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VIA Announces Lead-Free Motherboard
linuxprox writes "VIA announced today that their AS-1210 motherboard will be the world's first lead-free motherboard. 'The transition to 'green' manufacturing for VIA has been very smooth and we have been able to ship lead-free processors and chipsets since the end of last year,' said Richard Brown, Vice President of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. 'The AS-1210 clearly demonstrates the technology leadership of VIA and Yamashita in being the first to market with a lead-free motherboard that meets the requirements of the international market.'"
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2
And more from Intel:m
http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/leadfree.ht
And more information from AMD:u rces/0,,30_182_4040,00.html
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalReso
Disclosure: I don't work for, or own stock in AMD or Intel. I haven't purchased an Intel chip since the Pentium came out.
-ted
All my plans of turning worthless motherboards into precious pencils has failed!!
--- We need more Ron Paul!
VIA Green Computing page
It's too bad they don't do monitors. Those CRTs are the biggest source of lead in computers. Of course, I don't like electrons being shot at my face, so it's not all bad, but still. They are a pain to dispose of.
Cross your fingers for affordable OLEDs. (fp?)
Aren't most Printed Circuit Boards already green?
Ah, nevermind...
Ok, I know, it's not punny. Sorry.
New lead free motherboard*
*Supply your own solder.
So I shouldn't have been eating my old motherboards all these years?
Please confirm my Slashdot friends! Woe is me...
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Now I can let my toddler chew on motherboards without worrying about that pesky lead!
Thanks VIA!
This doesn't do a thing about the lethal levels of sheel negceba that go through most boards, not to mention the chemicals used in most non-paper capacitors, which are not only lethal poisons, but as tasty as anti-freeze to most animals.
Add to this the PCBs in the transformer that go with their power supply, and you've pretty much only addressed the fourth worst problem. The real problems have several orders of magnitude more impact on the environtment and worse -- solutions already exist to solve all three for prices only 5-10% higher than what they pay for existing chemicals!
For some reason I thought that all of the discrete components were going to be surface mount instead of through the board when I read that the board was "Lead free"...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
...is in pencils--a form of carbon. Won't get that past here.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Of course i didn't RTFA but .. are they too expensive?
I fail to see the consumer advantage on this kind of thing.. maybe they'll do some kind of special ad campaign..
Marketing guys just love to be able to say thing like "We're environment friendly" :-)
The Nec PowerMate eco computer, released in 2002 supposedly has lead free solder on the motherboard. To quote a press release, "The unit also contains a motherboard made with lead-free solder, which protects both the individuals involved in reclamation, and the ground water in case of disposal". I assume this means that there is no lead in the motherboard? Unless capacitors or other parts have lead?
50% more mercury...
:)
It's a joke people...
VIAs reputation is poor at best. The last VIA board I owned (KT133) wouldn't post if you had a SCSI card and a PS/2 mouse hooked up at the same time. Search around on Google, most of the VIA chipsets are rife with problems.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
my pre-1963 computer only takes leaded!
Just like how coal plants release more radition and heavy metals into the environment that nuclear plants. But which ones to the 'enviros' target the most, the nuke plants because it gets them more press.
Compared with negatives like chopping down rainforests, and people driving 4l SUVs to go and pick up the shopping, how much of a + is this?
How do you connect peripherals? Oh wait...
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Mobos don't just suddenly dematerialise when you're through with them. Instead they sit in land fills and get rained on and leech lead into the groundwater.
It shows that VIA care's about the Earth.. (and conviently released this info on Earth Day).. What other companies are working toward's being 'green' so I know what to buy in the future?
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
They don't do this out of altruism, they have to if they want to sell their products on the EU market, since from 2006, all electronic products will have to be lead free.
Stupid, yes. But how exactly is that a troll?
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
"[T]he campaign of fear now being waged against genetic modification is based largely on fantasy
... Greenpeace has harmed the environmental case."
and a complete lack of respect for science and logic."
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore.
"Solar power and windmills are not a realistic way out. Nuclear energy is the only real and practical solution, but there has been such a hysterical reaction to it."
James Lovelock, developer of the Gaia Hypothesis.
"Extreme weather events are definitely on the decline over the last 40 years."
Dr. Madhav Khandekar, a meteorologist with 25 years experience at Environment Canada.
