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.