Slashdot Mirror
UK Man Sentenced To 16 Months For Exporting 'E-Waste' Despite 91% Reuse
retroworks writes: The Guardian uses a stock photo of obvious electronic junk in its coverage of the sentencing of Joseph Benson of BJ Electronics. But film of the actual containers showed fairly uniform, sorted televisions which typically work for 20 years. In 2013, the Basel Convention Secretariat released findings on a two-year study of the seized sea containers containing the alleged "e-waste," including Benson's in Nigeria, and found 91% of the devices were working or repairable. The study, covered by Slashdot in Feb. 2013, declared the shipments legal, and further reported that they were more likely to work than new product sent to Africa (which may be shelf returns from bad lots, part of the reason Africans prefer used TVs from nations with strong warranty laws).
Director of regulated industry Harvey Bradshaw of the U.K. tells the Guardian: "This sentence is a landmark ruling because it's the first time anyone has been sent to prison for illegal waste exports." But five separate university research projects question what the crime was, and whether prohibition in trade is really the best way to reduce the percentage of bad product (less than 100% waste). Admittedly, I have been following this case from the beginning and interviewed both Benson and the Basel Secretariat Executive Director, and am shocked that the U.K. judge went ahead with the sentencing following the publication of the E-Waste Assessment Study last year. But what do Slashdotters think about the campaign to arrest African geeks who pay 10 times the value of scrap for used products replaced in rich nations?
Director of regulated industry Harvey Bradshaw of the U.K. tells the Guardian: "This sentence is a landmark ruling because it's the first time anyone has been sent to prison for illegal waste exports." But five separate university research projects question what the crime was, and whether prohibition in trade is really the best way to reduce the percentage of bad product (less than 100% waste). Admittedly, I have been following this case from the beginning and interviewed both Benson and the Basel Secretariat Executive Director, and am shocked that the U.K. judge went ahead with the sentencing following the publication of the E-Waste Assessment Study last year. But what do Slashdotters think about the campaign to arrest African geeks who pay 10 times the value of scrap for used products replaced in rich nations?
Somehow, it's worse in th eUSA
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Remember, arbitrage is only legal when dealing with intangible financial instruments. Arbitrage with actual products is gauche and therefore punishable.
The way quite a bit of e-waste gets out of countries with strong regulations is by being shipped in "working" or "repairable" units, which are in principle allowed by law, even though they are actually waste. So this may be a bad thing, or may be a good thing, depending on the details. The mere fact that the devices are working or repairable does not mean that they aren't waste--if someone gave you a working 20-year-old TV, would you want it?
The way quite a bit of e-waste gets out of countries with strong regulations is by being shipped in "working" or "repairable" units, which are in principle allowed by law, even though they are actually waste. So this may be a bad thing, or may be a good thing, depending on the details. The mere fact that the devices are working or repairable does not mean that they aren't waste--if someone gave you a working 20-year-old TV, would you want it?
If I didn't already have something better, then yes, I would want it. My current main television is about 10 years old, and I bought it used two years ago to replace another that was 14 years old and needed an expensive repair.
I think, as an American, I need to wait for a politician or a celebrity to tell me what my opinion should be. I'm quite sure I'm outraged, I'm just not sure why yet.
Be Excellent To Each Other
Er... I understand that most (all?) countries in Africa use either PAL or SECAM, while analog US TVs are NTSC.
That would make those TVs worthless for aerial reception.
How can we keep this economy growing endlessly forever, if people are allowed to resell good working long-lived well designed used equipment, rather than being forced to destroy their old gear and buy brand new bad-lot shelf-returned crap?
Remember, landfill is profit! Recycling is socialism.
What would you watch on it? Where would you get the power to run it?
I would definitely take a working 20 year old TV if I had no hope of getting one any other way. It's all about "what can I afford".
These TVs are waste because they are not digital, the countries they are going to are probably a long way from going digital.
One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure.
My current main television is about 10 years old, and I bought it used two years ago to replace another that was 14 years old and needed an expensive repair.
You are not the "norm". For the majority of consumers 2 years old is obsolete.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
In principle, reuse is a really good thing. And in some cases it's a good thing in practice too. There are definitely things we can export to Nigeria for which Nigerians will benefit from that export. But there is also a very dirty recycling industry in the third world. For stuff they can't use, we ought to keep it and recycle it expensively, rather than shipping it there and have them die young of heavy metal exposure recycling it cheaply.
Prehistoric vidya games.
Just plug it in.
