We have a how, it's just not cost effective to compete against a work force that makes 0 wages with 0 safety controls. Toxic waste is really cheap to deal with if you're not concerned with safety, not so much if you are.
Computers and servers are solid gold. Scrap metal, high quality circuit boards, gold and silver contacts, large amounts of aluminum.
Old TVs, monitors, even LCDs and plasmas are at best a break even proposition because the majority of their weight is plastic and materials that are expensive or at the current time impossible to recycle. Things like keyboards and mice contain almost nothing of value to fund their disposal, same with modern office and home homes and dozens of other products that may not jump to mind but are a the reality of eWaste. This also includes products which could be valuable but due to low yields or modenr "black box" mentality construction practices the labor cost of dealing with them far outstrips any resulting return.
I get the impression that it's not just a problem on the local level given how widespread the practice is. It seems like a government that can spare troops ever time workers are pushing for better rights could find a few to watch ships being unloaded. It seems more likely to me that they've turned a blind eye to the problem because of the massive amount of natural resources that can be brought in this way and the only cost is pollution and health problems, something industrializing China has shown they have very little concern for.
Sadly here's the dirty little secret of electronics exporters:
It's only "waste" if you call it "waste" both domestically (at least in North America) and internationally. That truck full of 20 year old monitors? That's electronics equipment for resale! Those electric meters with mercury switches in them aren't hazardous waste, they're a valuable finished product being shipped to a second hand market! It's scary and it's true, if a country allows the legal export of electronics and it's destination allows the legal import (i.e. every country in the world) it comes down to just how hard the customs inspectors are scrutinizing things and just how honest the operators at both ends are.
I think you're confusing industries that propose self regulation as an alternative to government regulation (the meat industry) with an industry that is in many cases actively pushing for greater government regulation and is already under the eye of the EPA, DOT, DNR, and OSHA for more things than you'd imagine.
They are not self regulating themselves to some legal standard, they are self regulating to a moral standard that is completely unenforceable by law.
The problem here is the same faced by any industry. Programs like eStewardship are voluntary programs and not subject to legal enforcement so the field is potentially ripe with opportunity to defraud your customers with higher processing fees for all the added expense of being green. It's largely a marketing tool on both ends and I'm sure there are plenty of people in the industry who see it as nothing but.
However, there are plenty of people who do take this very seriously, and it's unfortunate that our credibility is being tarnished. Sadly there's little that can be done about it, auditing processes will catch companies that merely don't meet the standards, but there's nothing that can be done about those who intentionally falsify records or aim for loopholes.
I can only recommend that those looking to be rid of their hardware do their due diligence, there's no reason a company shouldn't able be to provide a list of their downstream processors by name or offer you a tour of their facilities.
No offense, but if the best thing you can think to do is play Starcraft your example should be "sitting in a basement being bitter" not "camping in the middle of no where". Blizzard doesn't cater to the niche "getting away from it all to do the exact same thing they do at home" crowd.
That aside, I appreciate the desire to return to a kinder simpler time, but really, I think the scenarios you've created only emphasize the sibling poster's point that broadband internet is so common that the exclusion of LAN play might be a moral sin, but from a practical perspective I, and most other people, never even noticed because we're too busy playing with our roommates and friends through B.net with the same gameplay quality we needed LANs for 10 years ago.
And now when a friend gets home late the integration between friends in the same room, those across the country, and random opponents is absolutely seamless. You may not like it, but it is an improvement.
Blizzard is just making a preemptive strike saying that people who are willing to hack the game for single player achievements are probably willing to hack for multiplayer achievements are probably willing to hack in multiplayer games.
Maybe it's all just a slippery slope fallacy, but it's certainly less morally ambiguous than to develop a sliding scale of punishments that's always one step behind people who could potentially be ruining the game for your other customers.
If someone cheats at their house they don't get a plaque on the wall of the local casino that other people are putting a lot of work into trying to get.
It's unfortunate that the developed world has put pure profit over ethics in disposal of their waste, but keep in mind that in most cases Africa and China are not simply the cheapest place, they are actually paying to have this waste dumped on their shores. China in particular has laws in place to stop the practice that they chose not to enforce because the value of the commodities is great and the cost of labor and health concerns is absolutely nothing.
