Well said. It's a system that thrives on ignorance and laziness of the public. The public being consumers, but also the voting public. Ultimately, people need to be responsible for themselves, but US society has reached a point where they don't want that responsibility. Instead, they get subjected to unnecessary tests (because their plan allowed them and the doc wanted a few more $$), don't get the proper tests they need, pay way too much for drugs, as you point out, and don't do any of the things necessary to avoid going to the doctor in the first place. People need to police their medical providers, pharmacy, and elected officials. Most people claim they don't have time, yet it seems the TV, movies, and similar are being consumed in record amounts. As someone pointed out, getting enough information to question a prescription, test, or procedure requires only a few minutes with Google. I'm not advocating self-medical treatment via the Internet, but I am advocating spending 5 minutes to better understand and then question the "experts" that just made decisions about your care. I use a high deductible plan for many reasons, one of which is any doctor worth a damn in NYC will not take insurance. I pay over $800 for a physical rather than a small copay, but it's with pre-tax dollars from an HSA and my doctor gives me a thorough physical and then spends 20-30 minutes talking through everything with me afterwards and conducts a follow-up call on any outstanding issues. Also, he doesn't push me onto whatever drug has been pimped to him by the pharmaceutical companies. That's not a solution for everyone, but it's different than the factory approach and ignorant acceptance of what's handed out by the system.
You and other thoughtful people might see that, but how does his application get to your desk if it's screened by various systems and less thoughtful humans?
One of the mistakes people make is not getting a copy of the various employment agreements prior to accepting a role. They find themselves with objectionable terms only after they have resigned from their old job and not too many options since, as you put it, people "need money coming in".
You hit on the key with "Maybe a couple of numbers under it showing # files done out of # total files". I understand making a predictable progress bar is very difficult. What most people struggle with is knowing whether it's working or not. Using the file example, when downloading a disproportionately large file may stall the progress bar, but providing some indication that it is still receiving data provides the user with enough information to assume that the process is still working and not locked up.
There are several products on the market that are employed by the Exchanges and their large customers to track all of this. This is a marketing paper for what appears to be an interesting product. Existing vendors already capture, log, analyze (in realtime), traffic across multiple probes and provide real-time alerting along with monitoring, measurement, etc. These products are all leading edge and are changing rapidly. They've solved many problems with proprietary schemes of various sorts. Not the least of which was time synchronization at the nanosecond level.
For very simple public information, just look at latencystats.com. Keep in mind, more detailed info and analysis is going on behind the scenes.
While I can't speak to any specific exchange directly, I can say that their designs are fairly similar and fairly simple. Fast links provide low serialization delay (the time required to put bits on the wire). A 512 byte packet requires 4.256 microsec at 1 Gbps and.4256 microsecond at 10 Gbps (40 or 100 Gbps are not linear jumps) Fast switches forward and sometimes filter traffic. the faster equipment requires between.7 and 6 microseconds to begin spitting out packets. think about systems that start forwarding traffic prior to the entire packet being received. These are Ethernet values. Infiniband switch can be 2+ times faster. The network design is very simple. Not your traditional vendor-derived three tier architectures, but 1, 1.5, or 2 tier architectures. The largest variations are in the handling on security and market data distribution. Firewalls are slow and typically deprecated. Market data is a religious decision marred by questionable technology implementations Utilization is typically below 1% for any reasonable measurement period. Bursts may push an interface to line rate fractions of a second. Keep in mind that 10 GigE can carry 14.8 Mpps - so these bursts stress switch buffers and the receiving systems. The total network latency within an exchange's network is well below 100 microseconds with some offering delays below 50 microseconds and a 1 or 2 that are below 30 microseconds. The largest contributor to delay is, and will be for some time, the matching engines and other hosts that process the trades.