You are not in the norm;
Most people I know have televisions and other electronics that are 10+ years old; even more so for people in the 40+ demographic.
Even in the US a converter box or cable box takes care of the digital problem.
My bad, it's UK, not US.
I've got a Nigerian neighbour (I live in Australia) who fills containers with electronics and sends them to Africa. I spoke to him about it and he said that they repair the stuff there, and reuse most of it. Considering that the analogue TV signal was switched off last year, and essentially all CRT TV's don't work, a lot have been dumped on streets, and they naturally been picking them up for free.
So it's surprising that they so blatantly claim that they're dumping them, when I can hardly see the sense in spending the money on shipping containers half way across the globe, only to dump it there, when it has already been dumped here. Clearly there's some thing going on which the business world isn't particularly keen on. If this person jailed was being paid to dispose of garbage and he was just dumping it in countries that don't care about dumping, then that's a different matter, but I get the feeling that our garbage is somewhat more valuable in developing countries.
In the UK, that's the normal sentence for defending oneself from a criminal attack or leaving your wheelie trash bin out an extra day.
I have volunteered many, many hours to some 3d printing FLOSS projects over the years.
There is a reason.
Manufacturing is a corrupt, bizarre industry. It does not take magic to build a vacuum cleaner. Mechanical inclination is innate to the human brain. The planned obsolescence fad has done nothing in the past 50 years except transfer wealth from the middle class to the top 1%, essentially by committing mass fraud by forcing engineers to use their skills to produce products that fail on purpose for no reason.
This time is coming to an end. No African would buy castoffs when they can print their own product in their own backyard. Yes, it will be a while before we can print electronics, but it was a while before we could print things like cups and knobs in the past.
"Oh but what about the jobs lost". Lets talk about that. Lets talk about GM, which purposely shipped huge number of cars, knowing that they had a defect that killed people. For years. And punished the person who tried to stop them. I wonder how people who work for low wages at small businesses feel about watching their own tax dollars being spent to bail out a company that kills people because it's management are lazy and incompetent. This is not about 'saving jobs', it's about ending a corrupt and evil system.
You are not in the norm;
Most people I know have televisions and other electronics that are 10+ years old; even more so for people in the 40+ demographic.
I also wonder if his "norm" is considered "norm" in the Africa these tvs are exported to...
My current main television is about 10 years old, and I bought it used two years ago to replace another that was 14 years old and needed an expensive repair.
You are not the "norm". For the majority of consumers 2 years old is obsolete.
For the majority of consumers in the first world. If you ever traveled more than 10 miles from your house you might find that other people live differently than you do. A 10 year old TV in some communities in India is a luxury!
Valuable components for repair of other TVs can be easily desoldered from irreparably broken TVs. This would reduce the environmental load in today's world when the planet is already overloaded.
On the other hand how to dispose of the rest when the country doesn't have proper facilities for that.
I think the question whether something is waste or not and whether its good or bad to export it to third world countries is pretty complicated.
I wonder if it would be illegal to mass desolder second hand electronic components and send them to the third world country for the purpose of repair of broken TVs (regardless of questions of economy or component reliability).
If containing broken pieces makes a shipment illegal - if a manufacture ships a container of new TVs and some of them are defective, is it classified as illegal export of waste and the manufacturer goes to jail for 16 months?
Karel Kulhavy, Twibright Labs
These TVs are waste because they are not digital, the countries they are going to are probably a long way from going digital.
CRTs also hold up to the elements much better, and some places do not have 24hr AC. Or any AC. (Air conditioning, not power)
they were more likely to work than new product sent to Africa (which may be shelf returns from bad lots, part of the reason Africans prefer used TVs from nations with strong warranty laws).
Wouldn't shipping shelf returns to Africa be e-waste as well? Is management of budget video/electronic chains going to be serving their 16 months when caught?
Have gnu, will travel.
For stuff they can't use, we ought to keep it and recycle it expensively, rather than shipping it there and have them die young of heavy metal exposure recycling it cheaply.
I understand your sentiment, but think how it feels to be told by the first world "You can not have this stuff that you want because you can not use it responsibly." Talk about arrogance!
Never let action get in the way of posturing. What matters is the pretense of concern, not the resolution of problems.
I'm curious about this; do you have a source, or is that from experience?
For the corporate capitalist consumerist lobbyists I suggest the following:
1) A law that every electronic device older than 2 years is e-waste
2) People who don't throw them away and buy new one will be jailed for illegal storage of e-waste at home, harsh sentences
3) Claim that people who "illegally store e-waste" (=don't participate in wasteful consumerism) are bad for the environment, because
the precious metals and other stuffs in their "illegally stored e-waste" is being kept from re-use (add some greenwash astroturfed heartbreaking photos of people being tortured in mines in Kongo, which you accidentally also happen to operate).
