a solution to the problem of pollution. In fact, it would likely increase pollution, for businesses very systemically try to sabotage environmental regulations. And they can afford to employ lots of clever people figuring out how to do so.

Mjo: Do you see things getting any better or worse?

Rms: I can’t predict the future. But it is part of a general political problem, which is the sickness of democracy, government of the people by the cronies for the corporations. And I don’t know how to solve that problem. If I did, I would be implementing a solution. I would be the savoir of the world.

Mjo: Well, you are saving the world in your own way.

Rms: I’m saving the world from one problem, but if I knew how to correct this bigger problem, I would. But, I don’t know how any better than anyone else knows how.

Mjo: Do you ever see commonalities between your work and the climate change problems? You are a member of the green party – I mean, are you a member of the green party?

Rms: I don’t how exactly you define member. But I have sent them money, and would like to send them money again; I need to find their address. I moved too many times and they have lost track of me.

Mjo: I wish my alma mater would do that, they keep finding me! Do you look for a lot of commonalities, solving a lot of problems at once?

Rms: No, no. I haven't been able to think of any way to solve the problem of the sickness of democracy, let alone solve that together with another problem. It would be a huge effort. It's a power structure which is very powerful and defends its power. It's hard to see what to do about it.

Mjo: I think I know what you are going to say, but one of the other things I thought of was some of these new technologies that have come out, new software that has come, are you familiar with virtualization?

Rms: I’m not completely sure what you mean by that.

Mjo: That where you have a server running some applications, then you write the whole thing out to a binary file, and you host that file on another computer to emulate that system in its entirety.

Rms: I think I know what you are saying; you are talking about a virtual machine.

Mjo: That’s right.

Rms: Well virtual machines are not really new, I used a virtual machine in 1969. I don’t see that they raise any specific new issue regarding free software.

Mjo: The driver I am thinking of is that that a lot of platforms for virtualization are proprietary.

Rms: But there is a free one (Xen), and just like any other kind of software: for the sake of your freedom and others', you shouldn't use non-free software.

Mjo: Even if you could cut your power bill by 80 percent?

Rms: You shouldn’t use non-free software, and it’s ridiculous to assume that this job can only be done by non-free software. It may be the case today, that a particular job may have only non-free software to do it, but if you use that non-free software you are securing the establishment of an unjust power structure. So what you should do is, if you wanted to make your computer do that particular thing, is to support the development of free software to do it.

Mjo: And do you think we have time to do that?

Rms: What do you mean time to do that? How long does it take? You’re being silly.

Mjo: Well for you, it might not take very long…

Rms: I know, but how much time does it take? I'm not going to be the one that is doing it because I have other work -- I'm focusing more on these issues of freedom, not on writing software -- but there are lots of other people writing free software.

And what's the desperate hurry? Whatever we do [with computers], if we have to wait a few years to do it and keep our freedom, then we can wait a few years.

And, as you said, there already is free software for virtual machines, so maybe it is just lacking some feature that would be nice. Well, that's an even smaller job - you just need to add that feature.

People are really adept at making excuses, usually based on short term desires, for using non-free software. Well, I won't accept those short term goals as a reason to give up our freedom. It's much harder to get your freedom back once you give it up.

And I'm skeptical about the claim that you can save 80 percent of your power bill by using virtual machines. Maybe compared with some particularly obvious _and_ very expensive way of doing things, maybe that's true; but that's not the only way to do the job. You can run multiple applications on a single server. It could be that people have fallen into a habit of buying lots of computers and doing one things with each of them. But they are all timesharing systems, and any one of them is capable of doing all those things.

Mjo: And do you think people have fallen into that habit?

Rms: I don't know. I don't follow such things so this is just speculation. Maybe there's something that makes it somewhat easier to set up, and so they typically set it up the easy way. So, they buy more machines because that’s not very expensive really anymore, and even it means more electricity too, because that’s not very expensive right now either. So they have got two ways to avoid that: one is to put several servers on a single computer, or they can have these several different computers running virtual as machines, all in one [physical] computer. So maybe they find the first approach a little complicated and the second one is easy; well, I’m not against it, but it’s a mistake to say it is immediately necessary to save electricity or whatever and people have to use non-free software.

Even assuming that there weren't free software to implement it - and there is, in fact they can implement that method using free software, but just imagine that the free software didn't exist - then it would still be invalid to conclude that this savings could only be achieved by using non-free software. You would just have to run several different servers on one machine.

Mjo: Well, you’re right, actually.

Rms: So this shows how people take flimsy invalid excuses and stretch them to excuse doing what they want to be doing (because it's the usual way or whatever). It's a common practice when using non-free software, and that's our biggest obstacle: social inertia.

So how do we overcome social inertia?

Well the first step is to recognize it, and to show how is not valid. People want to give into social inertia because it's easy. But they don't want to say, "I want to do the wrong thing because it’s easier for me to do the wrong thing." So they exaggerate - they say doing the right thing is simply impossible. Impossible they say. Intolerable. It's always a matter of exaggeration, often several steps of exaggeration in series. So whenever I hear that, I start pointing out why it’s fallacious.

Mjo: I agree, in fact I think you did an excellent job refuting virtualization but isn’t it true that one of the things people often say about free software is exactly this - one of the biggest things is that the free software program doesn’t exist, or it’s not near the level of the proprietary program?

Rms: No they don’t often say that. Well, they say that but it isn’t usually true. You will find people who do thousands of things with their computer and if they find one thing that they occasionally do which has no free implementation they will say ‘Oh, free software is unusable’. It’s another form of exaggeration.

Mjo: That is inspiring. It does make a lot of sense that people make a lot of excuses for doing what they want. It’s been going on for quite some time, and I imagine it will continue to some degree.

