Re: A case for Dual System Cabinets

On Tue, 25 Dec 2007 09:59:00 -0600, "philo" <philo@privacy.net> wrote:

Sorry, following up via your post because my feed doesn't see the
original. :)

>"Htnakirs" <htnakirs@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:2abda83e-c0a7-4499-aac2-b1340f782fdb@i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
>> Consider the PC that is bought by the average person :
>> Intel or AMD based CPU,
>> Motherboard,
>> RAM
>> Hard disk
>> CD/DVD drive
>> 15" monitor
>> Keyboard, mouse, speakers

<snipped inaccurate figures>
>> A discrete graphics card that can offer better performance than the
>> onboard variant will consume upwards of 75 Watts. So for such systems
>> the total intake is 225 W.

I'd have to disagree, my partner has a system meant for gaming, it has
2 highend (or used to be) 8800GTS graphics card running in SLI mode
with an overclocked E6300 processor. If I didn't remember wrongly when
we did this test, the actual system consumption when deliberately
loaded up, was than 250W. For the heck of it, we hooked it up to a
350W PSU and it worked fine. The 19" LCD consumes 50W max if I didn't
read it wrongly. So that's 300W max.

Anyway, your assuming of 225W for an *average* system is likely way
off given that's pretty much what a highend gaming set consumes. I've
people mentioned as low as 120~150W for an average system with
graphics card. So if you remove the graphics card, I'll say the system
would likely use 90W to 120W on a modern set up.

I'll see if I can check on an average config later in the day since
the meter isn't with me now.


--
A Lost Angel, fallen from heaven
Lost in dreams, Lost in aspirations,
Lost to the world, Lost to myself

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 03:58:28 -0500, kony <spam@spam.com> wrote:

Sorry again for the hijack, his posts are not showing up on my feed at
all. :(

>On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:14:42 -0800 (PST), Htnakirs
><htnakirs@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Lost angel:
>>
>>The power figures have been collected from various online sources. And
>>15" monitor was a CRT which is still more popular in my country.

On a quick search, a 15" CRT consumes about 60~70W so it's comparable
with the 19" LCD example I gave.

>>I agree that power utilisation changes with the load. But, the point
>>is that even when dealing with less intensive work a lot of power is
>>lost, because the components in modern systems are inherently power
>>hungry. Which is why there is the need for a power miser system within
>>the same cabinet to be used when dealing with loads that do not
>>require the power of the "main" system.

I don't think so your assumption is correct. If you add in
sleep/standby modes for drives, turning off the system when not doing
anything useful, all the advance sleep states for modern CPU, they do
not really consume that much more power at low loads.

Bear in mind, the cost of a second system, especially a niche product
like the VIA ITX/mini-ITX stuff are likely to far outweight the cost
of a better mainstream system, in both monetary and ecological sense.

>>Please inform what the dual SLI system working on when the 250W
>>consumption was measured.

Dragothic in 3DMark05 or 06, with both core loaded with Prime95.
Basically it was the highest power draw situation we could find with
normal applications. In actual gaming, the draw was lesser.

To back up my figures, you can see these
E6600 full load 199W (at the wall, so actual consumption is around
160W) with a really power hungry 1900XTX
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/..._64/page3.html


Overclocked Pentium-D 950 with X1950XTX, 256W actual draw, this
probably represent the upper evenlope for any single chip single gfx
system because the has a TDP higher than any current Intel C2D/C2Q or
AMD X2/X4 chips
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article28-page4.html

And since the folks at SPCR are obsessed with low power and quiet
system, take a look at this AMD X2 system they reviewed at 105W AC
power
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article756-page7.html

>>And the mini ITX
>>motherboard makes it possible to include it in the same cabinet,
>>probably screwing it onto a hinged side panel (not slideable). Other
>>details need to be worked out.

Can do the same thing with the Hiper system reviewed by SPCR, it would
have more juice than the mini-ITX for sure. Of course the draw back
is, no discrete graphics card but the K9NGM2 uses an nVidia 6150 which
is good enough even for light gaming.

At 105W AC power, it means the system actual draw is likely around
75~85W, which is only some 60W more than your proposed 28W mini
system.

According to your estimate figures, this means you save maybe Rs520 a
year in power annually. If you expect the computational power of the
miniITX to last 5 years, you are going to be disappointed. Crazy web
designers pump increasing amount of flash content, as well as dynamic
scripted content, it takes quite a bit of time for even my older P3 to
render a page. The miniITX will choke in another 2 years or so.

Giving you 3 years, your proposed second system needs to cost no more
than Rs1600, even with 5 years, Rs2600. Assuming Rs means Indian
Rupees, this means it cannot cost more than US$65 at current rates.
Sorry but I doubt you can get a VIA miniITX system for that kind of
price. You're better off like I expect, with a normal full fledged
system both economically and ecologically.

If environment conservation is the more important objective, then join
the DINK (Dual Income No Kids) or DIOK (Dual Income One Kid) movement.
Having less humans in the long run cuts down on every single
ecological damage than any handwaving international protocols. This
public service message goes out to everybody, not just Srikanth :)

--
A Lost Angel, fallen from heaven
Lost in dreams, Lost in aspirations,
Lost to the world, Lost to myself

"Htnakirs" <htnakirs@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:2abda83e-c0a7-4499-aac2-b1340f782fdb@i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> Consider the PC that is bought by the average person :
> Intel or AMD based CPU,
> Motherboard,
> RAM
> Hard disk
> CD/DVD drive
> 15" monitor
> Keyboard, mouse, speakers
>
> If the power requirements of these were calculated: (the values that
> are not relevant to the discussion are marked X)
>
> CPU : 75 Watts ( conservative average)
> Motherboard : 50 Watts (conservative average)
> RAM : 15W (7.5 Watts per module X 2.)
> Hard Disk : 10 W for read write and 5 Watts for idle. ( this is for
> desktop hard disks of 80 GB)
> CD DVD Drive :20 W for spin up/5 W for operating
> 15" monitor : X Watts (75 W is a good approximate)
> keyboard mouse speakers : X watts
>
> The relevant total power requirement would be : 75+50+15+10 = 150.
> (assuming that the CD drive is rarely used)
>
> Motherboard power as mentioned above is conservative since most
> presently available boards bundle powerful graphics chips onboard
> which increase the power intake.
> A discrete graphics card that can offer better performance than the
> onboard variant will consume upwards of 75 Watts. So for such systems
> the total intake is 225 W.
>
> At 150 W per hour, assuming 4 hours of operation per day, the total
> daily power consumed is 600W. In a month, this is 18KW. At the average
> cost per KW of Rs. 5, the monthly spend is Rs. 90. Annually this is Rs.
> 1080 or 1100 approx. With a graphics card, the annual expenditure is
> Rs. 1350.
>

<snip>

Last year I did some actual power measurements on a P-III I was bench
testing...
and was surprsed to see that it was only drawing about 50 watts when
idling...
though with full cpu usage would go up to about 100 watts or so.

