A Tedious and Personal History of 3G
Don’t tell me how many G’s your new phone has. We’ve all loved and lost so many G’s at this point. In 2002, I got my first cell phone. June was stuffy in Manhattan, and my summer internship copy-editing the New York Sun, the now-defunct right-wing newspaper, was just about to start. I swam through…
Gulf Spill: Is The Oil Lurking Underwater?
Between 20 April and 15 July, BP released some 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Within weeks of the leak being plugged, researchers reported on the oil’s rapid disappearance. Others are now challenging those early claims. So is the oil gone or not? At the surface, the oil does appear to…
Android Phones Can Substitute for Supercomputers
There’s an app for almost everything. Now add one that can run calculations from a supercomputer on a Nexus One phone in real time and without the need for internet connectivity. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Texas Advanced Computing Center have created an Android app that can take simulations from the powerful Ranger…
Copy Protection Hasn’t Changed Much Since Medieval Times
Even thousands of years ago, creative types had to worry about protecting their intellectual property. Their approaches to discouraging piracy and theft may not have been too different from the intimidating warnings we see today, but they were far more creative and amusing. Sometimes people come to me and ask, “How did medieval filmmakers protect…