Jay Walker: A library of human imagination

[marcusnicko]

there are other sources of power which don't use coal(nuclear , solar, hydro...)

[bergenstation]

Is he a jewish?

[Yankeefan6190210]

It is the Jay Walker who founded Priceline

[fabiolous72]

yep

[Psypomp]

I saw this in Wired a couple moths ago.. I don't like the magazine, but the article on his library was breathtaking.. I can't believe this guy accumulated so many important artifacts of humanity.

[someman7]

The definition of indulgences presupposes that forgiveness has already taken place: "An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven" (Indulgentarium Doctrina 1, emphasis added). Indulgences in no way forgive sins. They deal only with punishments left after sins have been forgiven.

[NegativeNick]

I think you're forgetting that this is all bullshit anyway and has no barring on real life, it's fantasy!

[someman7]

If you meant sin, then you're wrong.

[someman7]

One never could "buy" indulgences. The financial scandal surrounding indulgences, the scandal that gave Martin Luther an excuse for his heterodoxy, involved alms—indulgences in which the giving of alms to some charitable fund or foundation was used as the occasion to grant the indulgence. There was no outright selling of indulgences.

[someman7]

The Catholic Encyclopedia states: "[I]t is easy to see how abuses crept in. Among the good works which might be encouraged by being made the condition of an indulgence, almsgiving would naturally hold a conspicuous place. . . . It is well to observe that in these purposes there is nothing essentially evil. To give money to God or to the poor is a praiseworthy act, and, when it is done from right motives, it will surely not go unrewarded."

(be sure you'll get my posts for every lie i find)

[RantKid]

i dont really understand the point of this TED talk...not one of TED's strongest.

and wtf is up with the rolex commercials at the end. who watches that.

[IlluminatyKL]

I have to agree

[HuckleberrySlim]

wow dont we all feel like bastards now (not sarcasm)

[spazammm]

rant rant rant... yawn

[roflcopter2225]

Wow, I never thought about the energy I use on my computer in respect to coal being consumed. All that CO2 and SO2, oh boy. I wish solar panels were cheaper. Perhaps someone needs to study more molecules that release electrons when exposed to UV light. I hope when I finish college one day I can do something like that.

[ssproutz]

I guess TED should stick to arty themes as the science provided by their presenters is deeply flawed.

[akushiii]

i agree... and after viewing a few scientific presentations, i decided not to waste my time on TED at all, there are plenty of credible presentations of scientific ideas

[Monchanger]

So you propose to fight alleged bad science with empty claims? Interesting...

[uvendire]

Guttenberg bible is NOT the first printed book. Look history of Korea and China please.

[Henrin]

actually yes it IS the first printed book. The Japanese, Chinese and Koreans printed on SCROLLS. Not books.

Although I have tried for 5 minutes to find a picture of one of these scrolls, i couldn't find anything. So until I ever see one, well, you know, i just can't bring myself to believe in it.

[Ross3]

I think you mistake a book for actually having to be hinged when this is not the case. There are stone tablets that are considered books. So scrolls or stone tablets, it does not matter.

The Diamond Sutra is the oldest printed book, preceding the Gutenberg Bible by almost 600 years. Look it up.

[Henrin]

yeah i know, i did look it up, i just couldn't find a picture. but yeah, now I have.

this seems to be a matter purely of definition.

the Diamond Sutra is indeed the oldest text - i agree to that of course - but to call it a book is like me calling a telegram an e-mail.

i mean really, when was the last time you bought a book without pages? we should really stop switching around the meanings words have.

but yeah, oldest text. i'll give it that. but no way in hell is it a book.

[GaddingImp]

keywords: Movable type, Printing press

DUH, it's not the first printed book. Who said it was?

[mikedubya]

Well does anyone know just how much energy is produced by a lump of coal? Maybe he was talking about the energy itself, not literal equivalent amounts of coal?

[mae1958]

Thanks, I enjoyed that. That library is a dream! I could spend my life in a place like that!

[fuunguus]

one lump of coal, no-one is stupid enough to believe that!! wtf, apparently i used 19 lumps of coal to see this video, lol.

[gorillasofthemist]

I agree, he does talk down to the audience (an audience filled with very smart people, no less), and he also doesn't tell the full story of some of what he presents, but that library looks awesome. Seriously, that looks like something that should come out of the Golden Compass. Just amazing.

[ShaneM686]

I agree with this. Also, the internet is much faster and more efficient, so perhaps when he spoke... there were 100mhz computers that were the super computers of his talk....

All the servers, people repairing them, the cable lines laid down, people who did it, transportation of all the equipment... on and on... I could see how it could be calculated(awhile ago) to equal that.

I don't see how it can be now though.

[atypicalguy]

I had a feeling the guy was full of shit. His 1Mb = 1 piece of coal confirmed it. I'm no physicist but I suspect a gigabyte MP3 player doesn't require the equivalent of burning a pile of coal to transfer files to a computer. Seriously, why does TED invite these people? That whole talk was fluff. Nothing of value was contributed.

