So? I live in the Netherlands and I also don't have a dryer. I put my wet clothes on a rack in the study to dry. Works fine and saves a LOT of electricity.

We don't have pennies in Europe. Just eurocents.

It looks like a very cheap process...

I don't think it suggests that at all. It says the Mg is used to make porous silicon out of sand (neat trick), but nothing about how to prevent the porous silicon from reacting with oxygen from the air. So I take it you have to use the porous Si in an oxygen free environment. That shouldn't be too hard to make in a battery though.

Ha, a real manager!

But seriously, hopefully Microsoft will benefit from him and become a bit more popular amongst nerds.

Out with a bang, not with a whisper.

One gene does not make a species.

That's not only in America. Here in the Netherlands there was a program on TV not long ago about how manufacturers design their products to break down after a few years. There are several ways to do this; the chips in printer cartridges being the most well-known one. But they also told us that Samsung designed the plastics in their washing machines so that they degrade when in contact with the detergent you use to clean your laundry. And many manufacturers build in 'time bombs' in the software of their products, so that they stop working after a certain period.

That exists already in the Netherlands. It's called the Action and it's mighty popular.

Luckily I have the impression that 3D TV is on the way out already...

I live in the Netherlands at 5 km distance from the border. The Netherlands and Germany are both members of the EU, where there is free travel of people and goods across all borders. So why can't I get my electricity from Germany?

Here in the Netherlands we do that all the time. It costs us billions of euros in useless infrastructure and failed ICT projects. Especially with big ICT projects our government has a failure rate of nearly 100%.

2020 is a long way away. Politicians usually only have long term vision when they don't want to make decisions about something. So MS will most probably still be strong in Korea by 2020.

That's a pity for the insects, but we live on this planet too, you know. We can't undo all of our pollution.

I agree with all you say. So much so even that I'm beginning to wonder if you meant to reply to me or the person I replied to.
Instinctive fear is of course not in itself irrational, but some people have their instinctive fear tuned up so high, so to speak, that they can't be in the same room with a harmless spider. That is irrational even when it's not yet a fobia.