Submission + - IT world must tackle an inconvenient truth
glamb writes: "The Age is
running a story, IT
world must tackle an inconvenient truth, Computer
conservation needs to be taken more seriously in Australia, writes Brad
Howarth.
POWER consumption through corporate IT use accounts for 0.75 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, according to research group Gartner. That's nearly half the contribution made by the airline industry, a high-profile greenhouse ogre. And the figure does not include the cost of keeping data centres cool enough to operate, an ever-increasing problem as processors get faster and hotter.
Now the fact that humans have caused global warming is irrefutable shouldn’t we, the IT industry, be doing something?
How many PC’s are doing nothing but wasting power and running screen savers because IT departments require desktops run 24x7 and there is no “wake-up mechanism”? How many people leave their PC’s running because Windows does not come back 100% of the time from a hibernation or sleeping?"
POWER consumption through corporate IT use accounts for 0.75 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, according to research group Gartner. That's nearly half the contribution made by the airline industry, a high-profile greenhouse ogre. And the figure does not include the cost of keeping data centres cool enough to operate, an ever-increasing problem as processors get faster and hotter.
Now the fact that humans have caused global warming is irrefutable shouldn’t we, the IT industry, be doing something?
How many PC’s are doing nothing but wasting power and running screen savers because IT departments require desktops run 24x7 and there is no “wake-up mechanism”? How many people leave their PC’s running because Windows does not come back 100% of the time from a hibernation or sleeping?"
Submission + - Can you recommend a team-oriented online game?
An anonymous reader writes: My parents are moving out of town, and my sister and I are looking for an online game to play alongside our mom. (All three of us have played Puzzle Pirates, but my sister has become bored with the puzzles and won't touch it anymore.) Neither my mom nor I enjoy the standard MMORPG fare of kill-level-buy-gear-rinse-repeat. What we're looking for is some sort of cooperative online gaming experience which doesn't hinge on how fast you can click the mouse button or how many hours you've been killing things in dungeons. Does such a thing exist?
What Is Real On YouTube? 277
An anonymous reader writes, "The popularity of user-generated video sites like YouTube has given rise to deceptive videos created for self-promotion, advertising, or even smearing rival brands. This latter format, dubbed the 'smear video,' depicts a rival brand's product exhibiting fictitious faults. One example is the 21-second YouTube video entitled 'Samsung handset, easy to break at one try!', which shows a smiling woman easily snapping the new Samsung Ultra Edition mobile phone in half. Samsung says the phone was rigged to snap and the video has now been removed from the site. The article also accuses those who created the now infamous Lonelygirl15 YouTube videos of 'deception for profit. Misrepresenting commercials as independent user-generated content, actors as members of the public, and fiction as fact.' Will user-generated video sites increasingly confront visitors with the disturbing possibility that the video they're watching is not a home video at all, but a sophisticated ad campaign?"
EA's E3 Lineup 54
Next Gen continues its rundown on E3 2006 offerings, with a listing of what EA will be bringing to the party. As far as I'm concerned, there's only one game on this list: "Spore - As a contrast to Crysis, consider Spore, a game where design is the be-all and end-all of the buzz surrounding it. Enthusiasts of game mechanics in both the player community and the industry itself have placed this game on an untouchable pedestal: the last great hope for innovation from the last great innovator in the industry, Will Wright. While we can concede that he may not be the 'last great innovator', there's no question that Wright has a long pedigree of thinking so powerfully outside the box that the box implodes from the pressure - The Sims in particular changed the way people thought about how to cater to different players. It also may very well be that Spore represents his most ambitious design yet - the player starts with a single-celled organism and ends up with a space-faring civilization. The whole thing is generated on the fly, meaning every player's race and culture will be different." Update: 04/26 22:14 GMT by Z : Sorry, I should point out these are the games *they* want to see at E3 from EA. I missed the disclaimer at the bottom the first time through.