I'm sure a dual core cpu doing several "heavy" tasks would draw more power
of course.

Anyway I have two main machines that I use on a daily basis...
by todays standards they'd probably be considered low end...but they do the
job for me.
I use KVM switch and normally only have one machine on...
but if it's doing a "heavy" task...just turn on the other machine and use
that.

About 90% of the time ...only one machine is on...
but the other is there any time I need it.
Since they were pretty much built from other people's cast-off parts...
It's kind of a "poor-mans" dual cpu machine.

I have a good job and could really afford to buy just about any machine I'd
care to get...
but the ones I have work just fine...so have not bothered to get anything
better.

The money I save goes to one or two good vacations a year...

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:14:42 -0800 (PST), Htnakirs
<htnakirs@gmail.com> wrote:

>Lost angel:
>
>The power figures have been collected from various online sources. And
>15" monitor was a CRT which is still more popular in my country.

Even a low end 25W video card is easily double the
performance of integrated video. Yes a high powered gaming
video card can consume 75W, but remember that even those
that consume a lot, consume significantly less when not
gaming.


>
>I agree that power utilisation changes with the load. But, the point
>is that even when dealing with less intensive work a lot of power is
>lost, because the components in modern systems are inherently power
>hungry. Which is why there is the need for a power miser system within
>the same cabinet to be used when dealing with loads that do not
>require the power of the "main" system.
>


I disagree. remember that the Via motherboard chipset is
not especially optimized for efficiency, while the processor
is but because it has such low performance it will be
operating at a substantially higher % of max load
continuously, while other reasonably efficient processors
would operate at very low load and thus mostly idling with
much lower than average or peak power consumed.



>Please inform what the dual SLI system working on when the 250W
>consumption was measured.
>
>Kony:
>Thanks for the CF to IDE converter idea. I was not aware of that
>option, and that converter is not easily available here. Getting the
>system to boot in USB is admittedly quite complicated when dealing
>with XP. In Linux, it is more easier.

Even then in Linux, it is much slower. A converter is not a
hard thing to acquire, many of the Chinese/et al
distributers will ship globally for low total cost.


>I have not yet tried the VIA system I mentioned. Though I did read
>that they are quite weak in comparison with even the older generation
>CPUs of Intel and AMD. VIA Mini ITX products are not available easily
>here, and I am awaiting a response from the main distributor. But,
>reading the spec sheet of the EPIA SN series (http://www.via.com.tw/en/
>products/mainboards/motherboards.jsp?motherboard_id=550), I did
>believe that it would suffice for the work at hand.


Sometimes yes it would suffice, but then you may come upon a
situation where even when what seems a modest task, is
terribly slow because of low performance ceiling.

There is more performance to be had and a more reasonable
modern compromise by underclocking contemporary Athlon64 or
Core2 architectures. Remember we can't look at peak CPU
power if we are talking about lower processing demand
workloads, rather we'd have to assume the higher performing
processors are far more often idling with significantly
lower power usage.

A Pentium 3 based system with optimized component choices,
including a SSD or CF-IDE based drive, can operate off a 50W
PSU. A modern system with similar concessions including
integrated video can operate off a 100W PSU - if only there
is enough current on the 12V rail.

Someone doesn't need to make these compromises though,
consider for example a Geforce 7600GT video card. In
regular 2D use it may consume no more than a dozen watts,
and under 35W in gaming. If one wishes to further reduce
it's power consumption they have both the easy way and
advanced way to make that happen. The easy way is use a
software (or bios editing tool to permanently set) for lower
core and memory speeds, which is a linear decrease in power
consumption. The more advanced way would be to reverse
engineer the power regulation subcircuits to force a lower
voltage, and some testing to determine what the best
voltage:frequency tradeoff is. Taking above example a
Geforce 7600GT should still be able to offer over twice,
possibly over 3 times the performance of integrated video
while consuming under 15W when runnning in an optimized
voltage:frequency configuration.

The problem with Via alternatives is they force a very low
performance level. IF that performance level were ok then
nobody would have bought their higher performing system,
they would have just kept using their old system instead of
replacing it with parts that "might" have almost the power
consumption figures you mentioned.


>And the mini ITX
>motherboard makes it possible to include it in the same cabinet,
>probably screwing it onto a hinged side panel (not slideable). Other
>details need to be worked out.
>
>By the way, which model of Via did you have problems with?
>
>

CLE266 based PCChips board with Via C3 processor. I forget
the model number. While the performance was so low I would
definitely not use it for regular tasks, I had hoped to use
it for a fileserver but after all kinds of driver hacks,
bios changes, and even direct chipset register changes via
utilities, it still couldn't provide normal PCI throughput
without corrupting data.

I think in a few years Via chipsets plus CPU boards will be
a good choice. After they learn a bit from mistakes and
most things sit on the PCI Express bus or are southbridge
integrated. Even then, modern alternatives from other
sources still have a good tradeoff of only slightly higher
power consumption with much more performance potential if
only one does not run that alternative at the max frequency
and voltage possible.

Many systems of yesteryear can be overclocked and
undervolted to result in surprising decrease in power used,
and even better, it can be done with no addt'l cost to buy
new equipment, no new cost for another OS license (if it
runs windows), and no manufacturing pollution or landfill
waste from throwing away old parts to replace with low
performing newer ones.

There is likely some system within 100 mi. of anyone who
wants one, which was either abandoned or sold cheap because
it has low performance like a newer Via CPU/chipset based
system would.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips kony <spam@spam.com> wrote in part:
> Even a low end 25W video card is easily double the performance
> of integrated video. Yes a high powered gaming video card can
> consume 75W, but remember that even those that consume a lot,
> consume significantly less when not gaming.

Sure, but remember these numbers are for the card alone, and
have to be multiplied by a factor reflecting the PSU inefficiency.

It may be that a low end vidcard has better video performance
than integrated graphics. That might matter for gaming and
3D activities where the GPU functions shine. But it makes no
detectable difference at 2D like desktop or websurfing.

I used to be very concerned about integrated graphics spoiling
desktop performance by stealing bandwidth. Then I tested my
new Xmas present: 2.44 GB/s increases to 2.50 with a separate
vidcard. Round-trip latency goes from 82 to 81ns. I'm very
underwhelmed and doubt I'll buy a vidcard for it.

The point is: times change! 1024x768x32bpp@60Hz is 189 MB/s.
That was a lot on older chipsets like PC100 that could only
burst 400 MB/s. Modern dual channel DDR2 is more like 6.4 GB/s,
and hardly notices the hit that once was crushing.

