From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V7 #97 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Friday, April 20 2007 Volume 07 : Number 097 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] pour on the guilt [Scout82667@aol.com] [loud-fans] pour on the guilt ["outbound-only email address" ] Re: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt [2fs ] [loud-fans] posies in vista [dennis ] Re: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt [Jenny Grover ] Re: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt [2fs ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 06:45:10 EDT From: Scout82667@aol.com Subject: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt From an AOL feature article: Considering all of the packaging, plastic, paper booklets, fuel costs and everything else that goes into delivering your favorite artist's CD to the music store, it would seem that downloading is definitely the Earth-conscious way to go. And true enough, _downloaded music's ecological impact is half that of the store-bought variety_ (http://environment.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,1924434,00.html) . But when you start burning your downloaded music onto blank CDs, the Earth-friendly aspects of MP3s go out the door. According to _Digital Europe_ (http://www.digital-eu.org/) , a research project formed to study the sustainable development of technology, the energy used by your computer to burn music onto blank CDs is more than three times more harmful to the environment than plain old store-bought CDs. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 09:12:04 -0400 From: "outbound-only email address" Subject: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt Interesting article Mark, thanks. Unfortunately the original report from digital-eu.org doesn't seem to be available, so I can't comment on the experimental design and the validity of their assumptions. However this excerpt from the Guardian article suggests that AOL's article is conflating two unrelated points to arrive at the "more than three times more damaging" result: "But the study also noted some other important factors. It based its weight for downloading on the assumption that a broadband connection was used and that the music was never burned onto a CD at a later date. If this is the case, and a slower narrowband connection is used, the backpack leaps up to a whopping 5.5kg." That sounds like two things to me: * Narrowband is used, which means that your computer is on and drawing power for a longer period of time for the same amount of music. That's a dead loss vs. broadband. * It's burned to a cd, which means that your computer is on (and using nearly the maximum amount of power and producing nearly the maximum amount of heat) to put the data on a piece of plastic (which had environmental costs for manufacture, distribution, and you leaving your house to get it). Further, the way the example is structured (using 56 minutes as the duration of an album) strongly suggests to me that what they're talking about is burning one album's worth of songs to a single CDR. Burning a dozen or more albums' worth of MP3's to a single CDR has the same net environmental impact, but a much lower impact per album. In the case where you burn a single album to a single disc it makes intuitive sense that the value is much higher than buying a manufactured CDs, because many of the cost components are almost identical: manufacture and distro one piece of plastic (with nastier chemicals for the CDR), and then what's probably much less efficient process for putting the data onto a CDR vs. a pressed CD. 3x environmental impact doesn't sound totally unreasonable to me. But studies like this are of limited utility unless you know the assumptions they used. The Guardian article tells you that that digial-eu assumed an "album" is 56 minutes of music. You don't know the value they used for the speed of broadband, the speed of narrowband, what assumptions they made about the power use of the computer, how they assessed the environmental costs of manufacturing a CD, or a CD-ROM disc, etc.. I think it's fair to say that you don't know enough about the study (from either AOL or The Guardian's articles) to say whether it's meaningful at all. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 09:32:18 -0400 From: "Michael Bowen" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] little technical blurb I've never seen before Yes, but what is IT? MB ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 07:56:15 -0600 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt At Thursday 4/19/2007 07:12 AM, outbound-only email address quoted: >"But the study also noted some other important factors. It based its weight >for downloading on the assumption that a broadband connection was used and >that the music was never burned onto a CD at a later date. If this is the >case, and a slower narrowband connection is used, the backpack leaps up to a >whopping 5.5kg." This kind of thing sounds meaningless to me. It also assumes that the only reason the person has the computer powered up is to download the music. What if the computer would've been on anyway (the user doing nothing), or the user was surfing the web, reading e-mail, entering transactions in Quicken, playing a computer game, etc. at the same time as downloading? Latre. --Rog - -- FlasshePoint, yet another blog among millions: http://www.flasshe.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:16:40 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt On 4/19/07, Scout82667@aol.com wrote: > > From an AOL feature article: > > Considering all of the packaging, plastic, paper booklets, fuel costs and > everything else that goes into delivering your favorite artist's CD to the > music > store, it would seem that downloading is definitely the Earth-conscious > way > to go. And true enough, _downloaded music's ecological impact is half > that of > the store-bought variety_ > (http://environment.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,1924434,00.html) . > But when you start burning your downloaded music onto > blank CDs, the Earth-friendly aspects of MP3s go out the door. According > to > _Digital Europe_ (http://www.digital-eu.org/) , a research project formed > to > study the sustainable development of technology, the energy used by your > computer to burn music onto blank CDs is more than three times more > harmful to the > environment than plain old store-bought CDs. Which raises the obvious question concerning the energy used by your computer to *listen* to those downloaded files...not to mention that computers themselves have considerable environmental costs, particularly once they're obsolete. Anyway, this sort of thing strikes me as similar to feeling virtuous because you take the most direct route to work in your Hummer in order to save gas. There are so many other things people do that use, or waste, much more energy than buying or listening to CDs. