Emergic: June 7, 2006 Archives

Wednesday, June 7, 2006

How the iPod Won

[The iPod] puts you, not them, in control. Basically, the record labels are devotees of the Henry Ford business model: 'You can have any music you want so long as it's what I want to give you.' But using the cyberspace jukebox, you're no longer at their mercy. You don't have to pay for the four filler tracks on every album. You don't have to buy albums at all.
...
And you can play them in the same way. Indeed, by plugging the iPod into a pair of speakers, many people are dispensing with a traditional home hi-fi set up altogether. The sound quality isn't as good (purists say), but it's good enough, and for many - perhaps most - of us the gain in control and simplicity easily outweighs the disadvantages. So the iPod signals the end of another, if less malign, producer tyranny - hi-fi manufacturers beware.

General | PermaLink | Comments (3)

As per the cost, iPod not seems to be the coolest technology ! I guess, in an year or two, we are going to see the biggy competitors of IPod !

Posted by Vaibhav

As per the cost, iPod not seems to be the coolest technology ! I guess, in an year or two, we are going to see the biggy competitors of IPod !

Posted by Vaibhav

I agree with you Vaibhav. However, I am still confused about the Ipod trend. I don't like them very much...

Posted by Pete

Vinod Khosla and Ethanol

ZDNet writes about an interview of Vinod Khosla by Walter Mossberg at the D conference:

There are plenty of acres to grow corn and collect biomass, called cellulosic (made from woodchips, orange juice pulp, grasses, corn stalks—any plant waste that will produce carbohydrates and sugar) to distill ethanol economically. Estimates vary, he said, as to how many acres of farmland would be needed. His estimate is that about 40 million acres are needed to replace all the gasoline used in the U.S., and that farmers would benefit economically as well. “Forty million acres is as much land as we pay farmers not to grow food on today,” Khosla said.

In fact, many in the energy food chain would benefit. Ethanol is less expensive to develop than hydrogen, which is nice for automakers. The farming industry has a new cash crop and less pressure on subsidies. It's lower risk and a more rapid path to efficient and green energy. Oil companies could become distillers and avoid the high risk oil patches.

Emerging Technologies | PermaLink | Comments (6)

US agriculture is a huge complex machinery for converting fossil fuels into biomass. The question is: how much fossil fuel is used for growing corn for generating ethanol, etc? Here is a snip from a Salon article:

"David Pimentel, a professor of ecology at Cornell University who has been studying grain alcohol for 20 years, and Tad Patzek, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, co-wrote a recent report that estimates that making ethanol from corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel itself actually contains.

"The two scientists calculated all the fuel inputs for ethanol production—from the diesel fuel for the tractor planting the corn, to the fertilizer put in the field, to the energy needed at the processing plant—and found that ethanol is a net energy-loser. According to their calculations, ethanol contains about 76,000 BTUs per gallon, but producing that ethanol from corn takes about 98,000 BTUs. For comparison, a gallon of gasoline contains about 116,000 BTUs per gallon. But making that gallon of gas—from drilling the well, to transportation, through refining—requires around 22,000 BTUs."

The Salon article is worth reading for its dissenting viewpoint.

Posted by Atanu Dey

Atanu is right. Industrially farmed ethanol(corn,sugarcane,sorghum etc) is not a renewable resource as it is tied to oil based inputs. It is attractive only when juxtaposed against imported oil. The processes based on bio diesel from Jathropa, pongemia, neem etc make more sense as they are crops that grow on wastelands and do not require any inputs. The recent excitement is due to the projected doubling of ethanol consumption (investors like Khosla) projected and companies like Braj industries that have alternate feedstock. Braj (pune based) has a sweet sorghum based process, but this is also not a renewable source... some of our work points us to wood chip based producer gas as a vaible alternate fuel though not for all kinds of transport. Some of these issues are covered in

http://valluvar.blogspot.com/2005/10/can-jatropha-curcas-l-help-india.html
http://valluvar.blogspot.com/2005/10/is-ethanol-really-renewable.html

Posted by shiv

Estimates for the amount of farmland needed to grow the corn for ethanol do vary. According to one estimate, you'd need land the size of Texas to meet all the fuel needs of the US alone. That's 70 % of available farmland in the US! And, as someone has pointed out here, ethanol is less efficient, so what's the point? Alternate sources of energy as an answer to the looming oil crisis (call it "oil dependency" to make it less alarmist) sound too far-fetched. The real answer is to bring down our oil consumption (read: "oil dependency") by working from home or working closer to home, using email and other such stuff. This, of course, does nothing real to counter the oil crisis -- it simply delays it. We need to change our lifestyles and lower the world population to somewhere around a sixth of what it is today. Okay, I'm off to cancel that purchase order on the SUV :)

Posted by Arun

The energy balance issue is still controversial and many credible researchers have arrived at different conclusions (as Khosla points out in this fairly in-depth interview: http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=2f526959-95c3-4c21-ab0c-65df1f51a3fa&f=00&fg=email , and his website: http://www.khoslaventures.com/ ).

