The Week in Geek
Stop bull-shitting us, Uranus. Give us the good stuff.
Soundtrack: Dozer's Beyond Colossal, Squarepusher's Budakhan Microphone, and Woodhands' Heart Attack.
New Properties of Diamond Discovered.
Crap Gems from Uranus!
Scientists recently discovered the possibility of liquid diamond on both outer planets, Neptune and Uranus. Why is it a possibility, and not a certainty? Well science isn't as exact when the atmospheric pressure of said planets restricts anybody from going there, ever, for one. Reported in Nature Physics, research has shown that diamond acts a great deal like ice. You're thinking, "why is liquid diamond big news, people have been melting diamonds forever, right?" Well, yeah, you're half right. The conditions present on earth cause melting Diamond to become graphite when liquid, and then resolidify into said matter. It doesn't just become diamond again when it cools, like water to ice. However, scientists have been running tests under the atmospheric conditions of the outer planets and found that when liquid diamond begins to cool, the solid bits rise to the surface. Granted this sounds mundane as hell, but it couldn't be more to the contrary. No other chemical compound known to science has that property except water. That's right, the basic building block of life finally has something in common with the building blocks of Gangsta Rap. I'm sure all of G-unit rejoiced when they figured out that, one day, they could swim around in an ocean of diamond, dodging gigantic icebergs. It's a nice thought, Fiddy, but it ain't gonna happen. The research surrounding this cool piece of knowledge notes that Uranus and Neptune are similar to the conditions of their experiment. Stay with me, Tony Yayo: that means that the atmospheric pressure of Uranus (oh, god the strain is killing me) and Pluto is something like 35,000+ times greater than that of sea-level Earth. Which means you will be the one going pop, not your nine or your gat, Dj Whoo Kid.
Google says it's going to pull out of China, then doesn't.
China might be pregnant.
Recently, tech giant Google threatened to pull its operations out of the People's Republic of China. Citing numerous reasons for their dispute, Google even went so far as to delay the release of two Andriod phones, just to stick it to 'em. This seems like a recent happenstance, Google versus China, but it isn't. Google and China have been struggling, in one form or another, since 2002 when a suspicious attack (Chinese in origin) blocked access to Google in China for two weeks. This turned into a real head-scratcher when the attack ceased, and censored search results began to surface. Bending to the the will of the largest nation on earth, the largest information source on earth released a compromised version of itself: Google.cn. The dot-C-N version submitted to certain censorship requests of the Chinese gov't; from porno to "politically sensitive" material. While Google felt this "compromised their mission" they realized that "not offering servic to a fifth of the world" would be an even bigger compromise.
So, yet again, Google is waving the war banners at the red republic, asserting their sovereignty as a corporation and asserting their ideals. Held high but completely taken for granted, Google's search service has allowed the (literate) people of the world (who have an internet connection) access to the ever-expanding library that has become the modern internet. However, dot-C-N takes away the sense of liberty and freedom that is Google's unique handle on the web, putting limits on the seemingly-unlimited. After seeing a rash of network attacks, again, on their servers in China, Google promised to no longer pay homage to the PRoC and offer uncensored search again. Google reports that the attacks were directed at the e-mail inboxes of known human-rights activists. Oh, and this is just the tip, folks! The official announcement of Google's intentions was issued on the 12th of this month, so only two days later China retorts that "if you're going to live in my house then you have to play by my rules." I could give you the real copy of what they said, but it's in the universal language of authoritarian, so it's all the same.
Now that the waters are good and boiling Google sees another attack on the 18th, just under a week later! This time it's been directed at journalist's Gmail accounts. Nobody knows for sure if these two are related, but hearsay as to a Google.Cn employee's involvement in the attack certainly don't help tensions. So it's Friday, now, a day after Secretary of State Clinton speaks out agist internet censorship. What's next? As the aforementioned statement is a thinly veiled weigh-in of diplomatic support, it's only going to stir the pot more. I, for one, wait for this outcome with baited breath as the implications of what's now coming to a head are epic. If 1.3 billion people are cut off from Google, what does it mean for the internet? If the Android platform doesn't come to the largest cell-phone consumer base in the world, does it mean it will flounder? It seems to me that The People's Republic is in dire need of modernization. A lofty and hard-to-fathom concept, to be sure, but a necessary evil for the most famously censored community in the world. If they are to stay competitive and in-the-loop with the rest of the world, both entities will need to either cease to exist or play nice. Google won't play by China's laws anymore and China won't budge; where's the love? What is the common ground between the best example of free-trade and the biggest beaurocracy in the world? Maybe if the party-friendly hackers in China were prosecuted, as an offering? Will the democratic liberalization of China be forced to speed up under the watchful eye of the world community? Having made great strides, in the context of the PRC's authoritarian image, since 2005 towards more freedoms, China is still far behind the rest of the world.
Posted by Ben Kessell, Ben Kessell on Jan 22, 2010 @ 12:00 am
