Dear silicon.com... green carrots, cloud nine chats, open source ponderings …

With the Easter weekend now a distant memory and all the chocolate eggs polished off, silicon.com readers have been hitting their keyboards to sound off on the hot issues of the week.

So, from the sinking ship of the carbon footprint to flying high and still being able to chat, readers let rip on the week's tech happenings.

Sinking ships
Green carrots needed for IT chiefs

The problem is that 'techies' are sufficiently educated to realise that all this 'carbon footprint', 'global warming' talk is just politicians who - having lost control of the populous via religion - have decided to start their own new religion of 'green sustainability'.
-- Roger Huffadine, Worcester

Our politicians' measured and considered response to this possible global extinction event was to create a market allowing people who produce lots of CO2 to offset this and "sell" some of these emissions to people who don't produce quite so much - raising lots of tax revenue in the process.

A bit like the captain of a sinking ship who, instead of doing something that might stop the ship sinking, sets up a system whereby the people who don't have so much water in their cabins can sell the empty volume to those that do, while giving the captain a kickback on every transaction, the ship is still going to sink and everyone is still going to drown - but the captain will be rich.

If the situation was so serious that 'green carrots' are actually needed for anyone, then even our politicians with their rather loose grip on reality, might have done something a little more productive to save the planet than introduce a carbon tax.
-- Karen Challinor, UK

It does make you ask the question "Is the ship really sinking?"

Diesel-running cars can just as easily run on vegetable oil. If there was any danger of causing our own extinction I'm sure our scientists could make them run on water if needed, along with all the factories that produce them!

Yet all the governments concentrate on is new ways to tax us on using the only fuels we are given, all in the cause of being "green". We still have to drive the same amount of miles to work each day if we pay 1p or £1 - taxing us more doesn't change anything!
-- MusicFan, CV UK

Editor's choice

silicon.com editor Steve Ranger flags up his picks on the site this week...

♦ Legal Eye: Is encryption really the silver bullet?
♦ Peter Cochrane's Video Blog: Multitasking mastery
♦ Heathrow Terminal 5 opens its doors
♦ Video: The Colossus WWII codebreaking machine
♦ Photos: The Colossus WWII codebreaking machine

Chatting on cloud nine
Emirates rings up first in-flight mobile call

Marvellous! I knew that it would happen eventually - now no long-waiting family member or active businessman may be starved of keeping in touch on the move and in the air. So long as the price of flights doesn't increase substantially, I think it's a worthwhile investment!
-- Matthew Bewers, Jersey C.I

Now those few hours of peace and quiet - about the only place on the planet where you could escape the dreaded Nokia ringtone - will be shattered with more talk, the endless keypad beeps from texters and people who believe that because they are at 30,000ft in the air they need to shout even louder!

Don't get me wrong - I love the technology. But did this last island really need a mobile phone facility? Surely wi-fi for laptop users would be sufficient?
-- Daz, London

Most devices now allow you to do all their functions in 'flight' mode, so the only real advantage is the send and receive element.

Hopefully the premium charges won't make that too prohibitive.
-- Anonymous, London

Anti-US a plus for open source?
Open source owes popularity to anti-US vibe?

The sentiments behind open source, including freedom, sharing and enjoying productive work ... if you had the impossible task of characterising them as matching any single nationality ... I think it would have to be American.
-- John H Woods, UK

I don't think that there is an across-the-board anti-US feeling where open source is concerned. I tend to believe that it's more of a reaction to individual corporate attitudes, as epitomised by the likes of Microsoft. After all, Apple is an American corporation and, as far as I can see, is not particularly unpopular and also doesn't appear to get so worked up about open source.

Even though I use a Mac I use NeoOffice, Thunderbird and Firefox (although I use Safari 3.1, too).
-- Malcolm, Kent

Open source is a global phenomenon, collaborating developers can be physically located on either side of the planet.

Talent, skill, experience and enthusiasm are the prime factors driving it's development.

Businesses could learn a lot from the way open source projects are developed.

National pride doesn't enter the equation, open source gets used because it solves the problem at hand and generally doesn't suffer from the 'software bloat' that afflicts much of commercial software as the developing companies stuff yet more useless bells and whistles into the application in an attempt to make their product more attractive.

Open source generally only has features that the users of the software have asked for, or in some cases developed themselves.

Open source is a good thing, but not for the reasons that Mr Whitehurst is claiming
-- Karen Challinor, UK

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