How much carbon is around to effect massive climate change?

I read a news report today about Barack Obama easing permissions for offshore drilling of oil and gas. I expect the usual backlash of of various interested parties regarding this news. I see the point from both sides, those vehemently against any kind of fossil fuel exploration and of the USA trying to protect its national interests and lessen its dependancy on foreign supplies.

I watch the third BBC episode, Tropic of Cancer and listened to Steven Reeve talk to government official from Oman about how they must invest in tourism because one day the oil will run out. This reminded me of a talk I heard many years ago about how demand and supply will naturally protect diminishing resources like rain forests.

I suddenly got this thought.... is there not a finite supply of carbon on the planet? The carbon that was collected by the plants and animals which in time turned into the fossil fuels we have today had to come from somewhere.

How much carbon in various forms (e.g. CO2 and Methane) can our environment cope with? Once we have consumed all fossil fuel reserves we will have a plan for alternative energy, demand and supply will dictate this in some shape or fashion. At that point our environment will be able to recover (unless we have found another poison).

The question is: will we have the luxury to witness this? I still don't really have a strong personal view on the full extent of the carbon impact on our environment, largely due to all the contrasting opinions. What motivates me is the enormous amounts of waist in our modern day lifestyles and I feel this has a far greater general impact on the world around us.

So is there enough carbon around to change our environment enough to seriously threaten our existance? I really don't know and I would love to hear your views.

Brilliant! Use Skype for 0800 calls

I had a problem today with my telephone handset as it was not ringing. I also had to make calls to a few utility companies and you know how long you can be tied up on the phone!! I used the callback feature from on of the utility companies an got onto a call with the next one. So between calls and the fact that my phone was not ringing I missed all of them as wasted 2 hours.

I just hate spending time and occupying my phone lines while on hold with 0800 numbers. I then got an idea to use Skype and googled to see if anyone knew about calling 0800 numbers at discounted rate or for free.

Well you can and for free! I found out that people from France, Poland, the UK, and the U.S. can call 0800 numbers in their respective countries for free. I tried it and it works ... you don't even need to by any Skype call credits.

So if you are at work, don't want to use mobile phone minutes or don't want to clog up your phone lines try Skype for 0800 numbers!

Twitter vs Slashdot

I was recently annoyed with the slashdot web site. I posted some commentary and a link to a new business' web site I came across and one of their editors market it as spam. I also recently observed that since I had been using twitter more regularly I only visit slashdot 2 to 3 time per week as apposed to multiple times every day.

I then googled for twitter effect on slashdot. The result was very interesting and as usual I got side tracked by the results. There are many references to "twitter effect" mainly centred around the impact on a web site when a link to it takes off on twitter similar to the digg effect or slashdot effect.

My guess is that many previous news/web link aggregation and dissemination sites have been replace by social networking sites like: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

I still frequent a few news sites and blogs directly, but I find that twitter is playing a larger role in me keeping on the pulse of what is going on right now. It makes me think of the impact the Internet had on newspapers as newspapers found themselves almost constantly out of date. Internet news sites are now more repositories of information than the source of news.

How has Twitter influenced your Internet interaction? Do you rely less on RSS feeds and previously popular websites?

How to Virtualize Your Workforce

I came across this great article from wikiHow on "How to Virtualize Your Workforce". It covers some obvious and not so obvious steps to make this a reality."

"The virtualized workforce (also referred to as teleworking or telecommuting) is a very hot topic but is sadly underused. Often, management is unaccustomed to managing remote employees, so there is a natural fear of reduced productivity. The movement into remote management can be disconcerting, but it has many significant rewards, both immediate and long-term. With the proper application of good management techniques, you will see an improvement in overall productivity, a decrease in attrition, a reduction in corporate expenses and a massive increase in skill set availability. Your company can demonstrate leadership by example, as well as benefiting employees, your local community, and even the environment."

Read the full article here

At-home mums (and dads), a latent workforce

Working around personal and family commitments and preferences has always been something I have often thought about. There is a large part of me that likes working the usual 9-5 in an office with others. I would say that I like the social interaction and the routine. For many others this is often just not an option for them.

I have different perspectives to this got from various experiences I have had over the years. For part of my teenage years, my mum did freelance book keeping from home for several clients which then later turned into a proper accounting practice. Soon after university I ran a computer bureau for a large accounting firm where all of the computer operators where woman and where I became aware of the juggling act women had to do when deciding to start a family.

After my wife and I had a few children this issue became real to me, until then it was something that affected others. We often have the opportunity cost discussion around my wide going back to work and how would we balance all the she things that she has to do and would like to do with making time available for work and the logistics of going out to work.

After finding myself a casualty of the credit crisis, I started a consulting company servicing the industry I have been working in for some time. Some of the services I offer are assisting business to make use of various outsourced technology solutions and building better operational processes to bring costs down and make it scalable. I delve into areas of cloud computing and other virtual computing concepts. This further leads of to implications like how do we define the concept of where and office is, what should constitute an office etc.

In the news and online there is a convergence of peoples live style choices and available technologies which will allow for remote and flexible work arrangements. What interests me is not how this complements the existing work from home, set you own hours make yourself rich business models. Rather how traditional bricks and mortar organisations can change to benefit themselves and their employees.

I am sure there are many studies centred on this and all sorts of data available. But what I see in the solutions I advise and what’s going on in companies around me is very exciting. I would love to get involved with a project that will invest in an infrastructure to enable people to working remote and across all time zones. This is more than what technology can allow; I see this agency of people all with different skills willing and able to do all manner of tasks on their terms.

If you are involved in making this happen right now, or are purely interested in the topic or have information to share, please leave a comment or get in touch.

Software licensing and support in the Cloud

"For the purpose of this discussion let us assume that cloud implies virtualisation."

I posted similar "questions" on other forums, unfortunately without much response.

For a moment lets ignore all the security issues and look at how software licensing and support agreements are impacted on by virtulisation and cloud deployments? I work in the Financial services arena and many software vendors do not officially or unofficially support and sanction the running of their software in virtualised environments.

They give many reasons for this. The main ones are unable to QA stability and performance under virtualised environments, underlying components not supported e.g. databases other software libraries etc,etc,etc. Bottom line it is going to cost them to much to support in the short term. But in the long term I think that they will loose customers.

I know there are performance considerations in virtualisation particularly with trading systems where often high data throughput and low latency systems are a prerequisite. I do however believe there are suitable solutions for this. People just need to think a little out of the box and put conventional wisdom aside.

I imagine that there are a fair number of people who face licensing and support issues around virtualisation, please share your thoughts and experiences by leaving a comment?

Update:

I have found these interesting and related links:

• Cloud Computing's Other Achilles' Heel: Software Licensing
• Clouds Looming for Software Server Vendors
• Is cloud computing a solution for software licensing woes?

New Quantitative Trading Platform

One of the coolest ideas I have seen in a little while. I know many people that are working on their own quantitative trading models, and they all have various problems.

• Actual knowledge and skill to do this effectively *duck*
• Access to quality market data
• Adequate technology to run the models and for back testing
• Lack of capital to trade on a large enough scale

Well.... now there is a solution Algodeal. They provide a platform for your to run and back test your models. If they like it they will give you capital to run them and share in the profits. what more can I say, now take a look for yourself.