Karel Kulhavy, Twibright Labs
It's not—if they can use the TV, they will want to. The problem is that most likely they can't. Even if it's in working order, it has to be able to display the signals that are available to receive, and you have to be able to get power for it. And CRTs draw a lot of power.
.. too little evidence. This entire entry is solid opinionated spin and foregone conclusion. Since I investigated and wrote on the E*Waste topic for several years, I happen to know that there is massive cheating going on, and financial responsibility avoidance at every turn. I dont know anything about this case, but the whole thing looks very fishy to me.
Yes, well, we also do a lot to make sure that they don't actually have the opportunity to have a safe environment, and I suspect that feels worse. Talk about arrogance!
Website against planned obsolescence where you can register cases of planned obsolescence in any product.
Major manufacturers already have hefty files there.
Unfortunately the website is in German so most people need to use some kind of translator.
Karel Kulhavy, Twibright Labs
BTW the captcha sucks its so badly distorted its ambiguous to read (a letter could be just the distorting lines, lowercase l, number one, or small p), when I enter one possibility it says I failed to prove I am human, when I try the other it says I failed to prove I am human and should start all over and I cannot get the editing work back again.
I think this is just deterring legitimate users while spammers pay a cent army of Indians who type the captchas for them.
Recycling is not socialism. Recycling is profit when it makes economical sense to do so. You will find this happens with most metals and a few other products like building materials and certain types of glass. Recycling is an economic drain increasing costs to producers and thereby consumers when it doesn't make economic sense to do so. You will find this with certain paper and most plastic and quite a bit of types of glass.
The reason is because it is either more expensive or cheaper to create new materials. when it is more expensive, recycling makes a lot of sense. When it is cheaper, it is just a burden.
Now this can get muddy when you talk about things like electronics. There is money in the metals in most of them but the environmental aspects of extracting them artificially increase the costs. In most of Europe, they have a special tax and a requirement for recycling these devices which covers most of it. In the US, not so much that I know of. In other countries, typically third world countries with lax environmental regulation or lax enforcement, extracting some of these metals are profitable and thereby recycling is also profitable.
Now, threatening you with jail time or heavy fines if you throw a soda can into the trash or toss a banana peal into the recycling bin is not socialism, it's more akin to fascism or the brand of totalitarian communism that communism (which seems great on paper but never works out in practice) always de-evolves into when they try it.
If the arbitrage was carried out by humongous multinationals, such as Japan's Mitsubishi Group or America's GE's, no, nobody dare to punish them
It's only punishable when small fry does it, small fry like that Mr. Benson in TFA
If it is a small mini-portable TV that fits in the corner of a mud-brick hut, then probably yes. There isn't much space once you have a couple of bunk-beds on each side of the door, a cooker and refrigerator on the far wall, and some cupboards on each side. The only space left is an upper corner, which is just enough space for a small TV.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Anyone has visited or lived in Africa will tell you that. You just need to look at satellite photographs of Earth at night to see that Africa has electricity. Like any rural area, the main hazards to power supply are thunderstorms and local wildlife. Power failures are frequent, along with the associated power surges and fluctuating power line voltages.
Africa is on the equator, so the climate is like Florida or New York in Summer but all year round. Sunrise at 6am, sunset at 6pm. Air conditioning is a luxury usually available only to office blocks and hotels. Any building without air conditioning becomes an oven. So having a 32" 600 watt plasma display wouldn't be appreciated. A small 12" black/white CRT is ideal and the bulkiness prevents looters from stealing it.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
They are "dumping", as in selling below cost! What this does is undercut the new product business, and someone was losing money. Nothing better than to have competition thrown in jail.
You do realize that they have electricity and media on the continent of Africa, right? It's a huge and very diverse place.
Talk about arrogance!
Arrogance is being told that your actions are self-defeating and harming others, then being told that you know better and carrying on.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In most of Europe, they have a special tax and a requirement for recycling these devices which covers most of it. In the US, not so much that I know of.
As usual, just California. We have an e-waste recycling fee which is charged at purchase time. When you want to dispose of electronics, there is no charge. I take them to the transfer station which is convenient for me, but municipalities often have a curbside electronics _pickup_ once or twice a year. Not here, I live in the sticks, which is why there's a transfer station on the way into town from my house.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As many of you should know, Rosewill is the house brand for NewEgg.
