Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (6210 mails)

[Carl Hartung <suselinux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Friday 07 October 2005 06:47, Darryl Gregorash wrote:
<snip>
> They should get rid of the CDs too, as all those plastics factories are
> bad for the environment -- far worse, in fact, than cutting down a few
> trees.

"cutting down a few trees" is a poor attempt to gloss over the plain truth 
that hard copy books are manufactured goods requiring lots of raw materials, 
chemicals and energy to produce. I've waded through two feet of paper sludge 
working in the mills and can tell you the volumes of energy and chemicals 
consumed are enormous... almost beyond comprehension... just for the paper. 
I'm talking about banks of machines three to ten wide, each the height and 
width and length of a small freight train... only ten times louder (ear 
protectors, hard hats and safety goggles are mandatory)... and they run 24 x 
7 x 365. The fumes are toxic and the exhaust never ends. This is just the 
*paper*.

Add to that all of the inks and staples and glues and the transporting of same 
plus the printing and binding equipment, all the energy they consume plus the 
parts and tools and chemicals needed to maintain them... it soon becomes 
apparent the issue is hugely bigger than just "cutting down a few trees."

Then there's the added manpower and transportation costs of distributing them 
(mostly diesel & kerosene.) So, you spend all that money producing an 
extravagant product that will be obsolete in a year and build that extra cost 
into the price of your product. Is that how you would suggest Novell/SUSE 
should lead in this industry? Is it supposed to be in the business of 
producing wasteful consumables? I think not...

In fact, now that I've pondered this sufficiently, maybe it's a good idea to 
start encouraging Novell/SUSE to build a "pay as you download" subscription 
site for the retail version and scrap shipping a physical product entirely! 
(Is that too much like Linspire?)

> There are also many people who are unable to read an online manual.

Let them print whatever they need to meet their personal requirement. The 
price of everybody else's product shouldn't be driven up just to meet the 
needs of this small segment of the market.

> I  can usually remember where something is in a printed book, plus/minus 5
> pages, after I've read it once. In 20 years, I have yet to begin to
> develop the same ability with an online manual.

That's what "bookmarks" are for. And, when bookmarks aren't available, text 
editors make great "notepads" (shiver). I keep .txt files containing notes 
parked in the same directories as all of the fixed, published documents I 
have and I've done this for many, many years. It is very effective.

Every time I find something noteworthy, or I'll be gone/busy for several days 
and want to pick up exactly where I left off, I make a note of it in the text 
file. Easy peasy, as an old girlfriend would say.

> Besides, there is just some quality about a printed SuSe manual on one's
> bookshelf, that "SuSE admin manual.pdf" doesn't quite seem to match,
> particularly if you went to a SuSE trade show and asked Andreas to
> autograph it for you.

I could see this with a first edition, or something. But somehow, I think the 
time and expense and investment made in producing hard copy books should be 
limited to those you'd expect would be worth owning decades or even centuries 
from now. At this stage of the game, with everything going digital, big, 
heavy "consumable" ("disposable"?) books are now almost offensive to me they 
are so wasteful.

Who knows? Maybe I've just worked myself up into a lather over nothing... 
maybe I should chill out, throw caution to the wind and order a couple of 
extra phone books or something. Maybe that would make me "fit in" better...

- Carl