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public transit...always requires financial support from tax payers because you never can charge the riders enough.

Texas couldn't find a single road that paid for itself 100% through gas taxes and other user fees. Why should transit be held to a higher standard?

And can you name a city that doesn't force developers and business owners to provide free parking and yet the majority of people still prefer to drive?

And because no road pays for itself in gas taxes and user fees, you could argue that if the direct users aren't willing to pay for the roads we have without asking for subsidies, we have too many roads.

Phoenix uses the Proposition 400 sales tax to finance freeways, San Francisco has Proposition K, Los Angeles has Measure R, and San Diego has TransNet. Texas found that "no road [in the state] pays for itself in gas taxes and [user] fees."

Are there any cities in the USA where cars are economical without road subsidies or preferential treatment such as minimum parking requirements?

Here is a 2006 article about the IGT Taxibus concept. It definitely wasn't conceived in Northern California air, but in the UK (circa 2001 IIRC).

The problem was they approached municipalities with the idea and no large cities climbed on board. So now the cities have to face the likes of Uber and Lyft who, I predict, will not collectively reach the scale needed to apreciably reduce traffic congestion (one of the aims of IGT). Combine that with no regulation and a consumer protection model that amounts to Yelp.com, and I'll guess that Uber and Lyft will in 7 years be less of a joke and more of a way to elict negative reactions from people (assuming you momentarily lack the gas to fart).

I agree with reading about it on the Internet. I like RSS, but I've found it homogenizes my content so that things don't jump out at me and the really interesting stories get buried with all the mediocre ones. So I keep the following list of bookmarks to check on a weekly basis:

ABC (Australia) Science, ABC (US) Science, Air & Space Magazine, ARKive, Ars Technica, BBC SciTech News, CBS Sci-Tech News, Chet Raymo, Cosmos News, Current: Science, Discover, Discovery News, Edge, Economist Science, EurekAlert!, Flyp media, Futurity, h+, Inkling Magazine, LiveScience, Massimo Pigliucci, Mother Jones Environment, MSNBC Science News, National Geographic News, National Public Radio (US), Natural History Magazine, New Scientist, New York Times Science, New Yorker Science, Newsweek Science, Orion, PhysOrg, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, R&D Magazine, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Science Daily, Scientific American, Seed Magazine, Science Cheerleader, Science News, Schrodinger's Kitten, Slashdot Science, Smithsonian, Space.com, The Technium, Time Magazine Science, USA Today Science, US News & World Report Science, Wired News, World Changing

There have been many projects over the years that aim to create a sustainable city. I know when China announced its eco-city, it was just as much a showcase for technology that could be exported to other countries as it was an experiment in making towns better for the environment. This is going to be big business in the future once the politicians and those with a vested interest in fossil fuel stop fighting the change.

Anyone could easily come up with a bunch of random links about fucked up environmental stuff happening in any country, but it doesn't mean they've actually said anything interesting or insightful.

Let me state up front that for many, many reasons I think society is better of heading towards New Urbanism... both for sociological, psychological, resource efficiency and energy efficiency reasons. We could be happier, healthier, live in cleaner cities and maybe even work less hours and yet still have the same, if not better levels of comfort.

However, it seems the 2 main problems with EV's have been solved. Those 2 problems were:
1. No one wants to buy an expensive new battery every few years as the car battery runs down. (Although battery life technology increases all the time).
2. No one wants to have to stop and charge for 8 hours on the occasions they need to drive more than 160km.

This is solved with the "Better Place" battery swap system! The irony here is I actually think a "Better Place" is a car-free, or extremely "car-disciplined" town plan like New Urbanism is a much better place to live.

Better Place have developed a new international EV car standard and are inviting all car companies to join up or be left behind. Renault-Nissan have already joined up, and will be producing the first cheap mass produced electric car ever.

They sell you the car, but they own the battery.

Then for most suburban driving you'll just charge whenever the car is still. (Which works out on average about 22 hours a day!) You'll charge at home, at work, at the shops. (Better Place installs EV charge points everywhere when they "do" a city).

