The 700 MHz spectrum could give birth to the much-anticipated third pipe, but phone and cable lobbyists are currently pressuring the FCC to sell companies like AT&T and Verizon our airwaves — in a flawed auction process — so they can hoard this valuable spectrum and stifle competitive alternatives to their networks. Google and other would-be providers are not taking it lying down. They want the FCC to mandate that whoever wins the auction be required to sell access to those airwaves, at wholesale prices, to anyone wanting to provide broadband Internet service. They also want anonymous auctions to prevent the giant incumbents from manipulating the results against small players (as they have done in the past).

TropicalCoder writes "The LiftPort Group, founded four years ago with the lofty dream of building a stairway to heaven, has seemingly reached the end the line. The dream was to develop a ribbon of carbon nanotubes 100,000 km long, anchored to the Earth's surface and with a counterweight in space, providing a permanent bridge to orbit. Elevator cars would be robotic 'lifters' which would climb the ribbon to deliver cargo and eventually people to orbit or beyond. Now LiftPort has all but run out of funds, and the State of Washington's Securities Division has entered a Statement of Charges (PDF) against LiftPort Inc. dba LiftPort Group and founder Michael Laine."

nbauman writes "New York Times interview with Amit Singhal, who is in charge of Google's ranking algorithm. They use 200 "signals" and "classifiers," of which PageRank is only one. "Freshness" defines how many recently changed pages appear in a result. They assumed old pages were better, but when they first introduced Google Finance, the algorithm couldn't find it because it was too new. Some topics are "hot". "When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds," said Singhal. Classifiers infer information about the type of search, whether it is a product to buy, a place, company or person. One classifier identifies people who aren't famous. Another identifies brand names. A final check encourages "diversity" in the results, for example, a manufacturer's page, a blog review, and a comparison shopping site."

Ant writes "The Science Creative Quarterly has published an economic analysis of The Social Norm of Leaving the Toilet Down, employing game theory. This analysis is more thorough than preceding ones cited (from 2002 and 2005), as it factors in the cost of yelling. Both men and women can take some comfort in the conclusion though neither may in the end be satisfied.

WBUR radio in Boston hosts a talk with two physicists, Alan Guth and Neil Turok, who represent, respectively, the consensus theory of the inflationary Big Bang and an upstart theory of the initiation of the universe in the collision of two three-dimensional "branes." Turok and Paul Steinhardt developed their "Ekpyrotic proposal" out of the mathematics behind string theory. In the audio the two physicists are perhaps more respectful of one another's views than the host wishes them to be. If you ignore the "let's you and him fight" framing of the debate, you will hear some interesting physics elucidated.

Preedit writes to tell us that those busy folks over at InformationWeek have been scrutinizing yet more SEC filings, and Novell and Microsoft aren't the only ones concerned about certain provisions in the final draft of GPLv3. TiVo worries too. The problem is that TiVo boxes are Linux-based. They're also designed to shut down if the software is hacked by users trying to circumvent DRM features. But GPLv3 would prohibit TiVo's no-tamper setup. "If the currently proposed version of GPLv3 is widely adopted, we may be unable to incorporate future enhancements to the GNU/Linux operating system into our software, which could adversely affect our business," TiVo warns in a regulatory filing cited by InformationWeek."

Rubinstien writes "A mineralogist at London's Natural History Museum was contracted to help identify an unknown mineral found in a Serbian mine. While he initially thought the miners had discovered a unique compound, after its crystal structure was analyzed and identified the researcher was shocked to find the material already referenced in literature. Fictional literature. Dr. Chris Stanley, from the BBC article: 'Towards the end of my research I searched the web using the mineral's chemical formula — sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide — and was amazed to discover that same scientific name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luthor from a museum in the film Superman Returns ... I'm afraid it's not green and it doesn't glow either — although it will react to ultraviolet light by fluorescing a pinkish-orange.'"