In 15 years we couldn't even switch over to all LED lighting instead on incandescent. And as the "Rolling Coal" jerks have appropriately pointed out, any attempt at legislating environmental changes versus "lifestyle" changes will be met with extreme civil disobedience. You might as well be asking to take away their guns.

We are doomed. Earth will survive, but we will not. But hey, it doesn't matter as long as kids get to stare into their cellphones all day twittering. Oh, wait, there's no cell phones anymore because we don't have electricity anymore because of global devastation? It's all that Socialist Keynan Muslim's fault! Benghazi!

We won't switch to nuclear because everyone will be "NIMBY", "oh noes radiation!", meanwhile they hold a 2 watt transmitter next to their skulls for 8 hours a day straight, and eat microwaved everything with GMOs and steroids. Electric cars won't catch on unless there's a revolution in charging times and range and cheapness.

And then there's the entire Republican Party platform that global warming doesn't even exist. Have you read the Texas GOP platform? If even a fraction of that gets through, we'll be sent back to the stone age.

America is too stupid, ignorant, and proud of being ignorant to give a crap if we are killing ourselves. And they won't do anything unless all of Florida is washed away, and even then they probably won't do anything.

Jonny Mnemonic is real. Hack the Gibson. I know how you're wired, cowboy. It was hot the night we burnt Chrome.

Every American should incorporate themselves. It's the only way to guarantee you have rights. If you are a closely held corporation, your religious rights cannot be infringed, your property cannot be confiscated, you can commit heinous crimes and only face a fine (no jail time for CEOs); and furthermore, NSA "spying" can be sued over as industrial espionage or as copyright violations under intellectual property rights laws.

Basically you have way more rights as a corporation. If you're an individual or "citizen", you're screwed.

I've read about malware/virii that can run on multiple operating systems, have their own smtp engine, can perform all sorts of miracles, and yet, are all contained in about 16k of code.

Failing that, anyone remember the Amiga Demo scene? Those Norwegian programmers were doing things back then then that mainstream software would take 20 years to work up to. And they were all coding in assembly.

How about the dudes that wrote GEOS? Seriously, they got a Macintosh-like OS to fit on a floppy and run on a Commodore 64.

Seriously, didn't the crash at San Fran with the 777 who relied too much on technology that failed teach ANYBODY ANYTHING? When the tech stops working, it's up to the pilot to actually FLY and LAND the plane.

How many people have to die to teach that you can't rely 100% on technology that can and will fail while the plane is still airborne?

I don't say this often, but Oy-veh-gevalt!

The NSA also considers Slashdot to be a terrorist organization.

And they'd be right too, judging from some of the comments I've posted here... oops.

It would have been so much more interesting if Captain Crunch was a Bitcoin zillionaire. Yeah, that wouldn't lead to anything *bad*.

This guy's first mistake was to assume he had any "rights". Is he "Baton Bob LLC"? Only corporate rights are respected by the law. Individual's rights are whatever the police feel like letting you get with at that moment, which is rapidly less and less.

Secondly, this is Atlanta Georgia, the deep south, and this guy is black and probably gay as well -- two strikes against him in the eyes of the police. Georgia is notoriously gun-happy as well, the governor having just recently signed a bill that allows open carry just about everywhere.

Frankly, this guy's lucky he wasn't shot dead on the spot for "resisting arrest". He seems to think we are living in a free country where the people have guaranteed rights. That hasn't been the situation for some time, he'd better get with the program or he'll be assigned to a gulag.

They'd sell a lot more robots, if they looked like beautiful girls. Where is chobits technology already?

Isn't the entire USA a "Constitutional Exempt Zone"?
It sure feels that way.

This is a well-understood technology that has existed since the 1960's -- aside from some materials tech not normally associated with car production, it isn't a big leap to create a vehicle that uses a fuel cell -- heck, they could take an existing Plug-in Prius, pull the battery pack, add-in a fuel cell, and job done.

What *precisely* is making the car this expensive? (I did not RTFA, this *is* Slashdot after all)......

This phone isn't running true Android, it's a port of Android, but using Xenix as the base OS.

For those of you on Slashdot who are not old farts like myself, google "Xenix" to find out what it is. It's part of Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" policy to use something they own to create a whole new version of an existing popular phone/tablet OS....

And if anyone believe what I'm saying, even for a second, you need to find a BBS for the less naive....

200 pre orders?? Screw that. The Elio has 20,000 pre-orders, and it's not built yet, has a nice low (projected) cost of $6800 and gets 84mpg. And I'd much rather have the Elio than the C-1 (although for a brief moment, I considered the C-1)... But for the long range I need, the Elio fits my requirements better.
http://www.eliomotors.com/

BYD, a Chinese car company, is *supposed* to start selling cars in the USA starting next year as well, of course, every time I read one of those articles, it seems some delay always forced a change of plans.

Tata was also supposed to introduce an American version of the Nano, but my guess is that that's never going to actually happen.

I personally, am hoping the Elio gets off the ground and is a success, not just because it's supposed to be American made, but I'd rather have a car that gets 84MPG, and looks different from everything else on the road. They have 20k reservations already and there's no real car yet, so, clearly the idea is a good one if they can just pull it off without screwing the pooch.

I'm afraid you haven't thought that entirely through yet. CURRENTLY, China's economy depends upon endless American consumption, so tanking the USA's economy by demanding payment would be as bad for China as it would for the USA.

It's kind of like how Donald Trump works -- if you borrow $10k from a bank, and you can't pay it back, you're in trouble. but if you're like Trump and you borrow $100 million from a bank and can't pay it back, the bank is in trouble, so the bank will continue to lend you more and more until you're out of trouble. And allow you to pay it back over decades. Otherwise the bank itself becomes insolvent.

Anyhow; let's assume that China no longer needs a healthy US economy -- they have a large enough middle class that they can afford to consume their own crap, and become a self-sustaining economy no longer dependent upon world trade, like the USA was in the 50's/60's.

So, China demands repayment, even if it destroys the US economy. The US still has a few options, because they are a nuclear power, which can even involve wiping out their debt by wiping out the creditor -- essentially starting world war 3 in order to get out of debt.

But there are other options: For example, when the Chinese middle class reaches the 500 million mark, China may be too expensive to afford itself and will seek to export/offshore manufacturing by that time. Ironically, the USA may be affordable by then, with a large, well-educated, working class in desperate need of jobs.

The Chinese will own the factories, but the stuff will get built in the USA. Which, also ironically, will boost the US's economy and help the USA pay back China. Slowly, over decades, like Trump.