-- Robert

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:43:04 -0800 (PST), Htnakirs
<htnakirs@gmail.com> wrote:

Again, following up to Kony's post because Srikanth's doesn't show up
on my feed.

>>Everyone will disagree with the above. Reducing population is not the
>>same as reducing wastage. The largest polluters are not the most
>>populous nations.

It works out pretty much the same, if not worse. 1 billion people
responsible for 1x pollution today has the same effect as 100 million
in other country responsible for 10x today. But in the long run, that
1 billion people will eventually, as a natural progression of
"economic development", increase their ecological damage to 2x, 3x and
adding more people to boot.

Furthermore, ecological damage is NOT just about wastage. The Earth
can only support that many people, every single person needs some
space and food at least. That space has to be taken from somewhere,
whether you clear forests to build more houses or cut more trees/blast
more rocks to build taller ones. The food has to be grown/harvested
from somewhere too.

Nobody can deny that reducing/limiting human population on earth is
the only true long term solution to ecological damage. But it's also
one that least raised because of the controversial nature. It's a lot
easier trying to tell people to bring their own bags to shop, to cut
down on car usage, to use energy efficient products, than to tell them
to curb animal selfish gene instincts and not have kids.

For those who want kids, please adopt one. There are tens of thousands
of orphans who could do with and would appreciate good parents and a
home, unlike many "native" brats nowadays. You will change the life of
a human for the better as well as reduce a human's lifetime load to
the environment.


>>In the SPCR link about the Hiper PC you provided, the damning figure
>>is the 82 W that the system consumes when idle.

If you're going to be energy efficient, you're going to be turning OFF
that system when it's doing nothing. Or at the very least, put it on
standby. Not let it sit idle for hours ;)

>>I doubt if rendering a page will be an issue if one has a broadband
>>link. Flash loaded files take longer to be transmitted over the line,
>>and rendering can occur only after that, so probably the CPU is not
>>the bottleneck in that case.

In this instance, you are 100% wrong in your doubt. Flash files only
provide the data on what's to be shown. The local system, aka your
computer, has to do the work of taking the data and processing it to
display what's intended. They don't magically animate themselves or
play music without needing processing ;)

If you want hard facts, I cite my examples from experience on an old
P3 system, a single core A64 and a dual core C2D, all 3 on the same
10Mbps broadband connection at home, all using 100Mbps Ethernet
connections because my switch's only 100mbps =P

--
A Lost Angel, fallen from heaven
Lost in dreams, Lost in aspirations,
Lost to the world, Lost to myself

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 23:51:19 GMT, Robert Redelmeier
<redelm@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:

>In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips kony <spam@spam.com> wrote in part:
>> Even a low end 25W video card is easily double the performance
>> of integrated video. Yes a high powered gaming video card can
>> consume 75W, but remember that even those that consume a lot,
>> consume significantly less when not gaming.
>
>Sure, but remember these numbers are for the card alone, and
>have to be multiplied by a factor reflecting the PSU inefficiency.

True, but if we're going to be THAT technically correct,
anyone using a faster system will get their work done sooner
and turn off the system sooner, leave the room sooner
turning off the lights sooner, etc.


>
>It may be that a low end vidcard has better video performance
>than integrated graphics. That might matter for gaming and
>3D activities where the GPU functions shine. But it makes no
>detectable difference at 2D like desktop or websurfing.

It doesn't have to. All it has to do is be such a small
difference in power consumption that it is a bad place to
focus. However modern generation cards do make a difference
in video decoding, offloading as much of the power used by
the CPU as they use themselves, if a lower end card is
chosen.


>
>I used to be very concerned about integrated graphics spoiling
>desktop performance by stealing bandwidth. Then I tested my
>new Xmas present: 2.44 GB/s increases to 2.50 with a separate
>vidcard. Round-trip latency goes from 82 to 81ns. I'm very
>underwhelmed and doubt I'll buy a vidcard for it.

I'm not trying to pimp video cards, just saying that taking
the great modern advances in PCs and castrating the whole
thing one piece at a time is kinda wasteful, we might as
well have just kept an older system because if we had, there
wouldn't be the higher numbers for power consumption being
listed.

So it goes for other parts as well, that each one could be
discounted if we only limited our uses to those which didn't
need more performance, but that's a bit counter to the idea
of a PC, it's strength being it's versatility.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips kony <spam@spam.com> wrote in part:
>>have to be multiplied by a factor reflecting the PSU inefficiency.
>
> True, but if we're going to be THAT technically correct, anyone
> using a faster system will get their work done sooner and turn
> off the system sooner, leave the room sooner turning off the
> lights sooner, etc.

AFAIR, PSU efficiency is ~50%. 70% for some of the best units.
No way a faster computer gets total work done that much faster.

> It doesn't have to. All it has to do is be such a small
> difference in power consumption that it is a bad place to focus.
> However modern generation cards do make a difference in video
> decoding, offloading as much of the power used by the CPU as
> they use themselves, if a lower end card is chosen.

This might apply if vid.decoding were the main task of the comp.
Like watching DVDs. But if it is, a dedicated DVD player is
certainly lower power.

> I'm not trying to pimp video cards, just saying that taking the
> great modern advances in PCs and castrating the whole thing one
> piece at a time is kinda wasteful, we might as well have just
> kept an older system because if we had, there wouldn't be the
> higher numbers for power consumption being listed.

No, older systems have larger feature sizes and needed higher
voltages at lower clocks. Per unit computation, modern CPUs are
_far_ more efficient. You should have seen a 5V Pentium 60!

Undervolting and underclocking is alive and well in the mobile
[laptop] market. Get one of those CPUs. Skipping the GPU
is a similar trade-off. Save 15W of power even at idle,
but lose some capability, especially 3D games. Notice the
low-end video cards are disappearing.

> So it goes for other parts as well, that each one could
> be discounted if we only limited our uses to those which
> didn't need more performance, but that's a bit counter to
> the idea of a PC, it's strength being it's versatility.

Sure. Just add the vid.card if/when you need it.

-- Robert

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 05:32:38 GMT, Robert Redelmeier
<redelm@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:

>In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips kony <spam@spam.com> wrote in part:
>>>have to be multiplied by a factor reflecting the PSU inefficiency.
>>
>> True, but if we're going to be THAT technically correct, anyone
>> using a faster system will get their work done sooner and turn
>> off the system sooner, leave the room sooner turning off the
>> lights sooner, etc.
>
>AFAIR, PSU efficiency is ~50%. 70% for some of the best units.
>No way a faster computer gets total work done that much faster.

Actually typical efficiency might be 70%, better units now
approaching 85%.

Yes a faster computer really is at least 3X faster than the
Via processor based ones that were suggested. They give up
all hopes of performance in order to achieve low power.