A few years ago they started selling fairly decent quality mechanical keyboards ( not as good as some high end keyboards, but certain good quality ).
Almost everything on these keyboards is repairable. If a keyswitch breaks you can buy a new a new one and solder it in. If the controller breaks you can replace it.
Even if the pc board breaks, you can get a "phontom" pc board and reuse the parts and the case.
What you cannot do is purchase it from NewEgg in Illinois and two other states ( NC and NY IIRC ). Why because of the ewaste regulations. So you can buy a cheap keyboard that breaks in six months and basically has to be thrown out, but you cannot buy a keyboard that is meant to last ten years and even then be repaired.
These are the kind of laws that the weirdo environmental groups push.
That's so 5 years ago.
Today people may consider it "obsolete", but lacking the funds to replace it with something new, it'll have to do. And just WHY people don't buy new crap, whether they are like my dad who just recently realized that he might ponder considering replacing his VHS recorder with a DVD player ("It's still working, ya know?") and who buys a new computer every 10 years or so ("it's still working and I don't run it on battery anyway"), or whether they simply cannot afford a new set despite wanting the latest and greatest in consumer gadgets, the result is the same: NO SALE.
And that's why the economy is in the slump. People have no money to buy new shit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Are we talking about Africa now or about my college's dorm?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Probably whatever OTA Analog broadcasts are around ( no digital receivers so older analog is fine), VHS / DVDs from players from the same era, and whatever the local market that wants the damn things has available ETC.
Just because you are privileged and can afford cable / digital OTA / blueray ETC doesn't mean there isn't a market ( which there obviously is ) for older tech in less privileged areas.
Besides, I would rather see the stuff being used than have to have plants built for stripping the old crap of anything useful; I don't want the acids, bases, and assorted other harsh chemical shit needed for reclamation anywhere near me.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Heh, I kinda got lost in thinking about CRTs and how they hold up to the elements, and forgot to direct my question at that in particular instead of the AC-related part of that post.
"What would you watch on it? Where would you get the power to run it?"
Really? Maybe you were the judge in this case? Newsflash: Cities in Africa have electricity and internet. Average urban income is about $3,000 per capita per year. 6M households with TV in Lagos alone. Go to youtube and search "traffic in Cairo" or "traffic in Lagos", search Africa and Tech on twitter, then ask where Africans, who buy these and pay for the shipping, are plugging it in.
.
Put down your 1960s TinTin comic book. Google "World Bank" and find out how many cities in Africa have electricity and TV stations and internet.
If only Africa had mod points....
The last thing that the manufacturers want are people to reuse old equipment. Each is a loss of a potential sale of a new unit. In the perverse eyes of capitalism.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. If this gentleman was definitely going to reuse the old TVs, and their fate otherwise was recycling, then I suppose what he was doing ought to be legal.
However the whole thing sounds a little like a backdoor venture, done either to avoid scrutiny or fees. So one then has to ask, why was this done this way?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Joseph Benson on the "bullyboys". He is illiterate, never attended school, but knows TV repair.
Gently reply
> These TVs are waste because they are not digital
No. One can use them quite easily for digital systems.
First of all, let's establish what means being digital. Every equipment is not 100% digital, there's always some analog part. That said, one can have a digital tuner/receiver which outputs composite video (analog) to said older sets. The TV is always set to channel 3 or 4 (usually).
> the countries they are going to are probably a long way from going digital.
Again, no. That's what happened in Brazil... we went from analog to digital in a few years because of said set top boxes. It only was not easier because local TV providers had a veiled interest (and shares) in paid cable-TV, so everybody said paid TV was technically better -- when in fact and in practice the opposite is true.
I suppose that if a country adopts an already developed system and set top boxes are cheap (which they can be), as well as transmitting equipment (e.g. with some kind of incentive for manufacturers, 5 years would more than enough for countries with limited area or high urban population density.
The problem with older TVs is that they didn't break. I myself had to donate mine, which was quite perfect and worked with said receiver flawlessly, to acquire a LCD one some 3 or 4 years ago.
The traditional CRT set would work only at 640x480, while LCD TVs evolved to show 1920x1080 (Full HD).
That was the main reason to get rid of the old TV. For comparison, we still have a 1366x768 HD-Ready LCD which annoys me for the lower resolution -- but works nice for World Cup games. My father watched 640x480 via cable-TV until recently and thought it was superb. People watching sports are too much forgiving...
You're both correct and both incorrect.
