Dialog: A Beginning

 The NY Times obituary today announced the passing of Roger Summit, the founder of Dialog, the first on line search entity. I remember Roger quite well. I was a Group President at Warner Communications in charge of their Electronic Home Services Division. My wife worked for Roger out of the New York Office so I saw first hand how it worked. She had a luggable TI terminal with a 1500 baud modem. She had been doing Dialog searches for a decade by the early 70s when she worked with me at MIT so I knew Dialog quite well.

In 1983 I met with Roger and tried to convince him to expand his service to the consumer market. I saw his data base engine and operational capabilities as an asset in my Warner system. I recall driving up to the end of Sand Hill Road, atop a major fault line and there was Roger's place. I guessed after a meeting that Roger did not see consumers ever being a market, and indeed in 1983 so did a lot of people. Yet at the time we had gotten retail stores, travel agencies, hotels, banks, and even on line gambling! 

 

Roger was a visionary and he was fortunate at the time to have Lockheed financial support. Unlike today's venture companies, Roger was in the DoD world of start ups, great technology but no billionaires. He was also limited by the Bell System slow data rates. 1500 baud was a result of Bell System design. Thankfully the system was broken up, otherwise we would never have the information revolution we have today.

Roger should be remembered as the genius who started on line searching and making it a reality. Pity we were too early in the consumer space! 

Counter Force, Counter Value

 

Back in the 70s when I spent time on the Comprehensive Treaty Negotiations seconded to ACDA, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, we had concepts of nuclear war such as counter force and counter value. 

The enemy could have a counter force attack, one targeting airfields, silos,  manufacturing, military bases. Or they could have counter value, attacking civilians. Think Dresden and Hiroshima. The intent of counter force was to cripple the enemy's ability to continue to fight by suppressing their weapons. The intent of counter value was massive civilian destruction reducing the moral of the enemy and forcing surrender.

Counter force often had limited value. Counter value was massive human destruction, and the elimination of the will to fight. 

As I noted, Dresden was just such in Germany a case of counter value, as was almost all of the strategic bombing.  Hiroshima was a sine qua non of counter value in Japan. It led to the unconditional surrender of Japan.

Counter force attacks can go on forever. Counter value attacks can be short lived but are potentially morally questionable. 

Thus in the current war with Iran one must ask which strategy to deploy. So far it is just counter force. Is there room for another strategy> 

Data Centers: To Have or Have Not?

 We will attempt to examine data centers, those physical entities which are composed principally computer servers. I have heard some TV financial news reader prognosticate on date centers. It was clear that he was totally clueless. He was eschewing the New York ban. Of course whatever he said had no basis in reality. He was saying there would be tens of thousands of data centers, of millions of square feet each. Just a side note: if there are tens of thousands of data centers each using 10 GW of power that would be 100,000 GW needed. Now as a note, the US today uses 1,400 GW of power[1]. We would need nearly 100 times more than what the US uses this very day! And this guy is some alleged financial genius!

1         Definition

If one seeks to address the issue of data centers one must first define what they are. A typical data center is a massive physical facility which principally is composed of thousands of computer servers. In addition there are inputs and outputs of fiber optic data lines. In the servers or adjuncts to them are massive amounts of memory.

The data center hardware demands massive amount of electrical power, often well into the Giga watt levels. The power may be externally provided or self-provided. The power must have significant redundancy, so that if one source fails an instant switch to a secondary source can be made. Maintenance is a critical factor for with thousands of servers and millions of terabits of date anticipated failures demanding human interface as well as replacements must be available.

The data center also demands massive cooling. The GW input creates and similar amount of heat. Thus cooling is critical and may be accomplished by some balance of water cooling and air conditioning. The latter demands even more power and it can become a deadly circle.

The data center demands massive areas of land. Often in millions of square feet. Inside these massive plants, besides power and computers is billions of mile of interconnection.

Needless to say they also consume computers and memory. More of both than is contemplated in today’s manufacturing world.

2         Disadvantages

Water: Water is used for cooling. Leaving aside the overall thermodynamic issues, massive amounts of water are needed. This is often from the aquifer. It takes drinking water away from humans. Worse, the massive areas covers by the centers means rainfall does not get to percolate down to refill the aquifers! That means a death spiral for water table stability.

Power: From whence do these entities get the power demanded. They can build their own systems which consume massive amounts of hydrocarbons, with the ensuing sequellae, or they purchase from the grid, which is neither prepared for such distribution nor priced so as to not over price consumer services. The devil is in the details, and as best as possible, they have failed to examine these.

