Peak oil is coming

I find it absolutely amazing the way the human race is sleep-walking into a couple of related disasters. Our children are going to ask ‘what were they thinking of’.

Firstly we all know about the half-hearted attempts by our government to address climate change.  The other highly related issue is peak oil.

We have known for years that oil production in any system follows a bell-shaped production curve (the Hubbert curve – check out ‘peak oil’ in Wikipedia). This means that inevitably the world’s production will reach a peak and then slowly decline.  If you think abut it for 10 minutes that is pretty obvious.  If oil demand continues to rise then the inevitable result is a rapid rise in the oil price, shortages, and a major economic crisis.

When will this happen?  Expert opinion varies from ‘it is happening now’ to ‘after 2030′.  The UK Energy Research Council says around 2020.

This is after the next election, so the politicians obviously don’t need to bother with this.  There are much more urgent problems.

Someone needs to teach them the difference between ‘urgent’ and ‘important’.  Not taking action now has consequences.

The solution to the climate change issue and the peak oil issue is the same.  Renewable energy and nuclear.  It would be nice to say no nuclear, but we have ignored this issue for so long that a nuclear period is probably inevitable.  If the crisis is coming in ten years we need to give this serious attention and do something serious now.

Ebooks

There is a lot of activity on the ebook front.  If you have not been following these developments, drop by your local Waterstones and try out a Sony ebook.  You load up your book(s) and read on a screen, surprising like reading words on paper.

These gadgets use different technology for the screen. These (Electronic paper) screens have two really useful properties.

1. You read them using ambient light rather than being back-lit which is much easier on the eye.
2. They only use power when the screen changes, ideal for reading.  Power consumption is minute.

You can carry a whole library around in a gadget about the size of a paperback.

I really like the reader gadgets, but haven’t bought one because

Netbook, Tablet or Courier

My mobile phone is too limited for any real work, my laptop is too big and only has a few hours battery life.  I need a smaller computing device that doesn’t weigh much or take much space, but which will do proper computing  jobs plus of course web surfing.

I still think the favourite is the netbook.  A possibility is the upcoming Apple tablet.  However Microsoft have come up with a third alternative that is really cool.  This is a tablet-like device, but with two screens, that folds.   They call it the Courier.  I really think two screens can work really well.

But no keyboard?

More details and a little video here: http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-first-details-of-microsofts-secret-tablet

Netbook – Smartbook

A smartphone is a mobile phone with some computer capabilities, such as web browsing and email.  A Netbook is a small notebook computer.  So a Smartbook is what?  Something between a Smartphone and a Netbook.?

You might think so.

Take device A.  This has 64 meg memory, a mobile phone operating system (windows CE or Android) a couple of gig of flash memory.  In other words the same spec as a smartphone but without the phone bit and with a screen and keyboard.

Device B.  A gig of main memory, maybe even a dual core processor, 160 gig disk, a full-blown multi-user operating system with a full set of office applications.

Obviously device A is a smartbook and device B a netbook.

Wrong. If device A has an intel processor and a Microsoft operating system and device B has an ARM processor and Unix.

It is madness, but the definition of a smartbook now is apparenrlty that it has an ARM processor because ARM processors are the ones you have in your mobile phone.

This is a triumph of marketing for Microsoft/Intel.

It has to stop.

Eternal Earth-Bound Pets

I love this site http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/

Quote

You’ve committed your life to Jesus. You know you’re saved. But when the Rapture comes what’s to become of your loving pets who are left behind?   Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind.

We are a group of dedicated animal lovers, and atheists. Each Eternal Earth-Bound Pet representative is a confirmed atheist, and as such will still be here on Earth after you’ve received your reward.  Our network of animal activists are committed to step in when you step up to Jesus.

Swoopo

About a year ago I blogged about Telebid, the on-line bidding site with a difference. The difference is that you need to be a chump to fall for the proposition.  I just checked to see if they had been closed down now, but I see they are now called Swoopo.    (www.swoopo.co.uk)

It looks like a very cool auction site with some real bargains. There is an upmarket Viaio laptop going for £44.80p  What is the catch?

The catch is that it costs money to bid. They state very clearly that bidding starts at 10p and it costs 50p for each bid. And each bid ups the price by 2p or 10p.  Do some math.  The Sony was a 2p auction, so a price of £44.80  means that there must have been 2240 bids.  At 50p per bid that means they have made well over a grand in bidding fees with five minutes to go.

In a bizarre twist, they are auctioning packs of 300 bids (worth £150). One pack was sold for £28.32 on a 2p auction so they have made an amazing £708.

Is this a scam? Not at all.  They are not cheating and are very clear about how the site works.  You just have to be dumb to fall for it.

This was started by a very clever German guy  with presumably no conscience  at all.  There is an interview with the Manager of Sucker Development  - sorry Business development here.

You would think Amazon could get something as simple as this right

I have been receiving an Amazon Web Services newsletter but decided to un-subscribe.

Easy – you just hit the unsubscribe button and you are done: right?

Wrong.  Number one you have to sign in.  I had forgotten my password.  The password refresh function requires that you enter a code from a distorted image.  So distorted I had to have two goes.

I got the email, reset the password.  Then I was taken to the shopping page.

Back to the email, clicked on the link again, went to a page with my name, address and checkbox for this newsletter.  I unchecked the checkbox and submitted.

Error!  I have to enter a valid State.  Uh.  In the first place I hadn’t changed my address, and in the second place we don’t have states in the UK.

So I enter a state (XX) the postman with think they are blowing him kisses.

Done.

About five minutes for something that should have taken 5 seconds.  Not to mention my blood pressure.

Project Governance

I overheard a guy talking on his mobile phone on the train yesterday.  I heard the term ‘Project Governance’ for the first time.  What a useful phrase.  And how out of date I must be – it even has a Wikipedia entry.

Google Chrome OS – not exactly a threat to Windows

The press have gone wild over the Google operating system announcement.

Google gets set to shatter Windows’ dominance
Google’s operating system escalates Microsoft duel

etc.

I don’t think so.  This is another Linux distribution.  There are hundreds of these including Ubuntu (the hot distro du jour), Moblin from Intel, Google’s own Android and for that matter the Apple Mac Operating system which is built on Linux.

What is meettheboss for?

I got a call the other day from www.meettheboss.com  a business social network.  I had been recommended by the CEO of HSBC or some such nonsense and I could participate in some sort of program and get in front of the creme de la creme of decision makers yada yada  I kept on asking ‘how much’  then there was yada yada ‘how much’.  £9,000.  I put the phone down.

I have signed up as a punter and checked the launch press release.  Apparently it is a business social network aimed at the finance industry launched last summer.  It looks very nice (expensive – allegedly $50million – HOW MUCH!!!). 

There is no evidence that  the members are finance industry people, so I guess that objective fell by the wayside fairly quickly.  The USP is that there is a two-tier system with ‘C’ level executives in a different class from us punters.  From the press release:

 “These executives are protected and this is what is missing from any other business networks out there – they don’t have the safety and security of being in a safe environment with peers and the top 10 global financial services organisations in the world don’t have the ability to network within the C level, and we’ve created a safe platform for them to do this.”

Now I don’t see the CEO of anyone significant spending time at his computer networking with other CEOs via some social networking site.  I just don’t see it.  These are important busy people, if they want to network with someone they get their secretary to fix lunch. 

The discussion forum got six posts/comments in the last 4 business days so it is not eactly a hive of activity. 

Compared to a really useful facility like Linkedin I somehow don’t see this one making it.  But we will see in due course.