Posts by Jim

Road warriors offered office in a suitcase

How do you drive that car?

With an Osborne in the driving seat... And no steering wheel... And no dash!

Actors paid to queue for Poland's iPhone launch

@Michael

>>>>>>Why spew your ignorant bias? Buy the phone that you want- it's your choice.

>>>On what grounds do you call him ignorant.

I think we can take "Apple is selling the most useless piece of junk ever made" to be pretty ignorant. While Mr Mectron is quite entitled to have his own needs and desires it is rather ignorant (and arrogant) to superimpose them on every phone user in the world. I know several people with this device (not myself) who find it extremely useful, at a stroke negating Mr Mectron's assertion.

So I'm with Jeff, Mectron is ignorant and you are king of the straw men.

Oh and the article was about Orange Poland and not really Apple/iPhone. Yet another wonderful hatchet job there El Reg

Downing Street rejects 'Clarkson for PM' petition

Re: Re: When will people realise..

While, technically, you vote for the person not the party, in reality, the majority vote for whoever represents 'their' party. They may as well just colour code the ballot paper to make it real easy.

And since the vast majority of 'individuals' voted in to parliament are party members then they are unable to vote freely on the vast majority of decisions made in the Commons without the risk of de-selection, losing the colour against their name and seeing their political career dissolve - Because the majority of voters vote for the party. Theory is all well and good...

"Wasn't the way Gordon Brown became PM on the back of TB a bit like someone else taking your driving test for you?"

And wasn't the way TB became PM a bit like getting in to a girl's knickers by secretly reading her diary (carpet focus-grouping)?

Lords call for variable VAT to cut landfill

Re: WHat is wrong with landfill?

One word: Leachate

Another, often used phrase: Compromised lining

Note: Never happens (apparently) according to those in favour of landfill.

I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the reader

UK.gov loses 29 million personal records

Re: Yet another reason against socialism...

Yeah, cos the private sector is so much better at keeping peoples details safe...

Red Devil assaults Burnley FC's stadium roof

@Peter Timon

Sounds like most displays I experienced.

I remember doing a jump into Coniston Water and someone missing it.

Wind farm wound down on air traffic fears

Re: More airports please

Ok, the wind isn't blowing and the windmills are still. How often does that happen across the entire country (plus surrounding water)?

So I guess you are a nuke man then? So tell me where does the electricity come from when your nice shiney GW unit is offline for refuelling, for 3 months every 3 years? Or are you suggesting we should build inefficient gas reactors or use the wonderful Soviet RMBK design?

Where does the power come from when the reactor SCRAMs at full load and takes a couple of days to come back online?

Where does your power come from when then is a large increase in demand (say an ad break) and your reactor cannot repond quickly enough to stop the grid frequency dropping and the generating network collapsing (eg Sweden 1983). Dinorwigg is not the answer btw as that is designed to fill in for relatively fast responding fossil fuel plant.

@RRRoamer: Get a life. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and people have a remarkable propensity to live with eyesores.

@Tim: Given that the majority of the time needed to build a new nuke plant is taken up by public enquiries and the government has already promised that the public won't get a choice (national security and all that...) then new nuke plant can be built pretty quickly. Additionally, the government has promised to reduce the burden of building and safety regulations so that is another speed gain, doesn't that leave you with a nice warm feeling inside?

Apple preps patch for 'problematic 3G' iPhone?

@Mike F

Don't be retarded, just remember that wintards outnumber mactards by roughly 20:1 and the ratio will always follow the market share. And they are all equally lame in my experience.

US court sides with Janet Jackson's breast

@ Bucky

"I recall a lawsuit many years back where a woman subverted the non-spill lid of a coffee cup at a drive-through window, decanted the coffee onto her lap, and then turned around and sued McDonald's because--gasp--the coffee was hot and burned her."

http://www.caoc.com/CA/index.cfm?event=showPage&pg=facts

And don't go all Ted Frank on us...

Dell challenges blades with rack workstation

Why has no-one thought of this before?

Seems such an obvious setup, if my understanding is correct, to utilise an existing cat6 connection for video and control only. Thus keeping access to your actual network in the server room. No more people hooking up unathorised kit, great!

But why the extra box? Surely they could have combined it in a monitor or don't Dell rate their own displays that highly?

UK comms intercepts up by half - and it isn't the council

(untitled)

Jacqui Smith says: "These powers can make a real difference ... enabling us to gain that vital intelligence that will prevent a terrorist attack, working to tackle antisocial behaviour or ensuring that rogue traders do not defraud the public."