"They have cheated the case and I am angry about that, because that will come to our account. They use bad data, as well as for the Brent Spar as for the French nuclear tests. I am against nuclear tests, but one should use scientific, sound arguments
Paul Crutzen, Nobel Prize winner for his work on the ozone layer, who cancelled his Greenpeace membership.
"In truth, what the environmental community has become is a money machine"
Alfred Runte, environmental historian, board member of the National Parks Conservation Association from 1993 to 1997 and author of Yosemite, The Embattled Wilderness.
"In 2000, say World Health Organization and other studies, malaria infected over 300 million people. It killed nearly 2,000,000 - most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
[...]
"[these deaths] are due in large part to near-global restrictions on the production, export and use of DDT.
[...]
"Where DDT is used, malaria deaths plummet. "
Paul Driessen, author of Eco-Imperialism - Green Power. Black Death. - "A former member of the Sierra Club and Zero Population Growth, he abandoned their cause when he recognized that the environmental movement had become intolerant in its views, inflexible in its demands, unwilling to recognize our tremendous strides in protecting the environment, and insensitive to the needs of billions of people who lack the food, electricity, safe water, healthcare and other basic necessities that we take for granted."
"Greenpeace is lobbying against industry plans to exclude products such as DDT from a POPs [persistent organic pollutants] phase-out."
Greenpeace annual report, 1999)
Hmmm... they don't say much about what is in it as a replacement. Can someone explain? I presume it is a change in the composition of the solder, but what are they using in place of the lead? More tin?
I really do wonder if they have got all the kinks worked out. You never know when some odd interaction of materials, manufacturing processes, and customer environments won't create reliability problems.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Interesting to see a company that is succeeding with lead-free... They are requiring the phase-out of lead-free components by 2006, and now a lot of companies are scrambling to change their product designs and processes to make this possible. I haven't heard of much success in this area.
I think electronic components have a blanket exemption for now, but this exemption is coming up for review soon. Just to be safe, most companies (including mine, which is part of an exempted industry) are trying to come up with lead-free products.
Not sure how much of an effect this will have... I remember reading that on average, electric components are less than 1% lead. In addition, the substitutes being explored to replace lead solder (silver and antimony) may actually cause more groundwater pollution, because they are more soluble. Doesn't seem like it's much more than a feel-good measure.
In that article, PCBs refers to polychlorinated biphenyls, a poison, not printed circuit boards. I'm not aware of any connection between the two.
The House Small Business Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform and Oversight held a hearing today on "Green Gazelles." The term is used to describe a fast growing business that utilizes environmentally friendly processes in its operations. Look for this trend to contine as a niche market for consumers who are willing to pay more for "green" products. Of course, there is no official certification to determine whether your business is "green" or not so feel free to turn off some lights in your store and advertise away!
Actually, the earliest pencils WERE made from lead, until graphite was found to be a much better substititute. I wouldn't nitpick, but I think the above nitpicking gives me more than ample justification =). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead
No water needed for making? What was it? 150 gallons of water just to make memory sticks?
I plan on using it forever!!! No dumpster for me!
> Mobos don't just suddenly dematerialise when you're through with them.
... dare I mention it on slashdot... Beowulf cluster nodes.
No, they evolve into Linux Routers and
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
there are more important issues regarding PCs and the evironment. Why don't PC manufacturers make computers that use less power? Nvidia's new graphic card needs a 450 watt power supply - so what if the mobo is lead free? The thing still draws enough power to burn twice as much oil as needed.
It's cool that they're getting into the push for lead-free electronics. It's certainly not easy or cheap to validate lead-free components. I work in acoustic micro imaging, so I look at the insides of ICs, MEMS, and other electronics all day. we get a lot of work from companies doing moisture sensitivity level testing for lead vs. lead free parts. The lead free parts have to go through a hotter solder reflow profile, so any moisture will cause even more damage. The insides of most of the parts look like someone set a bomb off. it takes them a long while and many iterations before they can pull it off right.
:P.
So, props to them for getting with it.
disclaimer - I don't work for these guys, nor do I buy their products. I'm just a concerned scientist
Maybe they can also do a *BSD troll-free /. ...
However, it's too bad reasonable voices like these are being ignored. And organizations like Greenpeace, PETA, the Sierra Club are being taken over by crazies. The Sierra Club in particular used to be a club for hunters and outdoorsmen, but has turned into an eco-nazi propaganda organization.
I agree that DDT and nuclear power would do quite a lot of good for the world, by the way.
My other first post is car post.
