brettbh

Well, I suppose he could have been a Kermode Bear but they do not usually swim over to the Island (unlike grizzlies which do occasionally decide to visit).

I was interested to find out whether there is any validity to this and so asked an Environmental Technologist at Microsoft for an opinion. Here's her reply: I checked around with my colleagues and we haven’t heard of this as a solid benefit or seen any whitepapers ... below are a few of the comments: “This is sort-of more server oriented, but you can look at the graphs which show the power consumption of various system components. I suspect increasing RAM (now the single largest drain in servers) – even on a desktop machine – is likely to offset any possible gains from spinning down a single disk. However, I could be wrong. I’d be interested to hear if you receive other responses. “Power In, Dollars Out: How to Stem the Flow in the Data Center†http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pnppw...wr_ITAdmin.mspx “ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “A typical SATA drive uses about 9W whether its doing anything or not (i.e. its spun up), so I think the answer is no, adding RAM won’t help reduce energy use (quite the opposite).â€

Smoke and mirrors. The deal’s target is to achieve a 20% reduction in emissions by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. Sounds grand, eh? But unfortunately it isn’t. Emission levels in the EU are already 9% lower than in 1990. Furthermore, countries and companies will be able to offset their emissions with credits purchased from non-EU countries. So, rather than leading to a 20% reduction, the actual result may a reduction IRO 5%. That’s better than nothing, but it’s certainly not enough.

Yup, we do indeed need to reduce unemployment, but that alone is not the solution. There are millions of working people who are extremely poor. Do you know where the majority of your tax bucks go? Education? Health care? Nope, the biggest slice goes on military spending. And who benefits most from that military spending? The soldiers? Nope, it’s the CEOs and executives of the companies which manufacture weapons. Is the CEO of the chain which owns your local grocery store deserving of a half a million dollar salary? Do talented actresses such as Angelina Jolie deserve the enormous sums that they make? Did Dick Fuld, Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers and one of the "Ten Most Wanted: Culprits of the Collapse" deserve the $45 million he made in 2007? Is the CEO of GM deserving of his enormous salary – a salary that will soon be paid by your tax bucks? And what about sports stars and their multi-million buck contracts? Ultimately, it’s your money that pays these people. It's the money that your activities help create. It’s the money you pay in taxes, the money you spend to see a movie, the money you spend at the grocery store and the money you spend when buying a car. Do you really think they are worth it? The problem is that our economy is like a crooked pyramid scheme in which the people at the bottom make little while the people at the top make enormous sums. For years, it has been claimed that these super rich people are extremely important. That they are what drives the economy. That we dare not tax them too much or they may decide to take their talents overseas. That the poor will ride to riches on their coat-tails. What absolute BS! Some food for thought. In the US, 5% of the people possess more of the wealth than the remaining 95%. 10% of the people possess 85% of the stocks and securities and 90% of the business assets. The wealth of the top 5% is increasing at a much faster rate than the wealth of the rest of the population. Divide out the wealth of the richest 400 people among the rest of the population and each man, woman and child in the US would get about $3000. Divide out the wealth of the top 5% (about 15 million people) and each man, woman and child would get ... well, would you like to take a guess? Hint: it's probably more than you think. In fact, it’s probably way, way, WAY more than you’d think! But while the richest are getting richer at a faster rate, everybody else is getting poorer. The real value of the minimum wage has decreased. Somebody earning the minimum wage today has less buying power than somebody earning the minimum wage in the 1960s. And the real value of the average wage has steadily decreased too. Do you see a trend here? Wealth is being channelled from the bottom of the pyramid to the top. Do you really think that this is a sound economic model? Do you really think that it’s in the best interests of the majority of the population?

Nope, he's a mud-covered polar bear.

