Peterbe.com

"Scientists say the global energy crisis can be solved by using the desert sun"

I've been wondering for a long time why the open deserts in north Africa isn't used for solar energy. There's 3 times as much sun there as there is in Europe. Unlike wind power plants in Europe, there's plenty of space for solar energy mirrors on the vast stretches of the north African desert.

This Guardian article is really interesting for me. Here are some interesting facts:

"[the two German scientists] calculate that covering just 0.5% of the world's hot deserts with a technology called concentrated solar power (CSP) would provide the world's entire electricity needs"

"Together the region could provide all its electricity needs by 2050 with barely any fossil fuels and no nuclear power. This would allow a 70% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from electricity production over the period."

The article also sheds some light on the comparison of fusion reactors compared to solar power.

"The outlook is not promising. More than 30 countries last week agreed to spend £7bn on an experimental fusion reactor in France which critics say will not produce any electricity for 50 years, if at all."

As some of my friends on this website have might have noticed, I was threatened by Carphone Ware because of supposed defamatory comments made on this page

Here's an interesting article on BBC News about a case (in USA I should add) where a blogger could not be sued for the comments other people placed on her blog.

"Overturning a decision by the San Francisco appeal court, the court ruled that people claiming they were defamed online could now only seek damages from the original author of the comments - and not the website which re-posted it."

I need to think a bit more about it before I resurrect the currently removed comments from the page about Carphone Warehouse.

Unless you're a die-hard US republican you probably don't watch Fox News and the Bill O'Reilly show. You might, like me, remember him from a part of Fahrenheit 9/11 when he tells Jeremy Glick to shut up (or was that another film?)

Bill O'Reilly is a nut. A unsympathetic right-wing nut. It's people like him that causes us europeans to disrespect and, dare I, hate the USA. I like and have an open mind about the USA but it's people like Bill O'Reilly being shown on a large national network that just makes me feel sick.

Here's a great videoclip on youtube.com where Phil Donahue has a right go at him. This is the best thing I've seen since George Galloway (my MP by the way) shredded this Sky News reporter to pieces

Dear american friends, if you want my respect back, do something to get these repulicans off the set. It's making me sick!

Today's Dilbert comic is brilliant.

For the uninitiated, Elbonia in the Dilbert comic is a returning made up country. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Elbonia:

"It is an extremely poor, fourth-world Eastern European country that has recently abandoned Communism. Most of the nation is covered with waist-deep mud, which the residents use to build houses. Much of the economy is also mud-based."

What's funny about this strip is that it's so true in our world today.

When I can't remember the URL site I just search for it quickly in Firefox which is quicker than trying to remember the address. Today I needed to go to "Google Groups"n:http://groups.google.com/ but couldn't remember the address, so I searched for it on Google

Guess which site came up first?! Not Google, but their main competitor Yahoo! I guess this just gives Google more kudos because their indexes aren't tainted in their favour.

Yesterday it was officially announced that the next Palm Treo will be running a Microsoft operating system

I think this is shit! So does Forbes it seems

"When Palm announced today that its new smartphone would run an operating system from Microsoft, it was the equivalent of Coca-Cola agreeing to fill its bottles with Pepsi."

I'm a proud owner of a Palm Treo 650 and it's been great. The best thing about this phone/PDA isn't it's size, it's processor or antenna, it's the operating system. PalmOS has always been known for it's ease of use. Not only in ease-of-use for beginners but also for experienced users. The designers have really thought about the user want to do with the system/menus/options/widgets rather than what can be done. M$ Pocket OS has some neat features too but it's generally clumsy and counter-intuitive. Looking at what David Lundblad has to say about the Pocket PC

"When users come up against functionality which works in a different way to how they expected it to, it creates a mental ‘question mark’. Every ‘question mark’ adds to a users cognitive workload, creating distraction."

Granted that I don't use my Linux computers much to sync my Treo, but if it had a M$ OS on, what are my chances of ever being able to do a backup with Ubuntu Linux?

I'll sit on my Treo 650 for at least a year or so and when it's later time to upgrade my first thought won't be to get the next Treo with M$ Pocket PC on it. Sad.