A lead-free motherboard? No leads? How am I going to plug anything into it?
Or do they mean no lead-time...? it gets delivered as soon as you order it. Now that would be nice.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
How is lead bad for the environment? I know its bad for us, and IIRC ducks, but how does it harm the environment? All the plants i buy for my fishtank come with lead clips around them, the guy at the fish store said lead is one of the few metals you can use in a fishtank. How could lead use in mobos(i assume the solder, so they're using straight tin or what?) be bad for the environment. Or is this just something from marketing, since people see stuff on the news about kids getting retarted from eating lead paint chips and think lead == bad.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Well.. I guess you can always incinerate them... or better yet.. shove them up Darl's ass.
Without lead, am I going to be able to desolder the exploding tawain capacitors in order to replace them with good ones, or do I just have to buy a new computer every 6 months now?
(note to mods: if you still havn't heard of the capacitor problem, go google about it before modding)
Morphing Software
I'm not qualified to say how this can be safely disposed of, or whether it really needs to, but an awful lot of old electronics do end up in public landfills and other locations where they could potentially leach(sp?) into groundwater. It's something worth considering when people are upgrading their electronics and computers annually.
"Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
No, it doesn't mean much for you or me, but when you start moving millions of pieces, the lead starts to add up. Yea lots of other nasties are used in the fab process, but hey, why make it worse than it needs to be?
The semiconductor company I work for has pretty high volume (nowhere near intel though...) and we went lead-free not too long ago. Customers demanded it, so we gave it to em.
http://computerfan.de/fun/HP_Gabon.jpg
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I will feel soooo much better when my son pulls chips off his motherboards and sticks them in his mouth! Thanks VIA!!!!
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Miniscule traces perhaps, but miniscule traces from hundreds of thousands of components is a whole hell of a lot. Besides, I'm sure the plants that produces these parts are a lot cleaner, environmentally.
So quit your whining, cleaner components are good, whether your talking traces or massive amounts. For everything that happens there's always someone whining about it.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
The article has a site load meter... and it's not entirely red yet... what's the matter with us fellow /.ers? Have we become weakened?
Learn something new.
Just so you will know, I think people that damange the environment on such a drastic scale and do it knowlingly should be sent to the Alaskan wilderness to spend the rest of their live make big rocks turn into small ones.
---------
Mobile porn
If you view environmental concerns as a luxury good, it makes sense that people only addressed such issues after the average person in society accumulated a fair ammount of wealth.
to quote the Cato Institute here:
And to say that without capitalism there wouldn't be polution to begin with, is to say that it is bad that technology that allows humans to look beyond the brutish nature of the world.
Happy Industrial Revolution Day!
http://while-true.blogspot.com/
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
1. PCBs do not contain lead.
2. The story you linked has no mention whatsoever of "entire generations of people" being "maimed". Other than a casual mention of personal injury and property damage lawsuits, there is not a single hint that anyone's actually been hurt.
Wow, if you're representative of people in the environmental movement, no wonder you're all viewed as being crackpots.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Granted the KT133 was a stinker, and largely the reason early Athlons were percieved as unreliable, but since then they've been solid. I'm posting from a KT600 box, just finished a KM266 econo box, and have build dozens of other VIA based boxes including my VIA EPIA based Car Computer!
it is a wonderfully progressive step forward - chips with no lead. however, lead in processors accounts for a small fraction of lead used each year. as with so many other environmental problems, the main polluter is the automobile industry. during its lifetime, each car uses about as much lead as would be required to paint a house with lead-containing paint. most of the lead in cars is used in lead-acid batteries. perhaps our environmental r+d dollars could be better spent...
~smell my mule~political correctness has met the IT sector once again. For gosh sakes, what's the problem? I don't plan to eat my motherboard - you might argue "it's thrown away one day", but some miniscule trace of lead found in the solder isn't going to hurt anything - more goes into the environment when i lose a sinker fishing than when I throw away a dozen motherboards.
There's a reason why my State banned the sale of lead sinkers. For gosh sakes, what's the problem with trying to be more environmentality friendly? If VIA can sell a lead-free motherboard that works well at a decent price and make a profit while doing so why is this political correctness? It's being a good corporate citizen. Why is this a bad thing?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Part A is on a per-plant basis. I wouldn't be surprised if the total effect on greenhouse gases is less for all nuke plants combined than for a single or a few coal-burners, but not knowing how much(if any) steam gets vented, I can't make that declaration.
