Intricate complexities

The latest fad in the world today is to be super-green. Falling off the "grid" energy-wise, recycling as much as possible, and consuming more local goods. In all, I personally feel this is a good trend to start, and even better for our future. But before we all commit, we should investigate the deep intricacies of the situation.

One of the clear benefits of living a more green lifestyle is the sustainability and the reduction in additional carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. For those that have been under a rock for 20-30 years, this means our planet will eventually stop artificially warming, and we don't have to keep drilling and mining for raw materials to make new things.

The recycling triangle has been around for at least three decades and it makes good sense, right? Maybe. Initially it may be more eco-friendly to reuse plastics, glass, paper, and other materials to reduce our consumption of natural resources such as oil and wood. But, let's look a little deeper. Recycling has a cost and that cost might be substantial- we need to move used materials, clean them, and process them into new materials. This directly translates to dollars for employees and transportation costs, as well as carbon from commuters to transportation of goods. Personally, I am willing to spend an extra few cents per plastic bottle I consume if it means it has come from a recycled product. But I don't know what the carbon contributions are, and we need to investigate those.

On another note, most if not all of the paper we consume has come from tree farms. Companies do not roll into a forest and tear it all down for paper. The trees that will naturally grow in a forest are gnarled and inconsistent. Genetically engineered trees planted on farms produce consistent wood, which creates consistent paper. This is another vast improvement in an industry, even if it's a little recognized one.

Anyway, this all brings me to personal conversion. Installing energy efficient windows and utilities is a good step in the right direction. Not only do you save money out of your pocket, you get to reduce your consumption of gas, oil, and/or electricity. That's something to feel good about, right? Maybe. What is the cost in carbon and materials to produce and consume the new utilities and windows? What does it cost in carbon and money to recycle your old washer, dryer, stove, water heater, fridge, etc? What about the windows? There are a lot of vinyl materials in those, and how well do they recycle? The glass has to be melted down and reformed, which costs an immense amount of energy anyway. The gas has to be recharged between the window panes as well. What is the cost of that?

Basically, what I'm saying here is this. We need to carefully study the benefits of conversion, and then the costs. We need to find out if there is a risk of doing as much or more damage by tossing out what we have now just to replace it with slightly better products. The benefit has to far outweigh the cost of sticking with what we have now in order to make the effort worthwhile. But, having said that, I think going forward any NEW products and materials should be produced with a careful eye toward reusing raw materials and resources. What do you think?

Two days with Bird Flu

So, I want to take a moment to thank Al Gore for my next idea. Without him, I would still be searching for a way to kill all avian life forms on the planet in one fell swoop.

Global climage change is our key to putting an end to the impending bird flu pandemic. If we can warm the earth by just a few degrees, the earth's climate will shift drastically. Within half to one centuries, we will have birds flying south to north for the winter. No doubt this will cause a lot of confusion with modern birds, which will cause them to make a wrong turn at the border- causing their demise.

Having survived the past two days with the A(H5N1)- known as the bird flu- I can emphatically say that we need to rid ourselves of ALL currently-capable bird flu carriers. I know this may seem shocking to some of you, and most of you know that I have two birds myself. I just want you all to know that they are exempt from the mass killing, and are hereby pardoned for all bird flu related acts. I'm sorry, but they're good people and they deserve to live.

Anyway, this is the first time I've been quite this sick in a very long time. I actually took Nyquil last night, and Dayquil this morning. For those of you that know me well enough, you know I detest taking drugs for any reason. Sickness is just the side effect of the body doing its job, and a good job it does. Anyway, drink your OJ with breakfast, get enough fluid throughout the day, and eat right. That's your only hope against this now raging epidemic. Oh, and kill a bird. That might help too.

Marcia, Marcia, Google

For the past three or four years at least we have heard about the Google phone, the Google operating system, the Google radio spectrum, and the Google life in general. None of them are real.

First of all, Google is a search company. They catalog information, index it, and provide a simple way for you to query that index. This has led them to software development, because the tools didn't exist. What this doesn't lead them to is building cellphones and computers. Here's why.

