I agree, the number is surprising. Said so in the post. The article claiming that energy intensity is from 2004, but even then computers were pretty cheap for 5000 kwh of energy to be put into them.
For what it's worth, electricity prices for industry are about half of the local residential rate. Source. Not all actors in the supply chain for computers will pay the industrial rate, though.
There are many places where electricity rates are "unavailable", and industrial rates may be low in Asia. I doubt it's a huge difference (Taipei is $0.059 - U.S. is $0.064), but it's possible. There are jurisdictions where electricity costs less than in the U.S.
It's also worth noting that the majority of the energy comes from fossil fuels, according to the linked article. They cost about $0.05 to $0.10 per kwh in any manufacturing centre. (Price at the pump for me is about US$1 per liter, 35 MJ ~= 10 kwh in a liter of gas.) It's also a little unfair to compare fossil fuel use with electricity use, since a lot of electricity is generated by burning coal and the transformation introduces losses.
When you do this analysis on most products, the EROI payback is shorter than the ROI payback. It seems that for computers, it's not so simple as that.
Energy to build a new computer: 18,100 MJ ~= 5,000 kwh. Source. Fossil fuels assumed to be 45 MJ per kg, the value for gasoline.
Proposed ROI payback period is $300/$70 ~= 4 years, saving $70 per year. Electricity cost in the US for residential customers is $0.104 per kwh. Source. This means he expects energy savings of around 675 kwh per year.
Expected EROI payback period is: 5,000 / 675 ~= 7.4 years.
I have to admit to being pretty surprised by that number. Usually, energy to manufacture is a fairly small portion of the retail price. Not so for computers, I guess.
I call B.S. Who among mortals would be willing to work more than 14 hours per day, seven days a week, without pay until 2010. On anything. Maybe they sleep in class?
I'm not claiming that the Vikings actually pulled this off, but there were accurate celestial clocks available in antiquity. Gavin Menzies described the method in his book about early Chinese exploration, 1421. Off topic, but this is how it works:
0. Develop the ability to predict lunar eclipses.
1. Draw a crappy map using the stars to determine your latitude and speed over water to determine your longitude.
2. Build and staff celestial observatories along the coast at intervals.
3. Note the star that transits directly overhead each observatory at agreed-upon events of a predicted lunar eclipse.
4. Collect all the observations, and note the difference in angle (longitude) between the transiting stars.
5. Interpolate the longitude of the points between the observatories to update your crappy map.
If you are too bored to follow the link it says, "An extreme explosion hazard exists in areas in which the gas has been released, but the material has not yet ignited." That's about as close as an MSDS ever gets to saying, "Do not look into laser with remaining eye." It also says that for concentrations in air the lower explosive limit (LEL) is 4.0% and the upper explosive limit (UEL) is 75%.
Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?
on
China Bans Gold Farming
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I was having breakfast in Idaho City, Idaho around the time the Chinese government put down the Tianenmen Square protests. I overheard a guy at a nearby table say, "This wouldn't have happened if the Chinese were armed, I tell ya." I nearly laughed out loud, but I took a moment to really think about what he said. For the first time in my life, I understood the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
The First Amendment is the first line of defense; the Second Amendment is the last.
As it happens, the annual cost of keeping a horse is broadly similar to the annual cost of keeping a car - somewhere in the neighborhood of US$7,000 per year. Horses are probably a little less expensive, but not that much. Here are a couple of links. Horse: http://www.extension.org/faq/47, Car: http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1219206
The first time I tried Slackware on an 80286 in 1992 in my residence at university. I didn't have a 386. I just wanted to see what would happen. IIRC, even the boot sector code required a 386.
You should know that putting it in your.sig is not sufficient. I have signatures disabled in my post viewing preferences. I find most of them to be without value. You should add your disclaimer to anything you write, because I didn't even know that your post was not advice.
You are misinformed. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted in 1789 and part of the French constitution, explicitly enumerates the presumption of innocence. There is no official English translation of it, and slashdot does not do accents correctly. The original text is here. Article 9 is the one for you.
In English that means, "Everyone is presumed innocent until they have been declared guilty, if it is deemed essential to arrest, all onerous treatment that is not necessary to hold that person must be severely circumscribed by law."
Many democracies have similar explicit constitutional guarantees of this right. Curiously, not the USA: it was read into the constitution by the Supreme Court in Coffin v. United States. Damnable activist judges!
The Art of Electronics by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill will give you a tremendous insight into how the underlying silicon in your computer (and radio) function. Every time I read a snippet, I want to build something electronic. Link to Amazon.