The CEO Shai Agassi gave a presentation at his TED talk.
Shai Agassi's bold plan for electric cars, Video on TED.com

Better Place is coming to taxis in Tokyo, a trial in Canberra, San Francisco, massive deployment in Israel (which will probably be the first country off oil for domestic car use), Hawaii, Denmark, and other places.

Shai's Australian talk basically said that on a per km basis, electricity will charge your car at about $0.80 cents a litre oil equivalent distance. Fuel in Australia costs around $1.20 to $1.30 a litre. Imagine how fast people are going to want these cars when they realise how convenient and cheap they are now, let alone when peak oil hits.

However.... there are a whole bunch of other peaks coming, including peaks in various rare earths and metals used in car production, which is why I prefer the lower embodied energy solutions of New Urbanism and walkable cities.

Even the Australian Senate found for "more walkable" cities... and yet realised this could be difficult.

"Increasing walking, cycling and public transport use in cities is a worthwhile goal for a number of reasons, regardless of predictions about the oil future. If there is a long term rise in the price of oil, it will be all the more necessary."

However we should not underestimate the difficulties involved. Vast areas of post World War 2 suburbia have been designed on the assumption that most travel would be by car, and with the aim of making this easier. The effect has been to make travel in any other way more difficult, as activity centres disperse to sites distant from the public transport network, and the environment for pedestrians and cyclists is degraded by traffic. In these areas existing public transport routes do not serve many travel needs, and existing services mostly function as welfare for people without cars, with a very low proportion of total trips (less than 5%)."

Chapter 5:21-22

My favourite piece ever to explore how quickly we could retrofit suburbia around walking distance plans is Worldchanging: My Other Car is a Bri

No because our fool politicians granted Comcast a monopoly.

Because our laws are written by corporate interests, not the people.

...which is the inevitable result of "private funding of campaigns"

See Change Congress and Lectures by Lawrence Lessig on Institutional Corruption for more information. Hour Version Half-Hour Version

Against Transparency an article by Lawrence Lessig indicates why increased transparency is probably not enough to make a difference on it's own. A number of people have responded to Lessig's article. Someone was kind enough to provide a walkthrough of the article too.

> Brazil?
What do you know of Brazilian techies? Ever worked with Brazilian engineers? Ever been to Brazil? I can assure you they are every bit as good as any Chinese, Russian, American, Indian, Brit, Czech, Japanese, or Pole I've worked with. Slashdotters may also be interested to know that Brazil has a very open-source, creative-commons sort of culture.

> And not an organized military either. Pirates.
It's likely that the recently reported Chinese cracks of US military systems were freelance.

This isn't some small scale local building installation we're talking about here. These are bought in bulk in a billion dollar installation. Your also assuming that panels are still prohibitively expensive due to the technology being relatively new, and the shortage of silicon.

Both are becoming non-issues.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20702/
http://earth2tech.com/2009/02/23/solar-prices-drop-deeper-discounts-expected/
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009478.html

Any new technology is expensive when it's new. As adoption increases, production costs go down as does the time it takes for return on investment.

Latest estimates show panel prices dropping by 40-50%. What was not cost effective in 2000 is easily becoming so in 2009.

Even though you are joking, you might be interested in: Clay Shirky: Gin, Television, and Social Surplus (transcript)

There are a lot of places where the majority of power comes from nuclear and hydro.

Yes, and both of those power sources use a lot of energy to build. Then for nuclear there's pollution from mining as well as the waste.

Also, the real risk of CFLs is caused by the fact that any pollution from it is local and concentrated as a point source

Over a period of years I replaced almost all of my incandescent light bulbs with CFLs. As one burnt out I got a CFL to replace it. A point source of mercury is easier to handle than air born mercury. As for possibly breaking one, I try to use measures to reduce any possibility of breakage.

Also, consider that the plumes from garbage dumps invading your water supply

CFLs are supposed to be recycled and not thrown in the trash. Of course some people do throw them away, either because they don't care or because they don't know better. Even so, that's still less mercury in the environment than the amount of mercury that would be emitted to produce the power to light today's incandescent lights.

