Facts and figures

A useful site, for facts and figures about demographics and economy:

http://indexmundi.com/

Round-up re: Globalisation

Well just thought I would collect some of my posts about Globalisation, interspersed with random headlines. Note that the inability of Proctor and Gamble to see the upcoming inflection point is not surprising–none of their competitors really saw it coming either. This ties in exactly with Seadrome planning. But I find it encouraging that they are trying to re-examine their business network, realizing that we are at an inflection point. So they are trying to imagine what P&G will look like in 2015. Scenario planning, anyone?

My Post:

From Great Cover, Wrong Article 13 September 2006

Or the fact that the cheap energy that has kept cotton going to China from Texas to be made into T-Shirts, and then back again to be sold at Wal Marts that Americans get to in their SUV’s, has just come to an end?

And the realization by all except a very few oil-industry lobbyists that even if cheap oil wasn’t coming to an end, the environmental costs of it are just way, way too high?

Random Headline:

Oil costs force Procter & Gamble to rethink supply network
Jonathan Birchall & Elizabeth Rigby / Cincinnati June 28, 2008, 0:11 IST

Soaring energy prices are forcing Procter & Gamble to rethink how it distributes its products, with the world’s biggest consumer goods company shifting manufacturing sites closer to consumers to cut its transport bill.

Keith Harrison, head of global supply at P&G, the maker of Tide detergent, Crest toothpaste and Pampers, said the era of high oil prices was forcing P&G to change.

“A lot of our supply chain design work was really developed and implemented in the 1980s and 1990s, when our capital spending was fairly high as a cost of capacity and oil was 10 bucks a barrel,”

“I could say that the supply chain design is now upside down.”

My Post:

In Rita, educating us all 29 November 2006 I quoted an earlier comment I had made, in January of 2006, briefly describing some of the new topology of the world economy:

John:

It would seem that the types of global organizations that will arise from this effect will be massively decentralized, with the flow of information dramatically increasing, while the flows of manufactured objects reducing, and commodities becoming more dear, rapidly and temporarily in some cases.

The really interesting thing, once we get past the immediate and obvious effects on the price of commodities is the effects on Science and Technology, as replacements for certain commodities are sought, and the R&D funding for replacements becomes economically sound.

The re-localization of manufacturing seems to be another developing trend here, with the only necessary global flows being of IP.

Posted by: enigma_foundry | Sunday, 29 January 2006 at 03:32 PM

EF. You are exactly right. Resilient decentralization is the inevitable long-term answer. Unfortunately, it’s not something that most people want to hear.

Random Headline:

Oil hits record above $142 a barrel

By Chris Flood

Published: June 27 2008 09:01 | Last updated: June 27 2008 20:57

CBOT July wheat rose 8.5 per cent this week to $9.40 a bushel, amid growing concerns about the outlook for Australia’s crop.

Oil’s strength and dollar weakness helped gold, up 1.4 per cent to $924.95 a troy ounce on Friday. Gold gained 2.7 per cent over the week, helped by renewed buying interest as the dollar retreated against the euro following the Federal Reserve’s statement on Wednesday, which suggested an imminent rise in US interest rates was unlikely.

Among the base metals, copper rose 1 per cent to $8,520 a tonne over the week while aluminium dipped 0.6 per cent at $3,120 a tonne.

Do you still think a Macintosh is simple?

Forwarded in an email, I am unsure of origin. But, the Mac requires 59 steps, the Lenovo takes 6 steps (I don’t count the last step, “Turn the computer right side up, and power it on.” Duh!)

Replacing the hard drive on an iBook G3 “clamshell”:

http://www.sterpin.net/uk/clamshelluk.htm

Replacing the hard drive in a ThinkPad X20:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-4Q2KW6.html

Iraq, as El Salvador, rather than Vietnam

An interesting post over at wikileaks, which is the United States Counter Insurgency Manual, officially the US Special Forces doctrine for Foreign Internal Defense. There are perhaps some other titles for this book, which is basically a HOW-TO for the institution of a fascist police state. Some excerpts suggest that the present template for success in Iraq is based on the experience in El Salvador. Of course, although the U.S. did not lose El Salvador in a straight-forward military sense, in the civil war there from 1980 to about 1992 about 70,000 civilians were killed, including Archbishop Romero and several Jesuit Priests, which e_f has covered here. So, in a moral sense, the dirty war in El Salvador did great damage to the U.S.A., but here is the proof that those in power consider a War where many innocent civilans are needlessly slaughtered as a victory. The manual advocates accusing those who oppose the regime in any way with terrorism, and immediately charging them and any of their supporters with terrorism. Unbelievable, but brought to you courtesy of Web 2.0. It also tells the U.S. military how to do those all-important things like: concealing human rights abuses from journalists. Which just leaves me asking: Who are the real terrorists?

Of course, the other question is: If this manual has been leaked, and available since at least Monday, why hasn’t it been covered by the mainstream US media yet? What’s going on here?

More and links to the manual below…

Mark Cuban does not own the internet

Cuban on bandwidth hogs and tiered broadband gets it all wrong, when accusing P2P users of jamming up “his internet”

When it comes to broadband internet access, you can have speed or large volumes of data transfer. You can’t have both. One certainty in the broadband world is that for those of us with cable or DSL modems connecting us to the internet, there is still a finite amount of bandwidth available. When a user consumes a disproportionate and significant amount of bandwidth, it can and will slow down everyone. I hate that.

If the choice is between your being able to download more movies or other video and my getting the best possible speed from my internet connection, I’m thrilled when you get kicked off. It can’t happen soon enough. Speed is what I need. Take all your P2P downloads and get the hell off my internet.

I have no sympathy for bandwidth hogs. You all are productivity killers for the rest of us. People who are working, people who are trying to play games, people who are in virtual worlds, people who are networking, people who are just trying to watch a Youtube video or their favorite TV show, you all are the reason why we get incredibly annoyed by slowdowns and buffering.

Leave and take your bit torrent client with you.

Well Mark, who appointed you arbiter of what is and isn’t good internet, and why do you think streaming video, the application you are pushing, has such a privileged position? That was probably the same person that decided that the internet was yours, right? If if that were so (and it ain’t) data indicates that streaming video creates more bottle-necks on the internet than bit torrent.

Gas Temperature Map

Actually useful site, in that it can save you money. Now I know why I always see cars from Illinois filling up in the Saint Louis Gas stations:

Hat tip: Infoaesthetics

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

Hugh Ferriss saved by Web 2.0

I had blogged earlier about Hugh Ferris’s renderings, and about how wrong it is for Avery Library to keep his renderings locked up in a proprietary file format.

And web 2.0 to the rescue–kosmograd has put the whole collection up on flicker!

It’s not really news, and no one is surprised anymore

But I am listing it here anyway:

Climate Findings Were Distorted, Probe Finds

Tuesday 03 June 2008
by: Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post

An investigation by the NASA inspector general found that political appointees in the space agency’s public affairs office worked to control and distort public accounts of its researchers’ findings about climate change for at least two years, the inspector general’s office said yesterday.

Tipping point reached

As a follow-up to my post “The tipping Point” from 07 December 2007, it seems that several other sources have come to the same conclusion I had: that the eeePC represents a tipping point.

First, there is LinuxFormat magazine, from the U.K., in its edition no. 106 for May 2008. (Still not available in all US newstands. It also has an article that I am very interested in, about sustainable aspects of free software, which I’ll just have to wait for. Also note that back issues of Linuxformat are available as .pdfs here):