January 2009 Archives

Logical, ja?

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We are familiar with coal-gasification. The intermediate product is syn-gas, a mixture of hydrogen and CO. Syngas can be used in may ways to generate power, for stationary or mobile purposes, making it a key ingredient for future energy infrastructures.

But syngas can also be made from biomass. The main drawback against using biomass has been logistic costs. You need a large gasification plant to get the economies of scale. To transport the necessary biomass volume to the plant is just not viable.

Unless....

Scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have found a way around the problem. 

Bioliq as they call it involves first heating the plant material in the absence of air to around 500°C, a process known as pyrolysis. This produces a thick oily liquid containing solid particles of coke termed biosyncrude. The crude can be made efficiently in small decentral facilities. The highly concentrated crude is transported to the central plant to make syngas.

The economics are a magnitude better. Clever.

Plugged

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A lot of knowledgeable people predict that we will see Plugin-Hybrid Vehicles take a large part of the market quickly, much more than pure electric vehicles. They combine the best of two worlds until battery technology gets to the next level, are reliable, production can be scaled up quickly. The reduction of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions can be quite large, as recent results show.
Cleantechnica reports about real life use of a couple of Priuses that have been converted to PHEV's. 

More than 40 km to the liter if you add a couple of cents of electricity, not bad.

Financial

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The graph below relates the liabilities of banks to the GDP of the home country. It shows how outdated the way is we have organized the control and regulation of the financial sector. The business is worldwide, the liabilities are in the end local.


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Turning point?

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According the latest Annual report on Energy Generation in the USA they have reached a turning point:
In 2007, for the first time, renewable energy sources, other than conventional hydroelectric capacity, accounted for the largest portion of capacity additions. Total net summer capacity increased 8,673 MW in 2007. Wind capacity accounted for 5,186 MW of this new capacity. Natural gas-fired generation accounted for 4,582 MW. Two new coal-fired plants with summer capacity totaling 1,354 MW were placed in service in 2007. However, retirements and downward adjustments to existing capacity resulted in a 217 MW net reduction in coal-fired capacity.

[Source Cleantechnica]

The short history of the Internet

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Smart

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Lawrence Lessig first defined it a decade ago in his groundbreaking book; code is the law of cyberspace. 
Code being protocols and architecture. 

Just as in the physical world, the law/code defines the structure and rules that in their turn allow or restrict possibilities. Therefore it is vitally important to choose the right law/code to get the best possible society/Internet. 
The most vital choices are if something is restricted or free, if something is public/common or privately owned.

The Obama governement understands this apparently.

As Tom Evslin reports, the latest stimulus bill includes money for demonstration projects for smart electricity meters for smart grids.

The catch is in these lines.

"The Secretary shall require as a condition of receiving funding under this subsection that demonstration projects utilize open Internet-based protocols and standards if available."

And

"The Secretary shall establish and maintain a smart grid information clearinghouse in a timely manner which will make data from smart grid demonstration projects and other sources available to the public. As a condition of receiving financial assistance under this subsection, a utility or other participant in a smart grid demonstration project shall provide such information as the Secretary may require to become available through the smart grid information clearinghouse in the form and within the timeframes as directed by the Secretary."

As Tom correctly observes, enforcing open protocols instead of allowing walled gardens will create a different universe of possibilities and freedom. 

I hope that they can withstand the pressure from Big Energy.

"Clean" coal?

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Factcheck.org has published a pretty good overview of the state of the discussion on coal as an energy source. Is so-called "clean coal"  possible? Their answer: not yet, is probable, but with a hefty price tag.

What they leave out in their considerations are two observations.

One: adding traditional coal energy plants (with or without CO2 capture) to the grid will only increase the base load capacity, while you have to decrease this base load level to adapt to sustainable energy sources. Flexibility will become key in the future, coal is very inflexible.
Coal gassification on the other hand is very flexible and it allows for cheaper and easier CO2 capture.

