There are four reasons Windows is 'easy'. a) It's already installed, b) they already know it, c) all their software works on it, and d) vast networks of nerds providing free tech support.
Windows is not 'easier' by any objective measure when compared to any modern distro. Some things will be easier, some harder.
Some hardware will be supported only on XP, some only on Linux. (Before anyone takes exception to this, I have two USB devices that do not work under Windows XP, and one of them does work under Linux, the USB link cable. And a USB wireless keyboard that bluescreens XP when plugged in or removed, and works fine under Linux. I mention only the USB devices, as USB devices are fairly new and standardized.)
Some problems will be easier to fix, some won't be. (Ironically, though, many Windows problems are much easier to fix using Linux.) In Windows, some problems are not fixable by mortal man, and Linux has an advantage there.
I'm not going to run around saying everyone should switch to Linux. Sometimes one of those four facts is a killer. I'm just saying, that ain't 'ease of use'. b, c, and d are a result of the install base, and a is a result of b and c. It's not a result of better UI design.
OTOH, when was the last time you hooked up your Windows laptop to a Windows network, and wondered WTF you couldn't see anyone else.
I did that just this morning.
And I solved it by diving into the config files...no, wait, you can't do that on Windows. I solved it by manually connecting using the IP address...no, wait, you can't do that on Windows.
In fact, I didn't solve it, and didn't transfer the files I wanted.
Windows: It nicely compliments easy of use with easy of non-use.
Where the fuck do you live where you have a two hour commute?
In Atlanta we'd give our right arm to have a commute that was 'pushing two hours'.
I worked night shift at a gas station five years ago that had people come by at five thirty in the morning to buy coffee for the commute. Actual distance from Atlanta was about an hour and a half, actual trip time was more like three and a half hours.
And this was five years ago, before Forsyth, Cherokee, Dawson, White, Hall, and Gwinnett County swelled. (That's out the north-northeast side of Atlanta.)
People now have taken to commuting via giant catapult or sleeping in the parking garage, because there is not enough time to drive home, sleep eight hours, and drive back.
Luckily, our average is down, because we've started building businesses in the burbs. Which leads to a funny situtation that happens nowhere else that has a clear 'in' and 'out' of the city...we have reverse rush hour. We have the freeways backed up in both directions, because people are living in the city and working elsewhere. (WTH someone would want to live in Atlanta I do not know.)
Tell me that when I can format shift them to a cassette tape.
Or when I can grab five second segments from the reading as examples of 'different voices in audiobooks' in a study I'm writing. Or in a discussion of how stupid the voice reader is.
What you really mean is it has the same restrictions as the music industry pretends we have. The only right to copy the music industry will grant us is, grudgingly, the right to rip our own music.
But, luckily, we 'don't' have the right to do that with things from a library. (Except, of course, we do, we just have to destroy all non-fair use copies when returning the original.)
You go and write something that will handle the media format.
We can't, you moron. It's patented and a violation of the DMCA to boot.
Yes, there are legal ways to play normal WMAs on Linux. Contrary to popular belief, using Windows Media Player under Linux is a license violation, but there are completely legal ways.
However, there is no legal way to play WMAs with DRM on Linux. There is no legal to play DRM'd WMAs without WMP (or an embedded version) and MS's codecs at all.
You can't even do it illegally. WMP's DRM doesn't work under Linux, even if you get Windows Media Player working under Wine.
In fact, there are almost no DRM 'solutions' for Linux at all. Mainly because the entire concept is absurd, you can't have software DRM in an OS that can be rewritten out from under you.
Now, what you can do is strip out the DRM using Windows and transfer that file to Linux. But this a) is illegal under the DMCA, and b) duh, requires Windows. (For those who care, this is because you have to download keys from MS to decrypt the file. The hacks on Windows rely on Windows decrypting the file, and then 'stealing' the file out from under it.)
You forgot the third way: Right now, all media distribution is controlled by very large corporations.
In some places, like books, that's not that relevant, because many people just ignore the distribution system and publish their own books, aka, vanity printing.
This is also happening in the music industry, although as the music industry is a cartel that controls entire channels of distribution, it's happening a lot slower. (Whereas with books you can walk up to local bookstores and get them to carry your vanity printed book if they think it's interesting.)
