Google buys into WiMAX

So how is this? Google herds Verizon into buying and opening up the 700MHz band and then finds itself with some cash to spend on plan B … to wit … WiMax in the form of Sprint and Clearwire which are merging and teaming up with a cast of dozens:

Sprint and Clearwire merge next-gen wireless businesses, goes by Clearwire - Engadget

the new outfit will be called Clearwire, even though Sprint will hold around 51-percent of the firm, while existing Clearwire shareholders will own 27-percent and the new investors will hold 22-percent. New investors? Ah yes, Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks will collectively invest $3.2 billion in the new company, but that figure is “based on a target price of $20 a share of Clearwire’s common stock,

But from a previous post, I think we can see why this part of the wireless strategy was plan B all along …

Sprint, Clearwire set to announce $12B WiMAX deal with Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Intel, and Google? - Engadget

it’s a pretty big boost for WiMAX, which was looking pretty sickly lately. Still, asking consumers to have faith in Sprint and Comcast and Time Warner Cable is pretty ballsy — between the three of them, they’ve probably burned everyone in America.

Introducing the memristor

Introductory physics courses are about to get harder.

Scientists Create First Memristor: Missing Fourth Electronic Circuit Element | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

A group of scientists from HP Labs has finally built real working memristors, thus adding a fourth basic circuit element to electrical circuit theory, one that will join the three better-known ones: the capacitor, resistor and the inductor.

Researchers believe the discovery will pave the way for instant-on PCs, more energy-efficient computers, and new analog computers that can process and associate information in a manner similar to that of the human brain.

Microsoft pays half billion for Sidekick.

If you were thinking, like maybe 5 years ago, that a Sidekick was a solution to mobile computing in the enterprise, here’s where you’d be.

Danger for Microsoft - The INQUIRER

With all these managers above them, the pair have to work out how to beat Apple’s Iphone, RIM’s BlackBerry Pearl, and whatever former Danger co-founder and former CEO Andy Rubin is doing with Android at the comparatively flat organisation, Google. µ

Hard Drive Failures

Google continues to mine its database of cheap commodity hard drive statistics. But, sadly, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Massive Google hard drive survey turns up very interesting things - Engadget

drives often needed replacement for issues that SMART drive status polling didn’t or couldn’t determine, and 56% of failed drives did not raise any significant SMART flags

Scientist’s Prayer

A good article on doing science: Sure, there is a small chance it could mean the end of the world as we know it. But there is an opportunity cost associated with not doing science, as well.

Large Hadron Collider - Risk of a Black Hole - Dennis Overbye - Physics - New York Times

In Walker Percy’s “Love in the Ruins,” the protagonist, a doctor and an
inventor, recites what he calls the scientist’s prayer. It goes like
this:

“Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men.

“Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction.

“Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.”

Son of Millipede

IBM has been playing with this technology for awhile, hoping to license the final process. Here’s a company that looks ready to field their own product in a couple years. The trick in this game is to provide a mechanical device that does not wear out with repeated use, and the article indicates (though it doesn’t say how) this company has addressed the problem of worn out tips.

A storage technology that breaks Moore’s Law

Lai said that in principle, Nanochip could develop the ability to move the probe a single atom at a time. The company said its current generation of probes has a radius smaller than 25nm, but it projects that eventually the probes could be shrunk to two or three nanometers apiece. That scale, said Knight will enable development in 10 to 12 years of a memory chip greater than 1TB. For a first generation, anticipated in 2010, Knight says he expects a small number of chips to be in excess of 100GB, but a more realistic number is “tens of gigabytes” per integrated circuit, a capacity comparable to the current generation of flash devices.

Beer: Publish or Perish

Two beer studies that make you think about your priorities in life.

Newsmax.com - Beer Fights Cancer

Beers that provide the most benefits contain the most hops, and include strong brews such as ale, stout, and porter. In general, the darker the beer, the better. For those who can’t stand beer, herbal supplements made from hops contain the highest concentrations of beneficial elements.

For Scientists, a Beer Test Shows Results as a Litmus Test - New York Times

According to the study, published in February in Oikos, a highly respected scientific journal, the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher, a measure of a paper’s quality and importance.

The results were not, however, a matter of a few scientists having had too many brews to be able to stumble back to the lab. Publication did not simply drop off among the heaviest drinkers. Instead, scientific performance steadily declined with increasing beer consumption across the board, from scientists who primly sip at two or three beers over a year to the sort who average knocking back more than two a day.

Jet engines better than Fuel Cells.

Miniature jet engines could power cellphones - 20 October 2004 - New Scientist

The key advantage of microengines is that they pack in at least 10 times more energy per volume of fuel than conventional lithium batteries, take up less space and work more smoothly than much-touted fuel cells.

A workable soultion to Copyright?

This is an interesting proposal to solve copyright problems.  Its seems innovative and workable, at least until you start to think about all the local, state, federal, and international bodies that might be called upon to protect copyrighted property from theft and therefore expect a piece of the revenue in return.  Still … very clever.

Copyright this - Los Angeles Times

A solution to determining which works are in the “Mickey Mouse” category of copyrights and which are in the more socially valuable “oral rehydration therapy” class of work is not feasible for a government bureaucracy. However, if all copyrights were taxed at a fixed (but significant) amount per year to maintain the copyright (all registered through the copyright office and searchable), there would be a significant carrying cost and most of the copyrighted material would revert to “public domain” and become available to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.” As intellectual property and copyrights become an even more significant part of our economy, and as copyright holders (not necessarily the creators) make claims of “stealing” as though it is real property, it should be taxed.

Replacing Flash Memory

Technology Review: A Memory Breakthrough

Phase-change memory has made a lot of progress in the past few years, Wong adds. “A few years ago it looked promising,” he says. “But now it’s going to happen. There’s no doubt about it.”