Slashdot Mirror

Maybe I just program/design for fun - my replacement for doing Suduko. I'ld much rather: hook a camera upto an FPGA or work my way thorugh Project Euler maths problems than bother writing anything for the Linux kernel.

I'm sure I could if I had a good reason to - in fact I hacked mixer support for a Brooktree PCI video card into the kernel some time back (way back!) after attacking the board with a multimeter. The Linux kernel has matured to the point where there is very little fun left in developing for it - why would I give up my spare time for no fun?

And bare metal ARM builds are not starting from nothing - most dev boards have a base system with device drivers and libraries for most stuff. Why the heck would I want a full OS to drive a few stepper motors, or act as a USB HID device?

Do you own any low-end dev boards? If not, get some. They are fun. I've got a
- CubieBoard - used as a media player
- a Raspberry Pi (in case I want to do high altitude ballooing) - used as a host for a 100MHz Logic Analyser
- a PcDuino (Android or Linux+ a bit of GPIO),
- a few Arduinos (one for controlling a reflow toaster overn)
- a few TI Launchpads(well they were $5...)
- a ChipKit Uno - 80MHz of microcontroller fun
- a MicroZed - gifted to me by Xilinx, the FPGA maker
- a Zedboard - gifted to me by Avnet to blog about
- TI Chronos watch - you can upgrade the firmware and make it run Mars time if you need to!
- A lot of FPGA boards
- My wiki-based FPGA VHDL programming course with 100K+ hits.

They are all much more interesting and 'fun' then writing a an obscure corner of the Linux kernel could ever be.

The ISS is nothing more than a thinly veiled weapons platform cloaked as a space station. Rods from God is the ultimate weapon, inflicting nuclear scale devastation without the pesky fallout. Within our lifetimes expect to see an attack launched and the USA will claim that they had no part in it, when in reality they will be the instigating party with plausible deniability.

Why would the Rods from God project require a manned platform? Especially an international crew that would be likely to discover the device and report it back to their own respective countries?

In the case, for example of the 7/7 bombings, these were made of organic peroxides.

Nail varnish remover, hair bleach, limescale remover, and you're pretty much done.

(you can't make a bomb from these chemicals simply in the concentrations they are normally used at - but you can't tell from traces if peroxides are part of hair dye, or a bomb.)

The reagents used to make ricin are similarly problematic.

Also - it's important to note that once in solution, you can't go back to the original compound.

If you put Calcium hydroxide and Sodium chloride into the drain - you get a mix of ions.
You can't tell if what went into a drain was Calcium Chloride or Calcium Hydroxide.
This is clearly important if one is innocuous.

In practice, it seems likely that most of the 'unique' signatures will come from illicit drug use - NOT manufacture of drugs or explosives.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-02/your-sewer-drugs

So basically they want to introduce a Slashdot for scientists..

Prepare for a brand new style of flame-wars!

Since Popular Science dropped the ball, the government had to take over.

If being wrong about electric vehicle pollution makes you an eco-tard, congratulations. You're an eco-tard.

Sierra Club

Popular Science

Or maybe we can all just conduct ourselves with a little more respect. That would be really nice.

I've been studying this (publishing) for some time, in the context of learning, verifying assumptions, and the scientific method.

It turns out that there is really no bar in scientific publishing. It doesn't have to be understandable, nor innovative, nor even correct. You only need to be ethical (ie - don't lie about the data), cite anything that you got from other sources, and show that there is less than a 1-in-20 chance that you are wrong (p > 0.5).

What exactly do we want in a published paper, anyway?

Many cancer studies can't be reproduced. Many studies are statistically significant but valueless (the IQ of people in NYC is higher than Chicago by 1 point: this can be statistically certain but have no practical significance). There are lots and lots of ways to frame the conclusion the wrong way such as confusing correlation with causation, reversed conditionals (if the defendant is innocent, there is a 1 in 1 billion chance that this evidence is wrong), and other logical errors.

Then there's the enormous economic incentive of needing to publish to keep your job, that reviewers will oppose maverick thought and agree with community beliefs, and that no one examines their assumptions.