In the USA the average TV is replaced at about
six years old. It used to be longer.
I might consider my TV obsolete, but it's not so bad as to require replacement yet. Same with my computer. Going by family history what tends to happen is that the main TV in the living room gets replaced by a bigger/better one, then the old TV there moves downstairs to the family room, that one ends up in a bedroom, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
Mostly from experience. I have worked in a few third world places, and in Africa for 6 months. And older, solidly built tech was preferred. Even in the "rich" companies, solid and proven technology was a benefit.
What about a 5 year old TV? Most of those still work, and are discarded merely because there's a newer model.
Hey, Norm!
Africa has electricity. And they have television signals that European televisions can use. And they have this anachronistic thing called the television repair shop.
What they don't have is a European/American attitude towards turning everything slightly old into trash, or the income necessary to be wasteful.
Hmm, I just now replaced a TV that was15 years old, only replaced because it was breaking down. (I still have it though, it's too heavy to drag down to the recyclers)
Remember several decades back when there were still television repair shops, so you'd go to have it fixed, replace the picture tubes, tune the chokes, etc?
That is all.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I remember it wasn't very long ago that we were all making fun of the Japanese throwaway culture where foreign students could get a lot of decent electronic gear from the curb simply because a newer model had a shiny new feature. Now we act in a similar way and those Africans are probably looking at us the same way.
I live in the UK, and I am using a desktop 3 years old, the family PC is over five years old, and our laptops that are 5 year old Lenovo T61's because they are better than the newer models. We dont play games on PCs - we have Android phones for that. PCs are for LibreOffice and Firefox (and the occasional bit of PCB layout). I think our company (Sun) servers are also more than 4 years old. They work fine. If it aint broke, don't fix it.
More relevantly: West African transport operators want mechanically injected diesel lorries with no ECU's because if the ECU goes wrong, the lorry and its load are lost. This means buying old lorries. The Western "polution reduction" Euro 5 etc, is about lining pockets for "Add-blu" sales, not about saving the planet.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I find it amusing that every reply so far has focused on the rhetorical question at the end of your post, even though you hit the real issue on the head.
Sure, this equipment is nicely sorted and in usable condition, but is there a distribution network on the receiving end? Are there actual storefronts, or merely front companies for stripping operations? From TFA:
Benson was previously convicted of exporting similar hazardous waste to Nigeria in 2011, and was appealing against his conviction – unsuccessfully – while continuing to illegally export televisions and freezers to West Africa, the Environment Agency said.
It seems Mr. Benson has made a habit of this tactic, and should already know that his methods run afoul of export laws. It's not a case of the big bad government out to stop the little guy from bringing luxury to the third-world savages, but rather just another guy who thinks that ignoring laws makes for a good business model.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Aljazeera news and Nollywood movies - so much better than Fox News and Hollywood.
Where would you get the power to run it?
From a Honda Generator.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Doesn't matter that much. Many tv's, even older analog ones, can receive both PAL and NTSC. The main difference is the color subcarrier being on a different frequency and slightly different timings. The different timings make almost no difference for the typical sync circuit in an analog tv (the older the better actually), so the worst that will happen is that you get a black and white image instead of color. Furthermore, UK has PAL.
blacks: the most violent uncivilized race
note - "saying those things offends me and that makes you a bad person and a big meanie head!" is not a rebuttal against anything i said.
saying those things can only offend yourself because in absence of a clear definition of "violence" and "civilization" in context it just exposes you as ignorant and racist (what a coincidence!).
Equating a "could be repaired or reused as is" number with the same for "definitely are being repaired and/or reused".
Because I don't think this matter was about off-lease Thinkpads.
Hmm, I just now replaced a TV that was15 years old, only replaced because it was breaking down. (I still have it though, it's too heavy to drag down to the recyclers)
Remember several decades back when there were still television repair shops, so you'd go to have it fixed, replace the picture tubes, tune the chokes, etc?
There's a perfectly functional Sanyo TV, matching DVD player, and VHS tape deck from 2002 sitting in my entertainment center.
Right next to a 1970s Lafayette Electronics (remember their electronics kits and Ham/CB radios?) analog stereo receiver, the kind with slide-rule AM/FM dial for the tuner portion, and an analog signal-strength/FM-stereo-signal-centering meter. That powers two pairs of 12"-woofer Rat-Shack "Optimus" speakers from the early 1980s. Still sounds great, and easily powerful/loud enough to rattle the windows and bring the local constabulary.