But Jacqui, what about the children? Surely they are in your thoughts too?

Drive-by download attacks menace UK.gov

@Tony Hoyle

Oh to live in a world of static html only...

Three letters - CMS

Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX5090 plasma HD TV

I'm with madra

No tuners, cable or sat boxes in the house... though do have a gorgeous projector giving a glorious 200" image (even from upscaled source). 60"? Pah! Oh, and I usually have stuff to do when it's light outside...

El Reg tells you what the Highway Code can't

Nothing new here...

"Still, it doesn’t yet come close to rates in London. A report out yesterday revealed that London Parking Charges are the most expensive in the world. The monthly rate for parking in the City is top of the list at £586 - exactly double that of New York's midtown area"

What do you mean double? I assume that it would cost $586 pcm to park in NYC so, given that £1=$1*, then the prices are identical. What are you complaining about ;-)

Also, the clamping ambulances thing. Given that the private amubulance is blocking the smooth operation of an A&E dept, just what is to be gained by locking it in said position? Surely it would be more practical to tow the offending vehicle and impound it? Or does this have bugger all to do with public safety :-0

* Exchange rate courtesy of Adobe and MS corps (to name but a few).

Canon EOS 450D digital SLR

@Big wow

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(speechless)

Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot C902 cameraphone

@Zech Lim

Nice rant but you are wrong.

Memory != RAM

SRAM, DRAM, Flash, hard disk, floppy, tape... they are all memory, ie they save state, the main differentiator being access time (although tape is far from random access).

Yes, with a phone they are talking storage not RAM. But it is not claimed that memory=RAM and storage is still memory. And this makes sense for the average consumer...

Gas crunch: Jatropha, kudzu, algae and magic to rescue

@Solution

"The "nuclear waste" problem is a straw man - it can be contained and disposed of pretty safely."

Huh? Disposed of? You mean left in a swimming pool (high/intermediate level) or dumped in a hole in the ground and hoping no one finds it accidentally (low level).

Roughly every 20 years since the 40's, the nuclear industry has claimed that the waste problem will be solved within 20 years - still waiting. Though sub-critical reactors look hopeful for annihalation of the nastiest stuff, what is being done to properly dispose of the mountains of low level waste?

"Anything you do creates waste - at least we track and are careful to dispose of or store nuclear waste properly"

Tracked properly? So how come fuel reprocessing plants carry a significant inventory of missing material, ie stuff that supposedly went in to a process but never came out?

Stored properly? Most nuclear waste from civilian power is in temporary storage while awaiting permanent storage to be found some time in the future. In fact, in the US, all spent fuel is still stored in cooling ponds at the reactor sites.

@ @Nuclear power plants

I think you are being a little too positive about nuclear power ;)

"2) Thorium (or other fissile) reactors - tech not ready, but"

I thought the usefulness of Thorium is that it can be bred into U233 (would be happy to be corrected on this) that leads on to...

"4) Existing breeder fission tech - could extend fuel reserves by a factor of 60, and because of the problems above, is the only realistic nuclear option."

The problem is that breeder fission tech has proved not to be a realistic nuclear option. It seems that expermental breeder reactors are being closed down and research halted in most places with only the French Phenix and Japanese Monju (when not on fire) experimental sites still functional. The Super Phenix is the only example of a commercial size reactor and that was unable to demonstrate anything like the theoretical 1.3 breed ratio, even during the brief intervals when it was operating at capacity. In fact they appeared to have major problems getting above 1. Personally, I find this disappointing as fast breeder tech certainly had a much brighter future than LWR - if they could have got it to work

Vauxhall launches virtual backseat driver

@Andraž Levstik

"Yes I am a driver, I have been one for 3 years...and yes I would find such a tool helpful..."

Seriously? You need help in spotting and responding to large, (mostly) obvious signs? And you think that you should still be driving a 1 tonne lump of metal (and glass and plastic) around? Seriously?

Devil dog laughs in the face of Taser

Dammit!

@ Brian

I think you should have started with "bollocks mate! sorry but thats such bollocks its not even worth going into!"

Lesbians like straight men, researchers find

title

Re: Let me get this straight

"... Also, if lesbians are men trapped in a women's bodies, shouldn't they seek out straight women?"

