Working @ Disco Technologies

Maybe it is because 2012 is an election year. Or maybe it is just people hoping that the economic collapse will motivate some elected officials (usually politicians who are members of party X or Y) to finally do their jobs. All I know is that a lot of people seem to think that this candidate [...]

This “Buy Local” Thing « The CitySquares Blog Local businesses drive our national economy, this is a fact. They’re the oil in the nation’s economic engine. Local business is the best ingredient for any community’s success. Anyway, to tie it all back together, and where we all seemed to agree last night, is on one [...]

The Poverty Business In recent years, a range of businesses have made financing more readily available to even the riskiest of borrowers. Greater access to credit has put cars, computers, credit cards, and even homes within reach for many more of the working poor. But this remaking of the marketplace for low-income consumers has a [...]

PlexNex: Wind Will Power Our Future According to the report, the DOE expects coastal states to harness 50,000 megawatts of offshore wind in shallow water depths of less than 100 feet. The report notes for some coastal states (like Massachusetts) shallow water offshore wind can provide 100 percent of the electricity supply. The DOE further [...]

Standards attorney Andy Updegrove announced the creation of the Hague Declaration recently. The Hague Declaration is a statement of human rights on the Internet. But it is more. Without being overly verbose about it, the Declaration also promotes free software, where “free” is not about the price of the software, but about the freedom that [...]

The San Francisco Chronicle scores again with its revelation of the cause of the whole mortgage mess: misconduct within financial companies. Over and over, the commentators keep telling us that it is the fault of the buyers, and that the lenders were totally innocent, tricked by those deceitful borrowers. The problem with that is that [...]

At first, high speed rail (HSR) was just an idea promoted by dreamers and idealists. Then the Japanese actually built high speed passenger rail lines. Magnetic levitation (maglev) passenger rail was a techno-fantasy, until the Europeans and Chinese developed reliable, high speed maglev systems. The question is, why haven’t we done anything like this in [...]