>
>> It doesn't have to. All it has to do is be such a small
>> difference in power consumption that it is a bad place to focus.
>> However modern generation cards do make a difference in video
>> decoding, offloading as much of the power used by the CPU as
>> they use themselves, if a lower end card is chosen.
>
>This might apply if vid.decoding were the main task of the comp.
>Like watching DVDs. But if it is, a dedicated DVD player is
>certainly lower power.

?? A dedicated video player is not lower power than an
underclocked low-end video card. Certainly it is lower
power than the entire PC would be, but then we get back to
an idea in my last post that part of the beauty of a PC is
it's versatility and we can't just subjectly subtract
features and have it apply to anyone's needs except that
subject.



>
>> I'm not trying to pimp video cards, just saying that taking the
>> great modern advances in PCs and castrating the whole thing one
>> piece at a time is kinda wasteful, we might as well have just
>> kept an older system because if we had, there wouldn't be the
>> higher numbers for power consumption being listed.
>
>No, older systems have larger feature sizes and needed higher
>voltages at lower clocks. Per unit computation, modern CPUs are
>_far_ more efficient. You should have seen a 5V Pentium 60!

You are missing the point, I am not talking about ancient
processors, I am talking about equivalent performance to
what the OP had proposed as a low powered system. That can
be had with a Pentium 3 era system for example.

In other words, if one didn't need the performance or
features of their modern system, they wouldn't have bought
it, would still have the old system which has more similar
power usage as the OP's proposed system, without the waste
of buying two more systems in money, time, pollution in
manufacturing and later landfill.



>
>Undervolting and underclocking is alive and well in the mobile
>[laptop] market. Get one of those CPUs. Skipping the GPU
>is a similar trade-off. Save 15W of power even at idle,
>but lose some capability, especially 3D games. Notice the
>low-end video cards are disappearing.

I think in the laptop market it is mostly a function of
cost, that integrated video saves a lot more on a laptop
than on a PC where it can be bought for under $20 if one
keeps an eye out for deals.

Robert Redelmeier wrote:

>I used to be very concerned about integrated graphics spoiling
>desktop performance by stealing bandwidth. Then I tested my
>new Xmas present: 2.44 GB/s increases to 2.50 with a separate
>vidcard. Round-trip latency goes from 82 to 81ns. I'm very
>underwhelmed and doubt I'll buy a vidcard for it.

Reminds of of when I was made fun of because I didn't really care that
the new motherboard that I was considering didn't have the new
Ethernet controller that didn't "steal bandwidth" from the PCI bus.

I asked, "What is the PCI bus for? To sit there looking pretty or to
provide bandwidth to devices that need it?" and "How much of my PCI
bandwidth is my Ethernet connection, usually limited by a ~1Mb/s
Internet connection, using-up anyway?"

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:43:04 -0800 (PST), Htnakirs
<htnakirs@gmail.com> wrote:

>Thanks for all the feedback/suggestions.
>
>kony wrote:
>
>> In other words, if one didn't need the performance or
>> features of their modern system, they wouldn't have bought
>> it, would still have the old system which has more similar
>> power usage as the OP's proposed system, without the waste
>> of buying two more systems in money, time, pollution in
>> manufacturing and later landfill.
>>
>
>Kony : I am evaluating the possibility that a person who needs the
>power of a modern system for some work (gaming), uses the same system
>for work that can be achieved by older systems (browsing, document
>creation etc). It is not my desire to use the Via system for gaming or
>other intensive purposes. I think there is a strong possiblitity that
>most of the high end systems being used by gamers, are operated most
>of the time for chatting or document creation.

You may be right, but IMO the percentage of systems that are
these high-end gaming systems is fairly small. The average
system is sold by an OEM and uses integrated video.



>Everyone will disagree with the above. Reducing population is not the
>same as reducing wastage. The largest polluters are not the most
>populous nations.
>In the SPCR link about the Hiper PC you provided, the damning figure
>is the 82 W that the system consumes when idle.

.... which isn't necessarily a damning figure. What happens
if someone doesn't find using the PC enjoyable? They may
read - turning on a 60W light or a couple of 14W CCFL
lights, or cook and eat, consuming more power, or go out -
driving somewhere, or watch TV... the list goes on. You're
talking about only a minor reduction in power usage while
there are so many other far more significant areas of power
wasted. These areas also include the power to make,
distribute, sell, deliver an additional system worth of
parts. The "green" idea is seldom to buy more stuff that
consumes power with the idea only the newer would be used
enough to make a difference and then ignoring the other
power usage aspects.

Perhaps a better idea would be that when the present PC is
due for replacement then it is replaced with one more energy
conservative, but many people replace to see a performance
benefit - if it were only the matter of a failed part it
could be nearly as conservative to just replace the one
failed part.

Don't forget about the cost. Not just as a deterrent to
buying the 2nd system but in that the more money one spends,
the more society has to work on average to pay for these
things, which also increase energy usage from the workplace,
travel, and often a supporting infrastructure like
restaurants... not everyone can always brown-sack their
lunch.



>I doubt if rendering a page will be an issue if one has a broadband
>link.

One has nothing to do with the other. The speed of the data
coming in has no effect on whether a low powered CPU can
render multiple animated flash ads as now seen on many
'sites. If you are browsing with a low powered system and
see a video clip you want to watch, will you turn off the
power conservative system, boot the more powerful one, watch
the video, then turn the more powerful one off and boot the
conservative one again? I suspect many times both would be
running.


>Flash loaded files take longer to be transmitted over the line,
>and rendering can occur only after that, so probably the CPU is not
>the bottleneck in that case.

False. No matter how fast or slow the data gets there, the
system has to be able to realtime process it to play it.
I'm not suggesting such a low powered system would be
completely unusable, but the truth is that most of us do not
have newer faster systems because we didn't want or need
them - and we had slower systems previously that did use
less power, systems that we could have (or did) keep and
could use instead of buying a new system too to reach a
lower power usage.

Ultimately power conservation has to be across the industry,
in parts design. Your idea could be applied in many areas
of life like buying a small efficient car to suppliment the
larger one, buying a well insulated toaster oven to
suppliment the large oven. Buying a smaller microwave to
suppliment the larger one, smaller TV when you don't *need*
to see things as large or are willing to sit closer. All
these are more expense, more manufacturing pollution, etc.
The answer is not as simple as buying more stuff.

