internet television options for linux systems?
Jim Cochrane
appropriate group in the list of comp.os.linux.* groups I have.)
After wasting a good chunk of time googling for internet/online TV
options and only finding ones that use proprietary/windows formats, I
thought I might be able to get better results asking here.
Has anyone found a good solution for watching TV online in the US on a
Linux system (either free or for a fee)? I'd prefer not to use wine,
but if that's the only option, I'm willing to consider it.
Thanks!
Jim Cochrane
--
A Watcher
It seems to vary with the original provider. Here is a site where I can
see some of the channels on linux. Right now I can see the NCAA
baseball game, McNeese State at Houston. There have been some ESPN
games that I could see, also. I couldn't watch the SciFi channel, though.
Bombadil
Well Balwinder. Here we have with a guy with a computer on the internet,
which is the most incredible, interactive communications and teaching and
learning and academic research tool that has ever existed.
And what does this guy want to do with it? Watch TV. He wants to turn it
into a fucking BOOB TUBE.
You call this an _improvement_ in Linux?
Yes. I am sure you do...
Bombadil
Balwinder S Dheeman
No, I shall never; me indeed hate people trying to make the web or
websites look like a TV and, or multi-media portals full of crap flash,
pdf documents and other bloatware.
May be, you did not get my point; I agree with you that there certainly
are flaws in package management systems, but who introduced, pumped in
and, or ignoring in those flaws?
I think, not only the developers and, or maintainers, but the end-users
as well are equally responsible for all such shortcomings.
If I understand your problem, IMHO, it is time to start:
1) Operation clean-up, the kernel and device drivers
2) Operation fork-all, snatch source packages from reluctant maintainers
3) Operation re-build or re-package, based on some transparent policies.
Resulting all this into a Yet Another Distribution; in this case I shall
definitely join hands with you in reinventing the wheel.
--
Balwinder S "bdheeman" Dheeman Registered Linux User: #229709
Anu'z Linux@HOME (Unix Shoppe) Machines: #168573, 170593, 259192
Chandigarh, UT, 160062, India Plan9, T2, Arch/Debian/FreeBSD/XP
Home: http://cto.homelinux.net/~bsd/ Visit: http://counter.li.org/
Bombadil
> On 05/06/2009 07:56 AM, Bombadil wrote:
>> Jim Cochrane <allergic...@no-spam-allowed.invalid> wrote:
>>> (Sorry if this is the wrong group to ask this in. I don't see a more
>>> appropriate group in the list of comp.os.linux.* groups I have.)
>>>
>>> After wasting a good chunk of time googling for internet/online TV
>>> options and only finding ones that use proprietary/windows formats, I
>>> thought I might be able to get better results asking here.
>>>
>>> Has anyone found a good solution for watching TV online in the US on a
>>> Linux system (either free or for a fee)? I'd prefer not to use wine,
>>> but if that's the only option, I'm willing to consider it.
>>
>> Well Balwinder. Here we have with a guy with a computer on the internet,
>> which is the most incredible, interactive communications and teaching and
>> learning and academic research tool that has ever existed.
>>
>> And what does this guy want to do with it? Watch TV. He wants to turn it
>> into a fucking BOOB TUBE.
>>
>> You call this an _improvement_ in Linux?
>>
>> Yes. I am sure you do...
>
> No, I shall never; me indeed hate people trying to make the web or
> websites look like a TV and, or multi-media portals full of crap flash,
> pdf documents and other bloatware.
Well. I apologize. And I'm glad to hear it.
> May be, you did not get my point; I agree with you that there certainly
> are flaws in package management systems, but who introduced, pumped in
> and, or ignoring in those flaws?
>
> I think, not only the developers and, or maintainers, but the end-users
> as well are equally responsible for all such shortcomings.
When Linux started going over to Windows-like 'desktop environment'
interfaces, inviting in mindless konsumers from the Windows world,
it started going to shit.
> If I understand your problem, IMHO, it is time to start:
>
> 1) Operation clean-up, the kernel and device drivers
> 2) Operation fork-all, snatch source packages from reluctant maintainers
> 3) Operation re-build or re-package, based on some transparent policies.
Sounds good. For starters.
> Resulting all this into a Yet Another Distribution; in this case I shall
> definitely join hands with you in reinventing the wheel.
I guess I already have. I have a minimal X install and run Linux
from xterms using bash. I use the Slackware package system and
init scripts, but you couldn't call what I have 'Slackware'.
My system only needs bash, not perl or python or ruby.
It is a work in progress. Ideally, someone would run a hardware
analysis CD on their system, and send the info, a simple text
file, by email to me, and I'd feed that to a script that would build
a kernel and module/device files/configuration files version of
'my' distro designed for their hardware.
Right now I am learning how to get rid of udev.
Bombadil
The Natural Philosopher
I dunno about the US, but linux solutions are just about available for
*UK* online TV.
What was it I came up with ..Moonshine? Moonlight? something like that..
Drop a URL in here of a US station so I can test...
>
> Thanks!
> Jim Cochrane
>
Balwinder S Dheeman
IMHO, if you don't add/remove any hardware often, it is as simple as
1) boot your machine with a good Debian based LiveCD.
2) figure out and remove un-wanted modules.
3) rsync /dev to some disk or other machine.
4) cleanup that /dev and rsync it back to your test machine.
Hope that helps :)
BTW, have you ever encountered:
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/
http://swtch.com/9vx/
http://swtch.com/plan9port/
Some important papers:
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/names.html
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/net/net.html
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/auth.html
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/8%bd/8%bd.html
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/rc.html
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acme/acme.html
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/plumb.html
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/comp.html
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acidpaper.html
Other documents:
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/doc/84/kp.ps.gz (***)
Last but not the least:
http://www.glendix.org/ (work-in-progress)
Jim Cochrane
That's funny; but I get the feeling you're not joking.
A computer is a wonderful multi-purpose tool. There's no reason to
limit its uses to a small subset of what it can do (and, no, dogmatism
is not a reason) and there's no reason for Microsoft to have a monopoly on
any of these uses.
I'd like to watch the Players golf championship on NBC this weekend.
Why don't I watch it on my TV? Since cable and satellite TV is quite
mediocre and I don't like the idea of paying to watch commercials, I
don't subscribe to such a service and I cannot receive NBC on OTA TV.
I'm not about to set up a Windows machine just to watch golf.
Likewise, I'm working on setting up a high-quality music composition
system with Rosegarden as the main component. There's no reason to have
to be stuck with Windows for such a system. There's no reason a Linux
system (or UNIX, for that matter) should not be able to do this.
There's no reason to be dependent on Microsoft to use a computer for
multimedia, music, video, and other artistic and creative endeavors.
Why would I want to depend on a company whose farovite slogan appears
to be "do the wrong thing" for such possibilities? The thought to me
is grotesque.
And the current grotesque (I guess I like that word today) system of
television networks, infested with irritating, mindless commercials, and
a limited (many channels, but most of them garbage - so, yes, limited)
selection of options viewed on a box in one's living room is soon to
become obsolete. There's no reason for Linux and UNIX systems not to
be part of the new paradigm that replaces the old, obsolete system.
>
> You call this an _improvement_ in Linux?
>
> Yes. I am sure you do...
>
> Bombadil
--
Bombadil
> On 2009-05-06, Bombadil <jus...@hometown.invalid> wrote:
>> Jim Cochrane <allergic...@no-spam-allowed.invalid> wrote:
>>> (Sorry if this is the wrong group to ask this in. I don't see a more
>>> appropriate group in the list of comp.os.linux.* groups I have.)
>>>
>>> After wasting a good chunk of time googling for internet/online TV
>>> options and only finding ones that use proprietary/windows formats, I
>>> thought I might be able to get better results asking here.
>>>
>>> Has anyone found a good solution for watching TV online in the US on a
>>> Linux system (either free or for a fee)? I'd prefer not to use wine,
>>> but if that's the only option, I'm willing to consider it.
>>
>> Well Balwinder. Here we have with a guy with a computer on the internet,
>> which is the most incredible, interactive communications and teaching and
>> learning and academic research tool that has ever existed.
>>
>> And what does this guy want to do with it? Watch TV. He wants to turn it
>> into a fucking BOOB TUBE.
>
> That's funny; but I get the feeling you're not joking.
>
> A computer is a wonderful multi-purpose tool. There's no reason to
> limit its uses to a small subset of what it can do (and, no, dogmatism
> is not a reason) and there's no reason for Microsoft to have a monopoly on
> any of these uses.
Yes. There is a reason to limit technology. It is incredibly destructive,
(high technology being the most destructive of all) and we are trashing
the planetary ecosystem that sustains us. This is common sense, not
"dogmatism".
But what do you care? Most of the harm at least _seems_ to take
place in someone else's backyard, and what matter that our own
great grandchildren will inherit a depleted and poisoned world?
And you aren't the one working in the horrible factory or mine
for subsistence wages to make all this stuff...
And I'll bet you call yourself a progressive and an environmentalist
and actually believe it.
<snippety>
Bombadil
Bombadil
Debian requires perl, which is an enormous program that myself
and many others have lived without for a long time.
And its package management system is a bloated nightmare that
has been known to trash people's systems without warning.
