Infrastructure Opportunities, The Return
In 2007 I wrote a quick post about infrastructure opportunities.
I’ve also wondered previously about opportunities with cheap electricity, seems The Google and other huge server farms are spending more on electricity than on hardware, hello Hydro Québec joint venture?
Found this in September 2011:
The facility will run on geothermal and hydroelectric power – in Iceland, all electricity is from renewable energy sources. The project was commissioned by the UK start-up Verne Global, itself a data hosting company, which plans to use Iceland’s cheap power to undercut rival European offerings.
—World’s first zero-carbon data centre to be built in Iceland
And then this just last week:
The enormous server farm facility in Luleå, northern Sweden, to be announced officially on Thursday morning, is the first time that the social networking giant has chosen to locate a server farm outside the US.
“The climate will allow them to just use only air for cooling the servers,” said Mats Engman, chief executive of the Aurorum Science Park, which is leading the push to turn the city into a ‘Node Pole’, luring in other international computing giants.
“If you take the statistics, the temperature has not been above 30C [86F] for more than 24 hours since 1961. If you take the average temperature, it’s around 2C [35.6F].”
—Facebook to build server farm on edge of Arctic Circle
See, now that would have made for an interesting Plan nord.
[Update on Nov. 7th] Thought so, seems they are on it (FR) but Hydro didn’t find the idea interesting enough 3 years ago. Merci Josée pour le tip.
Ze Nails It. Again.
(Thanks Time for the smallass, not resizable embed. See their site for a decent sized version. Morons.)
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Not surprisingly, Wall Street ran with these opportunities. From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent. Pay rose just as dramatically. From 1948 to 1982, average compensation in the financial sector ranged between 99 percent and 108 percent of the average for all domestic private industries. From 1983, it shot upward, reaching 181 percent in 2007. (emphasis mine)
—The Quiet Coup
Oh My
Is this real or some kind of messed up Google ad à la Microsoft? If real, people who don’t know what a browser is should not be let on the internets. And you were wondering how come spammers find value in doing what they do? Those would be the people getting caught.
Hooked On a Feeling
We haven’t heard much about America’s war on drugs recently, what with the whole war on terror, search for WMDs, middle eastern debacles and now the economy’s war on America but even though they aren’t talking about it they are still actively waging (and losing) that war.
But do you know which drug I find is doing the most damage to the US? It’s some kind of endorphin, the Patriot Endorphin© if you will and it’s a powerful drug, it’s what drives the whole nation and a good number of Americans suffer from that little high provided by saying “I AM AMERICAN™”. It’s a rallying cry, a battle cry and a good number of our neighbours stand just a little bit straiter, are just a little bit happier when they can think, say and prove that they are indeed, proud Americans.
Sometimes, as we’ve seen and even felt in the last few months, when someone like Obama provides his own version of that drug, it becomes a great beautiful thing that creates hope and brings change to a nation. When Obama speaks—and hopefully what he actually feels and thinks—they and even we want to be better, to do better, to help one another, to work hard to get out of this econopolypse and build a better world, a more equal, sustainable and clean world. To build nations that work together to better all the planet.
That’s what happens when he speaks. That’s what happens when a number of Americans think and do and feel that rush. But it’s the same drug that can be provided by dimwits like Dubbya and his cohorts which leads to the exesses of the past years. It’s also the same drug that every American manages to synthesize for his or her own little high, it’s that same drug that makes them go out of their way to get that fix, that same drug that brings them, sometimes, from feeling oh so proud and well intentioned when Obama speaks to bad trips and messed up decisions when it runs unchecked.
It’s that same drug that makes a customs officer say Money cannot leave the United States or that one is “displacing an American worker” with “Four million American workers lost their jobs last year” as a crutch to explain why she wanted that little fix she felt from being American and protecting her own. It just feels so good to get that tingle in the spine, that rush of Patriot Endorphin©, so, so good. Some just can’t walk away from it.
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He described Mr Obama as “our first open source President, a leader willing to let anybody and everybody figure out how, when and where they want to get involved.”
—Calls for open source government
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For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.
—Time to Reboot America
Bush’s Final F.U.
It’s mindboggling. Ming.Fucking.Boggling what Bush is doing right now. If you were still not convinced he’s completely mad, evil, bought by big everything and soulless, check out the midnight regulations he’s inacting. If this were written in a novel as the evil acts of a demented nutball, you’d think it too over the top and yet it’s happening. Read the whole list, seriously.
A New Chapter on Climate Change
I love this man!