Which is why I hope these LEDs, or others, that are good for area lighting come onto the market within a couple of years.

trace mercury emitted into the atmosphere a hundred miles away from the city....

Not all power plants are 100 miles away from the city. There's more than one power plant in South Bronx. NYC has 25 plants serving it. The first ones built by Con Edison, used the used steam to heat neighborhood buildings.

Falcon

But seriously, "IF you build it, they will come". Take the hundreds of hectares of suburban sprawl out in Western Sydney (Australia). It's hard to believe, but even with all the evidence we had 10 years ago that the world was approaching peak oil, the town planners let MORE of this car-dependent suburbia spread ever further west. Anyway, how to fix it? Build the trains, trams, and trolley buses... run them well, and an amazing thing happens. Town planners allow density and diversity to spring up around the stations. That's New Urbanism folks.. and it gives something for the surrounding suburbs to plug into. To get through peak oil and global warming, we've got to stop thinking of our cities as "FINISHED" because they are just not... they are constantly evolving, changing things that we shape. Simply by rezoning how we plan our cities we can let natural attrition of older homes being demolished but NOT replaced in the same out-of-date suburban plan that they started in, and things change. In 20 years we could have retrofitted most people off oil, in 50 America could be "more European than the Europeans". Remember, half the energy ever used by a car is used before the car leaves the car lot for the first time! (In building the car and the car infrastructure of highways, parking lots, etc). http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007800.html So isn't it time we stopped stuffing around with the suburban plan which is bland, boring, sociologically and psychologically detrimental by increasing isolation, and actually created urban hubs running trams, trains, and trolley buses on renewable electricity? This can be done. Peak oil is already rocking the world economy... stop mucking around with petty dinky little EV's that require rare metals that are fast running out, too much energy to build, and maintain a city plan that's bad for us anyway. New Urbanism and Richard Register's "eco-cities" rock. It's time to stop thinking about energy efficient cars and think about energy efficient cities. As peak oil hits it's going to be a challenge enough to keep the harvesters running, the emergency services patrolling and the post on time. Sacrifices will have to be made. It's time to get serious... so what if you 'like' a car, reality just may not be that accommodating.

News feeds:

IE Blog - for keeping track of what MS is up to on the browser front
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/atom.xml

Standards Blog - not as many posts now days, was very important during the height of the ooxml/odf war
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/backend/geeklog.rss

I keep OSNews for completeness, but it is pretty useless - software news
http://osnews.com/files/recent.xml

Anandtech - hardware news and reviews
http://www.anandtech.com/rss/articlefeed.aspx

Ars Technica - tech news and commentary
http://arstechnica.com/index.rssx

Phoronix - linux graphics news and info
http://www.phoronix.com/rss.php

Linux Weekly News
http://lwn.net/headlines/rss

KDE announcements
http://www.kde.org/dotkdeorg.rdf

Open Source Software Planets:

http://planet.debian.org/rss20.xml

http://planet.fedoraproject.org/atom.xml

http://planet.ubuntu.com/rss20.xml

http://planet.gnome.org/atom.xml

http://planetkde.org/rss20.xml

http://planet.freedesktop.org/rss20.xml

http://planet.mozilla.org/atom.xml

http://planet.jabber.org/atom.xml

mostly software releases and XEP updates
http://planet.jabber.org/news/atom.xml

http://maemo.org/news/planet-maemo/atom.xml

environment feeds:

Good Pacific Northwest environmental news
http://www.sightline.org/daily_score/rss

Best environmental news and discussion on the web
http://www.worldchanging.com/index.xml

I keep Treehugger for completeness, but I mark 90% of their posts as read without looking at them.
Really too "light green/consumer green" for me
http://www.treehugger.com/index.xml

other feeds:

Dive into Mark - not what once was, but good enough to keep around
http://diveintomark.org/feed/

Loooong posts on software
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Bruce Scheier knows Alice and Bob's shared secret
http://www.schneier.com/blog/index.rdf

The intersection of Science (especially Evolution), Liberalism, Atheism, and Squid
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/index.xml

"Your comment has too few characters per line" - what a load of bull. Taco, I know this and the timer are supposed to cut down on spam, but I think they annoy legitimate posters more than they reduce spam. You should really reconsider these "features".