Debian patches the kernel, which can cause all sorts of
problems with non-debian executables and libraries.
What a lousy choice. You seem to be clueless.
>
> Hope that helps :)
Yes. It makes me realize that you are out of your depth here.
>
> BTW, have you ever encountered:
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/
Yes. Waste of time.
<snippety>
Bombadil
The Natural Philosopher
The sahara, for instance, was created by overgrazing of low tech goats,
and the chopping down of trees with primitive axes for very low tech
construction and firewood.
(HINT. The sahara is NOT in N America..)
> But what do you care? Most of the harm at least _seems_ to take
> place in someone else's backyard, and what matter that our own
> great grandchildren will inherit a depleted and poisoned world?
Just as we did.
> And you aren't the one working in the horrible factory or mine
> for subsistence wages to make all this stuff...
>
Indeed no.
> And I'll bet you call yourself a progressive and an environmentalist
> and actually believe it.
>
Not at all. I call myself a natural philosopher ;-)
> <snippety>
>
> Bombadil
Bombadil
You are saying that because someone used low technology to trash
ecosystems that high technology is not destructive.
This is stupid.
Most of the damage being done to the planet to create high
technology for Americans is not done in America.
So the rest of your argument is equally stupid.
This obviously isn't going to get any better.
<snippety>
I suggest that you call yourself "The Unnatural Philosopher"
Nature is not stupid and you are .
Bombadil
Bombadil
I apologize for calling you "stupid" in my other post here. You are
not stupid, you are ignorant (as well as rude). You probably have
a college degree, 16 years of formal education, and you know nothing
about technology. (This says as much about the educational system
as it does you.)
>
> The sahara, for instance, was created by overgrazing of low tech goats,
> and the chopping down of trees with primitive axes for very low tech
> construction and firewood.
And if this had been accomplished with a medium level of technology,
circa 1950, the technologies used for the agriculture and
silviculture involved would have done not only that damage, but
all of the damage creating and sustaining those industries required.
Mines and factories and coking mills and rolling mills and foundries
and smelters and oil wells and refineries (just for starters). To make
and fuel caterpillars and road graders and skidders and tankers and
chain saws and radios and logging trucks and docks and warehouses and roads
and power plants and, and, and....
Make it a high-tech operation, with computers and robotics at
every level, and you have added the destructiveness of yet another
layer of industry. One that is very, very destructive, because it
requires so many resources and production steps. That's what
high-technology means: Complex.
<snippety>
Bombadil
Balwinder S Dheeman
I only asked you to use a *LiveCD*, so need not install anything not
even the perl and just rsync the device nodes and, or symlinks created
by a udev, but, _you seem to be somewhat overly smart_ :P
>> Hope that helps :)
>
> Yes. It makes me realize that you are out of your depth here.
>
>> BTW, have you ever encountered:
>> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/
>
> Yes. Waste of time.
>
> <snippety>
>
> Bombadil
>
Bombadil
> On 2009-05-06, Bombadil <jus...@hometown.invalid> wrote:
>> Yes. There is a reason to limit technology. It is incredibly destructive,
>> (high technology being the most destructive of all) and we are trashing
>> the planetary ecosystem that sustains us.
>
> nonsense 30-40 years ago. I still remember the predictions of doom,
> and where we would be today. (All dead, basically. It was bullshit
> then and it is bullshit now.)
That's what you want people to believe. But you are a liar.
On Tuesday September 11, 2001, at least
35,615 of our brother and sisters died from
the worst possible death, starvation.
Somewhere around 85% of these starvation
deaths occur in children 5 years of age or
younger. Why are we letting at least 30,273
of the most beautiful children die the worst
possible death everyday? Every 2.43 seconds
another one of our fellow brothers and
sisters dies of starvation. Starvation
doesn't just happen on Tuesday September 11,
2001, it happens everyday, 365 days per year
24 hours per day, it never stops.
Results-In 1990, an estimated 1,851,000 people died from
violence (35.3 per 100,000) in the world. There were an
estimated 786,000 suicides. Overall suicide rates ranged from
3.4 per 100,000 in Sub-Saharan Africa to 30.4 per 100,000 in
China. There were an estimated 563,000 homicides. Overall
homicide rates ranged from 1.0 per 100,000 in established
market economies to 44.8 per 100,000 in Sub-Saharan Africa
with peaks among males aged 15-24 years old, and among
females aged 0-4 years old. There were an estimated 502 000
war related deaths with peaks in rates for both sexes among
people aged 0-4, 15-29, and 60-69 years old.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/epi_of_violence.htm
Q: Are the number of cancer cases increasing or
decreasing in the world?
A: Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide
and the total number of cases globally is
increasing.
The number of global cancer deaths is projected
to increase 45% from 2007 to 2030 (from 7.9
million to 11.5 million deaths), influenced in
part by an increasing and aging global
population. The estimated rise takes into account
expected slight declines in death rates for some
cancers in high resource countries. New cases of
cancer in the same period are estimated to jump
from 11.3 million in 2007 to 15.5 million in
2030.
http://www.who.int/features/qa/15/en/index.html
The number of oxygen-deprived "dead zones" in the world's oceans has been
increasing since the 1970s and is now nearly 150, threatening fisheries as
well as humans who depend on fish, the U.N. Environment Program announced
Monday in unveiling it its first-ever Global Environment Outlook Year Book.
These "dead zones" are caused by an excess of nitrogen from farm
fertilizers, sewage and emissions from vehicles and factories. In what
experts call a "nitrogen cascade," the chemical flows untreated into
oceans and triggers the proliferation of plankton, which in turn depletes
oxygen in the water.
While fish might flee this suffocation, slow moving, bottom-dwelling
creatures like clams, lobsters and oysters are less able to escape.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4624359/
Though extensive, the world's forests
have shrunk by some 40 percent since agriculture
began 11,000 years ago. Three quarters of this loss
occurred in the last two centuries as land was
cleared to make way for farms and to meet demand
for wood.
Over the last five years, the world suffered a net
loss of some 37 million hectares (91 million acres)
of forest, according to data from the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Forest/2006.htm
* While global GNP grew 40 percent between 1970 and 1985 (suggesting
widening prosperity), the number of poor grew by 17 percent.
* Although 200 million people saw their incomes fall between 1965 and
1980, more than 1 billion people experienced a drop from 1980 to 1993.
* In sub-Saharan Africa, twenty nations remain below their per capita
incomes of two decades ago while among Latin American and Caribbean
countries, eighteen are below their per capita incomes of ten years
ago.
* UNDP reported in 1996 that 100 countries were worse off than 15 years
ago.
* Three decades ago, the people in well-to-do countries were 30 times
better off than those in countries where the poorest 20 percent of the
world's people live. By 1998, this gap had widened to 82 times (up
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/inequal/gates99.htm
It took me minutes to come up with the above. I could post similar
grim news and trends for the rest of the year.
This fellow calls cancer and starvation and massive environmental
destruction and violence "hippy bullshit".
I think he's a twisted fuck.
Bombadil
The Natural Philosopher
High texch is actually less destriuctive as a tool.
> This is stupid.
No, but I am wondering about you...
>
> Most of the damage being done to the planet to create high
> technology for Americans is not done in America.
>
To create low technology actually. High tech is not particularly energy
intensive to make.
> So the rest of your argument is equally stupid.
>
> This obviously isn't going to get any better.
>
> <snippety>
>
> I suggest that you call yourself "The Unnatural Philosopher"
> Nature is not stupid and you are .
>
>
> Bombadil
>
What with teh stupid bit? I know, everyone at school calls you that and
this is your way of feeling better, right?
The Natural Philosopher
technology arrives.
What you dont realise, is how many people there are.
And if you hate hi-tech so much get off the net.
The Natural Philosopher
notbob
> You should have seen the news stories from 10,000 years ago.,
Posting 123 lines of old crap with 1 line of original content reveals you
haven't a clue, dolt.
nb
The Natural Philosopher
How does it do that then?
> nb
Bombadil
I did not bother reading his new articles.
People don't realize just how much resource depletion has to do with
our current recession. Resources become scarcer, more difficult to
extract or use, and the cost goes up and less people can afford
the "American Dream".
Take gold, which is critical to computers (and many other things).
The price is escalating because of scarcity, with 38 tons of ore
processed to produce an ounce of gold in many places.
http://www.mindfully.org/Heritage/2005/Cost-Of-Gold24oct05.htm
Old mines in America are being reworked, now, using extremely
destructive and costly methods.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/prospect2/prospectgip.html
Bombadil
Bombadil
> On 2009-05-07, Bombadil <jus...@hometown.invalid> wrote:
>> That's what you want people to believe. But you are a liar.
>
> movement" 35-40 years ago, and I know full well the arsenal of
> lies, tricks, and misinformation that is your stock in trade
I am not a member of the corporate financed sham called the
"environmental movement". They are a bunch of elitist phonies
who want to save what remains of the planet after they get their
huge pieces of it.
We all note that you based this entire article on an assumption
rooted in nothing but thin air. Your lack of integrity is now
a matter of public record.
We are trashing this planet. The "haves" of the world, like you,
have their modern armies and transportation and communications
systems to make sure that other people and places suffer the
consequences of your technological-material excesses, but they
are starting to show up in your backyard anyway, which was always
inevitable. It's all one planet. And it's a finite planet.
