Okay... Suppose it costs an extra $10 for the battery, smart circuitry to run it, design costs, etc etc. Suppose disabling the transformer for standby saves you 2W. Suppose it's on standby year-round. That's 8,760 hours, or 17.52 kWh. Say 8 cents per kWh, you're now saving $1.40 per year. It would take over seven years for you to make up the initial cost.

And say there are 100 million machines with your reduced power consumption. How many power stations does that save, with all the polution not being belched into the air?

Now lets say we look at other devices and repeat the exercise. Oh look, poisonous emissions are going down, respitory health proplems are down, medical bills are down, medical insurance (for those countries with retarted health care like ours) are down (nah, maybe not this one).

Meanwhile we're filling the landfills and oceans with dinky little transformer-saving batteries.

You will save far more energy by investing in some compact flourescent light bulbs.

...servers run 24x365.25 no need for ACPI here.
Save power somwhere else...

...we have a serious energy crisis *now*. All it took was one hurricane to fubar the energy industry and cause shortages. Energy doesn't exist in a vacuum, take it away at one point, and other areas are put to the task of taking up the slack, which still leaves you short. Check the headlines out, we might be a month or two away from a significant new middle eastern war, one that might shut down a lot of the oil being produced and shipped around the world. This isn't 50 or a hundred years in the future, this is today, now. Every summer, we are under the threat of massive blackouts or "rolling" blackouts or brownouts from demand that is barely met with the existing infrastructure. And what about the cost, indirect? Look at the medical problems associated with just living heavily urban and soaking in a toxic soup 24/7. Look at the political problems having to deal with dead dino doo from the ground in weird areas of the world. Look at the bogus "leaders" we have and their ties to the greed and stupidity merchants.

The good news is, the individual CAN do something about it, at least for your own needs. It's doable TODAY if you have a mind to it and want to safeguard your own future. If you wait for government, "the market" and insane geopolitics to fix things, well, don't be surprised if you become an energy victim. If anyone is waiting for the "hydrogen economy" or even the "well, we'll just build more nukes" to fix things, you STILL are going to be waiting and probably affected negatively when the next crisis hits. and just 'building more nukes" won't replace and add on to all the new transmission lines that would need to be built, and it doesn't address transportation. We can't get the car companies to even come up with a normal cheap all electric commuter car, something highly doable now, so we are supposed to trust them to come up with an affordable fuel cell hydrogen car, in the hundreds of millions needed, PLUS replace all the normal liquid fuel gas stations and delivery infrastructure with hydrogen stations? And it is allegedly going to be cheap??? and soon??? I don't think so...

Me, not waiting, I got the message loud and clear,so I have taken proactive steps to secure at least some of my energy needs, without having to rely on forces outside my control. You (anyone you, generally speaking) can complain, theorize, or act to make things better. I choose "act". I re arranged my priorities. I'm not waiting for an invite, I clearly remember the OPEC embargo, I don't need a second reminder of how things can go from "affordable and normal" to "this really sucks and man is it expensive and I hope I can get ANY tomorrow". My first is securing a minimal supply of electricity, home produced, this is done. The next one is vehicle fuel. I'm not waiting for the miracle hydrogen fuel cell million dollar car, that's way off in the future still and you'll still be tied to THEIR profit and politics centered infrastructure whenever it arrives. No thanks, I've seen how they fool around, waste time, waste money and want me to make them rich while they subvert the political process and help foment wars. The big energy cartels have gotten enough of my money over the years, and despite all the promises, it looks little better now than it did in the 70's, in fact it has gotten worse waiting for those gents to get off their ass and actually do anything besides talk about it and throw out a gee whizz prototype of something once in awhile.

The standby circuitry in most devices could probably run for days on the charge in a $1.50 capacitor.

I'm an electrical engineer, and no, it can't. That's why there is a transformer. The real solution would be to get off your lazy ass and hit the power switch when you are done watching instead of turning the TV off with the remote. The other solution is to put in a very high-efficiency switching power supply, but those are very expensive.

There is a good reason why Java never became particularly popular, and this is it. It has an absolutely idiotic security model, in that it prohibits you from doing "dangerous" or "nonportable" things. Where "dangerous" or "nonportable" actually means "useful".

With the appropriate privileges, Perl (or any other native application) can send any type of packets, layer 2 or above (possibly even layer 1). A programming language is NOT the place to impose security constraints. That's what the operating system is for.

Since perl scripts running on a Linux machine have access to the commandline, yes, they can send raw ethernet packages, given they run with the correct privileges and availability of correct tools. No native capability in perl for doing this is required at all. When running natively compiled JAVA on the same platform, and giving it access to the commandline, you'd have the exact same situation.

Fusion is up in the air at the moment, nuclear will work if you ever get round the environmentalists,

Yeah, because those damn environmentalists wield so much power and have so much money, why they're practically running the US government!

and wind and tidal power can provide about 5%.

That's nonsense. Slashdot ran an article on this just recently. Global wind power in class 3 areas alone could generate 72 terawatts which is 60 times global consumption [physorg.com]. Class 3 wind turbines are financially comparable to brown coal. North America has the greatest number of class 3 areas in the world.

But let's not stop at wind power. A home with solar panels for hot water (not the expensive, dirty and inefficient photovoltaic) saves 50% on heating costs. The panels pay for themselves in 5 years and have a 25 year lifetime. They are maintenance free (they are effectively just black plastic pipes behind glass sheets) and easy to repair when damaged (simple plumbing that a home handyman could do).

But let's not stop at solar and wind power. Changing your light bulbs from incandescent to energy efficient flouros will save 75% on lighting costs. Modern flouros are compact, come in a variety of shapes, only need to be changed once every 5-10 years, degrade slowly rather than blowing suddenly at inconvenient times, and have equivalent candela output to a 75W incandescent.

But let's not stop at solar power and wind power and energy efficiency. Your SUV gets 10MPG yet a comfortable Subaru Legacy has equivalent seating and storage but gets 33MPG. Your average driver will save between $750 and $1250 per year while simultaneously slashing their automobile oil consumption by two thirds. That's financially sensible and enviromentally friendlier.

The solutions are here right now. You need to stop waiting for the magic silver bullet like fusion, or blaming "environmentalists" for preventing fission, or wondering why you're spending $2000+ per year on fuel for your gargantuan SUV, and simply start using the technology that is here right now and is economical right now and is practical right now. You can make the difference right now.