And it's started happening with TV shows. I point you to the fan-made Star Trek, or even cartoons like Strong Bad. Yes, it's crude, and there's no money in it, but people are doing it who couldn't actually produce a real TV show.
That leads to the third option. People not in the industry could convert to the new way. In practice, this is how 50% of all paradigm shifts works. Some companies convert to the new way, and some resisted. Those that resist are left behind.
Book publishers are not going to be left behind. There are already ones that publish free ebooks, there are ones that don't do 'contracts' and 'advances'...you write the book, you pay them to edit it, you pay them to print it, you keep all the money. And, of course, newspapers are desperately trying to reposition themselves in this new world where everyone has an infinitely-big infinitely-fast printing press that lets random people append whatever they want at any time.
The publishing industry 'gets it'. Some parts are scared to death, some parts are worried, and some part are laughing manically as they gain the ability to print a single copy of a book at a sane price. But they all see it coming, and they all see they have to change.
However, the music 'industry' is resisting 100%. Sadly, the music 'industry' is not made up of the people who actually make the music, who are converting in droves.
Which is, of course, the third option. The industry might not change, and might come out with harser and harser laws, and harder to get around technical means.
And while they're doing that, others see a way into the market by not doing that. Eventually rendering the music 'industry' irrelevant.
The TV and movie industry have not reacted much, because copying hasn't been that possible for that, and because entering that industry has incredibly high costs...or, at least, it did.
Soap operas are one of the few forms of TV that don't need copyright. Why? Because they have almost nil value after being aired once.
Other types of TV shows use copyright, because they have reruns, syndication, and DVD. Soap operas have none of those. They air once, maybe twice, then the next episode airs and they never air again.
Um, no. This is as anti-fair use as any other DRM.
Fair use has nothing to do with this at all. Fair use says, under some circumstances, it is legal to copy parts or even the whole of a work. Yes, even if that copy is borrowed.
There were only a few places in the entire Space Quest series where you could end up in an 'unwinnable' situtation, and those were not intentional. There is one game where you can even 'try again' when you die.
The sole exception, as far as I know, was Space Quest 2, where in the first room you needed to pick up something that you needed near the end of the game, and that was deliberate, those bastards.
And if you got attacked by the alien you had an alien burst out of your chest later on, but I laugh at people who complain about that. First, it was five minutes of gameplay you lost, and second, um, duh. What did you think would happen?
re title, you aren't just buying a physical product, you are buying an intangible license which permits you to use that software title. When you purchase a software title, you obtain both the license and software necessary to use that license.
Yeah, that's what I'm not quite believing about this story.
I can imagine motors that spin up and don't use much power past that. However, while I'm no expert on motion, I would suspect that generating a tilt would suck power.
I hit submit in the middle of that by accident. And don't even know where I was going.
Let me try again:
And as it currently standards, DIA has much smaller facilities, with less gates. It's built on more land, and it uses the land it has much less tightly, but not really 'bigger'.
However, the whole airport is designed so poorly they can't actually run more planes in and out.
Especially if they combined it with a tilt detector.
You want to steer around that corner? You not only have to push 'left', but you have to push on the right side of the controller to keep it level, or left doesn't count as much.
Tilt 'control' is pretty dumb, but 'you must fight the added tilt' is actually a pretty cool idea, or at least sounds like it.
The toxic waste was a red herring. They needed to build a runway, which you can build quite happily on toxic waste. In fact, it's one of the only things you can safely build on places like that, so obviously we should use those places as often as possible for runways. It's not like poeple are going to be standing around 8 hours a day drinking thw water in the middle of a runway.
And as it currently standards, DIA has much smaller facilities, with less gates (Although, of course, it's paradoxically and slightly larger runways.
However, the whole airport is designed so poorly they can't actually run more planes in and out.
The recording industry doesn't know talent when it hits them in the back of the head with a 2x4. Maybe some sort of out-of-control bus, or high-powered rifle bullet...
Musicians, you have a choice. Either go with the recording industry, which might give you two years of nice living when you are not your own boss, and shat you out at the end of it with absolutely nothing to show for it. Not even the ability to sell your own music.
