« July 2006 | Main | September 2006 »

August 30, 2006

goople

A pinch of salt in the news enchilada may pass undetected: Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, joined Apple’s Board of Directors today, August 29th.
Speculation is green for this occurrence but I remember last time Steve Jobs joined a Board of Directors that was not Apple’s, Pixar was sold to Disney the day next. Not to say Apple will be sold out to the Juggernaut of search engines but possibly something else of the most interesting kind: integration.

1 Two of the coolest brand in IT are partnering on betting that Microsoft Vista is going to be a major embarrassment to Redmond’s agonizing monopoly but see the Zune initiative as a threat in the long run (AAPL needs GOOG).

2 Apple is from now on going full-frontal against the former Gates company (Bill’s out gardening with Melinda) and the miserable states of affair that is called the disbanded Microsoft Software Division (GOOG needs AAPL).

3 Google is going to switch to Apple hardware for most of its numerous factories (AAPL needs GOOG).

4 Google is going to buy on the dozen or so multimedia-oriented and Apple branded software pieces that are iLife and iWork (GOOG needs AAPL).

5 Google is going to embrace the iTunes Store for audio and video replacing the miserable Video store have now (they both need this).

6 finally The Googlians are going to fix .Mac and integrate it with their services once and for all (AAPL needs GOOG).

But the whole package of semi-obvious predictions looks possibly too predictable. Apple is set for exploding sales next year with both audio, video and PC products, what they are going to need is sit side-by-side on the couch with the only other company that is an established nightmare to MS and MS’s lack of understanding of web-as-a-service. WAAS has so far been a thorn on the side in Apple’s crown of jewels with only two, masterfully executed and very successful exception: the iTunes Music Store and the Apple Store.

Some very sweet goo is dripping in Cupertino with new iPods, faster Mac minis and now the right infrastructure to jump 2.0.

A small notch on the paper, one with consequences. Expect a lot of them.

Posted by lck at 02:14 AM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2006

Interesting Times

Was it not for the insane-wet-wave-hot of the week past, on the way to (aspiring at) getting a taste of Siberia, I should call these interesting times. Perhaps interesting in an unusual way. We have a few answers and a reminder: I have to teach kiddo the proper spelling for big-bang; her big-boom is flatteringly French sounding and unfit to an educated 6-years old. Make note.

Dark Matter Exists. The great accomplishment documented on Chandra Chronicles here (also check Sean's post on cosmicvariance) and the mandatory press release here. As you can read, a fine understanding of the nature of Dark Matter is too much rush but the old hypothesis is no more: we know now what to look for, where and what it looks like. The object that put an end to secular uncertainty is 1E 0657-56, known as Bullet Cluster, a supercluster consisting of two colliding clusters of galaxies and the most energetic cosmic event known beside the big boom. The discovery takes us back firm on our feet and under comfortable old-school experimentalism. The baby inside can breathe relieved.

On the other camp the very people who should give us a draft of the bigger picture, calling String Theorists, are pic-nicking with new languages (again?) and again: enumerating: torsors (a sophisticated new branch of tensors), granular Homotopy (a trendy variant of old K Theory), Lie-3 algebra and topological dualities, one of which contributed by Richard Superman J. Szabo. Some of this stuff smells promising, what it does not is showing the ability to connect any of the many loose mono-poles that String Theory has become. We grant ST the time it takes and the patience but the field is sore in full stagflation. The brilliant connections a decade old are long gone and the road ahead murky. Hope the first few observations at LHC, operational starting in 2007, may shake the tree, for better or worse. The recent discoveries in astrophysics all put growing pressure on ST for a bit of convergence.