At the national, let alone global scale, trees alone do not provide the carbon sink we need to offset our woefully unbalanced power consumption. They are vital, yes, and planting them is still good, but trees will not offset our coal power plant use, let alone petroleum use. From: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007286.html "Home Depot is funding the planting of 300,000 trees in cities across the US to help absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions... The CO2 emissions from only one medium-sized (500 MW) coal-fired power plant, in just 10 days of operation, will negate this entire effort." [for the entire life of the tree].

It's a popular concept in some circles: Use affordable high-tech devices to let folks in the developing world have a better life.

An example are cell phones. They've brought connectivity to folks in even isolated villages who could not dream of getting a land line.

Or the "life straw," a simple, cheap, but high-tech gadget that filters the filth and germs from streams. It's literally a straw.

Or a simple solar-charged LED light. Hang it outside your hut in the day, bring it in at night so the kids can study or mom can make extra money doing piecework.

A sturdy, self-contained solar electrical generator could act as an adjunct for a decentralized high-tech low-budget infrastructure. You'd use it to charge cell phones, XO Laptops (and their adult equivalent), and so on.

Consider how much concrete needs to be made during the commissioning of a nuclear power station.
From this page:

Concrete is responsible for 7-10% of CO2 emissions worldwide, making it the biggest climate change culprit outside of transportation and electricity-generation.

YouTube.

Let burn down some more rain forest to grow more cane to feed this monster. What's wrong with using algae that requires one fifth the space as corn or sugar and probably less maintenance? If it can be made into bio-diesel, then I'm sure it will make great battery "acid" too. Obviously all biomass will provide some kind of energy, but for the best bang for the buck and highest energy density, algae is it. Check out the yields here to see why we should NOT use corn.

> How many times have you been rammed from behind? How many of those were from someone following too closely? How many times have you been tailgated?

None :) I try my best to avoid situations where I'm being tailgated. It's not just always possible. But I think you didn't understand my point : I was speaking about statistics and the entire driving population. Otherwise, if I only think of myself, who never had an accident (minor or otherwise) in 15+ years of driving, with 170,000km on my present car, then I could therefore assume that my driving practices are excellent and that I should not question my driving! By the gods, I didn't even have accidents where 'it's all their fault!' :) ah faulty logic, where would I be without it :)

> They are directly comperable. If you "kill" 80 years of man-hours, you have taken away the equivelent of one lifetime. Is it somehow better to take 1/4 of the life period from 4 people than 100% from one person?

I disagree. There are a couple of things wrong with your assessment. First of all, you are comparing killed time with killed people? Wow... just... wow. I don't value my time above the safety of others. I think that it's better to all equally share the load of 'killed time' (which is rather small for an individual), rather than for one person to lose his life to an impatient driver. That's the reality of traffic. You have to share the road, and you'll always meet someone who goes slower or faster than you. I do realize that it applies to all the drivers out there, from the slower ones to the fastest ones. This means I always pay extra attention not to get in the way of other people ... up to a point. After all, the road belongs to all, not just the fastest drivers. Just like I have to cope with the inevitable bad driver, you have to cope with the inevitable slower driver.

The second one, which also relates to the rest of your post, is the false assumption that tailgaters improve the flow of traffic. The studies I found indicated that they actually slow down the traffic! Here's a non-scientific report (sorry, I can't find the real ones only tonight, took me a while to find them the first time.. so you don't have to take my word for it, hopefully, your google-fu will be stronger than mine) http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000911.html. And here's another : http://www.nature.com/news/1998/981126/pf/981126-8 _pf.html. And another : http://www.dctech.com/physics/features/0700.php.

Basically, tailgaters tend to overreact to small changes in speed to the lead car. This leads to a domino effect where the preceding cars slow down more and more, creating a important slowdown in the traffic in the long run.

So, in the end, not only are you endangering others (reduced reaction times, reduced visibility) but you are also slowing down traffic. I am therefore not thanking you :p

Z.