Or put a website and sell music online. Give away some tracks. Sing at clubs. You'll end up living on half of what the music industry loans you, but notice that word loan? That loan, called an advance, means you will never see a dime of money from your music.
But what about promotion and distribution and stuff? Sorry, bub, you have to pay for that. Or rather, it comes out of the money that you are increasingly unlikely to see a dime of.
Now, unless you're incredibly lucky or good, you won't make it 'big'.
However, if you fail outside the industry, you fail because people don't like the music, whereas if you fail inside the industry, you fail because the industry doesn't like you. And the industry likes exactly seven people at once, one that fits exactly one predefined market, and no more.
Whereas outside the industry, you can make an okay living with 'pretty good' music, and a great one with 'very good' music. If you do make it big outside the industry, and end up needing them, you can approach them on your terms. And if you don't make it big, you don't need them and don't want them, they'll just suck money from you.
But it's not as complicated as it could be, if sane choices are made.
That means absolutely no sendmail. That means Maildirs, so you don't need any file locking at all. That means users stored in one place, be it SQL or LDAP, and not a brittle text file under any circumstances.
A lot of that is choices, and many people don't know how to make good ones, but this guy does. In fact, he's managed to chose exactly what I chose, three years ago, at least for the basics.
And this plan, as I pointed out, isn't complex. A postfix policy server doesn't increase the complexity of anything at all. An imap server that isn't part of a SMTP server is less complex than if they cared about each other. You can write a mail delivery agent in four lines of shell script. None of those things are externally complex, none of them interact with other things in complex ways.
You seem to think that small things talking to each other is more complex than one big thing. That is just completely wrong. Small things that talk to each other in well-defined ways are easier to deal with.
Because, and speaking of checking things manually, you can manually tell maildrop to deliver a message, you can replace maildrop with something that just dumps every message to a file to see if it or postfix is manging a header, and you can manually look at a Maildir mail message to see if the imap server or maildrop is confused. You can't do that if your server is one big black box where you put in mail on port 25 and get it out port 143.
The only added complexity to his setup is the content filter, which requires postfix accepting mail, and then delivering to a non-postfix server running on localhost and a weird port, which then does scanning and hands it to another postfix instances. While that is needlessly complex, it seems to work without any problems at all, and, if it does have problems, a single line commented out will fix that.
And, yes, if he doesn't have time to be a mail admin, he shouldn't be one, but mail systems run themselves if you do not fiddle with them and set them up correctly. The only non-spam-fighting change I've made in several years to the system I administer is changing 'maildrop' to postfix's own 'virtual' delivery agent (Something, BTW, I would recommend to this guy.) because it got smart enough to work for me, and finally getting sasl2 working. (Before I was using a postfix patch called simple_auth, which worked fine but was limiting my upgrade options.)
Because we generate power from things other than coal.
However, that logic would render his statement rather meaningless.
If we assume that, conservatively, 35 million computers are running in the US all day. (Or 105 million running 1/3rd the day, or some combination thereof.) than his coal would be supplying a mere.00005% of them, and thus it couldn't be that important to care about much coal any hypothetical computer was using, as they are extremely unlikely to be powered by coal at all.
In fact, it'd be even more unlikely to matter, as I am unaware of any special 'coal-powered, for computer' power hookups. So we must assume the power is distributed evenly and each computer is.000005% powered by coal.
How much power is this, actually?
Experiment time: Let's hook up a car battery to an inverter, and see how long we can run a computer.
My laptop, with the battery removed and screen off, got at least 30 minutes once in my car as an experiment. In fact, I'd expect about 2 minutes on even the most power sucking computer, with monitor. As coal provided power for, apparently, a fraction of a second per day, obviously car batteries are a saner choice.
I hereby propose we replace coal power with sulfuric acid power.
Re:Disposable computing - are we trash or treasure
on
Rio Brand Closes Doors
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· Score: 1
Doing a case mod of an old MacSE is better than tossing it in the river - those things have mercury and other heavy metals in them.
Perhaps I'm not aware of what a 'case mod' is, but you are aware that the 'bad' things in a computer are almost exclusively on the circuitry, right?