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 10:04:09 -0600, chrisv
<chrisv@nospam.invalid> wrote:

>Robert Redelmeier wrote:
>
>>I used to be very concerned about integrated graphics spoiling
>>desktop performance by stealing bandwidth. Then I tested my
>>new Xmas present: 2.44 GB/s increases to 2.50 with a separate
>>vidcard. Round-trip latency goes from 82 to 81ns. I'm very
>>underwhelmed and doubt I'll buy a vidcard for it.
>
>Reminds of of when I was made fun of because I didn't really care that
>the new motherboard that I was considering didn't have the new
>Ethernet controller that didn't "steal bandwidth" from the PCI bus.
>
>I asked, "What is the PCI bus for? To sit there looking pretty or to
>provide bandwidth to devices that need it?" and "How much of my PCI
>bandwidth is my Ethernet connection, usually limited by a ~1Mb/s
>Internet connection, using-up anyway?"

You have a reasonable point, if it were that simple.

How does one decide they would only use networking for a
1Mb/s internet connection, in the entire life of the system
and possibly even the next owner of the system if you hope
it won't die before you want to replace it- so the next
owner who has different needs might benefit. Buying parts
well designed encourages good design, puts more profit into
doing so and benefits us all so long as the price is not
excessive, and it will tend not to be excessive when one
superior solution is universally accepted and sold in
greatest volume (so long as there is still competitive
tech).

Multiple PCI devices don't just have to additively use more
than the PCI bus throughput, it is a matter of timing as
well. Recall certain Creative Labs sound cards plus another
PCI device, did not additively use 120+ MB/s, but did have
the potential to often stutter in sound playback.

Mentioning the potential issues of devices that use the PCI
bus is reasonable. Some people have PCI sound, drive
controller, TV tuner or other cards as well, or may add them
in the future. Avoiding 33Mhz/32bit PCI bussed devices when
possible is a good idea (assuming chipset integral or PCI
Express, not USB).

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips kony <spam@spam.com> wrote in part:
>>AFAIR, PSU efficiency is ~50%. 70% for some of the best units.
>>No way a faster computer gets total work done that much faster.
>
> Actually typical efficiency might be 70%, better units now
> approaching 85%.

Thank you for the correction

> Yes a faster computer really is at least 3X faster than the
> Via processor based ones that were suggested. They give up
> all hopes of performance in order to achieve low power.

No, they do not. Yes, the fast box benchmarks 3x. But I said
"gets total work done that much faster". Does the user get up
out of the chair in 1/3rd the time? No! Outside HPC, the only
thing that speed affects is the user experience -- the faster
system appears more responsive. She might wait 0.5 second less.
We pay a heavy price for impatience.

> ?? A dedicated video player is not lower power than an
> underclocked low-end video card. Certainly it is lower power
> than the entire PC would be,

Yes, and we must compare everything to get the job done.
Including the noise & slow boot if a PC is to serve as DVD player.
Perhaps OK for a student in a dorm. Less so in a living room.


> but then we get back to an idea in my last post that part
> of the beauty of a PC is it's versatility and we can't just
> subjectly subtract features and have it apply to anyone's
> needs except that subject.

Of course we can. Specialization has been a key to human
progress. Do you use a screwdriver as a hammer?

> You are missing the point, I am not talking about ancient
> processors, I am talking about equivalent performance to what
> the OP had proposed as a low powered system. That can be had
> with a Pentium 3 era system for example.

No. The later P-3 (Tualatin) were typically 30W for 1 GHz.
Some mobiles were less.

> I think in the laptop market it is mostly a function of cost, that
> integrated video saves a lot more on a laptop than on a PC where
> it can be bought for under $20 if one keeps an eye out for deals.

Laptops are one area that doesn't appear very cost sensitive,
but is extremely power/runtime/weight sensitive. People
complain more about short battery life than ridiculous pricing.
Quite possibly because most laptops are bought by employers.

-- Robert

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:28:32 GMT, Robert Redelmeier
<redelm@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:

>In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips kony <spam@spam.com> wrote in part:
>>>AFAIR, PSU efficiency is ~50%. 70% for some of the best units.
>>>No way a faster computer gets total work done that much faster.
>>
>> Actually typical efficiency might be 70%, better units now
>> approaching 85%.
>
>Thank you for the correction
>
>> Yes a faster computer really is at least 3X faster than the
>> Via processor based ones that were suggested. They give up
>> all hopes of performance in order to achieve low power.
>
>No, they do not. Yes, the fast box benchmarks 3x. But I said
>"gets total work done that much faster". Does the user get up
>out of the chair in 1/3rd the time? No!

Yes, if we're goig to talk strict numbers then we would have
to say that since the faster system gets the job done
sooner, the user does get up sooner.


>Outside HPC, the only
>thing that speed affects is the user experience -- the faster
>system appears more responsive. She might wait 0.5 second less.
>We pay a heavy price for impatience.

You are only counting uses that would not have justified the
purchase of the more expensive semi-modern system (which is
required, to attain the power figures originally cited). In
other words, If someone bought a newer system to have this
power consumption, they have already _decided_ to either
keep their old PC, making the new purpose mostly a waste, or
abandon it because they consider it's low performance (like
the new proposed system would have) unacceptible.

There just isn't any thought beyond an overly simplistic
"one number is lower" concept here. It ignores all the
reaslistic scenarios and to spend more time on this
half-baked idea is a waste of time (and power, for that
matter, because it is another reason people would leave
their systems on longer reading instead of being done and
turning the system off).

The little lost angel wrote:
>>>Everyone will disagree with the above. Reducing population is not the
>>>same as reducing wastage. The largest polluters are not the most
>>>populous nations.
>
>
> It works out pretty much the same, if not worse. 1 billion people
> responsible for 1x pollution today has the same effect as 100 million
> in other country responsible for 10x today. But in the long run, that
> 1 billion people will eventually, as a natural progression of
> "economic development", increase their ecological damage to 2x, 3x and
> adding more people to boot.
>
> Furthermore, ecological damage is NOT just about wastage. The Earth
> can only support that many people, every single person needs some
> space and food at least. That space has to be taken from somewhere,
> whether you clear forests to build more houses or cut more trees/blast
> more rocks to build taller ones. The food has to be grown/harvested
> from somewhere too.

Well, were far far away from the limit.

> Nobody can deny that reducing/limiting human population on earth is
> the only true long term solution to ecological damage.

It happens naturally for all species, including humans. Look at those
developed countries -- the population there is generally stagnant.


> But it's also
> one that least raised because of the controversial nature.

And because the premise if false.

> It's a lot
> easier trying to tell people to bring their own bags to shop, to cut
> down on car usage, to use energy efficient products, than to tell them
> to curb animal selfish gene instincts and not have kids.

This is a bad proposition from really many different reasons. First of all
those living in developed countries do have less kids, and having even less
has much more negative effects for them and their communities than positive
ones. Those who "mass produce" kids are from those poorly developed regions.
Those DINK and DIOK movements in developed countries make no sense at all
and in fact are harmful.
Second, growing number of old, unproductive people without "new
replacements" poses significant economical and sociological problems.


> For those who want kids, please adopt one.

