geekosystem

Well, it's Wednesday evening, so chances are, by this point, you have a pretty good idea how this week is going. We hope it's going well for you! If it's not, though, take a moment to consider this -- no matter how bad a week you're having, Applebee's is having a worse one. Between a PR meltdown that will be held up in communications classes as an example of how not to interact with your customers until the stars wink out in the sky and an assault on one of their franchises by no less than a figure of villainy than The Joker himself, the restaurant would probably like to just call in sick, pull up the covers, and go back to bed. And as loathe as we are to celebrate someone else's misery... actually, I guess we're not, especially when it's this funny!

Intel servers have been getting a spa treatment to try and cut energy costs and it seems to be working. The company has been running some of its servers submerged in experimental mineral oil baths for a year in an effort to cut down the energy they use running and cooling the machines -- and the expense associated with it, lest anyone think this is a totally altruistic endeavor. After a year, the results are in, and they're pretty promising.

Servers use a lot of energy. They use energy to run, get hot and then use even more energy for the air conditioning that keeps the waste heat at bay. In order to combat this inefficiency, which is only bound to increase with the booming popularity of the cloud, Microsoft has proposed an interesting, if far-in-the-future solution: Distribute cloud servers to businesses and homes for use as heaters. "Data Furnaces" as Microsoft dubbed them in a research paper on the subject would provide exhaust that, while too cool for energy regenration (104-122 °F), is just right for space heating. In addition to reducing waste, the initiative also has to potential to increase the overall efficiency of the cloud servers involved by making it far more practical to locate specific servers near the areas they serve.