Noise: Running computers and environment systems, not to mention power systems creates massive amounts of noise. Noise is both aggravating but it can cause significant harm to individuals. No one has yet to measure these effects but alas they may be the dominant factor in harm.

Pollution: All of the above result in increased pollution.

Traffic: These facilities demand human interaction. Thus significant increases in traffic and resulting negative effects will ensue.

Abandonment: Finally, as history has shown, all too often the initial exuberance and build outs are excessive resulting in bankruptcies and abandonment of facilities. This means buildings and equipment left to rot on viable land, pollution resulting from the toxic materials used in the facilities, and loss of value to the land and local environment.

3         Needs

It is worth considering the actual needs for such facilities and systems. Currently we have an almost faddish use by many. No real economic need has been demonstrated. If one were to compare this to the deployment of PCs or of the Internet, in those cases immediate economic value was provided. However with AI to the consumer, there are lots of gimmicks but no clear value. Would one trust AI to be my medical provider? Hardly. Would I trust it to be my accountant? No way. Who shows up to the IRS, my laptop? Won’t work. Perhaps as a customer services interface, they can’t get any worse than what they are now!

4         Recommendations

My recommendations are simply:

1. Locations should be distant from any human locations and any areas that would cause negative impacts on natural plants and animals.

2. Power should be self-sourced and penalties for excess carbon emissions.

3. Water usage should be at a minimum.

4. Noise levels should be regulated.

5. Funds should be held in escrow in the case of abandonment so as to remedy potential toxic effects.

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[1] https://www.publicpower.org/resource/americas-electricity-generating-capacity

 

Just War?

 The Bishop of Rome has been quoted as:

Asked whether there is a "just war" in Iran, he replied: "I believe this has already been made very clear: in Iran, the criteria for a just war are not present. The theory of the just war dates back to centuries when it was impossible to imagine the weapons and the destructive capacity available to humanity today." 

As we have noted previously, under the Catechetical Canons the current situation with Iran is a country who had repeatedly  stated "Death to America". who has developed and has putatively deployable nuclear weapons, who has demonstrated clear intent to kill those they consider enemies, as well as all other elements required for "Just War" elements. The Bishop has failed to demonstrate his understanding of a lack of concordance whereas we have presented them in detail.

Ockham would be having a field day with this.  

Hospital Food?

 Apparently our current HHS head has proposed "improvements" in hospital food. Now I have had a recent experience with hospital food when my knee surgery was done a year ago. My experience was simple, I ate none of it. None! It was inedible masses of mush and smelled worse than the most recent entry in the morgue. 

Worse, as I was leaving, I was accosted by a woman who apparently managed the food and she was one of the most abusive creatures I have ever met. The rest of the staff was superb!

The good news was I lost 5 pounds and needless to say had no "accidents".

I had a second experience four years ago, after a massive food poisoning episode. Apparently in this hospital you had to order your meals of you never got fed.  So after five days I just had water and lost ten pounds. No one ever questioned my fluid or caloric intake. In my opinion that was gross negligence.

Those who run food services in hospitals in my opinion and in my experience may be the cause of more fatalities than the diseases the patients are being treated for. Strangely enough physicians today, the "hospitalist", is unlikely to ever to examine what the patient has or has not consumed. This can in itself be a cause of fatality. 

The "Guidelines"  sound great for a cafeteria in some corporate environment. They are useless for a hospital one!

Try a Flying Buttress?

 

The latest sign of collapse of NYC is the pending collapse of the Pfizer building. One would think that any competent Civil Engineer would have checked to see if the added stress on the building supports would have resulted in a collapsing strain. I recall having these courses some sixty plus years ago building upon the Medieval Church structures and the flying buttresses. But clearly someone paid no attention and built another building on top of the old one. You cannot balance a Ford 150 atop a Campbell's tomato soup can. It will crunch!

Clearly the NYC building folks seem to be in my opinion as incompetent as the total administration. NYC is collapsing everywhere. Just look at Penn Station, the temporary sidewalk roofing, the empty lots filled with trash, and so on. The current Administration will most likely just accelerate this problem.

So what can be done? Possibly the following:

1.  Close the streets for a few years.

2. Build some flying buttresses to  stop the forward movement. The more it moves the faster it will collapse.

 3. Using automated high cranes, start to remove the floors added.

Or

Get the Department of War  to use one of their smart bombs...just kidding.