Seems that Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s CEO, posted something similar about moving a petabyte of data a couple months ago. He chose to use a sailboat for his example.
“Bit meters per second” or “megabyte kilometers per hour” would be a better measure than just “bits per second”.
I live on a fixed income, so hourly wage isn’t a very relevant metric. It wouldn’t even fit in my place. I couldn’t take it with me when I move, and I move a lot.
Would even this [source] be too large? It’s only ~50lbs (~22 kg), so moving it should be possible. (This is not an endorsement of the specific machine or this class of machines, I didn’t look very closely.)
I can’t sell an extra hour either, but reverse the situation: would you be willing to wash dishes for an hour for $2? (If so, I have a few jobs for you that are harder to automate than dishwashing… ;-))
I’ve lived in apartments where this would not fit. And I don’t think I know anyone who, after finishing dinner, would actually go and earn money during the time they used to spend washing up.
Everyone in the western world you mean ? Because 2 euros per hour is much more than the minimal wage in many countries. Sorry for nit-picking but forgetting that more than half of the world doesn’t live in as much comfort as we do is a frequent bias (probably a consequence of availability bias, we don’t see them as often).
Dishwasher efficacy is variable. Where I live, the water is actually hard enough that I have to hand scrub most of the dishes I use because the dishwasher alone won’t clean them properly. It only barely takes me less time to get many of my dishes dishwasher-ready than to clean them entirely by hand
If you download a LOT of old movies onto your PC, a truck full of old tapes heading towards you, could be a great internet speed up from your perspective.
Or a pizza delivering man, he could bring you some files in less time than the email.
At least in principle, some “station wagons full of tapes”, cargo planes in the sky full of USB flash drives and pedestrians running on the streets with a massive data storage devices in their bags—they all together could increase the network bandwidth we need.
Andrew Tanenbaum
Tony Dye
From your link:
“Bit meters per second” or “megabyte kilometers per hour” would be a better measure than just “bits per second”.
Are there useful generalizations which can be derived from this?
“Shut up and multiply” works for practical purposes too.
(One of my favorite shut-up-and-multiply results: automatic dishwashers cost less than 2 euro per hour saved, so everyone should have one.)
I live on a fixed income, so hourly wage isn’t a very relevant metric. It wouldn’t even fit in my place. I couldn’t take it with me when I move, and I move a lot.
Would even this [source] be too large? It’s only ~50lbs (~22 kg), so moving it should be possible. (This is not an endorsement of the specific machine or this class of machines, I didn’t look very closely.)
I can’t sell an extra hour either, but reverse the situation: would you be willing to wash dishes for an hour for $2? (If so, I have a few jobs for you that are harder to automate than dishwashing… ;-))
I’ve lived in apartments where this would not fit. And I don’t think I know anyone who, after finishing dinner, would actually go and earn money during the time they used to spend washing up.
Everyone in the western world you mean ? Because 2 euros per hour is much more than the minimal wage in many countries. Sorry for nit-picking but forgetting that more than half of the world doesn’t live in as much comfort as we do is a frequent bias (probably a consequence of availability bias, we don’t see them as often).
True, but “everyone on LW” seems to be fairly defensible.
Dishwasher efficacy is variable. Where I live, the water is actually hard enough that I have to hand scrub most of the dishes I use because the dishwasher alone won’t clean them properly. It only barely takes me less time to get many of my dishes dishwasher-ready than to clean them entirely by hand
You’re assuming away a lot of individual variation in time spent manually washing dishes.
If you download a LOT of old movies onto your PC, a truck full of old tapes heading towards you, could be a great internet speed up from your perspective.
Or a pizza delivering man, he could bring you some files in less time than the email.
At least in principle, some “station wagons full of tapes”, cargo planes in the sky full of USB flash drives and pedestrians running on the streets with a massive data storage devices in their bags—they all together could increase the network bandwidth we need.