[farvision]

atypicalguy, I think you are right.

The theoretical limit from thermodynamics is far below the lump of coal burning, and we are almost certainly doing much better.  Unfortunately he was vague about what he was talking about, so an exact calculation is hard.

[bersaba]

I agree atypical guy. I just ran a few numbers through my calculator and, if the 1mb = 1 bit of coal was true, my buddies and I (that I lan with) would be about 1/1000th of a small power station.

[peterbriers]

He said: over the internet. It can be true, in a weird kind of way.

When you request a file on the internet, it has to go through a lot of cables (that had to been placed there = energy), trough a LOT of servers (servers running = energy). Somebody had to put the file on the internet (= energy)

So, depending on how you look at it, it might have some truth

[mikedubya]

Exactly, peterbriers. Not to mention the energy required to build all the computers, to transport them, to house them securely... One server room at UCI required two air conditioners running at full blast 24/7 simply to keep the computers from overheating.

[bersaba]

Perhaps, but I'd love to see the science behind it. You'd have to look at where you're downloading it from, where it's at. What transmission method you use etc etc. I wonder if anyone's actually done that, or if he was just guessing?

[commandingheights]

Worst TED talk ever.

[seanarrative]

wow, cool library!

[qkholster]

This guy doesn't mention that many of the Nazi scientists came to America after the war to start up the US space program. Much of our automotive technology came from the Nazis and mountains of scientific literature. He's speaking like the world is black and white and his audience only consists of children.

[darkstar000]

ummmm.... he was just using a single GENERAL reference to show contrast and juxtaposition of the two... fuck your crazy if you think the people in the audience are that stupid to just be like oh my god nothing good came from those german scientests.

And he never mentions Nazi Scientest specifically, he just said it was a device created by man IN nazi germany, not NAZI SCIENTESTS ARE BAD M'kay.

fuck your nuts

[jingleshady]

This guy is speaking to us as if we were children.

[sosolid2kk]

Estimated North American Data Transfer per Month = 11,000 Petabytes (11,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes).

1 MB = 1,048,576 bytes

11,000 petabytes/1 MB = 10,490,417,480,468.75

So apparently, North America alone, uses nearly 10.5 billion lumps of coal a month just to keep the internet running?

Lol, I smell BS. :)

[chikotube]

i bet he refers to all the energy used to operate the quantity of machines that are getting you your information while you wait for your file transfer to complete. (around 20 servers and a few SANs running for a few seconds). Of course for the sake of brevity he's excluding some points about simultaneous connections and their efficiencies.

[Doomsetter]

He obviously has NO clue how the internet works or its orgins.

[kelseywall]

Wow. I never knew it takes so much energy to download.

[code933k]

And it isn't a library... That's what mortals are used to name touristic museum...

[code933k]

ADN = machine? Coal = Megabyte? And that means not-for-free? If this where a discourse of some man from 500 years ago it'd be somewhat respectable. But it is not. The result: Too much imprecision and fables to think seriously about it.

[BodaciousBurnley]

95 Theses Mr. Walker, not 90. A good speech though, and a really interesting place that library. I'd like to see it.

[PlayT0E]

Time to begin powering the INTERNET (and everything else) on something other than coal.

The front runner would be wind.

[FreiheitKampfer]

lol

[qkholster]

No, it would be solar.

[PlayT0E]

For now, wind power is cheaper and more reliable. In a decade or so, solar will catch and pass wind power as the #1 choice.

[ssproutz]

Who says wind power is no.1 choice? Show us the evidence.

[PlayT0E]

Of the renewable sources, we see that price per kWh for wind being lower than the rest. Wind is now price competitive with coal. The technology development of other sources is catching up, and will eventually be cheaper than wind.

[Drynae]

Indeed, there is nothing more powerfull in our universe then light. Not sure if it's the same, but if we could harness light (which we are partially do naturally anywhoo), we'll have endless possibities.. unless the universe has an end. ;)

[GaddingImp]

Not true. Black holes trap light.

[wo00ody]

basically, mass traps light

[GetLostInCompost]

He is full of shit, he deserves a ticket for jaywalking with a lumb of coal in a zip lock bag

[dollaresque]

I thought it was the same Jay Walker as the founder of PRICELINE and WebGrocer and Walker-Digital biz incubator. Fairly rare name, and still multiple people have it, lol.

[intrepgun]

"haha, jay walker, i get it!" - channeling philip j. fry

[qpwnsall]

This guy is so full of shit. It does NOT take a lump of coal to download a megabyte, if that were the case the entire world would run out of coal within a year.

[kalaway]

that library gives me the shivers *want*

[Ayla8711]

Holy shit. It really takes that much energy to download 200 megabytes!?

[TomConger]

Probably not. Bear in mind a "lump" of coal is not an actual unit of mass. He's making it up.

[dogtv]

rolex weak.