Do you know, that big percentage of those adopted kids are ending back
without parents (as "parents" are unable to accept them in the long run).
People are only people and all attepts to create heaven on earth fail
miserably and typically with great suffering to the millions.


> There are tens of thousands
> of orphans who could do with and would appreciate good parents and a
> home, unlike many "native" brats nowadays. You will change the life of
> a human for the better as well as reduce a human's lifetime load to
> the environment.

This simply won't work. And if you try to force peple to do so, you'll just
make more suffering.


[...]
rgds
\SK

On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:56:58 +0100, Sebastian Kaliszewski
<s@get.it.off.to.reply.informa.pl> wrote:

>Well, were far far away from the limit.

If we must hit the absolute limit before we stop, it will be too late.
Everyday there are news about natural resources being overused and not
replenished, do we all have to live on a limited variety of
artificially cultivated food before it's considered the limit?

>> Nobody can deny that reducing/limiting human population on earth is
>> the only true long term solution to ecological damage.
>
>It happens naturally for all species, including humans. Look at those
>developed countries -- the population there is generally stagnant.

As they should be as people get more education, they realized the long
term benefits of large families are not the same as countries that
rely heavily on manual labour for subsistence. But yet we have well
developed countries pushing reproduction policies trying to increase
population growth.

>> But it's also
>> one that least raised because of the controversial nature.
>
>And because the premise if false.

How so?

>This is a bad proposition from really many different reasons. First of all
>those living in developed countries do have less kids, and having even less
>has much more negative effects for them and their communities than positive
>ones. Those who "mass produce" kids are from those poorly developed regions.
>Those DINK and DIOK movements in developed countries make no sense at all
>and in fact are harmful.

Harmful in what sense? Perhaps currently the "mass produced" kids are
from poorly developed region but it doesn't change the fact that
having less people in the long run means better quality of living for
everybody, no matter where you are. Poorer countries do eventually
become developed.

>Second, growing number of old, unproductive people without "new
>replacements" poses significant economical and sociological problems.

In the short run yes for a few generations it causes problems due to
top heavy population distribution and such. But it's a small price to
pay for a future. There isn't much point forcing population growth in
order to maintain an allegedly healthy population tree when doing so
means a non-sustainable ecology.

None of us alive today will benefit from a population reduction
policy. But 10 generations down, those living would be cursing us for
being short sighted and passing to them an unsustainable planet as our
legacy.

>> For those who want kids, please adopt one.
>
>Do you know, that big percentage of those adopted kids are ending back
>without parents (as "parents" are unable to accept them in the long run).
>People are only people and all attepts to create heaven on earth fail
>miserably and typically with great suffering to the millions.

Any hard facts to back up that claim? What are the reasons the
"parents" are unable to accept them? Lastly, ultimately, it doesn't
really matter if the adults leave their adopted parents in the end,
the ecological benefits have been realized since the parents are
unlikely at that point to have their own children.

>This simply won't work. And if you try to force peple to do so, you'll just
>make more suffering.

I'm not forcing people to, I'm not even suggesting that government
legislate for it... like the way many are "forcing" their people to
reproduce by tangling financial carrots. I'm simply asking people to
think about it and make the better choice for the future regardless of
what politicians want... more people to tax for their benefits.

--
A Lost Angel, fallen from heaven
Lost in dreams, Lost in aspirations,
Lost to the world, Lost to myself

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips kony <spam@spam.com> wrote in part:
>>No, they do not. Yes, the fast box benchmarks 3x. But I said
>>"gets total work done that much faster". Does the user get up
>>out of the chair in 1/3rd the time? No!

> Yes, if we're goig to talk strict numbers then we would
> have to say that since the faster system gets the job done
> sooner, the user does get up sooner.

Sure. Maybe 60 seconds on a one hour session. 1.7% for 3x the
power. Not obviously a good return. But perhaps so in economic
terms: Say +100W power draw at U$0.15/kWh is U$0.90/hr for the
minute saved. That's cheap, and that's how energy is "wasted".

> There just isn't any thought beyond an overly simplistic "one
> number is lower" concept here. It ignores all the reaslistic

Chair time isn't realistic? I'm questioning whether the
additional CPU power is useful, and arguing it may not
be, leading to full life-cycle energy and resource savings.

> scenarios and to spend more time on this half-baked idea is
> a waste of time (and power, for that matter, because it is
> another reason people would leave their systems on longer
> reading instead of being done and turning the system off).

On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:22:46 GMT, Robert Redelmeier
<redelm@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:

>In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips kony <spam@spam.com> wrote in part:
>>>No, they do not. Yes, the fast box benchmarks 3x. But I said
>>>"gets total work done that much faster". Does the user get up
>>>out of the chair in 1/3rd the time? No!
>
>> Yes, if we're goig to talk strict numbers then we would
>> have to say that since the faster system gets the job done
>> sooner, the user does get up sooner.
>
>Sure. Maybe 60 seconds on a one hour session.

.... or maybe 30 minutes in a one hour session. It does
little good to randomly pick numbers that suit your
argument, remember that not all uses are the same.



>1.7% for 3x the
>power. Not obviously a good return. But perhaps so in economic
>terms: Say +100W power draw at U$0.15/kWh is U$0.90/hr for the
>minute saved. That's cheap, and that's how energy is "wasted".
>

The processor is only a % of total system power. One can in
fact use a 2X faster processor with only 10W more power
consumed (at full load, less than 10W difference at idle if
as you suggest it would be mostly idle then the difference
is far less in practice).

So we might compare a system with 55W total consumption vs
60W total consumption when the latter is twice as fast.

Did you consider this? The slower system is always running
at a higher % load and further from it's idle state
consumption. The faster one is not running at peak power
consumption UNLESS it is fully utilized for a
compute-intensive job and if the job is that demanding there
really could be a difference in the time the system ran from
60 minutes down to 30 minutes.




>> There just isn't any thought beyond an overly simplistic "one
>> number is lower" concept here. It ignores all the reaslistic
>
>Chair time isn't realistic? I'm questioning whether the
>additional CPU power is useful, and arguing it may not
>be, leading to full life-cycle energy and resource savings.

Then the entire argument is invalid, because there is no
assumption a person who didn't find lesser performance
acceptible would have bought the new system using the higher
power figures. They'd be more likely using some Pentium 3
system that uses far less power, instead of buying two
addt'l systems.

I've been down this road already, my low powered system
didn't save enough power to matter.

IMO, the largest problem is the idea of splitting use
between two or more systems and having more hardware
manufactured, distributed, purchased, then eventually thrown
into a landfill. That does use power, REAL power, not
something we can ignore. Further we can't ignore that there
is a very good chance sometimes both systems would be
running, or even that the owner of the low powered system
would be less likely to turn it off, thinking it's not as
important because it's *low power*.