Rms: Well I can’t predict the future but what interests me is how we can influence it. We can influence it by not getting so much packaging, putting bricks in our toilet, and we can influence it by rejecting proprietary software. And, in that way, we will gain freedom for ourselves, and freedom for everyone who uses computers. And computers are becoming more important.

Mjo: So is really what is required is for people to stand up in board room meetings, and start talking about free software?

Rms: Yes, they need to start discussing these issues of freedom instead of these other issues. People have to recognize that software is not a mere tool that is unimportant as long as it gets a particular job done. You have to recognize that the problems that relate to computing come from the fact that somebody has power that nobody should have.

Mjo: I do think that people recognize that at some level, even people that are in a totally Microsoft shop, they do recognize that at some level.

Rms: I don't know how you can make a generalization about so many people. What I find is that many people have never even considered that there might be a political issue about the licensing of software. They just take it for granted. They say, "We need these products" - they say they need them; they don't recognize that they could do things another way. "These are the licenses, and we accept these licenses, but we don't care, we only care how much we pay and what the software does." This is the perspective of a person that doesn't appreciate freedom.

Now, maybe they appreciate freedom in other areas of life, I can't say, but in that area of life [computing] they are paying no attention.

Mjo: Isn’t there also a question of fear as well?

Rms: Oh I don’t know. There may be. It takes work; you have to learn something new. But you can.

Mjo: It takes risk too, if you are a business you have to take risk too.

Rms: No, lots of people use free software, it’s not a risk. You are taking a risk by using non-free software; you have no idea what they are going to demand of you with the next version.

Mjo: That's true, and it’s getting worse.

Rms: Right, so the real risk is from being under the power of somebody else that wants to use that power to make money, and will use it against you to make money. And with free software, nobody has that kind of power. Now you will still need people to maintain your shop and you will still need programmers to have changes made, but instead of relying upon one particular entity, you simply rely on society around you. It’s much better. With free software, if you want something changed, you can decide which programmer to hire, and there are lots of them.

Mjo: Yes, ultimately it’s probably much safer, don’t you think?

Rms: Absolutely. In fact many non-free programs contain back doors. Actually Microsoft Windows contains a back door, although many people don’t call it that. If you are using the most recent version of Windows, then Microsoft more or less knows you are, and when you ask for an upgrade they can give you an upgrade designed just for you. And it could do whatever they wanted to do.

Mjo: Is that a risk that other countries have recognized?

Rms: Yes.

Mjo: And isn’t this then a big driver for them to ditch Microsoft?

Rms: Right, the question is on back doors that are used by terrorist organizations. A few years ago in India some programmers working on Microsoft Windows were accused of trying to put in a back door for Al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, in 1999 Microsoft put in a backdoor for another violent terrorist organization, the US government. So this is just one example of a non-free phenomenon.

Lots of non-free programs have malicious features. Because the developer has power, the developer can think “Aha, if I put in this malicious feature the users will be helpless. They may grumble, but they won’t go to the actual trouble of not using my program because that will be hard, that will be work. So they will just accept it, and now I can abuse them.” Temptation is there for lots of non-free software developers, because they have the power to put in a malicious feature; you can’t take them out. With free software that temptation doesn’t exist; it’s as ludicrous as trying to walk into a bank with a banana and rob the bank. I mean, you wouldn’t think they would give you any money, they would just laugh. So, there’s no temptation. Where guns give people that temptation because they could be used as real weapons, bananas don’t. It’s a real temptation, and many of them give in. There are probably others who don’t give in, but we don’t know who they are. We can never be sure.

Mjo: Do you think US citizens are more likely to labor under the oppression because Microsoft is an American company, as opposed to citizens in other countries, who recognize they don’t want a foreign government in their personal computer?

Rms: Well actually I don’t know if that is true, because the extent to which people recognize that varies from country to country. There are countries where people are very sensitive to the threat, to their national security, to using proprietary software, and there are other countries that hardly pay attention, perhaps because they are so thoroughly under the thumb of the US anyway. The country that is most concerned with this is Venezuela.

Mjo: Actually, there was a big article in the New York Times today about the oil, and how they are going to take over all the oil firms, nationalize them.

Rms: Well, good for them. But they had to fight to reclaim control over their own national state affiliated oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA). The US tried to arrange basically for the old management of PDVSA to shut it down, for the staff to refuse to operate it. And one thing they did was to ask the US company that managed the computer system for PDVSA to shut them down. So PDVSA is extremely aware of the threat of not using non-free software.

Mjo: So you really are talking about a war, a virtual war here.

Rms: It is like a war tactic, yes. Microsoft’s willingness to do these things, to put in back doors in on behalf of the US government, makes it a direct threat to the national security of any other country, to the security of any other society.

Mjo: This oil example is a good one, particularly for Venezuela.

Rms: Even in Venezuela you find people who resist migrating to free software.

Mjo: Why?

Rms: I really don’t know. Maybe you could detect the influence of Microsoft. It may partly be people who know how to do things with Windows, and thus their expertise is valuable. With free software they would be starting from zero - that doesn’t mean they couldn’t learn it, but they would have to be starting over again and they would lose their advantage.

Mjo: Yes, but I think this might be a big environmental issue. If computer systems control a lot of the resources that are in demand such as oil, then maybe not directly, but you could get a software vendor to essentially control the resource, through the computer system. Isn’t that true?

Rms: Yes and no. You wouldn’t find that happening in normal circumstances, because when you did that to a business, the business would get very angry at you. However, in unusual circumstances, such as the Venezuelan petroleum stoppage, then yes, they bring out these weapons. Yeah, it’s sort of like other weapons; in peacetime, the weapons are not being used, it’s only when it comes to a crisis, then somebody starts a war.

