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  • The future of our energy sources

    Strange thing, I’ve written this article during my vacation and what happened a short time after I were back?

    • Power outage in America
    • Blackout in Great Britain

    I swear, I have nothing to do with that! But could it be that I have somehow received a subconscious message? Can I feel the future? Or am I just thinking of too many things at once? But this confirms my general paranoia somewhat.

    Let’s go on with the stuff that comes out of the wall. Sorry, that it’s a bit outdated, but this is the way I thought BEFORE the power shortages happened.

    Energy and Power Energy consumption is increasing. The modern world as we know it today is not able to survive a single day without electrical power. Computers, fridges, even vehicles could not work and the modern economy would sink into chaos within a few hours. People today don’t think about, how they are addicted to electrical energy. In the year 2000 more than 50 percent of the produced electricity relied on prehistoric energy carriers as oil and coal (see IEA Fact Sheet). As we all (hopefully) know, these reources will be depleted within the next few decades. I think it doesn’t matter if they last for 40 years or for 80 years, estimations vary, in the end the result will be the same. If we begin to plan new energy production techniques THEN, it’ll be too late. Luckily, today many people and companies already have realized this and are researching in areas of alternate power production technologies.

    One of the most promising inventions seems to be the fuel cell. But this is only part of the solution as this lessens the need of not-renewable energy-sources only on the consumer side. The hydrogen has also to be produced and this production also needs energy. It can be produced in several ways and for the most effective technique the only thing (besides water) is electrical power (which currently is produced using oil or coal). One may ask, where the sense behind converting electricity intro hydrogen just to make a bit less electricity out of it (because there are some leaks in the conversion processes). Well, electricity has one very important flaw: It can’t be stored effectively. Hydrogen can.

    In the future, when fossil materials are depleted, alternate sources of electrical power for hydrogen production will have their peak time. This will be the era of solar power plants, wind parks and biomass-reactors. And the best of all is, that the resources which are needed for them are not available in only special parts of the world (as it is today) but evenly distributed all over the globe. Everyone can take advantage of them. This opens the opportunity to an all-new world order, with more democracy than we can imagine today. Ever noticed how often the force of a country is tied to it’s access to resources? Think of America. Cut the pipeline and say bye bye.

    In the days to come everyone can sell the power he produces and the ‘energy-sellers’ of today have to fit more into the role of distributors than producers. This conversion has to be a global process because the main source of power in the future will be solar power and the sun only enlightens 50 percent of our globe. The other side will have to live from the hydrogen it has produced over the day.

    The main beneficiaries of the change to alternate energy will be the poor countries. Many of them have large, unused surface which then can be used to build huge, cheap photovoltaic power plants for example. Today’s large power companies will rely on many little electricity producers instead of fossil resources under their control. Today the countries with the most resources under their control play the big roles in world politics, countries with less resources (or the opportunity to use this resources) have small roles, even if in sum they overweight the big ones.

    Perhaps, if political influence keeps tied to resource-access, the whole world will be politically re-ordered and can become more democratic in the future because, as said before, the access to alternate energy sources is largely evenly divided all across the world.

    Some links: http://www.renewableenergy.com How biomass works How electricity grids work

  • Shrinking company

    Damn, I still haven’t found time to transfer my article from paper to blog, don’t know why. I apologize.

    Back at work my windows-computer didn’t boot from hibernate, a normal boot resulted in BSOD. "inaccessible boot device"… Luckily a chkdsk run in repair console fixed the problem.

    Then while diggin’ through the mountain of mails I found out that three employees were fired, other three have left us on their own will and one was saved by works committee. What the heck is going on here? We hardly have enough resources to keep up with the incoming work not to speak from improving our products. Don’t they realize, that they remove the hard gathered knowledge base from the company?
    I’m way off of getting fired (I’m the last remaining core developer in my area) but it’s a strange feeling that many other co-workers could be gone tomorrow. I’m still remembering the statement from shortly before my vacation: "… retirements were necessary, but are over now…". Crap. Hot air. "Marketing nonsense".
    Side note: We are going through a economizing and reduction wave now for almost a year and the effect on our company’s statistics: zero, nada, nothing. They even have degraded slightly. Doesn’t surprise me, the remaining people are, if ever, hardly able to compensate the reductions.