And I do know that nuclear plants do contribute to algal blooms due to warm water being put back into the waterways. Nuclear plants aren't perfect, and they leave a long-term problem, but they don't toss junk into the upper atmosphere for the whole world to share.
NB: YMMV. IANAL. Take the above with a grain of salt.
I can't understand how the parent can be modded +5 insightful...
:).
First he makes an odd reference to sheel negceba..."furry artpron", apparently.
Then, he claims that there are "lethal poisons" in capacitors. In fact, according to the wikipedia, capacitors generally contain fairly harmless boric acid or sulfuric acid at worst. Not to mention, I find it hard to believe that there are animals digging through dumps and eating electrolyic capacitors.
Finally, PCB electric transformers have been banned since 1977. I think that we can assume that most power supplies in personal computers were manufactured after 1977
Conclusion: parent is full of it, mod down and ignore.
What exactly is this "kilogram" you speak of?
Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
nice effort but in the end I don't think eliminating lead from motherboards will make a significant difference except perhaps in cost.
I understand the prices of tin and silver have been climbing though - with lead free solder now being used in plumbing and now on motherboards...
but frankly a "lead free", CFC-free, so-called "green" motherboard or computer won't be the deciding factor over what I buy next. It's all about the performance and reliability baby.
The mix of tin and lead in solder varies somewhat depending on the application, with 60/40 and 70/30 being common. I was curious myself about the claim of "Lead-Free" since every solder joint in the system would have to have lead, right? From VIA's Lead-Free Manufacturing page:
Of course, I don't know what everyone's got against lead. If all the claims you hear were true then my old man (who breathes in solder fumes for up to 80 hours a week) should have died of lead poisioning forty years ago. He reckons milk is the answer. :)
Yes and no. In my experience, the second revision chipsets (for example, the KT266A I'm running in my box) are solid as a rock. This one has been up for 23 days straight. Very *nix-friendly, too; and I have never had any weird hardware flukes. But yes, I have heard plenty regarding VIA in some of their early-revisions having silly problems. There are quite a few VIA-specific hacks in the Linux kernel, and a lot of people have reported that you can't run a nVidia GPU on several VIA boards at 4x mode (though I do just fine without problems).
"Hu, ho, ho-ah-oh-oh-oh. Hu, ho ho-ah-oh-oh-oh. Mario Paint! Whoaaa!"
So, what does this mean in terms of shielding from solar radiation? Word is that currently non-ECC RAM can have an occasional bit flipped about once a month or so at sealevel. As technology gets smaller, especially CPUs, will there be new shielding technology developed? Surely there must be something better than lead..
It all depends on what the system is being used for. I tend to load my computers up (RAID, Gigabit, Fireware etc). I expect all the PCI slots to be usable, VIA seems to think that 2-3 out of 5 of them are just for show. ACPI, IRQ and other resource sharing just seem to no work well on them.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Why are you so afraid of anything that appears to be "pro-environment", or at least towards maintaining an environment capable of sustaining us in the long-term? You seem more "radicalised" (rabid anti-environmentalist) than the extremists you're mocking.
It's as if you're as allergic to anything "green" as they are to anything "un-green".
The existence of extremists does not mean we shouldn't be in favour of long-term sustainable management of the environment. I mean, come on, THINK! Or, wait, is that "uncool", sorry.
I don't know about milk, but apparently cilantro (coriander / Chinese parsley) can help. When patients are given soup with plenty of cilantro juice in it, their levels dropped much faster than those who are receiving normal treatment only. Of course, this isn't scientific evidence, and they have no idea if it works on its own, or just as an aid to conventional chelation. Still, it is something to keep in mind.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Take your commie trash back to Moscow, Mr. Lenin.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Having said all this, I have no VIA experience so I cannot vouch for or criticize them.
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
Heh... water. Can be a serious problem when it becomes polluted... but whatever.
:)
A problem: you named it wrong. It should be dihydrogen oxide. not monoxide. Need to brush up on your chemistry, eh?
...
What in the hell? Green does NOT mean living in a thatched hut eating berries. If 6 billion people reverted to hunter/gatherer the planet would be stripped bare in less than a year. No green wants that.
For F's Sake people, use your brains and quit spouting propaganda at each other.
Green means finding a technological solution to the fossil fuel problem (finite supply, source of pollutants). There is absolutely no reason to think that a hydrogen powered SUV is in any way a step backwards.
