Career Is Over, CIO...

but a new one is beginning for you. I like to call it the CGO - Chief Green Officer. Here are some tips to make the transition.

Corporate responsibility is now your responsibility - As Chuck Hollis mentions, you now have an obligation to run your IT shop efficiently. To start, extend the life of your servers from 3 to 5, or even 7 years. I been saying this for months now, but Chuck's article is the first time I have seen it in print.

Eliminate the "'chain of lies" - I'm sure you have you heard this one before (from Chuck):

• Business guy says 100GB to application guy who doubles it to 200GB.
• Application guy says 200GB to database guy who doubles it to 400GB.
• Database guy says 400GB to server guy who doubles it to 800GB.
• Server guy says 800GB to storage guy who doubles it to 1.6 TB.

And the business guy ends up only needing 10GB, rather than 100GB. And terabytes go unused.

Oh yah, master chief. Let's keep the 16,000 percent increases in storage requirements down to a bare minimum.

Recycling is now a must - With WEEE in Europe and the dozens of regs now active or pending in the US, there's a lot for IT managers to think about when they dispose of used equipment. Make sure they know what they are doing.

Lose the Shelfware - Still installing Access on every single machine? Getting pushed into reupping your million dollar Oracle maintenance agreement? Rolling out package after package with no training? Time for it to go.

No Virtue, Virtualization for Vista

It's getting pretty clear that Vista is only intended to have one specific use. One very, very specific use. And this is it; buy Vista, buy a new PC, and then install Vista on your new PC.

Why else would Microsoft refuse Mac users the right to install Vista on their Mac using Parallels, without buying the most expensive version? Why do they allow installs using Bootcamp, which only allows one operating system at a time? To be fair, some folks think that Apple doesn't want OS X virtualized either, although Apple's opinion is only briefly mentioned in the article and unsubstantiated.

Why is it that they focus so much on the benefits of sleep mode of Vista, when in fact a potential 10 million PCs will be trashed because of Vista? I bet sleep mode doesn't work in a virtualized environment, that's why. Most of all, why is Microsoft now billing Vista as a 'transition OS' to their new Vienna OS which is due out in 2009? The level of insanity is getting a little dizzying.

I'll sum it up - Vista, you have sinned. In your thoughts and in your words, in what you have done and what you have failed to do. I banish thee to a dusty shelf in a Best Buy.

House of Mystery Around Mercury

Mercury is one of those proverbial bad elements, right up there with lead with the amount of documented badness to the environment. So why is it that Canada (along with the US and India) refuses to support a global ban on mercury pollution? It's a regular House of Mystery.

I did some research into this to solve the riddle. Canada is not a big producer of the metal, so there's no economic incentive. They don't process a lot of eWaste, although India does and they are against the ban as well. Aha, how about this. According to the EPA:

The primary sources of mercury to the environment are fossil fuel burning (primarily coal) and solid waste incineration (Nriagu & Pacyna, 1988). Power plants in the U.S., according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are one of the main sources of mercury pollution—48 tons a year.

Good thing the EPA took our power plants off the regulated list for Mercury in March 2005. Maybe Canada plans on burning up a lot of those Athabascan Tar Sands they are developing, generating a lot of mercury vapor in the process, and they don't want to be hypocrites? Sounds plausible to me, could be that's mystery solved.

Gas Powered Laptop

My, my what will next think of next. How about this cool gas powered laptop that runs on methanol. With an OLED display for both the display and the keyboard, this 'top is ultrathin, and ultracool. No pricing yet, but apparently expensive is the operative word.

More Options in Green Web Hosting

The number of options for green web hosting has expanded quite a bit in recent months. Right now, green hosters fall into two categories, mostly related to how they get their power. One group buys Renewable Energy Certificates that insures that the power they use is generated in an ecofriendly manner, typically wind or solar but it could be biogas or geothermal as well. A few offer discounts to non profits, telecommuting, etc.

Obviously there's going to be a big battle brewing here over what is the most environmentally friendly thing to do; we are going to see the usual heavy marketing on the small differences in model that each provider has to offer. Take this one that concentrates on AISO, a provider that make their own energy :

According to AISO’s website, many of the so-called green Web hosts out there don’t run any environmentally friendly technologies at all, but instead buy RECs as a marketing tactic in hopes of making you think they’re helping the environment. AISO says many RECs merely go toward helping polluting power companies boost their green portfolios and meet EPA or government guidelines. “One of the things that has to change is these companies have to stop looking to traditional power and data centers. They have to buy their own buildings and land and use their own green services… and buying green credits doesn’t make your company green,” Nail said.

Sounds like marketing to me - does one really need to buy their own solar panels and land to be a green hoster? Also, some of the companies such as Acorn and ecoSky, seems to support only open source servers and scripting. I'm going to look into these options and move New View onto the one I think is the best.

Goldman Sachs Manhandles Feds

I always thought that people entered politics for the power that it affords them. That got turned on its head this week when I noticed the the US Government is only appropriating about one billion dollars next year for renewable energy; that's the same amount as Goldman Sachs is investing in renewable technologies, like wind, solar, biodiesel, and ethanol.

