VCom Blog

Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows on my PC, I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows CD.

Too my astonishment and distress he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned it on. I was upset because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: ‘Do not worry, it is unharmed.’ After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: ‘Take a close look at it.’ To my surprise the CD was quite cold and it seemed to have become thicker and heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, in lines finer than anything I have ever seen before.

The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

4F6E65204F5320746F2072756C65207468656D20616C6C2C204F6E65204F5320746F
2066696E64207468656D2C0D0A4F6E65204F5320746F206272696E67207468656D20
616C6C20616E6420696E20746865206461726B6E6573732062696E64207468656D

‘I cannot read the fiery letters,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said, ‘but I can. The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:’

One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

WTF? Yeah, well that was my response to the person who told me about the existence of ecology on the internet. As far as I know the internet is one of the most energy-insufficient things there is; millions of servers; websites that run on them and hardly ever have a single visitor? Ok, there are a few websites that have quite a few visitors; but what to think of those pages on the net that hardly anyone ever visits? They all run on servers, and most of them are quite energy insufficient…

So Ecology on the internet? What about it?

It exists. If you have a homepage that is visited regularly and you have a black background (not gray or dark blue, but plain black) you could be the proud owner of a energy-saving site already… The idea is based on the fact that every pixel on the screen needs to be lit in order to produce white light and thus use up a lot of energy. The other way around is true as well: a black website doesn’t need a pixel being lit up in order to render the background and thus saving energy. Strange? Not quite, in fact if Google (you know, the famous search-engine) would use a black background, it’s estimated that worldwide they could save up to 15kW of power each day, which is significant…

I’m not saying google is to blaim because you can easily make an HTML page with a black google search-bar in it (will try and do that on this stie as well); but there already is a site for eco-nerds available if they want to go for it right away: Blackle. It’s using the Google search-engine, but with a twist: searchbar and resultpages are all black and gray…

I don’t feel a need to abandon my google page so all of a sudden, but hey, if someone is inspired; feel free

Ik mag in mijn vrije tijd erg graag vertoeven in een ouderwetse omgeving op het Internet: De Digitale Metro.

Hoewel, ouderwets? Ook de Metro gaat met zijn tijd mee; XMLRPC en PHP zijn ook in de uit 1991 stammende MUD/MOO geintroduceerd.

kom gerust eens kijken, en mocht het niet lukken, gebruik dan een online-client (telnet kan en mag ook).

Mijn naam hier is IJsbeer, en ik geef je graag een rondleiding als je me kan vinden