I seem to remember Quentin Crisp commenting that he always dreamed of having sexual relationships with straight men but also realised that this was obviously impossible. Or something like that anyway.

Re: @Bring on the cure

Well if he could rid us of Mecha-Streisand...

Google preps net neut dowser

@James Butler

"Do you know of anyone who actually uses the throttling option? Not bloody likely."

Errr... Yeah. Me. I may be the exception but there you go.

Why attack one protocol when it is the users not the technology. You can max out a T1 with FTP and HTTP downloads too (so long as the other end has allows it) and how many of those clients allow you to throttle bandwidth use? Why not pick on streaming media? Get 10 users listening to a 128kbps audio stream and there goes your T1 again (approx).

"There is simply not going to be enough bandwidth for everyone to run torrents 365/24/7, regardless of how much fibre gets laid."

Agreed but banning one protocol will just shift the load to another protocol, then another, then another... You see where I'm going with this? The problem is not any specific protocol but inherent human behaviour - self-interest and greed.

Bandwidth capping and/or throttling can alleviate this issue much more effectively than an outright ban, with some rather obvious caveats.

NZ hydropower drought could see leccy rationing

Re: One I've seen before

Erm... works really well if you plan to do this from the start (like Dinorwigg) but rather hard to retro fit, particularly at short notice. Also, you need excess capacity from a source that you really can't afford to turn off cos it will take two days to turn back on again - you know, like a nuclear reactor.

Nice to see a continuing objectivity with regard to the pros and cons of nuclear power, no personal preferences clouding your articles - no siree bob.

Apple's Snow Leopard to cut the bloat from Mac OS X

Amazing...

The amount of time people have spent complaining about bloat and then what happens when the OS writers take note? Everyone complains because bloat isn't a big problem after all, who would've thunk it? Bring on more useless improvements... not! I want stability and an install disc that can be backed up to RW media

@SpitefulGOD

Ooooo, so eloquant. I'm impressed I can tell you...

@AC "Oh boy!!"

Your joke might've been a little funnier if you had read the article, "new graphics engine"?

US air force chiefs sacked in robot-armada brouhaha

shouldn't that be...

"And the mother of all strategic bombing, the dropping of 2 atomic bombs on Japan, directly resulted in the surrender of Japan."

..resulted in the unconditional surrender of Japan. IIRC they were (conditionally) willing to end hostilities prior to the bombs being dropped.

New Microgeneration report - what it actually says

Unsubsidised nuclear power?

Nukes are given a free ticket in the energy auctions because they cannot compete in a free market, even with the heavy subsidies they receive. IIRC the EDF figure of 2bn tco for a nuke plant excludes the majority of fuel disposal and decommissioning, which will be a cost to the tax payer.

Also, why not compare the 21bn proposed subsidy of microgeneration with the trillions of tax payers money that has been (and still is) ploughed into nuclear.

Oh, and life audit of a nuke plant shows it to be far from carbon-neutral.

@Stephen R

So you would suggest we continue to grow the population exponentially to ensure that the resource crunch is someone else's problem?

It is a fundamental flaw in the current economic model that everything falls apart if the population doesn't continue to grow. So do we pretend that this is never going to happen or face the fact that eventually we are going to hit the limit of a resource and things are going to get painful.

Obvioulsy, sticking our head in the sand is much easier...

@Frank Gerlach

"Face it - the greenies are a special interest group determined to extract money from everybody else by the means of their supposedly idealist ideology."

Not quite right, the 'greenies' have provided an excuse for the formation of greedy special interest groups that see a big pile of tax payers that they think has their name written all over it. Wolf/sheeps clothing and all that...

'Untraceable' phone fraudsters eye your credit card

Spoofed Caller ID

I can think of one valid use for a spoofed caller ID.

Many PBXs have a feature where your extension can be twinned to another number, typically a mobile. So when your work number rings then the PBX originates a call to your mobile. But this call will come from your trunk and caller ID will display that number. If the PBX is able to spoof the caller ID then you can see the actual originators number on your mobile rather than the PBX trunk number.

Time Warner gives America metered internet

The official demise of unmetered access?

But $30 for 5Gb @768? Surely you can get better 3G data packages than this?

Oh sorry, forgot this is/was AOL...

Economist: girls actually better than boys at maths

@ Ian

"Err.. statistics is a branch of pure math :p"

Err.. no it's not. At least not when I did my A levels all those years ago.

