McCain's battery prize idea

I neglected to link last week to this Register editorial on John McCain's big idea of giving a $300 million prize for coming up with a better battery. It's not an inherently terrible idea; prizes have prodded innovation before, quite recently with the Ansari X-Prize that may have jump-started the space tourism business. But it's likely that the reward from the marketplacewould be even bigger, so McCain's idea might be superfluous.