I grow tired of this. Thanks for the discussion :)

> Oh, I'm not frustrated. I have fun weaving in and out of traffic at three times the limit in bizzards

I liked that one :)

I wonder if this is a jab at WorldChanging? That future thinking, socially engaged blog tends to be extremely gadget and technology focused. He founded the site a few years ago, was extremely active on it, and then left in March without comment -- after an otherwise remarkable year wherein the org files to incorporate as a non-profit and publishes a massive coffee table book.

I remember reading that they need 10 million to even be able to produce them. They are still a long way off.

You remembered wrong:

"The laptop won't be produced unless at least five countries sign up at a million laptops each.

Four out of five isn't that far off.

for subjects like this, you should consider using other resources of discussion than slashdot... especially because the original news is more detailed, has references and is earlier announced than on slashdot ... have a look here:

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004608.html

The board itself is designed to encourage hardware hacking - the 500 prototype boards currently built come with a VGA jack soldered on. But production models will leave the jack leads etched on the board, though unpopulated. Want to turn a laptop into a device that can drive an external monitor? Solder one on. Also on the board but unpopulated will be connectors for additional RAM and flash memory, as well as a mini-PCI slot. A goal for the next iteration is a board with a wider pitch, which makes it easier to repair the board or to hand-solder additional connections. The case is designed to be easy to open and access the innards - this makes it easier to make Frankenmachines from dead machines, and also makes it easier to mass produce lots of these devices quickly.

Hey, why lend when you can give?

For a solution which is somewhat in-between, there's organizations which provide low-interest microfinance loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, helping them towards econmic independence. One neat-looking organization is Kiva.org, which enables individuals to make such loans. Worldchanging has a neat article on organizations like Kiva and how they're helping things in the developing world.

A relevant item from Kiva's FAQ:

Why loans and not (just) donations?
Over the last three decades, microfinance has proven to be an effective tool in raising the standard of living in impoverished communities. Up to now, there has not existed a way for individuals in developed countries to participate directly in this exciting movement. Kiva believes individuals in developed countries will find loaning to be a more rewarding and sustainable form of involvement in international development than traditional giving. In other words, when you receive your original loan amount back, you are more likely to loan again than if you simply made a donation.

You want to know why pure-electric cars are incredibly unlikely to become popular? Answer: it's not possible to get a full battery charge in 2 minutes. When you run out of gas, you can fill up again in 2 minutes. Travelling cross-country, it simply is *not* acceptable to have to sit around for 3 hours at the gas station waiting for your car to get enough juice to continue. Nor is it likely to be possible to improve on this, until someone invents some radically new battery technology - no existing battery technology will allow charging at this kind of speed without the batteries exploding.

World Changing had a post last week explaining why nuclear power is not a great solution to fossil fuels. There are three main reasons why they say nuclear is not the answer: 1) They bring up the issue of safety, not only for the reactors but of storing the radioactive waste. 2) Mining the ore needed is a very high impact activity, so the environmental impact might not be any less, although it would likely be concentrated in a few locations. 3) The money to develop and build new nuclear reactors could be more efficiently spent on greener technologies.

When it comes to climate change, nuclear is probably a better option. But in no way is nuclear a green technology, it just alleviates the most pressing issue facing fossil fuel use. What we need to do is develop truly green and renewable energy sources, which doesn't include nuclear.

World Changing had a post last week explaining why nuclear power is not a great solution to fossil fuels. There are three main reasons why they say nuclear is not the answer: 1) They bring up the issue of safety, not only for the reactors but of storing the radioactive waste. 2) Mining the ore needed is a very high impact activity, so the environmental impact might not be any less, although it would likely be concentrated in a few locations. 3) The money to develop and build new nuclear reactors could be more efficiently spent on greener technologies.

When it comes to climate change, nuclear is probably a better option. But in no way is nuclear a green technology, it just alleviates the most pressing issue facing fossil fuel use. What we need to do is develop truly green and renewable energy sources, which doesn't include nuclear.

What is dangerous is jumping to the conclusion of why it is changing. If we were to "accept" the opinions of a few climatologists that human nature is what is causing the climate change...

