cringley is an idiot

google history internet

or maybe I am one.
Last November Robert X Cringley writes about a google project.
He claims that Google is planning to put 5,000 opteron CPUs and 2.5 Petabytes in a 20 or 40 foot container.

Back in November the story got attention, and now it bubbles back up again in the context of the “Google PC Walmart CES” buzzword cluster.

I wondered if the “Cringleytainer” would actually be feasible:

Those pieces would barely fit in a 40 foot container. Forget about air flowing around. Maybe it’s all water cooled?

Which leads to the ultimate flaw in Cringley’s concept:
5,000 CPUs @ 90 W and 30,000 disks @ 15 W would use 0.9 Megawatt. Let’s add 0.1 Megawatts for boards and powers supplies. Of course this would assume a couple of technology breakthroughs.
Ignoring the laws of thermo dynamics we have to add the same power to cool the thing: 2 Megawatts.

Googling around I found this power source for the Cringleytainer. Guestimating optistically again it would use a gallon of diesel every minute.

Of course Mr Cringley is not an idiot. Not more or less than anybody else. I am only certain that I am one,
since I had to spend so much time with me.

What strikes me is that such a story can float around without anybody doing the basic math. Or maybe people did and got ignored. It’s much more ‘news worthy’ to toss around crazy ideas involving google.

If I should be bored in mid March then I will try to inject the urban myth of a planned Apple Google merger into the world.

billions.

history internet

Awfully big number. A Thousand Million.

six point five: people on the planet

US dollars:

one: budget for the rebranding from AT&T to at&t. Ok, they change their font twoo.

two point five: budget for the rebranding from “Intel inside” to “leap ahead”

five point seven: what yahoo.com paid for broadcast.com. Never heard of it? That’s about right.
Nothing really came out of it for Yahoo. broacast.com’s last earnings: they lost 2.7 million dollars.
they paid with stock. Overvalued you might think: sure, but yhoo is back to 80% of the levels of those days.

hundret twenty two: what all google stock is worth today.

hundret billion neurons are having trouble making sense out of this.

is it safe?

Apple internet M$

If you buy a brand new windows machine then there are ten steps to keep it safe. Well, as brand new as those tips appear to be, even if you do so, you can get your Windows PC infected simply by visiting a website.
one of the many articles disscussing the matter
If you are so unlucky and use a Windows PC then you could have been infected by clicking on that lick. Of course the link above is legit. But do you trust me? How many links do you click on?

I have written this again and again: I use no firewall, I use no virus protection, I am in the internet 16 hours a day and leave my computer on 24/7. I jump on every wifi that I can find if I need to. I visit all sorts of websites. Really everything. My cookie list reads really disgusting, that’s for sure. Various reasons, not really what you think. Point being that I behave extremely ‘dangerous’ and never had a single problem. No spyware, no virus, nothing. My computer runs what I want. No a single bit more. Always have been.

I am not particularly lucky nor smart. It’s just that I don’t run Windows.

It’s one of these things that make you shake your head if you look at it in clear daylight: You can even buy ‘virus protection software’ for OS X. People are so used to think that Computers need some extra protection that they miss the point that the whole switch will get you out of the mess that grew around Microsoft Windows.

The other day somebody told me that it was funny to watch me becoming such a Mac zealot. I think it’s more a passion for the alternative, that is less fucked up. Apple sucks in many ways: I am writing this, with a Microsoft mouse attached to my PowerBook6,7 since the trackpad goes stale till the next reboot. I have open bugs with their ‘pro’ division, and they didn’t come up with a solution. At all. But getting a new computer and having to go through ten steps to make it somewhat secure? Clearly I have an easier life. Imagine you buy a car and then have to go and get brakes and seat belts and a lock for it from somewhere else.

iMeat

daily life

the perfect Urban Myth

With real ones it does not even matter if they are true or not.

I could ramble how products are mere substitutes for game. How shopping might be like hunting.

very scary

politics

american beauty

this is all it takes

internet media

What the current Pirate Bay looks like. More than 800K registered users. One rack that makes the RIAA and MPAA cringe.

swing

economy free of any reason

Business 2005

del.icio.us and blink

internet

In 1999 a company callled blink did social bookmarks.
It’s founder reflects what went wrong

Web 1.0 vs. 2.0: Same basic concept. 12 Millon VC money vs. 1 guy and a mysql server and tags.

dear morons at Kodak

free of any reason

“If you would have been not asleep at the wheel for the last fifteen years, then you might have gotten ‘digital’ and would be able to stay in business without ridicolous and pathetic marketing attempts.”

Thinking about it for seven more seconds, I can not believe that this real. Somebody must have ironed on some logo’s on some panties for whatever reason. It certainly is a stupid idea.

misc links

misc

things on a poster via veer

one blogger dreams

another blogger dreams


Fast Company about the future of Hollywood

worth the click for the first quote alone. I didn’t know that one, but I like it. Of course.