That the case itself is just steel and possibly some plastic? It's like throwing away file cabinets.
Maybe the power supply has some toxic stuff in, but that's about it.
(And don't fall for the 'recycling plastic' lie. Recycling plastic uses more oil and creates more pollution than just throwing it away.)
If you don't like throwing away batteries, you might be interested in an idea they've come out with, called 'rechargable batteries'.
I know, the mind boggles.
Me, I haven't bought batteries in at least seven years, when I went rechargable. I over-invested and got like eight AA and four AAA batteries, and have lost about 1/4th of them. All of the remainers still work. The entire investment cost less than forty dollars, about half for the charger and half for the batteries. (Admittedly, I've also collected many 'normal' batteries from purchases that actually included the batteries, and I try to use those first.)
I keep my charger in the corner, and both the charged recharables and the unused normal batteries from purchases laying next in it. When I need a new battery, I go there and get one, and put the old one in the charger or throw it away. Having rechargables means I feel a lot less guilty about trying to get the last watt of power out of a battery. All the batteries I possess are fully charged (Or new normals.), or in devices.
It's a hell of a lot less complicated than the 'big drawer of batteries that may or may not work' that most people keep. I honestly don't know why everyone doesn't do it. I guess I had the advantage of being newly out on my own without the 'big drawer', to make a clean start. I went to the store, saw the charger, did the math, and got it, and don't regret it at all.
However, if the 'big drawer' is your experience with batteries, I can see why you'd like the built-in ones.
And they have battery rechargers that run off cigarette lighters, or for even more fun, most MP3 players can just be plugged into the cigarette lighter, thus not using the batteries at all. Buy a splitter and you can hook the battery recharger in at the same time!
The one difference between a built-in battery and one that isn't is that, with one that isn't, you'll have to open the back up, take the batteries out, and swap them for a charged pair. (OTOH, you don't have to leave your iPod in the car or hotel room to charge for it to work later, just a fifteen dollar charger. And people will steal iPods if you have them mounted in sight.)
Yes, it's slightly more work, but OTOH, you're sure to never have something die on you because the battery failed. The absolute worse that can happen is, in the middle of a trip, all your batteries stop recharging, (I've never had recharagable batteries reach that point, but they can.) and you want to remove your player from the car, so you have to, gasp, spend 99 cents on some normal batteries.
What do you do when your iPod battery fails, or the charger stops working, 200 miles from nowhere in a town that possesses one gas station and one grocery store?
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of right clicking, just click. Try it.
The problem is, no one knows about it.
There are four reasons Windows is 'easy'. a) It's already installed, b) they already know it, c) all their software works on it, and d) vast networks of nerds providing free tech support.
Windows is not 'easier' by any objective measure when compared to any modern distro. Some things will be easier, some harder.
Some hardware will be supported only on XP, some only on Linux. (Before anyone takes exception to this, I have two USB devices that do not work under Windows XP, and one of them does work under Linux, the USB link cable. And a USB wireless keyboard that bluescreens XP when plugged in or removed, and works fine under Linux. I mention only the USB devices, as USB devices are fairly new and standardized.)
Some problems will be easier to fix, some won't be. (Ironically, though, many Windows problems are much easier to fix using Linux.) In Windows, some problems are not fixable by mortal man, and Linux has an advantage there.
I'm not going to run around saying everyone should switch to Linux. Sometimes one of those four facts is a killer. I'm just saying, that ain't 'ease of use'. b, c, and d are a result of the install base, and a is a result of b and c. It's not a result of better UI design.
I did that just this morning.
And I solved it by diving into the config files...no, wait, you can't do that on Windows. I solved it by manually connecting using the IP address...no, wait, you can't do that on Windows.
In fact, I didn't solve it, and didn't transfer the files I wanted.
Windows: It nicely compliments easy of use with easy of non-use.
Where the fuck do you live where you have a two hour commute?
In Atlanta we'd give our right arm to have a commute that was 'pushing two hours'.
I worked night shift at a gas station five years ago that had people come by at five thirty in the morning to buy coffee for the commute. Actual distance from Atlanta was about an hour and a half, actual trip time was more like three and a half hours.