I work for a more reputable recycler. Almost nothing leaves the country and those things that do are going to reputable vendors. Frankly it is more expensive to do it that way, but some people actually are interested in doing the right thing and thankfully there's a market for it.
relative free ride that those individuals get under the current sales tax system
I never liked this one, the argument that any tax that isn't progressive is inherently regressive. Rich people also get a relatively free ride on property taxes (or rent) if they chose to live in the similarly size homes of the less wealthy, they get a relatively free ride on luxury taxes if they live a modest lifestyle and a free ride on estate taxes if they spent their lives living paycheck to paycheck like plenty of people do. Why focus on sales taxes, why not start with the price of normal consumer good in general which seem heavily skewed in favor of people with more money.
For all I know it's more his argument than yours, but even for someone who would be lucky to be considered middle class I think it's unfair to complain about a flat tax on consumer goods that contains a multitude of exceptions for more essential items.
Yes, and $200 is completely arbitrary, as is require it to be a dual core, a choice that was never explained or justified for their system.
If they're going to compare it to a $300 system they should at least be fair to it. And better yet people shouldn't make a big deal about it every time someone combines readily available commodity hardware in completely un-new and unexciting ways.
Did anyone else notice that they forgot to mention in their final summary the possibility of buying the pre-fab eMachine for $100 more then installing Ubuntu on it and having a system with:
Much better performance
Much smaller form factor
Wireless keyboard and mouse
1 year warranty
I also don't like the "higher transfer speed" was attributed to Ubuntu not to the eMachine running a 5400 drive vs. a 7200, or the face that building your own cheap computer and putting Linux on it is even news to begin with.
In English it is pronounced like adobe and the spellings (both being accepted) reflect that. You can call it "wrong" but that's fairly ignorant of the natural fate of many words that cross into other languages.
Slashdot Mirror
Being a racists isn't illegal, it's just stupid.
So the CIA should just hire some thugs to murder the entire staff of Wikileaks and dismember the bodies?
Saying criminal interference is just a cost of doing business if you anger the wrong criminals isn't even a slippery slope, it's flat out stupid.
And the 1st amendment limitations to censorship apply to the government, not private corporations.
It only works if everyone plays by the same rules.
:(
Take away my American card if you must.
We have a how, it's just not cost effective to compete against a work force that makes 0 wages with 0 safety controls. Toxic waste is really cheap to deal with if you're not concerned with safety, not so much if you are.
It is and it isn't.
Computers and servers are solid gold. Scrap metal, high quality circuit boards, gold and silver contacts, large amounts of aluminum. Old TVs, monitors, even LCDs and plasmas are at best a break even proposition because the majority of their weight is plastic and materials that are expensive or at the current time impossible to recycle. Things like keyboards and mice contain almost nothing of value to fund their disposal, same with modern office and home homes and dozens of other products that may not jump to mind but are a the reality of eWaste. This also includes products which could be valuable but due to low yields or modenr "black box" mentality construction practices the labor cost of dealing with them far outstrips any resulting return.
I get the impression that it's not just a problem on the local level given how widespread the practice is. It seems like a government that can spare troops ever time workers are pushing for better rights could find a few to watch ships being unloaded. It seems more likely to me that they've turned a blind eye to the problem because of the massive amount of natural resources that can be brought in this way and the only cost is pollution and health problems, something industrializing China has shown they have very little concern for.
Sadly here's the dirty little secret of electronics exporters:
It's only "waste" if you call it "waste" both domestically (at least in North America) and internationally. That truck full of 20 year old monitors? That's electronics equipment for resale! Those electric meters with mercury switches in them aren't hazardous waste, they're a valuable finished product being shipped to a second hand market! It's scary and it's true, if a country allows the legal export of electronics and it's destination allows the legal import (i.e. every country in the world) it comes down to just how hard the customs inspectors are scrutinizing things and just how honest the operators at both ends are.
I think you're confusing industries that propose self regulation as an alternative to government regulation (the meat industry) with an industry that is in many cases actively pushing for greater government regulation and is already under the eye of the EPA, DOT, DNR, and OSHA for more things than you'd imagine.
They are not self regulating themselves to some legal standard, they are self regulating to a moral standard that is completely unenforceable by law.
The problem here is the same faced by any industry. Programs like eStewardship are voluntary programs and not subject to legal enforcement so the field is potentially ripe with opportunity to defraud your customers with higher processing fees for all the added expense of being green. It's largely a marketing tool on both ends and I'm sure there are plenty of people in the industry who see it as nothing but.
