This is my problem, and hopefully you can relate. I can spend an hour reading a dozen news articles each day and still not know the general direction of the world. My interests and biases guide what I choose to read, and so I get a skewed world picture.

Part 1 described the mechanics of an economy based on the unused processing power of desktop and laptop computers on the internet. Part 2 gave a detailed example of a digital media store like iTunes that could use this spare power to offer free music while still compensating the artists fairly. In this part, we'll do a comparison of some popular free Massively-Multiplayer Online (MMO) games between the revenue they earn and how and the revenue they could earn through the spare computer power of their users.

This is a possible use for the grid computing economy mentioned in part 1 , a media store funded by grid computing. The basic model works like this: a research group buys a large block of computer time for some major computational work they need done. That work is distributed in manageable blocks to users with spare processor cycles in exchange for credits.

Mathematics, although incredibly versatile, isn't always so useful on its own. Likewise, a B.Sc in Mathematics isn't all that usual unless it is applied to something else. There are a few things I'd liked to have known while getting that degree. I've tried to summarize those things here.

A city built only for streetcars and pedestrian traffic solves two energy problems at once. It eliminates the need for automobiles and drastically increases the efficiency of heating and cooling systems within the buildings because of the high density.

The economic model for a lot of the Internet is to earn money through advertisement instead of directly from the consumer. This works great for online services like search engines, social networks, news and webgames where people come back to view the advertisements many times.

This is part two of a series on carless city design. It's largely based on J.H. Crawford's design in Carfree Cities

Introduction:

This is the first of a series on carless city design I'll be writing. It's largely based on J.H. Crawford's design in Carfree Cities (www.carfree.com), but attempts to flesh out other details.

There's something more to ReCAPTCHA that I'd like to mention. ReCAPTCHA is also a program that digitizes old books, and the words that the digitizing computer is unable to recognize are sent out as humanity tests.

With regards to telemarketers, I can see why some people are opting out of a land line completely.