I try to refrain from getting too political here, but there is enough technology in this disaster and I feel strongly enough about it that I need to say something.

• Just about every plan that BP has thought up involves recovering the oil. Are they more concerned about tapping the black gold or fixing the environmental disaster?
• The expert’s long term solution requires a relief well to be drilled. Can we let another company start drilling this NOW? Why do we have to wait months and months for this to begin?
• The US Government’s failure was due to them not enforcing or properly inspecting using current laws and standards. Why create new legislation or standards if we are not willing to enforce the ones we already have?
• BP’s executives promised to pay for all the disaster recovery costs yet their liability is legally only $75 million. They have not addressed this obvious question. Do they have insurance? Are they prepared to pay above the $75 million cap, because it’s likely to cost more than 100 times that, and some things will be just impossible to fund enough to clean up.
• What about economic losses years into the future as this mess spreads around Florida hurting their tourism industry and up the east cost disrupting fishing and tourism potentially for years?
• What about economic losses for other countries such as Mexico whose government may not be as tolerant as the US government is by capping their liability?
• What is the long-term danger of these chemicals that they are pumping into the ocean to break up the oil? Where is the openness and who is the oversight on this technology? If the oil is still in the water but we can’t see it, how does that help?
• I work with computer servers and technology all the time for a large business. We have a contingency plan for just about every scenario including failures during a recovery operation. We won’t be causing ecological damage while we recover, but we will be losing money. BP is doing both right now yet no one thought about this possibility and developed a disaster recovery plan for the initial blowout or a contingency plan in case that failed? There are plenty of ways an oil rig like that could have been destroyed, many of which do not involve negligence of any time by the oil company or the government. Where’s the plan for this?
• Why is BP concealing the extent of the spill?
• Why are people still buying BP gasoline in the US today?!?!?

I believe BP is operating this cleanup effort with an eye on profits from the oil rather than the cost of the environmental disaster. This would lead me to believe that BP has no intention of paying the full costs of the cleanup and economic losses as a result because the cleanup will cost more than the value of the oil that has already spilled into the ocean. It would also then follow that if people would vote at the pump by picking other gas stations over BP until they fixed the problem that would speed up the time it would take them to fix the problem. I drove by a local BP station twice today and both times there were cars lined up buying gas even though there are stations nearby who are selling gas at the same, lower, or slightly higher prices. What sane American would purchase gasoline from BP right now? Why would you support a company who views profits above responsibility? I would understand if BP had lower prices and people needed to save a buck, but why do people get off the highway, drive past a cheaper Mobil station, and purchase more expensive BP gasoline? It makes absolutely no sense.

I know my audience is extremely limited, but please if you read this, don’t by gas at BP until they fix this problem. Please spread this message. I heard someone at church today who sounded like they were hearing about this problem for the first time. We need to get this message out or our complacency will allow BP to act in their own interests without consequences. Our votes as their revenue stream at the gas pump will matter more to BP than anything our government is likely to do to them.

I’ve written about the Atom processor and what it could do to save power if used in enterprise. Here are some things that I’ve done to save energy at home.

1. Replaced all my lights with CFL (Compact FLourescent) bulbs.
2. Replaced windows with triple pane vinyl.
3. Fixed the draft under the front door with a draft guard like you’ve probably seen on TV.
4. Replaced a 50+ year old boiler (in progress).

Reports on some of these are going to be subjective since I was not thinking at the time that I would be reporting on them, but I thought I would post this as an encouragement to some who may be thinking about undertaking a project like this.

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Since Halloween just went by I thought I would talk about vampires. You know, things that turn into bats and suck your blood! No, I’m just kidding. Well, I am talking about Vampires, but of a different sort.

Vampires, Wall Warts, Power Brick, these are all descriptive names for those transformers that plug into your wall socket and sap power out of the wall night and day regardless of whether or not anything is connected to them. Standby power is a minimal problem, but I did a little experiment recently to find out just how minimal.

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Why is it so difficult to produce a trustworthy electronic voting machine? I know Maryland has had electronic voting for quite a few elections, but it seems that many places can not make it work. I have seen examples of machines that count the votes wrong during testing, favor one candidate over another, or are vulnerable to having their data compromised.