Two: if you now allow investments in traditional coal plants with (future and yet unproven) end-of-pipe CO2 capture, you have painted yourself in a corner as society. All the riscs of end-of-pipe capture will be placed upon us all. If it does not work we have the lousy choice of throwing away the investment in the plant or allow CO2 emissions to be continued. If it turns out end-of-pipe capture works but it turns out to be very expensive we will pay the price directly or indirectly.
Bad public policy.

For anyone who wants to freshen up on the subject.

Junknet

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It is not just us in the Western world who want to have high bandwidth connectivity, the demand is everywhere. People will use any possible route to get what they want, leading to unexpected developments.

Brough Turner reports in his weblog about  junknets in Pakistan (Lahore) and in Romania (Bucharest).

(Lahore) Access to neighborhood rights-of-way is governed by local relationships rather than by official government license.  As a result, there are extensive local broadband networks (fiber and Cat 5 cable) providing excellent local connectivity (typically up to 100 Mbps symmetric), including high speed access to local content caches.  Actual connections to the Internet are still limited so, while one can download movies from a file server at 30 - 50 Mbps, connections to the real Internet tend to be limited to 512 Kbps each.  On the other hand, the whole package costs roughly Rs 600 or about US $8, per month.

An insider explains how it works: no-nonsense, minimalist approach. And it works: customers complain if they do not get 5 Mbps download from a local media storage server. 

If anybody ever questioned if people want hyperconnectivity and high bandwidth, here is your answer.


Fly away

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Are you looking for a way to bond with your neighbours? Buy a hot air balloon and generate energy for all your new friends with the balloon engine. Ian Edmonds' balloon engine traps solar energy in a greenhouse and inflates a giant balloon with the heated air. The balloon pulls a earthbound tether while it rises, spinning a generator to generate electricity. Once the balloon has ascended 3 kilometers it automatically release its air to lose buoyancy. In the descent less energy is needed to pull the balloon back down again, resulting in a net power gain. Edmonds estimates the average power output on 50kW for a commercially available balloon (with a volume of 45,000 cubic metres, equivalent to a sphere of diameter 44m). He predicts that the costs of his balloon engine par with that of wind power. That would be great for sunny places where the wind rarely blows.

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Via: NewScientist.com
Link to more information and the concept of operation: Balloon Engine

Lifesigns

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Although we continue to get bad news from the financial sector not all is bad. During my recent trip in Germany (Bavaria) I had the opportunity to talk with a lot of people about their business. Surprisingly enough the small and medium-sized companies were doing quite well. An guy from an ad-agency told me they did not take any more orders until May, too much work. Not many people were pessimistic, only the ones directly living of the financial sector.

The stimulus package of the German government aimed at taking old polluting cars of the road and at the same time increasing the sales of small new efficient cars works apparently. Many had expected it would not because domestic sales is only 20 % of the volume.
Sales have increased and BMW has announced they expect to get back to normal production levels before the summer. 

Encouraging. If the German real basic economy will be keeping itself afloat that is a good sign. The reduction of the financial economy and sweating out bad debts is bad for statistics and will hurt everybody, but first priority is the "real" economy.

Effect

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Another effect of the German laws that stimulate local sustainable energy generation.
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Icecold statistics

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Sometimes you wonder how it could take so long to discover something that seems so obvious. Scientists now have discovered that Antartica is warming. In the last fifty years temperature sensors on Antartica indicated that it was cooling down. This was opposite to the rest of the world and attributed to the hole in the Ozone layer. However, it has now been concluded that the temperature sensors used to gather the data where placed close to the coastline and not equally spread over the region. Therefore they gave a false impression. The new study has used satellite data and has concluded that Antartica has been getting warmer over the last fifty years with the Western region rising about 0,12 degrees per decade. This can only be explained, according to the authors, by global warming. East Antartica has, however, indeed been cooling down because of the hole in the Ozone layer. Professor Steig, author of the article remarked on this: "In any case, efforts to repair the ozone layer eventually will begin taking effect and the hole could be eliminated by the middle of this century. If that happens, all of Antarctica could begin warming on a par with the rest of the world."  