Topologically interesting is Russian Grigory Perelman, a 40-year old from St. Petersburg won the Fields Medal, often described as the math equivalent of the Nobel prize, and he declined to accept it. Perelman is famous for a break-thru (papers of 2003) in the study of shapes and for proving the one-century old Poincare conjecture. The Poincare conjecture essentially says that in 3D space you can not transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it. The original papers by Perelman are a bit obscure. Two attempts have been made to clarify the original demonstration, both successfully, the most synthetic by Huai-Dong Cao and Xi-Ping Zhu. The proof presents some prosaic aspects, especially at the intro stage but still is a complete step-by-step proof of a geometrization conjecture. The paper is 328 pages. (linked here courtesy of the insane amount of space MT gives us for 9$ a month) Such extensive undertaking not only depicts a brilliant (and eccentric) mind but also lays down a final verdict on accessibility of science and its model of choice: if the full proof to a conjecture on a fundamental property of space requires something of a soap opera (a space opera, specifically) the connection to social function is lost, dramatically and forever. As each chapter in this brilliant (if tedious) epos sucks from sub-modules underneath of at least comparable complexity the scenario is a world away from General Relativity where some of the big nodes are transmissible and social-able. Here, and possibly in most of future science, accessibility is lost and an army of Brian Greene bots is nowhere to be found.

On Pitchford’s Review a recent post puts out the complain that we lack a handful of those minds that in recent past were able to filter and put art in critical perspective to a big audience. Widening the scene the complaint applies to music, literature and most other forms of expression. Turns out the lack of discriminating capability is related to the heavy role technology plays on these fields and how it affects us. Deeper in the hole we find:

1 We do not like to admit that technology affects the way we perceive reality. We are more lax in admitting the role drugs play, do not like to concede that ubiquitous low-fi (ipods, youTube, google and content at-a-glance) is changing the way we structure our experience.

2 On judging, filtering and disseminating to audience it is critical that we are aware of technology and its role but what do we know about technology? How many phone numbers do we recall without the help of our Blackberry, how many movie plots without the help of imdb.com?

3 And last, what is an audience? Defined by the ritual TV spread on the couch now that setting up your youTube account and buying tracks on iTunes is easier than operating and set up your dolby surround TV center?

My kiddo does that, I’m surely not messing with her VCR.

Science, a human construct after all, is no different. Sorry, you need at least being able to read a few differential equation and have a clue of topological transformation in a Riemann-ish space. We’re so sorry.

It’s easy to make a lemon float. Cut out a square section, remove content and seal it back with silicon. The surprising part is that now people think Sicilian lemons float because they have a bigger oxygen core. How disappointing is that.

Posted by lck at 07:31 PM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2006

7

We go to the mountains and camp with the fire and lakes, the smell of mint and a chimney. It wasn’t you on the corner in White Avenue honestly I imagined it would spin me out of the picture. Out of the picture, next to the store with Bob, Kate and Lou, staring at all those other shells, rolling down the slide, speaking your team’s language, from nowhere to out there.

Taken in by the wind-works I watch the squirrels gather in the gallery sorting thru water throws some childhood game backwards. Once in the story when they snap off another click I rage to believe downstairs a really good cup of coffee across the tray awaiting for social investment. With the grass, the milk, the devoted family by the runway, a frame of the view someone else covers. Lookout your six when you curl up.

The shattering clouds cut the morning sun off then the line of purples after the storm glancing on the tiles, two wooden poles hold the frame and from their wet narrow track the billboard girls deflect in the other window, brushing where everything is lips closing in a chime of plums, oxygen, gold and regret. Pink as birthday balloons, light the rainbow emerges from the dull lake to the east, the running water, the billboard girls speak.

Humming in the air that masks us clear by the hundreds trafficking droplets of blood warming my hands then up on the beach for a minute. A thousand leaves chained to the air conditioner burst with a puff and roll in the snow speeding away. A thousand leaves for me to give the little laughing, drop the little chainsaw and fall asleep on the pillow.

I live in the land where the waterfall flows thru a pool and thru the ocean the sparrows revolve, the scale grows, a bump or a trail of miniatures, maps and insects crowding to meet me on this street. After and before every morning she gets on the phone and the couch, the wedding gift, a critical stance. I hold in until I begin typing when I step across the sleep I stretch at a fraction of a breath. This is part of what I like.

Two people in the room blinking, falling into place, painting. A backbone kicking and kicking to start the plot in every recess first in the needle. Everyone will work it out right about now.

I am dating no dramatic layouts but a collective fortune. In the face of deliberately misconstruing the wounding as a kind of case, disseminated, faked by frustration, the light indicates no coincidence. Boxes thru boxes, thru 27 miles of shrubby cactus then the 56-foot tall iron gate. You have arrived.

© Fortunato Caragliano. All rights reserved.

Posted by lck at 06:23 PM