Show me the way to go home...

Sat in Jo'berg airport waiting for a flight delayed by 4 hours wanting to wing my weary way home.

A great country with fantastic potential!

Of course everyone knows that investment in ICT can drive growth in GDP, that is till you run out of energy!

In fact this countries growth forecast has been reduced by 20% because of the energy crisis. So how do you square the circle between ICT and energy consumption?

You can do more with less! I have been sharing the Sun ECO message with people who are grappling with the issue and looking for answers and it has generated a number of POC's from people who didn't know who Sun are or what we stand for. They now do, and love it...

I just wish we had the courage to take a chunk of the $5b in the bank and share the value Sun's ECO innovations bring with the planet so that they know without me having to grow my carbon footprint any more than I need to.

Note to self, Can I count the Sun Ray POC's as a carbon offset??

Posted at 06:12PM Jun 20, 2008 by Richard Barrington in General  | 

Goodbye John and thanks for the memories

So John Gage has gone, one of the Sun BRANDS and someone who, in the days of spreadsheets and process, spent his time with Sun doing the most important thing, getting out there and telling people what we do! He had a 'place' at so many tables that Sun will find it very hard to replicate the influence he had..BUT of course a Blog is so much better, isn't it?

The first time I really experienced his magic was in Venice. Must be 4-5 years ago, Sun held an e-gov event there with the Venetian government so apart from a dinner in the Doges Palace which was spectacular, the conference itself was on one of the islands in the bay. I took Andrew Pinder, my former boss in the Cabinet Office who spoke at the event, and one afternoon I 'acquired' a bottle of wine and some glasses and we sat the three of us and put the world to rights....well John and Andrew did. I felt like a little boy sitting at the feet of two venerable sages my only contribution to the debate was to keep the glasses filled and eventually get another bottle....

A perfect blue sky, a warm summer afternoon, a memory to treasure...

Posted at 10:18AM Jun 13, 2008 by Richard Barrington in General  | 

Sunrise over Stonehenge

Dropped my Son off at the school bus last Thursday and was driving from home, Dorset, to the Sun offices in Farnborough. ( if I knew how to do this I would have embedded the google earth links )

One of those amazing English autumn mornings fresh, crisp and clear...

Traveling west to east along the A303 towards Stonehenge just as the rising sun crept over the horizon ahead Beautiful!

Till I glanced up and was horrified to count more than 25 vapour trails slashing the clear blue morning sky

Aircraft racing to Heathrow to disgorge the sweaty tired and belligerent masses having enjoyed the the wonder and excitement of travel.

I'm writing this from the Sheraton Palo Alto and tomorrow morning that will be me.....

I do offset my own carbon planting a fruit tree each year reducing my carbon footprint and food miles BUT I'm not sure
thats enough anymore......

Posted at 01:02AM Oct 23, 2007 by Richard Barrington in General  | 

Obscenity and Climate Change

I recently offended a number of colleagues with a Friday afternoon e-mail.

You know the sort of thing, something you found amusing / thought provoking, in this case some didn't...sorry folks

I had been sent, with a caution rating I passed on, a video from www.green.tv
A serious attempt to reach the 'youtube generation' using a mixture of shock and humour.

( perhaps if it had been shock and awe the result might have been different )

The video based on perhaps what is a juvenile or Benny Hill-esque play on words between defenestration and deforestation highlights the negative impact WE are having on one of the most important places on our planet for biodiversity and carbon sequestration, the Amazon.

NB: It is purely co-incidence that Sun are working with the Brazilian authorities capturing real-time satellite images and comparing them with GIS looking for man's impact & illegal activity, seeking to preserve this amazing resource for future generations....

A recent survey of 50,000 university entrants in the UK carried out by Forum for the Future and the University Clearing Service, UCAS, highlighted their recognition of the issue of climate change but also more worryingly their expectation that they wouldn't have make changes personally it was someone else's problem to solve , probably government.

So we may need to reach them with images and messages some might find challenging.

For me the obscenity is what we are doing to the planet rather than a vanity choice of 'to wax or not'.

An unrepentant but apologetic Richard....

Posted at 10:24AM Oct 20, 2007 by Richard Barrington in General  | 

Hand up not hand out

Got into a debate with someone who is doing a charity thing to raise money to send legacy PC's to Africa. They thought I was critical of them, far from it, my diatribe was on "does the ends justify the means?"

A legacy PC in Africa is a liability. With decreased levels of MTBF meaning more not less support, an operational environment not suited to 'delicate' technology that produces a lot of heat IRO 850BTU's, voracious energy consumption where large tracts of the country have none, Almost no network connectivity, ( what's the point of a PC without the Internet? ) and of course the problem of what to do with the toxic waste at disposal.