The phony environmental movement and people like this
(the so-called "Right") are conspiring to distract
the public about the severity of the problem with this
stupid "Global Warming" debate-farce.
If all "greenhouse gas" emissions were eliminated, we would
still be trashing this planet, yet it's all they ever talk
about.
<snippety>
Bombadil
D.Campagna
> Roger Blake <rogbl...@iname10.com> wrote:
>> On 2009-05-07, Bombadil <jus...@hometown.invalid> wrote:
>>> That's what you want people to believe. But you are a liar.
>> You and your kind are the liars. I was involved in the "environmental
>> movement" 35-40 years ago, and I know full well the arsenal of
>> lies, tricks, and misinformation that is your stock in trade
I am really astonished by the extremism that both of you are putting in
this discussion. Here in Europe (I live in Italy, so sorry for my
English) it's common knowledge that pollution is a big problem.
There is no need to be very fluent to say, anyway, that:
- cancer is growing
- allergies are growing, (following some sources 30% of english childs
suffers now of some kind of allergy)
- Industry pollutes. We here had many cases of dead fishes, completely
polluted rivers, soil so contaminated that it is unthinkable to eat
vegetables grown on it, if ever someone would be able to grow something
on it.
-It's a matter of fact that brazilians are destroying the forest that is
the lung of the planet at a rate that makes think that in a short period
scientist should begin to think were to find the Oxygen we need to
breathe.
-Whe burn one milliard barrel oil every year? Well, someone really
thinks that all the smoke and toxic products of combustion go away in
the air without consequences?
- ... [snip a lot of oter well-known facts that demonstrate that
pollution is not a Good Thing, no need to be Einstein to undestand it.]
Car industry is committed here to produce smaller and cleaner engines.
We had to substitute the lead in the petrol because it was one of the
most toxic and dangerous substances around. True? Or this too is a lie?
What about Plutonium, the most dangerous substance on the earth? One
should be crazy only to think that it can be used for something. 20000
years or so to become lead. And in the meantime?
> I am not a member of the corporate financed sham called the
> "environmental movement". They are a bunch of elitist phonies
> who want to save what remains of the planet after they get their
> huge pieces of it.
Americans, often we say in Europe, have the most tremenduous lifestyle
of the globe, they alone burn out the 75% of the resources and are,
globally speaking, a mere 7% of the population.
The corporate financed scam is the one that says that it's OK to go on
that way, consuming more and more, exploiting resources and accusing of
some unclear plot to destroy the american lifestyle every person that
tries to explain that we can't go on that way.
Not that we europeans are much better. And one zillion of chinese are
now wanting cars, air conditioners and so on. And Indians are another
billion of people.
Not exactly a nice picture.
But when it comes to remedies, then I must say that we differ a lot from
those pseudo-environmentalists that are only able to speak against the
technology and the progress.
If a solution will come, it will be from science and technology.
High, sustainable technology is now the big target people should aim at.
We are too many people and we have big and complex problems. No way to
find out some simple solution like solar energy, natural food and so on
wishful thinking.
Computers, technology, new big sources of energy (nuclear fusion, the
energy of the stars et. al.) will be part of the answer.
And not to be completely off-topic, look at how computers can help to
save energy and resources. Electronic documents save trees. Global
networks make possible instant messaging and communication with a
minimum of energy to transmit informations across the world.
And of course, a bit of consciousness that we are polluting, devastating
an depleting resources should be part of the education every people gets
at school. A bit of respect for the environment is in no way a wrong or
misguiding concept.
My 2 cents, and now back to work with Linux....
D. Campagna
Bombadil
> Bombadil ha scritto:
>> Roger Blake <rogbl...@iname10.com> wrote:
>>> On 2009-05-07, Bombadil <jus...@hometown.invalid> wrote:
>>>> That's what you want people to believe. But you are a liar.
>>> You and your kind are the liars. I was involved in the "environmental
>>> movement" 35-40 years ago, and I know full well the arsenal of
>>> lies, tricks, and misinformation that is your stock in trade
>
> I am really astonished by the extremism that both of you are putting in
> this discussion.
Myself and others like me are not extremists. This destructive
civilization is extremist.
> Here in Europe (I live in Italy, so sorry for my
> There is no need to be very fluent to say, anyway, that:
> - cancer is growing
> - allergies are growing, (following some sources 30% of english childs
> suffers now of some kind of allergy)
> - Industry pollutes. We here had many cases of dead fishes, completely
> polluted rivers, soil so contaminated that it is unthinkable to eat
> vegetables grown on it, if ever someone would be able to grow something
> on it.
You fail to mention the desruction of ecosystems because you Europeans
have already destroyed most of yours, building over them or pillaging
them or appropriating them for agriculture and the like. Now, you
export most of your environnmental damage.
> -It's a matter of fact that brazilians are destroying the forest that is
> the lung of the planet at a rate that makes think that in a short period
> scientist should begin to think were to find the Oxygen we need to
> breathe.
Destroying it to make things to sell to Europe and America and China,
etc. This destruction of the world's forests is hardly confined to
Brazil.
> -Whe burn one milliard barrel oil every year? Well, someone really
> thinks that all the smoke and toxic products of combustion go away in
> the air without consequences?
> - ... [snip a lot of oter well-known facts that demonstrate that
> pollution is not a Good Thing, no need to be Einstein to undestand it.]
Again, pollution is only part of it. Freshwater shortages, destruction
of ecosystems by development and industry, loss of the world's great
oceanic fisheries due to overfishing, the list goes on.
> Car industry is committed here to produce smaller and cleaner engines.
> We had to substitute the lead in the petrol because it was one of the
> most toxic and dangerous substances around. True? Or this too is a lie?
Most of the damage done by cars is accomplished by the numerous mines
and related processing industries needed to make the things. And roads.
And the industries involved in fueling them.
What comes out of their tailpipes is insignificant by comparison.
> What about Plutonium, the most dangerous substance on the earth? One
> should be crazy only to think that it can be used for something. 20000
> years or so to become lead. And in the meantime?
What of it? If all pollution of every kind were to disappear, we'd
still be trashing the planet.
Great Britain needs more land than is found in its entire country
to provide the food for the animals it eats.
That's what the Falklands War was about -- Sheep. That's all there
is there now.
>> I am not a member of the corporate financed sham called the
>> "environmental movement". They are a bunch of elitist phonies
>> who want to save what remains of the planet after they get their
>> huge pieces of it.
>
> Americans, often we say in Europe, have the most tremenduous lifestyle
> of the globe, they alone burn out the 75% of the resources and are,
> globally speaking, a mere 7% of the population.
> The corporate financed scam is the one that says that it's OK to go on
> that way, consuming more and more, exploiting resources and accusing of
> some unclear plot to destroy the american lifestyle every person that
> tries to explain that we can't go on that way.
True.
> Not that we europeans are much better.
True.
> And one zillion of chinese are
> now wanting cars, air conditioners and so on. And Indians are another
> billion of people.
>
> Not exactly a nice picture.
>
> But when it comes to remedies, then I must say that we differ a lot from
> those pseudo-environmentalists that are only able to speak against the
> technology and the progress.
> If a solution will come, it will be from science and technology.
And there you have it. The Big Lie. It is the overindulgence in
technology that is largely the cause of the problem, providing
incredibly destructive and inefficient and costly solutions to
challenges that could be met well with lower orders of technology.
But that doesn't create investment income....
> High, sustainable technology is now the big target people should aim at.
Insanity. We've been hearing that for 40 years, and the environmental
problem just keeps getting worse.
You just want to go on living like you do and send off your tax
money to the geeks and trust that they invent magick machines
and processes that will save the planet.
They won't. They will invent things that will make money for the
investors and pretend that they are "green".
> We are too many people and we have big and complex problems. No way to
> find out some simple solution like solar energy, natural food and so on
> wishful thinking.
We need to learn to use the lowest order of technology that will get
the job done. Because they are the least destructive.
>
> Computers, technology, new big sources of energy (nuclear fusion, the
> energy of the stars et. al.) will be part of the answer.
This kind of blind worshipping of technology is going to bury us.
> And not to be completely off-topic, look at how computers can help to
> save energy and resources. Electronic documents save trees.
Computers require an incredibly destructive complex of industries. You
are deluded.
> Global
> networks make possible instant messaging and communication with a
> minimum of energy to transmit informations across the world.
You can get a message across the globe using shortwave at a fraction
of the cost in energy and materials.
You are either lying or incredibly ignorant.
>
> And of course, a bit of consciousness that we are polluting, devastating
> an depleting resources should be part of the education every people gets
> at school. A bit of respect for the environment is in no way a wrong or
> misguiding concept.
>
> My 2 cents, and now back to work with Linux....
> D. Campagna
You are a typical ersatz environmentalist. Pretending to care for
the planet but really caring for technology and its benefactors,
the elites of the world. You and your people.
You think that you can export all of the damage done by your
super materialistic, technology worshipping lifestyle, but
that game is coming to an end. The chickens are coming home
to roost.
Bombadil
Bombadil
<snippety>
> If a solution will come, it will be from science and technology.
> High, sustainable technology is now the big target people should aim at.
