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    Re: Longest year since 1992
    From: Lu Abel
    Date: 2009 Jan 12, 12:26 -0800

    With respect to the quality of science reporting at The Times, just this 
    weekend they published an article claiming Google searches have a 
    massive carbon footprint:   
    http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece?Submitted=true
    
    Down in the article is a claim that maintaining an avatar (an on-line 
    personality that gamers create) uses as much electricity, 1752 kilowatt 
    hours per year, as the per-capita electric consumption in Brazil.  Doing 
    the math, 1752 KWH/yr works out to 200 watts.  A  friend who is in 
    charge of the server farm for a large web site says that his 
    dual-processor Pentium servers consume on average only a bit over 100 
    watts.  Two dual-processor servers to maintain a single avatar?  Not on 
    your life!   Mr. Carr, the person who makes the claim about avatars, has 
    a seriously misplaced decimal point.
    
    Google has also responded that their searches generate about 1/30 of the 
    amount of carbon claimed by Prof. Wissner-Gross.  
    http://timesonline.typepad.com/technology/2009/01/googles-respons.html
    
    Don't mean to take us off-topic, but I just thought I'd give a more 
    accessible example of the "quality" of The Times' science reporting.
    
    Lu
    
    frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.net wrote:
    > And once again, some folks are raising silly objections about the possible abolition of leap seconds.
    >
    > See:
    > http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5361670.ece
    > (article written by Mark Henderson, said to be "Science Editor")
    >
    > The article claims, "Sundials would become even more inaccurate than they 
    are already, and it would become almost impossible for sailors to navigate by 
    sextant."
    >
    > As we've discussed previously, accomodating a time standard without leap 
    seconds would present no serious problem for celestial navigation. Needless 
    to say, the comment about sundials is technically true, but only after 
    decades and in a way that no one but an expert would ever notice.
    >
    > -FER
    >
    >
    > >
    >   
    
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