And don't forget that the RBOCs (Verizon, AT&T) are determined to strangle VOIP in the crib. They will employ any means, fair or foul, to do so.

Weak connection between the two items, Bob. Try harder next time.

>Well at least it produces no greenhouse gases.

How are you going to get energy from sugar without producing carbon dioxide? Look deep inside your body...

After saying such nice things about Shelley Minteer, you could have at least given us a picture.

You didn't, but I did. http://chemistry.slu.edu/Faculty_Staff/Minteer/

About those IP packets, how can I set my own priority bits to "1"?

Uh, Bob... Sure, sugar is not a hydrocarbon, true, but a CARBOhydrate, which, if it is actually consumed will produce ... CO2. Maybe less, but not zero. That's why the sugar cartel is of significance.

Bob...

Suprised to see no commentary on the Apple + EMI announcement. After all the coverage you gave Job's letter, now not even a "Told ya so?"

Dick, you are right, but sugar does have the plus that all or nearly all of the carbon in it came from CO2 in the atmosphere, so the net effect on greenhouse gases is near zero, you are just putting back what you took out of the atmosphere. That said, the amount of carbon released by a carbohydrate fuel for a given amount of useable energy is going to be *more* than from a hydrocarbon.

CO2 will be produced, but CO2 was consumed in the first place by the sugar cane/beet/whatever when it created the carbohydrate, so it nets to zero.

You might say the same about petroleum. The problem with petroleum is that that CO2 was taken out of circulation hundreds of millions of years ago. Life on earth has got used to getting on without it, and with the O2 that its burying left around.

now if they could get that $100 laptop running off sugar, that would be sweet.

A biofuel car, or laptop for that matter, is CO2 neutral because the carbon released while powering the device was previously pulled from the atmosphere by sugar-producing plants. In essence, the atmosphere becomes a pool of carbon which can be used to build biochemically stored energy. Releasing that energy creates no new CO2 (as does the burning of fossil fuels) but rather the release of that which was previously captured. So no (new) harm done to the environment.

As per net neutrality, the impact of IPTV will exacerbate the situation and lead to conflicts between consumers and ISPs sooner. Neither of these giants will be happy should I decide to purchase my IPTV service from another provider and use these last mile folks just to ship bits to me. The same goes for being able to get movies shipped to my Tivo or AppleTV box (via high speed Internet). Oooo… scrappy little Tivo and the marketing might of Apple v. Comcast and Verizon. Tickets! Tickets please. Can’t wait for THAT fight to begin ;-)

Bob – any word on when the logjam over CableCards will be broken? I still can’t get cards for my Tivo Series 3 box from Comcast… though they will provide them for my TVs and their own DVR. Seems downright anti-competitive to me. There should be a law…

The sugar battery will have some waste by product that will still have to be disposed of and replaced with a fresh battery or a fresh supply of sugar.

Net Neutrality will be determined by competition or regulation.

I do not think that Steve Jobs will appreciate his costumers being throttled back for downloading or streaming too many of his bits.

The ISP who will win the next phase of Internet competition will be the one that will be able to deliver the on demand bits. That demand for bits, VOIP, music and "video" entertainment is not going to decrease there are too many big players trying to push it now. The costumers want more and more, he who can deliver more will win the game.

Cable companies phone systems (atleast the ones using coax, instead of the interwebs) work on an entirely different frequency (within the coax) and do not have anything to do with one and other. The problem, atleast here in Calgary, is there has been huge speculation that our leading cable co, who provides both Internet, cable and phone, is actually de-prioritizing VOIP traffic so that it can make their phone product look that much better.




Net neutrality is an ainteresting problem because at this point, the companies are the ones calling the shots. I understand there is stuff in motion to try and take some of those descisions out of the companies hands (ie. should 911 traffic be prioritized?) but if the government controls it, are we that much better off?




On the flipside of that same Calgary cable co. I am one of those users who regularly downloads 100GB a month and have now for over year. Should they decided to ever throttle my bandwidth I would most certainly be quick to pick up the phone and start complaining. Is throttling our Internet the answer? I'm not thinking so. What is? I'm not sure of that either...

Yes, the consumers want more and more.

That strikes a real chill in my heart.

Consider humans as a cancer.

oh, so close... Cringley *almost* managed to get through an essay without mentioning TV over the Internet :-) ("[...] Yes, you can still download a 320 meg episode of Ugly Betty from iTunes...")

The government is not going to like giving up all that petroleum based tax revenue. Look for a big excise tax on sugar.

Is it possible that it takes a lot of energy to produce sugar in the first place as is the case with ethanol?

@sama - it was an 'interesting' connection btw the two, which is all that is desired by author and reader.

>>>>>>>>>>
So I tracked down Shelley Minteer, associate professor of chemistry at St. Louis University, who did the work. Shelly, who looks like a cheerleader, graduated from college TWENTY-THREE YEARS after I did. I feel so old, and dumb.