> We are too many people and we have big and complex problems. No way to
> find out some simple solution like solar energy, natural food and so on
> wishful thinking.
>
> Computers, technology, new big sources of energy (nuclear fusion, the
> energy of the stars et. al.) will be part of the answer.
> And not to be completely off-topic, look at how computers can help to
> save energy and resources. Electronic documents save trees. Global
> networks make possible instant messaging and communication with a
> minimum of energy to transmit informations across the world.
>
> And of course, a bit of consciousness that we are polluting, devastating
> an depleting resources should be part of the education every people gets
> at school. A bit of respect for the environment is in no way a wrong or
> misguiding concept.
>
> My 2 cents, and now back to work with Linux....
There you have the manifesto of the fake environmentalists who are
the very people who are laying waste to the planet.
"Just relaxe and play with your toys, the Great God Technos will solve
all of our problems
Their supermaterialistic lifestyle, for which only poor people living
in other places suffer the negative impacts of, (subsistence wages and
trashed local environments and gruesome working and living conditions) the
sum of their individual ecological footprints, is responsible for most
of the damage being done to the planet.
And what do they want? More technology. Because they get to use it
and reap profits from investing in it and to enjoy the cushy, white-collar
jobs at top of the pyramid.
Technology is a wonderful, but over-indulging in it is going to kill a
lot of us. It already has. We should use low-technology wherever
we can, because it is much less destructive than high-technology.
The environmental impact of google searches:
While millions of people tap into Google without considering the
environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle
generates about 15g. "Google operates huge data centres around the world
that consume a great deal of power," said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard
University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of
computing is due out soon. "A Google search has a definite environmental
impact."
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece
And what's involved in producing and transporting that energy? Mines and
factories and coal/nuclear power/hydroelectric/natural gas power plants and
heavy equipment and endless miles of heavy copper wire and....and....and...
All of that does a LOT of damage to the environment. A LOT!
Of course, the energy used for google searches is just a tiny fraction of
the energy needed to power the internet and the computers on it.
Bombadil
The Natural Philosopher
You missed the crucial point
And people are still having babies.
We are already past the point at which it is technically feasible for
the earths population as a whole to ever be affluent, except possibly
with massive use of nuclear energy.
And even then, there are other resource limits.
I'll leave it to te socialists to decide whether a decent life fr some,
or a miserable life for everybody, is the optimal direction.
But it doesn't matter., When life is miserable, people kill each other.
caver1
You need to exterminate all of the human race. THEN the
earth will
be safe for the aliens when they arrive.
caver1
Marten Kemp
The trend line will be down for the first half of this century.
It'll tend sharply down around the middle of the century.
The Collapse will come during the first half of the next one.
Once the population is reduced below a billion or so the planet
will start to heal. It's problematic whether or not the remaining
human population will be viable in the long term.
I kinda-sorta hope that there's some sort of life after death
so I can see if my predictions come to pass.
--
-- Marten Kemp
(Fix name and ISP to reply)
The Natural Philosopher
> Once the population is reduced below a billion or so the planet
> will start to heal. It's problematic whether or not the remaining
> human population will be viable in the long term.
>
Oh yes. a section will survive. The question is which sections.
> I kinda-sorta hope that there's some sort of life after death
> so I can see if my predictions come to pass.
>
Only real justification for it.
Bombadil
We don't need what Americans et al call "affluence".
We have plenty of resources to provide comfortable and healthy
lifestyles for everyone on the planet.
But we have to fundamentally change how we live and this begins
by putting severe limits on technology. We need to use the lowest
order of technology that will get a job done, because the lowest
order is the least destructive.
For example -- Growing your food with handtools and within walking
distance has a tiny, tiny, fraction of the ecological footprint
that our present means of producing and delivering food has.
It is a matter of lifestyle, not population.
>>
>> And even then, there are other resource limits.
>>
>> I'll leave it to te socialists to decide whether a decent life fr some,
>> or a miserable life for everybody, is the optimal direction.
>>
>> But it doesn't matter., When life is miserable, people kill each other.
>
> The trend line will be down for the first half of this century.
> It'll tend sharply down around the middle of the century.
> The Collapse will come during the first half of the next one.
I don't think there will be a collapse. The number of people living
the elistist Middle Class supermaterialistic lifestyle will decline
and the rest of the population will receive only subsistence support
from industry, enough to keep them healthy enough to work and buy
cheap goods.
It's an old story and it's coming to America.
>
> Once the population is reduced below a billion or so the planet
> will start to heal. It's problematic whether or not the remaining
> human population will be viable in the long term.
Along with the idea that Technology will save us, this is the most
destructive myth -- that population is the problem.
It is _lifestyle_ that is the problem.
A million people with cars and everything involved in making them
happen have a hundred times the environmental impact of a million people
using their own feet and mass transport.
The planet can support 100 times as many people using mass transport
and their feet than people using cars.
>
> I kinda-sorta hope that there's some sort of life after death
> so I can see if my predictions come to pass.
They will not. But you may very well find yourself living like
one of the new Chinese industrial de facto serfs. Toiling in
factory or farm for subsistence wages and living in a slum.
Bombadil
The Natural Philosopher
That's your basic mistake.
There isn't enough WATER in many places to have even a flush toilet.
There isn't enough food in many places to feed the populations. OK, it
could be grown elsewhere..but then you have to truck or fly it in.
There is an absolute and direct correlation between people per unit
area, lifestyle, and per capita energy consumption that is irrevocable
and irreducible.
Populations expand till they die off from something. Disease,
starvation, war, auto accidents..
we haven't been 'in balance' with nature for 10,000 years, when the
population of the earth was a few million.
Your stupidity, if universally adopted, would result in us going back to
the stone age.
> But we have to fundamentally change how we live and this begins
> by putting severe limits on technology. We need to use the lowest
> order of technology that will get a job done, because the lowest
> order is the least destructive.
>
Bullshit. Pandora's box was opened the first time someone took a stone
and hit another stone with it (irreducibly reducing the flints in the
world by one) and hit an animal with it.
All animals change the environment, and if they get too dominant, end up
drowning in their own waste. Life itself changes the environment. There
is no way back to the carboniferous era with few animals and a lot of
plants.
> For example -- Growing your food with handtools and within walking
> distance has a tiny, tiny, fraction of the ecological footprint
> that our present means of producing and delivering food has.
>
And a tiny tiny fraction of the food per acre as well.
IN the UK, when we were limited to that, we just managed to support a
million population. Its 60 million now.
And people today simply couldn't do it. Its unbelievable backbreaking
dawn to dusk slog. And an early death.
> It is a matter of lifestyle, not population.
>
They are one and the same. The earth can support a few million hunter
gatherers, a few tens of million non industrial agriculturalists, and a
few billion if we use hi tech farming. And have an excess of energy per
capita to draw on. Lose that and the 'lifestyle' reduces to the point
where its merely choosing a novel and interesting way to die.
These sums have been done, but people like you dont want to know. Maths
is too hard for you.
> I don't think there will be a collapse. The number of people living
> the elistist Middle Class supermaterialistic lifestyle will decline
> and the rest of the population will receive only subsistence support
> from industry, enough to keep them healthy enough to work and buy
> cheap goods.
>
Good grief. You are criminally naive aren't you?
> It's an old story and it's coming to America.
It may well be, but it aint coming to Europe.
>
>> Once the population is reduced below a billion or so the planet
>> will start to heal. It's problematic whether or not the remaining
>> human population will be viable in the long term.
> Along with the idea that Technology will save us, this is the most
> destructive myth -- that population is the problem.
>
> It is _lifestyle_ that is the problem.
>
I am afraid you have your head up your arse.
How big is America 250 million people? Its NOTHING. Europe is bigger
than that. Asia is HUGELY bigger in population terms.
Let me say this slowly.
America is utterly irrelevant. The only thing it has is enough surplus -
well it used to - to develop hi tech solutions. Now it doesnt even have
that any more., Americas is finished as a world power the way Europe was
finished post WWII. It just doesn't know it yet.
The worlds future is largely in Chinese hands. In as much as anybody has
the power to dictate it.
Whether or not America suddenly reduces its lifestyle to European
levels, barely dents the world energy budget.
Yiou are about as Naive as the South African who told me that 'come the
end of Apartheid, we will all have a Mercedes car and a swimming pool
like the White man' I did the sums, and answered' there isn't enough
water to give every citizen a flush toilet'
But the guys fro Cuba told him it was so, and he wanted to believe it.
You are no better.
You are just a little zealot with his head full of someone's propaganda.
You haven't really thought about it, you don't really understand it and
you certainly haven't done the sums.
You are just cannon fodder in someone's bid for political power.
> A million people with cars and everything involved in making them
> happen have a hundred times the environmental impact of a million people
> using their own feet and mass transport.
>
Sure but that's not the issue. Even if everybody stayed at home and
lived on Welfare, you still need to grow the food and build the homes.
That cannot be done without excess per capita energy input.
> The planet can support 100 times as many people using mass transport
> and their feet than people using cars.
>
That is utterly irrelvant. It cant FEED, CLOTTHE and KEEP WARM AND
HEALTHY that many. AND although I know this seems incredible from your
tiny narrow little parochial perspective, most of the world does NOT
have a car or access to one, and does do everything on foot.