Would you like to publish a paper? MathGen will write one for you. Pass it around and chances are it will be accepted.

So when I talk to people about my research, the inevitable comment is "you should publish". And my inevitable answer is: why?

What do we want in scientific papers? What are they even for?

There are "bedrock scientific doctrines". Like bedrock, they can change, but to change them requires something pretty impressive. Comments on an article are not that.

Look at the first 5 comments on one of the articles they linked as an example of the problem. The article is titled "What Happens To Women When They're Denied Abortions?"
For convenience, reproduced here:

The narrative of this article and the study on which it is based perpetuates the falsehood, in that it assumes pregnancy is not a preventable occurrence.

What happens to the baby when it's denied an abortion?

To piggyback off of [first commentor], this article also never explores the possibility of putting the baby of for adoption to a family that will love and look after it's well being, and cover a lot if not all of the mothers medical expenses. Adoption is an option!!

My sister in law is a NICU nurse and has been in a number of different states, and she is baffled when she talks to girls that are considering abortion, all of which indicate that they were never told it was an option to put the child up for adoption. Come on, there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in this country that would do almost anything to have a child, to the point where they will go to Africa for a baby!! I mean when I dont want my dog or cat anymore I dont kill it I give to someone else who will care for it .....sigh....we're doomed.

My mom had 9 kids (quite the opposite from Miss S.) and went through financial collapse and suffered poor health. She didn't ever once consider aborting, if she did neither my brother nor his son would be alive today.

That said, I cannot feel sorry for a woman who hits hard times in spite of her best attempt to kill her child off.

So some women get depressed when they are not allowed to have a government sanctioned murder of a baby. Outstanding...

How selfish is humanity that we condone murder of babies instead of dealing with 9 months of inconvenience, embarrassment, and adoption....

Which it doesn't.

Actually it does. linky. Most things don't have to be 'perfect' when 'good enough' will get the job done - especially in low economic areas.

Commercial product would cost thousands of dollars. you can print this robo-hand for maybe a hundred bucks. Shipping one printer to a 3rd world country is going to be much much cheaper than importing everything already made.

And that needs a 3D printer why, please tell. The solar panels are presumably produced by conventional means, but somehow that doesn't work for simple accessories?

Never said it 'needs' a 3D printer. just that it can be done easier and simpler than setting up an entire manufacturing process to build by 'conventional' means. I haven't seen a desktop injection molder for $500 bucks - have you?. And comparing the complex nature of a solar panel to plastic parts and gears is ridiculous.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-10/123000-mph-plasma-engine-could-finally-take-astronauts-mars?page=2

These are super efficient and super fast and the fuel is readily available.

Maybe not. Lockheed Martin claims they can build a test reactor in less than 4 years and a full production reactor by 2022.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-02/fusion-power-could-happen-sooner-you-think

Yes I know it is in popsci but they are not all flying cars.

This is just another step in the scheme of controlling the population. Can you imagine if the NSA forced all the developers to insert a backdoor which would allow law enforcement to shut down your car with the click of a button? /tin-foil-hat

In some ways that seems better than the current methods using stop sticks or a barrage of 12 gauge slugs. Or the periodically re-invented EMP guns. At least the back door could be designed in such a way that the vehicle is not destroyed permanently or as dangerously. It always sucks when the police kill the wrong person in a hail of gunfire. With a kill switch, your car could at least be turned back on and you can avoid an early trip to the morgue.

It's certainly better to have a kill switch in your car if they use an EMP while you're wearing your foil hat. Unless you prefer to have your head cooked to extra crispy

I'm not sure why you are bringing the NSA up though. They would be more likely to want a backdoor to get the GPS data or covertly use a built in microphone to listen in on conversations within the car.

Conventional ice breaking is done by the weight of the ship, the shape of the bow allows them to slide on top of it and once far enough the ice underneath will break, doing this sideways will be rather nasty for the stomach of the sailors on board.

Providing they have the horsepower it can be done in a relatively smooth way or they need to regularly back up for a new run onto the ice.