Back then, pure maths was the study calculus, trigonometry, matrices and other general algebra. My exam board (JMB if you're interested) stipulated that each student be taught a pure maths curriculum plus one elective from mechanics, stats or 'applied' (bit of both).

And "nearly all math is applied" is tosh too. While all maths can be applied to some degree (it would be pretty useless if it couldn't), 'applied maths' teaches how maths is applied rather than teaching mathematical theorems specifically. A simple example is the triangle, from a purely mathematical perspective it is a 3 sided euclidean shape where the sum of the internal angles is pi rad/180deg, etc. If you are building a bridge however...

Going back to the study, how can there every be true gender equality (in education, life, whatever) when the whole issue is so highly politicised? The reality is that true equality is impossible because the different sides have different ideas of what equality is. If boys do well then it indicates that the education system is more suited to males and if girls do well then likewise. The worst part is that politicians will endlessly exploit this situation to achieve whatever end they desire.

And the same goes for racial, or any, equality discussions. The worst part is that politicians will endlessly exploit these situations to achieve whtaever end they desire.

Old Windows exploits dominate hack attack traffic

@ Rich

I think you missed TCP/UDP 123, very useful if you like your clock to stay pretty accurate.

@AC @Rich

"I think you're getting confused. These are the ports you connect to on a server, not the local source ports."

I think when Rich said "outgoing ports ..." he meant "outgoing connections to ports ..."

Daily Mail cites video game as proof of terrorist doomsday plot

Hardly a realistic image...

Sorry if this is off-topic but...

I would have thought that the Capitol would look a little flatter, maybe even with a hint of crater, after a 'real' nuclear attack. Or have I been hopelessly misled about the destructive capability of modern nuclear weapons?

Irregular heart rhythm? Try a Taser

Re: Dont tase me bro!

"First of all... don't resist arrest. You get your day in court. If you allow yourself to be tased by authorities, then you are probably a threat and deserve it."

And I guess you are one of these (rare) people who have absolutly "nothing to hide" too?

...And a strange belief that the court system is 100% reliable.

Boffins' breakthrough boosts fuel cell output by 50%

Small point...

"sulfonated tetrafluorethylene copolymer"

Shouldn't that be sulphonated or is that battle lost?

I for one welcome our aluminum over-lords.

Airbus jets could be converted to fuel-cell propulsion

hmm...

@Peter Depledge

"I agree that electric motors could be used for regenerative braking, but the energy transferred from kinetic to electric must go somewhere."

Yeah, it can be transferred in to heat. You put a hefty resistor bank on board and, once the batteries are full, just burn off the speed (literally - almost).

@TeeCee

If this idea was adopted...

Firstly, the aircraft would taxi to holding point CLOSE to the end of the runway and then go through the engine warm up procedure. This is what Branson was planning.

Secondly, there would be backup power available at the parking lot surely? Airlines are not that dumb - cheap but not dumb.

@Peter Fielden-Weston

Isn't it the main gear that takes the vast majority of the stress on a commercial jet? The nose wheel is mainly there for steering... and stopping the horrible scraping sound of the aircraft frame on tarmac.

And for those bitching that taxiing isn't the problem, well it was a big enough problem for Branson to bother trying to tow his heffalumps. Taxiing is horrendously inefficient; those engines are designed to run fast and high. For an airline manufacturer to propose this solution they obviously think that there is an operational saving to be made (although this IS Airbus...).

Games consoles not green enough, claims Greenpeace

Usual anti-green toss

"Still, without Greenpeace nagging at companies and lobbying of governments, would Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have achieved this much? We suspect not."

This is probably the most important part of the article. Without these whingers then there qould be no RoHS and children's toys would still be covered in lead-rich paint, even the ones not made in China.

"Well i'll try to stop opening up my console and eating the components until greenpeace say its safe..."

Has it ever crossed your mind that your console existed before you bought it and will continue to do so after you chuck it in the bin? It may be surprising but solipsism is only a hypothesis, when stuff leaves your immediacy it does not just cease to exist.

Apple okay with Safari 'carpet bombing' vuln for now

Safari is a steaming pile...

Seriously, when are they going to change the default option that automatically opens 'safe' (ie. all) files after download? That is another glaring security issue waiting to be fixed.

That is of course ignoring the fact that Safari seems the least capable when it comes to rendering pages. If Firefox and Opera are having problems then I may give Safari a chance but that is about all it gets used for on my machine.

I guess the only saving grace is that it isn't heavily tied in to the OS (yet...)