Mjo: And if we have a resource crisis, and there is a bunch of them going on all over the world…

Rms: You might find that happening. Countries might be attacking each other though their computer systems, through Windows for instance. But interestingly in Cuba, there isn’t the same sort of push to move to free software.

Mjo: I thought they moved to free software?

Rms: Well yes, the ministers decided to that they wanted to move to free software, but a lot of the professors in universities decided that they have no wish to ever move. They are using gratis unauthorized copies of Windows, and Microsoft can’t do anything to stop them, so as far as they are concerned, they feel safe.

Mjo: I don’t see the safety there.

Rms: Well, they haven’t exactly thought of it in terms of national security.

Mjo: Oh I see. They are kind of asleep.

Rms: Right, that’s a better way to put it. So they just think “I don’t want to change. I’m teaching the students how to use Windows; I know what to teach them. Why change?” The students in many cases want to move to free software - I gave a speech at the University of Havana, and the students said that my speech stirred up the water, and that they would move to free software but that the management of the university is not interested.

Mjo: Do you find that younger people in general would like to move to free software? I know you don’t like to talk in generalities.

Rms: Well they may be… I don’t’ know. I mean it may be a large fraction; I have not attempted to measure this however. I can tell you specific examples that I have heard, but to draw broad conclusions is hard.

Mjo: I was wondering if younger people might embrace the freedom, they might embrace the freedom more than an old geezer like me.

Rms: Some yes and some no. People react differently, people have different attitudes. There are people who look at the question in purely selfish terms, how they can make more money.

Mjo: Very interesting. Well what can ‘Joe User’ do to support free software?

Rms: When you buy a computer make sure that you choose hardware that fully supports free software.

Mjo: Isn’t that most computers?

Rms: It depends, there are a few areas in which that is not so. For instance many wireless devices do not work with free software. Many graphic accelerators don’t work with free software. There is a project to change that, to develop drivers for nVidia cards; maybe in a year they will have it working. But anyway, pay attention to the choice of hardware. And there are some pages in fsf.org that list the hardware that works with free software.

And then, install the free software on it. Get rid of non-free software. Defenestrate your computer. There are two ways to defenestrate your computer: you can throw Windows out of the computer, or the computer out the window.

Mjo: And by free software, do you recommend installing GNU with the Linux kernel?

Rms: That’s one, that’s the most common free operating system, but there are others. And ethically speaking the important thing is not which free software you are using, the point is to escape from proprietary software.

Mjo: Well, I have to say it is very inspiring listening to you. You have a powerful argument,

Rms: Every area in which we eliminate corporate domination may help put an end to corporate domination, which tends to be bad for the environment in general. I won’t say that that’s a very direct connection, and I won’t say that that putting an end to proprietary software will automatically fix the problem of extreme capitalism. But it can help.

Mjo: Can you think of any instance where implementing a free software solution could directly help the environment?

Rms: Directly, no. It’s not that common that your choice of software directly effects the environment, directly affects the amount of pollution or waste that you produce. Pollution is produced by processes.

Mjo: Is there anything else Richard?

Rms: Well there are a few websites that people should be aware of. There’s badvista.org, which explains why people should not use Vista. It’s a campaign against the use of Windows Vista. So even if you are going to run Windows, you shouldn’t run Windows Vista. Another website is DefectiveByDesign.org which is our campaign of protests against digital restrictions management. There’s also gnu.org which is the website of the GNU operating system, and explains the philosophy of free software. And there is also the site fsf.org, and that one has the free software directory, and it has the hardware resource pages to describe which hardware does and doesn’t work with free software. It also has a way to join the fsf as a member in order to fund our work.

A Laptop, Some Repeaters, a Sailboat, And a Quarter-Ton Server

Picking up from my last post, I was part of a discussion to determine how far you could push sites such as Freecycle and Craigslist, where people give and get items for free. Would people really treasure my junk? Here's my experience; what's yours?

Let's start with a Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop that I owned for about 6 years. I don't know the exact specs, but it was running GNU/Linux and everything except the battery worked. I posted it on Craigslist - I got 15 "I'll take its" in 10 minutes. The guy picked it up the next day for his ten year old daughter to use. I felt great.

Next one; ten circa-1992 Thinnet repeaters with BNC connectors. For those not on the floor laughing, nowadays these are about as useful as shouting "One!" and "Zero!" into two tin cans with a string between them. Posted on Freecycle and gone in 30 minutes, to a guy right down the street from me. He needed then to run some old system that was still in use.

Sailboat. This is no joke; Freecycle lets people asks for items as well, so one guy asked for a sailboat for his family to cruise around in. After taking considerable flak from the rest of the group for asking for such a 'luxurious' item, he got it! A week later, a guy offered a 14-foot sailboat that needed work, had a trailer with two flat tires, and he just wanted the thing out of his yard.

Finally, a 500 pound server; this one is my favorite. This thing was huge - three feet high, two feet wide, two feet deep - and solid metal. It took three men to move it with a handtruck. There were dozens of hard drives, backup power supplies - the works - but it was old. We had tried for over a year to get rid of it; it sat in the main hallway, sometimes being used as a table. Then I posted it on Freecycle.

Gone. In under a minute, to a guy that wanted to run an Internet site. He picked it up that day.

[one more, just got rid of a broken coffee maker using Craigslist in half an hour! Mark]

Disposing of Your Computer for Joy and Profit

There may come a time where you will have an extra computer or two lying around. In fact, that time is probably now, as about 75 percent of used computers are currently stockpiled in storage (read, your basement). What to do, what to do - you don't want to turn them into eWaste. Well, here are two methods that produce good results, let's call them the 'Joy' method and the 'Profit' method.