We also have the issue of 'cultural imperialism' the assumption that everyone wants to do things our way, in our language, with our social / moral standards and western values.

I'm working on a project that will take Sun's 4 watt virtual display technology ( Sunray 2 )to deliver a renewable energy powered community access point, that requires little field support, lasting for an expected 10-15 years, management or maintenance. Connecting to locally generated resources via 'Wi Max' mesh technologies so that the 'ComBox' can be many things to the local community through the day based on their needs and aspirations, delivered in local languages, configured to reflect cultural sensitivities and it looks like the energy generated will exceed the needs of the Combox itself and so will be able to provide power to the local community as well, meaning it could qualify as a carbon offset.

We are at the design stage and hope to have the first one field tested in the next few months...

Posted at 10:56AM Nov 08, 2006 by Richard Barrington in General  | 

Negative Hallucination!

In a column about climate change from David Aaronovitch ( Times Columnist )he stated

"Normal hallucinations involve seeing things that aren't there, negative hallucinations consist of not seeing things that are. "

Have we been marching to oblivion, eyes firmly on the horizon ignoring the yawning chasm in front of us?

Of course Tom Peters tells us the chasm can be crossed, and the STERN review tells us it's not too late to start to build bridges. It would be disingenuous to claim Sun's low carbon technologies are a result of foresight rather I'm a huge fan of the concept of serendipity!

A while ago I spoke to Fiona Harvey the environment correspondent at the FT and when we talked about Sunray Niagara etc, she suggested Sun was just jumping on the "eco bandwagon." My response was FAR FROM IT, we've believed in the network is the computer for 25 years and focused on reducing the energy and physical footprint of our technology for the last 5+ years. We just haven't painted our products with 'greenwash' till now.....

Posted at 08:51AM Oct 31, 2006 by Richard Barrington in General  | 

Stern Review on climate Change validates Sun's environmental position

No time for anything fancy, checkout the Stern review on the economics of Climate change and the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate change response ( find it via the CLGoCC link )

There are two views on climate change, mitigate or adapt...do something or deal with it. Stern shows that the cost of waiting till its too late will be 10 to 20 times the former, equivalent in scale cost and damage as a new world war.

Sun has been investing in producing low carbon technologies and re-engineering its products to take advantage of such, reducing the footprint even more.....
Stern suggests the market for this technology is IRO £500 Billion PA by 2010...

Working to counter the worst impacts of climate change is not just good for the planet but also great for the bottom line.....

Posted at 08:32AM Oct 30, 2006 by Richard Barrington in General  | 

Blair, Brown Cameron and the Clash!

I know it's now called 'gootube' but worth $895 million just for this!

Still finding HTML a pain so here is the link!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1vwKZiDsY4

Posted at 02:07PM Oct 13, 2006 by Richard Barrington in General  | 

Vista Schmista, Come on Steve scrap it now and help save the Planet!

So everyone's talking about and making offers to help you go green, even IBM have got with the programme, except there is a strange silence from Redmond....what could it be, and what does a software company have to do with the environment anyway???.....

well,

Current estimates put the number of PC's on the planet at about ONE BILLION with 300 million already obsolete, somewhere in the waste stream.

I have a simple view of life ( or I'm simple, take your pick ) but given the track record of product upgrades from Microsoft, your exisiting PC / departmental server won't perform / work well with Vista so you will be forced into another upgrade cycle to get the latest and greatest product innovation. ( Watch out Jonathan I hear the biggest innovation is the paperclip has pony tail! )

In the old days, PCC ( pre climate change )nobody really cared about the millions of tonnes of toxic waste and valuable materials that will, in the main, be dumped somewhere where they don't understand the terms 'litigation' and 'class action' but some of us are very aware of our responsibilities...

There are of course a couple of options for Steve Balmer to consider:-

1)Pull the launch until he can guarantee it will work very well on anything sold in the last 3 years, say P3 and above
2)Pay $50 for every PC that has to be replaced because of Microsoft's inability to live on todays planet, so it can be properly recycled. ( I calculate that could be up to 1/3rd of a billion x $50 HECK, that's not even half the cash pile....

Do you remember the advertising campaign Microsoft has been running calling all of their customers who aren't on the latest Office product dinosaurs?

Hey Steve! At the moment it looks like you're the Stegosaurus and there's a meteor coming!

Posted at 01:47PM Oct 13, 2006 by Richard Barrington in General  | 

Climate Change Videos......

Decisions, decisions, decisions

Posted at 01:41PM Oct 06, 2006 by Richard Barrington in General  | 

First Post Ever

The last 49 years of my life summed up in as few words as possible, including sex, politics, technology coupled with some serious name dropping and brown nosing...it's all here folks! ( as I said to the Prime Minister only last week )

Posted at 09:52AM Oct 06, 2006 by Richard Barrington in General  |  Comments[2]