    On the other side, my girlfriend has carried her computer over to my place and we are playing a bit over network when I come home from work. Worms, Starcraft, Tetrinet and so on. Much fun for me, but she constantly gets better in all the games šŸ˜‰
    At least at home there is some relaxing.

  • US executive orders for Iraqi oil

    Do you want to get juristic immune to practically everything? Then get access to oil in Iraq!
    As said in Executive Order 13303 everything which has somehow to do with Iraqi oil gets practically invulnerable to justice (Section 1b). The Bush administration tries to push US companies into the Iraqi oil-market and now these companies are immune to everything? They could break human rights and couldn’t be punished. An ecological accident could cause huge damage to the environment and nobody would be responsible for it.
    Well, they could even intentionally harm people if it would happen in conjunction wit the production of oil products. I may be a bit paranoid, but I don’t think that it is a good idea to set some companies free from the law. Any other paranoid thoughts out there?

  • Lazyness note…

    I’m back but still off from work for another week. Another small article is being prepared but I don’t know when I’m not too lazy to type it up.

  • Vacation note

    I’m on vacation for a few days. Expect me back in a bit more than a week.

  • Netscape shutdown in progress…

    Mozilla.org now is redirected to Mozilla Foundation. AOL is quite fast with turning websites down. Nevertheless the sub-links, downloads etc., still point to mozilla.org and are still functional.
    I wonder how long this will last…

  • Netscape is now Mozilla

    Netscape is dead.
    Mozilla-developers inside Netscape/AOL will be fired or shifted to other projects. Mozilla will stay alive with help of its great community.
    I wish you all the very best for the future. Mozilla rulez.

  • Worries – Global war and peace

    ##Global War and Peace Humanity is a strange thing: Everyone wants to live in peace. But many try to achieve this goal with force and brutality. This has been true since early stages in the history. There have been only few exceptions as for example Buddhism but even those have some ‘military’ aspects (i.e. Shaolin monks) although they mostly rely on self-defense. Nowadays this has split somewhat. There are already parts in the world where conflicts are solved by talking rather than by battling. The ‘first world‘ is in peace.

    Serious war seems to occur only at the borders of the first world and within countries of the second and third world. Why only there or other way round, why is the first world so peacefully? I think this has something to do with economy. It has only regional influence in market if there is a war in a non-first-world-country (as long as it doesn’t have resources which are needed worldwide) but a war in a first-world-country would have immediate effect in global business. This is because, I think, the first-world-countries are more tied together and interlinked than the other countries. If one country is affected directly, many others are involved indirectly. That’s why the first-world countries try to keep peace within their circle. The side effects of a military conflict are unpredictable.

    The countries of the second and third world are more independent of other countries so a country with strong military forces can attack a weak one without the fear that side-effects can return like a boomerang and hit the own economy.

    How do these conflicts arise whatsoever?
    There are many causes, religion, resources, money, etc. I think one of the main reasons for conflicts in the first world is profit. If I don’t have the chance to get profit out of conflict, why should someone contribute to it?
    In the second and third world this is more different. Money is a motivation too, but there are also reasons of tradition or honor. Take for example the conflict in Israel. Only few know why they are fighting. They are fighting because ‘my father/family fights’, just because its tradition to fight. There is no real benefit for anyone if he wins the dispute.

    In my opinion the consequences of wars become more interesting in the future because the USA is involved in many conflicts all around the world. And being involved means, that some people won’t like you afterwards and these will be trying everything to weaken the western world and US in special. And the US will be more and more be acting like a helpless child in the ocean of self-caused terror, causing even more anti-USA-mood with this behavior. Small advice to Americans: Next time try to elect a president which isn’t that aggressive to other nations and thinks a bit about how other nations think about the USA.

  • Worries – Stock market

    ##Stock market You know shares? You even own some?
    You hope, that while you own them their value rises and that later you can sell them at the higher price so that you make profit?
    Great! Because this behavior is the reason why the whole construction hasn’t collapsed long ago.