With the 'Joy' method, you give a gift (which is fun), someone receives one (which is also fun), and you both share the joy of giving the computer an extended life (more fun). One way is to use the 'free' section of Craigslist - just post your equipment, and folks will email you if they want it. The gift getter usually picks up the equipment; it will usually be gone within minutes, no matter what it is. You can also try freecycle as well; their motto is 'changing the world one gift at a time'. Make sure you use your local group, there are a lot of them.

The second method is the 'Profit' method. Reselling used gear is not something people (or companies) often think about, but it can be very lucrative - this guy made 300 thousand dollars selling 10 used Cisco cards. For starters, you can try eBay's rethink program, which specializes in computer equipment, or you can try and sell it yourself on eBay or Craigslist. Reselling used equipment can take more work than you think - you need to take pictures, have a good write up, process the payments, etc. - and is better suited for expensive high-end gear, very new equipment, lighter items (because of shipping), and parts (surprisingly valuable). Since there's probably a few computers hidden in your basement, why not give the planet, others, and yourself a little treat today?

Powerpoint and Virtual Conferencing - A Deadly Combination

Meetings - by phone, email, in person, or virtually - are all about communication, and almost anyone that deals with people regularly, as part of their job, will tell you that nothing beats face to face communication; you establish the relationship, pick up on the non-verbal cues, etc. The problem, of course, is that hauling bodies around the world and expensive, and getting more so. So, is webconferencing or videoconferencing the solution?

Not according to James Murray, a writer for Green Business News who cranks out a lot of insightful green IT commentary. This piece on webconferencing struck home, where James probes the murky depths of what it has to offer to the planet. In particular, he wonders why so many presenters go to the trouble of using it, when most just make a Powerpoint presentation of their ideas, then run through it via virtual meeting. As James says, the only collaboration happening is on the associated phone call, and that's just to make sure he is on the right slide and not surfing the web. Ha ha, the truth hurts, and it's funny too.

Now, maybe videoconferencing is better; I have not sat in on a videoconference like the one pictured above using Cisco's Content Delivery and Digital Signage, and I'm sure that would be cool. It might even convince a customer rep that they don't actually need to fly about the world and 'shake the hand of the flesh' to establish quality relationships. But if all we are doing is following up or negotiating with well established clients, skip the virtual dog and pony; it costs money, energy and bandwidth to use it, and may turn people off entirely from the technology.

Sun Micro Both In And On The Money

Dave Douglas is the VP of eco-responsibility at Sun Microsystems and was recently featured on CNN Money as well. Sun is one of those vendors that everyone has heard about but no one outside of IT really knows what they do; this is primarily because they have not catered to the consumer market (although they do have desktops for sale, some of them using the power of a night light). It's unfortunate because they have had a great green computing program for some time.

Sun's position on green computing is well thought out and deep - read their sustainability paper to get a sense of their profound strategy. They invented novel items like the black box, a trailer full of servers that you can cart around and provide computing where you need it. Sun also bought a tape archiving company a few years ago, based on the (very practical) fact that tape is far more energy efficient than digital archiving. And 55 percent of their employees don't even have an office, which saved them 67.8 million in real estate costs in 2006. Add those items to the fact that Sun recycles 99.7 of all their returned product materials in California, and you might get the sense that they are really doing something new.

You Needa UNEDA

UNEDA is the United Network Equipment Dealer Association, a trade group that specializes in reselling aftermarket networking equipment. That's the Prez at right. Apparently Cisco is hell bent on getting rid of these 'gray marketers' - obviously, reselling used kit cuts into profits margins. Apparently You can make big money doing selling off your old network gear - one guy netted 300K selling just 10 used Cisco cards.

I'm going to look into this, but it seems like Cisco is voiding the warranty on any new stuff you purchase from them, if you either add aftermarket kit (Cisco or no), or another vendor's equipment to your network. Another hardware/eWaste cycle? We shall see.

Be Still, My Beating Heart

...while I move you across Manhattan in the middle of a monsoon. A short one from Core77 about how they had to move their servers wrapped in plastic sheets across town. A breathless near miss, and who hasn't had them? The weather wasn't to blame for this particular move, but it made me think that we might be hearing quite a few of these stories soon, with changing weather patterns and all. Save the baby! Save the baby!

Droid May Kill Ape

Apparently it's more than my coffee maker than wants a certain amount of freedom, now the US military have proposed a new set of rules for having robots engage in combat. Bottom line - they can kill other robots, but not the humans that run them.

There's gray here; weapon 'systems' might include items such as standard issue rifles, and they could be targeted, as Lewis Page (from the Register) notes:

“If people or property isn't a military objective, we don't target it. It might be destroyed as collateral damage, but we don't target it. Thus in many situations, we could target the individual holding the gun and/or the gun and legally there's no difference.”

Which seems to suggest that a robot could decide, under Mr Canning's rules, to target a weapon system such as an AK47 for destruction on its own initiative, requiring no permission from a human. If the person holding it was thereby killed, that would be collateral damage and the killer droid would be in the clear. Effectively the robot is allowed to disarm enemies by prying their guns from their cold dead hands.

Rough Type wrote this up as well. Why do always have to go for all the marbles? Can we just experiment with rights for the Roomba for a while, before we start getting into the Ape-killing scenario. I'm sure Dr. Zaius is turning over in his grave.

What The Other Guy is Doing

The Series...

IBM sees green in environmental tech - Welcome to the party...

Dell starts cranking out cheap desktops for China - only $335 bucks will get you a fairly mid-range PC. Dubbed as a move against Lenovo and the like, I'm wondering if the Chinese can afford such luxuries? But hey, I would buy one, if I needed it. HP and VIA are in on the China desktop game as well.