Bob ... I like reading your columns ... but calling the Professor, a PHD in Chemistry, a cheerleader is just so much pandering. If Shelly were a man's name would you have mentioned he looked like a linebacker with sixpack abs?

>>>>>>>>>>
After saying such nice things about Shelley Minteer, you could have at least given us a picture.
You didn't, but I did. http://chemistry.slu.edu/Faculty_Staff/Minteer/ External Link

See what happens when you say silly things.

Sugar is actually much less energy intensive to produce than ethanol. If anyone has the numbers, please post.

BTW, the government SHOULD NOT ever give up all that petroleum based tax revenue. It takes a huge amount of money to fight wars over oil, and build roads. In fact, if you take into account how expensive these wars and roads are, gas should be more expensive than it is by about a dollar, like it is in Europe. American gas is actually subsidized, and therefore cheap, because we pay for roads and wars with our other tax dollars (income tax). I think we would make better decisions about petroleum if its full costs were included in every gallon.

Rob,

Would you publish a similarly piece, if Shelley Minteer was your daughter?

Viswakarma

The heat problem can be overcome to engineer the enzymes to be a bit more heat tolerant or stable with a small lose in reaction rate. Thermophilic proteins have the same shape and function as our enzymes but they are stiffer to counter the thermal bombardment of water molecules hitting them. But then water is the problem with biofuels. Crops depend upon rain and ample rain at that. With expanding population and global warming, biofuel supplies might be more fickle than petroleum ever was. People need water as much as crops do and agriculture uses a lot of water. A good drought and say goodbye to all your corn crops. Anyone remember the Dust Bowl days in the 1930s? The entire Great Plains became barren and farmers watched their fields blow away.

It's easy to claim that, because the sugar came from a plant which removed carbon dioxide from the air, such biofuel technologies have net zero carbon emissions--but one has to consider the entire picture: Land will have been cleared to make room for the crops that yield the sugar in the first place. The plants and trees on the land before it was cleared to make way for the biofuel crops may have actually held more carbon than the biofuel crops that replace them.

Also, one has to consider the price effects of the greater demand for agricultural commodities that is created by the use of biofuels--the price increase is great if you're long sugar and corn, but not so wonderful if you happen to enjoy eating them.

Perhaps this is why Google and the other search giants are so intent on builting their own datacenters and owning as much of the network as possible.

Just as the Verisign monopoly increased the wholesale domain name price, the internet owner cartel can be expected to increase fees or at least increase restrictions on your usage of the public internet. Welcome to the 21st century version of Hearst Newspapers!

Here's a better link to pix of Shelly Minteer. Best of all, there are some pix of some of her publications for those who wish to pursue the subject further.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Shelley+Minteer&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

Just a quip, as I haven't had time to read through, yet. But I have a mental image of millions of minds turning to thoughts of "corn syrup". ;-)

Momentum, baby. Not saying it's always the best way, but it can push awfully hard to have its way.

Getting a little lazy there Robert. The first 4 paragraphs in the net neutrality section is almost word-for-word what you already posted at Tech Evangelist almost 2 weeks ago. You're probably taking some time off for the Easter holiday. :)

Interestingly enough, a children's book from way back when, Bob Fulton's Amazing Soda Pop Stretcher by Jerome Beatty, involves sugar being used as the primary ingredient in an amazing technological advance. It's a super-frictionless lubricant rather than a source of energy, but still something that everybody wants. As I recall, by the end of the book sugar has become outlandishly expensive because the government is buying it all up to use in producing this lubricant—until finally the American people have had enough and the government is forced to give up the use of this advancement for the sake of the people's collective sweet tooth.

(I seem to recall that they happily allow Russian spies to steal the secret of the advancement by the end of the book, knowing that Russia actually using it will throw them into the same kind of turmoil that America has just experienced.)

The notion that prioritized voip is bad only holds if your connection sucks. Because, clearly no one would give a damn about a 128kb stream of audio vs, say, 8 mb of data. it doesn't mean much of a change if voip is prioritized or not, unless your isp sucks bollocks. Make that argument video over ip and then you get somewhere.

Is this a battery or a fuel cell? They are not the same.

In other businesses like, I think, trucking, airlines, railroads, and the post office we have lots of net neutrality laws. They are known as common carrier laws.

"would we then be held hostage by the the Organization of Sugar Exporting Countries"

Ah Robert, it's wit like yours that has made the American public the uniformed twits they are today, the people who believe everything Bush said, from WMDs found in Iraq to economic fairy stories about how lowering the tax rate while expanding government payouts is somehow a tax cut. It is, after all, as journalist, more important to be amusing than to present the public with an accurate impression of the world.

As anyone who actually knows anything about the subject will tell you, the primary villain in anything to do with American sugar is massive sugar tariffs on imported sugar, thanks to the lobbying of a few multi-millionaires in Florida who benefit from the exorbitant cost of imported sugar. (And now joined by the corn lobby who are happy to have food manufacturers use high fructose corn syrup in all recipes that formerly used sugar.)

