Inside the Mad Scientist's Lab

There has been a lot of speculation over why Apple purchased PA Semiconductor, a small chip design firm that previously designed the PowerPC chips. As I recall, it was discussed at some length in the Buzz Out Loud episode "Fablessly 'Splenive Pigeons," and it was probably the funniest episode ever. But I digress. AppleInsider suggests that PA Semi is working on a processor destined for the next-generation iPhone.

National Geographic recently ran a story on what may be the first image obtained of a planet around another sun-like star. Which is pretty awesome. But they probably should have not started the article (at least in the RSS feed) with the phrase "A hot, young body ..." because few statement would have made my brain jump so quickly off track.

It seems Apple is finding it hard to crack the cell phone market in Japan, thanks to the widespread availability in that country of cheaper, similarly featured alternatives. Duh, Apple. Thanks to the international date line and a permissive attitude towards advanced technology, people in Japan are already living in the future.

Yeah, Japan gets the cool parts of the future, the US gives us the scary parts. Apparently a team at Stanford developed a set of robot helicopters that have such advanced AI that they actually learned to fly themselves by watching a remote-controlled helicopter. Which would be wonderful, if it were not so very reminiscent of the origin of Skynet as seen in Terminator 3. Gaa!

In news that in no way involves the destruction of humanity at the cold, metal hands of our misguided creations, Egypt has big plans in the works to make Cleopatra's palace complex into a museum. Which is a pretty big deal seeing as how it was built on islands on the Mediterranean coast at the mouth of the Nile which have since sunk due to a series of earthquakes. Oh, and the architect's concept looks fantastic, too.

Google: Atlantis

A patent filed by Google in February and recently dug up by Slashdot describes a self-sustaining floating data center that uses the waves for power and draws cooling water from the deeper layers of the ocean. The data center would be of modular construction using ordinary shipping containers and would be parked some 20 to 30 miles offshore. The story on Cnet’s Green Tech blog notes that about 30 megawatts (MW) of electricity would be required, as data centers are a major load on electrical grids all over the world. For reference, a typical single-unit nuclear power station produces around 700 MW at the top end, which is only enough for 23 such data centers. Since the internet wouldn’t work without this infrastructure, Google’s investigation into making it green is welcome, one of the actual good ideas they’ve had lately (unlike launching their own spy satellite). It’s not exactly the lost city of the Ancients, but it’ll do for now.

I had a very strong moment of shadenfreuder Monday morning upon learning that the New England Patriots QB Tom Brady was apparently out for the season with a knee injury. After years of listening to the talking heads of TSN / ESPN / NFLNetwork going on and on about the invincible, god-like, mighty-hammer-of-Thor Patriots and their invincible QB and how it was a lock right from pre-season that they would win the Superbowl, I must admit it was nice to see demonstrated that Brady is just a mere mortal. I'm sure this will come as a shock to everyone who hitched themselves to the Patriots bandwagon over the past several years (you know who you are) but it is seldom pleasant when reality sets in.

In news that in no way involves the irrational hatred of a pissed-off Broncos fan, Mitsubishi is making HDTV even better by the usual means. That is, make it bigger and add lasers. Everything is better with lasers. The 65-inch (!) set will use lasers in an otherwise conventional digital light projection setup. The unit will be available later this month and will set you back $ 7 000 US (oh, I suppose that's $7,000 to our non-metric friends).

In nutter news, a mystery group calling themselves the American Rights Council has sent 4 000 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube demanding the removal of videos critical of Scientology. Just to demonstrate what the DCMA and similar legislation really is: a means to curtail free speech in the name of self-interest, and a hammer to beat down anyone holding a contrary opinion. YouTube has a history of complying with such notices without question, so any legal action will have to come from the posters of the videos in question. We can only hope.

The fact that I’m still posting and it’s past Wednesday means that, contrary to what some had speculated, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was started up and failed to cause the apocalypse. Initial tests were a complete success, leaving particle physicists free to go in search of the elusive Higg’s Boson. Which is a lot less sexy but a lot more useful than much of the material appearing (usually half jokingly) in the press over the past few weeks.