The ship in the article is 'only' fit for up to 60 cm. in sideways and 100 cm. of ice in regular mode, not exactly a lot of obstruction when you consider the typical ice sheet north of Russia is between 1.2 and 2.5 m. thick.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-09/russia-building-worlds-largest-nuclear-powered-icebreaker

If you look at the map, the seas where finnish ice breakers roam are not it north russia (itä-meri and perämeri in finnish). As far as i know there is no ship routes trough the northern arctic sea. If there would be, it would cut ship travel times from certain parts of the world by a considerable margin, if they would want to deliver cargo to northern or central europe. Cargo from russia to norway, sweden and finland are mainly transported by railway or truck as there is no sea in between. The most work these breakers do as far as i know are between denmark, finland, russia, estonia, sweden, norway and germany (and some others), not in the arctic sea as your "north russia" would suggest.

Providing they have the horsepower it can be done in a relatively smooth way or they need to regularly back up for a new run onto the ice.

The ship in the article is 'only' fit for up to 60 cm. in sideways and 100 cm. of ice in regular mode, not exactly a lot of obstruction when you consider the typical ice sheet north of Russia is between 1.2 and 2.5 m. thick.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-09/russia-building-worlds-largest-nuclear-powered-icebreaker

Except it doesn't:

http://www.popsci.com/stuart-fox/article/2008-09/could-tapping-planet-geothermal-energy-cool-earth%E2%80%99s-core

And:

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008186.html

Will be a bit off-topic but it is somewhat related to your questions and Snowden gave us a chance to fix this.

I've ran across this article and another one. Both in quite a reputable magazine that is around for 100+ years. While these are theoretical ones, I'm stunned by what they wrote. Theorizing whenever it is possible to dronebomb Snowden without even acknowledging how lawless and cruel such murder would be (yes, murdering, assasination - not just killing!). I'm even more stunned with comments below commenting technicalities of such act without any regard to criminality of such act. Face it folks ! You've been brainwashed to the point where your moral consciouness does not work anymore - you just take such crap for granted from your psychopatic, corporate media and then wonder why there is no outcry ?!? I haven't seen such levels of apathy anywhere in the world ! Add result of latest polls into equation (majority americans don't mind being spied by NSA) and see how sad state of affairs is. Your corporate government can manipulate you into anything it wants ! That huge data cache collected and stored in the NSA is propably the crucial tool it uses to achieve this goal. They can strip you out of everything (see housing bubble, bailouts, healthcare system bankrupting and killing people, fraudclosure, mass-jailing people for profit etc. etc.) and there is virtually no backlash from american citizenry. How this happens is just beyond my perception. I don't know what kind of science does it take to borg 330 millions people into submission, but I suspect it might be as advanced as science behind putting Curiosity rover onto Mars.

Will be a bit off-topic but it is somewhat related to your questions and Snowden gave us a chance to fix this.

I've ran across this article and another one. Both in quite a reputable magazine that is around for 100+ years. While these are theoretical ones, I'm stunned by what they wrote. Theorizing whenever it is possible to dronebomb Snowden without even acknowledging how lawless and cruel such murder would be (yes, murdering, assasination - not just killing!). I'm even more stunned with comments below commenting technicalities of such act without any regard to criminality of such act. Face it folks ! You've been brainwashed to the point where your moral consciouness does not work anymore - you just take such crap for granted from your psychopatic, corporate media and then wonder why there is no outcry ?!? I haven't seen such levels of apathy anywhere in the world ! Add result of latest polls into equation (majority americans don't mind being spied by NSA) and see how sad state of affairs is. Your corporate government can manipulate you into anything it wants ! That huge data cache collected and stored in the NSA is propably the crucial tool it uses to achieve this goal. They can strip you out of everything (see housing bubble, bailouts, healthcare system bankrupting and killing people, fraudclosure, mass-jailing people for profit etc. etc.) and there is virtually no backlash from american citizenry. How this happens is just beyond my perception. I don't know what kind of science does it take to borg 330 millions people into submission, but I suspect it might be as advanced as science behind putting Curiosity rover onto Mars.