Flow of money

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During my visit in the Bavarian Alps (near the Czech border) I noticed the effect of the famous German law that regulates the amount that is paid for green energy delivered to the grid. It is known that is has spurred a lot of investments in solar panels and windenergy parks.
Over here they tackled it a little bit different.

Someone with a little mountain river on his property has placed 4 turbines in the river. Each turbine delivers on average 250 KW of energy. The electric energy is delivered to the grid at a price of 11 eurocents per KWh, meaning a revenue of 240.000 euro per turbine per year. Depreciation, maintenance and interest is estimated by the locals at less than 200.000 euro per year.
So these 4 turbines give an income of 160.000 euro per year.

Not bad for a relatively small piece of land in the outback of Bavaria. 
Beats farming.

Proof

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The recent study by TNO and SEO showing that filesharing increases (!) our wealth is only days old. And the next piece that shows that sharing increases value becomes available..
Mashable points out that the recent availability of many clips on Youtube of Monty Python's work has boosted their sales of DVD's on Amazon by 23,000 percent.

I guess the Pythons never expected this. How many more examples do we need before the content people come to their senses?

Confused

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The possibilities created by hyperconnectivity and new tools confound our lawmakers.
The High Court in Germany has asked the EU-court (search for "Google Bundesgerichtshof" ) in Luxembourg to rule on a quite interesting case.
Google Ads is widely used tool. If a certain searchword is detected by the Google search engine, specific advertisements are displayed next to the screen with search results. It is a do-it-yourself (DIY) tool, the advertiser can define the trigger words (and a lot of other things) himself.
Clever entrepeneurs have used this tool in an unexpected manner. They define specific brands (like a farmaceutical branded medicine) as triggerwords. The advertisment displayed is for a cheaper unbranded alternative , designed to redirect the customer from buying the original brand.

The case in Germany apparently has been dragging on for years through various courts. The question is if this should be banned because the original brand must be protected or not. Now it is lifted to the EU-level.

I guess this will become a landmark decision. Personally I would hesitate to go this far to forbid this. Brands should be strong enough by themselves in the first place. Secondly you open up a "mer-a-boire" in litigation: where do you draw the line? In a Net where mashup's and links are daily routine?

(Quote from the original)
Seit Jahren entscheiden die Instanzengerichte in der für Internetanbieter wichtigen Markenrechtsfrage unterschiedlich. Die höchsten deutschen Richter in Karlsruhe haben am 22.01.2009 entschieden: Ist eine als Schlüsselwort benutzte Bezeichnung mit einer fremden Marke identisch - wie in dem vom BGH zu bewertenden Fall „Bananabay" für Erotikartikel - und wird sie zudem für Waren oder Dienstleistungen benutzt, die mit denjenigen identisch sind, für die die fremde Marke Schutz genießt, hängt die Annahme einer Markenverletzung in einem solchen Fall nur noch davon ab, ob in der Verwendung der geschützten Bezeichnung als Schlüsselwort eine Benutzung als Marke im Sinne des Markengesetzes liegt. Das ist eine Frage der Auslegung des Markengesetzes. Da die Bestimmungen des deutschen Markengesetzes auf europäischen Recht beruhen, hat der Bundesgerichtshof das Verfahren ausgesetzt, um dem Europäischen Gerichtshof diese Frage zur Vorhabentscheidung nach Art. 234 EG-Vertrag vorzulegen.


Simple

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Part 2 of the famous humorous explanation of the credit crisis, by two comedians enacting a talkshow. Part 1 is over here. Very, very to the point.


Solid?

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Germany has a reputation to lose: solidity en quality is expected. Therefore the latest revelation of Der Spiegel is sobering.

All the country's top commercial banks and the publicly owned regional banks known as Landesbanken took part in a survey which revealed that the banks hold so-called "toxic" securities totalling just under €300 billion  of which only a quarter has been written off.

The Finance Ministry in Berlin estimates that the entire German banking sector is still holding risky securities totalling up to €1 trillion. 

The value in their books is imaginary, nobody has any idea what the real worth is. 
To put this in perspective: the debt of the German federal government is approx.€1 trillion.