On a similar note, HCL announced eco-friendly laptops for India. Greenpeace is on their case, but according to the article, they are RoHS compliant.

TI is into solar powered cellphones.

Blades are better. And cell phone chargers might meet with an untimely demise.

Chime In on EPA Server Efficiency Standard

The EPA has recently released several draft task reports on data center and server energy efficiency. The reports are posted on the Energy Star Web site and make for some fine, if technical, reading. The neat thing is that you can comment on these reports.The consumption of energy in data centers is a growing concern among industry and government officials; it's a regular black hole. In 2005, for example, U.S.-based data centers consumed 4.5 billion kilowatts hours, using over $3 billion in energy. This is according to a study funded by Advanced Micro Devices that was released earlier this year.

This is real democracy in action; if you are knowledgeable about these issues, EPA welcomes you to help populate this report. You can contribute data or information to this effort by contacting Eric Masanet at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The commenting period is relatively short (under two weeks) as the final report is due to Congress in June 2007, and according to Andrew Fanara, the program manager for EPA Energy Star, the team is not looking for a line-by-line critique of the draft. They want to know “if we missed anything significant, or caught or appreciated [all] the dynamics inside data centers that need special attention,” he said. Check it out, and see if they did.

Words From Dell

Matt James over at ecoGeek has a nice interview with Sean Donahue, spokeman for Dell, on their environmental program. There is some same old, same old here - Dell's Plant a Tree for Me program has been covered extensively - and there a quite a few 'forward looking statements' such as plans to integrate with EnergyStar 4 and moving towards 80 Plus power supplies. Ok, we're all doing that.

But there also some fresh ideas. Dell is starting to offer GNU/Linux on factory installs, which will help reduce obsolescence, and there are also some specific recommendations for the most efficient systems that Dell has to offer. These come mainly from the Optiplex and PowerEdge lines. Also, virtualization, a big resource saver, also figures in prominently to their program. Matt remained undecided on their program at the end and fell back to the 'if you don't need it, don't buy it' argument. Barring something truly groundbreaking from a hardware vendor such as, say, six year warranties on all new machines, we will probably be in a holding pattern for some time to come. It's bar raising time.

Food or Phone, Is That the Question?

The Independent has a fairly unnerving story as to how bees may be effected by the radiation given off by mobile phones and other electronic devices. The UK has already been hit hard by Colony Collapse Disorder, and there have been a few theories why this has occured.

The theory in the article is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing them from finding their way back to their hives. Sounds a little buzzy, but there is now evidence to back this up - a former German study found that that bees' behaviour changes near power lines, and this new study discovered that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Note that it doesn't prove that cellphones are directly responsible for CCD, but it does provide evidence that mobile phones are implicated in the death of hives.

This might turn out to be a devil's bargain - either give up the cell phones, or give up eating as the world's harvests fail. It's hard to get excited about either option, but if it comes down to it, I would rather eat than talk.

What's He Smiling About?

That's Vyomesh I. Joshi, the senior vice president in charge of Hewlett-Packard's printing division and he's happy because revenues, profit, and margins are all up at HP. Because, you see, people are printing out things like crazy. Not just anything mind you; according to the article, about half of what is being printed out is the Internet, turning bits and bytes in oil (ink) on vegetable (paper).

And just when you thought that dog had stopped hunting; is this phase two of the redesigning the bags that that ink comes in? Guys, you're leaving me breathless - I liked the energy reduction thing better.

The Internet, It's Junk

Apparently after four decades of getting the existing Internet moving, researchers have decided it's junk, and we need to build a new one. it seems a little ominous - according to the article "Industry is playing a bigger role this time, and law enforcement is bound to make its needs for wiretapping known." - so I guess the present Internet is unable to be used to its full economical or wiretapping potential.

The biggest hurdle, they admit, is switching over from the existing Internet to a new one, a veritable pole vault over the moon. Can you really just change a system as big as the Internet, or, for that matter, the environment? For the first one, I don't know, for the second, I hope so.

Land of Fire and Ice, and Data Centers

A data center is a facility used for housing a large amount of electronic equipment, typically computers and other communications gear. Although they vary in size, a big tech company (a Microsoft, a Google) might have well over 100,000 computers in a single location. Obviously, with all those machines in one place, they use a lot of power. And as the demand for power increases, companies are now on a worldwide seek to find the cheapest, most sustainable supply of go-juice to run their operations.

Not surprisingly, there aren't a lot of places left in the world that have enough surplus energy to run an extra 100,000 computers. Iceland, with its massive amount of clean, geothermal power, has recently popped up as a potential candidate and both Cisco and Microsoft are investigating the possibility of establishing server farms in the Land of Fire and Ice. Otherwise, options are limited - forget about running a data center anywhere in the UK, energy is far too expensive there. And Manhattan is out, as there is literally no more room on the roofs for cooling. Sioux Falls, South Dakota might be an option, or maybe Winston-Salem, North Carolina - oops, Google already took that last one.

Sustaining Virtual, Virtual Worlds

A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact. The 'world' is represented in the form of two or three-dimensional graphical representations of humanoids, called 'avatars', and you get to control one or more of them. Some popular virtual worlds include Second Life and the Sims, to name just a few.

There's been a lot of talk about how these worlds can best adapted for business practices, and there are some differing opinions. Melanie Turek of Collaboration Loop thinks that IBM's new Codestation in Second Life, a kind of virtual place for sharpening programming skills, might turn out to be a non-starter for a pretty simple reason; Codestation might be fun, but real work is not always so. And she questions, rightly so, whether workers are going go through the hassle of getting into a virtual world and manipulating clunky avatars do their work, when they could just do their work at their desk using traditional tools.

