Environmental Effects - Applicable to Cloud Computing Too

Of course, this is US data but soon will be applicable to us.

Of the electricity consumed, nearly 1.5% of electricity consumption accounts to data centers. By 2020, the electricity consumption by data centers alone will be more than aviation industry. So, in future we will have two industries giving away lot of carbon emissions. We talk about cloud which is effectively repositioning data centers as far as location of boxes are concerned. We move many boxes to the cloud and once we move them, they need lots of power. Here the important point is that we don't really know whether the cloud provider takes care of environment and carbon footprint. What if the provider generates power and dump carbon emission in the air.

Already Greenpeace is saying someone is using coal. That someone is none other than Facebook. A bit of story can be found here.

What about cloud providers? Will they give out information on how the electricity that powers their data centers is generated?

A technology (cloud computing) that makes us replace a old technology offers benefits (efficiency). If the new technology (cloud computing) goes into the wrong hands (to a provider who doesn't care about its carbon emission) still produce big side effects.

Expect Job Market in Another Six Months

The world has seen enough of this - "the effects and after effects of economic recession". You have the reason to cheer because of the words "after effects" meaning that the recession is ended as far as my understanding is concerned. You cannot shed more jobs as you have already fired many and this is the time that everyone is going to be buckle up for job market. First you will see a move of highly qualified and intelligent workforce move from one company to another company. It is happening in Wipro, CTS, Infosys in India and many product companies. Breathe.

The job market is going to heat up in another three to six months and within the next nine to twelve months, each company will have record high attrition rate, may even be close to 20% (many are saying that it may even go to an extent of 30-40%). Even if you pay more, the people will not be willing to stay as they will use this opportunity to move out for many reasons. If you are intelligent company, you should selectively remove recruitment freeze, bring in talented workforce now. Because, when the job market recovers, you need to pay them more as there will many people who give them good offer (Demand-Supply baba). So, if you do not see further pressure to your business, lift the recruitment freeze. If you are highly conservative, wait till next recession so that you can be right at least in the next business cycle.

Will the world end by 12-12-2012?

Sometime back, when I was surfing, I happened to visit a site that talked about 12-12-2012. The world is likely to come to an end by 12-12-2012 giving a lot of evidences from ancient history to modern sciences. The evidences are not more than mere superstitions. This superstitious group is arguing about end of this planet and another group tries to give array of counter arguments that the world will not end. After reading an article from this month's Scientific American India, I feel that the world will not end by 12-12-2012 but it may take few more decades, probably 5-8 decades. Why? Read on.

When we compare the population of the world with the population that existed few decades back, it is fair to say that we are exponentially growing. We are likely to hit a spot somewhere higher and as of now it is difficult to predict where it will be. As a result of increase in population, the demand for food and infrastructure is increasing. When we want to live, we will happily kill trees and massacre forests leading to rapid deforestation. Even with the current population, as more developing nations become developed nations, their consumption will also increase which in turn increases the demand for food. So, there are two visible factors that is going to influence the high demand for food. Let us assume the following simple math.

Assume that we double our consumption and engage in rapid deforestation by converting half of the forest as living communities. How can we produce 2X food from y/2 land. There is going to be a big pressure and we will end by increasing the productivity of lands artificially through fertilizers. To our havoc, we will run out of one of the components of fertilizers soon. In order to understand the entire mess that is currently building up, I encourage you to read Scientific American India. In this article, the author gives a clear picture about depletion of phosphorous and how the world will end if phosphorous depletion is not addressed. When you do not have phosphorous, you cannot grow plants and trees.

So, without being supersititious, we have found another reason why the world will end. We are creating a big mess for the future generations and making this planet unsuitable for living.