Shocking.

Bots with tails

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Seems like someone has made a big step towards real practical microbots, swimming in the bloodstream as they are guided towards problem areas through small arteries. The (silent) video shows a practical method to use piezo-electric propulsion, mimicking nature.


Penalty

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Everyone in logistics is aware of the relatively low utilization rate of trucks. It is reportedly below 50 %, as many trucks bring a load to one place and return empty. Many other factors (like branded trucks: a Coca Cola truck cannot carry beverages from other companies, let alone something else than beverages) reduce the utilization even more. All these empty kilometers cost money and produce CO2 emissions. 

In a move probably stimulated by the succes of the congestion charge in London an advisor to the British Government has proposed to tax empty truck kilometers. This would reduce road taxes for others and stimulate cooperation to improve utilization.

Hmm, not a bad idea. The only problem might be to check if a truck is empty or not. I can imagine that clever truckers keep the truck partly loaded at all time.


Logical

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One strategy to use less (expensive) silicon in solar panels is by concentrating the sunlight with lenses on the solar cells. The drawback is the heat: silicon does not like to be overheated. So you see designs with elaborate cooling fins to keep the solar cells at a reasonable temperature.

I guess it would only be a matter of time before somebody realized you could harvest that heat as well, increasing the energy produced by this envestment and reducing the waste.

Well, here is one example. Entech Solar produces combined cycle solar collectors called ThermaVolt. I am curious about the real-life performance.......

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It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's ....uhhh

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Ok, paragliding is well known sport. You even can see powered paragliders, carrying a small engine and propellor on their back.


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But extending this to a 4-wheeled vehicle?

Apparently a company called Skycar will sell these vehicle/powered paraglider cross-overs in a sleek package. 

The specs are OK: 

In "fly mode" the car will have:

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  • a take-off speed of 60 kmph
  • a top speed of 110 kmph
  • a range of 300 km.
  • a cruising altitude of 2000 - 3000 ft
  • a maximum altitude of 15,000 ft.

In "road mode" the car will have:

  • independent 4 wheel suspension
  • rear wheel drive
  • acceleration from 0-100 kmph in 4.5 seconds
  • a top speed of 180 kmph
  • a range of 400 km
To prove their point they have started a charity fundraising journey from London to Timbouctou, approx. 6000 km, by road and in the air.

Zeekracht

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Last week Rem Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) presented a plan for large scale windfarming, Zeekracht. OMA states: 'Due to its high and consistent wind speeds, shallow waters, dense population and knowledge industry, the North Sea is arguably the most suitable area for large scale windfarming in the world. The potential magnitude of renewable energy in the North Sea in fact, approaches that of fossil fuel production in the Persian Gulf states today. In the changing landscape of 21st century energy perception and demand, the North Sea could become a major player in global energy production and trade through windpower alone.

The proposed circular wind farms provide destinations at sea through their explicit connection with the parties they are supplying (e.g. communities, companies, cities, etc). The farms are also designed to be sited, programmed and phased according to the evolving demands and plans of North Sea regional development. Locally, the windfarms perform a series of hybrid functions according to their location and performance mandate -depleted subsea natural gas reservoirs are used for energy storage, untapped gas fields for hybrid energy production, farms adjacent to shipping lanes act as offshore power stations, etc. Farms developed along ecological zones and around existing decommissioned platforms create marine remediation areas, new recreational parks, and recreational sea routes. At a mature stage of offshore development, wind farms are clustered along the length of the Super-Ring, distributing national surpluses and supplying regional energy needs efficiently and profitably.'

As a Dutchmen you can participate in Zeekracht, to support this initiative and to use the windenergy once the farm is operational.

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Links:
Zeekracht
OMA and Zeekracht


Alpha and Beta

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We depend more and more on sophisticated technology in our society. The complexity is rising quickly: large information technology (IT) projects have a worse track record than infrastructure projects when measured to "completed-on-time-and-within-budget" . Climate and energy issues require a lot of knowledge of physics , of complex modelling, of research and development, of innovation.