I think the point is that Willie Mays and Joe DiMaggio would both get the job done, but do it in different ways. Willie Mays would make the catches while running, diving, over-his-head, etc. All of which looked amazing and made the highlight reels. DiMaggio, did a better job of preparing and positioned himself better so that when catching a similar hit, he would be in position to catch the ball standing up. Both were great athletes, but DiMaggio made the job look routine. Even though he was equally capable of making the fantastic plays, his approach was more safe because he didn't have to make them so often. Planning and design vs. fire fighting.
the cost of running a server is $3,000-$6,000 / year. The wide variation is due to differing data center resiliency profiles and utility costs (power, water). That figure includes data center costs (space, power, cooling, utility, etc.) and excludes server operations staff, depreciation of hardware, support systems, backup systems, network, etc.
Firms that understand this and bill back the business units appropriately have markedly different environments.
Short answer: Transmission speed impacts latency when you consider how long it takes to drop all the bits (one at a time) onto the wire. This has not typically been a concern with LANs, but as latency gets measure in 10's of microseconds, it is a very real concern.
Long answer: Network speed is a bottleneck in that it impacts latency through serialization delay (the time it takes to drop the bits onto the wire). This sounds trivial when were talking about Gigabit, 10 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit speeds, but the Exchanges are striving to meet network and trading latencies measured in microseconds. You can do the math yourself to see how long it takes to drop 512 bytes (1 bit after another) onto a wire. If you're anal you can add the appropriate overhead for framing, headers, etc. Switching latencies also vary significantly and have a tremendous impact on vendor/product selection. This also drives network architecture as eliminating as many switching hops as possible is key maintaining latency budgets. Distance from the exchanges is important, but not as important as switching latency and serialization delay. You can do the math to figure out how much time it takes bits traveling at roughly 2/3 the speed of light to reach their destination. Most trading firms pay large premiums to either collocate at the exchanges or very, very close to them. So-called program trading is performed by autonomous server farms operating in these spaces.
I can go on, but refer back to the short answer. Network speed is important.
This worked really well for the banking industry...
Also, perhaps you're too young to remember how bad the taxi experience used to be before tighter regulations were developed AND enforced. Despite the comments from people that don't live or work in NYC, cabs here are infinitely cleaner, better kept, and safer than cabs in other cities. NYC cabs are limited to 3 years of operation. Cab companies in other cities (Philly, Chicago, etc.) buy these 3 years olds and proceed to drive them into the ground. If you look closely you can usually see a spot or two of NYC yellow where the new paint has chipped off. NYC cabs have mandatory A/C for the passenger section and there's a simple number to call if you're having problems with the cab (311). There is a fixed rate from the JFK to Manhattan. All of this, including the rider's "bill of rights" is displayed clearly inside the cab. As is the driver's license number in case you want to report an issue. If you're willing to give that up, so that you can save a few dollars and put up with low quality experience that results from cost savings and weak enforcement - please do so in whatever second tier city you inhabit. Finally, NYC cabs are already significantly cheaper than cabs in any other city.
Agreed. I had issues w/Netflix and found them ALL related to Comcast. Adding a ~7 Mbps connection from AT&T solved all of my Netflix issues. Not surprisingly, Comcast would also screw up my T-Mobile UMA (IP based) cell phones and my non-Comcast IP phones at the same time.
I just started using this Netflix online with Comcast as my ISP. Things are cool for a while, but then Netflix informs me that there's an issue with my connection and buffers traffic for 10 to 20 minutes. I just installed router monitoring and it looks like they throttle me from 1-3 Mbps down to 300 kbps. More testing required, but it appears that Comcast is screwing with my traffic. I only installed the monitoring after I found that my T-Mobile UMA (WiFi then Internet) calls would get disconnected and my VoIP phone (connected to a non-Comcast VoIP service) had issues as well. What could ever go wrong with allowing the cable and phone companies monopolies?
For a few years I ran my little side business using Yahoo's personal address service. It may have changed, but at the time it was $35/year. However, if you procure and maintain your domain through another entity it is only $10/year. You get Yahoo's unlimited storage and the web/POP3 (not sure about IMAP). You gain the benefit of Yahoo's reasonably good spam filtering, excellent (and free) integration with Blackberrys (if you need/want it), and you can also assign up to 4 other accounts. I believe it's targeted at individuals who want to get a domain with their own name, but it was very inexpensive and very effective for my mini-business.
