Blackle: the "green" google...

[BC_Programmer]

http://www.blackle.com/

Please. Somebody tell me this is a joke.

Actually, I'll answer that pre-emptively- it has to be. But I think the joke would be on them.

Think about it. They created a google custom search site  that makes the background black- under the pretense that it "saves energy".

The thing is- it doesn't. In fact, with an LCD monitor (which uses less power then a CRT monitor, so the environmenta types who would use blackle would already have one) this uses more power- the LCD backlight/inverter is always on, and the Cells become opaque to produce black. making the cells opaque takes more power then not.

The only advantage might be with a CRT monitor, but the thing is, when a CRT is producing the colour black, it's still emitting light. Go ahead and try- turn on a TV or monitor in a dark room and try to tell me there is no light coming from it.

Additionally- I don't care what your view on climate change is, but this is simply nonsense- a quote:

    Sending and receiving email makes up a full percent of a relatively green person’s annual carbon emissions, the equivalent of driving 200 miles.

    Dealing with spam, however, accounts for more than a fifth of the average account holder’s electricity use. Spam makes up a shocking 80 percent of all emails sent, but most people get rid of them as fast as you can say “delete.”

    So how does email stack up to snail mail? The per-message carbon cost of email is just 1/60th of the old-fashioned letter’s. But think about it — you probably send at least 60 times as many emails a year than you ever did letters.

    One way to go greener then is to avoid sending a bunch of short emails and instead build a longer message before you send it.

Wow. Just... Wow. I don't even think I'd even be able to properly satirize it in one sitting.

[kpac]

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

[patio]

Which is all untrue...

[ThomasTheXPUser]

I like the color black on my desktop, but the reasoning here is crap

[BC_Programmer]

I like the color black on my desktop, but the reasoning here is crap

yeah, if you like black backgrounds, that might be a good reason. But people who use blackle under the notion they are saving the environment or something are merely fooling themselves.

It's interesting to note that it only saves any power with CRT monitors, their measurably greener LCD cousins will actually consume infinitesimally more power (it will use the same amount extra as they claim to save- Black cells are when power is being applies, white cells are when no power is applied).

Personally, I don't really have a problem with environmentalism and stuff of that nature, but none of them can seem to find a middle ground- they either think tiny (send multiple E-mails as one, which if it saves anything, it might be a yocto-watt or something for every hundred thousand e-mails you merge) or they think huge; I've had some suggest ways of "saving the earth" (an interesting concept I will revisit in a moment) which involved "simply" sucking all the CO2 out of the atmosphere. There were many failed attempts to reason with this individual on the fact that it's anything but simple do do something like that on a global scale, that they haven't even considered a method by which they can extract CO2 (and CO, I suppose) from the rest of the atmosphere easily, and add to that the fact that it would essentially cause another ice age if it were possible.

Revisiting the whole "Save the Earth mantra"... I've always felt that this phrase felt simply wrong. The Earth is a ball of rock hurtling around a giant fusion reactor. The only thing that makes it noteworthy to save is the fact that we live on it, but life could just as easily be classed as a disease on the Earth. Truly it's not the earth we are trying to save- it's not the animals, it's ourselves. Of course "Save Us" doesn't sound as selfless.

I also had a computer teacher that would literally flip out if anybody printed anything. I once printed 500 pages of nothing- (as in, the pages came out blank, nothing was on them at all) and she tried to tell me how many trees I just killed (or something). It was unbelievable. She actually took the blank and perfectly usable paper- and she put them in the garbage which was right next to the recycling box. It was a true *censored* moment. I've never understood the hate for using paper, as if using paper is somehow environmentally unsound; more interesting it makes me wonder if the people against it actually realize that trees are this thing called a "renewable resource" you see, they grow from these things called "seeds" and after a few years they grow into trees. You cut them down, it doesn't matter if the wood is used for the creation of paper or for creating cardboard and wooden posts for creating anti-paper protest signs, the tree will eventually grow back.