A daunting task for our politicians. One should hope that at least some of them have had an education and preferable some work experience in "hard" environments : where hard science is required, solid engineering is important, professional management of big complex projects or products is vital to survival. They would have much more feeling for the daily reality of these challenges, understand what the effects would be of policy changes and laws written.

So lets look at their backgrounds in this respect. Over here (20090116 Overzicht Beta achtergrond TK-leden 2007-2011.xls) you can find a spreadsheet with our members of parliament, over here  (2008 Overzicht Beta achtergrond ministers en staatsecretarissen.xls)  with the members of our cabinet.
An interesting overview. You can draw your own conclusions. Approx. 20 % of parliament has had a "beta" education (including health care and MBA), approx. 10 % has some work experience in this arena. In the cabinet things are not really different.

So next time you question yourself why large technology projects and IT projects which are run by our goverment seem to be not-so-well-run, or why our policies regarding technology and innovation seem to be lacking in effectiveness, or why the high-tech manufacturing industries seem to be left out in the cold,  look again at these spreadsheets.
Do we get enough people in office who "get it"  and have more than a theoretical understanding of the issues?

Bye bye copper

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Resize of PB010339.jpgFiber-to-the-Home (FttH) is the hotly debated step to replace the copper wires in the street, used for telecommunications, with optical fibers. We will see a lot of activity in the next 10 years : construction workers digging trenches and laying optical cables to our homes. But if optical fiber is so superior, why do we keep on using copper wires in our homes to connect our home gear? Some people believe all will be wireless in due time, but I have serious reservations about this projection. Wireless bits are always desperately seeking wires to continue their path. So will we see fiber-in-the-home?

Recently Swisscom has announced their plans to deply FttH in Switserland, in an unprecedented manner: cooperation with their competitors to create the network, to be used by all of them in competition.
Hardly anybody has noticed that Swisscom has at the same time invested in Firecomms, a company delevering Plastic Optical Fibre (POF) solutions. Swisscom uses their products to offer a Swisscom-branded Fiber Optic self install solution to their customers.
" Firecomms home networking technology enables the quick and easy deployment of fiber optic cable in the home. Using low-cost, easy to use transceivers, like the company's proprietary OptoLock® plugless transceivers, Firecomms makes possible a reliable and future-proof connection between IPTV set top boxes and home gateways. Plastic Optical Fiber technology is widely used in millions of cars worldwide, so Firecomms devices have achieved the low-cost and high reliability required for use in home applications" 

So already today optical fiber has become a viable solution to be used in your home, for very reliable highspeed connections over short or long distances. Given the fact that good highspeed copper cables like HDMI cabling for 1080p HD television can be really expensive (from Euro 20 to Euro 100 retail) and are limited in lenght the rise of optical fiber in the home may be much quicker than anybody expected.

Inverted

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I would have thought that we would have exhausted the functional envelope of search-engines, but no. After Vincent Dekker of Trouw had pointed to Melzoo  (mouse-over of search results gives example in separate frame) Cool Tools posted about TinEye.
"TinEye is a handy reverse image search engine. It finds where on the web an image comes from. You can use it to find where a photo of yours appears elsewhere, to find a higher res version of an image, or to locate the origins of a photo someone forwarded to you." 
A first test showed that their coverage of the web's content is somewhat lacking, but it is an interesting twist in search technology.
The company is using their basic technology to extend the possibilities. Like TinEye Mobile , which allows you to search for products using your mobile phone's camera. Just take a photograph to start your search and view pricing and reviews for products.

Idée's first mobile release is TinEye Music (take a picture of a CD and search on the web), for iPhones only. 

A company to watch: somebody is going to think of a way to use this technology nobody would have imagined before.

Domestic animals

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This is a really nice series of 8 photo's of wild animals in domestic situations by photographer Mikel Uribetxeberria (yes, he is from Basque country). It's called animalia. Wouldn't you like to have one of these as your pet? His other photo's are worth looking at too.

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Selling newspapers

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Yesterday the story was all over the news "Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research." . Great headline, therefore copied without any checking by leading media.