Lewis Hamilton and friend targeted in computer blackmail plot

Re: Surely

Agreed. The title is completely misleading, when I first read this on Friday (http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/67267 - take yur time eh?) there wasn't even a mention of Hamilton.

UK.gov torpedoes personal carbon credit plans

@Misery

"Environmental issues are just what the people behind these ideas have currently latched onto as an excuse."

I agree that the solutions being put forward, particularly by government, are designed to increase the proposer's income rather than solve any real problem. But are you saying that there are no actual environmental issues? As for the rest of your post, maybe that is why the government realised it would be a serious waste of money, eh?

I find the whole 'guilt' thing quite interesting. The concept of an individual's right to be guilt-free appears to be a construct of corporations, keeping the consumer from questioning whether they really need all the crap they are endlesly told to surround themselves with.

And now it is being rolled out once again to counter the AGW hypothesis, a hypothesis that could have serious consequences on corporations. Remember that when the US claims that ratifying Kyoto would cost $115bn per year to the US economy, that figure comes from corporate profits not your pocket. The corporations ARE the economy (stupid).

It is not a right to drive an SUV or have A/C or watch TV or even have your own washing machine. But it is very nice to have all these things. If you realise that then fine. If you think you are entitled to any of these things and anyone who gets in the way is taking away your presonal freedoms then you are just a product of the corporate machine and have already given up your freedoms - have an ID card...

Anyway, that's my take (it's just a ride). Flame away...

Well Done Lewis

You hit virtually every possible negative stereotype of the environmentalist in that piece, your mum must be so proud that you can avoid balance so effectively.

Plasma TV is ok? Because it only uses 0.25% of its 'on' power while 'off'. Hmm, so you don't turn your TV on much then? You quote a plasma at 400W, I have a nice projector that gives a very watchable 200" 16:9 picture for a mere 170W and a CRT would be about half that (obviously not at that size). But of course it is very important to have a thinner TV (apparently).

It is interesting that you point out how an individual would find restrictions to basic needs. Suppose it never crossed your mind that the credit level would be set so that basic needs plus a few luxuries would be covered. Hell, if they go about it the way they did with business you wouldn't even a notice a limit to your activities and have some spare credit to sell to boot. Thus making the whole scheme a waste of time, the noting of which being the starting point of your article.

Gordon Brown claims a Brit invented the iPod

Re: The real reason

"that Brits spend so much time drinking on public transport"

So what are you supposed to do while waiting several hours as they clear the wrong kind of fluff off the track?

Google readies for action against Dutch smut site

So...

Google is now claiming any word that ends in 'oogle' is a trademark infringement? WTF?

And for those who haven't been to the site, it is titled "porno ogle" but obviously underscores... etc etc.

HP pulls memory Missing Link from bottle of beer

Only 2 terminals?

To reuse a quote I found above

"The memristor consists of two titanium dioxide layers connected to wires. When a current is applied to one, the resistance of the other changes. That change can be registered as data."

(Taken from http://www.physorg.com/news128786808.html)

If you only have 2 terminals how can you apply current to one layer only and still measure the resistance of the other layer? That is truely amazing and appears to break many established physical laws. Either the device isn't 2 terminal or the description of operation (provided by HP labs) is bollocks.

Also, if the primary characteristic of the device is resistance then isn't this just a new kind of resistor, in the same way that a potentiometer or rheostat is?

@ John

Get off your high fuckin horse. I happen to have a PhD in electrical engineering, so?

What is your problem with the term "element" rather than "component? Type "synonym element" into Google and follow the first link. Never heard of the phrase "circuit element"? Hmm, maybe if you were an electrical engineer...

I (and the majority here) never actually trashed the device just the claim that it is a new fundamental PASSIVE element/component that has never been seen before. FFS read, nothing like a good straw man eh?

@David Brunfeldt

C and L are time invariant, just like a resistor, as this is one of the definitions of a fundamental passive circuit element (another being that the component only has two terminals). They are not time dependent, though they are frequency dependant (mostly accompanied by lc omega or s in equations).

This new device sounds like a usefully novel voltage controlled resistor but nothing more spectacular than that. Btw, can anyone point out where the magnetic flux is in this device cos memristance is supposed to be flux/charge.

P.S. L=dphi/di not dt - but you knew that really ;-)

@Les Matthew

Ok, let's go through this http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9932054-7.html

"The fourth circuit, which Chua called a "memristor" for memory resistor, would register how much current had passed."