Not everyone agrees - rebuttal here - but it does seem silly to do what you could be doing on 'Earth' in a virtual world, particularly when the latter realm uses up real world resources, such as energy. In fact, Nick Carr reports that each virtual person uses as much energy as the typical Brazilian. Let's take it a step further to a ridiculous conclusion - should we use computers in a virtual world to login to another virtual world, and do our work there? What benefits would that acheive? Seems like we should stick to keeping most activities Earth bound as much as we can.

'Vista Capable' Machines May Not Be

The environmental impact of Microsoft's Vista operating system will be large; it is projected that over 10 million PCs will be scrapped as a direct result of upgrading to Vista, and the UK Green Party thinks it will create a Vista upgrade layer that will be identifiable by archaeologists. So, based on this and the limited additional functionality the OS provides, this TH is not changing to Vista any time soon.But there's more - turns out that some systems that are advertised as "Vista capable" (with the sticker) are in fact not capable of properly running Vista. A class is now suing Microsoft over this, alleging that the marketing around Vista was designed to deliberately mislead potential customers. Microsoft has already changed their stance, citing that a 'Vista capable' machine might not be able to run all of the versions (at least five) of Vista out there.

If you leaf through almost any PC catalog, you will discover that Vista is almost the sole choice for new PC systems. I don't know about you, but as Robert Cringely points out, you might find it maddening when you buy a system with a 'Vista Capable' sticker on it then discover your graphics or sound card won't work because the driver is not ready, or that it won't run the version with the 'cool' Aero interface. And when you consider that it took 1800 pounds of raw materials to make that computer, one must wonder what the environmental benefits are of vending systems that are obsolete as soon as they are off the shelf.

Laptops that can Change, from Asus

Laptops are notorious for not supporting basic hardware changes, like installing a new hard drive or replacing a video card. What that means is that the thing usually gets disposed of as a whole. However, Asus has come out with a laptop that can change, by supporting such standards like HDMI and ESATA. Unlike other laptops, you can replace the components in the C90 yourself with a minimum of tech savvy, and that's good news for the big E as it will prolong the machine's life.

By the way, you will notice that the word 'upgrade' is not mentioned in this writeup; that's because it's the wrong term when it comes to computer equipment. Give me a piece of equipment I can change to suit my needs, not one that is an supposed upgrade to something that is better. What could be better than having full control over your machine?

Win 10000 Bucks!

by entering (and winning) this design contest sponsored by Echelon, a maker of building control technology. I can't tell you how thrilled I am - if nothing else, contests definitely put something on the map - you don't see a lot of contests for the design of the next square wheel. And I bet there will be some neat ideas coming out of this one. I had often thought that computing should be integrated into smart building technology, let's see what they come up with.

Google Goes After the Data Center

Fascinating read here on the lengths that Goggle is going to make data center operations as efficient as they can be. There's a lot of gems here that I have never seen before, such the fact that running systems at non-peak levels is very inefficient, and it costs around $10 to $22 dollars per watt to build a data center, but only about 80 cents per watt to run it.
And there's also quite a bit of info on low level stuff, like how inefficient single threaded applications are, and how shared memeory models are difficult to keep up. Worth a readie.

Prisoners Smash Computers

Did you know that inmates in the US are being afforded the opportunity to recycle eWaste? The program has been running since 1994, through an arm of the government-run corporation UNICOR which opened its first eWaste 'business' in Florida. Since then, the company’s electronics recycling program has spread to other federal prisons across the country. In 2005 the company recorded $64.5 million in profits; inmates get paid between 23 cents and 1.15 per hour for their services. Dell got nipped a while ago for supporting the practice; they have since discontinued it.

What do they do? Well, when the program began, the job consisted of raising CRTs over their heads and smashing them down on metal tables to separate the glass from the recyclables. Ultimately inmates might want to reevaluate the risks, which are outlined in a excellent joint report entitled Toxic Sweatshops. In addition, the March 2007 issue of Prison Legal News has picked up on the practice, which suggests, amongst other things, that the program to just there to provide a labor intensive activity to keep inmates quiet. And, as the article reports, inmates are dying from the exposure to the toxic chemicals in the eWaste.

What is most striking is that a baseline has not been established for this type of activity; not in a workplace rulebook, not in a federally mandated guide, but in peoples' minds. Computers are hazardous, they are filled with poisonous chemicals and materials, and need to be treated like poisonous waste. Not like something that can be smashed down on tables by inmates.

Verdiem Goes Smart

Wouldn't it be great if your PC took energy consumption into its own hands? By this I mean it would turn itself on and off, shut down the monitor, and go to sleep automatically. Sure, there are a lot of products out that manage power consumption for computers (including OSes), but I'm talking about going one step further- the computer actually learns something about you. It knows you write in spurts, knows that you leave for lunch between 11:30 and 12 every day, knows you never show up on the weekend. It learns your habits so that it can reduce its own power consumption accordingly, without inconveniencing you.

Doesn't that sound, say, farfetched. In actuality, the technology exists and is being deployed to thousands of PC worldwide. Verdiem, the inventor, was at hand to explain in this interview. Kevin Klustner, CEO of Verdiem, explains the marvel.

So, tell us a little about Verdiem Kevin, the product, the business.

Hi Mark, thanks for inviting me to this interview. The company was founded in 2001 by an entrepreneur whose wife was a school teacher. In light of the consistently tight budgets facing the district, the founder's wife was upset by the amount of energy, and therefore money, wasted by school and district computers that were left on all night. The founder wrote a program to turn them off, and that's where it all began.

After developing the initial version of the software and seeing the success it had within the school district, Verdiem's founder saw a bigger business opportunity in managing power consumption of networked PCs for even larger organizations. That's how our main product, SURVEYOR (TM), got started. The development was initially funded by a grant from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance; since then, the company has grown significantly and further refined the product. To date, over 300,000 seats have been sold to schools, universities, government agencies and corporations across North America.