The reseacher quoted has a different story. The Sunday Times of London who started the story made things up.
Techworld tells us:
The study's author, Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, says he never mentions Google in the study. "For some reason, in their story on the study, the Times had an ax to grind with Google," Wissner-Gross told TechNewsWorld. "Our work has nothing to do with Google. Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site."
And the example involving tea kettles? "They did that. I have no idea where they got those statistics," Wissner-Gross said. 

Wisner-Gross has a simple explanation: "The short answer is, it's a really easy way to sell papers. Google is a very successful company and it's a very easy way to get readership by making grandiose claims about them.".

Interestingly enough this has triggered Google to give an estimate themselves.: 0,2 gram of CO2 per search.

Kain and Abel (2)

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Gunnar Heinsohn (see this earlier post) specializes in the relationship between "youth bulges" and war/terrorism. 
His latest publication in the online version of the WSJ drills deeply into the hidden and ugly facts behind the conflict in the Gaza strip. And points his finger at the West: our aid is fueling the war machine.

"Gazan teenagers have no future other than war. [..] Some 230,000 Gazan males, aged 15 to 29, who are available for the battlefield now, will be succeeded by 360,000 boys under 15 (45% of all Gazan males) who could be taking up arms within the coming 15 years."

" The reason for Gaza's endless youth bulge is that a large majority of its population does not have to provide for its offspring. Most babies are fed, clothed, vaccinated and educated by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Unlike the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which deals with the rest of the world's refugees and aims to settle them in their respective host countries, UNRWA perpetuates the Palestinian problem by classifying as refugees not only those who originally fled their homes, but all of their descendents as well."

" Thanks to the West's largesse, nearly the entire population of Gaza lives in a kind of lowly but regularly paid dependence. One result of this unlimited welfare is an endless population boom. Between 1950 and 2008, Gaza's population has grown from 240,000 to 1.5 million." 



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Still ugly

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Although the people from jalopnik.com seem to like it, I still think the new Toyota Prius, recently unveiled at the Detroit motor show, looks bad. The article displays a lot of details on the new design and performance. And also in that aspect, I am somewhat dissapointed. 9% better fuel efficiency does not sound like a lot for a new model. My prediction: Prius is out. And although more dead than alive, Chryler will be in if it reaches 2011..

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How to prevent traffic jams (2)

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The number and lenght of traffic jams in the Netherlands this week (so far) has been significantly lower than normal.
What would be the explanation? So many injured while skating this weekend? 

Probably not.

The most plausible hypothesis is that a lot of construction companies have to wait until the ground is thawed and/or the temperatures have risen, before they can continue.
Most companies hire a massive amount of very small companies or self-employed construction workers to be flexible. Most of them drive to the job in a mini-van, and they are absent from the roads now.
If this hypothesis is correct, the number of traffic jams will rise sharply with a change in weather.


Another Stick in the Wall

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What will the cities of the future look like? There will be more and bigger cities according to the current predictions, but will they be greener? And what will those citizens eat? Environmental Graffiti presents a couple of nice examples for a green city and touches upon vertical farming. I would love one of those here in Amsterdam. 

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Ballistic

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The battle on nuclear energy is in full swing. Proponents see it as the most effective method for reducing emissions of green-house-gasses. However discussions on safety have erupted after the stream of reports on "minor accidents" in France. Reports about the possibility of a limited supply of fuel have been debunked by the IAE, but the issue of storage of radioactive waste material for eons is still unresolved.
One can debate on all of the above. The biggest questionmark now is costs. As reported before more and more proof is becoming available that nuclear energy is far more expensive than any other solution. The NY Times reports :
  
It turns out that new plants would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive. The first detailed cost estimate, filed by Florida Power & Light (FPL) for a large plant off the Keys, came in at a shocking $12 billion to $18 billion. Progress Energy announced a $17 billion plan for a similar Florida plant, tripling its estimate in just a year. "Completely mind-boggling," says Charlie Beck, who represents ratepayers for Florida's Office of Public Counsel. 
....
The key will be reducing demand through energy efficiency and conservation. Most efficiency improvements have been priced at 1¢ to 3¢ per kilowatt-hour, while new nuclear energy is on track to cost 15¢ to 20¢ per kilowatt-hour. And no nuclear plant has ever been completed on budget.

