Call Gordon Freeman! Apple to build $2bn 'data command center' – BLACK MESA? Arizona state and local government officials were beaming on Monday over news that Apple has decided to locate its latest "global data command center" in the state. "It's one of the largest investments ever in Apple history," Arizona governor Doug Ducey said of the $2bn project in a press conference on Monday. "It means a 1.3 …
Let's see.... make a deal involving a loan with a supplier who builds a huge facility and is expecting large orders of product. Cancel all orders to force supplier into bankruptcy. Supplier has to pay back loans and turn over facility. Company gets tax breaks, etc. and great press about what they're doing for the local economy. Yep... in order and to perfection.
>When you are above 1million, wouldn't it not mKe sense to use sq/meter?
No. Sq/yd would be more appropriate.
There's nothing intrinsically better about metric. We could easily all use hex if everyone was happy with it. It's a question of what everyone understands and can relate to, and in the place concerned, that would be imperial.
I still don't get metric. It seem arbitrary. If you're counting on your fingers, base 11 is the logical base to use. Why would you go to two significant places before you've used up all your fingers?
Because the western world has been using base 10 for many centuries? Just because you can come up with an argument why base 11 could have possibly been what we ended up with is irrelevant, we ended up with base 10. So it makes sense to design a measurement system around it.
If the English (we should probably call it "American" now...) system was base 11 or base 16 or whatever you might have an argument, but it is a hodgepodge of historical quantities that are based on no common 'base' at all. You know damn well why the metric system is superior, you're just being contrary.
"it always amazes me that the US folks still use sq/foot."
As does the UK property and retail sectors, who routinely quote property sizes in square feet, and talk about sales per 000 square feet. Even in Ireland, where they went metric with far more gusto, the retail sector still talk in sales per square foot.
"Last year, when Apple was searching for a place to house a factory that makes a stronger glass for its gadgets, Mesa pulled out the stops. The city, which was ravaged by the 2007 housing crash, offered tax breaks, built power lines, fast-tracked building permits and got the state to declare a vacant 1.3 million-square-foot facility that Apple was exploring a foreign trade zone. With unemployment high, such are the lengths that towns are willing to go to to lure the world’s most valuable company.
Governor Jan Brewer and the Arizona Commerce Authority estimate that the manufacturing facility will create at least 700 quality jobs in the first year and generate significant capital investment. The project also will produce approximately 1,300 construction and other associated jobs for the people of Arizona.
"
I wonder how much more they are offering for a remotely operated data center employing a handful of security guards and a few cleaners
Right; so Apple bought a big shed from a bankrupt erstwhile supplier that they bankrolled, (before they fell out over quality and quantity issues), which they are now going to fill with racks of disk drives. Because it's got cheap power and a couple of data motoways going past the front gate. see TUBES by Andrew Blum for an interesting general read on data centres.
Wouldn't it be delightful if they used gazillions of very low power networked Raspberry Pi 2s as servers. I'd have RaspberryPie over Apple Pie any day.
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