There are many, many factors in selecting locations for data centers. In the end, you need to compromise on some things and tax incentives certainly influence the decision.
The online service oriented data centers tend to be "lights out" in that they'll run for an extended period of time without humans coming in and screwing things up. While it's doubtful that any of these data centers are in a 100 year flood plane, the "lights out" functionality means they need not worry as much about their employees being impacted by a flood. Just keep the power and data circuits flowing and the corporate overlords still get paid. Automation of the mechanical and electrical systems is progessing (at a turtle's pace compared to IT, but it's still moving) so much of the facility side can be operated remotely as well.
Further, many of these types of setups are employing sealed shipping containers (e.g. Sun's MD-20, HP's POD, Rackable System's whatever they call it, etc.) inside the buildings. The old raised floor and controlled rooms are being replaced by concrete slabs, containers, and shipping cranes. They don't even open the containers unless more than 10 or 20% of the systems inside have failed. Again, a highly controlled and protected environment with little human interference.
All that being said, flood plane is typically in the top considerations. Others include: -power cost (and cost stability) -availability of 69 or 138 kV feeds -distance from flight paths -proximity to transportation -distance for rail lines that carry chemicals or other bad things -access to staff and service for IT kit and mechanical/electrical systems -latency requirements (not as much of a factor for most web services) -access to and diversity of telecom (washington area mid west on this one) -land and construction costs (construction much greater than land) -zoning restrictions and flexibility for land and telecom delivery -average hourly temperature and humidity (both impact the ability to gain "free" cooling and you can find studies showing that you get more free cooling in AZ than you do in IL) -proximity to executive's homes/summer homes/favoriate vacation areas -etc., etc.
In addition to what the poster replied, note that soy products in Japan are not the same as what's on the shelves in America. ToFu is made differently in Japan and generally "safe". In the US, most ToFu's are typically not fermented hence tempeh becomes the only option in that area. However I digress, most soy products in America are processed foods, chips, soy proteins mangled into some form of simulated meat, soy milk, etc. These are actually quite detrimental to humans yet they are advertised with "soy protein" and isoflavones. To get more detail, you can search the net. There's plenty out there, but you can also pick up a good book on macrobiotics. The Kushi's http://www.kushiinstitute.org/ published some great books on this. In general, macrobiotics recommends a wide variety of vegetables, soaking/fermenting beans and grains, and cooking almost everything.
"Now, I don't see how being a media company leads one to compete with a US municipality. Maybe they meant "New York [Times|Post] and Los Angeles [Times]"
perhaps they are referring to the fact that NYC and LA are the centers of the advertising and media industries.
Perhaps the concern is not about total market share, but limited growth. Going from 50-90% market share = growth = happy stock holders. At 90+ market share, you need to grow revenue by increasing price/unit or by expanding to new product areas (e.g. buy games companies, sharepoint, etc.). Companies are valued based on expectations of future revenue growth. If you already own the O/S, office suite markets and have respectable shares of the messaging and gaming markets, where else do you find revenue growth. Before you answer that, pretend you're a large company that doesn't innovate well. Also, note, the Vista ultimate/supreme/whatever costs more than XP pro.
I did the same and for the same reasons. Not sure how this practice justified the poster calling them slimey. I've been relatively happy with AVG. Perhaps, someone could elaborate on how they are slimey. This appears to be an attempt to protect people.
This is 9+ year old technology that he continually repackages. Caspian Networks was founded in 1999 based on this very concept. It failed as a large router, then it failed as a traffic management platform, and now it's rearing it ugly head again. I would say the "third time's a charm", but I've lost track of actually how many iterations we've seen over the last 9 years.
I fly every week, sometimes multiple trips per week and I mostly agree with you.