More and more things remind me of 1998 lately, the latest is the Motorola i365. This thing is so huge it reminds me not even of the first cell phone I owned, but the first cell my dad owned. Granted, it does a bit more than the old analog brick of yore, including GPS, Bluetooth, and push-to-talk support. But man, is it ugly.

Project for this weekend: upgrade to iTunes 8 and then download iPhone 2.1. Because my internet is so slow it will probably take all weekend and of course Apple makes you do them in order.

All of this has happened before, and it will happen again (special early post!).

Major deja-vu for me on Monday when a new netbook was announced which was billed as the Commodore UUMD 8010/F. Yes, Commodore of Amiga and C64 made-in-the-80’s fame. My trip down memory lane was soon brought to a screeching halt by a clarification to the Crave post:

Updated at 5:54 p.m. PDT to clarify that the "Commodore" in the Commodore UMMD 8010/F is most likely only an homage to the company of yore.

Seems the name and trademark was bought by Yeahronimo Media Ventures of the Netherlands. Oh, so this is just another lame attempt to bring back everything that was cool in the 80s. Whatever.

Another flashback takes us to the mid-90s and the Browser Wars (!). Google is taking a shot at yet another portion of the average user’s internet experience (search, e-mail, documents, web storage… what do we not have?) with Crome. The browser is based on Apple’s Webkit rendering engine. The features are discussed oddly in an online comic book format. I’m curious enough to take it for a spin, but what I really want to know is: will it ever make it out of beta? Several sources in the tech world have already weighed in on the browser itself, perhaps even more time has been spent on user agreement which I’ve heard summarized as the EULA from hell. Those of you who thought the Chrome logo looked vaguely familiar will be comforted to know that you’re not the only one who noticed.

One thing that did not make me flash back to a simpler time was a study that looked at the popularity of podcasts. The Pew Internet and American Life study, via Ars Technica, found that while 19% of internet users had downloaded a podcast in the last year, but that only 3% did so on a regular basis. It seems I fit pretty neatly into the study’s finding… the vast majority of regular downloaders were between 18-29 (check) with weaker trends such as household income above $75 000 (check), and male (check). This small number of regular listeners overall is a bit of a surprise (although it should be noted that this was a small study – 2 251 people at least 18 years old) given that the iPod has long featured dead simple podcast integration and competing products such as the Zune also have this feature. Of course, you don’t have to use it, but I find it a great way to stay in the loop on a particular topic whenever you have time to listen, on a portable device, no less. In case you’re curious, I currently subscribe to four podcasts – CNET’s Buzz Out Loud and Loaded, Geekbrief.tv, and ESPN’s Football Today.

AT&T had a mess on its hands Wednesday when the cell data network up and down the east coast suffered a serious meltdown, rendering data services unavailable for as long as 12 hours in some places. Then it really felt like 1995.

I happened to read Gamespot’s review of Madden ‘09 for the Wii on Friday and I laughed my balls off. The game itself sound a lot like I remember from the PC version of Madden ’06 plus the Wii’s excellent (for non-gamers such as myself) controls, but the statement that really got me was this:

“Celebrating” after a TD mostly involves waving your arms like a nut.

I’m not sure if this refers to some poor game design from EA sports, a glitch in the software itself, or what you’re doing with the wiimote when you score. I pick the third one just because the mental picture is priceless. It’s like the “silly walks” Monty Python sketch for your arms.

This week I was also reminded of one more reason why it is great to be Canadian: our elections are short. Rather than a presidential campaign that lasts for two long, grueling, frustrating years (doubly so for those of us who don’t get a vote but still get positively soaked by election coverage) we take four and a half weeks to do an entire parliamentary election. Our election is expected to be formally announced tomorrow and we vote on October 14. The simple fact it that regardless of who wins, somebody else gets screwed, so why prolong the pain?