Privacy and Road Pricing

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Without much ado the tenders for the road-pricing system for the Netherlands have been started. (See this and here). 

One of the hot topics in this system is privacy versus security/fraud prevention.

Having a unit in your car that tracks your whereabouts, stores that information for later use by the government triggers a lot of sensivities. Who can access that information? Is Big Brother watching you all the time?
At the same time you want to prevent fraudulent use (evasion of road charge, identity theft) and to be able to contest an incorrect charge in court succesfully.

The same professor that publicized the succesfull compromise of security of the Mifare chip used in the "OV-chipkaart" has now turned his attention on roadpricing, this time to propose a solution.
 
Bart Jacobs is one of a group of experts in the world who consistently warns us of the dangers of unsafe IT systems, like voting computers. Their main point is that the only safe IT-systems are the ones where the security design is publicized so experts can check and validate the security. Secrecy gives a false sense of security, only when the best minds cannot find a flaw or a way to compromise a system you can have some reasonable confidence in the system. And when bright minds find a flaw, at least you can take corrective measures. Otherwise you might be sleeping through years of fraud unknowingly.

Wiebren de Jonge and Bart Jacobs have published a very interesting paper (link here, download ETPprivacyFAST2008lncs.pdf) with a new approach. 
This architecture allows a lot of flexibility while keeping the privacy level as high as you as an individual care for. You can even break up the calculation of the roadcharge in little pieces, to be executed by different providers as you choose it, so nobody has a complete picture but yourself. The system design can be with a "thick" onboard-unit (OBU) that does all the calculations, or a "thin" OBU that off-loads as much as possible to other systems. They present how a "granny", "gadgetfreak" or "geek" would create totally different solutions with or without the help of providers, suited to their wishes.
At the same time it is quite difficult to defraud the system. With a minimal number of spot-checks (less than 1 %) the authorities can verify that the roadcharges calculated are based on actual driving behaviour.

The actual design can be found in the paper (sending committed hashes of trajectories and seperately of roadcharges). In my opinion a very elegant solution. And above all something that can be subjected to the best test possible: of all the bright minds in the world.

(Continued after the break)

The evolution of technology

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(Source: The Technium)

Chief Strategist

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Martin Geddes is undoubtedly one of the great and deep  thinkers about telecom. You don't have to agree with all of his views to enjoy his strategic views and original thoughts.
Over here you can find a rare treat: the transcript of a part of an long interview, and the full podcast. For anyone who is interested.

One small gem: The value of the SMS-market is.....over a hundred billion dollars per year and rising. Bigger than movies and music and games together.

As Odlyzko always says " Communication is king, not content". 

Shooting yourself in your foot

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Slashdot reports about the next escalation level of the war Big Content is waging

The infamous "Valenciennes graduated response" tactic (3 strikes and you are out: a private organization can take your Internet connection away after 3 accusations of " illegal content" downloading) has been quickly adopted as the favourite approach by lobbyists in several countries. But why wait so long?

A Kiwi reports that :
" Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act. The controversial act provides 'Guilt Upon Accusation,' which means that if a file-sharer is simply accused of copyright infringement he/she will be punished with summary Internet disconnection. Unlike most laws, this one has no appeal process and no punishment for false accusation, because they were removed after public consultation "

As Creative Freedom describes " As ISPs transmit data across their own network (for their users) they're open to copyright infringement claims themselves unless they comply with [section 92]. ISPs are therefore put into the role of policing copyright infringement accusations without judicial oversight against their customers, all while risking their business if they get it wrong." 

The implementation of this Act is probably the best way to show the madness of these approaches. How many PC's are infected with programs that somehow create traffic the owner is unaware of? What about young children who start a download which results in termination of the families Internet connection? How easy will it be for sophisticated hackers to target specific people and create an infringement with serious effects for the target?   
The politicians will probably see an uproar of their voters before the economic effects will become visible. After all, making Internet a dangerous place to be is very, very bad policy.


