Status of 6.0 for production systems

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Chris [mailto:chris at childeric.freeserve.co.uk]
>Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 3:46 PM
>To: Ted Mittelstaedt
>Subject: RE: Status of 6.0 for production systems
>
>
>Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>>>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Michael Vince
>
>>>While most people aren't using a pentium 1 to run a water sprinkler
>>>system, there are a countless amount of people using machines
>>>for things
>>>that aren't ideally power efficient. A lot of people using old PCs and
>>>Internet gateways in their home network and nothing else. This is a 24
>>>hour PC running just to provide Internet where a basic Netgear home
>>>router 500ma device can do it just as well, (5volts * 0.5amp =
>>>2.5watts), a lot of people use FreeBSD as a server in some way on a
>>>network and need to keep it somewhat up to date for security reasons
>>>this also means 24 hour running.
>>
>>
>> Hmm - let's see now, where does this extra "wasted" power go?  It
>> is turned into heat.  Which heats your house.  Which means you do
>
>A lot of it doesn't, it gets lost to the atmosphere at the
>power station
>and in transmission losses.
>
>> not have to run the furnace so much, thus saving energy there.
>
>If you mean gas fired, almost all the heat is generated inside
>your house

There's a huge number of people that heat with electric, and more
and more every day since more people are living in apartments these
days, and the apartment complexes, particularly the new ones,
are going electric baseboard heaters since that way they can bill
the resident their exact usage.

Also even a gas furnace uses electricity for the blower, quite a lot
of it.

>>
>> So you spend more energy to run inefficient PC's and save energy
>> in not running your furnace.  Seems to me to be a wash, here.
>
>So the saving of C02 emissions by reducing your gas heating is not as
>great as the extra C02 emissions generated by your PC, by quite a large
>amount I believe.

Older gas furnaces are about 70% efficient, even newer ones
are about 80%.  A lot of energy goes up the flue.  You can get
90% efficient furnaces but they cost double or more than a
standard one (I know, I own one) so most people don't buy them.

A natural gas fired power plant can get more efficiency.

>>
>> I should also point out that in many areas power is generated by
>> wind.  Here in the Pacific NW you can pay a bit extra on your
>> power bill to have all your electricity come from wind if you want.
>
>I wish we could have more commitment to sustainable energy in UK but UK
>governments noise about it _is_ wash sadly.
>
>>>A lot of people on the FreeBSD mailing
>>>lists like the idea of getting rid of their clunky old PC routers and
>>>still using a good firewall like Packet Filter by using the MIPS based
>>>linksys WRT54G router that could run FreeBSD, while there is no
>>>port for
>>>this on FreeBSD the closest front for this would be NetBSD.
>>>
>>
>>
>> At the ISP I work at we USED to recommend Linksys routers.  Then
>> we found that without exception they fail after about a year to two
>> of continuous use.  Therefore the person goes and buys another router.
>> Talk about wasted energy of manufacture and increased use of landfill
>> space.
>
>That is indeed a waste but consider that in that year the PC at 150
>watts has consumed 60 times as much power as the router at 2.5 watts. I
>make that 1314kWh for the PC and 21.9kWh for the router 24/7
>for a year.
>Anyone know how much power it takes to manufacture and deliver a small
>router? And maybe other routers last a bit longer.
>
>Where this comes back just a little to topic is if an OS such
>as FreeBSD
>can be made to run as effectively on an older PC as Windows on a new PC
>the new PC doesn't have to be manufactured and the old PC doesn't have
>to go into landfill. And then the FreeBSD project _is_ saving the world.

>
>>
>> You need to rethink your views on energy.  The problem in the world
>> today is not electrical energy.  We can generate all the electric
>> power we could ever need using wind energy, for very little more
>
>There is actually some debate about how much sustainable energy we can
>produce globally, and we also have to think about the world tomorrow
>when low consuming countries convert to consumer societies, eg China.
>

As long as the Chinese government is a dictatorship they will not
permit China to become dependent on foreign oil, they are far too
paranoid for that.  China is the world's sixth largest oil producer,
and 60 per cent of its oil consumption is domestically produced. Oil
makes up only 23 per cent of the country's total energy consumption,
far less than coal, which accounted for 68 per cent, and also less
than the world average, which is 40 per cent.  According to BP's
Statistical Review of World Energy 2005, China consumed 310 million
tons of oil in 2004, accounting for 8 per cent of the world total,
whereas the United States consumed 938 million tons -- a quarter of
the global total and three times China's consumption.

The International Energy Agency estimated the growth of China's oil
consumption for 2005 has so far been a mere 3.2 per cent, and the
growth of import of crude for the first nine months of the year was 4
per cent, while exports of the fuel increased by 27.1 per cent. For
processed oil, imports dipped by 16.4 per cent and exports climbed 38.2
per cent.

During this period China's economic growth was much higher and should
have produced a cooresponding higher growth of oil consumption.  Clearly
something is going on.  If you adjusted for economic growth China's
growth of imports of oil would be negative.

I think it's apparent that the Chinese central government is gradually
working to wean China off foreign oil.  One of these days we will wake
up and find China's oil imports are zero, and that 100% of it's oil
needs are satisfied by internal production.  I suspect at that time we
will see China be a lot less tolerant of shenanigans like the US war
in Iraq.

Ted