I do not think that we are yet transitioning to a non-capitalist model, but I do think that we are approaching a point where major economic changes shall become unavoidable. Copied from Wikipedia: Giuseppe Carone and Declan Costello of the International Monetary Fund projected in September 2006 that the ratio of retirees to workers in Europe will double to 0.54 by 2050 from four workers to two workers for every retiree. William H. Frey, an analyst for the Brookings Institution think tank, predicts the median age in Europe will increase from 37.7 years old in 2003 to 52.3 years old by 2050 while the median age of Americans will rise to only 35.4 years old. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates only 39% of Europeans between the ages of 55 to 65 work. If Frey's prediction for Europe's rising median age is correct, productivity in Europe will radically decrease over the next four decades. Austria's Social Affairs Minister painted a bleaker picture in 2006, saying the 55 to 64 year old age bracket in the European Union will be larger than the 15 to 24 year old bracket by 2010. The Economic Policy Committee and the European Commission issued a report in 2006 estimating the working age population in the EU will decrease by 48 million, 16%, between 2010 and 2050, while the elderly population will increase by 58 million, 77%. By 2050 the ratio of Europe's working age to senior age population will decrease by 50%, two workers instead of four for every retiree. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the European Union will experience a 14% decrease in its workforce and a 7% decrease in its consumer populations by 2030. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Europe#United_Kingdom State welfare schemes were introduced at a time when people started work at young age and the average age expectancy was only a little over 60. Accordingly, people paid into those schemes for the majority of their lives, but took out only a relatively small amount. That's now been turned completely on its head. People are remaining in education longer and retiring earlier. Life expectancies continue to increase and so people are paid retirement benefits for a greater number of years and need health care for a greater number of years (in Switzerland, the number of people aged more than 100 has doubled every year since 1950). Furthermore, there are now a sizeable number of people who either never contribute to the welfare schemes or who contribute minimally - the long term unemployed and non-working single parents, for example. The welfare systems are also being constantly extended to pay more people more money in more circumstances. Whereas once people were paid benefits only when they were sick or had retired, they are now paid those benefits for maternity, paternity, strike absences and ill health caused by narcotic addictions (why the heck don't we pay for compulsory rehab rather than paying sickness benefits because they are too "ill" to work?). This trend is completely unsustainable. Look at government projections for the next 20 to 30 years and you'll see a closing gap between revenue and spending. A shrinking number of workers simply cannot pay for an expanding number of non-workers. The balance sheet will eventually stop balancing. We need to radically change our socio-economic models. We need to face the harsh fact that there are too many non-contributors in our society - non-working single parents who spend 20+ years on welfare, habitual criminals who are constantly in the court system, etc., etc. - and that we cannot afford to continue to support such people. These people are what society had made them and what society enables them to be - but now society need to find a way to remodel them into contributors and ensure that subsequent generations also become contributors. We need people to start working for the common benefit rather than working for the benefit of the 2% of people who control 50% of the wealth. We need to find ways to distribute wealth more equally. We need to find ways to ensure that we can properly care for the members of society which need care. We see schools close because of a lack of money. We see hospitals unable to offer proper care because of a lack of money. We see people forced into selling their homes because it's the only way that they can pay for their medical care. Even in supposedly advanced countries (such as the US), we see people people who cannot afford basic necessities such as food and health care. Why? There's certainly no shortage of money in the US - the richest 400 people alone are worth more than $1 trillion - so why are some people unable to afford to heat their homes or buy food? People created money, but are now going hungry because of that creation. Money has become king, but it can be dethroned.

Yup. I blame MountainHiker.

Yeah, there are polar bears on the Island too but they all seem to be caked in so much mud that appear to be brown in colour. I met this particular polar bear last summer. He was hitchhiking at the side of the road. Had he been a bit less dirty, I might have considered giving him a ride.

You’ve never heard of Canada, eh? Are you sure that you’re Swedish and not a Yankee? I ask this as 99% of Yankees have never heard of it either. And the 1% who have heard of Canada have absolutely no idea where it is. In fact, if you ask a Yankee to point to Canada on the map, he’ll adopt an expression like Dubya Shrub (or Brush or whatever his name is). Really, it’s like watching a blindfolded child play pin the tail the to the donkey. “Man, that’s a tough one! Erm, I used to know where it was, but that map just don’t look like it used to! Erm, is it somewhere around here?†*pointing to Iraq* What Yankees do know – or, rather, think that they know – about Canada is that it’s colder than a witch’s tit. Everywhere. They don’t realise that there are places which have a mild climate year round and other places, such as Osoyoos, which have cacti, tumbleweeds, rattlesnakes and blisteringly hot weather. Whenever a Canadian sees somebody wearing Arctic gear in the desert, he can safely assume that it’s an “ignorant Yankee.â€

Carbon offset providers calculate the amount of CO2 emitted by common consumer activities like driving a car or going on holiday. They then calculate the cost of ‘offsetting’ the equivalent amount through funding a project designed to reduce carbon emissions such as a small-scale renewable energy or forestry scheme. If you choose to pay for this offset you can claim to have taken responsibility for your emissions and done at least a small bit to help combat climate change. What could be wrong with this? Read more.

And why do Swedes become so rigid during a conversation? They keep their hands and arms absolutely still and stare at you with a completely blank expression. But then they smile. And the smile lasts for 15 minutes or more before the blank expression gradually returns. Spooky. It's like speaking with a Stepford wife. An example of the famous Swedish blank stare ...