Green means putting solar on your roof and becoming energy self sufficient. Maybe even sell surplus back to the grid. (yes I am aware of the pollutants that solar manufacturing potentially represents, however a) its localized and controllable, b) advances over time will lead to reductions in the pollutants, as scale of economy increases)
Green means finding a technology solution to feeding our children without destroying the land that we grow it on (or perhaps you think that the Dust Bowl was good for our moral fiber?) The answer here is not patented genetically modified foods, which can't be seeded from the previous year's crop and require exorbitant licensing fees to biotech companies.
Green means encouraging/funding zero population growth (i.e. replacement births). Yes this is "family planning". In most nations of the world family planning means just that, planning how many children to conceive - or rather how many NOT to conceive. But to bass ackward U.S. conservatives all they see is 'abortion' when they hear family planning. Sheesh.
Green means smart progress, yet people like you spout your bullsh*t anytime you are confronted by the idea that change can be good. No no! Protect my comfortable status quo! Never mind that even if we did nothing, eventually it will be changed for us by the laws of physics!
Sorry for the rant, mods do with me what you will..
I fail to see the consumer advantage on this kind of thing
http://www.yesmagazine.org/29globalhope/grossman.h tm
They have to.
And it's a good thing.
CRT there's a kilogram or so, used to shield the user from xrays.
Yeah, but that's mixed in the glass, and isn't going anywhere for the next several millenia or more. In several hundred million years when that glass gets subducted under the mantle and remelts, I doubt humans will be around to worry.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
My bad.
The trouble with lead free solders is that they all have considerably higher melting points than lead-based solders. The "standard" lead-based solder has a melting point of 183C. The best available lead-free solders have melting points in the 220C range. That's a big jump. All the manufacturing processes have to be reworked. Some components need to be redesigned for higher soldering temperature tolerance. Some components must be repackaged in different plastics. It's not trivial.
Here's a good summary of the issues.
Not a single human being has ever died as a result of PCB ingestion. ONE solatary lonely person has gotten ill from it and he recovered. If you would drink motor car oil, then you would get ill too...
Oh well, what the hell...
CRTs do not "use" X-rays, but they certainly produce them. In fact, Roentgen discovered X-rays specifically using a CRT. The X-rays are produced when the cathode ray strikes the glass wall or the screen itself.
...they should go all the way and make computers out of coconuts and palm fronds like Gilligan and the Professor. Now that would be green.
If it happens, I will make sure NOT to melt down any Via motherboards to cast lead bullets for our muskets.
Go ask anyone who's got a child who's eaten lead-based paint and is now sick forever if lead is safe. This is a GOOD thing. If we kept our components forever no one would care, but people in countries like China are disposing of all that US waste - and killing themselves by doing so. It's deplorable. I'll be looking into this.
Lindows Steals Copyrighted Art and Promotes Porn
Stick to programming. Your physics isn't all that hot.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/ 2003/12/eminent_environ.html
F -8&q=extreme+quotes+environmentalists&spel l=1
Here is the source of what I posted with supporting links. I have researched quotes like these before, but is is the THIRD response http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UT
Now fucking appoligize.
[leach is the proper spelling; leech is the organism.]
But yeah, lead is very dangerous, even in a compound like solder. With rain and acids (like the flux used in soldering, and other environmental sources), it is quite easy to see how the lead could dissociate and run off, contaminating the groudwater.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Ok, that begs the question: how many parents are feeding lead-based paint to their children?
Seriously, though, people aren't generally in direct contact with the lead contained in their motherboards, cards, hard disks, etc. The problem is supposed to occur at disposal time when it is alleged that lead and other heavy metals leach out of the refuse and in to the water table, and hence into the local water supply/food chain. With recycling companies breaking-up computers and other electronic devices into their constituent materials and reselling "raw" materials this should become less and less of an issue.
I'm not convinced of the lead problem myself. There isn't anything in this world today where everyone says it's good for you and nobody is saying it will kill you - just look at diets and mobile phones. One well-known atmospheric scientist who is a big proponent of global warming at the moment was pushing the coming of an ice age in the 1960's and 70's. His excuse? He was "wrong" back then. So, who's right and who can you believe?
If you were to look at this from an anti-Lead-Free point of view, one could wonder whether Lead-Free petrol has benefited the environment or not, since Lead-Free petrol has caused increases in SO2 emissions which cause H2SO4 acid rain and decimation of forests in Sweden and Norway as well as damage to old and ancient structures in France, Italy and Greece.