However... 1. Flight delays are horrendous 2. Charging for checked baggage makes the already abused carry-on baggage situation worse 3. Lack of coordination and insufficient staff at the gates make boarding disorganized 4. Airlines are always slow to update flight times. http://www.fly.faa.gov/flyfaa/usmap.jsp gives you a good idea of what may happen to you, but then you need to find out whether your plane is coming from (or through) a troubled airport. 5. Congestion at LGA, ORD, EWR, JFK and I'm sure many others is constant and should be dealt with. 6. Policies that encourage planes to "push back" only to have you wait for an hour+ on the tarmac are detrimental.
Below about 20% RH, you get Electrostatic Discharge (ESD). The sparks you can see aren't the ones that kill the equipment, it's the ones that occur inside the equipment without human intervention that kill it.
As the low-humidity cool air you've blown in heats up, its relative humidity drops even lower. You may find the humidifying the volume of air present in a 100,000-200,000 square foot data center with a 4 foot raised floor, a 12-15 foot ceiling, and a 4 foot ceiling plenum a little challenging. Especially if you're considering "changing" that air by continually bringing in new air from the outside.
You may also find that maintaining traditional chilled water systems from temperate climates becomes expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and maintenance intensive when the outside temperature is significantly below freezing.
The heat wheel approach addresses the humidity and contaminant concerns by keeping the data center space and air isolated from the outside air. they are used in other industries, but are new to data centers, so the cautious folks with big data centers are leary.
While it may appear that you don't have to work hard to cool the data centers, you will have to work hard to humidify them if you do not want your equipment to die. This is a non-trivial cost and is the reason the "free cooling" (taking in outside air to cool a data center) is often not free. One answer may be heat wheels, but they are fairly new and unproven in the data center space. Take a look at http://www.kyotocooling.com/
Roberts has been harping on the same thing since 2000, probably earlier. Guess why he has built several failed companies around the concept. It seems that Slashdot forgets this every few months and posts another one of his rants.
Slashdot Mirror
Well said. It's a system that thrives on ignorance and laziness of the public. The public being consumers, but also the voting public. Ultimately, people need to be responsible for themselves, but US society has reached a point where they don't want that responsibility. Instead, they get subjected to unnecessary tests (because their plan allowed them and the doc wanted a few more $$), don't get the proper tests they need, pay way too much for drugs, as you point out, and don't do any of the things necessary to avoid going to the doctor in the first place. People need to police their medical providers, pharmacy, and elected officials. Most people claim they don't have time, yet it seems the TV, movies, and similar are being consumed in record amounts. As someone pointed out, getting enough information to question a prescription, test, or procedure requires only a few minutes with Google. I'm not advocating self-medical treatment via the Internet, but I am advocating spending 5 minutes to better understand and then question the "experts" that just made decisions about your care. I use a high deductible plan for many reasons, one of which is any doctor worth a damn in NYC will not take insurance. I pay over $800 for a physical rather than a small copay, but it's with pre-tax dollars from an HSA and my doctor gives me a thorough physical and then spends 20-30 minutes talking through everything with me afterwards and conducts a follow-up call on any outstanding issues. Also, he doesn't push me onto whatever drug has been pimped to him by the pharmaceutical companies. That's not a solution for everyone, but it's different than the factory approach and ignorant acceptance of what's handed out by the system.
You and other thoughtful people might see that, but how does his application get to your desk if it's screened by various systems and less thoughtful humans?
One of the mistakes people make is not getting a copy of the various employment agreements prior to accepting a role. They find themselves with objectionable terms only after they have resigned from their old job and not too many options since, as you put it, people "need money coming in".
You hit on the key with "Maybe a couple of numbers under it showing # files done out of # total files". I understand making a predictable progress bar is very difficult. What most people struggle with is knowing whether it's working or not. Using the file example, when downloading a disproportionately large file may stall the progress bar, but providing some indication that it is still receiving data provides the user with enough information to assume that the process is still working and not locked up.
Archie Bunker's solution was to hand everybody a gun as they boarded the plane so that if a terrorist tried something, they would be outgunned.
There are several products on the market that are employed by the Exchanges and their large customers to track all of this.
This is a marketing paper for what appears to be an interesting product.