I have worked in economic geology as a summer student when I was at university, and I can vouch for the fact that hollow rotary drills are in common use. The drill core (the part of the rock that goes in the hollow centre) is the whole purpose of drilling the hole in the earth.
The drill is a gasoline or diesel engine, and the drill bit is a piecewise continuous long hollow tube. The drill bit is quite short, and the business end is a ring of industrial diamonds. The whole tube spins, and water is used to carry away the cuttings. To remove the core, the whole nine yards gets pulled up, and the drill core comes with it. The drill core is put in boxes, with depth markings on it.
The last (optional) step is for the drill operator to piss on the drill core. When the geologist opens the box of drill core, the first thing he does is lick the rock, because you can see the colour variations in wet rock a lot easier than in dry rock.
It seems to me that if you drilled into some magma with one of these diamond drills, you would run the risk of the whole earth collapsing like a balloon thththpththpthpthpthtpp.:)
The limit on signal transmission speed is relativistic, and about one foot per nanosecond. So the maximum characteristic distance of a chip clocked at 1GHz is about a foot. 10GHz is about an inch. A pentium is about square, and about half an inch on a side. Asynchronous electronics can operate with higher frequency signals, though timing and lead length are still considerations in such devices at really high frequencies.
Whether punishment should be based on outcomes, or not, in fact it is. It's called the "thin-skill rule" or the "eggshell skull rule". The rule says that defendants take their victims as they find them.
This means that if a defendant tortiously or criminally torments someone, traumatizing him so badly that he kills himself, then the defendant can be held liable for the victim's death. This rule applies even if the defendant could not foresee the unexpectedly dramatic results of his actions, such as might be the case if the victim was predisposed to suicide. It only applies if the act is a tort or a crime, though, like if the defendant were harassing the victim. The reason is simple: courts do not want to allow defendants to build their cases on the vulnerability of their victims.
Slashdot Mirror
I knew a constipated mathematician who worked it out with a pencil.
I don't think that the 6400 MJ figure includes 260 kg of fossil fuels, because 260 kg of fossil fuels represents more than 6400 MJ of energy.
I agree, the number is surprising. Said so in the post. The article claiming that energy intensity is from 2004, but even then computers were pretty cheap for 5000 kwh of energy to be put into them.
For what it's worth, electricity prices for industry are about half of the local residential rate. Source. Not all actors in the supply chain for computers will pay the industrial rate, though.
There are many places where electricity rates are "unavailable", and industrial rates may be low in Asia. I doubt it's a huge difference (Taipei is $0.059 - U.S. is $0.064), but it's possible. There are jurisdictions where electricity costs less than in the U.S.
It's also worth noting that the majority of the energy comes from fossil fuels, according to the linked article. They cost about $0.05 to $0.10 per kwh in any manufacturing centre. (Price at the pump for me is about US$1 per liter, 35 MJ ~= 10 kwh in a liter of gas.) It's also a little unfair to compare fossil fuel use with electricity use, since a lot of electricity is generated by burning coal and the transformation introduces losses.
When you do this analysis on most products, the EROI payback is shorter than the ROI payback. It seems that for computers, it's not so simple as that.
Energy to build a new computer: 18,100 MJ ~= 5,000 kwh. Source. Fossil fuels assumed to be 45 MJ per kg, the value for gasoline.
Proposed ROI payback period is $300/$70 ~= 4 years, saving $70 per year. Electricity cost in the US for residential customers is $0.104 per kwh. Source. This means he expects energy savings of around 675 kwh per year.
Expected EROI payback period is: 5,000 / 675 ~= 7.4 years.
I have to admit to being pretty surprised by that number. Usually, energy to manufacture is a fairly small portion of the retail price. Not so for computers, I guess.
And environs.
I call B.S. Who among mortals would be willing to work more than 14 hours per day, seven days a week, without pay until 2010. On anything. Maybe they sleep in class?
I'm not claiming that the Vikings actually pulled this off, but there were accurate celestial clocks available in antiquity. Gavin Menzies described the method in his book about early Chinese exploration, 1421. Off topic, but this is how it works:
0. Develop the ability to predict lunar eclipses.
1. Draw a crappy map using the stars to determine your latitude and speed over water to determine your longitude.
2. Build and staff celestial observatories along the coast at intervals.
3. Note the star that transits directly overhead each observatory at agreed-upon events of a predicted lunar eclipse.
4. Collect all the observations, and note the difference in angle (longitude) between the transiting stars.
5. Interpolate the longitude of the points between the observatories to update your crappy map.
Hydrogen doesn't explode unless well mixed with oxygen. Normally it just burns.
