Re: The good, the bad, the insane

[Milan Bouchet-Valat <nalimilan club fr>]

Le jeudi 26 mai 2011 à 16:56 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams a écrit :
> On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 21:17 +0100, Martin Häsler wrote:
> > At least my "generalizations" are based on observations of family, 
> > friends and workplace and the
> 
> See my generalizations as above.  When I advise people to power-off
> rather than suspend [there are some cases where that is appropriate]
> they look at me like I'm stoned.
That's not the question: if people around you don't care about power
savings, that doesn't imply other people shouldn't be allowed to care.

> > fact that energy saving power extensions sell very well in Germany.
> > You, on the other hand, deduced from your lazy behaviour of never 
> > turning your desktop
> > off, that that is the norm.
> 
> Off course if you power *off* at a power-strip, etc... then not even
> Wake-On-LAN can get the machine to start-up for updates, maintainance,
> scheduled jobs, etc...  I insist that my 200+ users never power-off
> their workstations - and will continue to do so.
Completely orthogonal to our issue.

> > Please read this link: 
> > http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2007/nov/02/pulltheplugonstandby
> > before you think we are talking about peanuts here.
> 
> Yes, I'm aware of all that.  But in the end it is just bogus.  Power
> plants operate to match base-load requirements;  unplugging your 1W
> whatever doesn't reduce CO2 emissions or fuel consumption AT ALL, NONE,
> ZILCH.  The real-world doesn't work that way; the system is too layered
> with too many structural [possibly unavoidable] inefficiencies.
I'd like you to point us to real studies about that. 1W is 1W, and in
the end power plants follow consumption predictions, and in a country
where everybody does this like Germany, this does have an effect.

Anyway, the point is not to argue whether turning off computer is worth
the energy cost. The fact is, in some countries or in some groups of
users, power off is the norm. If we don't want to include that feature
as an easily discoverable command, we have to assume that we're forcing
them to suspend. So better have very strong reasons for that.


Regards