And this was five years ago, before Forsyth, Cherokee, Dawson, White, Hall, and Gwinnett County swelled. (That's out the north-northeast side of Atlanta.)
People now have taken to commuting via giant catapult or sleeping in the parking garage, because there is not enough time to drive home, sleep eight hours, and drive back.
Luckily, our average is down, because we've started building businesses in the burbs. Which leads to a funny situtation that happens nowhere else that has a clear 'in' and 'out' of the city...we have reverse rush hour. We have the freeways backed up in both directions, because people are living in the city and working elsewhere. (WTH someone would want to live in Atlanta I do not know.)
Tell me that when I can format shift them to a cassette tape.
Or when I can grab five second segments from the reading as examples of 'different voices in audiobooks' in a study I'm writing. Or in a discussion of how stupid the voice reader is.
What you really mean is it has the same restrictions as the music industry pretends we have. The only right to copy the music industry will grant us is, grudgingly, the right to rip our own music.
But, luckily, we 'don't' have the right to do that with things from a library. (Except, of course, we do, we just have to destroy all non-fair use copies when returning the original.)
We can't, you moron. It's patented and a violation of the DMCA to boot.
Yes, there are legal ways to play normal WMAs on Linux. Contrary to popular belief, using Windows Media Player under Linux is a license violation, but there are completely legal ways.
However, there is no legal way to play WMAs with DRM on Linux. There is no legal to play DRM'd WMAs without WMP (or an embedded version) and MS's codecs at all.
You can't even do it illegally. WMP's DRM doesn't work under Linux, even if you get Windows Media Player working under Wine.
In fact, there are almost no DRM 'solutions' for Linux at all. Mainly because the entire concept is absurd, you can't have software DRM in an OS that can be rewritten out from under you.
Now, what you can do is strip out the DRM using Windows and transfer that file to Linux. But this a) is illegal under the DMCA, and b) duh, requires Windows. (For those who care, this is because you have to download keys from MS to decrypt the file. The hacks on Windows rely on Windows decrypting the file, and then 'stealing' the file out from under it.)
In some places, like books, that's not that relevant, because many people just ignore the distribution system and publish their own books, aka, vanity printing.
This is also happening in the music industry, although as the music industry is a cartel that controls entire channels of distribution, it's happening a lot slower. (Whereas with books you can walk up to local bookstores and get them to carry your vanity printed book if they think it's interesting.)
And it's started happening with TV shows. I point you to the fan-made Star Trek, or even cartoons like Strong Bad. Yes, it's crude, and there's no money in it, but people are doing it who couldn't actually produce a real TV show.
That leads to the third option. People not in the industry could convert to the new way. In practice, this is how 50% of all paradigm shifts works. Some companies convert to the new way, and some resisted. Those that resist are left behind.
Book publishers are not going to be left behind. There are already ones that publish free ebooks, there are ones that don't do 'contracts' and 'advances'...you write the book, you pay them to edit it, you pay them to print it, you keep all the money. And, of course, newspapers are desperately trying to reposition themselves in this new world where everyone has an infinitely-big infinitely-fast printing press that lets random people append whatever they want at any time.
The publishing industry 'gets it'. Some parts are scared to death, some parts are worried, and some part are laughing manically as they gain the ability to print a single copy of a book at a sane price. But they all see it coming, and they all see they have to change.
However, the music 'industry' is resisting 100%. Sadly, the music 'industry' is not made up of the people who actually make the music, who are converting in droves.
Which is, of course, the third option. The industry might not change, and might come out with harser and harser laws, and harder to get around technical means.
And while they're doing that, others see a way into the market by not doing that. Eventually rendering the music 'industry' irrelevant.
The TV and movie industry have not reacted much, because copying hasn't been that possible for that, and because entering that industry has incredibly high costs...or, at least, it did.
Soap operas are one of the few forms of TV that don't need copyright. Why? Because they have almost nil value after being aired once.
Other types of TV shows use copyright, because they have reruns, syndication, and DVD. Soap operas have none of those. They air once, maybe twice, then the next episode airs and they never air again.
Audiobooks do not have licenses.
Fair use has nothing to do with this at all. Fair use says, under some circumstances, it is legal to copy parts or even the whole of a work. Yes, even if that copy is borrowed.