The Material Data Safety Sheet for hydrogen disagrees with you.
If you are too bored to follow the link it says, "An extreme explosion hazard exists in areas in which the gas has been released, but the material has not yet ignited." That's about as close as an MSDS ever gets to saying, "Do not look into laser with remaining eye." It also says that for concentrations in air the lower explosive limit (LEL) is 4.0% and the upper explosive limit (UEL) is 75%.
I was having breakfast in Idaho City, Idaho around the time the Chinese government put down the Tianenmen Square protests. I overheard a guy at a nearby table say, "This wouldn't have happened if the Chinese were armed, I tell ya." I nearly laughed out loud, but I took a moment to really think about what he said. For the first time in my life, I understood the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
The First Amendment is the first line of defense; the Second Amendment is the last.
Google street view link?
As it happens, the annual cost of keeping a horse is broadly similar to the annual cost of keeping a car - somewhere in the neighborhood of US$7,000 per year. Horses are probably a little less expensive, but not that much. Here are a couple of links. Horse: http://www.extension.org/faq/47, Car: http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1219206
Maybe if we put it in a format IBM can understand:
SOCIAL-SECURITY-NUMBER PIC 99-999-9999
The first time I tried Slackware on an 80286 in 1992 in my residence at university. I didn't have a 386. I just wanted to see what would happen. IIRC, even the boot sector code required a 386.
Yes.
Or a one-byte shift register.
I think you mean, "Whale oil beef hooked!"
Works best with a Newfoundland accent.
You should know that putting it in your .sig is not sufficient. I have signatures disabled in my post viewing preferences. I find most of them to be without value. You should add your disclaimer to anything you write, because I didn't even know that your post was not advice.
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
You are misinformed. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted in 1789 and part of the French constitution, explicitly enumerates the presumption of innocence. There is no official English translation of it, and slashdot does not do accents correctly. The original text is here. Article 9 is the one for you.
In English that means, "Everyone is presumed innocent until they have been declared guilty, if it is deemed essential to arrest, all onerous treatment that is not necessary to hold that person must be severely circumscribed by law."
Many democracies have similar explicit constitutional guarantees of this right. Curiously, not the USA: it was read into the constitution by the Supreme Court in Coffin v. United States . Damnable activist judges!
A 40-watt CFL is about like a 150-watt incandescent. Here's a link to a really bright "compact" fluorescent. It's over a foot long.
All I need now is google underwear that twitters for me with real time gps tracking so I know where I've gone.
ftfy
The Art of Electronics by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill will give you a tremendous insight into how the underlying silicon in your computer (and radio) function. Every time I read a snippet, I want to build something electronic. Link to Amazon.
I have worked in economic geology as a summer student when I was at university, and I can vouch for the fact that hollow rotary drills are in common use. The drill core (the part of the rock that goes in the hollow centre) is the whole purpose of drilling the hole in the earth.
The drill is a gasoline or diesel engine, and the drill bit is a piecewise continuous long hollow tube. The drill bit is quite short, and the business end is a ring of industrial diamonds. The whole tube spins, and water is used to carry away the cuttings. To remove the core, the whole nine yards gets pulled up, and the drill core comes with it. The drill core is put in boxes, with depth markings on it.
The last (optional) step is for the drill operator to piss on the drill core. When the geologist opens the box of drill core, the first thing he does is lick the rock, because you can see the colour variations in wet rock a lot easier than in dry rock.
It seems to me that if you drilled into some magma with one of these diamond drills, you would run the risk of the whole earth collapsing like a balloon thththpththpthpthpthtpp. :)
The limit on signal transmission speed is relativistic, and about one foot per nanosecond. So the maximum characteristic distance of a chip clocked at 1GHz is about a foot. 10GHz is about an inch. A pentium is about square, and about half an inch on a side. Asynchronous electronics can operate with higher frequency signals, though timing and lead length are still considerations in such devices at really high frequencies.
Whether punishment should be based on outcomes, or not, in fact it is. It's called the "thin-skill rule" or the "eggshell skull rule". The rule says that defendants take their victims as they find them.
This means that if a defendant tortiously or criminally torments someone, traumatizing him so badly that he kills himself, then the defendant can be held liable for the victim's death. This rule applies even if the defendant could not foresee the unexpectedly dramatic results of his actions, such as might be the case if the victim was predisposed to suicide. It only applies if the act is a tort or a crime, though, like if the defendant were harassing the victim. The reason is simple: courts do not want to allow defendants to build their cases on the vulnerability of their victims.