Old news/joke: City officials almost ban foam cups
Funny yes, original no.
I would like to suggest a Detox Tea regimen for anyone that feels that they have been exposed to more than their fair share of toxic materials. My mother; for instance, has been drinking this stuff for years and almost all her major ailments (arthritis, gall stones, and kidney stones) have been alleviated more so than the medicine she was prescribed. I myself take it only sparingly and have noticed a few things, my lung and nose mucus is clear unless I go to the city and a few blackheads I have had for years have dissapeared on my face. I guess I will have to keep drinking it to see if it can get me to lose this last 20 lbs without exercise, heh.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
What exactly is this "kilogram" you speak of? I think it might just exist in the same alternate universe where people get to upgrade their computers annualy.
The pollution isn't appreciable at your consumer (and disposer) end - the critical mass is in manufacturing. And in the landfills loaded with your neighbors disposed boards. Every one of us does our part, whether we notice or not. The same might be said for your lost sinkers, but the scale is too small and diffuse to matter (yet).
Capitalism eats away at the communistic principle of hiding production costs where the Party collects its dues, the factory, obscuring the full costs including disposal and even occasional cleanup. So corporations with a sustainable strategy are getting out from under their eventual liability by moving to cleaner production. Intel is one of the most forward-strategic corporations on the planet, and Via is their competition, with a longterm survival attitude. You might drop this "political correctness" kneejerk and get with the program for a livable future, like the rest of us.
--
make install -not war
However, Roentgen tubes use much higher voltages (100 kV at least) than CRTs (about 25 kV), and so the intensity of X rays is much lower. The screen itself, made of thick glass with a trace amount of lead, is sufficient to stop them. I tried to measure the radiation at the screen with a dosimeter, and got nothing except the usual ambient radiation (10 micro Roentgen / hour or so).
good job!
Most new boards are lead free. All the parts use BGA chips so there are no leads sticking out of them. :)
Obviously, the lead had to come from SOMEWHERE, right? I'm going to take a stab in the dark, and guess that it came from either the earth, or aliens. Since, although I support the belief of extraterrestrial life, I find it illogical that they would want to sneak lead to earth, the lead probably came from earth.
/.
when I was a kid, my mom would always tell me to put the damn bread back in the damn fridge when I was done making the damn sandwhich.
Could somebody more learned in ecology tell me why we can't put the damn lead back in the damn earth when we're done with the damn products?
I mean, I realize that animals die because of it, but doesn't that just accomplish more natural selection? I don't see how it matters.
Then again, i'm an idiot compared to 99% of
If you consider the safe disposal and storage of spent nuclear fuel, the mining and prossesing of said fuel. A nuclear power plants are only economical to run if you have a domestic nuclear weapons programme, which will use the plutonium produced by your uranium fueled reactors.
DDT I dont know about.
First, few computers draw their power supply's rating. Their recommendations for that is when the card is being heavily used on an assumed fully loaded PC with a bunch of extra peripherals. Your PC is NOT drawing 450 watts *all the time* (or even part of the time, usually) when you have a 450 watt power supply.
Second, if you can figure out a way to significantly reduce the power required by chips while maintaining performance, you will be fabulously wealthy and revolutionize the world of computing. Power draw is a HUGE concern. Remember that the vast majority of computers sold these days are actually in battery powered devices (all your cell phones, pdas, calculators etc have processors in them now)
-
first, many eu companies produce in taiwan, malaysia and so on. second, many non-eu companies produce in eu (amd in dresden for example)
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
> whether Lead-Free petrol has benefited the environment or not, since Lead-Free petrol has caused increases in SO2 emissions which cause H2SO4 acid rain and decimation of forests in Sweden and Norway as well as damage to old and ancient structures in France, Italy and Greece.
It was necessary for the introduction of the catalytic converter to switch to lead-free petrol as the lead deactivates the main catalysator.
The cat was necessary to reduce acid rain by NOx-reduction (Transportation accounts for 43percent, industry 32percent, natural 5percent of overall emissions (1993) )
For SO2: Overall, 69.4 percent of sulfur dioxide is produced by industrial combustion. Only 3.7 percent is caused by transportation. And now there is another solution: sulphur-free gasoline.
> His excuse? He was "wrong" back then. So, who's right and who can you believe?