Mas transport is NOT more efficient than cars *unless* you are moving
goods or people from one center to another. IF uyou want that lifestyle,
everyone lives in cities, in tower blocks except for a few farmers, who
grow everything and truck it in. Now, when are you moving to downtown
Detroit? And what useful thing can you do there? What can YOU generate
to pay those framers for doing it?
Yeah, right, not a damned thing. Useless as tits on a bull.
>> I kinda-sorta hope that there's some sort of life after death
>> so I can see if my predictions come to pass.
>
> They will not. But you may very well find yourself living like
> one of the new Chinese industrial de facto serfs. Toiling in
> factory or farm for subsistence wages and living in a slum.
>
That is exactly where your ideas will take you.
You aren't fit for anything better.
> Bombadil
Bombadil
>> We have plenty of resources to provide comfortable and healthy
>> lifestyles for everyone on the planet.
>>
> No, we dont.
Yes we do.
> That's your basic mistake.
Your basic mistake is ignorance and stupidity and the big
mouth that generally accompanies those characteristics.
Or perhaps you are just determined to discredit anyone
who would ask you to change how you live.
And left your conscience at home.
> There isn't enough WATER in many places to have even a flush toilet.
No kidding. They are called "deserts", whether natural or artificial.
There is an enormous amount of land that is not desert. If that
wasn't the case there wouldn't be billions of people on the planet.
Right now most of that land is controlled, directly and indirectly,
by an enormously greedy and destructive elite, the hundred million
or so Middle Class of the world, but if it was available to people who wanted to
live relatively simply and rationally, the planet could easily support
2 times this population. With room for all of the other species.
<snippety>
Bombadil
The Natural Philosopher
> The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> I said:
>>> We have plenty of resources to provide comfortable and healthy
>>> lifestyles for everyone on the planet.
>>>
>> No, we dont.
>
> Yes we do.
>
>> That's your basic mistake.
>
> Your basic mistake is ignorance and stupidity and the big
> mouth that generally accompanies those characteristics.
>
> Or perhaps you are just determined to discredit anyone
> who would ask you to change how you live.
>
> And left your conscience at home.
>
My friend, I learnt something about my conscience when I left home,
taking my conscience with me, and came into a country where things were
very very different. Where what people wanted, and what they truly
deserved, was never ever going to happen to them no matter what I, or
anyone else did, thought, felt or believed.
I had a choice. Salve my conscience, pretend that they could, and go
along with the mob of leftish bollocks, sit there and join the haves
and piss on the have nots, or leave. I left.
To give people what you would call even the basic necessities of life,
takes energy way beyond what the sun drops onto this planet.
Considering the conversion efficiency of the means at our disposal of
harnessing it.
>> There isn't enough WATER in many places to have even a flush toilet.
>
> No kidding. They are called "deserts", whether natural or artificial.
> There is an enormous amount of land that is not desert. If that
> wasn't the case there wouldn't be billions of people on the planet.
>
No its not.
California for example, barely has enough water to give everyone a flush
toilet. Its hardly a desert.
What you don't understand is how much water a flush toilet takes,
compared with e.g. what you drink in a day, and what goes into what you
eat in a day.
Every flush is a couple of GALLONS. You would be hard put to drink a
gallon of water a day. You can sure pee 5 times a cday though.
So, you can either have your flush toilet, and your shower, and not eat
and not drink, or you can eat and drink, and not have a flush toilet.
Your choice.
Or you can build massive hi tech desalination plants - like the Israelis
have. IF you have the energy to drive them.
BUT in may parts of the world, you can have a high population, or a
decent lifestyle. Not both, not without additional energy input.
Your blinkered vision shows you probably come from the USA and have
never ever left it. Try a nice hike round Southern Africa, and see what
sort of life it is where there is no 'tech' at all. I suggest Zimbabwe.
A troumph of ideology over common sense, a once fruitful country now
reduced to abject poverty disease and starvation, because the tech was
all take away and the land given to people with none.
> Right now most of that land is controlled, directly and indirectly,
> by an enormously greedy and destructive elite, the hundred million
> or so Middle Class of the world, but if it was available to people who wanted to
> live relatively simply and rationally, the planet could easily support
> 2 times this population. With room for all of the other species.
>
You really haven't a clue have you?
No one controls anything. Much.
People trade, that's all. They swap things they have too much of for
things they want, that someone else has too much of.
A lot of the world has people with not too much of anything. Your
choices is whether you are going to get smart, or be like them, and live
a dawn to dusk peasant existence caught in a poverty trap that you can
never escape from. I guess you have no choice at that you are dumb
enough to know that you cant make it, so you want everyone else to be as
miserable as you are, and as poor as you will be.,.
The main reason we have technology is because a life without it is
unbearably miserable.
I used to live on a farm, where the owner took some schoolkids, all full
of ecoshit and back-to-nature stuff they had had pumped into them..they
wanted to know what he would do if oil ran out, and there were no more
tractors, and he had to go back to horses and picking potatoes by hand..
'You want to know what I would do if I had to go back to picking potaoes
by hand?'
'Yes'
'I would commit suicide'
You can take your back-to-nature lifestyle and shove it up your arse.
I've been there, and its crap. Literally. Its crap in the water, crap in
the food, its dysentry every other day of your life, and if you get a
scratch, its likely you die from lack of hygiene and antibiotics, and if
you live, its nothing but labour and toil, and no days off, because if
you have a choice between dying cos you didn't plant, weed and harvest
your crops or dying because you are ill, you chance it that you wont die
from being ill.
The world you envisage exists only in your imagination., It doesn't obey
the laws of physics, or of human nature.
Dream on..some of us have seen where it leads, You can go there, but
switch the lights off and close the door on your way out. We wont be
coming with you.
There is a lot wrong with the way things are, but it wont be fixed by
lowering our energy usage. It will be fixed by increasing it. OR by
decreasing the population..
Nuclear power or megadeath.,. Your choice. I've made mine..
D.Campagna
>
>> There is no need to be very fluent to say, anyway, that:
>> - cancer is growing
>> - allergies are growing, (following some sources 30% of english childs
>> suffers now of some kind of allergy)
>> - Industry pollutes. We here had many cases of dead fishes, completely
>> polluted rivers, soil so contaminated that it is unthinkable to eat
>> vegetables grown on it, if ever someone would be able to grow something
>> on it.
>
> You fail to mention the desruction of ecosystems because you Europeans
> have already destroyed most of yours, building over them or pillaging
> them or appropriating them for agriculture and the like. Now, you
> export most of your environnmental damage.
sigh, quite true (but QUITE)
>
>> -It's a matter of fact that brazilians are destroying the forest that is
>> the lung of the planet at a rate that makes think that in a short period
>> scientist should begin to think were to find the Oxygen we need to
>> breathe.
>
> Destroying it to make things to sell to Europe and America and China,
> etc. This destruction of the world's forests is hardly confined to
> Brazil.
Of course. Globalization, that is.
>> -Whe burn one milliard barrel oil every year? Well, someone really
>> thinks that all the smoke and toxic products of combustion go away in
>> the air without consequences?
> Again, pollution is only part of it. Freshwater shortages, destruction
> of ecosystems by development and industry, loss of the world's great
> oceanic fisheries due to overfishing, the list goes on.
right (in my opinion)
> Most of the damage done by cars is accomplished by the numerous mines
> and related processing industries needed to make the things. And roads.
> And the industries involved in fueling them.
>
> What comes out of their tailpipes is insignificant by comparison.
Not so insignificant. The really amusing (in a sort of way ) thing is,
where now we put the very toxic exhausted catalyst devices (sorry again
for my lack of technical dictionary in this amazing language - English).
It seems we have only put the venenom in a barrel, and now we are
scraping our heads trying to figure out where to put the barrel. :-)
>> But when it comes to remedies, then I must say that we differ a lot from
>> those pseudo-environmentalists that are only able to speak against the
>> technology and the progress.
>> If a solution will come, it will be from science and technology.
>
> And there you have it. The Big Lie. It is the overindulgence in
> technology that is largely the cause of the problem, providing
> incredibly destructive and inefficient and costly solutions to
> challenges that could be met well with lower orders of technology.
>
> But that doesn't create investment income....
Fact: if it would be possible to achieve the nuclar fusion, we would
have illimitate energy with no pollution at all.
End of the story.
And how to realize it? With low-tech solutions? Don't be kidding.
I'll be proud and happy to make rich any industry giving us such a great
achievment. No problems with someone becoming zillionaire if it is a
benefactor of the mankind.
> Insanity. We've been hearing that for 40 years, and the environmental
> problem just keeps getting worse.
False. For a start, in the '60 nd '70 Italy was much worse. I was a kid,
and I was swimming among little pieces of shit when at sea, the sea was
a sewage, there were no rules, in the river Ticino 1.100 industries were
releasing their waste, and so on... Now we have a much better situation
(while problems remain).
> You just want to go on living like you do and send off your tax
> money to the geeks and trust that they invent magick machines
> and processes that will save the planet.
I say they are the only ones that can do it. And i only hope they will.
If I'm wrong, then we all are lost.
> They won't. They will invent things that will make money for the
> investors and pretend that they are "green".
