Actually, I suspect CA is a big enough market that all manufacturers will meet the requirements and no one will notice the difference.

Cutting our energy usage by X% is at least as good as swapping x% of our power plants over from coal. Switching to flourescent lights, which would cut overall energy usage by something like 15%, has to be worthwhile.

Negawatts are real, and if something like this cuts out a power plant or two worth of usage, it's worthwhile on purely economic grounds.

Power generation won't change much until the economics change there. If coal is cheaper and carbon/pollution isn't taxed, it doesn't make much sense to switch to anything else, regardless of level of demand.

It's good to see support on slashdot for California's giant Monorail!

Sing it!

Without RTFA:
1 - Rocks and nearby puppies.
2 - Bacteria are asexual. These bacteria will, however, be able to spread an "asexual agenda" among native bacteria, who will begin to glow in the presence of other objects, like discarded cans, to look cool and "green."
3- Except for puppies, the bacteria are harmless. Unless you like eating gunpowder or landmines.
4- More landmines! No, wait, they'll be outbred by normal bacteria soon enough.

Easy enough to exclude google in your robots.txt Google would take a huge PR hit if they started ignoring robots.txt or using new user agents specifically to get around these.

Did you just say anonymity should only be a right of whistleblowers (sure) and Politicians? I mean, I can see the argument that maybe anonymity isn't a fundamental right. But saying that only politicians should be protected is nuts. By this "public position" logic, shouldn't anyone be protected if they don't want their boss to know they really like anime, or badmouthing people who make dancing cat videos?

I'd been thinking similar things. Venting gas would limit their ultimate height though. I wonder if they could:

Underinflate the balloon at ground level so it's got just enough bouyancy to get off the ground. Then the ballon inflates itself as the external pressure drops. It'd still pop eventually, but might last a good bit longer.

Carry a second (third? smaller?) balloon that inflates off the main ballon when the internal pressure gets high enough. I don't know how much a second balloon would weight things down on the way up, but at higher altitudes, it could double your bouyancy.

The linked PDF has a few more companies listed (~10% more) and says there are around 500 more companies in the long tail.

God's patents have expired, he hasn't filed any in the last 17 years.

Suck it, God!

No, being accused of something isn't a crime. If there were trials and evidence and judges, this would be a whole different matter. This law punishes people who are accused too many times.