Ignoring that you are sufficiently vague, (What is an athmospheric scientist? Who was it? When did he expect the coming Ice Age? What did he really say?), and ignoring that a theory has to be tested on its facts and reasoning and not on its proponents, I'd rather believe someone who admits his mistakes and learns from them as someone who claims to be always be right and stays by his theory ignoring more recent data.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Shame the programming isn't all that hot either...
Sorry for getting further off-topic... Atmospheric Scientist == Climatologist in this case.
Testifying before a Senate Committee for Global Warming as late as October last year, I've called him Dr. X in this transcript extract from Channel 4's (Britain) "The Greenhouse Conspiracy":
Anyone who's sufficiently interested can find the source and proceed from there. It's not just this one program singling him out, there are various sources both on and off the Internet discussing the conversion from The Little Ice Age to Global Warming.
I have no problem with someone learning from their mistakes. But I do wonder about such a change of viewpoint, especially when people in the same industry are skeptical or express concern about such a change in this individual. It makes me take the whole issue just a little less seriously. If many people assess it similarly then that can't be good for any cause.
So the designers of the PPC 970FX are fabulously wealthy computing revolutionaries? Well, they certainly deserve more praise and material reward than the makers of Prescott. Now if only yields were a bit higher...
Correctly rated as "troll". But to enlighten you...
One mobo is not a big problem. But the zillions of circuit boards thrown away every year, when they're all taken together, *are* a problem. It's the same as smokeless zones - one campfire is not a problem, but an entire city with coal fires screws up the air.
You don't plan eating your mobo, but wherever they're shipped to (usually China) for "recycling", this shit dissolves out of the piles of boards and seeps into the water supplies. So people over there are *literally* eating and drinking the metals out of your mobo. Life expectancy in those areas is pretty damn short, due to poisoning from lead, cadmium, arsenic and other nasties.
Grab.
The ban of lead in the electronics industry is only the beginning. :-) discover all the nicey materials used in assembly, packaging and silicon wafer processes.
Just you wait until the environment hippies
I mean, Beryllium and Gallium Arsenide just sound unhealthy, right?
Well, yeah, you're right. They actually are....
Hint: Don't go licking the walls in the manufacturing facilities.
bravo! encore!
good to read someone with more than two braincells in their head.
Sorry, this is one of those sit/set, sitzen/setzen, lernen/lehren pairs from Germanic languages.
Leach is a transitive verb meaning to suck/drain something out of something else.
Leak is an intransitive word meaning to spill out of something. The substance itself is the agent.
So a leech leaches the blood out of you, but if there's a leak in your oil pan, the oil leaks out all by itself.
Kind regards,
tormenta,
-Teaching native English speakers their own language since 1997
There isn't anything in this world today where everyone says it's good for you and nobody is saying it will kill you - just look at diets and mobile phones.
Yeah, but there are many things that everyone says are bad for you, and no one thinks are good. Lead is one.
With recycling companies breaking-up computers and other electronic devices into their constituent materials and reselling "raw" materials this should become less and less of an issue.
BTW, How many computer recycling companies are accepting computers from your area? Maybe I'm just uninformed, but I haven't heard of any that would take my old computer parts.
You are an idiot. Environmentalists are not only concerned about the heavy metals emitted by nuclear plants, but about the catastrophic effects of an accident at a power plant.
Have you heard of Chernobyl? Well, if that's too far away for you, maybe you would like to look into the missing fuel rods at this Vernmont nuke plant
A pencil size rod is missing and it is enough to make a dirty bomb and kill thousands. Even if it isn't used in a terrorist act, it will be fatal to anyone who comes into contact with it without being properly shielded. Considering that no one knows where it is, we don't know how many people have already died.
Those are the real concerns of the environmentalists that you ridicule. If you were to fairly criticize them, you would do the honorable thing, which is to fully articulate the position of those that you critique, so that others can really weigh out the arguments.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
I can't help thinking about this story,
9 23 0
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/06/044
Some chip makers went green, and it killed their reliability a few years later. Hence a zillion useless Fujitsu hard drives.
I hope they have done huge testing, or else landfills will be clogged with a lot more computer parts.
Of course, given my experience VIA stuff doesn't last that well anyway. When I'm working on a flakey computer with a dying MB, I usually see a VIA chipset on it.
------- Mark
Also, I believe you misunderstand the difference between conservative support for "family planning" prior to conception (which is generally strong, apart from Catholics), with conservative disgust with "Planned Parenthood" after conception.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious