How heavy is the Internet

Using publicly available information, for the first time in the world,the weight of the internet has been calcuated precisely and scientifically. Obviously this information is only really useful to someone attempting to work out the cost of posting the Internet somewhere, perhaps to North Korea. Still, the casual reader -- hi there! -- may still enjoy learning just how damn heavy the thing is.

Around 570,937,778 computers are believed to be connected to the Internet, according to the Internet Systems Consortium. That's an awful lot of heavy hardware jacked into the idiot pipes. In fact, at an average of around 40kg per machine, including your monitor, it all adds up to a staggering mound of electronics. Obviously some of these machines are laptops. Many desktop machines will have printers or scanners plugged into them though, offsetting the difference.

Servers are the place where all your 'Internet' is stored. Picture them as electronic lending libraries, only your book is never on loan, or smeared in sick. Instead, servers serve up the pages you ask for when you type those addresses into your browser window. As you can see, there's a fair number of them. Netcraft estimates there are 175,480,931 servers worldwide.

This is one of the few definitive figures available on the weight of cabling that makes up the Internet. It's the approximate weight of the 15,000km TAT-14 cable that links the US to France, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and the UK. The cable weighs 5.8kg per metre.

Quite a lot of iPhones have been sold, 42 million in total, and all of them connect to the Internet. Collectively they weigh an absolutely mindblowing 6 million kilograms.

BlackBerry: the iPhone for people who like to 'do business'. The 'business people' have spent a huge amount on BlackBerrys. RIM has sold over 50 million of the critters since the gadget was first introduced. The weight soon adds up!

These viruses don't actually weigh anything, but they're a huge part of the Internet you know and love. There are over 287,524 viruses available on the Internet for free installation on your Windows PC.

Web sites are also an important part of the Internet experience, but they don't really weigh very much either. Most of them are electrical impulses, magnetic stripes on hard disks, or electrons floating about the place, giddy with excitement. The Internet Archive stores over 85 billion pages, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The Internet is very heavy indeed. To give you some idea of just how heavy the internet is, imagine an absolutely enormous tower of computers and servers and cables reaching up into the sky like the evil fingers of some apocalyptic demon. Now imagine sparks, thunder, electrical storms. And, on top of it all, an otter screaming pointlessly. That is the closest you are likely to come to visualising the Internet.

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MBAs Consider startups

Business Schools have quietly become the back door to starting your own business. Once considered merely the hallway to a high-salaried career with an investment banking or consulting firm, business schools are now drawing attention from those tinkering in their garages and hoping to find the next big thing. Through virtual and traditional business incubators, business schools are helping students launch startups with everything from fund-raising and networking to finding office space and interns.

During the economic crisis, many people took shelter in graduate programs, while many others who had been pursuing careers at companies large and small sought opportunities to become their own boss so they won't have to worry about the next round of layoffs. These ingredients have come together in a recipe that has graduate business programs cooking up entrepreneurial ideas like never before—from RecipeKey, a reverse search engine that has visitors to its Web site typing in ingredients to get recipes, to WallStreetOasis.com, an online community for finance professionals.

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MBAs face a tough job market

The MBA Class of 2009 was hit harder than expected by the recession. At some top schools, 1 in 5 are jobless 3 months after graduation

According to the latest data reported to BusinessWeek, 16.5% of job-seeking students from the top 30 MBA programs did not get even one offer by the time schools collected their final fall employment data three months after graduation. Last year that was true of just 5% of students. And despite the meteoric rise of salaries over the past several years, starting pay was down this year for the top 30, dipping from roughly $98,000 in 2008 to $96,500. For many programs, it marked the first time since the tech bubble burst that salaries didn't increase. Signing bonuses, too, fell both in value and quantity.

Even students at top schools have been affected by the slump. With MBA mainstays like the consulting and financial services sectors still hurting from the crisis, industries that were once elite schools' bread and butter have hit lean times. The average number of students without job offers three months after graduation at the top 10 programs was 15%, just three percentage points better than the rest of the top 30.

One factor that made this recession different was that it hit MBA students where it hurt the most, with thousands of high-paying finance jobs going up in smoke. The companies usually responsible for doling out generous bonuses dramatically scaled back both their hiring and incentive packages. The percentage of employed graduates who got signing bonuses fell to 71% from 81% the year before, and their median value dropped by $5,000. In 2007 signing bonuses went to about 76% of students who accepted jobs across the top 30. That number fell to 65% in 2009.

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