Things i’ve grown to dislike…

I’m a huge supporter of schemes that hope to save the environment or at least make a difference to the environment.

I’m also skeptical about schemes that I think are a waste of time because they are either aimed at making somoene a whole lot of money on the back of an environmentally friendly product or because society’s reality is that it just won’t happen mainly because it is not commercially viable.

I always point to Enjo, the environmentally friendly cleaning glove/cloth thingo. It was questionable at best, what advantages that brought to the environment, sure, they say they only sell environmentally friendly products but in reality how many people regularly buy their products and is it enough to save the world… definitely not.

Now there is this article on the Sydney Morning Herald about the IT industry having to start looking at stopping such high consumption of power which we all know is created by burning coal which is bad.

MY issue with this article is that it is misguided and tries to simplify a complex situation into a black and white one. And it also throws in a plug for VMWare’s virtualisation software.

It’s a given that most offices have many computers, usually one per person and that these consume alot of power. However unless you are a big organisation, most companies buy what ever system they can afford without regard for low power processors. Many don’t even know much about computers and buy what is sold to them. And that is the reality of the situation, it’s driven by money, suppliers want you to pay more and you want to pay less, in the end it’s unlikely that small to medium companies are going to end up with an environmentally friendly system.

Furthermore to expect them to is ridiculous. Many still use computers and servers that they have been using for many years. Ones that are no doubt very inefficient in their power use or require alot of cooling and hence adding to the environmental problem.

Sure you can maybe push larger organisations to do so but in the end is it going to make that much difference. Each company may reduce energy consumption per person but with ever expanding companies and ever increasing numbers of companies IS THIS REALLY GOING TO HAVE AN EFFECT.

In reality, like most environmental solutions, their needs to be a government led push either by law or by a reward system. Make people do it or make them want to do it. I’ve always thought that this is where the government is very slow to react, the general public are lazy when it comes to being environmentally friendly, not enough people care if something is made from recycled goods or if its biodegradable. I don’t think the onus should be on the public (because you cannot force nor can you regulate so many people), the onus should be on the manufacturers and the government should be enforcing it because stopping climate change is in the peoples interest.

And virtualisation is not a solution to cutting power consumption. You still need a computer to connect to the server that host the virtual machine and the cooling for the server room and then you have to pay for the virtual machine software which the report conveniently pointed out, can be purchased from VMware.

THe movie Goal was released a couple of years ago and the sequel Goal 2 is to be released soon with the trailer available online right now [view the trailer].

It’s the story of a young illegal mexican immigrant in the US who is a gifted footballer but his dad doesn’t want him to play professionally when a scout tries to take him to Newcastle United for a trial. Obviously he does well and makes it in the end.

It’s a underdog story in the vein of many other underdog movies, Mighty Ducks, Bad News Bears (the original movies). Though in this case as it’s focused on the one player it’s more apt to compare it to Rocky or, if you’ve seen it “When Saturday Comes” which stars Sean Bean as a footballer who makes it to the big stage and it’s infinitely more in depth than the glamourous marketing brand driven, Goal.

Non content on stopping at 1 movie, he has of course made it to the Premier League which is regarded as the most watched and entertaining league if not the most skillful league in the world, the producers are to make 2 more, the first one of which is titled “Goal 2″… HOW INSPIRING. Could they not have come up with something better than that?

Goal - A new hope
Goal - Santiago Strikes Back
Goal Evolution
Goal Goal Goal
Goal - The Empire Stikes from long distance and scores?

Just a suggestion.

Nonetheless, he now leaves Newcastle to play for Real Madrid. Completely understandable in this story line, though apparently the producers are huge Liverpool fans and when they offered the part of Santiago’s first team to Liverpool FC they turned it down because they didn’t want to be seen as a club whose players leave for another team. Newcastle obviously have no shame in that respect.

The question through all of this is very simple, the movie should have stopped after half an hour. He is a mexican illegal immigrant into the US. He has never played for either Mexico or the US. In the football leagues in Europe a player has to get a work permit (especially in England) to play football if you or your parents were not born in Europe.

To get a work permit is quite hard as you have to prove you have played 75% of your countries international games. Hence alot of players don’t get to play in England.

How then did Santiago manage to walk into the Newcastle first team?

There are other questions of course. He grew up in America not Mexico and no doubt learnt his football in America. I doubt very much that his skills would be good enough to play Premier League and even if they were, he was playing casual kick around at a park in LA. It would take months or years of training to get him up to Premier League pace.