Believe it or not, I have not set up an instant SMS upon each Thinboy00 slashdot posting... It took more than an hour to see your message.

0.0001% of statistics are made up by taking a recent software release version and stripping one of the dots.

At the time, some people could reproduce it apparently (I recall reading that a team at MIT did) but even then it was intermittent (as it was, too, for Pons and Thingy). I don't know how accurate the MIT account was.

Well, the Japanese have lots of savings. That sort of wealth is easily available there. Over in the west all we have is debt so we can't get that kind of service as quickly.

We already have fiber broadband over large parts of the UK. I had it installed nearly two years ago by Virgin Media.

Everybody that has their first child is one of those people that don't have kids. Since you credit having had one with providing the knowledge of the fun that ensues it is clear that the first child is not had for the fun, but the decision is made for some other reason...

Aka, pay attention at the back.

Hell, it could /require/ them to buffer the grid.

People could book energy for particular slots of time. The cost of managing grid electricity would plummet.

The electric company would have to manage it to ensure that it really does draw the power it books, and draws it at the right time. But that's okay - it takes the risk out of it for the home-owner and pools it. For the grid operator, the risk is a tiny fraction (you need an awful lot of simultaneous failures to cause them a problem). The grid operator will also be well equipped to estimate the remaining risk, budget it, and limit the customer's liquidity at optimal times to minimise it - things the customer general isn't able to do.

I'm talking about taking renewable energy to manufacture hydrogen at source. Rather than use electrolysis, this discovery might form a part of a better process.

To use water and aluminium as energy storage. We already have a pretty good global aluminium infrastructure.

If water could be combined with aluminium to produce hydrogen on demand, then you refuel by replacement of the aluminium oxide waste with fresh aluminium and refilling the water tank.

Then you still need a better method to convert aluminium oxide to aluminium - but here's the great thing about this research. Better ways to convert in one direction usually lead to better ways to go the other way too (eg, microdots convert electricity to light better, but also the other way round too).

Depends how easily that aluminium oxide can be converted back to aluminium - if it is easy enough then this is a better cycle than electrolysis and might finally make hydrogen a sensible alternative energy storage medium than oil.

so we'll have to wait and see.

But javascript is an awfully convoluted language. Why does it become easy when you put a language like that into the equation?

I've still got my spectrum... Will this thing support my kempston joystick?

Is it okay if your camcorder recording includes the anti-piracy notice?

What is this "woman" thing you speak of?

I'm wasting my mod points now by posting, but I can't let that lie. A volcanic eruption that can kill everybody spouts vast quantities of CO2 - that's how it kills them - it suffocates them.

The guy in prison would be the first to go because CO2 is heavier than air and would fill the gaol as soon as possible.