Firstly, current is a measure of the flow of charge so you are actually measuring how much charge has passed.

<rant>

It seems that people really don't get electricity at all. It's like people saying that the power companies provide current. They don't, they provide voltage and you the customer draw the current you required. The best I've heard (on this site even) is people saying that the power grid provids 120v of current!

</rant>

Secondly, isn't this what a capacitor does? As charge accumulates on the plates of a capacitor (assuming your basic 2 plate model) then a potential difference is generated that is proportional to the charge. By measuring the voltage on the capacitor you know how much charge has passed, assuming that you are looking at a circuit whose initial conditions are known.

"a memristor is a variable resistor that, through its resistance, reflects its own history, Williams said."

No it doesn't. It provides an instaneous value of its resistance without any connection to previous (or future) values. If you apply a constantly varying voltage across the device you will be unable to gain any insight into the variation that occurred prior to your measurement, all you get is an average.

Other than that, nothing really in it. It is interesting that the dicussion on Wikipedia for this subject has pointed out that most material on this topic has appeared very recently and are mostly written by journos not 'experts'.

After a few hours sleep I realised something...

This is like a MOSFET (operating in ohmic mode) that saves its state.

@Fake.

The point I was trying to make is that a memristor device cannot be a fundamental element as it is just another type of resistance, something that is even embedded in its name. It is like saying a potentiometer is fundamental element because it can change its resistance and then 'remember' that value. But it is still, fundamentally, a resistor.

As for the existence of a 4th fundamental element, is there actually space for it?

Resistance: v proportional to i

Inductance: v proportional to di/dt

Capacitance: V proportional to int{ i dt }

What else can you do to i to require a new constant of proportionality? What Chua is effectively saying is

Memristance: di/dt proportional to int{ i dt }

Now does that really make sense?

Also, there is the mechanical anology of LCR circuits. In this analogy the three fundamental components become mass, spring and damper respectively (voltage becomes force and current becomes velocity). If there is a 4th fundamental electrical component then there must be a mechanical equivalent. Can any mechanical engineers out there provide possible candidates?

Saying all that...

The meristor design presented by HP is pretty cool as it is far, far simpler than existing flash (or any memory) cell designs.

No-fly list grounds US Air Marshals

@John A Blackley

"If you're in the UK, please ask someone (as I'm assuming you're too lazy to read) about fingerprinting you as you're leaving your own country."

Yes this occurs in one terminal in one airport of the UK (is this even live yet?) and is only to ensure that those getting on planes are the same people who passed through security (supposedly - until they find a better use). What does the US immigration service do with all those fingerprints it collects everytime one enters the US? They don't seem to check to make sure you leave again.

"Ask someone about the searches you have to go through to get on a plane to leave your own country"

And these searches are different in the US because? Well apart from TSA being more officious and more likely to flag a false positive (in my experience)? And in the US you have to go through these checks even if you don't leave the country. I have also found that flying a US carrier out of Heathrow usually entails an extra 'securty' search, done by US citizens.

That said, it is a tough call as to which country will transform to a dictatorial regime first though I think the UK is ahead in terms of spying on its own citizens.

Shell pulls out of Thames Estuary mega-windfarm

This comment will be posted by “Jim”

@a walker

Bugger me, the stirling engine domestic boiler was one of the projects in my PhD research group (not me, I was looking at MW CHP) and that was Sept 92! They have only just started selling them!?

@dervheid

"You cannot just 'turn on' a "large scale" hydro power station."

Keep smokin that crack. Dinorwigg can turn on any one of its main alternators to full load in 20secs ( I watched and timed it just to be sure), we're talking 8ft diameter pipes iirc so just how much bigger is "large scale"? When you compare that to minutes for CCGT, hours for coal and days for nuclear, I would say that you CAN 'just turn on' hydro. I call DICK.

Talking of nuclear, there are a whole host of issues that nuclear power generation throw up. A full-load scram on an LWR can take up to 2 days to recover from (get back to full load - xenon poisoning) assuming everything goes as planned. Also, can you tell me how you intend to provide for cover the 2 months every 3 years when the reactor is offline for refuelling? And stepping back, where is your capacity to cover a reactor scram? Let's not even bother with the problem of fuel scarcity. Don't get me wrong, nuclear can provide a (very) short term solution to an energy crunch but by the time plant contruction begins there better be a long term solution in the pipeline.