This little bit comes to the topic: "Apple's Huge New Data Center In North Carolina Created Only 50 Jobs" http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-28/news/30446402_1_apple-iphone-apps-facebook-and-other-companies
I liked that talk a lot, and I also hope, that when machines will do a lot of work instead of people, we'll be able to focus on other work to be done. And there's a lot, just as the talk mentioned (hunger, etc). But the jobs what robots will do will be first those jobs which doesn't require education. I have a fear that all of the people without education won't be able to fulfill a "higher level" job! (Not even mentioning that machines will be able to do even very complex jobs thanks to advances in AI). This connects, but off-topic. But I'm very curious about your opinion, my wife showed this article to me yesterday: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www I tried to describe it to her that despite of all of the irregularities (like the lack of permit for the diesel generator of the cited Amazon datacenter) datacenters to my knowledge consolidate processing power usage. So without datacenters -> if every company would have their own tiny server room, it'd be way more inefficient in the end. For example the datacenter can have one huge very efficient AC as opposed to a small server room's. (Not to even mentioning that some companies like Amazon and Microsoft are experimenting with AC-less designs.) I also don't understand where those data come from about inefficiency in the article. Because the datacenter has to pay the electricity bill, in theory it's interest to be as efficient as possible. The last 5-10-15 year's hardware have incorporated power saving technologies in the CPU and chipset level, so you don't even need to configure anything, and if the machine is not loaded, it simply won't consume as much energy (CPU and memory will go to a lower power state automatically), ideally it'll sleep. But you can even write management software to control racks, I'm sure modern datacenters have that. My wife argues that the people cited in the article probably (?) creditable and from all around this industry, but the whole big picture drawn by the article is weird for me. They talk about some underlying deep secret. What is that? Surely datacenters can occupy a complete line of a powerplant, but they are the most efficient alternatives because of consolidation. As far as I know. Correct me if I'm wrong. I know that every google search has a carbon footprint. If the article finds that the consumed power is a lot (indeed), then it's not the fault of the datacenters, but it's the hunger and the demand for processing power from _us_, people. Surely the efficiency of both the hardware and the software can be increased, and it'll be done actually, because the electricity bill is there, the power is not for free, and it should be spared. So I feel safe that efficiency will be even higher. The article upset me a little, because I couldn't argue well being a "john Doe" on the datacenter field as opposed to "big names" (???) in the article. But I have my gut feelings. Also, it's a little funny about the diesel generator: I agree that environmental standards should be obeyed, but when the Amazon's datacenter went down in Virginia, then Instagram and other services went down and people were pointing with finger at the cloud as a technology. Well, if we want 24/7 reliability, then a diesel generator is needed. Actually more of them (more levels of protection!) for a huge datacenter. Maybe the datacenters surveyed by the article (producing whopping low efficiency) are old datacenters? But at the same time they talk about Amazon, Yahoo, etc. I have a feeling that the journalist wanted a blasting article. Is it only exaggeration? Or it's totally misleading? So please hit me with your opinion. I'm happy to see that Paul Weiss is here too, he also must have experiences with! Csaba ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Boniol [[email protected]] Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 10:59 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [nlug] Interesting video On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 11:45 AM, Jack Coats <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMF-Z74C1QE A good TED video on Tech. I can see his points, and some of the graphs are intriguing, but I am not sure I come to the same conclusions. Actually, I am not sure what conclusions I really see. In any case, it is a good data point to encourage more discussion. When I was just starting in 'puters, there was a lot of folks afraid of the computer takeover. Well it hasn't happened in my career, but with the rate of acceleration, it is still a possibility. Watch it and give us your synopsis. ><> ... Jack Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23 "You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." — Admiral Grace Hopper, USN "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" - Henry J. Tillman "Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." - Albert Einstein I found it interesting. I don't think it has changed my outlook in any way. Other than highlighting that online translation services are helping to put human translators out of work as they continue to improve, and that study that showed technology helped remote villages reduce waste, he didn't really point out anything new. Where all of this leads us, I have no idea. Paul Boniol -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en