I also feed video/audio to the system from my 2001 and 2006 PCs, as well as my SGI Octane system from ~1998.
My cellphone is a 'soapbar' style basic LG from 2005.
*I* and people like me who do not throw money at them every other year for the latest "Oooh, shiny!" are their enemy and their target. Africa just has a higher proportion who don't (and/or can't afford to) buy their products according to an "optimum upgrade schedule" designed to maximize their profits.
The e-waste angle is just another tool being (mis-)used to "nudge" people to keep paying them over and over, and not repair, reuse, and/or re-sell their products.
A *government* tool that would not exist, or at least not in a form that would allow the corrupt politicians to use in this way, if we did not allow governments to grow large enough to have so much power and control over everything and everybody's life that holding those in government accountable becomes impossible as a practical, peaceful matter. We've seen this recently with the DoJ, IRS, NSA, GCHQ, etc etc.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
It's true about heat and LCD failure, though the LCD failure attributed to heat could also be from shoddy low cost producers and bad production runs (which also get directed at Africa).. And CRTs are heavy and less likely to be stolen.
Sure, this equipment is nicely sorted and in usable condition, but is there a distribution network on the receiving end? [...] From TFA:
That's a good question, but the excerpt that you pasted does not in fact address it. Care to try again?
It seems Mr. Benson has made a habit of this tactic
The quoted section only proves that he has gotten in trouble for this before, not anything else.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Where would you get the power to run it?
From a Honda Generator.
Ahh, that was the old days. Now people buy china generators. They don't live long enough to get exported. They just get scrapped when they fail utterly, or when they're missing too many parts you can't get.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ooh, buzzwords! Crap. But really, that's what this is. I'll lay odds that this judge has a financial interest in new electronics (read modern, LCD screens as opposed to older tech like CRTs). All this repair/reuse of old first world tech in a third world market is hitting a LOT of bottom lines, and it's pissing them off royally.
I wonder what they'd've made of my laptop recycling business I ran up to 2008, where I sent repaired laptops from the likes of Dell, Toshiba, HP and Compaq (before the merge - yeah, that kind of age) to African schools at pretty much the cost to ship them (hell, they didn't cost me anything and it was just a case of powering them up, seeing if they worked and if they did, take out the hard drive, make sure it had a wireless card and whack in a K12LX CD. Even a £20 mark on each unit meant I was making a friggin' fortune).
Stealing pie is illegal, especially if they're billionaires.
blacks: the most violent uncivilized race
note - "saying those things offends me and that makes you a bad person and a big meanie head!" is not a rebuttal against anything i said.
saying those things can only offend yourself because in absence of a clear definition of "violence" and "civilization" in context it just exposes you as ignorant and racist (what a coincidence!).
i know youre desperate to clutch at straws and find something to disagree with there but i will let you in on something you apparently couldnt figure out on your own: when a definition is not supplied it means we are going by the standard commonly accepted definition of those words. i would suggest consulting the oxford english dictionary if you are unclear about what those two terms mean.
then you can explain how 7% of the us population (black males) can be responsible for over 50% of all US murders and still be equal to everyone else. while contributing next to nothing in terms of science and new technology compared to whites and asians. then tell me how much you'd like to live in a majority black place like haiti, somalia, or hell detroit for that matter. since you are so very not-racist that should be no problem for you to move your family there - right?
if you have to play games with definitions and semantics again i will understand. most ppl do that in a desperate effort to save face when they know they are wrong.
same here. I don't want a car with a computer-controlled engine management system, because *when* that computer goes wrong, no matter how it goes wrong, that engine ain't starting without a dealer/mechanic EMU reset. Which costs money.
Nope. Show me a car with a carburetor and I'll show you a wad of ready cash.
We must find this Marxist Judge, Police, and Prosecutor... ;-]
I have a friend who runs a 16:9 CRT TV, he watches IPTV that comes through ADSL on the ISP provided box, and digital movies from Samba shares on his desktop computer, which is connected to a 100Hz CRT monitor. I was amazed that he set up the shares himself, lol.
Downloaded SD movies look and sound better than ever, by the way. Generated by competent people, from BD rips and with the sound in at least AAC 128K if you're lucky.
LCDs should be modified for sustain the thermal conditions. Perhaps things will change once the African middle class starts demanding products designed for African conditions. Overheated LCDs have been filling repair shops even here in the arctic North. It is too bad that making the television slightly fatter would likely impact sales. Too few consumer cares about a better sound or increased endurance.
