Having the truck paid off is not really an argument - if you sold your truck you could probably fund bus tickets for the rest of your life. Also, what about insurance? I'd guess that's in the same order of magnitude as the bus fare. I can fully understand not wanting to take the bus, and in your case it doesn't really sound feasible. I am driving a car to work every day even though it only saves me only about 20min - simply because public transport stresses me out while driving a car is relaxing for me. But money is usually not a good argument for doing that, at least for people living in urban areas with good public transport.

That doesn't change the fact that in most situations cars are more convenient and get you faster to your destination. Do you think that if there was only one model, and everybody could get that for free, people would drive less?

A car usually costs you several hundred dollars/euros per month. A ticket for public transportation is usually a fraction of that, maybe 100 dollar/euro. Why would you think that reducing that cost would make a significant difference?

That's a translation problem. This law allows companies to sue when competitors violate existing laws and regulations. Something like 'unfair competition' would be a better translation.

Can't speak for others, obviously, but I mostly only ready Slashdot on Google Reader these days. I just don't have the time for writing comments any more, and, frankly, I guess I am too old for flamewars and trolling by now :) Congratulations, Slashdot!

Should I really care which system is drawing the borders around my Firefox or Chrome windows? Only when I need special software, like Photoshop or Gimp or a Java IDE or a game, the OS or desktop environment still matters. Unfortunately KDE apps are not in most people's 'special software' lists.

The Japanese elite *may* have outlived the European/American elite but I'm gonna [citation needed] you on that one... The Japanese common man, however, certainly did NOT live longer or better than his Western counterpart.

I refer you to "Standard of Living in Japan Before Industrialization: From what Level did Japan Begin? A Comment" by Yasukichi Yasuba in The Journal of Economic History Vol. 46, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), pp. 217-224.

Yasuba takes to task the notion that life for the commoner in Japan was better than that in the West. While economic development HAD been ongoing throughout the Tokugawa shogunate, and circumstances had improved for the Japanese laborer, the reality of the situation is that farmers here and farmers there both were treated very poorly. He also points out, specifically, the flaw in Hanley's research (which estimated life expectancy to be around 40 years in Japan) specifically used a source which excluded year 0 deaths, and then substituted Western infant mortality rates in its place. At the time, Japan would be much closer to India than the West. By using data which matches temple records more closely, Yasuba suggests that the actual life expectancy of the time was around 35, which (again) puts it below the West.

Actually many newer european cars have a start-stop-automatic (as soon as your car stops, the engine turns off; if you press the gas-pedal it turns on automatically), so there does not have to be any idling. IIRC this is not popular in the US because its savings would not be included in the official MPG ratings, but some manufacturer (can't remember which) is going to introduce it in the US soon.

Wouldn't it be better for the environment to forbid dogs in the city? After all, a large dog has the same carbon footprint as two SUVs. But, oh, I guess we are just trying to make a point, not to actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions...

Hmm.. but in that case, the bottle would be made of less valuable components. Which would mean that the demand for the components required for a plastic bottle is lower than the demand for the other components, and thus plastic bottle are merely a by-product. So I wonder, would reducing the number of plastic bottle have any impact on the general oil consumption?

After all, even if there wouldn't be any plastic bottles anymore, the oil would still be needed because of the other components.

Oh, just checked oil prices... $88 per barrel. That means a plastic water bottle's raw material costs over $0.10?

"So your average plastic water bottle requires about 1/4 a litre of refined oil products to be produced."

I have no idea of plastic production, but it looks wrong to me: if oil costs about $40 per barrel (159l), 1/4 litre is about $0.05. I can't imaging a plastic bottle costing that much - I can buy a bottle of water in a supermarket for not much more than 5 cent. Am I missing something?