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:18:16 -0700 From: dennis Subject: [loud-fans] posies in vista I don't think anyone has mentioned this, but I find two Posies songs in the 'sample' songs in my vista install (dell preloaded laptop): "I guess you're right" and "Love comes" curious, Dennis ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:19:02 -0400 From: Jenny Grover Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt outbound-only email address wrote: > Further, the way the example is structured (using 56 minutes as the duration > of an album) strongly suggests to me that what they're talking about is > burning one album's worth of songs to a single CDR. Burning a dozen or more > albums' worth of MP3's to a single CDR has the same net environmental > impact, but a much lower impact per album. What about filling up a DVD-R with MP3s? I've been doing that just to save space, and I do back up any MP3s I particularly value. Does it take any more energy resources to burn one DVD-R vs. one CD-R? Are the chemicals involved any nastier? Jen ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 16:08:56 EDT From: Scout82667@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt In a message dated 4/19/2007 11:25:38 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, jeffreyw2fs.j@gmail.com writes: There are so many other things people do that use, or waste, much more energy than buying or listening to CDs. Like getting into my internal combustion engined Cavalier and delivering pizzas on Friday and Saturday nights. I'm pure eee-vihl. Not only am I pouring CO2 and toxins in the air, I'm elevating the triglycerides of everyone in the Taylors/Greer, SC area, listening to my CD-Rs, as the plaque collects on my customers artery walls--All this not even mentioning the trees used in the pizza boxes) Screw the planet, - --Mark, lights big cigar and laughs maniacally p.s. Walgreens has these little speakers that plug into your i-Pod that run on two AAA batteries as an impulse buy by their registers--4.99 each. I like this thing--I can plug it on the end of my Shuffle and put it in my pocket and walk the dog instead of wearing the headphones. Thought I'd give a heads up. Then, when the batteries go, you can promptly chunk them in your garbage can! ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:03:43 -0400 From: "outbound-only email address" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt Jen: > What about filling up a DVD-R with MP3s? I've been doing that just to > save space, and I do back up any MP3s I particularly value. Does it > take any more energy resources to burn one DVD-R vs. one CD-R? Are the > chemicals involved any nastier? Semi-educated guess - it's probably roughly the same and almost certainly much better than making 8 CD-Rs or whatever the equivalent is. You do run the laser at burning power longer to make a DVD than a CD, so it takes a bit more power for each one. I don't know how much difference there is in the dye compounds, I'd guess not very much; maybe none. If I had a device that would play DVD-Rs with MP3s on them I'd definitely go that route myself. np GB 3 _Circlework_ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 16:11:34 -0700 (PDT) From: zoom@muppetlabs.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] little technical blurb I've never seen before > Yes, but what is IT? > > MB The thing in the box, from BELLE DE JOUR. Next question: "What Is Hip?" Andy "Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me." - --Alfred Lord Tennyson ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 16:12:04 -0700 (PDT) From: zoom@muppetlabs.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] little technical blurb I've never seen before > Yes, but what is IT? > > MB The thing in the box, from BELLE DE JOUR. Next question: "What Is Hip?" Andy "Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me." - --Alfred Lord Tennyson ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:15:34 EDT From: Scout82667@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] little technical blurb I've never seen before In a message dated 4/19/2007 9:36:28 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, bowenm@gmail.com writes: Yes, but what is IT? MB You can read about it at oasiscd.com. Supposed to minimize distortioin and make an exact copy of the source. That glass cutter I had as a kid from Ronco was single-speed. Made nice dangerous glassware from bottles that I cut my lip on one '70s Chirstmas ("Cuts lips so deep, the in-laws will never come back!"). "Hey good lookin', we'll be back to pick you up later!" (as soon as I stop the profuse bleeeding!) - --Mark, who likes hugging people, not trees, but still like trees--and I DO use rechargeable batteries.... ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 19:47:22 -0700 From: "Michael Mitton" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt As long as we have this excess heating floating around in our CD players, this seems to be a perfectly awesome way to make use of it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7879970@N06/463078490/ I wasn't planning on buying NIN, but after this...... In other news, my latest CD shipment from Amazon failed to arrive as scheduled today, and upon checking "track package" at UPS, I was informed that it was sent out for delivery at 10:52 AM, and then at 1:25 PM it said "PACKAGE DESTROYED". The more I imagine what could possibly have happened, the funnier it gets. mm On 4/19/07, outbound-only email address wrote: > Semi-educated guess - it's probably roughly the same and almost certainly > much better than making 8 CD-Rs or whatever the equivalent is. You do run > the laser at burning power longer to make a DVD than a CD, so it takes a bit > more power for each one. I don't know how much difference there is in the > dye compounds, I'd guess not very much; maybe none. If I had a device that > would play DVD-Rs with MP3s on them I'd definitely go that route myself. > > np GB 3 _Circlework_ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 22:13:24 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pour on the guilt On 4/19/07, Michael Mitton wrote: > > As long as we have this excess heating floating around in our CD > players, this seems to be a perfectly awesome way to make use of it: > > http://www.flickr.com/photos/7879970@N06/463078490/ > > I wasn't planning on buying NIN, but after this...... Admittedly, that is a pretty cool design feature... In other news, my latest CD shipment from Amazon failed to arrive as > scheduled today, and upon checking "track package" at UPS, I was > informed that it was sent out for delivery at 10:52 AM, and then at > 1:25 PM it said "PACKAGE DESTROYED". The more I imagine what could > possibly have happened, the funnier it gets. I imagine your fellow residents of Deadly Poisonous Gas Boulevard have similar problems... - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V7 #97 ******************************