I love profit. And if they'll be able to get profit from shit, I'll love
them and pay for it. If on the other hand they will try to fool me with
some bullshit and make more pollution, I'll never give them a penny. (If
I can choose, of course.)
>
> We need to learn to use the lowest order of technology that will get
> the job done. Because they are the least destructive.
>
You're young and you simplifies things. Aren't you young?
>
> Computers require an incredibly destructive complex of industries. You
> are deluded.
>
You are right, but in a somewhat distorted way
>> Global
>> networks make possible instant messaging and communication with a
>> minimum of energy to transmit informations across the world.
>
> You can get a message across the globe using shortwave at a fraction
> of the cost in energy and materials.
>
> You are either lying or incredibly ignorant.
>
You are unfair. I am moderately ignorant. :-)
> You are a typical ersatz environmentalist. Pretending to care for
> the planet but really caring for technology and its benefactors,
> the elites of the world. You and your people.
Must admit there is something true in your words. If only you were not
so a bit of an Angry Evangelist, you'll probably get more audience. That
way, you only get angry answers. Anyway, I'm too old and mellow to care
about. You definitely talks like a young man. I love your enthousiasm, I
warn you: temper your enthousiasm with a bit of salt.
>
> You think that you can export all of the damage done by your
> super materialistic, technology worshipping lifestyle, but
> that game is coming to an end. The chickens are coming home
> to roost.
>
We'll see. Come back in a 30 years, and let's have a quiet and ironic
conversation on "those messages, 30 years ago..."
Dan
D.Campagna
> Bombadil wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> I said:
>>>> We have plenty of resources to provide comfortable and healthy
>>>> lifestyles for everyone on the planet.
>>> No, we dont.
>>
>> Yes we do.
>>
>>> That's your basic mistake.
>>
>> Your basic mistake is ignorance and stupidity and the big
>> mouth that generally accompanies those characteristics.
>>
>> Or perhaps you are just determined to discredit anyone
>> who would ask you to change how you live.
>> And left your conscience at home.
>>
>
> My friend, I learnt something about my conscience when I left home,
> taking my conscience with me, and came into a country where things were
> very very different. Where what people wanted, and what they truly
> deserved, was never ever going to happen to them no matter what I, or
> anyone else did, thought, felt or believed.
> I had a choice. Salve my conscience, pretend that they could, and go
> along with the mob of leftish bollocks, sit there and join the haves
> and piss on the have nots, or leave. I left.
Nat. Phi, you are (in my opinion) speaking like a real philosoper. I
guess, you are in your 40 or 50, but your counterpart is a young. Don't
burst all his bubbles...
>
> To give people what you would call even the basic necessities of life,
> takes energy way beyond what the sun drops onto this planet.
> Considering the conversion efficiency of the means at our disposal of
> harnessing it.
>
>>> There isn't enough WATER in many places to have even a flush toilet.
true, sadly.
>
> Or you can build massive hi tech desalination plants - like the Israelis
> have. IF you have the energy to drive them.
>
> BUT in may parts of the world, you can have a high population, or a
> decent lifestyle. Not both, not without additional energy input.
"many" parts of the world I suppose. And yes, true, no?
> Your blinkered vision shows you probably come from the USA and have
> never ever left it. Try a nice hike round Southern Africa, and see what
> sort of life it is where there is no 'tech' at all. I suggest Zimbabwe.
> A troumph of ideology over common sense, a once fruitful country now
> reduced to abject poverty disease and starvation, because the tech was
> all take away and the land given to people with none.
Let him his dreams, he's a nice guy.
> No one controls anything. Much.
You're so Cynic (Cynicist? materialist? realist? how do you say it?)
> People trade, that's all. They swap things they have too much of for
> things they want, that someone else has too much of.
Economy law n. 1. True, of course.
> The main reason we have technology is because a life without it is
> unbearably miserable.
We should put it in the marble and read it every day we wake up.
> I used to live on a farm, where the owner took some schoolkids, all full
> of ecoshit and back-to-nature stuff they had had pumped into them..they
> wanted to know what he would do if oil ran out, and there were no more
> tractors, and he had to go back to horses and picking potatoes by hand..
>
> 'You want to know what I would do if I had to go back to picking potaoes
> by hand?'
> 'Yes'
> 'I would commit suicide'
Nobody fully understands it, but let's they have an ill teeth and no
medical care. In a couple of hours they will love Pharma industries and
dental medicine, no matter the pollution or any other thought.
> You can take your back-to-nature lifestyle and shove it up your arse.
It was Rousseau that gave us this basic misguiding concept. The joy of
the nature. Nature is a Bad Mother. No need of technology if she wasn't.
> I've been there, and its crap. Literally. Its crap in the water, crap in
> the food, its dysentry every other day of your life, and if you get a
> scratch, its likely you die from lack of hygiene and antibiotics, and if
> you live, its nothing but labour and toil, and no days off, because if
> you have a choice between dying cos you didn't plant, weed and harvest
> your crops or dying because you are ill, you chance it that you wont die
> from being ill.
Incredibly true, wise and real.
>
> The world you envisage exists only in your imagination., It doesn't obey
> the laws of physics, or of human nature.
He's young, misguided and idealist. But he's not a bad guy. He has
choosen the right ideals, but he's simplifying a bit things...
> Nuclear power or megadeath.,. Your choice. I've made mine..
I too.
Dan
Bombadil
The damage done to the environment, which includes enormous amounts
of pollution, mining and refining and manufacturing and transporting
and assembling all the materials needed to make a nuclear power plant,
is staggering.
And what is most of that energy used for? To power industries
that do further harm to the environment on a large scale, making
things we don't need or can produce without electricity.
We have more than enough energy already. It is misused and
abused at this point. We have more than enough for our need,
but not our greed. And greed never has enough.
Electricity is not needed for most of the things it is used for.
Renewable, organic sources of energy, methane/gasified carbon/alcohol/
vegetable oil can be produced locally by hand and used to provide
heating and lighting and cooking fuel and hot water, etc., without
trashing the planet in the process.
Like all the people who believe that high/complex technologies
hold the answer, you don't look at the big picture. For you,
things like nuclear power plants just materialize out of thin
air, rather than requiring thousands of mines and refineries
and factories and roads and power plants and water supplies
and landfills and so on. Not to mention supporting the super
materialistic lifestyles of the tens of thousands of people
needed to design and make and assemble and transport all the
materials involved. It takes MANY years for such a nuclear
power plant to produce the energy needed to make it in the
first place.
The blind worship of technology is going to bury us, I fear.
<snippety>
Bombadil
caver1
Part of what you say is true. But even without our modern
technology
man has always destroyed his environment with the technology
of the time.
So is technology to blame or Man?
caver1
Bombadil
That's not true. The 'Native Americans' lived on the 'North
American' continent for tens of thousands of years and it
was a paradise when the Europeans arrived. And there are
still millions of people living around the globe, as
gardeners and gatherers and hunters and crafters, who have lived
on their lands since time beyond memory and harmed it not in
the least.
(You really need to turn off your TV and do your own research.
Those scientists you see on the flashy documentaries are in
the pockets of the corporations and they tell you what their
corporate masters pay them to tell you.)
We can't live like that now, because we are too many and the
planet has suffered too much damage. But with the right technologies,
most of them pre-industrial, we can live well and sustainably,
utilizing the 'higher', more destructive, technologies only when
absolutely necessary.
Bombadil
caver1
How many places have you been where humans have deforested
areas that
do not have "modern" technology. How about the ancient
Chinese and their gas wells,
iron making, wars with gun powder, etc.
Okay the "Native Americans". How far back do you want to go?
Where are all the largest of the animals that were here when
they got here?
Were they peaceful? No. No human ever was.
How about Africans and their over grazing their goats?
You can go on and on and on.
So who is to decide when necessary is?
The problem is not technology but how it is used.
TV what is that? Ask my kids the oldest is 33 and we have
never had a TV
in our house that he can remember. You need to learn you
history.
caver1
Bombadil
Never the less, there have been many peoples who have
lived in harmony with the environment. And many more
than that who lived very much more in harmony with
the environment than this civiliztion does.
> The problem is not technology but how it is used.
There are many destructive technologies that cannot
be anything else, and all of them are unnecessary.
There will never be an earth-friendly private automobile.
In order for them to work there have to be roads everywhere
and vast numbers of people have to support all the industries
involved. The amount of work/materials/energies that goes
into making and maintaining a private automobile and its
share of the vast infrastructures (mining, refining, manufacturing,
energy, roads and fuel and parking and repair...) is staggering,
as is the destruction of the environment involved.
That's but one obvious example.
> TV what is that? Ask my kids the oldest is 33 and we have
> never had a TV
Considering that much of the internet is now basically a
new mutation of the TV, that's a remarkably silly statement.
> in our house that he can remember. You need to learn you
> history.
> caver1
You just don't want to change how you live. That's the problem
with people like you. You want big changes in the world, but
you don't want big changes in _your_ life. So that means that
other people are going to have to make even _bigger_ changes
in _their_ lives.
You like all the technology only because _you_ don't have
to do the mining and refining and manufacturing and transporting
and powering involved. Or live around any of that stuff.
NIMBY. Not In My Back Yard. Trash the planet somewhere else for
my goodies. Pay people subsistence wages to work in hellholes
to make my goodies and do it somewhere else. And don't tell
me about it.