Maybe they think the free market will solve the problem without government intervention or funding. This happens, compare FedEx with the US postal service and see who won that game. Going with private investment is a fine idea, just realize that GS will be running the country in a few years when they own all the energy making apparatus.

Everybody Wants a Piece of eWaste

There's been lots of movement on the eWaste front, as ruling body after ruling body starts getting serious about the issue. Oregon is trying for the third time (the charm) to get an electronics recycling bill in place, with obvious embarrassment I might add. Looks like they are going to go with the manufacturer's responsibility model.

Saskatchewan is now requiring consumers to foot the bill, by tacking on fees when the items are purchased. Some of the fees are pretty weighty - $10 for a desktop, up to $45 for a TV. Personally, this is my favorite scheme as it encourages "Reduce" more than any other.

At the national level, several countries such as India realize that they have to do something. In India, the problem is two-fold; not only must they deal with their own waste stream, but also the waste coming from the US because its ten times cheaper to process there. Looks like the manufacturers' responsibility model is in the lead. In addition, Greenpeace has reported that Mexico, China, Thailand, and the Philippines all have groundwater contamination from electronic waste. That should get some politicians interested.

Build A Free Computer Lab

If you really want to create something from nothing, you have to go where there are few resources e.g. no billion dollar hardware budgets, no million dollar software projects. Africa is a good bet. These guys from eTux demonstrated amazing resourcefulness and built a lab in South Africa with no budget, using the Linux terminal server project and Edubuntu. Capital Outlay - $0.

Solar Typos

Sietch has a review on a solar powered keyboard and mouse. It's the first one that i have heard of. Coming from the Genius Corporation, it is wireless, uses USB, and features a four button mouse. No word on the pricing.

Energy Turned Flesh

Picenum has an article on how many energy slaves the typical Brit has working for them; I wrote this up for the United States a while ago. Picenum makes more generous assumptions, in that they think a human can burn about 3800 calories a day. Me, as I sat here drinking coffee and eating toast and jam, was not nearly as generous; I used 2200. Be that as it may, they have combined their numbers with another report to break out where all this energy is going. Turns out that the average Brit has about 16 slaves recreating on their behalf, but only one computing.

Looking at the data, I was wondering if increasing the computing budget could reduce the other items; for example, by using your computer to 'think' about how you take your vacation, can you actually save energy? The answer is probably yes.

For the Price of a Song

Music - it predates the written word. A God Box of all the music ever recorded would take up maybe 60,000 CDs. We don't really know why we like it except for the fact that it makes temporary structures in our minds that are pleasing. And, recently, a lot of people are questioning the environmental impact of music services such as iTunes that do this kind of thing on a big level.

At the human body level, music is a lot like any other consumable. It doesn't get clamped on to your arm or leg; you listen, then it's gone. It's not like an artificial limb, more like a candy bar, where you chow down and throw away the wrapper. And these wrappers are the problem.

One of these wrappers is called the CD-ROM, and iTunes sells the equivalent of 416,000 of these per day. Now, I haven't done the math on the Shuffle, but it seems like having a few a these Shuffle things around is going to be a lot better then having 416,000 CDs a day being produced. If you absolutely need the get the CD, music vendors like Green Amoeba can sweeten the deal by taking your eWaste when you make a purchase, but this seems like a slightly inferior business model. Again, no math on this one, but having the semi-permanent Shuffle with the virtual mp3 songs seems better than having the semi-permanent CD-ROM player with the semi-permanent CDs.

90,000 Dead? Try Telecommuting.

Filed under Baseline - the CDC has just published a report on what companies should do if the US is hit with a major influenza attack. Among the many recommendations, they suggest implementing telecommuting if the death toll hits 90,000.

Not bad, not bad, let's go one step farther. How about 300 million Americans slowly dying from damage to the ecosystem? Can we implement telecommuting based on that? If you need a little help getting your program going (and a few reasons why it's a good business case), Sun has a nice packet on why telecommuting is the solution. True, you won't have the 90,000 dead to point to, but the guide is chock full of other great facts and figures.

Gore, the Fortune Teller

I found a story yesterday on Al Gore which suggests that he is reading my mind. It relates to his speech in Silicon Valley the other day which suggests exactly what I just said, that techies need to start figuring this green stuff out:

The work already done in information technology, computational science, biotechnology and other specialties that are present in this valley, more than any other place in the world, are going to be the most valuable resources" to combat the crisis, he said. "Just as information technology changed the world, clean tech and green tech right here based in Silicon Valley...you can chart the course and save the future of this civilization.

In fact, in the same speech he encouraged executives to use their collective technical knowledge to innovate. C'mon Al, I just said that yesterday, are you sure you didn't crib ecoIron right before your speech? Maybe it's in the water.