A wild scenario? Not when you consider that there's already been one banana apocalypse. Until the early 1960s, American cereal bowls and ice cream dishes were filled with the Gros Michel, a banana that was larger and, by all accounts, tastier than the fruit we now eat. Like the Cavendish, the Gros Michel, or "Big Mike," accounted for nearly all the sales of sweet bananas in the Americas and Europe. But starting in the early part of the last century, a fungus called Panama disease began infecting the Big Mike harvest. The malady, which attacks the leaves, is in the same category as Dutch Elm disease. It appeared first in Suriname, then plowed through the Car- ibbean, finally reaching Honduras in the 1920s. (The country was then the world's largest banana producer; today it ranks third, behind Ecuador and Costa Rica.)

Growers adopted a frenzied strategy of shifting crops to unused land, maintaining the supply of bananas to the public but at great financial and environmental expense-the tactic destroyed millions of acres of rainforest. By 1960, the major importers were nearly bankrupt, and the future of the fruit was in jeopardy. (Some of the shortages during that time entered the fabric of popular culture; the 1923 musical hit "Yes! We Have No Bananas" is said to have been written after songwriters Frank Silver and Irving Cohn were denied in an attempt to purchase their favorite fruit by a syntactically colorful, out-of-stock neighborhood grocer.) U.S. banana executives were hesitant to recognize the crisis facing the Gros Michel, according to John Soluri, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon University and author of Banana Cultures, an upcoming book on the fruit. "Many of them waited until the last minute."

1st, physical law has limitations too, for example newton's law doesn't apply when your speed is near the speed of light. 2nd, there're speculations that physical law does change over time, for example fine structure constant may not be constant at all.

Seems the editors couldn't figure out submitter "awaisoft" is a pissant blogger on the awaisoft.com domain
There have been many articles about this around the Net today, and o fall of them, this one is by far the worst.
For fuck sake, the entire blog posting was copied and pasted verbatim into the summary.

Here's a real article over at PopSci with many pictures, a video and a good many more words about the project and what went into it.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-05/world%E2%80%99s-largest-lego-model-life-size-x-wing-video

This is the basis for a warp drive.
You contract the space infront of the ship, while expanding the space behind. The ship itself remains inside a "warp bubble" while you move space around outside the bubble.

To test this they're trying to create a bubble in the lab and shine one of a synced laser pair through the bubble region. If the lasers are out of sync, then they've managed to create a bubble and distort space.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-03/pro-tip-flying-faster-speed-light-could-have-devastating-consequences
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-03/warp-factor?single-page-view=true

This is the basis for a warp drive.
You contract the space infront of the ship, while expanding the space behind. The ship itself remains inside a "warp bubble" while you move space around outside the bubble.

To test this they're trying to create a bubble in the lab and shine one of a synced laser pair through the bubble region. If the lasers are out of sync, then they've managed to create a bubble and distort space.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-03/pro-tip-flying-faster-speed-light-could-have-devastating-consequences
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-03/warp-factor?single-page-view=true

I don't really want to speak on the validity of these things, but it's not new:

http://m.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-11/wi-fi-radiation-killing-trees

There was another article posted here about an amateur scientist I believe that had evidence of plant damage from cell or WiFi.

I see your logic. The proper thing to do then is replace this system with an issue of brooms to the police for clean up after events since tips from concerned citizens never solve terrorist cases or prevent terrorist attacks.

Got it.

Weird bacterial life in the Dead Sea

Thanks for being specific. Care to try again?

I read this article (popsci.com) a little while back. It shows a promising, relatively speaking low cost, option

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2013-02/how-two-makers-built-customizable-new-prosthetic-hand-150-and-changed-boys-life

Oh and,
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-05/every-six-hours-nsa-gathers-much-data-stored-entire-library-congress

If it's good enough for the root zone of DNS, it's good enough for my friends list.

Given technological advancements such as this lightweight carbon structure, how long could it be before a Dyson ring could be constructed using statites?

Yes, but they can't figure out what you were thinking, only the pattern it creates for the brain scan. It's like a salted and hashed passphrase from the perspective of the brain scanner You could even tell someone else what to think, but the hashing algorithm (your physical brain) is an extra secret they can't replicate. ..for the time being.