Only thing is, it's not the first world in America and Europe
and the third world everywhere else anymore. It's the third
world _everywhere_ . More and more. A two-tiered society,
with elites and serfs. And the planet will only support
maybe 200,000,000 Middle Classers. The people above them
are too few to count, and the rest of the billions will
be industrial serfs.
We need to make _real_ changes in how we live. Most of us
are going to be whether we like it or not. But we can
choose whether to live as industrial serfs or free villagers.
The "Technology Will Solve Everything" myth is one of the
most destructive around. This is disinformation from the
world's elite. Like this fellow. Next he's going to try
to get you to believe that the only two choices are this
lifestyle and living like a "stone-age" savage. This
is another one of their Big Lies. There are a thousand
different lifestyles between those extremes. We can
rule technology, and we must not let it rule us.
Bombadil
caver1
Case in point its not the technology but how it is used.
tell mehow the technology of the year 1 would take care of
the multitudes today.
So what you are saying is the only way to save the earth is
to destroy humanity.
> There will never be an earth-friendly private automobile.
> In order for them to work there have to be roads everywhere
> and vast numbers of people have to support all the industries
> involved. The amount of work/materials/energies that goes
> into making and maintaining a private automobile and its
> share of the vast infrastructures (mining, refining, manufacturing,
> energy, roads and fuel and parking and repair...) is staggering,
> as is the destruction of the environment involved.
>
> That's but one obvious example.
>
>> TV what is that? Ask my kids the oldest is 33 and we have
>> never had a TV
>
> Considering that much of the internet is now basically a
> new mutation of the TV, that's a remarkably silly statement.
Then why are you even using Computers?
Of course you could use a chalk board but even that destroys
land and maybe even trees.
>> in our house that he can remember. You need to learn you
>> history.
>> caver1
>
> You just don't want to change how you live. That's the problem
> with people like you. You want big changes in the world, but
> you don't want big changes in _your_ life. So that means that
> other people are going to have to make even _bigger_ changes
> in _their_ lives.
You don't even know how I live.
As a matter of fact I maybe riding a bicycle right know so I
can
run my computer. do you run a bicycle to run your refrigerator?
So what changes have you made?
OH yes you have a synthetic blanket that uses oil. Or better
yet you
had a sheep killed so you can keep warm at night. Or are you
Using electricity
to keep warm, which either uses gas or coal? Oh my God.
Better yet
maybe you are deforesting our world to do it?
> You like all the technology only because _you_ don't have
> to do the mining and refining and manufacturing and transporting
> and powering involved. Or live around any of that stuff.
So What are you giving up? Where did your house come from?
where did your food come
from? Oh yeah. Where did your rubbers come from?
> The "Technology Will Solve Everything" myth is one of the
> most destructive around. This is disinformation from the
> world's elite. Like this fellow. Next he's going to try
> to get you to believe that the only two choices are this
> lifestyle and living like a "stone-age" savage. This
> is another one of their Big Lies. There are a thousand
> different lifestyles between those extremes. We can
> rule technology, and we must not let it rule us.
You are no different than the ones you rail against.
No man cannot solve these problems no matter which side of this
coin they are on. So quit bugging us here.
Bye
caver1
Bombadil
You write that without even reading my arguments, which
follow. You are just reciting dogma that makes you
comfortable.
All industrial technologies are destructive, regardless
of what they are producing. The higher (more complex)
the technology, the more destructive it is. 2+2=4.
If we are going to become an earth-friendly, sustainable,
peaceful, and just people we have to minimize their usage.
We have to use the lowest order of technology that will
get the job done, and especially local, human powered
technologies that are completely non-industrial.
People who tell us that technology offers the only hope
are ignorant fools. It is the over-indulgence in technology
that has landed us in this mess.
Caver1, we are enemies. I hope for the sake of the human
race and the planet that my side wins.
Because selfish and willfully ignorant fools like you are
leading us to a world that is much worse than one we have
today, and it stinks for most of the people who live in it.
Now why don't your run along? Go light some incense on
your altar to the god Technos.
And then follow his first commandment: Consume and enjoy and don't
worry. My Priests will create magical machines and processes
and chemicals that will solve all your problems.
<snippety more corporate propaganda>
Bombadil
caver1
You are really stupid never have I said that tech is the answer.
But neither is it the enemy. The one that wields it is
either or or both
or even neither. Why don't you go crawl in your hole and
hope for the best?
caver1
Bombadil
Every single post of yours has implied that. Now you are lying.
Perhaps to yourself as well as us.
> But neither is it the enemy.
I have never said it is the enemy. It's abuse and overuse is
the enemy and that's written clearly in the post you are responding
to.
> The one that wields it is
> either or or both
> or even neither.
Doublespeak.
> Why don't you go crawl in your hole and
> hope for the best?
I prefer to work towards creating a better world.
If that means having to forcefully destroy all the technology you
worship against your will, so be it. Sometimes you have to get
rough with self-destructive fools.
Bombadil
Chrisjoy
> Jim Cochrane <allergic-to-s...@no-spam-allowed.invalid> wrote:
> > (Sorry if this is the wrong group to ask this in. I don't see a more
> > appropriate group in the list of comp.os.linux.* groups I have.)
>
> > After wasting a good chunk of time googling for internet/online TV
> > options and only finding ones that use proprietary/windows formats, I
> > thought I might be able to get better results asking here.
>
> > Has anyone found a good solution for watching TV online in the US on a
> > Linux system (either free or for a fee)? I'd prefer not to use wine,
> > but if that's the only option, I'm willing to consider it.
>
> Well Balwinder. Here we have with a guy with a computer on the internet,
> which is the most incredible, interactive communications and teaching and
> learning and academic research tool that has ever existed.
>
> And what does this guy want to do with it? Watch TV. He wants to turn it
> into a fucking BOOB TUBE.
>
> You call this an _improvement_ in Linux?
>
> Yes. I am sure you do...
Yes, it sure is an improvement, to watch TV though internet. Specially
if the programs are available also after they went live. It means I
can watch any program I like, WHEN I like and WHERE ever I like, just
within the reach of my HSPA equipped super small laptop, and I'm sure
you think it's a great thing too, if you get some time to think about
it.
I think your real concern got nothing to do with watching online TV. I
bet your sarcasm is a way for you to hide the fact that Linux has been
laying behind sinse MS came along with '98, or even more precise,
Linux community has not been able to push forward user friendly tools
for all different kind work like MS has. I think you should try to
keep honest, all of you Linux freaks. This will help you doing
something about this problem. Not it has been 10 years, and still you
have not been able to come up with a office packet of intergrated
tools for everyday work, including all the tools you see in outlook.
OpenOffice is a fuckin' joke, and you should agree if your're to be
the least honest. I've got no problem agreeing to the fact that MS are
incompetent making tools nite and effevtive, and this goes for most
application on Windows. If you're a reasonable person you should think
this is less important than actually making something that actually
work. If you hate bloatware so much, help out Linux to make the apps
we want more nite, and stop complaining about MS platform that at
least got a sollution. And above all, try to understand that the only
way you're able to make something is by money, and come out of that
moronic idea about software should be free. Keeping on to such a
stupid idea will only increase the gap between Linux and Windows. You
need money to make anything, including software. This is a fact
regardless what light communist Linus sais.
The Natural Philosopher
Its way less than the dnmage done by a bunch of starving human beings
hacking down rain forest with machetes to clear it for farming.
> And what is most of that energy used for? To power industries
> that do further harm to the environment on a large scale, making
> things we don't need or can produce without electricity.
>
Not, to keep assholes like you in the comfort to which they have become
accustomed.
> We have more than enough energy already. It is misused and
> abused at this point. We have more than enough for our need,
> but not our greed. And greed never has enough.
>
WE do not have anything like enough energy already.
> Electricity is not needed for most of the things it is used for.
> Renewable, organic sources of energy, methane/gasified carbon/alcohol/
> vegetable oil can be produced locally by hand and used to provide
> heating and lighting and cooking fuel and hot water, etc., without
> trashing the planet in the process.
>
Do the sums. silly boy.Or read a book by someone who has
You really know nothing of the detail of this.
> Like all the people who believe that high/complex technologies
> hold the answer, you don't look at the big picture.
No, actually that's precisely what I DO do.
Do global calculations.
YOU are the one failing to see the big picture, and understand why we
need energy , how much we can get without technology, and why that will
mean that most off the humans on the planet will die.
For you,
> things like nuclear power plants just materialize out of thin
> air, rather than requiring thousands of mines and refineries
> and factories and roads and power plants and water supplies
> and landfills and so on. Not to mention supporting the super
> materialistic lifestyles of the tens of thousands of people
> needed to design and make and assemble and transport all the
> materials involved. It takes MANY years for such a nuclear
> power plant to produce the energy needed to make it in the
> first place.
>
You are so much decsribing yourself. I have been an engineer all my
working life. I have worked in the places you describe, I know EXACTLY
how much it takes to make a nuclear power station. About ten times less
than it takes to make the equivalent number of windmills, anyway.. and
round about a thousand plus times less than it takes to make houses for
the people whose energy needs it will serve.
> The blind worship of technology is going to bury us, I fear.
No, but blind fear will.
