Conspiracy Theory #1

[Walter Bright]

BCS wrote:
> Even if you have network parallelism, CPU loads still costs money. Many 
> server farms are not space limited but power limited. They can't get 
> enough power out of the power company to run more servers. (And take a 
> guess at what there power bills cost!)

I've often wondered why the server farms aren't located in Alaska, for 
free cooling, and the waste heat used to heat local businesses. They can 
turn a cost (cooling) into a revenue source (charge local businesses for 
heat).

There's a peculiar old brick building in downtown Seattle that was 
called the "steam plant". I always wondered what a "steam plant" did, so 
I asked one of the tourist guides downtown. He said that the steam plant 
had a bunch of boilers which would generate steam, which was then piped 
around to local businesses to heat their buildings, as opposed to the 
later practice of each building getting their own boiler.

So, the idea has precedent.