Green Options an Option

I came across Green Options the other day, a green blog/forum/news space out there that will probably give the Hugger a run for their money. They seem to cover everything and they have a whole stable of bloggers ready to grind out the news, including Jeff McIntire-Strasburg of sustainablog who I have linked for some time. Seems like they're trying to do it professionally; this is good, as the stories are usually more meaty and researched, but it can take the edge off the individual opinions.

There are two intriguing parts of their site - the forums and the 'Green Report' - which are fresh in the green blogging world. I haven't found a green forum page which is heavily used yet, but I think this one might be. Also, the Green Report is a neat idea, it is laid out like a newspaper, kind of Drudge Report-esque, but better. I can see reading that every day. Take a look.

Go Green, INTP's and INTJ's

Nice article here from CNet describing how Silicon Valley is going from silicon to solar. Now I've been saying this for months, this is the next evolution of the geek. And in this post, I'm going to explain why.

Here's why. All this green environmental technology stuff is going to require people to figure it out. All those solar cells, all those geothermal power plants, all those battery powered cars, these are all going to take people. But not just any people, we're going to need real dedicated visionary types, go getters who can really put some determination and effort into figuring this stuff out before the global meltdown. Self directed individuals, hard workers, innovators. A quick look at my Myers Briggs profiler shows me that we will need a lot of those INTP's and INTJ's. Why, those are the Nerds!

The problem is we are only talking about 5 to 9 percent of the population here, and a lot of these guys are busy doing other things like being a dentist or running a multinational corporation. However, with IT collapsing on itself more and more every day now, looks to me like there will be an abundance of Nerds lurking around for something to do pretty soon. Why don't you finish up that pointless software/hardware maintenance you're doing now and convince Bossman to get into this environmental racket? You will all be happier.

China about Sated on eWaste

The China eWaste saga continues, but I think I can add a few more pieces to the puzzle. Let's start with demand; China is growing like mad, sucking up about 30 percent of the world's supply of minerals and other raw materials. It's these minerals that are of interest to us, as eWaste is full of minerals. Gold, steel, iron, copper, eWaste has it all. So this waste stream, except when it has hand grenades in it, is a good one to import and process; it's a waste stream that no one wants and they are happy to send it to China.

Now, we all know that the 10 million unlicensed Chinese who process a lot of this stuff don't do the best job at it; acid baths, open air burning, etc. And maybe they aren't getting rich off it, but the potential does exist to make big bucks off recycling. For example, check out Zhang Yin, who in five short years made 7 billion processing waste paper in China. So there is some profit to be made, people are getting rich, and there is definitely potential to turn the free waste stream into cash.

Up to now, I think that this has been fine with the Chinese. However, now I think we are going to see a shift for several reasons. One is that they know that the eWaste processing is causing serious health issues, and the burgeoning middle class won't put up with that. Two, they are coming out with Chinese RoHS, which has no exemptions and will require detailed labelling and reporting. I believe they will use these regulations to climb to the next rung on the ladder; namely, to selectively limits products coming into China for use by their new middle class. This will allow them to expand their line of 'clean goods', while simultaneously phasing out the old eWaste program. Essentially, they are transforming the amount of resources they need to build things into buying clean goods from other countries.

A Few Items

Here's a few items I have been keeping on my bookmarked list for a while now.

Solid State Disks - such as the 128GB monster shown here, put out by A-Data. I think there is great promise for these drives because of their "solid stateness", if only we can get past the slow write time and relatively short lifetime.


Looking for an ecoMachine? Try this writeup from the Hugger that has a variety of models from NEC, Greenmachineshop and EcoSystemPC.

We Can Change the Time, How About the Tune

Many of you know that daylight savings time is going to be extended by a full two months this year, starting on March 11 and ending November 4. Lots of states seem to be doing their own thing, but overall, the change is supposed to save 100,000 barrels of oil. Since we use about 20 million barrels a day, I figure that's about .0013 percent, only 1000 times more efficient than black Google.

Of course, none of the computers will like this; you will pretty much have to patch every OS, piece of hardware, and software suite that you own. Here's some more help. Something to do this Spring, but here's my point; changing the time on millions of Americans and computers is within our framework for change, but mandating, say, CFC bulbs in every household is not (except for California.) Why is that?

It's a Breeze to Go Virtual

with VMWare's Converter, that is. This handy tool will convert your Microsoft server into image files that work with VMWare. Also converts other formats like Virtual PC, Live State Recovery, and Ghost. Two editions available, one free and one not.

Now you just have to figure out what those Windows machines will cost in your virtual environment. Well, it's easy, just use the Microsoft Virtualization Calculator.

Now's Your Chance

If you are worried about the massive surge in eWaste that upgrading to Vista will produce, you're not alone. One study found that 50 percent of all business computers cannot run Vista Basic, and 94 percent can't run Vista Premium.

What to do, what to do. I think this guy has it figured out. His father wanted the Vista installed on his computer, the son installed the Ubuntu. Natch, dad thinks it's great, best thing to come out of Redmond in years.

I don't think it's so crazy. The Vista release is prepping your users for a change. Doesn't really matter what the change is, and if you don't have to throw out 94 percent of your machines, so much the better.