Existing vendors already capture, log, analyze (in realtime), traffic across multiple probes and provide real-time alerting along with monitoring, measurement, etc. These products are all leading edge and are changing rapidly. They've solved many problems with proprietary schemes of various sorts. Not the least of which was time synchronization at the nanosecond level.
For very simple public information, just look at latencystats.com. Keep in mind, more detailed info and analysis is going on behind the scenes.
While I can't speak to any specific exchange directly, I can say that their designs are fairly similar and fairly simple. .4256 microsecond at 10 Gbps (40 or 100 Gbps are not linear jumps) .7 and 6 microseconds to begin spitting out packets. think about systems that start forwarding traffic prior to the entire packet being received. These are Ethernet values. Infiniband switch can be 2+ times faster.
Fast links provide low serialization delay (the time required to put bits on the wire). A 512 byte packet requires 4.256 microsec at 1 Gbps and
Fast switches forward and sometimes filter traffic. the faster equipment requires between
The network design is very simple. Not your traditional vendor-derived three tier architectures, but 1, 1.5, or 2 tier architectures. The largest variations are in the handling on security and market data distribution. Firewalls are slow and typically deprecated. Market data is a religious decision marred by questionable technology implementations
Utilization is typically below 1% for any reasonable measurement period. Bursts may push an interface to line rate fractions of a second. Keep in mind that 10 GigE can carry 14.8 Mpps - so these bursts stress switch buffers and the receiving systems.
The total network latency within an exchange's network is well below 100 microseconds with some offering delays below 50 microseconds and a 1 or 2 that are below 30 microseconds.
The largest contributor to delay is, and will be for some time, the matching engines and other hosts that process the trades.
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/c/capcave.htm
I think the point is that Willie Mays and Joe DiMaggio would both get the job done, but do it in different ways. Willie Mays would make the catches while running, diving, over-his-head, etc. All of which looked amazing and made the highlight reels. DiMaggio, did a better job of preparing and positioned himself better so that when catching a similar hit, he would be in position to catch the ball standing up. Both were great athletes, but DiMaggio made the job look routine. Even though he was equally capable of making the fantastic plays, his approach was more safe because he didn't have to make them so often. Planning and design vs. fire fighting.
Using real world data from real environments...
the cost of running a server is $3,000-$6,000 / year. The wide variation is due to differing data center resiliency profiles and utility costs (power, water).
That figure includes data center costs (space, power, cooling, utility, etc.) and excludes server operations staff, depreciation of hardware, support systems, backup systems, network, etc.
Firms that understand this and bill back the business units appropriately have markedly different environments.
Short answer: Transmission speed impacts latency when you consider how long it takes to drop all the bits (one at a time) onto the wire. This has not typically been a concern with LANs, but as latency gets measure in 10's of microseconds, it is a very real concern.
Long answer:
Network speed is a bottleneck in that it impacts latency through serialization delay (the time it takes to drop the bits onto the wire). This sounds trivial when were talking about Gigabit, 10 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit speeds, but the Exchanges are striving to meet network and trading latencies measured in microseconds. You can do the math yourself to see how long it takes to drop 512 bytes (1 bit after another) onto a wire. If you're anal you can add the appropriate overhead for framing, headers, etc.
Switching latencies also vary significantly and have a tremendous impact on vendor/product selection. This also drives network architecture as eliminating as many switching hops as possible is key maintaining latency budgets.
Distance from the exchanges is important, but not as important as switching latency and serialization delay. You can do the math to figure out how much time it takes bits traveling at roughly 2/3 the speed of light to reach their destination. Most trading firms pay large premiums to either collocate at the exchanges or very, very close to them. So-called program trading is performed by autonomous server farms operating in these spaces.
I can go on, but refer back to the short answer. Network speed is important.
This worked really well for the banking industry...
Also, perhaps you're too young to remember how bad the taxi experience used to be before tighter regulations were developed AND enforced.
