David Herron .com

This is a tale of globalized megacorporations gone awry. I want to say at the outset that I believe the current state of deregulated globalized megacorporations comes about because the government has been weakened to the point it cannot rein in corporate excesses. Corporations have proved over and over they cannot be counted on to behave according to enlightened self interest, instead corporations have proved over and over they are willing to lie, cheat, steal, poison, and otherwise act to destroy their customers or employees.

A $5 billion expansion of clean energy manufacturing tax credits for wind, solar and electric vehicles is exactly what the doctor ordered. Vice President Biden announced today that the $2.3 billion of tax credits currently available under in the ARRA stimulus package’s section 48C Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit program will be expanded with an additional $5 billion. The additional funds will leverage $15 billion in private investment, work immediately to create new clean energy manufacturing jobs, and boost the America’s competitiveness in global clean tech innovation.

Arriving in Copenhagen, Mr Brown said: "Over the next three days the leaders of almost every nation on earth will gather in Copenhagen. Their role; their opportunity; their responsibility: to shape the future of humanity. It is a defining moment." To win around developing nations who are resisting limits on their carbon emissions, Mr Brown could back a deal for rich countries to give more money. He is now preparing to make Britain pay into another international fund to help poor countries limit the amount of their forests they cut down for logging and agriculture.

"For more than 100 years, coal has been the backbone of the Appalachian economy." a.k.a. "Coal, Kentucky's Ace in the Hole". Change is undeniably happening in the coal industry. "Mountaintop removal mining" despite being a horrendous disaster, also requires fewer employees than traditional mining. Meanwhile the Central Appalachian coal seams that remain to be mined are becoming thinner and more costly to mine. (BTW an early indicator of "Peak Coal") "Let’s speak the truth. The most important factor in maintaining coal-related jobs is demand for coal.

In a recent press release the Energy Information Administration said it expects lower heating costs this winter. "We expect household bills for space-heating fuels will be 8 percent lower than a year ago, with the average household spending $960 in the October through March winter heating season, a decrease of $84 from last winter," said EIA Administrator Richard Newell. "The lower bills primarily reflect lower fuel prices, although slightly milder weather than last winter will also contribute to less fuel use in many areas.

Big news for the WalkScore people. They've received funding from the Rockafeller foundation, plan to make enhancements to the Walk Score system, and are starting an open source software project based on the walkscore software. This is all excellent news.
The enhancements include adding public transit, transportation cost, and greenhouse gas emission data to Walk Score. Or as they say in pressreleasese:

The U.S. Fair Trade Commission has recently released new rules on advertising that appears in the form of endorsements and testimonials. This is one of those "the times they are a changing" moments given that these guidelines were last updated in 1980, my how the world has changed since then. There are many ways endorsements & testimonials show up which aren't so clearly ethical and the new technologies being developed offer new ways for us to communicate with each other.

On Aug. 19 over 100 software professionals gathered in Mountain View CA at the Green Software Unconference (Facebook page). The attendees were individuals (e.g bloggers) representing themselves as well as representatives of companies large and small. There are many corporations developing software that addresses some specific environmental issue facing our society.

I run several blogs and a forum, and have been taking sponsorship for a long time. Blogging is a time consuming thing and it's therefore necessary to seek income to support one in doing this. But as in all things when a company dangles money in front of you there is the possibility of enticement to sell your soul for filthy lucre. In other words it's plausible that taking advertising on a website will subvert the message of that website to suit the advertising.

The JavaOne opening keynote is still a fancy rock & roll show with fancy stage and the like. It's always exciting to see what they have to say, and they do a good job of spinning a story that Java is Everywhere.
The overall message is to convince developers that the Java platform is compelling, that Sun is providing this compelling ecosystem for developing applications, and that the developers can become uber-rich by developing applications for the Java platform.