Encyclopedia of life launches, then crashes

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

If your new site crashes under heavy traffic at launch, even when you’ve prepared for a surge, that’s a sign that you may be on to something. And by that standard, the Encyclopedia of Life got off to a healthy start Tuesday. The encyclopedia has set itself a modest goal — it simply wants to be a single, comprehensive collection of everything we know about every species on Earth. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 1.8 million known species and an estimated 10 times that many yet to be cataloged. To fill the pages, the encyclopedia is using customized software to extract information from all manner of scholarly sources and display it in a standardized format. The data is then vetted by experts. The site hopes to have entries for all the known species within a decade, but for its public debut, it offered starter pages for 30,000 species, mostly plants, amphibians and fish. Still, that was enough to draw a crowd that exceeded the organizers’ optimistic estimates, bringing the site to its knees for a while. To give folks an idea of what a more fleshed out version of the site will look like, some demonstration pages were created, and of these, the one most viewed so far is about the death-cap mushroom, which founding chairman Jesse Ausubel whimsically attributes to society’s deep underlying homicidal tendencies.

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When in Rome…

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After photos of Barack Obama in a turban are circulated in the US – part of a smear campaign against him by the Clinton camp, the senator claims – the Guardian had the idea of digging out other photos of politicians following the when-in-Rome dress code. There are particularly fetching snaps of Dubya and Putin wearing Vietnamese ao dai silk tunics, and of Bill Clinton looking fluthered in a Gujarati turban.

Thanks to Pete for spotting it.

The mainframe lives!

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The concern with energy costs and environmental impacts of cloud computing is increasing. Here’s Technology Review an IBM’s new mainframe.

IBM Corp. rolls out a new mainframe computer Tuesday boasting a 50 percent performance boost and dramatically lower energy costs than its predecessor.

The new System z10, with a starting price at about $1 million, comes as IBM focuses on lowering the price tag for running its storied line of data-crunching workhorses.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based company said it designed the new machine to help companies and government agencies that rely on mainframes — usually for critical data processing such as bank transactions or census statistics crunching — save money on energy bills and better handle a flood of Internet information.

IBM says that the new machine was designed to appeal to cost-conscious companies looking to consolidate the number of servers in their data centers.

The z10’s capacity is equivalent to 1,500 servers based on the popular x86 design, IBM says, though it has 85 percent lower energy costs and takes up 85 percent less space than the batch of x86 servers.

EU fines Microsoft £680m

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Small change, really. This from guardian.co.uk…

The EU today imposed a record €899m (£680m) fine on Microsoft for charging “unreasonable” prices to rivals for access to its dominant software.

The fine, the largest imposed on a single company, brings the total levied on the world’s leading software group close to €1.7bn in the past four years.

Neelie Kroes, EU competition commissioner, who said she had no pleasure in imposing the fine, told journalists she could have charged Microsoft €1.5bn in the latest penalty.

The fine, representing 60% of the maximum, reflects the 488 days – until October 22 2007 – in which Microsoft refused to comply with the commission’s March 2004 anti-trust ruling.

Denying vindictiveness, she insisted the new penalty was “reasonable and proportionate” and should be “a clear signal to the outside world and especially Microsoft that they should stick to the rules”.

“Microsoft is the first company in 50 years of EU competition policy that the commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an anti-trust decision,” she said. “I hope that today’s decision closes a dark chapter in Microsoft’s record of non-compliance.”

Second Life: First World energy consumption

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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

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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’.

The real worry about the US elections

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Something I’ve been quietly brooding on for months is is a hunch that if Obama gets the nomination he will be assassinated by one of the thousands of nutters loose in the US — cut down just as JFK, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were in their time. Now I find out that I’m not the only one with these worries. Here’s an excerpt from a piece in today’s NYT:

DALLAS — There is a hushed worry on the minds of many supporters of Senator Barack Obama, echoing in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe?

In Colorado, two sisters say they pray daily for his safety. In New Mexico, a daughter says she persuaded her mother to still vote for Mr. Obama, even though the mother feared that winning would put him in danger. And at a rally here, a woman expressed worries that a message of hope and change, in addition to his race, made him more vulnerable to violence.

“I’ve got the best protection in the world,” Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said in an interview, reprising a line he tells supporters who raise the issue with him. “So stop worrying.”