Their are many pieces of the past that if works should not be destroyed, And even if they don't work, we can still very likely get parts off it. I personally would love to find an atari ST, atari falcon, Mac 128k, Amiga 600/1200, any of the atari 8 bit computers. It is a shame that so many of these fantastic pieces of hardware end up getting destroyed.
Now people buy china generators.
Yes, where instead of Copper, they use Aluminium wire...instant decrease in useful lifespan (e.g. I've two generators at hand, one old (20+years) Honda beastie, which just keeps working..and a year old cheap chinese copy (bought for the boat as it was a bit lighter) which has been nothing but trouble..but, as I'm a rather bloody minded individual (with a large spare parts pile), it's not getting scrapped that easily..the generator might be iffy but the engine is fine..)
They don't live long enough to get exported. They just get scrapped when they fail utterly, or when they're missing too many parts you can't get.
Tell me about it.
The good thing is that the chinese engines are usually based on an existing Honda/Other design, and once your scrap pile reaches a reasonable number of failed units, you stand a good chance of Frankensteining something working (but monstrous looking) out of them, usually replacing the obvious weakest link components with scrapped/new 'real' Honda equivalent parts (been there, done that...don't get me started on things like the quality (or lack thereof) of the pull start recoil springs fitted to your average chinese honda engine clone..)
Over the past couple of years I've had the misfortune to have in for servicing/repair a large number of chinese engined mowers, generators, strimmers/brush cutters, pressure washers, chainsaws, petrol masonry/stihl saws (misfortune, as it isn't technically what I'm employed to do and it takes up valuable time, but hey, I know how to do it, and it's another part of my non-existant job description now..).
I can honestly say that I've gotten to the point with some of them now that after a cursory look, it's a case of telling the owner that it's scrap, they're not usually happy about this, and when they start going on about how many hundreds of GBP the item cost, I fire up alibaba and show them the FOB cost of the item, and roughly what the import duty etc is, and point out that their 500 GBP item cost the suppliers betwixt 90-140 GBP to bring in and sell to them, and why, factoring in the cost of spares and my time, they're not worth fixing.
That's usually a fun session.
In reality, it's only something like 1% of that 7% of the population, with something like another 5% of that population involved in violent crime or robbery and 10% involved in nonviolent crime (I'm excluding drug use here for a reason). The remaining 84% of that group, comprising 5.88% of the population are, at the least, well-meaning people, and many of them are even pleasant to be around.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I agree with what you're saying overall, but I think your response was just apologist in nature.
The underlying problem still is that a majority of the crime comes from a minority population. Softening the problem will only make it worse because then no one will solve it.
I'm curious about this; do you have a source, or is that from experience?
Not the original poster, but here's my experience.
CRT Monitors and TVs tend to run hot, were designed to run hot, and seem to survive well in hot ambient conditions. LCD beasties, on the other hand, tend not to like high ambient temperatures for any length of time..in my non-AC'ed house in the third world that is the UK, I've three CRT TVs which have seen off their replacement LCDs..yes, they were replaced with LCD TVs, but these bloody things failed just after the guarantee period (14-16 month mark), and the old CRT ones dragged back out of storage.
The Monitor on the machine I'm typing this on is a 15 year old 17" CRT, it replaced a 19" LCD IIyama which gave up the ghost a couple of years ago (at the grand old age of three).
I'll lay the blame firmly on the LCD Monitor/TV design, they're mostly style over substance, from having no forced ventilation (would it hurt to fit an axial fan or two to keep the PCBs etc at a reasonable temperature? I've had a case of a Plasma TV where the localised heat build-up at one point in the case partially desoldered the joints on a flexible cable - causing me a couple of hours of find-the-transient-fault fun..) through general bad case design (seriously, who thought a case where the VGA and HDMI connectors placed right beside exposed mains voltage terminals was a good idea?, another where the act of adjusting the tilt of the monitor placed stress on one of the PCBs inside, eventually casing a ribbon connector to fail, i.e. there wasn't any sort of metal internal frame within the case to prevent torsion..basically it was relying of the LCD panel alone to provide this..not such a good idea ) to the bête noire of LCD TV/Monitors ... crap PSUs (from the usual dodgy Electrolytics to weirder issues, I've traced a fault to a component on the PSU board on a Panasonic model, gotten a copy of the service manual, compared schematic to board - guess what, it isn't the same IC, not even an equivalent funtion device, both SMT ICs came in at, ISTR, 35 GBP and 65 GBP from the only supplier I could find that stocked them in the UK.