Comcast has been cutting off people entirely, not just throttling them. I noted on my blog:
http://blog.bfccomputing.com/articles/2007/03/14/conflict-of-interest-at-comcast
that they're cutting off just about at the point where folks could reasonably replace a cable TV ser vice with Internet content.

The I-Mafia Internet mafia (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, RIAA, MPAA et al) have a tight strangehold on the American consumers. Rather than improve the quality of their service (better bandwidth, services etc), the I-Mafia deliberately throttle bandwidth just to so that they can maximise profits - customer satisfaction be damned as there is no competition any way. And the FCC is under the tight grip of the I-MAFIA - instead of encouraging alternative methods to the last mile, the I-MAFIA is allowed to control any newer technologies as well. In contrast, India, Korea and China are making spectacular progress. Fibre as the last mile is already in place in most metro cities, Wimax trials are already in place and due to go mainstream in a few months.
I live in the BayArea and AT&T is pathetic in terms of the bandwidth is provides. My VOIP calls through Vonage are routinely dropped (don't tell me that AT &T are not involved) and upload/download speeds are pathetic.
When will some one take on the I-Mafia? Like Robert kennedy, we need a bold and fearless head of the FCC. As for our elected leaders, they are so old that they hardly understand what Net neutrality means.
If this trend continues, the USA will soon beocme no 4 after China, Europe and India as a world power.

I'm putting my bets on the Coke and Mentos turbine-powered car.

Google will save us.

Looks like Prof. Minteer wisely pulled her photo from her SLU link listed above. Nice going Bob. Let's make it all about the package and not about the contents.

It is a shame that you described a serious woman doing serious work in such a sexist way.

Kia ora Bob,

Always enjoy reading your columns!

Your bit about the sugar battery was interesting. Had not seen that. As your readers point out, carbohydrate-based batteries have the potential benefit of being carbon-neutral with regard to climate change. We recycle the same carbon instead of releasing the carbon stored in our big "fossil fuel" battery.

One other interesting issue to consider is how much land would be needed to provide enough carbohydrates (or ethanol or something else) to substitute our fossil fuel use. It would not even necessarily need to be a complete replacement before we begin to see some serious repercussions. There are already claims that the big push for ethanol-blended or based fuels is driving up corn prices via simple competition, which has potentially significant consequences for people in countries that rely heavily on corn as a key food source.

As a Yank living in New Zealand, I was intrigued by your comments about ISPs in the USA moving towards data caps and speed throttling. We must be very advanced Down Under then, because we've already got both in various combinations. For $29.95 GST inclusive I get MAX speed (generally around 4 MB per second) downloading and a 500 MB (no typo there) data allowance per month. That's one of the better plans. For an extra $10 per month I think I could get 3 GB. You can get a higher allowance if you pay more.

Funny thing is the NZ Government is in the process of breaking up NZ Telecom into independent retail, wholesale, and network companies in an attempt to spur competition and catapult NZ into the top half of the OECD for broadband (one of their key indicators). But it seems that the USA, where competition supposedly abounds, might be headed right to the same place where we are now in NZ.

Interesting.

Cheers,

Daniel

Daniel here in South Africa is much the same thing although slightly better, Telkom, the up until recently the only Telecoms, 36% government-owned, company in South Africa, has us on a 3 gig cap, 384kbps download speed for around 89 US dollars (there are better options but of course more expensive), yes ridiculous I know. With the introduction of a new Telecoms, Neotel, and the impending opening up the last mile, and Wimax, a new cable line from the Indian ocean and so forth, we can only look forward to what americans call the bare minimum in their country... so guys in the US, if u feel u being throttled to 10 gigs or so, don't feel so bad...

In INDIA we have both public and pvt telcos. One of the options cost about 1100 rupees(divide by 45 to get USD eqiv.) Down load speed is 1.5 to 1.9 Mb appx. as advertised by telcos, but practically it may be 300/400 kbps, with unlimited download. So we are not in an unhappy situation I understand.

Net neutrality is exclusively about censorship.

@misogynylovescompany:

It's a shame you can't put a comment in context. Bob goes on to describe the professor as 23 years his junior. Your comment seems to be from someone who seeks nits to pick.

How much energy does it take to produce ethanol and sugar? It depends. Are you producing it from corn, sugar cane, sugar beets or some other crop? Sugar cane is much more effecient than corn, by the way.




How much land would it take to produce enough ethanol or sugar to fuel our needs? Again, it depends on your source, but it will be a LOT. However there are technologies on the near horizon that can potentially take agricultural byproducts that would otherwise have very little marketable value (think wheat chaff) and use them to produce ethanol.




The shift to ethanol-based fuels is shaping up to be very interesting indeed.

re: Net Neutrality
I agree with net neutrality, but the whole issue is predicated on net congestion. In 5-10 years, I expect that new technology will take care of the congestion, and this will be a non-issue!