I beg to differ. In a recent study by Science Magazine, a search of the ISI database on the keyword "climate change" yielded 928 peer-reviewed papers, NOT A SINGLE ONE OF WHICH disputed the conclusion that global warming is caused by man-made changes to the atmosphere.

The so-called "debate" only exists in the popular press, where (in a misguided attempt to provide "balance",) 53% of articles express doubt on global warming. Red-staters may not like this article very much either, but I challenge any of them to find a respectable counterargument.

This article http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003999.html
suggests that algae is up to 300x more efficient per acre than soy. At that point it becomes a much more competitive option.

Also keep in mind that you can farm algae off-shore (add more "farm land" using coastal waters).

From WikiPedia:

The production of algae to harvest oil for biodiesel has not been undertaken on a commercial scale, but working feasibility studies have been conducted to arrive at the above yield estimate. In addition to a high yield, this solution does not compete with agriculture for food, requiring neither farmland nor fresh water.

One thing that people might not know is that Biodiesel is a BYPRODUCT. The food part is still used as feedstock. If we get more specific, there are actually two by-products of corn and soy crops. Biodiesel and soap (glycerin).

In short, there is no trade food for fuel.

Peace!

Ah, but there are many alternative biofuels with much higher yield per surface area than soy. Palm, coconut, and algae, just to name a few.

This article
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003999.html
suggests that algae is up to 300x more efficient per acre than soy. At that point it becomes a much more competitive option.

I was thinking of the other kind of actual Product Design that we're also evolving towards. :)

This is essentially marketing copy, but a start:
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

Wired had an article back in 2002:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.04/mustread. html?pg=5

This is probably the source article the parent read:
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003999.html

All I know is, the bill had better be sent to the Americans.

Why's that? Coal fires in China release 360 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, as much as all the cars in America.

Not for me, give me a Diesel/Hybrid and watch it go Bio-Diesel. Diesel/Hybrids(the clean kind of Diesel that's supposed to his US markets in the next few years) get about 70-80mpg already, then switch it to Bio-Diesel(which normally gives another 5 to 10mpg depending on the type, or none at all). Suddendly you're paying 10c/gallon for 70+ mpg.

Even at 60mpg @ 10c(est cost of making it at home) you're doing pretty damn good.

Dio Diesel/Hybrids and Retail Fueling Sites are good places to look too, but it's probably better to make it yourself.

Many of the comments here are condemning the article submitter for wanting to give to giving money to open-source projects, saying that he should instead give money to, say, starving orphans in Africa or South America. I think people would do well to read a recent op-ed in the NY Times (commentary in WorldChanging) by a former Peace Corps worker in Africa about why just dumping money in poor countries isn't such a good thing. Some quotes:

It seems to have been Africa's fate to become a theater of empty talk and public gestures. But the impression that Africa is fatally troubled and can be saved only by outside help - not to mention celebrities and charity concerts - is a destructive and misleading conceit. Those of us who committed ourselves to being Peace Corps teachers in rural Malawi more than 40 years ago are dismayed by what we see on our return visits and by all the news that has been reported recently from that unlucky, drought-stricken country. But we are more appalled by most of the proposed solutions.

I am not speaking of humanitarian aid, disaster relief, AIDS education or affordable drugs. Nor am I speaking of small-scale, closely watched efforts like the Malawi Children's Village. I am speaking of the "more money" platform: the notion that what Africa needs is more prestige projects, volunteer labor and debt relief. We should know better by now. I would not send private money to a charity, or foreign aid to a government, unless every dollar was accounted for - and this never happens. Dumping more money in the same old way is not only wasteful, but stupid and harmful; it is also ignoring some obvious points.

If Malawi is worse educated, more plagued by illness and bad services, poorer than it was when I lived and worked there in the early 60's, it is not for lack of outside help or donor money. Malawi has been the beneficiary of many thousands of foreign teachers, doctors and nurses, and large amounts of financial aid, and yet it has declined from a country with promise to a failed state. ...

