Indeed, Windows is a consumer product, made by a corporation that has stated many times it plans on getting everyone to upgrade everything fairly often. Planned obsolescence is the plan, plainly stated. Many other operating systems don't fall into those categories. Choose.

Microsoft always does this bait and hook game. Already XP can't run IE9, and sites are stopping support for IE8. There's no option, accept Microsoft doesn't maintain support for their OS without forced upgrades, or just don't use it. There are some options.

The thing many people are waiting for I think is some simple way to stream win32 API suport to run any win-app you want, on demand, from one single box sitting on the network. Then get rid of every Microsoft product in sight.

Indeed, transportation and logistics companies would love to use more trains, it is much lower cost and simpler logistically. They don't use more electric transportation simply because it doesn't get approved for building - that's the lobby money from profitable trucking and oil.

Economics however, say that trains are actually more viable in the US than in Europe, precisely because of the long distances. And for freight, there is not the minefield political issue of taking cars from consumers, who are addicted to them. In fact most auto drivers would like to see less large trucks on the roads and streets, leaving more space for cars.

All they need to do is create a new index for import tariffs, putting China at a very high rate. Just derived the formula for the tariff from a nations amount of slave labor, world pollution index, smuggling rates, etc.

Accusing is a start. But we need proposals on how to stop being completely dependent on corporate services and products, and then talking in circles about what their agendas and political puppets have fed us, via marketing and media. "Should we subsidize the army? The corporations? Private military forces?"

Nonsense. This is an attempt to create endless confusion among everyone, and not ever discuss how to create and own their infrastructure, and avoid being slaves of monthly bills - tax, food, power, communications, transportation, real estate, insurances, and so on.

See what countries pay for gas, and where the developed countries are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_and_diesel_usage_and_pricing
Country - gas prices (in US$ / US Gallon)
Norway - 9.69
Netherlands - 9.35
Denmark 8.90
Sweden 8.90
Finland 8.82
Italy 8.74
France 8.63
United Kingdom 8.63
Belgium 8.44
[...]
United States 3.88
[...]
Brunei 0.39
Oman 0.31
Bahrain 0.27
Kuwait 0.224
Qatar (Doha) 0.83
Turkmenistan 0.72
Libya - 0.64
Saudi Arabia (Riyadh, Jeddah) 0.45
Venezuela 0.085

That's just going to be a lot of waste no matter what anybody does. The social and monetary cost for a trip to the grocery will always be enormous. There's a reason everything is expensive in Hawaii or Japan -- they are far form everything. That's the whole reason big cities have progressed. It's unlikely world economy and infrastructure will be built around supplies for people who live far from everything, at least not until some equivalent of nuclear fusion comes around.

Electric freight trains. Railroads have proven themselves old and reliable technology. Almost all electric, almost no accidents. About 90% lower cost for freight transportation. Only problem is, since the trains last for decades, the tires don't wear out all the time, and the there's no massive fuel consumption, it doesn't generate lots of other costs. Those massive costs are what feed the truck manufacturing and oil business. But, there is no real change without change. The trucking and oil business industries will have to go do something else. They won't be the first or last industry get shaken up by changes in the world.

If you live in a house, you could just generate your own power. Many cases have less need every day to keep dependending on others and paying for it.
http://otherpower.com/

Unleash NYC real estate speculators to build Dubai-like artificial reefs, and get foreigners looking for "safe havens" for their money to buy it all up. Given the financial madness of real estate in nyc and new beachfront property, it will pay for itself a thousand times over.

I really don't see what's the deal, besides an oil industry investing in a massive PR program to convince us all that their oil is the only source of power. If all the oil and coal in the world disappeared tomorrow, I'm sure lots of power sources would be built at record speeds. Power of any kind needed, clean or any other, The whole debate just relegated to the history books. Once necessity hits the fan, the creative juices will create self-powering airplanes that run infinetely. Oh wait, that's done already.

It's still getting worse, and it still has to be done. Technically it actually seems easier every day to create always more sources of power, but politics and established economic interests mandates that people react to disasters after the fact. I'd just build nuclear reactors and electric trains everywhere, large but gradually increasing taxes on polluters, and subsidies for clean power. Heck, we're spending a ton of money and risks importing shiploads of raw materials for power.

After years of horrible persecution of scientists and accusing them of crimes for the results of their research and voicing their opinion, taking us back to the middle ages, perhaps now they will gain a bit more respect. But we're still far from paying them anything near what they deserve, anywhere in the world.

Let's have laws linking the right to privacy of the public and scientists, to the rights to privacy of corporate executives, politicians. Let's see if they will relinquish their rights to have private talk corrupt practices. And since they are representatives of public servants of public-supported, publicly owned, legally public entities, they should have very few rights to privacy.