I would not be so sure about that, they are getting closer to being able to reconstruct an image from thought with fmri,
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/mind-reading-tech-reconstructs-videos-brain-images

The walls are built to withstand a nuclear strike, but how about cutting a hole in the walls with a thermal lance? Or maybe just get a few truckloads of bacon: http://www.popsci.com/bacon

Actually there were two. But we can't just go using the last one left on piddly shit like facebook users. ;)

Funny enough, they did do just that a couple years ago. Doesn't seem like anything came from it.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-05/new-technique-uses-bodys-stem-cells-regenerate-teeth

http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-57567014-85/what-it-really-takes-to-make-a-flexible-phone-smartphones-unlocked/

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-02/rubbery-battery-stretches-300-percent

Thanks for trolling. http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/no-pulse-how-doctors-reinvented-human-heart?page=3

Linux on the PS3 was terrible. Anyone that used it could have told you that.

Really??? Tell that to the US Air Force.

Sorry, the US Air Force can afford a mainframe with cell processor blades if they need it. Might not be anywhere near cheap, but that's not their job.

Linux on the PS3 was terrible. Anyone that used it could have told you that.

Really??? Tell that to the US Air Force.

Well, since I'm pretty sure I've yet to hear anybody talking about deploying these drones for cargo purposes,

There's this pilotless helicopter
And this patented concept
And this article from PopSci

So yeah...no one is considering that type of use.

* is the World is warmer than it has been for the last two thousand years? Why is the answer to this question relevant? There are many variables that affect climate (forcing factors). It's entirely possible that we've experienced cooling over the first 1700 of the last 2000 years; that has nothing to do with what degree (ha!) of change we should expect from our cranking CO2 up past any level we've seen in the last 15 million years. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/last-time-carbon-dioxide-levels-111074.aspx * is the warning of the last three hundreds years (which is undeniable) human induced? You quote Watts. He (unsurprisingly) gets the science wrong: http://grist.org/climate-energy/co2-doesnt-lead-it-lags/ * why are scientists who use the Scientific Method and go against the narrative being vilified? and 1. Who is being vilified? Names, please, of climate scientists who have been vilified for arguing against AGW. I know of very few -- Lindzen and Singer, perhaps, the latter being entirely deserving of vilification to the point of outright dismissal from the conversation, given his enthusiastic and utterly disingenuous defense of the asbestos and tobacco industries and the former appearing to simply be a contrarian in general. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/03/misrepresentation-from-lindzen/ Meanwhile, climate scientists who report that we're headed in a dangerous direction are receiving death threats. No, really: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-06/battle-over-climate-change 2. Controversial research results are a dream. Anybody who could come up with a data-driven defensible argument disproving AGW would have their career made for them. * global climate models "Much of the global warming information is based on 'extrapolations' (projections) of short-term trends." Hm. Seems like lots of folks are running tests of current GCMs against paleo data, which undermines if not invalidates your point. http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html#figure4 http://www.giss.nasa.gov/projects/gcm/ http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter6.pdf I know that climate change, as a global problem, is painful for libertarians to consider. However, as Feynman said, nature cannot be fooled. In a battle between physics and philosophy, I bet on physics. Apologies if the formatting is broken in this post; apparently Safari on a Mac doesn't want to insert line breaks.

You have to accept that the economy is not a natural thing, it's a human made game whose outcome HAS TO BE beneficial to humans by definition. All the laws and regulations and trade agreements and monetary policy and all these complex things will either serve the general welfare of humans of *get thrown the fuck out* and replaced by something that does.

IF you want to see what a "natural" economy looks like, head over to Somolia or Rwanda or Congo. Pack your pretty wife or girl friend too and stay a few weeks "free of goomint regulation" in your perfect Ayn Randian "free market" with all those supermen who have gained positions of power thanks to being free from that damn 'goobmint and tell us how it goes for you.