However, there are plenty of people who do take this very seriously, and it's unfortunate that our credibility is being tarnished. Sadly there's little that can be done about it, auditing processes will catch companies that merely don't meet the standards, but there's nothing that can be done about those who intentionally falsify records or aim for loopholes.
I can only recommend that those looking to be rid of their hardware do their due diligence, there's no reason a company shouldn't able be to provide a list of their downstream processors by name or offer you a tour of their facilities.
There's no "Imperial standard" for bandwidth either, so I guess the Internet must be metric too?
No offense, but if the best thing you can think to do is play Starcraft your example should be "sitting in a basement being bitter" not "camping in the middle of no where". Blizzard doesn't cater to the niche "getting away from it all to do the exact same thing they do at home" crowd.
That aside, I appreciate the desire to return to a kinder simpler time, but really, I think the scenarios you've created only emphasize the sibling poster's point that broadband internet is so common that the exclusion of LAN play might be a moral sin, but from a practical perspective I, and most other people, never even noticed because we're too busy playing with our roommates and friends through B.net with the same gameplay quality we needed LANs for 10 years ago.
And now when a friend gets home late the integration between friends in the same room, those across the country, and random opponents is absolutely seamless. You may not like it, but it is an improvement.
Blizzard is just making a preemptive strike saying that people who are willing to hack the game for single player achievements are probably willing to hack for multiplayer achievements are probably willing to hack in multiplayer games.
Maybe it's all just a slippery slope fallacy, but it's certainly less morally ambiguous than to develop a sliding scale of punishments that's always one step behind people who could potentially be ruining the game for your other customers.
If no one cares there's no reason to hack the game to get it.
IS THERE?
If someone cheats at their house they don't get a plaque on the wall of the local casino that other people are putting a lot of work into trying to get.
Yes, fabulous sites that are both older and larger. The only thing special about Stonehenge is the horizontal stones.
How many of them allowed an armed populace?
Yeah, they were only 5 years behind the curve too.
Basel Action Network
It's unfortunate that the developed world has put pure profit over ethics in disposal of their waste, but keep in mind that in most cases Africa and China are not simply the cheapest place, they are actually paying to have this waste dumped on their shores. China in particular has laws in place to stop the practice that they chose not to enforce because the value of the commodities is great and the cost of labor and health concerns is absolutely nothing.
I work for a more reputable recycler. Almost nothing leaves the country and those things that do are going to reputable vendors. Frankly it is more expensive to do it that way, but some people actually are interested in doing the right thing and thankfully there's a market for it.
Apples to Apples, cynic.
Why can't people ever be happy when enterprising amateurs do something cool?
Thanks for the -1 Overrated on an un-moderated comment by the way.
relative free ride that those individuals get under the current sales tax system
I never liked this one, the argument that any tax that isn't progressive is inherently regressive. Rich people also get a relatively free ride on property taxes (or rent) if they chose to live in the similarly size homes of the less wealthy, they get a relatively free ride on luxury taxes if they live a modest lifestyle and a free ride on estate taxes if they spent their lives living paycheck to paycheck like plenty of people do. Why focus on sales taxes, why not start with the price of normal consumer good in general which seem heavily skewed in favor of people with more money.
For all I know it's more his argument than yours, but even for someone who would be lucky to be considered middle class I think it's unfair to complain about a flat tax on consumer goods that contains a multitude of exceptions for more essential items.
Why not Buying a $1337 PC or Buying a PC?
My largest complaint is still that building a PC from commodity hardware and putting Linux on it isn't really newsworthy.
Yes, and $200 is completely arbitrary, as is require it to be a dual core, a choice that was never explained or justified for their system.
If they're going to compare it to a $300 system they should at least be fair to it. And better yet people shouldn't make a big deal about it every time someone combines readily available commodity hardware in completely un-new and unexciting ways.
Did anyone else notice that they forgot to mention in their final summary the possibility of buying the pre-fab eMachine for $100 more then installing Ubuntu on it and having a system with:
Much better performance
Much smaller form factor
Wireless keyboard and mouse
1 year warranty
I also don't like the "higher transfer speed" was attributed to Ubuntu not to the eMachine running a 5400 drive vs. a 7200, or the face that building your own cheap computer and putting Linux on it is even news to begin with.
In English it is pronounced like adobe and the spellings (both being accepted) reflect that. You can call it "wrong" but that's fairly ignorant of the natural fate of many words that cross into other languages.