In the end it just won't do much useful as a one-off idea.
Looking at our typical home energy bill it won't matter much
at all if an extra 10W were used. By ignoring this and
spending time thinking about trivial energy savings, we
allow larger energy consumers to be temporarily ignored. It
wastes more power than it saves to even begin thinking about
this whole topic, because most people do not have some uber
gaming system with high power draw just sitting there
running 24/7. If they do, certainly I would suggest turning
it off or considering a secondary system but this is _not
the typical, reasonable comparitive scenario.

Have you tried using a system with a Via Eden processor and
Compact Flash or USB flash drive? I have, and even did a
lot of tweaking trying to improve performance like blocking
scripting and flash ads, things most people can't or don't
want to do. Let us know how well you feel it does for
general purpose use if you are using one, then compare it's
performance to what you could have for a mere 10-20W higher
power consumption with a different platform. I already
have, and the problem IMO is not conserving power, it's that
today the performance levels are not high enough _yet_. In
5 years maybe they will be, but during that period there are
a lot of other energy consumers that ought to be focused on
instead of the typical PC.

In fact, just switching to a smaller LCD monitor may save as
much or more power than the difference between the Via Eden
or C-7 platform and one twice as fast. Just putting on a
thicker shirt and lowering the heater temp by 3 degrees may
help as much or more. Replacing lamps with some that don't
diffuse light as much might allow using fewer lamps. There
are tons of ways one could shave 10-20W off their energy
bill and still that is such a small difference it is a waste
of time in the larger picture.

You can't just cut a tiny bit of power usage then feel good
about it, that's just a token gesture that won't make any
real difference in the end once you consider all the
factors.

The little lost angel wrote:
>>Well, were far far away from the limit.
>
> If we must hit the absolute limit before we stop, it will be too late.

The absolute limit is about 100 cubic meters per person. It's like like
living in prison, but it far far far away -- as it takes about 2 trillion
people to use up 70% of land area (rest ommited as hardly habilatbe, like
Himalaya, lakes and stuff).

> Everyday there are news about natural resources being overused and not
> replenished, do we all have to live on a limited variety of
> artificially cultivated food before it's considered the limit?

You're ignoring economic pressure. And this one works best. If resources are
scarce they are expensive. And in hard situation people do not like to
reproduce if that reproduction is not going to be beneficial.


>>>Nobody can deny that reducing/limiting human population on earth is
>>>the only true long term solution to ecological damage.
>>
>>It happens naturally for all species, including humans. Look at those
>>developed countries -- the population there is generally stagnant.
>
>
> As they should be as people get more education, they realized the long
> term benefits of large families are not the same as countries that
> rely heavily on manual labour for subsistence.

You're right. In countries where manual labor is not so important to sustain
the family the families are smaller. And in more troubled times people
reproduce much less. Look at Russia (and Ukraine) as prime exaple. Those are
industrially developed countries, and manual labour is not needed to keep
families up. As situation is not perceived as good enough though, their
population is (rapidly) decreasing. Natural laws and laws of economy do work.


> But yet we have well
> developed countries pushing reproduction policies trying to increase
> population growth.

And rightly so. This is simply better for economy.


>>>But it's also
>>>one that least raised because of the controversial nature.
>>
>>And because the premise if false.
>
> How so?

Simply. The laws of nature do not exclude humans. All species reduce
reproduction if conditions are not good enough.


>>This is a bad proposition from really many different reasons. First of all
>>those living in developed countries do have less kids, and having even less
>>has much more negative effects for them and their communities than positive
>>ones. Those who "mass produce" kids are from those poorly developed regions.
>>Those DINK and DIOK movements in developed countries make no sense at all
>>and in fact are harmful.
>
> Harmful in what sense?

Harmful to society and to economy.


> Perhaps currently the "mass produced" kids are
> from poorly developed region but it doesn't change the fact that
> having less people in the long run means better quality of living for
> everybody, no matter where you are. Poorer countries do eventually
> become developed.

And stop kid "mass production".

>>Second, growing number of old, unproductive people without "new
>>replacements" poses significant economical and sociological problems.
>
> In the short run yes for a few generations it causes problems due to
> top heavy population distribution and such. But it's a small price to
> pay for a future.

We're way too supid to know anything exact about the future. Wasting energy
on blind moves is a stupid idea. First we have to understand how things
work, the we can make an educated decission. Now we can't.


> There isn't much point forcing population growth in
> order to maintain an allegedly healthy population tree when doing so
> means a non-sustainable ecology.

Noone has proven tha ecology is non-sustainable. It rather looks like it's
much more sustainable that we think. Fossil fuels are only like using value
stored in a bank savings given us by the ecosystem. Fossil fuels have mainly
biological origin, they're (by)product of the ecosystem of past epochs. We
can't use more than it has been produced earlier. As they're more and more
depleted they become more and more expensive. Thus economic pressure is what
will force us to find other means to extract energy from. And it happens
just now. As barrel of oil cost's more than 75-85$ it's already economically
viable to produce fuel from crops containig a lot of oligosaccharides and
starch (apolysaccharide), at about 90-100$ per barrel it becomes viable to
produce fuel from cellulose which is abundant in plants, and in parts of
plants now thrown away. And even better there are fuel usable platns which
are not crops but which grow much faster and in areas not suitable for crops
(like willows). There are in fact countries (for example Brasil) where
significant part of transport is based on such fuels).


> None of us alive today will benefit from a population reduction
> policy. But 10 generations down, those living would be cursing us for
> being short sighted and passing to them an unsustainable planet as our
> legacy.

We're now neither shortsighted nor longsighetd -- we're allmost blind.


>>>For those who want kids, please adopt one.
>>
>>Do you know, that big percentage of those adopted kids are ending back
>>without parents (as "parents" are unable to accept them in the long run).
>>People are only people and all attepts to create heaven on earth fail
>>miserably and typically with great suffering to the millions.
>
>
> Any hard facts to back up that claim?

It's a significant percentage (AFAIR it's in the teens percents).

> What are the reasons the
> "parents" are unable to accept them?

They're unable to create psychic links with them? Things don't go like those
parent thought they would (they are often waiting long for their own, then
they look for a child to adopt, and they have idealised image of how it is
to have a child. Such image is rarely even close to being adequate)? And
last but not least, genes (and our animal instincts associated with them) do
work.
In general people do not know how would they behave in a particular
situation until there are put in such situation for a first time.

Children are something incredible. It's incredible to see the moment of
birth, to see the first breath (I felt being struck by a shockwave when I
saw my daughter taking her first breath), it's incredible to the cild
growing, smiling, etc. But one must accept few hundred watts of sound power
at 3 a.m., one must accept that child is not allways behaving nicely, one
must accept the time is being eaten up by a child, etc...