What does your product do? It's smart, right?

It's smart. SURVEYOR works by intelligently placing PCs into lower power settings when not in use. SURVEYOR’s Adaptive SmartProfile analyzes the behavior of the user. This information is used to control the power settings, ensuring that networked PCs are in right power state (on, hibernate, standby, etc.) at the right time. This maximizes energy savings without interfering with end-user productivity. SURVEYOR also features reporting capabilities to quantify savings.

And how much can I save? I assume energy is the big savings but there may be others.

Verdiem helps save energy, but as we all know, energy is money, and it is getting more expensive all the time, particularly in developing countries. A typical PC consumes 600 kWh of electricity a year. We actually provide a money back guarantee that you will save at least 10 percent off your computing energy bill, but we find that SURVEYOR consistently reduces consumption by about a third. That translates into a 3-6% annual reduction in total electricity consumption. Additionally, organizations also reduce associated CO2, greenhouse gas emissions. It averages about $20 per PC, per year.

Are there auxiliary services that you offer?

Yes, we offer pre and post-sale services for our customers, including Network Energy Analysis. This is for prospective customers who are interested in learning how much their PCs consume each day, and want to know how much energy and cost savings could be achieved with SURVEYOR. Verdiem will conduct a PC energy audit on a sampling of a prospect's PCs. At the conclusion of the energy audit the prospect receives a report detailing baseline costs and estimated savings. We also offer a Maintenance and Support package after purchase that includes free upgrades to any new releases that are made available during the maintenance and support period, and an annual Network Energy Analysis to ensure networked PCs are maximizing their energy savings.

What is the payback period and return on investment (ROI)?

Our pricing starts at $25 per PC – a one time licensing cost. The payback period averages about 15-18 months or less, depending on the cost of energy. However, we have agreements in place with several US utilities which provide various rebates to organizations that buy and install the software. Companies that take advantage of these rebates will see a significantly faster payback. For example, Southern California Edison offers a $15/PC rebate on SURVEYOR through their Express Efficiency program. Obviously, if you take advantage of this offer, the payback period drops significantly.

Is there a minimum or maximum organizational size that would benefit from your product?

Any organization can benefit from our software, but it really comes down to at what point the savings has compelling value for a particular organization. Typically Verdiem works with customers that have 5,000 PCs or more.

Are there other, non software related things that 'Joe User' can do to save energy?

Well, the easiest thing users can do is turn off their PCs at night, but countless studies and personal experience indicate that the majority of users don't. That's why software can make such a big difference.

What do you have planned for the future?

The confluence of several factors – the rising cost of energy, the political climate and the recognition of business leaders that implementing green initiatives delivers bottom line results – is creating a groundswell of interest in our technology, so managing the company's growth is priority number one. We are just beginning to expand internationally. Energy costs are higher and regulations are much tighter across Europe, so we see a huge opportunity there. In addition, we are in the process of investigating ways to wring energy savings out of other IT devices and peripherals, such as printers and copiers, so we can help our customers create even greater efficiencies.

Thanks for the info.

Thank you for the opportunity.

The Computer as Art, Friend

Do you throw beautiful things away? Probably not, because if you are like most you enjoy things that have taken some skill and time to create. Take, for instance, this Russian computer case pictured at top. Now, wouldn't you do as much as possible to fix that thing to keep it running? Or would you trash it after three years, the average life of a computer. Take a look at it again; unlike most, doesn't smashing that computer seem like a crime?

It's not a new idea, and we have covered these items of wonder before - bamboo mice and notebooks and monitors, for example, all wonderfully crafted. Fact is, no one likes ugly. Ugly gets destroyed, but treating your machine with respect will extend it's life. And the first step out of ugly is to establish a relationship - maybe start by giving your computer a name. Just try it, right now - take a piece of tape, write a name on it, and affix it to your machine. See if it changes your behavior, or your coworkers. If you want, you might try a laser etching to beautify your pal. We're waiting for the comments to roll in.

Thin Clients are the New Black...

... on the ledger sheet, that is. Because according to a new report, it turns out that using these "super slimmed down" alternatives to the PC could reduce your cost of ownership by up to 25 percent, as compared to an office equipped with traditional desktops.

Thin clients have been around for years; they are simply a computer that uses a central server for processing activities, where you send your keystrokes and mouse clicks to the server, and you see what is happening on a monitor at your desk. It's very much like having a desktop PC, except that thin clients typically have no almost no moving parts and little memory. This reduces their power consumption dramatically; according to the report, they can use up to 50 percent less energy than a typical PC.No word on the global impact of switching to thin clients, but if just the 10 million or so PCs in operation in the UK would be switched out for thin clients, businesses could save £78m a year and cut CO2 emission by 485,000 tonnes.

Save Your Watts With Emergy-C

Many electronic devices, such as cathode ray tubes, plasma screens, and OLEDs consume more energy when displaying certain colors. These devices use the three primary colors of light - red, green, and blue - and turn them on at varying intensities to produce a particular color. As a result, colors such as white which use all three primary colors turned on at full intensity cost a lot of money (and energy) to display. In the electronic world, white is expensive.

A fellow by the name of Jon Doucette took this idea and created a low wattage web palette that, according to article, only uses three or four watts more than a completely black screen. Starting with the EnergyStar wattage ratings, he came up with six colors that work well together. White is included in the palette but is it supposed to be used as an accent color. The savings do not apply to devices that have a constant backlight, such as LCD monitors, but it's a neat idea that is especially practical for handheld device and large web sites. Save your watts!