With DRM, you can't do that.
The sole exception, as far as I know, was Space Quest 2, where in the first room you needed to pick up something that you needed near the end of the game, and that was deliberate, those bastards.
And if you got attacked by the alien you had an alien burst out of your chest later on, but I laugh at people who complain about that. First, it was five minutes of gameplay you lost, and second, um, duh. What did you think would happen?
Really? Just a license?
When am I getting all my sales taxes back, then?
I can imagine motors that spin up and don't use much power past that. However, while I'm no expert on motion, I would suspect that generating a tilt would suck power.
And if you don't like it, sue your damn real estate agent.
Let me try again:
And as it currently standards, DIA has much smaller facilities, with less gates. It's built on more land, and it uses the land it has much less tightly, but not really 'bigger'.
However, the whole airport is designed so poorly they can't actually run more planes in and out.
You want to steer around that corner? You not only have to push 'left', but you have to push on the right side of the controller to keep it level, or left doesn't count as much.
Tilt 'control' is pretty dumb, but 'you must fight the added tilt' is actually a pretty cool idea, or at least sounds like it.
And as it currently standards, DIA has much smaller facilities, with less gates (Although, of course, it's paradoxically and slightly larger runways.
However, the whole airport is designed so poorly they can't actually run more planes in and out.
Apparently it was 'too small', which doesn't quite explain why this new one is even smaller. (Although located in middle of a huge area.)
It's not a tilt detector, it's a tilt inhibitor, specifically, gyroscopes.
In fact, if the gryoscopes can be rotated, it could easily be something that tries to tilt the controller out of your hand.
At least, that's the rumor.
The recording industry doesn't know talent when it hits them in the back of the head with a 2x4. Maybe some sort of out-of-control bus, or high-powered rifle bullet...
Musicians, you have a choice. Either go with the recording industry, which might give you two years of nice living when you are not your own boss, and shat you out at the end of it with absolutely nothing to show for it. Not even the ability to sell your own music.
Or put a website and sell music online. Give away some tracks. Sing at clubs. You'll end up living on half of what the music industry loans you, but notice that word loan? That loan, called an advance, means you will never see a dime of money from your music.
But what about promotion and distribution and stuff? Sorry, bub, you have to pay for that. Or rather, it comes out of the money that you are increasingly unlikely to see a dime of.
Now, unless you're incredibly lucky or good, you won't make it 'big'.
However, if you fail outside the industry, you fail because people don't like the music, whereas if you fail inside the industry, you fail because the industry doesn't like you. And the industry likes exactly seven people at once, one that fits exactly one predefined market, and no more.
Whereas outside the industry, you can make an okay living with 'pretty good' music, and a great one with 'very good' music. If you do make it big outside the industry, and end up needing them, you can approach them on your terms. And if you don't make it big, you don't need them and don't want them, they'll just suck money from you.
But it's not as complicated as it could be, if sane choices are made.
That means absolutely no sendmail. That means Maildirs, so you don't need any file locking at all. That means users stored in one place, be it SQL or LDAP, and not a brittle text file under any circumstances.
A lot of that is choices, and many people don't know how to make good ones, but this guy does. In fact, he's managed to chose exactly what I chose, three years ago, at least for the basics.
And this plan, as I pointed out, isn't complex. A postfix policy server doesn't increase the complexity of anything at all. An imap server that isn't part of a SMTP server is less complex than if they cared about each other. You can write a mail delivery agent in four lines of shell script. None of those things are externally complex, none of them interact with other things in complex ways.
You seem to think that small things talking to each other is more complex than one big thing. That is just completely wrong. Small things that talk to each other in well-defined ways are easier to deal with.
Because, and speaking of checking things manually, you can manually tell maildrop to deliver a message, you can replace maildrop with something that just dumps every message to a file to see if it or postfix is manging a header, and you can manually look at a Maildir mail message to see if the imap server or maildrop is confused. You can't do that if your server is one big black box where you put in mail on port 25 and get it out port 143.
The only added complexity to his setup is the content filter, which requires postfix accepting mail, and then delivering to a non-postfix server running on localhost and a weird port, which then does scanning and hands it to another postfix instances. While that is needlessly complex, it seems to work without any problems at all, and, if it does have problems, a single line commented out will fix that.
