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Energy density may indeed be "the most important characteristic," but charge time, available power, and reliability over repeated charge cycles are also things consumers care about.

The biggest limitation on electric vehicles is the energy density of batteries. The other factors are important too but if there is not enough energy density the other factors are meaningless.

Perhaps with further research, their 10x energy density with 100% oxygen can translate into a 1.5x energy density in normal open air. I'd still be pleased with that.

It might be equally likely that the other components of air will make the batter not work at all. Even if they get a 1.5x energy density that is an incremental change and nowhere near their claim.

Have you ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf? By making unfounded, sensationalist statements like this so often when a real breakthrough is found no one will believe you. That leads to less investment in real breakthroughs. It is already happening now. Look at the comments.

Wow. Really?

If your doctor tells you that you need antibiotics, you weight the risk and cost vs the reward to determine your course of action. In this case, the risk to you is low, the cost is similarly low, the reward is that your infection likely goes away faster (in extreme cases, saving your life, but not in general).

If the AGW politicians tell you that you need to sacrifice your entire standard of living in order to curtail a problem that they still don't understand (and, let's face it, they don't understand it because they still can't predict it, even on a decade-by-decade basis, nevermind year-over-year), the risk is high (no understanding of likely outcomes), the cost is even higher (likely resulting in many human deaths), and the rewards are vague.

Those aren't even kind of similar. For an analogy to work, there must be a reasonable amount of similarity, and your analogy has almost none.

I'm all in favour of technology improving our cheap-energy viability. But the problem is that the only realistic cheap-energy that is currently technically viable is nuclear. And that has the same group of environmentalists opposed to it as are trying to decry AGW. They're shooting their cause in the foot.

Other than oil executives, most of the rest of us don't care where our energy comes from. But we know we need it. And most of us don't want to double (or more) our energy costs. We have a viable alternative. Use it. That will kill more opposition to AGW changes than any "scientific" argument you can come up with. Make our lives easier for less cost, and it will be adopted overnight (relatively speaking). Use your scientists to proclaim the actual safety of the nuclear industry. You'll do far more to remove carbon emissions than anything else currently being tried.

It's the old adage - catching more flies with honey than vinegar. Don't accuse us, attract us with what we want. Cheap, reliable energy. Remember Aesop's fable about the North Wind vs the Sun. The man wears a coat to keep warm - blowing a cold wind only makes him hold it harder, but give him warmth and he sheds his coat willingly. Give us what we want, cheap, reliable energy, and you get what you want, fewer carbon emissions.

There is no mention of the DOJ anywhere in the articles you posted.

But according to the article, it works well and doesn't filter out health-related websites. It also doesn't work for black and white images, but the majority of online porn isn't b&w. Or so I've heard.

These lawsuits have been going on for years: They blamed Doom for Columbine too and a judge simply threw it out. The more judges that see these absurd lawsuits the more they'll be ignored them in the future, classic example of "The boy who cried wolf", so I say bring them on, just get them all out of the way now so in the future developers don't have to worry about these ridiculous lawsuits anymore.

Your eloquence and soft words do not excuse your completely unconstructive negativity. You ask, "that's 'hate'?," and then contradict your own point by saying we don't have to choose between big and little bigotry.

I argue that "rude behavior... when the rude person of ignorant of it" is not rude at all. You may take offense, but that doesn't make it rude. (Please don't rebut this with one of the 178 definitions of the word "rude" you can find in some online dictionary.) The vast majority of people who hear a joke based on similarity of name of two individuals they do not personally know (especially when, as in this case, the negative connotation of the first name is not even being applied to the second person!) are not going to be offended by the joke.

People named Lewinsky, Clinton, Hitler, etc. may take offense at this kind of joke. But that offense stems from their own past negative experiences - being teased or mocked for their name's similarity to some famous figure - and not the substance of this joke itself. For every one of those cases, there are thousands of other triggers for negative memories. Saying, "lunch money" might trigger such a negative experience for me. So am I to complain of rudeness every time I hear that phrase? Ridiculous.

We DO have to choose between real bigotry and imagined slights. Most political correctness hogwash consists of party A attacking party B for an imagined insult to party C, e.g., a NYT op-ed piece written by a white woman lambasting Bill Cosby for his remarks about black culture in America, without any input from a black person at all, based only on her imagination of what a black person might feel in response. Or a Washington Post reporter being fired for using the word "niggardly" in a story.

Respectfully, your appraisal of my reaction as "more exemplary of people in denial of racism" is simply wrong. I've known several people who are deeply passionate about issues of race and ethnic hatred who believe as I do, that political correctness is extremely counterproductive and damaging to the effort of actually fighting against and educating people about the real problems. Most Americans are numb to racial issues, and political correctness run amok is one of the principal reasons for this.

In case you missed it when you were 3 years old, there's a story you should read.

Exactly, that was the point I was trying to make. Lawyers know that enough companies will settle out of court to avoid the negative press. They also know that every once in a while, they'll pull one off and that makes up for all the cases that go nowhere. Check out what the lawyers walked away with in the tobacco suits, or since he's so recently in the news, check out some of the settlements Edwards won while in practice. Even if 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000 win big, the expected payoff is non-zero. I'd bet it's way more likely that the action would be settled out of court for some fee, add that in to the expected payoff as well.

It would be nice for them if some one was providing insurance against this though a backdoor cash infusion lack with Baystar for SCO gives them the incentive to take the risk I'd love to see companies actively fighting this, countersuing for slander, libel, or whatever they can come up with. Too many companies take the "easy" way out, settle out of court for a few hundred thousand and hope it goes away. All this does is encourage the sharks and the next time it will be a few million, then a few ten million, and so on.

I believe that we, the consumers and investors, need to be the ones to push this, after all, we're the ones who will be left with higher prices or diminished returns in the end.

It smells of MS

Think twice about making those kind of statements.

To troll or not to troll?

Which is it?

The recording industry and its brethren have been crying wolf for years.

• At various times we have been told that the pianola was going to kill sales of sheet music,
• that radio was going to kill sales of records,
• that photocopying would kill sales of books,
• that the VCR would stop people going to movies, and
• that cheaper imported records would stop people buying Australian music.
• Along the way we have been told that the use of the latest technology was immoral - everything from the photocopier to the cassette recorder to the VCR.

Crying Wolf for years ? Crying wolf implies that someday your bluff will be called. Remember the Story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf ?

If the bluff ain't ever going to be called then is it really crying wolf ?

Is the RIAA and MPAA bluff ever going to be called ? Has it ever been called out even after the above listed examples ?

Big Money speaks. And Big Money carries a big stick. In today's world don't underestimate the belief that brawn overcomes brains. Hopefully, though, someday the brains will inherit the earth.

It's called sour grapes.

Well, it would be funny if I had someway to get to another earth-like planet ...

Of course, with essentially no space program, there's nothing we could do even if we DID believe them, so maybe they're worrying over nothing.

Hmmm... This reminds me of a story I read when I was younger.