Photo: Ethan Pines/The New York Times
Quick: what industry uses 30 billion watts of energy (the equivalent of the output of about 30 nuclear power plants), wastes 90% of that and pollutes the environment by belching diesel exhaust, all while cloaked in near total secrecy?
You're using it, actually. Behold the data centers that power the Internet:
“It’s staggering for most people, even people in the industry, to understand the numbers, the sheer size of these systems,” said Peter Gross, who helped design hundreds of data centers. “A single data center can take more power than a medium-size town.”
Energy efficiency varies widely from company to company. But at the request of The Times, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company analyzed energy use by data centers and found that, on average, they were using only 6 percent to 12 percent of the electricity powering their servers to perform computations. The rest was essentially used to keep servers idling and ready in case of a surge in activity that could slow or crash their operations.
A server is a sort of bulked-up desktop computer, minus a screen and keyboard, that contains chips to process data. The study sampled about 20,000 servers in about 70 large data centers spanning the commercial gamut: drug companies, military contractors, banks, media companies and government agencies.
“This is an industry dirty secret, and no one wants to be the first to say mea culpa,” said a senior industry executive who asked not to be identified to protect his company’s reputation. “If we were a manufacturing industry, we’d be out of business straightaway.”
James Glanz of The New York Times has the story: Link
Comments (6)
Until people get a little bit of learning about about the scientific definition of Theory, as in way more than fact, we should call it something else.
I'm tired of accepting others' opinions on this matter when we have fact and I'm just being nice to protect their feelings. I'm not helping anyone doing that, just insulting their intelligence.
A really good scientific theory is subjected to these kinds of criticisms. Otherwise you end up just another type of zealot like Skipweasel. Or you, for that matter. It's real because it must be real? That sounds very familiar.
It is odd how much controversy surrounds such a neat, well supported theory. You don't find so many people arguing germ theory with the same passion, or pointing out vehemently that the standard model is 'just a theory'. Evolution ranks on the same scale as far as theories go, yet to support it brings on accusations of dogma and zealotry.
Athon
Oh, and please don't feed gambit the troll.
It is sad, but until more faith leaders come to understand that evolution does not disprove their religion, we will continue to have this disconnect. I think many religious organizations are moving in the right direction, but we still have some major stumbling blocks.
Evolution is real, and it happens.
Evolution takes a very long time - and it needs pressures to make it happen - without a good reason to select one model over another there will be very little change over millions of years. Crocodiles, for example, are a damned good fit to their niche - so they haven't changed.
Early humans were a less good fit - we needed to walk more upright to conserve energy (waddling like a chimp is inefficient, walking on two legs is very efficient), we needed larger brains (ours are measureably larger than proto-human's) and so on.
Were you expecting Aunty Flo to suddenly grow longer arms so she didn't keep asking you to get things off the top shelf? IF, given a very large number of generations an Aunty Flo had a better chance of survival with longer arms than without then yes, all other things being equal, longer arms might develop. One of the issues is that all other things /aren't/ equal - there are so many competing pressures that change is generaly slow and very hard to predict.
We didn't. We were never monkeys, we did not evolve from monkeys, the theory of evolution does not say we evolved from monkeys, and it would be plainly absurd to believe we did. Unfortunately, too many creationists prefer to lie to you (in direct violation of a certain Commandment, I believe) and tell you this is what evolution says in order to "debunk" it. This lie is often followed up with the question "Then why are there still monkeys?" It's like saying that Christianity can't be true because Christianity says that the earth is flat and we know that's obviously wrong. (Christianity does not say that, of course, which is exactly the point. It would be extremely disingenuous, or at least ignorant, to make such an argument.)
Evolution says that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor, which was neither human nor ape. It's essential to understand that in order not to sound foolish. Next time the argument comes up, you'll be better prepared to state your case without being dismissed as one who knows nothing about what he's arguing against.
*so confused*
I was brought up in a Christian home, where we learned about dinosaurs. My parents didn't try to tell me that dinosaurs all lived during the time of Moses, and they didn't tell me that I had to accept the story of creation as 100% fact. I think if more Christians were raised this way, they wouldn't have such a conflict with the science of evolution, and they wouldn't advance preposterous hypotheses to make the facts fit their conceptions.