No black holes — but a data tsunami

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From CERN…

The Large Hadron Collider will produce roughly 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data annually – enough to fill more than 1.7 million dual-layer DVDs a year!

Thousands of scientists around the world want to access and analyse this data, so CERN is collaborating with institutions in 33 different countries to operate a distributed computing and data storage infrastructure: the LHC Computing Grid (LCG).

Data from the LHC experiments is distributed around the globe, with a primary backup recorded on tape at CERN. After initial processing, this data is distributed to eleven large computer centres – in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, Spain, Taipei, the UK, and two sites in the USA – with sufficient storage capacity for a large fraction of the data, and with round-the-clock support for the computing grid.

These so-called “Tier-1” centres make the data available to over 120 “Tier-2” centres for specific analysis tasks. Individual scientists can then access the LHC data from their home country, using local computer clusters or even individual PCs…

Hopefully, all of this is not orchestrated by Windows servers.

Is the DoJ preparing an antitrust case over the Google-Yahoo ‘partnership’?

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The NYT thinks that it might be

That was the question being debated from Washington to Silicon Valley on Tuesday, after the Justice Department, which has been reviewing the partnership for several weeks, hired Sanford M. Litvack, a veteran antitrust lawyer, to help assess the evidence gathered by its lawyers.

The hiring of an outside lawyer like Mr. Litvack is rare and represents the clearest indication that the Justice Department could be planning to mount a legal challenge to the deal, some analysts said. “They wouldn’t bring in a special counsel unless they were preparing to litigate,” said Sam Miller, a partner at Sidley Austin in San Francisco who acted as a special trial counsel in the department’s first antitrust case against Microsoft…

The End is Nigh?

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Hmmm… From this morning’s Telegraph

At about 9.30 am local time, scientists will introduce a beam of protons into the 18-mile-long circular particle accelerator, buried some 300 feet in the earth and straddling the Franco-Swiss border just outside Geneva, beginning what should be a remarkable career. Some 300 journalists from around the world will be on hand to watch the switch being thrown, accompanied by the thousands of scientists who will make the LHC a good part of their life’s work. Last night, some 50 scientists were working late to iron out glitches and prevent an embarrassing failure in front of the world’s media…

Quote of the Day

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“Today’s necessary but likely very expensive action for taxpayers is the consequence of regulatory neglect and of a broader political system’s reluctance to take on what should have been clearly seen as festering problems.”

Larry Summers, sometime Harvard President and former Treasury Secretary, commenting on the nationalisation of Freddie Mac and Fannie May.

Child abuse at the conventions

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From Willem Buiter’s blog…

I have now watched a brace of US presidential nominating conventions. This has been a truly mind-numbing and depressing experience – a complete triumph of appearance over substance.

Particularly disturbing has been the willingness (eagerness?) of both the Democratic and the Republican candidates to exploit their minor children in the hope of gaining electoral kudos with the family values crowd. First the Obamas trot out their nine and seven year old daughters (after Michelle Obama had been airbrushed into a tupperware mom). Then the McCains roll out their seventeen year old daughter. Not to be outdone, Sarah Palin bounces onto the stage with her newborn baby in her arms. Even her seventeen year old pregnant daughter was put up for public display, accompanied by the neanderthal earmarked/branded for future son-in-law status.

At least the Obama kids may be too young to suffer lasting psychological damage as a result of their cynical exploitation. Seventeen-year old teenagers may not be as fortunate. Should the social services get involved in what has all the hallmarks of emotional child abuse?

Googlewashing

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Google’s use of a comic strip to explain the thinking behind the Chrome browser architecture has attracted lots of derision. The Register has been assembling a compendium.

Thanks to James Miller for spotting a dud link.

The Palin Effect

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Welcome detachment in The Atlantic.

In the last 18 hours, I’ve seen the Palin Effect on two very different groups of Republicans: grassroots delegates and professional operatives. Last night, I wormed right up front to the edge of the stage, where I figured the hardest-core activists would cram in to watch Palin, allowing for easy anthropological observation. They raved and seemed convinced she would put the ticket over the top. (The best line, whooped in my ear by a Kentucky delegate responding to Linda Lingle’s quip about how 250 Delawares could fit inside Alaska: “That’s right, baby, size matters!”)

Everybody at this morning’s panel discussion, on the other hand, thought Palin was great, but not the decisive factor that the activist crowd did. The clear consensus was that McCain needs to focus on independents. “He’s got to message himself to independents tonight,” said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia. “He has to win independents, period,” said Sara Taylor, former White House political director. “He must be more focused on the center of the electorate than Bush was in ’04, and pull independents and conservative Democrats,” said Terry Nelson, McCain’s former campaign manager. In his own inimitable fashion, Chris Matthews seemed to concur: “If you guys want to be the war party, kiss it!”

Er, I’m not sure I understand that last comment, but I sure hope the Republicans continue to make the same mistake as they made at the convention. Keep preaching to the converted and leave the country to make up its own mind.

And there’s always the ‘Eagleton Scenario’.

Nice column by Gail Collins in which she points out that McCain is actually running for Leader of the Senate:

A visitor from another planet who dropped in on the Republican campaign at this point would very likely assume that the presidential nominee was a guy who had spent his life as a prisoner of war until he was released just in time to pick Sarah Palin for vice president.

“I can’t wait to introduce her to Washington, D.C., and the pork barrelers and the lobbyists,” he said.

Ah, the dreaded pork barrelers.

John McCain is not actually running for president. He’s running for Senate majority leader. All his passion is directed at defects in the legislative process. He’s been a military man or a senator for virtually all of his adult life, and listening to him talk, you get the definite impression that the two great threats of the 21st century are Islamic extremism and the appropriations committee.

How the patent system corrupts academic inquiry

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Thoughtful piece in the NYT about the long-term impact of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 which aimed to use the patent system to promote “the utilization of inventions arising from federally supported research or development” and “to promote collaboration between commercial concerns and nonprofit organizations, including universities.”

In the past, discovery for its own sake provided academic motivation, but today’s universities function more like corporate research laboratories. Rather than freely sharing techniques and results, researchers increasingly keep new findings under wraps to maintain a competitive edge. What used to be peer-reviewed is now proprietary. “Share and share alike” has devolved into “every laboratory for itself.”

In trying to power the innovation economy, we have turned America’s universities into cutthroat business competitors, zealously guarding the very innovations we so desperately want behind a hopelessly tangled web of patents and royalty licenses.

Of course, there is precedent for scientific secrecy, notes Daniel S. Greenberg , author of “Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards and Delusions of Campus Capitalism” (University of Chicago Press, 2007). When James Watson and Francis Crick were homing in on DNA’s double-helix structure in the 1950s, they zealously guarded their work from prying eyes until they could publish their findings, to be certain that they would get the credit for making the discovery.

“They didn’t try to patent it,” Mr. Greenberg notes, “but somebody doing the same work today would certainly take a crack at patenting the double helix.”