Start opening your eyes, with a quick crash course on SOME of the basic
facts of human life and energy. The link I posted is good.
Then take a trip to some third or even second world countries, walk out
of your air conditioned hotel, and down to where the real people live,
in the tin shacks, on the fields. Don't take any money though. And dress
down.
People without one tenth of what you take for granted, cant afford to be
one tenth as nice as you are.
>
> <snippety>
>
> Bombadil
The Natural Philosopher
> Bombadil wrote:
>> The blind worship of technology is going to bury us, I fear.
>>
>> <snippety>
>>
>> Bombadil
>
>
>
> Part of what you say is true. But even without our modern technology
> man has always destroyed his environment with the technology of the time.
> So is technology to blame or Man?
>
He hasn't even got to first base. All life is the destruction of an
earlier environment. Life has been destroying its environment as long as
its been on the planet. Once it has, it dies, and new life comes along
to feed on the waste left over from the previous life.
Animals developed because the plants had so poisoned the air with
oxygen, that they could not flourish, whereas air breathing animal -
pure parasites really - they make no energy of their own - could live.
The only difference is that we have become sufficiently sophisticated to
become aware of the process.
And panic, because we have this notion of some eternal balance.
Th reality is that life is never balanced for long: It develops, as
conditions develop.To regard the world as having some long term stable
future is already nonsense before we do anything ourselves.
This is the blind track eco-warriors go down, missing the main and
really far more important point: Is the human species to survive at all,
and if so, how many and in what lifestyle?
My answer is that an energy efficient high tech probably for now,
nuclear powered, lifestyle is a lot more achievable with far less Death,
than a low tech pre-industrial one.
In the sense of easily achievable being 'requitres less population
adaptation'
Of course nothing is easier than to do nothing, let nature take its
course, build no power stations at all, and end up back in the stone
age, at similar population levels.
That is, nothing easier for the decision makers, especially if they have
brains the size of monkeys. Its very very HARD on those whose lives they
wreck in the process, mind you.
> caver1
The Natural Philosopher
> caver1 <cav...@inthemud.org> wrote:
>> Part of what you say is true. But even without our modern
>> technology
>> man has always destroyed his environment with the technology
>> of the time.
>> So is technology to blame or Man?
>>
>> caver1
>
> That's not true. The 'Native Americans' lived on the 'North
> American' continent for tens of thousands of years and it
> was a paradise when the Europeans arrived.
Well tell that to the woolly mamoth..who they allegedly hunted to
extinction.
And so a bit more careful research, on how MANY indians there were, and
where and when they arrived..and how ritual inter-tribal warfare was the
routine way of controlling excess population..and why, post the arrival
of technology, the Inuit, for example, now hunt seals with rifles and
outboard motors..They don't *have* to do that you know. Its their choice..
And there are
> still millions of people living around the globe, as
> gardeners and gatherers and hunters and crafters, who have lived
> on their lands since time beyond memory and harmed it not in
> the least.
>
Well so there are, although of course they have 'harmed' it
immeasurably. Agriculture itself is already a massive modification of
the environment that seeks to domesticate animals that taste good, plant
crops that humans can eat, and destroy ant life that isn't edible, or
contributes to food production...Or is simple edible and too slow to
run..where is the Dodo, the woolly mammoth, the Sabre toothed tiger?
I am glad you said millions though, because there are BILLIONS of people
who _dont_ live that way, and its not possible for *billions* of people
to exist that way.
> (You really need to turn off your TV and do your own research.
> Those scientists you see on the flashy documentaries are in
> the pockets of the corporations and they tell you what their
> corporate masters pay them to tell you.)
>
Huh? you are too americo-centric and parochial.
Only a few people relatively live in America, although they don't even
understand their own country, let alone the rest of the world.
America is just a wart on the face of the planet, and has just ceased to
be nearly as important as it was a few years ago.
Over here, all the soothing TV is all about how corporates are bringing
us over priced windmills that do so all at the taxpayers expense to
'solve climate change' Ha!
> We can't live like that now, because we are too many and the
> planet has suffered too much damage. But with the right technologies,
> most of them pre-industrial, we can live well and sustainably,
> utilizing the 'higher', more destructive, technologies only when
> absolutely necessary.
>
Absolutely wrong.
WE cannot live *at the current population levels* without advanced
technology. Period. I can, because I have done a lot of research, state
that as a fact.
WE cannot live much longer *at the current population levels* with
existing technology. For various reasons, on which we probably agree.
Ergo there are two choices. Less population, or more technology.
> Bombadil
>
Bombadil
>> Bombadil wrote:
>
>>> The blind worship of technology is going to bury us, I fear.
>>>
>>> <snippety>
>>>
>>> Bombadil
>>
>>
>>
>> Part of what you say is true. But even without our modern technology
>> man has always destroyed his environment with the technology of the time.
>> So is technology to blame or Man?
>>
>
> He hasn't even got to first base. All life is the destruction of an
> earlier environment. Life has been destroying its environment as long as
> its been on the planet. Once it has, it dies, and new life comes along
> to feed on the waste left over from the previous life.
And there you see the specious rationalizations so common to criminals
of all kinds. They can always justify their crimes. Talk to any
lawyer or judge or police officer.
This is the enemy, folks. One of the people who don't care about anything
but their selfish material desires and plans. There are a lot of them.
They don't care whether they trash the planet or not because they
aren't going to be here to experience the consequences. And they
aren't doing the trashing or living where it is being done, they are
just reaping the seeming benefits.
You can't have an intelligent conversation with them because they have
already decided, like religious fanatics, what the truth is. Come
to think of it, the worship of technology IS pretty much a religion.
<snippety>
Bombadil
The Natural Philosopher
> The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> caver1 wrote:
>>> Bombadil wrote:
>>>> The blind worship of technology is going to bury us, I fear.
>>>>
>>>> <snippety>
>>>>
>>>> Bombadil
>>>
>>>
>>> Part of what you say is true. But even without our modern technology
>>> man has always destroyed his environment with the technology of the time.
>>> So is technology to blame or Man?
>>>
>> He hasn't even got to first base. All life is the destruction of an
>> earlier environment. Life has been destroying its environment as long as
>> its been on the planet. Once it has, it dies, and new life comes along
>> to feed on the waste left over from the previous life.
>
> And there you see the specious rationalizations so common to criminals
> of all kinds. They can always justify their crimes. Talk to any
> lawyer or judge or police officer.
>
So, its it true, or is it not?
> This is the enemy, folks. One of the people who don't care about anything
> but their selfish material desires and plans. There are a lot of them.
> They don't care whether they trash the planet or not because they
> aren't going to be here to experience the consequences. And they
> aren't doing the trashing or living where it is being done, they are
> just reaping the seeming benefits.
>
I am a damned sight more environmentally friendly than you are.
I just spent 40 years thinking about it before shooting my mouth off.
> You can't have an intelligent conversation with them because they have
> already decided, like religious fanatics, what the truth is. Come
> to think of it, the worship of technology IS pretty much a religion.
>
Right. You are not an honest individual who believes in something
erroneously.
You are a pissing troll.
Its the old mirror trick.
You have described yourself perfectly, an enemy of humanity and a person
who is akin to a religious fanatic.
I have no sympathy. Die in your fantasy.
> <snippety>
>
> Bombadil
Bombadil
Says someone who knows nothing about how I live.
>
> I just spent 40 years thinking about it before shooting my mouth off.
>
>
Says someone who knows nothing about me.
>
>> You can't have an intelligent conversation with them because they have
>> already decided, like religious fanatics, what the truth is. Come
>> to think of it, the worship of technology IS pretty much a religion.
>>
>
> Right. You are not an honest individual who believes in something
> erroneously.
>
> You are a pissing troll.
>
> Its the old mirror trick.
>
>
> You have described yourself perfectly, an enemy of humanity and a person
> who is akin to a religious fanatic.
>
> I have no sympathy. Die in your fantasy.
Here you have the typical worshipper of technology attacking someone
for suggesting that the abuse of technology, its overuse, is the
source of our environmental problems. Even though it obviously is.
In the minds of people like this, anyone who speaks out about the obvious
downside of technology is a dangerous radical. He just wants to kick
back and play with his toys and send his tax dollars to the government
to disperse it to the geeks and he really believes that they can invent
a machine or process or chemical that will fix any problem.
Even when mountains of evidence to the contrary are staring him in
the face.
I guess he's right, in a way. I am a dangerous radical from his
perspective. We have two very different visions
for the future of the planet. They are not compatible.
He wants to go on pillaging it and to leave a despoiled and depleted
planet to future generations, although he says otherwise. What his
'environmentalism' boils down to is: I want to save what's left of
the planet after me and my hundred million or so buddies get our gigantic
pieces of it.
I want to leave a healthy planet to future generations and am
willing to make profound changes in my lifestyle to accomplish
this. Already have made quite a few.
There are maybe a hundred million in my camp, in North and and
Central and South America, in Europe and the British Isles,
in India and Bangladesh, in Sub-Saharan Africa and Australia
and S.E. Asia.
You don't hear about us because the corporate controlled media
doesn't give air time to the enemy.
But we are here. To take a look at one of our more visible
manifestations, google "permaculture". About 1.5 million hits.
Bombadil