    ‘Why should it collapse?’ you ask? Well, one might think that the price of a share is determined by the value of the emitting company. But this is only true at the moment when the company initially sells the shares. After the emission the price of a share is only determined by bidding and demand of the stock market. The company and its growing has no direct influence on the price anymore.

    The crazy spiral begins to spin when enough people buy the share causing the price to increase. This causes more traders to buy the shares hoping that the price will continue climbing so that they can sell them later with high benefit. This again causes the price to increase even more and more and more people want to buy this shares. Suddenly something happens which causes the price to drop significantly (ie. an analysts says the share is highly overrated or the company gets slightly in conflict with law or just a bad rumor is going round). Then many, many stockholders want to get rid of their shares before the drop is hitting them, but it’s too late. Nobody wants to buy them anymore (of course not, they are overrated and the price will drop. Why would anybody buy a expensive share and sell it cheap?).
    And so they sit on a pack of paper which decreases in value with every breath they take. Finally the share price is far below the price at which most people bought them. Only a few people had some gain, those who sold their shares shortly before the big bang.

    What indirectly also happens is, that other shares from other companies can also loose value because for example they are a partner of this one. And then a second spiral starts turning, and this could be the root of a potential stock market crash. We all know that the stock market is highly tied with almost every other market or industry.
    Example: Banks also try to get profit out of shares, but if they do not acquire profit they have to roll over the costs to someone else. Anybody remember the anger when the credit rents raised last time? Be happy, you are keeping the stock market alive šŸ˜‰

    What I’m afraid of (and I’m sure that it will happen sometime) is such a real "Big Bang" when the stock market finally crushes and the whole economy follows.
    Would be a good time to learn carving bows and arrows.

    I hope people will learn not to rely on virtual value created by demand but rather on real created values from companies and industries.

  • Worries – Politics

    I’m worried!

    Not about myself, my work or someone or something special. It’s about the world in general and its future. In my opinion large parts of the world and how everything works together will change completely in the next one or two decades.
    For me it is unimaginable that some things will last in their current state for longer than a few years:

    ##Politics The root of many political changes will be on the north-american continent. The current goals of the American top heads is not to make the world a better place and to fulfill their electors needs but to increase the value of the market and the few companies which it consists of.
    The political management is highly tied with industrial management and the mass media and the all have big influence in each other and everyone tries to get the best out of it just for himself and the few surrounding him. An example: politicians want to get votes, so they try to reach as many people as possible. They have to use the mass media for this, so they promise things to satisfy the mass media companies (ie. weaken anti syndicate laws) so that these in exchange bring only those news about the politician which help him to be elected and fulfill his mission to help the media.
    This is only a small part of the big picture, but nearly all parts consist of such "rings of indebtedness". But slowly things are changing. People get aware of what’s going on behind their back although mass media and politicians are trying to cover everything up. And this knowledge spreads, slowly but steadily.
    At some point in the future, the current leadership will change in elections. Lets hope that the newly elected people will do better work for everyone than currently Republicans do and not lie at us as Democrats did. (You think, Clinton was better than Bush is? Forget it.)

    But I don’t want to blame the American administration alone, Europe has also quite a hike ahead, until it really becomes an "Union". There are lots of controversy points inside the EU and there is no real unity between the member states in many points. Consider just the reactions on the Rise of the FPƖ in 2000 and today’s European Union presidency.
    Former caused sanctions from several other countries (mostly France and Germany) on Austria but latter has managed it to grab the first chair in the EU without much attention (but creates much "hot air" because Berlusconi can’t stand a single critique). If I were up to compare these two, I’d choose Haider. He mostly represents the opinion of his electors, while Berlusconi decides, which opinion his electors should have by using his media imperium. (See the parallelism with America?)

    I think, the problems in Europe will reduce with time and patience. But I can’t predict, how the whole system will look like at that time.

    Whew, this becomes a bit more text than I expected so I’ll split it up into several blogs. Remember, that everything is my personal opinion and that I only represent myself and no one else but I appreciate any additional information/links anyone can point me to and allow me to see more parts and different views of our global political situation.

    P.S.: I only mentioned America and Europe here because I don’t have enough information and news about Asia, Africa and Australia at hand. (I doubt that Antarctica has any serious political activity šŸ˜‰