Microsoft Caves; Truly, Madly, Deeply

Call it grasping at straws. Call it the last hurrah. Heck, call it whatever you want the fact is a series of recent event suggests more than a little bit chomping out West.

Last's start with this one, Microsoft goes on the green offensive, claiming that the power saving features in Vista will 'massive' reduce carbon emissions. Uh huh. Maybe, tops, $20 per year per computer, and corresponding carbon. That's non-sneezable, but it will take a long time to payback the $400 for the OS at that rate. Ok, so the white paper says you can save between 23 and 46 Brit pounds per year - Rupert Goodwins called those numbers "fun and games"; let me repeat that. Rupert Goodwins called those numbers "fun and games".

There's a few more nails here, Adobe turning down the Vista updates, PC makers claiming Vista sucks (their words) , 'Soft loosening the license terms for virtualization. To badly cross metaphors, Vista is in a pit, digging a hole, while excavating a cave, while chipping away at a chasm. Truly. Madly. Deeply.

Greenpeace vs. Apple, Part Trey

So Greenpeace has come out with their third report on the evils that computer giants do. There's a few differences here; Apple is now all alone in the red, while Lenovo, that company no one ever heard of, has rocketed to the top of the list in 6 months. A few of the other guys switched positions as well.

Greenpeace is getting more involved in green computing and some items, such as their trouncing of Vista, I completely agree with. This electronic report thing I can't figure out though, particularly the Apple stance. GP has now approached Al Gore to do something about the problem as he sits on the board of Apple. Yes, Apple has a poor takeback program. Personally, I do find that to be a big minus for Apple. They are often compared to Dell's 'global recycling program', although, as Keith points out, Dell doesn't recycle in 30 some odd countries, particularly Latin America and the Caribbean.

Other folks are dissecting the report again, I don't need to do that. But here are my questions:

• Why were these manufacturers chosen?
• How is it possible that Lenovo, the big loser, could go from last to first place in 6 months? What does this say about the rating system?
• Why does GP continue to use language like "Sony-Ericsson... ...took up our demand ", suggesting that they are forcing these companies to do these things?
• When is this going to end?

US DOI is DOA

Well, it looks like the US Department of the Interior takes the booby prize for starting the first large scale switch to Vista. With over 70,000 PC users, each of them now requiring a machine now that needs a 1 Ghz processor, 1 GB of RAM, and and 400GB hard drive, we can be sure the eWaste will be piling up outside their offices. I guess I'm not too surprised; wasting taxpayer money on foolish equipment is almost the only thing the government seems to have the political will to fund at all, so it's just par for the course to switch to a ridiculous, wasteful operating system that provides no benefit to the employees. Rant, rant, rant, sorry guys at the DOI, you stink. No names in the article of course, but when I find out the name of the CIO at the DOI, you will get a special little mention in your own article.

Circular Reasoning on China's Circular Economy

China is drafting its first law on creating a “circular economy” that provides a legal framework for its national sustainable development strategy. Mao Rubai, chairman of the Environmental and Resources Protection Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), said the draft law will improve resource efficiency, and is expected to pass at the end of the year.

The handling of eWaste is included in the framework, of which China takes about 70 percent of the world's 'supply'.There's quite a few doubts that this policy will have any effect; one anon in the piece claims that "Many articles in the draft are very hard to put into practice in China", and that there is no "clear and tough punishment for those who violate the rules of the circular economy.” It's hard to disagree, but it's also the best course that can be steered.

Consider this - China accepted massive amounts of eWaste for years, mostly in an unregulated framework, and probably in an effort to garnish raw materials and provide jobs for the 10 million Chinese who process this stuff. With the Green Hammer coming down, they realize it's time to change, but even China can't stop a rocket on a dime. It's clear that there's going to be a transition period here, with big smiles and gladhanding as a raft of toothless laws and benign directives get put into place. It's just paying dues.

Foedus on Track with Virtualization

You probably know that most companies use computers to provide a variety of business-centric services that are critical to their success. These machines are known as 'servers'. Each server usually performs a single, specific duty; there's the email server, the accounting server, the print server, etc. Oftentimes each server runs on its own separate hardware, and is controlled and managed as a single unit. IT personnel really like this, as it makes each application far easier to troubleshoot and maintain than if everything was lumped together on one box.

A lot of that is beginning to change with a new technology that allows for several of these machines to be consolidated and run off a single computer. This process, known as virtualization, is still in its infancy, but will have tremendous ramifications for the environment. Foedus, a three year old Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based company, specializes in this process. Mike Reilly, CEO of Foedus, was happy to fill in the details.

According to Mr. Reilly, most servers are only run at about 5 to 12 percent utilization; that means that the processor, or CPU, is only doing work for that amount of time. In addition, servers use a large amount of electricity, much more than your typical desktop or home computer. How much? Mr. Reilly estimates that each server uses between $300 and $550 per month in electricity. So the idea here is clear; if there was a way to put a lot of these machines onto one piece of hardware, companies could (a) save a lot of energy, (b) buy a lot less hardware, and (c) throw away a lot fewer machines when they reach their end of life.

The savings are substantial; Reilly estimates that a typical project reduces the numbers of servers by a factor between 10 to 1, and 20 to 1. That turns into, on average, a 40 percent overall cost savings and an 80 percent reduction in hardware purchases. And the good thing is that almost all servers (95 percent) are candidates for virtualization. Only a few, typically running old software or 'legacy' applications, are not.

The downside is fairly minimal; personnel require some additional training in the virtualzation software. It is of course, new, so there may be some reluctance at implementing it corporate wide from the get-go. But, as Reilly says, the good thing is that you can try it out on a few servers and see how you like it. Virtualization is clearly a revolution, probably as big as the invention of networking, and it's sure to be a big hit for companies, and a low hit on the environment.