Watching somebody eat cornflakes drenched in sour milk is bad enough; but watching them eat it in the nude is (or can be) an exceptionally disturbing experience :-(

Noteworthy story: Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) presented NetApp with a rebate of $1,427,477 under PG&E's Non-Residential New Construction Program, which encourages PG&E's commercial, industrial, high-technology, and agricultural customers to implement energy-efficient building and process design and construction. NetApp's rebate is the largest new construction incentive PG&E has ever awarded. NetApp received the rebate for the design of its new Sunnyvale engineering data center and the measures it implemented to more efficiently provide power and decrease the energy needed for cooling. Upgrades included environmentally friendly flywheel uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, energy-efficient transformers, outside air economizers, and a variable primary chiller plant. As a result of NetApp's energy efficiency improvements, its data center is projected to operate at power usage effectiveness (PUE) of less than 1.3, which is considered a best-in-class metric for data center energy efficiency. In addition, PG&E estimates that NetApp will save more than 11,100,000 kilowatt-hours each year, which represents a savings of more than $1,178,000 and a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by 3,391 tons annually. Read more.

>>Upgrade the RAM to the highest the motherboard can support. This will reduce paging by the Operating System (i.e. disk accesses).<< Sorry, but that's bad advice, Dan. To determine whether a system may benefit from more RAM, it's necessary to establish whether or not the system is currently performing paging operations and the extent of those operations. Should the system not be performing paging operations (or paging minimally) then adding RAM will make absolutely no difference to performance and will increase - not decrease - energy consumption (as RAM uses energy). Similarly, adding more RAM than is necessary to eliminate (or almost eliminate) paging would also be counterproductive. In fact, adding RAM may not reduce energy consumption at all - even on paging systems. Theoretically, reducing or eliminating paging operations may slightly (very slightly) reduce energy consumption, but the saving would likely be completely offset (or more than offset) by the energy used by the additional RAM. There are a number of factors which would affect the outcome including the extent of the paging, the amount of energy used by the HDD or SSD when paging/not paging (which will vary), the amount of energy used by the RAM (which will vary too) and the extent to which the system is used. I suspect that, in the majority of cases, a small increase in consumption would be more likely than a decrease. I have never seen any research related to this matter, but my gut reaction is that adding RAM is not an effective way to reduce energy consumption and that people would be better advised to spend their money on other energy efficiency measures. That said, should you know of any evidence pointing to the contrary, I'd certainly be interested to see it! >>Use a memory card (solid state, SSD) rather than a conventional hard drive. The energy consumption difference is rather impressive.<< Hmmm.

Do you care about the legality of the solution?

Nothing. I wouldn't necessarily want to have dinner with a Swede (they eat in the nude and, depending on your companion(s), that can be somewhat of an appetite suppressant) but they are otherwise a pleasant bunch of people.

>>But who is the antichrist and the phone guy? And Hagrid the Horrible is what?<< 1. Antichrist = Benny Andersson or Dolph Lundgren 2. Phone guy = Ericsson 3. Hagrid the Horrible = a Swedish dude. >>Peter who?<< Schmeichel: an albino goalkeeper best known for verbally assaulting his defenders (and for being an albino). >>And, you mean this Björn Borg?<< No, the other Björn Borg; the one famed for his headband.

As murders in major cities across the United States continue at a relatively unaltered rate, we have formed a task force to analyze the surrounding community to see if we could find any patterns. What we found was disturbing to say the least. The common bond? Within 1 mile of each murder scene we able to locate a McDonald's restaurant. Coincidence? We thought so, until further investigation provided more evidence to link McDonald's to a campaign of murder. Read more.

I should have known that the Swedes couldn't produce such a good footballer ;-) Ok, see the edit. I've substituted Hagrid the Horrible for Schmeichel. But I'm not convinced that he's Swedish either! Oh, and how could I have forgotten to mention Björn Borg!?!?

Princess Victoria, Alfred Nobel, Ingvar Kamprad, Ingmar and Ingrid Bergman, Henrik Larsson, Ace of Base, Peter Schmeichel (or is he Danish?), Hagrid the Horrible, Dag Hammarskjöld and, of course, the Antichrist! Oh, and the phone guy!

My point was simply that it is wrong to point a finger at Adobe as El Reg did ("Study spanks Adobe Flash for abuses of power"). Flash is no less green than any other form of technology; the problem is how it's used.

From the nofillup website: >>What if I told you that you can have your own electric car setup for $300 or less!?<< I would say that either 1) you are being completely dishonest or 2) know absolutely nothing whatsoever about the subject. I certainly hope that nobody is conned into buying this book.

Dolph Lundgren.

I watch very, very little TV. And I'm selective in what I do watch. There's no Springer in my diet, Boyo ;-)

Benny Andersson.