When Malawi's minister of education was accused of stealing millions of dollars from the education budget in 2000, and the Zambian president was charged with stealing from the treasury, and Nigeria squandered its oil wealth, what happened? The simplifiers of Africa's problems kept calling for debt relief and more aid. I got a dusty reception lecturing at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation when I pointed out the successes of responsible policies in Botswana, compared with the kleptomania of its neighbors. Donors enable embezzlement by turning a blind eye to bad governance, rigged elections and the deeper reasons these countries are failing. ...

Bono, in his role as Mrs. Jellyby in a 10-gallon hat, not only believes that he has the solution to Africa's ills, he is also shouting so loud that other people seem to trust his answers. He traveled in 2002 to Africa with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, urging debt forgiveness. He recently had lunch at the White House, where he expounded upon the "more money" platform and how African countries are uniquely futile.

But are they? Had Bono looked closely at Malawi he would have seen an earlier incarnation of his own Ireland. Both countries were characterized for centuries by famine, religious strife, infighting, unruly families, hubristic clan chiefs, malnutrition, failed crops, ancient orthodoxies, dental problems and fickle weather. Malawi had a similar sense of grievance, was also colonized by absentee British landlords and was priest-ridden, too. ...

Africa has no real shortage of capable people - or even of money. The patronizing attention of donors has done violence to Africa's belief in itself, but even in the absence of responsible leadership, Africans themselves have proven how resilient they can

The machine is 500MHz, has no disk, a 1 megapixel dual mode display, and 1G of RAM (*not* 128M, as you claim here).

Specifications were gathered from these sources:

http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000120060924/
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003707.html
http://news.com.com/The+100+laptop+moves+closer+to +reality/2100-1044_3-5884683.html

-- Terry

If not this particular company and technology, the prices they are giving are in line with most analysts' expectations.

Like a lot of other technologies, this one is going down in price in a predictable way. Check out the wind energy data at earth-policy.org, especially that last figure.

The sector has recently been experiencing Hockey-stick growth in investment. It's pretty much inevitable that this is going to be cheaper than coal- and likely cheap enough to make hydrogen for when wind is low. Cheap, guaranteed price, non-polluting.

Judging from nuclear's track record, it won't come close to wind. These turbines might not be the ones to put nuclear out of its misery- but wind certainly will play a large part (don't discount solar just quite yet).

I have have posted a "pledge" http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop that would allow others to express their interest in supporting the project by purchasing one of the Laptops for ~$300 and letting the extra profits be used to subsidize the ones for developing companies.

If you think that this might be interesting, I suggest that you sign the pledge and also "forward" the link to others who might be interested also so that the media labs can gage the number of people who might support the project.

To repeat, the link to the fuller article on the $100 laptop is:

. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003707.html

and to the pledge site is:

. http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop

I was going to write a comment about ubiquitous energy systems but you beat me to it. On the other hand, I don't think anyone has noted yet that the backpack might generate juice even in the dark.

Yeah.

I want more videos like this

In terms of the actual materials, I think we're getting there.

How about this. It's been all over the news a few months ago.

in a funny way, you are absolutely right... have a look here: how much is that tree worth?

not so elusive it would seem.

Most of us have the technical expertise to build the next internet, so lets actually build it instead of talk about it. Here are a few sites to help you with your networking, Always On Fast Company
Alonovo World Changing

Oblig reading on Worldchanging: Terraforming Earth IV: The Question of Methane, in which Jamais Cascio explores different avenues to engineering the climate to avoid a catastrophe.

There's an article on WorldChanging.com today about this very topic. They discuss the viability of terraforming techniques to address this problem.

The nearest terraforming solution would be the use of methanotrophes, a bacteria that is known to consume methane.

It's worth a read (it's enviro-techy, a good combination).
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003283.html

I know you were joking, but the machines aren't connected to the Internet ... from this site:

"The other big drawback to this project is that the locations using the system are tied into one-way broadcasts from EduVision, not connected to the Internet at large. There's a philosophical issue at play -- this system makes students and schools are little more than consumers of educational material. The people testing the devices already note a practical problem with one-way communication: there's no way to get feedback to the makers directly from the users. This one-way system also raises the question of what happens if EduVision goes away -- without the central distribution of updated material, the electronic textbooks are suddenly fragile, power-hungry versions of old paper books."