My own take is that energy balance analysis (as well as water balance analysis for that matter) is highly site and method-specific. What is needed is a systematic way of grading biofuels so that buyer can evaluate (and pay accordingly for) biofuels based on the environmental standards with which they have been produced and distributed. Fortunately, such evironmental standards for biofuels are under development.

Our research suggests that Jatropha-based bio-fuel (produced responsibly vis-a-vis water and land use) have the potential to score highest in this regard.

Posted by Sagun

Check out Alan's presentation on "Future Car" ... http://www.pbs.org/saf/1403/ , I am convinced Hydrogen will power the next breed of cars. Its most "viable" of all other alternatives, challenges remain on Hydrogen production and distribution. I would rather work towards that than giving up the SUV ;-)

Posted by Pradeep

Just so that there is no misunderstanding, hydrogen is not really a fuel; it is more akin to a battery, a sort of a energy storage medium. If hydrogen were mined or extracted without expenditure of energy, then it would be a fuel. Right now, you take energy of some sort (fuel, solar, whatever), then use it to produce hydrogen and then recover part of that energy during the combustion cycle. You get less energy out than you have put in in the first place.

Posted by Atanu Dey

Google's Power - or Not

Foreign Policy has a commentary by David Wise who authored a book on Google recently:

Around the world, Google faces tough obstacles. In developing nations, the Web is inaccessible for all but a wealthy few. In technologically advanced countries, Google faces the emergence of government-backed rivals. The competition in Asia is especially fierce. In Japan, Yahoo leads the pack with its millions of registered e-mail users. The leading search engine in China is Baidu.com, which enjoys strong government support. And, though Google’s popularity in China is increasing, it can’t seem to gain any traction in nearby South Korea. There, the government has invested heavily in making high-speed Internet service widely available, as well as facilitated the creation of a number of domestic Web search firms that are the market leaders. Google has become so frustrated by its inability to crack the Korean consciousness that it has done the unthinkable—spent money to promote its brand name, something the online giant has rarely had to do anywhere else.

Search Engines | PermaLink | Comments (1)

I think Google is very powerful. Maybe not in South Korea but in the rest of world without doubt. And - by the way - I am worried about Google's power. I hope that Microsoft and Yahoo will be successfull.

Posted by Andreas Thomas

MySQL and Distributed Working

Fortune writes:

Few businesses are as spread out as MySQL, which employs 320 workers in 25 countries, 70 percent of whom work from home.
...
How on earth do these virtual organizations get anything done? Management gurus have been preaching since the early days of Peter Drucker that workers must be organized into corporations with strict boundaries (between, for example, employees and customers) and a centralized physical plant (the headquarters). Based on those criteria, a remotely controlled entity such as MySQL begins to look no more managerially sophisticated than, say, your average garden club.

But peer inside such an oddly configured company, and you'll find someone at the top who has thought very deliberately about how to execute effectively in the virtual world, managing communications resources and human ones in such a way as to keep participants feeling valued and connected. As pioneering as those folks may be, they are hardly soft-headed idealists.

Management | PermaLink | Comments (2)

I think it all depends on wheather there is a real feeling as one community. MySql ist not a normal firm, it's a tradition. And if the employees are proud of their company and project, they can work effectivly at home.
greetings, andreas

Posted by Andreas

Rajesh,
Great blog.

Distributed work is the future of work. We will see this increae in the near future as companies finally realise that there do not need to be geographic boundaries when building teams and recruiting staff. Of course, many companies will dismiss this (in spite of the MySQL example) as unachievable. These are the folk who will be left behind, unable to erap the rewards of reduced overheads and decentralisation.
The next step to this is fractional work. Only working when you're needed. We will become portfolio workers, working when need for a number of clients. The efficiences and flexibility afforded to us all will be immense and transform the "job" as we know it currently.

Stuart

Posted by Stuart Oliver

WiFi Mobiles

Lifeblog writes:

Risto Koski, a colleague from Nokia, and I were having a deep discussion when he naturally suggested that why bother making phones with both WiFi and cellular connectivity (now being called dual-mode).