Despite the comments from people that don't live or work in NYC, cabs here are infinitely cleaner, better kept, and safer than cabs in other cities. NYC cabs are limited to 3 years of operation. Cab companies in other cities (Philly, Chicago, etc.) buy these 3 years olds and proceed to drive them into the ground. If you look closely you can usually see a spot or two of NYC yellow where the new paint has chipped off. NYC cabs have mandatory A/C for the passenger section and there's a simple number to call if you're having problems with the cab (311). There is a fixed rate from the JFK to Manhattan. All of this, including the rider's "bill of rights" is displayed clearly inside the cab. As is the driver's license number in case you want to report an issue.
If you're willing to give that up, so that you can save a few dollars and put up with low quality experience that results from cost savings and weak enforcement - please do so in whatever second tier city you inhabit. Finally, NYC cabs are already significantly cheaper than cabs in any other city.
Agreed.
I had issues w/Netflix and found them ALL related to Comcast. Adding a ~7 Mbps connection from AT&T solved all of my Netflix issues. Not surprisingly, Comcast would also screw up my T-Mobile UMA (IP based) cell phones and my non-Comcast IP phones at the same time.
I just started using this Netflix online with Comcast as my ISP. Things are cool for a while, but then Netflix informs me that there's an issue with my connection and buffers traffic for 10 to 20 minutes. I just installed router monitoring and it looks like they throttle me from 1-3 Mbps down to 300 kbps. More testing required, but it appears that Comcast is screwing with my traffic. I only installed the monitoring after I found that my T-Mobile UMA (WiFi then Internet) calls would get disconnected and my VoIP phone (connected to a non-Comcast VoIP service) had issues as well. What could ever go wrong with allowing the cable and phone companies monopolies?
For a few years I ran my little side business using Yahoo's personal address service. It may have changed, but at the time it was $35/year. However, if you procure and maintain your domain through another entity it is only $10/year. You get Yahoo's unlimited storage and the web/POP3 (not sure about IMAP). You gain the benefit of Yahoo's reasonably good spam filtering, excellent (and free) integration with Blackberrys (if you need/want it), and you can also assign up to 4 other accounts. I believe it's targeted at individuals who want to get a domain with their own name, but it was very inexpensive and very effective for my mini-business.
There are many, many factors in selecting locations for data centers. In the end, you need to compromise on some things and tax incentives certainly influence the decision.
The online service oriented data centers tend to be "lights out" in that they'll run for an extended period of time without humans coming in and screwing things up. While it's doubtful that any of these data centers are in a 100 year flood plane, the "lights out" functionality means they need not worry as much about their employees being impacted by a flood. Just keep the power and data circuits flowing and the corporate overlords still get paid. Automation of the mechanical and electrical systems is progessing (at a turtle's pace compared to IT, but it's still moving) so much of the facility side can be operated remotely as well.
Further, many of these types of setups are employing sealed shipping containers (e.g. Sun's MD-20, HP's POD, Rackable System's whatever they call it, etc.) inside the buildings. The old raised floor and controlled rooms are being replaced by concrete slabs, containers, and shipping cranes. They don't even open the containers unless more than 10 or 20% of the systems inside have failed. Again, a highly controlled and protected environment with little human interference.
All that being said, flood plane is typically in the top considerations. Others include:
-power cost (and cost stability)
-availability of 69 or 138 kV feeds
-distance from flight paths
-proximity to transportation
-distance for rail lines that carry chemicals or other bad things
-access to staff and service for IT kit and mechanical/electrical systems
-latency requirements (not as much of a factor for most web services)
-access to and diversity of telecom (washington area mid west on this one)
-land and construction costs (construction much greater than land)
-zoning restrictions and flexibility for land and telecom delivery
-average hourly temperature and humidity (both impact the ability to gain "free" cooling and you can find studies showing that you get more free cooling in AZ than you do in IL)
-proximity to executive's homes/summer homes/favoriate vacation areas
-etc., etc.
