Sobering film by Mike Wesch and the students of his cultural anthropology class at Kansas State.
Daily Archives: February 26, 2008
Second Life: First World energy consumption
Nick Carr has a post in which he uses some data supplied by Linden Labs (proprietors of Second Life) to show that an avatar in that benighted corner of cyberspace consumes as much electricity as the average Brazilian.
If there are on average between 10,000 and 15,000 avatars “living” in Second Life at any point, that means the world has a population of about 12,500. Supporting those 12,500 avatars requires 4,000 servers as well as the 12,500 PCs the avatars’ physical alter egos are using. Conservatively, a PC consumes 120 watts and a server consumes 200 watts. Throw in another 50 watts per server for data-center air conditioning. So, on a daily basis, overall Second Life power consumption equals:
(4,000 x 250 x 24) (12,500 x 120 x 24) = 60,000,000 watt-hours or 60,000 kilowatt-hours
Per capita, that’s:
60,000 / 12,500 = 4.8 kWh
Which, annualized, gives us 1,752 kWh. So an avatar consumes 1,752 kWh per year. By comparison, the average human, on a worldwide basis, consumes 2,436 kWh per year. So there you have it: an avatar consumes a bit less energy than a real person, though they’re in the same ballpark.
I have some good friends who are dedicated environmental campaigners, but who are also evangelical about the potential of Second Life. I wonder what they think about the energy issue.
And, just to be fair, everything that applies to Second Life’s energy consumption applies to cloud computing generally.
Richard Stallman on handing over GNU Emacs
After 32 years, Richard Stallman is stepping down from being the lead maintainer/developer on Emacs. Paul Macnamara wanted to interview him about the decision (which, after all, represents a significant moment in the history of software). He got his interview — but only after agreeing to these conditions:
I’ll answer your questions if you promise me that the story will avoid a couple of frequent errors.
One common error is referring to a free operating system as “Linux.” That system is basically GNU; Linux is actually the kernel, one program in the system. Calling the whole system “Linux” means giving the system’s principal developer none of the credit. See (this link) for more explanation.
Would you please agree to distinguish consistently in your article between Linux, the kernel, and GNU/Linux, the entire system? Since GNU Emacs is part of GNU, this is directly relevant.
The other common error is labeling me, GNU, GNU/Linux, or the GNU GPL with the term “Open Source.” That is the slogan adopted in 1998 by people who reject the philosophy of the Free Software Movement. They have the right to promote their views, but we would like to be associated with our views, not theirs. For more explanation, see (this link).
My response to your questions, based on the ideals of the Free Software Movement, would be very different from what a supporter of Open Source would say.
Could you please agree to refer to this work as Free Software in your article, and not as Open Source? In particular, please don’t describe GNU Emacs as “Open Source.”
Er, I had originally categorised this post under ‘Open Source’ but, not wishing to incur the wrath of Richard, have re-categorised it!
Actually, I rather agree with him. ‘Open Source’ was a term coined to placate the US business community, which regards the word ‘free’ as a synonym for ‘communist’.