Some local newspaper has grabbed hold of the story and the implication is that the result is solid science, where in fact it is either a preliminary discovery, or an aberration of some sort. Things like this happen all the time, which is why there is a need for reproducing the results, which has not yet been done. However, the story is already circling the globe and no doubt this will add more fuel to the fire of people claiming this type of radiation is harmful. It's irresponsible journalism on Slashdot's part by posting this story and over-hyping something that could be nothing. Next thing we know, every lab error will be either heralded as cold fusion, the discovery of dark matter, or space aliens, if we go by the standard of proof in this article. When this most likely goes sour, I hope it doesn't turn off those hard working kids from science altogether.

That being said, I would be interested if this experiment was reproduced by several respectable researchers, but the skeptic in me says that this will likely not happen. This story is really jumping the gun, and doesn't belong in anything but a small town Danish newspaper, let alone Slashdot.

here is a great use case... Human foetuses can be made with just this one gene flipped, so now babies can be made strictly for the purpose of organ donation. Since the brain would be the equivalent of a rodent's, there wouldn't be as much of a moral quandary.

I donate older computers I have refurbished to the local food bank, because at least in my town, they are most in-tune with who would a computer the most.

Well, it looks like Dr. Joe Zawodny himself agrees with you that the extraordinary evidence to prove this even works has yet to be demonstrated:

http://joe.zawodny.com/ That's his private blog, and an interesting read. Looks like he's into model rocketry too.

After reading the article, it appears that the magic formula is subjecting a nickel metal hydride to T-waves. Perhaps all the existing NiMH batteries out on the market can be somehow re-purposed to last forever if someone can invent a portable terahertz wave generator.

If you read the article, the reactions only work if you subject it to THz wave EM energy. So damaging this type of reactor would only ever have one kind of effect... it would stop working and go back to being a big lump of inert metal. Assuming it works in the first place after all.

That is for cars, where those features actually cost a lot to manufacture. For cell phones there are no features that could raise the price to $10,000. Diamonds glued to the case aren't functional, so this excludes decoration.

The problem is that once such a beast is designed and built, it's relatively easy to build the factory to stamp them out by the millions, and that's where the real profits are. The only players big enough to pull that off are too big to care about the few rich fools who would pay that kind of markup. Until the rate of technological progress slows, it will be the masses that are closest to the bleeding edge, and any $10,000 phone will either be a prototype on it's way to market (and subject to so many NDA's that no rich person could pay enough to be allowed to show it off), or a sub-par phone with diamonds glued to the case. That what you wish for cannot exist is a quirk of the amazing world we live in.

Bait taken (i might regret it)

I designed buildings for a living. Not only did I need to be very creative, but very technical as well. If I made mistakes, there was the possibility of huge amounts of money or even lives lost. Wouldn't it be nice if the copyright on my blueprints would allow me to get a royalty from everyone who steps inside one of my works. Unfortunately for me, I don't have a whiny industry organization working on my behalf twisting laws in my favour. The reason why the media organizations have this influence and income is because communications is what they are good at, and that they also had a lot of power over distribution of information. They've been using their skills to twist the market unfavourably in their favour for the latter half of the 20th century, and now that the Internet is here, the power is no longer as centralized in their hands. The tide is now shifting back to the way it ought to be. They aren't the only content creators out there, not by far.

What we are seeing now is a market correction where those content creators are being dragged back down to undistorted market value for their work. Kicking and screaming of course, which is pretty much the basis of the original article.

If you're talking about the last image, where they have a row of drinking glasses, it only works at first glance. The background through that first glass moves as it should. But the background through the further glasses does not.

You know, I could get the equivalent to a master's degree in braiding my nose hairs and singing about my exploits, and then whine about not being able to feed my kids on a nose hair braiders salary. The whole point is that the market has spoken, and that there are too many world class cellists for the market to bear. Her righteous indignation is equivalent to someone who trained to be a master ferrier at the beginning of the 20th century. Markets change, technology changes, and it's her own damn fault for building her entire life around something with only a dubious chance of providing for a family in the first place. If she had minored in something else that actually has a large market and a demand, she wouldn't be in this mess.

It's not like I don't have a degree of compassion. I "followed my dream" and got educated in something that didn't give me much of a chance of ever making decent coin, so I had a backup plan. Her backup plan seems to be whining that she deserves more money just because she's very qualified, while ignoring the realities of the market and technology.

As for the righteous indignation of artists being taken advantage of, it's been covered here plenty of times, take your strawman elsewhere.

On the other hand, no matter how much technology outpaces the music industry, I know in my heart of hearts that human beings will always sing, make, and listen to music far into the future. When we stop, I'm sure that will be very near the defining moment at which we will no longer be considered human. The only thing that will change over time is our ability to make money doing what we love to do.