> Lastly, ultimately, it doesn't
> really matter if the adults leave their adopted parents in the end,

It's not about adults it's about small children.

> the ecological benefits have been realized since the parents are
> unlikely at that point to have their own children.

I don't se here any ecological benefits. But I see children whoich got their
family and then lost is again. Imagine their suffering.


rgds
\SK

On Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:17:50 +0100, Sebastian Kaliszewski
<s@get.it.off.to.reply.informa.pl> wrote:

>The absolute limit is about 100 cubic meters per person. It's like like
>living in prison, but it far far far away -- as it takes about 2 trillion
>people to use up 70% of land area (rest ommited as hardly habilatbe, like
>Himalaya, lakes and stuff).

100m3 per person, that's a space of around 4.6m around... Slightly
better than prison but still not a place I think most of us would want
to be in. Does this 100m3 includes the space needed for food and other
goods production? If so, the actual amount of usable personal space
would be significantly less. Do we really want to live in sardine
cans?

In theory my country can support a lot more people than it holds now.
But already I can barely stand the crush and crowd of people, yet like
you, my government will have us increase the population by another 50%
for the sake of the economy.

Yes, we could all live functionally in minimalistic conditions, but I
happen to prefer a quality life with space to roam than one as a drone
contributing merely to the pleasures of the elite.

>You're ignoring economic pressure. And this one works best. If resources are
>scarce they are expensive. And in hard situation people do not like to
>reproduce if that reproduction is not going to be beneficial.

By the time that kicks in, it may be too late, if it isn't already.
It's like global warming, by the time the signs are staring at us in
the face, it may be too late to do anything useful to reverse the
effects before it rolls us over by sheer momentum.

>You're right. In countries where manual labor is not so important to sustain
> the family the families are smaller. And in more troubled times people
>reproduce much less. Look at Russia (and Ukraine) as prime exaple. Those are
>industrially developed countries, and manual labour is not needed to keep
>families up. As situation is not perceived as good enough though, their
>population is (rapidly) decreasing. Natural laws and laws of economy do work.

The problem is in many cases, the government attempts to counter the
natural laws. Just like in mine.

>> But yet we have well
>> developed countries pushing reproduction policies trying to increase
>> population growth.
>
>And rightly so. This is simply better for economy.

Sacrificing the world tomorrow for better economics today is right?
Well, probably doesn't matter to us since we would still benefit and
enjoy a booming economy. Too bad for the (more) people coming after us
who have to deal with the aftermath.

>Simply. The laws of nature do not exclude humans. All species reduce
>reproduction if conditions are not good enough.

Except the very perverse human race which unfortunately has the
conscious will to choose otherwise.

>Harmful to society and to economy.

Harmful to the economy perhaps as there are less people for the
government to tax, less people to consume etc. But that's never been
my concern in this particular discussion. It's the long term
viability/survivability of the world in a NOT minimalist kind of way.


>> Perhaps currently the "mass produced" kids are
>> from poorly developed region but it doesn't change the fact that
>> having less people in the long run means better quality of living for
>> everybody, no matter where you are. Poorer countries do eventually
>> become developed.
>
>And stop kid "mass production".

At which point, they would have already contribute irrevocably to at
least a 100 years of ecological burden. It's better than they don't
add these burden today.

>We're way too supid to know anything exact about the future. Wasting energy
>on blind moves is a stupid idea. First we have to understand how things
>work, the we can make an educated decission. Now we can't.

Having less children saves energy.

We don't know how exactly having a lot more people will do in terms of
the planet's ability to support it, in that we are blind perhaps.
Perhaps it can, perhaps it cannot. Assuming that it can, is not
exactly prudent is it? However, we do know the planet CAN support a
lesser population, in that we are not blind. Is a 100% guarantee of a
better quality of life for a smaller population better than an unknown
gamble of the entire planet's fate?


>Noone has proven tha ecology is non-sustainable. It rather looks like it's
>much more sustainable that we think. Fossil fuels are only like using value

As long as technological advancement manages to keep up with our
needs. But these advancement usually come with a price, and that price
is usually variety and choice. Sure we could all survive healthily
enough on 3 meals every day comprising of the same manufactured
carbohydrates, fibre, protein slabs and vitamin pills. But is that
desirable? Maybe to some it is, to some of us, that's not a life worth
living.


>viable to produce fuel from crops containig a lot of oligosaccharides and
>starch (apolysaccharide), at about 90-100$ per barrel it becomes viable to
>produce fuel from cellulose which is abundant in plants, and in parts of
>plants now thrown away. And even better there are fuel usable platns which
>are not crops but which grow much faster and in areas not suitable for crops
>(like willows). There are in fact countries (for example Brasil) where
>significant part of transport is based on such fuels).

And we have reports of concerns that farmers are diverting so much
land to biofuel production for profits that there might not be enough
to feed people.

>> None of us alive today will benefit from a population reduction
>> policy. But 10 generations down, those living would be cursing us for
>> being short sighted and passing to them an unsustainable planet as our
>> legacy.
>
>We're now neither shortsighted nor longsighetd -- we're allmost blind.

Blind to the future, blindly gambling that technology will get us out
of the death trap. Thus, is it not better than we do not gamble the
world on it? Should technology prevail, the lives of a lesser
population will be vastly improved, but the lives of a greater
population not that better off.


>> Any hard facts to back up that claim?
>It's a significant percentage (AFAIR it's in the teens percents).

According to the Internet, 98.4% of all statistics are made up ;)


>They're unable to create psychic links with them? Things don't go like those
>parent thought they would (they are often waiting long for their own, then
>they look for a child to adopt, and they have idealised image of how it is
>to have a child. Such image is rarely even close to being adequate)? And
>last but not least, genes (and our animal instincts associated with them) do
>work.

Then, the problem is with the parents, all the more they shouldn't
have children. Even for biological families, there are many I see that
are barely, if at all, qualified to be parents. My neighbour has 4
adopted children, it's been years, I don't see them having any
abnormal problems that a biological family does not.


>> the ecological benefits have been realized since the parents are
>> unlikely at that point to have their own children.
>
>I don't se here any ecological benefits. But I see children whoich got their
>family and then lost is again. Imagine their suffering.

Every adopted child that takes the place of another newborn, say via
test tubes, is one less lifetime of pollution and ecological stress.
Therefore a benefit.

Perhaps it's a suffering, but perhaps they at least had some joy
during that period they might never have known otherwise. Ultimately,
being an abandoned child means suffering one way or another. At least
if somebody chooses to adopt rather than have a new toy, the world
benefits where it really matters.

All of us, no matter great or small, our sufferings will pass soon
enough. But the damage we do to the world, that we pass on to the next
generation, will not so easily go away. The choice is between being
selfish for our petty selves or to sacrifice (if it is even one) for
the long term greater good.


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A