I don't know, if they're the first to devise a working setup to achieve that, haven't they discovered how to do it?
It was already discovered that it should be possible, but they might be the first to actually describe a possible apparatus to do so, so i guess it's fair to say that they discovered how to do it?

Just because you keep repeating that, doesn't make it true you know...
The article at the point where it's mentioned that it's most expensive immediately states it is due to the 5 year plan, and sorry, but a migration of win2k -> winxp (where you can keep most apps you were using, and most users will still be fairly familiar, and tech support won't need to learn much new things) vs windows -> linux where just about everything changes just isn't the same order of magnitude.
They also continue to say further on in the article that by their own estimates they saved money by now (about 12 years later?).

So stop your trolling (or work on your reading comprehension, it's seriously lacking)

And i almost feel like a karmawhore/linux fanboy when responding to you (even though i'm a happy windows 8 user)

And you took that out of context. That was on the initial 5 year plan, where moving to linux was a big migration, while moving to windows XP from windows 2000 would have had far less impact.
So of course in the first years such a massive migration and education of your users costs more. But now 10+ years later they estimate they saved money (and that was also mentioned in the part where they mentioned that linux was more expensive. For the 5 year plan microsoft was cheaper, but strategically they were pretty sure linux would be cheaper after that).

and ceos and religious leaders and [fill in random position with a lot of power]

since a lot of recent phones are surpassing tv's in resolution, i doubt it...

you can't possibly expect a journalist to get a single number right in an article?

I'm not sure if i agree to this. There is some truth in that of course, it's just that people are enjoying too many things at once than they can pay for reasonably. I also enjoy a lot of thing i don't wish to pay for (and thus don't), and that's indeed not so nice of me. But the things i really care about, those that interest me the most, do get a lot of money from me.
We're in a culture where suddenly it's possible to experience just about everything for free if you want to. And that leads to a lot of people doing so, but a lot of them wouldn't bother if they had to pay. And if you're expecting to get money from the mainstream, you better advertise a lot, and go for the lowest common denominator. Otherwise, find a loyal public, and don't expect to make millions, but a fair living should be very possible if you're good at what you do :).

I'm wondering what the ideal situation is. It's really nice to be able to see & experience so much, but how do the people making all those things get money? How do you split the people who are just casually interested from those who really like it, and want to pay for it. A lot of it in the current world has become more a case of goodwill of people willing to pay for content, because they know they don't need to.

I respect the content of what i like most, and am willing to pay for it. But not everybody wants to or is able to... It's a very hard question...

i love your exaggeration, but am also wondering how a solution could possibly be found.

Users & advertisers just have opposite wishes. I don't see any middle ground. They are convinced that we want to see ads that are relevant to us, no we don't, if we want to know what could be interesting for us, we'll talk to our peers, we don't need you to try and data mine it for us, especially since no one trusts you anymore!

Btw, i'm wondering, is there a browser/plugin that nicely separates cookies across websites? that ads can't track you across websites via cookies? Completely separate cookie caches dependent on the url in your address bar sounds pretty easy to make, and would prevent some basic tracking (of course they can still track you on ip address, the information your browser gives, ... but i think cookies are at least a nice chunk to disable if possible).

Ads are just something that seems to only be able to get worse with every year, and i hope the backlash that the younger generation is giving to it, will some day actually mean that ads will be reduced again. They'll never disappear since they work too damn well, but that the only evolution appears to be more ads in more places and more tracking, that just can't be maintained.

"Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt"
Or in this case: if he doesn't know anything about it, why immediately assume the plastics would be dangerous (and that expert doctors pioneering such a procedure wouldn't think of it)...

He wouldn't have gotten the angry comment if he had simply asked if the plastic can't give health issues, instead of making a sensationalist comment about it without knowing anything about the subject...

I've recently been wondering: isn't this exactly what most of the economy is about these days?

Just look at where most of the money is, it's all virtual things, why the hell is facebook worth billions? What does it physically produce or add to this economy?

Want to get rich? forget about actually making stuff, try to get into the next virtual bubble (or go along in many of the existing ones). When it's all virtual, and you don't really need to make something, perpetual exponential increase suddenly is possible (until it collapses that is, but who saw that coming?), but there just is no hard limit. and since it's coupled with money, if you're lucky you'll make a fortune.

It's not that there's no logic in that. But the purpose is just generally to soak up power when there is little demand, and to release it when there's high demand. Why not just make this separate facilities just for this function, and do it for the entire grid? why the focus on data centers?

Or is it just to try and shift the maintenance of this likely mess to someone else? It sounds like a nice idea, but will probably require some effort, and some annoying surprises from time to time as the batteries will wear out, and will require quite some management.

for all the negative remarks, maybe i'm the only one who wonders how awesome this would be for space travel XD
we would be able to explore a meaningful part of the galaxy XD.