Archive for June, 2009
Interesting video on global warming. More  videos at the proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change
Returns by Asset Class 1997 - 2006
It’s hard to look at this chart and not conclude that picking asset classes is difficult and that relative returns are not durable over time. Also, unsurprisingly, correlations between asset class returns are fairly high.
Here’s something to think about:
In 1917 the breakdown in consumption for a typical family ( 38 year old working father, non-employed mother, 13-yr old boy and 8 yr old daughter ) was:
Food – 41%
Housing – 27%
Clothing – 18%
Healthcare – 5%
Transportation – 3%
Other – 7%
By 1987 this had changed to
Housing – 33%
Transportation – 26%
Food – 19%
Clothing – 5%
Healthcare – 4%
Other – 12%
You might ask: how do we reconcile this with the 17-20% of GDP ( ~$8K per person ) that we are spending on healthcare today? First, it’s interesting to note that the average citizen took the money they saved on food and clothing (the basic necessities of life) and ploughed it straight into bigger houses, more expensive cars and (probably) an increased level of entertainment. Along the way, though, we gradually socialized the cost of healthcare so that despite saving 20% of our consumption on food (not to mention the saving on clothing), we are now unable to find that same 20% to pay for our healthcare.
However, I don’t think it is a problem, per se, that we are spending an increasing amount on healthcare. It seems as though it’s a trend that is irreversible and given the continuing decline and commoditization of the other line items in the typical family budget, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Healthcare is one of the industries where we continue to spend R&D dollars for new products and an expanded menu of options is inevitable.
The real problem is that neither “the American people†nor their elected representatives and the Chairman, are willing to put aside the $8K per person per year that we’re currently inclined to spend. The future price of US 10 yr notes is left as an exercise for the reader.
Twubs is a great website for tracking a specific Twitter hashtag. For instance, you can follow the post-election chaos in Iran in real time. The window below shows the current activity surrounding the election in Iran. It was getting over 1000 messages per minute on June 16, 2009.
One of the major issue with large data centers is power. This is applicable to both large data centers like Microsoft / Google and also to large Enterprise Data Centers which are very energy inefficient.
Definition of Power Effectiveness: Data Center Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is defined as the ration of data center power to IT (server) power draw. Thus a PUE of 2.0 means that the data center must draw 2 Watts for every 1 Watt of power consumed by IT (server) equipment. The ideal number would be 1.0, which means there is zero overhead. The overhead power is used by lightning, power delivery, UPS, chillers, fans, air-conditioning etc. Google claims to have achieved a PUE of 1.3 to 1.7. Microsoft runs somewhere close to 1.8. Most of Corporate America runs between 2.0 and 2.5.
A typical large data center these days costs in the range of $150 Million to $300 Million depending upon the size and location. A 15 MW data center facility is approximately $200 million. This is the capital cost so it is depreciated over time.
Most of the facility cost is power related. Anywhere  from 75% to 80% of the cost is power (pdu, chiller, ups, etc).
A typical 15MW datacenter with 50,000 servers costs about $6.0 million per month for operating expense (excluding people cost) and the share of power infrastructure (pdu, chiller, ups, etc) is between 20% to 24% and actual power for the servers is 18% to 20%. Thus total power cost is between 38% to 44%. These numbers reflect what Microsoft / Google would do. EPA has done a study and they believe these numbers are close to 50% for inefficient data centers.
If you use Google Analytics’ Site Overlay functionality, it occasionally results in a white or gray haze over your website which prevents you from clicking on any of the links.
The good news is that your browser is the only one affected (none of your customers will see the same effect). All you have to do to fix the problem on your end is clear your cookies (specifically a cookie called GASO).
So Bush speaks of the “wonder-working power of volunteerism” and the Left has a conniption but Obama quotes straight out of the Koran and no one so much as murmurs. People are never threatened by those who don’t believe what they say.
I’ve been playing around with Wolfram Alpha’s new computational knowledge engine and it seems to need a lot of work before it becomes more than an exotic curiosity. I entered the following query:
US Debt / US GDP
and it returns the following answer:
0.585 years (2007 estimate)
I’m not sure how to interpret that but it seems ominous!
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