For a TV that was only worth 130 GBP secondhand, it wasn't worth it (so I stripped it out, sold the working panels individually on ebay for more than the second hand value of TV)
Africa is on the equator, so the climate is like Florida or New York in Summer but all year round.
Erm... Africa's quite a big place, with lots of different climates. Nearly all the north of Africa is desert climate, so nothing like Florida or New York. South Africa has ski resorts, Tangiers is Mediterranean climate.
Any building without air conditioning becomes an oven. So having a 32" 600 watt plasma display wouldn't be appreciated. A small 12" black/white CRT is ideal and the bulkiness prevents looters from stealing it.
One of the major advantages of LCD and LED TVs is their lower power consumption. See this page for a quick comparison. CRTs have awful power consumption, even tiny ones.
i thought you'd came up with some conclussive scientific study showing irrefutable evidence that black humans are more prone to violent behaviour than white.
instead you're just babbling about crime statistics around the ghettos in your little corner of the world were you happened to threw some blacks in a while back. so now you have a problem with them? don't tell ...
i guess with such a display of skewed naiveness there's no point in even bothering to talk about civilization. have a nice day, keep enjoying your "commonly accepted definitions", you racist scumbag :-)
hey, it's hitler!
How about a five year old CRT? Many of those lasted for 10-15 years (I still have mine, bought it around 2000), where as I've been told (by people trying to convince me to buy a new TV, even) that modern LCD or Plasma displays should not be expected to last more than three to five years.
Actually, that's what I do too.
Although LCD technology is catching up (**), it's still hard to beat a SONY Trinitron (100Hz Pal+) IMHO! (much nicer colors, no artifacts, etc...).
I guess it does consume some extra electricity and yes, it is bulky like hell and often gets some frowns from visitors. But on the other hand, if ever a burglar comes peaking through the window, it's probably the first thing he sees and might actually convince him to switch to the next house =)
(**: that LG OLED 4K in the mall looked great but simply isn't affordable IMHO; and frankly, most shop-demo-stuff looks a lot nicer than what you actually get to see at home)
If there is one thing to be learned on slashdot, it has to be sarcasm.
if someone gave you a working 20-year-old TV, would you want it?
No, nor would I likely want a 10-year-old TV. However, if somebody sold it to a person in a rather poor country that same TV for an affordable price (when said person is not likely able to afford the newer model, or at least the price difference makes it a reasonable buy), that seems OK to me.
Better that the heads somewhere it can get a little bit more use, rather than being dumped in the ground somewhere or even separated into various bits in a rather environmentally unfriendly way.
RIght, and we should definitely support this plan of yours by relaxing the laws on emission controls... Because after all your desire not to have to repair the computer totally trumps any desire we have to breathe clean air and not see forests destroyed by acid rain.
In the early 90s my Dad was winding down his construction business. He had some Zambian employees, who bought (at slightly above scrap value) a truck that was going to be no longer legal to circulate in Europe due to upcoming emissions standards, and a lot of his old equipment before going home (in the truck) and starting their own business there. We still get a card every day, and they are doing incredibly well. Was that wrong?
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
I generally downcycle stuff. Get a new computer? The old one becomes the entertainment center, the old EC becomes the backup server for my work, the old server moves over to run the 3d printers, etc. Takes a full day to move over, mind.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Nothing apologist about it, just calling out racism where I see it. Statistically yes, at least in the US, it does appear that black males who offend tend to do so more violently and more frequently than other offenders, but let's tow the racism party line by insinuating that all black men are offenders. This is just a case of the few ruining it for the many.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If the Judge knew better after reading that report, and STILL sentenced the guy for a crime that he KNEW he wasn't guilty of, then he is obviously corrupt. Welcome to a "brave new world" far worse than Aldous or Orwell *ever* could have believed possible..
No, I already have a 20 year old TV in my living room. Don't need a spare.
For the majority of consumers in the first world. If you ever traveled more than 10 miles from your house you might find that other people live differently than you do. A 10 year old TV in some communities in India is a luxury!
Been all over the world, Mr. Elitist Asshole.
But as it happens this discussion *is about* "first world" e-trash, so put your head out of your ass.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I'm not so sure about televisions. A lot of people replaced their CRTs with LCDs and plasmas, so most of the people I know have televisions that are less than 10 years old. Many of them less than 5 years. From what I've seen of the build quality of most modern TVs, they'd be lucky to get 10 years out of them if they are used regularly, so I think the era of buying a TV and keeping it for 20-30 years is probably over for most people.
Hundreds of years. Meanwhile the stuff on the boards is metallic and highly mobile.