Y'see, you could just have a WiFi phone and when you wanted to make a call, just go around looking for a WiFi access point.

Of course, if you are a regular 21st century person, this suggestion should shock you. You must be thinking: Who is going to be looking around for a place to call from?

Well, before mobile phones, such behaviour was the norm - to make a call, we would look for phone booths.

This suggestion has all the hallmarks of a disruptive situation.

Telecom | PermaLink | Comments (1)

Yeah, I already recognized when travelling that WiFi access point are very rare - unfortunately.

Posted by Kylie

TECH TALK: Education and Reservation: Other Comments (Part 3)

Sachin Pilot, a Congress Member of Parliament, wrote in the Indian Express:

When talking of reservation in educational institutions, I believe we have to create a situation where no deserving student is denied an opportunity to get educated. Unfortunately we are nowhere close to this ideal situation. In fact what we have is a situation where the demand far exceeds the supply in almost all fields of study, be it medicine, engineering, management or law. Our goal should be to have so many vacancies that reservations become irrelevant. Just think back to the time as late as the early ’90s when LPG and phone connections were tough to access because of supply shortages. Once they were available in abundance, the premium (and black market) for them also disappeared. Similarly, having enough number of good institutions that can absorb all those who wish to pursue higher degrees will rid us of the problem of having to ration admissions.
…
The solution lies in expanding our educational infrastructure starting right from primary school upwards and we ought to do this on a war footing. Why can’t we create more Manipals and Punes? Why can’t each state in India have two IITs and three IIMs?
…
Another challenge is in ensuring that only the truly needy make use of these reservation opportunities. If an individual has availed himself of the benefits of reservation and prospered, then his dependents should not be entitled to any reservation privileges. Therefore, even though I belong to the OBC community, it would be improper for my children to be admitted to an institution on grounds other than merit because they would have had all the necessary resources at their disposal to secure their own future. I think the solution lies in finding a middle ground between meritorious students not getting left out and a situation where those who have been neglected for centuries are given the systemic support to realise their dreams and aspirations.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta resigned from the Knowledge Commission set up by the Prime Minister in protest over the issue. The Indian Express carried his resignation letter in which he wrote:

These measures will not achieve social justice. I am as committed as anyone to two propositions. Every student must be enabled to realise his/her full potential regardless of financial or social circumstances. Achieving this aim requires radical forms of affirmative action. But the numerically mandated quotas your government is proposing are deeply disappointing…

As a society we focus on reservations largely because it is a way of avoiding doing the things that really create access. Increasing the supply of good quality institutions at all levels (not to be confused with numerical increases), more robust scholarship and support programmes will go much further than numerically mandated quotas. When you assumed office, you had sketched out a vision of combining economic reform with social justice. Increased public investment is going to be central to creating access opportunities. It would be presumptuous for me to suggest where this increased public investment is going to come from, but there are ample possibilities: for instance, earmarking proceeds from genuine disinvestment for education will do far more for access than quotas. We are not doing enough to genuinely empower marginalised groups, but are offering condescending palliatives like quotas as substitute. All the measures currently under discussion are to defuse the agitation, not to lay the foundations for a vibrant education system. If I may borrow a phrase of Tom Paine’s, we pity the plumage, but forget the dying bird.

Tomorrow: My Views

Related Entries: [All]
TECH TALK: Education and Reservation: My Views (Part 2) [June 9, 2006]
TECH TALK: Education and Reservation: My Views [June 8, 2006]
TECH TALK: Education and Reservation: Other Comments (Part 2) [June 6, 2006]
TECH TALK: Education and Reservation: Other Comments [June 5, 2006]
TECH TALK: Education and Reservation: Atanu Dey’s Primer (Part 5) [June 2, 2006]

Tech Talk | PermaLink | Comments (4)

Nice blog

http://emotionalzombie.blogspot.com/

"No! Let’s join the self-proclaimed snobs protesting with slogans “Remember your place”, polishing shoes and cleaning premises? Let’s pretend not to see it at all! Damn Reservations!"

Posted by Shanu

Nice blog

http://emotionalzombie.blogspot.com/

"No! Let’s join the self-proclaimed snobs protesting with slogans “Remember your place”, polishing shoes and cleaning premises? Let’s pretend not to see it at all! Damn Reservations!"

Posted by Shanu

Nice blog

http://emotionalzombie.blogspot.com/

"No! Let’s join the self-proclaimed snobs protesting with slogans “Remember your place”, polishing shoes and cleaning premises? Let’s pretend not to see it at all! Damn Reservations!"

Posted by Shanu

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Posted by bob