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Comment Re:Stupid Idea (Score 1) 1026

Um Acela is much faster than driving. Less than 3 hours from Union station to Penn Station vs almost 5 in car. However, your point is partially on. Acela is only marginally faster than the Northeast Regional Amtrak trains. It usually doesn't warrant the added expense for saving 20-30 minutes...unless someone else is paying.

Comment Re:Drugs and Scientists.. (Score 1) 153

Dude, we could launch this killer satellite to check out thunderstorms. It'll be awesome. We'll check out the gravitivity and polarity and shit. We could tell people there's antimatter from the lightning and really freak them out. Then, ya know, we could put a little hydroponic greenhouse on it. That would be some cosmic weed, man.

Comment Re:CPU, HDD, WiFi - RAM doesn't matter (Score 1) 152

Yeah, if you're looking at laptops or desktops. But when you start talking server class machines and you start jamming DIMMs in them for large database, virtualization clusters, or other high memory applications, a few watts can make a big difference. The current generation of DDR3 low power DIMMs usable with the Westmere chipsets have brought server power consumption down 30-50 watts (72 GB RAM configuration). With advancements like this, you can further increase memory density within servers and/or server density within data centers. A 5-10% improvement in server power utilization has significant financial impacts. Many data centers are power constrained not space constrained. Better utilized data centers means longer time between needing new physical space. Data center space is kind of expensive, especially in large server environments.

Comment Re:Jobs (Score 1) 153

Generally, a data center doesn't need too many high tech employees. Most of the expertise needs to be in facilities management, electricians, plumbers, etc. There are probably a good number of people leftover from the textile factories who have the necessary skills. Racking, stacking, and cabling don't require too many people with a BSCS or BSEE. 90% of the tech work in big data centers is done remotely. Yeah, you'll need a few hardware engineers and the like to fix broken equipment and install tricky stuff. Various vendors will have a few people nearby that can fulfill 4 hour response from Charlotte and make day trips for other on site work.

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