The economy is not a natural thing. It's a game; an agreed upon lie that can and should be replaced when it starts to fail with something that works. . Maybe that something is just a little bit of socialism where we all work some hours and get what a lot of of what we want in return. The reality that is technological progress could take us there and if it does,who the fuck cares ? When we can grow houses

http://www.popsci.com/arbona/article/2006-11/grow-your-second-home

and clothes and high quality protein meat is created in test tubes ,

http://www.helium.com/items/2162168-meat-grown-in-test-tubes-only-a-few-years-away

that is when food clothing and shelter are too cheap to meter , then what? Something new. Something we haven't thought of, that's all.

Sure tech is ruining the economy. Is it really that surprising? The economics of scarcity is the ultimate buggy whip.

You can not teleport an object from one place to another at all.

But isn't the quantum state (which is what is being "teleported") exactly equivalent to a full description of the particle in question? Therefore isn't there absolutely no difference between doing this and what might be considered "classical" teleportation, i.e. the movement of a particle from point a to point b without travelling the intervening space?

Also, keep in mind that, to my knowledge and I just did a quick check and found nothing, humanity has never entangled anything other than photons/light.

How about entangling two macroscopic crystals, neutrons and all?

The Mixed Reality Lab at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan did this in 2009 (linked post dated 2010/10/01, research presented on Popular Science's "The Future Of" television show in their The Future of Sex episode, aired in 2009.

The only reference to it remaining on the PopSci.com is Video: Japanese Robot Torso Hugs You Back dated 2011/06/23.

Popsci opened up their archives a while ago. http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=FgEAAAAAMBAJ&pg=78&query=1977%20Tornado%20Turbine

It's thermal recall force from heat generated by components on Pioneer.

Right. and the headline is a little misleading, it's a "new" explanation only if you weren't following; since it was announced in late 2010. The "anomaly" is solved.

Popular Science article about Toth and Turyshev's work here: http://www.popsci.com/pioneeranomaly

More detailed calculations supporting the explanation:
Phys Rev Letters paper by Toth and Turyshev here: http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v108/i24/e241101
ArXIV paper confirming the work with more details: http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.5222v1

JPL press release: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-209&cid=release_2012-209&msource=12209
Centauri Dreams article: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=23720

Still, it's a nice article to read about how the work is done.

"SpaceX founder Elon Musk wants to create a colony on Mars consisting of a population of 80,000, ferried to the planet in a reusable rocket. For the initial trip, the rocket would contain fewer than 10 humans, and enough equipment to found a colony ready for the other 79,990."

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/what-do-we-know-about-elon-musks-plan-mars-colony

With extinction looming on the horizon if we do nothing

What's the mechanism? How does one go from modest sea level rises over long periods of time to extinction? No one has presented any threat related to AGW that is significant enough to cause human extinction. Instead it's all idle hysteria.

Extinction may be overreach. But if you think about it, climate change means more rain and hurricanes in some places (and we get an idea of how much record-breaking hurricanes are costing us already), and maybe more importantly drought in others. We actually do have an example of what happens when drought affects crops in a region - war:

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/political-strife-caused-climate-change-doomed-maya

So the Mayans, numbering over a million in the Yucatan in 800AD, fell to less than 200k, just 100 years later (numbers coming from memory of a Jared Diamon book - correct me pls). It was almost a 90% drop in population due to war, famine, and all the other social effects that more and more evidence indicates were initially due to climate change.

And of course, the Mayans hadn't invented nuclear or even automatic weapons.

Considering that's SOP for Apple. Pot meet kettle?

Fandroid throwing stones in a glass house?

Apple devices are supported for about 3 years.

Cute, comparing Microsoft's desktop support to Apple's mobile support. A first generation iPod will still be recognized by iTunes and will still sync newly purchased music. Good luck with that PlaysForSure, though.

Apple operating systems receive updates for about 2-3 years.

They're still releasing security updates for Leopard, a six year old operating system. You know, the same kind of updates that XP and now Windows 7 get.

They started it.

This one?

Apparently it's the former: here

Actually, assuming you leave the solar panels on the ground, batteries may be a viable option:

1. Volta Volare has designed a small electric-hybrid airplane that should be able to go 200 miles on a charge. Of course, it's not an airliner, but...
2. Boeing has designed a concept airliner called the Sugar Volt (video) that can cruise on battery power alone. It could be built as early as 2035.