Transition

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Information is power (and money) , so let us limit and control the accessibility of information. Or at least, that is what many public transport companies think. The recent publicized row between Google and the Washington Metro is only the tip of the iceberg. 
Google has quietly introduced Google Transit, an extension to Google Maps, making it possible to plan a trip including public transportation. The specifications for (feeding) the schedules have been made public and open for anybody to use. You can build your own online planner if you like using the available API's.
A perfect base for a rapid development of very valuable tools, one should think. Unfortunately many public transport companies are very reluctant to share their timetable, believing that this will undermine their position. Very old-school thinking: get linked, connect and share, that is where the money is.
 
They have missed apparently also a solid piece of research. Dr. Caspar Chorus  has shown in his thesis that people are not willing to pay for travel information for public transport, while at the same time spending serious money on satnav systems. The psychology driving this difference is very straightforward: you are not in control when using public transport, you are being transported as a subject, you have to subject yourself to the time table. Paying extra for information is like adding insults to injuries.
In your car however you make all the decisions, you are in control, so information has value.

As public transport companies are rarely subjected to competitive pressures to win the hearts and minds of their customers, it will probable take a long time before they start to realize that they would benefit from freely sharing this information.

How to prevent traffic jams

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Yesterday (the 5th of januari) half of the Netherlands was covered in snow. The eastern/southern half to be precise. The effect? Terrible traffic jams in the south, particularly on the roads leading to the Randstad (area enclosed by Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam and Utrecht). 
And hardly any traffic jam in the Randstad itself, funny enough. 
Which leads to the hypothesis that the main cause of traffic jams is all the traffic going to and from the Randstad, the economic heart of the Netherlands.



Eyes everywhere

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Reality often follows art, as Star Trek fans know. The now popular clam-shell phone was conceived as a flip-open communicator in this TV-series. We hardly could imagine that less than 20 years later more than half of the world population would have a mobile phone. In developing countries mobile communication has had an even bigger impact on the lifes of the population.
And this impact can evolve in unexpected directions, as a recent publication shows.

In the lab of UCLA electrical engineering professor Aydogan Ozcan, a prototype cell phone has been constructed that is capable of monitoring the condition of HIV and malaria patients, as well as testing water quality in undeveloped areas or disaster sites. The imaging platform, known as LUCAS (Lensless Ultra-wide-field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging), has now been successfully installed in both a cell phone and a webcam. Both devices acquire an image in the same way, using a short wavelength blue light to illuminate a blood, saliva or other fluid sample. LUCAS captures an image of the microparticles in the solution using a sensor array.Because red blood cells and other microparticles have a distinct diffraction pattern, or shadow image, they can be identified and counted virtually instantaneously.


Ultracapacitor

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ultracapacitor.jpgGas2.0 published an interview with Honda's chief engineer Tetsuya Yokoyama and discussed the ultracapacitor with him. In brief the ultracapacitor is a battery-alternative that stores more energy than a comparable size and weight battery and can be charged much faster. Two other publications on this nice website tell about a recently granted patent and about some of the science behind it. Interestingly enough, however, Mr. Yokoyama states that the ultracapacitor has taken a backburner at Honda, considering recent advances in lithium ion and NiMH battery technology. He states that a significant technological break through is needed for the ultracapacitor to become production reality and that this is rare. However, the accumulation of know-how from the continuous technological research and development could bring further advancement by linking different technologies together, he pointed out. Combination of a classical battery with an ultracapacitor could then maybe become the first reality. Read also Honda's own information on the ultracapacitor.

Previous Green

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In 2008 there was much ado about electric transportation and sustainable energy. Inhabitat provided a top ten of green transportation, and a top ten green architecture projects.
I wonder which buildings, cars, bikes and other green projects will see the light in 2009. Will there be more of the same (but better), or will there be completely new concepts to go green?


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Green Roof Art School in Singapore

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