When a company develops software in the manner that Google does, they bring on the most talented developers they can get. This creates a honeypot for other developers, drawing them in by the lure. This keeps the development team fresh, and active. But, software development is extremely cheap when you compare it to the value returned to the business. However, when a company develops a cell phone, they need to hire those software developers as well as hardware developers, radio engineers, patent lawyers, pay for FCC licensing, distribution, and of course you need to line the pockets of the carriers to make them use your phone.

Basically, the process is extremely complex, insanely expensive, and something Google has no experience in the market. This is not to say they can't do it- just look at the iPhone- but I sincerely doubt the board members would ever allow it. Ever.

If you are a technology pundit, stop complaining that Google has shorted us by developing a platform of applications for mobile phones, and not a phone itself. You knew better, but you let your desire get ahead of your senses. Do some critical thinking, do some real reporting, and get real.

WRC 2008

Well, after reviewing the 2008 season WRC schedule, it looks like next year will be a little more action packed. Basically, the rally series begins a couple weeks later in the year, and ends a couple weeks sooner. Essentially, about a month has been trimmed.

Also of note, rally Ireland, Norway, Portugal have been nixed, but replaced with Jordan and Turkey. I've seen a preview of what Turkey looks like, and it should be pretty interesting. No matter what, the usual suspects are all there. Germany will prove more difficult than people suspect, Japan will take out front runners, and Greece is always a challenge.

For reference, here's the schedule as posted at wrc.com.

2008 FIA World Rally Championship Calendar
January 24-27 - 76th Rallye Automobile Monte-Carlo
February 8-10 - Uddeholm Swedish Rally
Feb 28 - March 2 Rally Mexico
March 27-30 - Rally Argentina
April 24-27 - Jordan Rally WRC
May 16-18 - Rallye d'Italia-Sardegna
May 29 - June 1 - BP Ultimate Acropolis Rally
June 13-15 - Rally of Turkey
July 31 - August 3 - Neste Oil Rally Finland
August 15-17 - ADAC Rallye Deutschland
August 28-31 - Rally New Zealand
October 2-5 - Rallye de España
October 10-12 - Rallye de France - Tour de Corse
October 24-26 - Rally Japan
November 28-30 - Wales Rally GB

An unfortunate truth

Well, I gave it an honest try. I ran the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 7.10 for a good long while. Truth be told, I liked it quite a bit. But, I've gone back and installed the 32-bit operating system on my AMD64 machine at work.

First off, let me explain why you should care about 64-bit versus 32-bit. In the future, not to long from now, there will only be 64-bit computers coming out of the major vendors. Intel and AMD both have roadmaps leaving the 32-bit architecture in the dust. Not only because of the higher memory limits, but because of other architectural improvements that the addition of an extra 32-bits of data has allowed. In fact, many benchmarks show a speed difference in actual work favoring the 64-bit CPUs. One such example is encoding MP3's a few seconds faster, which pretty much everyone can appreciate.

So why would I stop using a platform that better takes advantage of my new hardware? In a word, software. Software is the final sticking point for most users and computer vendors. While most software can easily be recompiled for the 64-bit platform, few packages take true advantage of it. In addition, some packages do not support it at all! This lack of support from very few software vendors makes my life difficult- and I refuse to make Linux difficult.

This post is a cry out to the authors of Flash, and the men and women working at Google writing their browser extensions and web apps. Support 64-bit platforms! You will soon be left without a choice, and there are already tons of people out there using such software. Or, better yet, if the people writing Gnash (an open source alternative to Adobe's closed source Flash player) crank out improvements in the next six months, most Linux distributions will pick them up for their next release cycle.

In 2007, the 64-bit architecture isn't new. We've had PowerPC chips. SPARC chips, Alpha chips, and the list goes on. Most of these have been around since the 1990's, and are very well supported. This means there has been about a decade at least to develop software support for the 64-bit architectures. And yet, support is still lacking. There's just no excuse for that anymore.