In addition to what the poster replied, note that soy products in Japan are not the same as what's on the shelves in America. ToFu is made differently in Japan and generally "safe". In the US, most ToFu's are typically not fermented hence tempeh becomes the only option in that area. However I digress, most soy products in America are processed foods, chips, soy proteins mangled into some form of simulated meat, soy milk, etc. These are actually quite detrimental to humans yet they are advertised with "soy protein" and isoflavones. To get more detail, you can search the net. There's plenty out there, but you can also pick up a good book on macrobiotics. The Kushi's http://www.kushiinstitute.org/ published some great books on this. In general, macrobiotics recommends a wide variety of vegetables, soaking/fermenting beans and grains, and cooking almost everything.
"Now, I don't see how being a media company leads one to compete with a US municipality. Maybe they meant "New York [Times|Post] and Los Angeles [Times]"
perhaps they are referring to the fact that NYC and LA are the centers of the advertising and media industries.
Perhaps the concern is not about total market share, but limited growth. Going from 50-90% market share = growth = happy stock holders. At 90+ market share, you need to grow revenue by increasing price/unit or by expanding to new product areas (e.g. buy games companies, sharepoint, etc.). Companies are valued based on expectations of future revenue growth. If you already own the O/S, office suite markets and have respectable shares of the messaging and gaming markets, where else do you find revenue growth. Before you answer that, pretend you're a large company that doesn't innovate well. Also, note, the Vista ultimate/supreme/whatever costs more than XP pro.
I did the same and for the same reasons.
Not sure how this practice justified the poster calling them slimey.
I've been relatively happy with AVG. Perhaps, someone could elaborate on how they are slimey. This appears to be an attempt to protect people.
This is 9+ year old technology that he continually repackages.
Caspian Networks was founded in 1999 based on this very concept. It failed as a large router, then it failed as a traffic management platform, and now it's rearing it ugly head again. I would say the "third time's a charm", but I've lost track of actually how many iterations we've seen over the last 9 years.
Here's the original company's site from 2000:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000711075418/www.caspiannetworks.com/company.html
Here's a page from 2002 that starts discussing QoS and "differentiated services"
http://web.archive.org/web/20021207223724/www.caspiannetworks.com/solutions/services.shtml
I fly every week, sometimes multiple trips per week and I mostly agree with you.
However ...
1. Flight delays are horrendous
2. Charging for checked baggage makes the already abused carry-on baggage situation worse
3. Lack of coordination and insufficient staff at the gates make boarding disorganized
4. Airlines are always slow to update flight times. http://www.fly.faa.gov/flyfaa/usmap.jsp gives you a good idea of what may happen to you, but then you need to find out whether your plane is coming from (or through) a troubled airport.
5. Congestion at LGA, ORD, EWR, JFK and I'm sure many others is constant and should be dealt with.
6. Policies that encourage planes to "push back" only to have you wait for an hour+ on the tarmac are detrimental.
Below about 20% RH, you get Electrostatic Discharge (ESD). The sparks you can see aren't the ones that kill the equipment, it's the ones that occur inside the equipment without human intervention that kill it.
As the low-humidity cool air you've blown in heats up, its relative humidity drops even lower. You may find the humidifying the volume of air present in a 100,000-200,000 square foot data center with a 4 foot raised floor, a 12-15 foot ceiling, and a 4 foot ceiling plenum a little challenging. Especially if you're considering "changing" that air by continually bringing in new air from the outside.
You may also find that maintaining traditional chilled water systems from temperate climates becomes expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and maintenance intensive when the outside temperature is significantly below freezing.
The heat wheel approach addresses the humidity and contaminant concerns by keeping the data center space and air isolated from the outside air. they are used in other industries, but are new to data centers, so the cautious folks with big data centers are leary.
While it may appear that you don't have to work hard to cool the data centers, you will have to work hard to humidify them if you do not want your equipment to die. This is a non-trivial cost and is the reason the "free cooling" (taking in outside air to cool a data center) is often not free.
One answer may be heat wheels, but they are fairly new and unproven in the data center space. Take a look at http://www.kyotocooling.com/
Roberts has been harping on the same thing since 2000, probably earlier. Guess why he has built several failed companies around the concept. It seems that Slashdot forgets this every few months and posts another one of his rants.