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Job Market

It would seem to me with the massive numbers of people being laid off that there would be plenty of tech workers around looking for work. Why is it then that we can’t find anyone to fill a slot we have? Frustrating!

Stock Market

Sounds like we’re about to have another massive drop in the US markets today. I think people forget that companies with little to no debt can continue to make profit with little risk even in a down economy. Panic seems to be the word on the street, and while some people stock their freezers with meat, other people are investing. Its my opinion that a balanced approach is the right approach. If the first rule is buy low, sell high, then why are so many people selling when the market is down some 40%? Should be an interesting day, and I hope to get so busy at work that I have no time to look at the market.

Grocery Market

Milk prices have fallen recently by a good deal. I was looking at some tech products a few days ago to see how they were doing. Locally there does not seem to be much of a change in technology products. I expect that to catch up soon, so if you are pining for a new computer you may want to wait a few months longer.

Credit Market

It is a great time to borrow if you have decent credit. I negotiated a deal on my new used fuel efficient Corolla dropping over 1.75% off what the dealer wanted to charge me in interest. I also found a 0% credit card deal among the standard deluge of pre-approved credit card offers, and I keep getting letters in the mail from companies wanting to refinance my home at some outrageously low APRs.

Economic Market

If the economy is doing so poorly, then why are the parking lots at shopping malls still filled all the time, and how do people find the money to drive around all day on Saturday when they are not going to work?

My thoughts

If I did not own any stock, did not listen to the news, and did not pay attention to my 401k I would think that everything was going wonderfully. Gas prices hit $2.58 here yesterday. Milk prices have fallen by about 80 cents. People are offering credit at heretofore unheard of rates. Both candidates for President promise tax cuts. I still have my job.

I posted yesterday about the potential for a new worm similar to Blaster. Please download patches and protect yourself and especially your business. Blaster and other worms have cost businesses millions of dollars, and now is not the time for businesses to absorb yet another cost.

Sorry to stray off topic a bit. There are some technology bits in there for you to byte into. Have fun! Oh, and I’m getting closer to my hundredth non-spam comment. Taking a hint from a fellow blogger at nukeit.org I will be paying out Entrecard credits to non-spam comments number 96-100. I will also donate a 125X125 advertising block for 2 weeks to the 100th comment.

The latest techie buzz word seems to be the word Quantum. It is the end-all-be-all of computer technology, the savior of the computing universe. Right.

“Quantum” is used to define the momentum, state, and energy of the elementary particles of an atom, or basically any subatomic particle. It seems like every day someone comes out with a new quantum something that is supposed to solve all our problems. I saw an article wednesday on quantum cryptography now supposedly unbreakable. I read the article and it does seem that they have developed something that would be impossible to intercept in such a way that it could be deciphered simply due to the fact that an interception would be detected in the quantum state of the stream which could then be stopped. It is interesting stuff and reminded me of a bad book I once tried to read.

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Here’s a good one. How many of us at one point in our lives said, “When I grow up I want to be an astronaut!” I know I did, and surprisingly it seems that NASA needs kids to start thinking that way again. I saw a news article about this problem and found it quite interesting. NASA apparently has had this problem before during the transition time between the Apollo missions and the Space Shuttle. I guess it should come as no surprise that it is happening again as NASA plans to retire the shuttle without having anything ready to take its place.

That whole thing concerns me a bit. I know we have other launch vehicles, but nothing is as versatile as the shuttle, and we have nothing that takes humans besides the shuttle. With tensions between Russia and the United States growing, it just seems like the wrong time to abandon the shuttle. Beyond that, however, it appears that children are not as interested as they used to be in these sorts of things. Either that or they no longer believe in the American dream – that they can become whatever they want to.

There are other countries dreaming this way. Here are a list of countries that I know are planning to put people on the moon:

• Russia
• England
• Germany (unmanned)
• China
• Japan
• India
• Italy

If there is someone I’ve missed, let me know. It is exciting that so much interest exists in the moon still, however it seems to me that little mention is made of this in the media anymore, and Sci-Fi and real technology is taking a back seat to fantasy and video games for our children.