And, yes, if he doesn't have time to be a mail admin, he shouldn't be one, but mail systems run themselves if you do not fiddle with them and set them up correctly. The only non-spam-fighting change I've made in several years to the system I administer is changing 'maildrop' to postfix's own 'virtual' delivery agent (Something, BTW, I would recommend to this guy.) because it got smart enough to work for me, and finally getting sasl2 working. (Before I was using a postfix patch called simple_auth, which worked fine but was limiting my upgrade options.)
Because we generate power from things other than coal.
However, that logic would render his statement rather meaningless.
If we assume that, conservatively, 35 million computers are running in the US all day. (Or 105 million running 1/3rd the day, or some combination thereof.) than his coal would be supplying a mere .00005% of them, and thus it couldn't be that important to care about much coal any hypothetical computer was using, as they are extremely unlikely to be powered by coal at all.
In fact, it'd be even more unlikely to matter, as I am unaware of any special 'coal-powered, for computer' power hookups. So we must assume the power is distributed evenly and each computer is .000005% powered by coal.
How much power is this, actually?
Experiment time: Let's hook up a car battery to an inverter, and see how long we can run a computer.
My laptop, with the battery removed and screen off, got at least 30 minutes once in my car as an experiment. In fact, I'd expect about 2 minutes on even the most power sucking computer, with monitor. As coal provided power for, apparently, a fraction of a second per day, obviously car batteries are a saner choice.
I hereby propose we replace coal power with sulfuric acid power.
Perhaps I'm not aware of what a 'case mod' is, but you are aware that the 'bad' things in a computer are almost exclusively on the circuitry, right?
That the case itself is just steel and possibly some plastic? It's like throwing away file cabinets.
Maybe the power supply has some toxic stuff in, but that's about it.
(And don't fall for the 'recycling plastic' lie. Recycling plastic uses more oil and creates more pollution than just throwing it away.)
I know, the mind boggles.
Me, I haven't bought batteries in at least seven years, when I went rechargable. I over-invested and got like eight AA and four AAA batteries, and have lost about 1/4th of them. All of the remainers still work. The entire investment cost less than forty dollars, about half for the charger and half for the batteries. (Admittedly, I've also collected many 'normal' batteries from purchases that actually included the batteries, and I try to use those first.)
I keep my charger in the corner, and both the charged recharables and the unused normal batteries from purchases laying next in it. When I need a new battery, I go there and get one, and put the old one in the charger or throw it away. Having rechargables means I feel a lot less guilty about trying to get the last watt of power out of a battery. All the batteries I possess are fully charged (Or new normals.), or in devices.
It's a hell of a lot less complicated than the 'big drawer of batteries that may or may not work' that most people keep. I honestly don't know why everyone doesn't do it. I guess I had the advantage of being newly out on my own without the 'big drawer', to make a clean start. I went to the store, saw the charger, did the math, and got it, and don't regret it at all.
However, if the 'big drawer' is your experience with batteries, I can see why you'd like the built-in ones.
And they have battery rechargers that run off cigarette lighters, or for even more fun, most MP3 players can just be plugged into the cigarette lighter, thus not using the batteries at all. Buy a splitter and you can hook the battery recharger in at the same time!
The one difference between a built-in battery and one that isn't is that, with one that isn't, you'll have to open the back up, take the batteries out, and swap them for a charged pair. (OTOH, you don't have to leave your iPod in the car or hotel room to charge for it to work later, just a fifteen dollar charger. And people will steal iPods if you have them mounted in sight.)
Yes, it's slightly more work, but OTOH, you're sure to never have something die on you because the battery failed. The absolute worse that can happen is, in the middle of a trip, all your batteries stop recharging, (I've never had recharagable batteries reach that point, but they can.) and you want to remove your player from the car, so you have to, gasp, spend 99 cents on some normal batteries.
What do you do when your iPod battery fails, or the charger stops working, 200 miles from nowhere in a town that possesses one gas station and one grocery store?
The canonical example is, of course, start of Sgt. Pepper's, where the titular song turns smoothly into 'With a Little Help from my Friends'.