The Interstitial Species

Interestingly enough, CNN was once considered to be the provider of the most instantaneous, real-time news. If something was happening in the world, you could tune into CNN to get the latest details.

Today, that comes from Twitter.

Thursday, as the news of Michael Jackson's emergency situation and eventually his death unfolded, Twitter was blowing up with Michael Jackson-related tweets, with people asking for, as much as sharing, details about his condition. When the reports started coming in that Jackson had died - first from TMZ, then from the LA Times, CBS News and the Associated Press - those tweets were being re-tweeted and re-tweeted all across Twitter.

CNN, in the meantime, continued to report that Jackson was hospitalized.

I'll give CNN this much credit: It eventually started informing its viewers about what the other news outlets were reporting, that Jackson had died, though it was waiting for official confirmation before putting up the big headline. That's responsible journalism and they deserve some credit for that.

Still, as the events unfolded, I couldn't help but think back on how CNN became the poster child for real-time, on-demand news when it first entered the news scene. And now Twitter, which isn't even a news outlet, is disrupting that.

Twitter may be filled with gossip and incorrect information as people re-tweet any and all information they happen to find. But you can't deny that, when it comes to instantaneous news, Twitter allows us to tap into the reporting skills of the masses, not just the professionals who give us the news as it becomes official.  


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The Internet was built to withstand nuclear attack. That was why it was built in the '60s in the first place, as a communications system with redundancy built in so that the military could communicate even if one of the nodes went down.

We saw some of that happen today, as news of Michael Jackson's death spread like wildfire through the Internet. TMZ.com got the scoop about Jackson being sent to the hospital. But the site went down from the surge of traffic. The LA Times reported he was in a coma, but then that site went down too. The LA Times managed to report that Jackson was dead, and then everyone else started buzzing about it. Twitter went down. Keynote Systems, which measures web site performance, said that the following sites all slowed significantly: ABC, AOL, LA Times, CNN Money and CBS. Starting at 230 pm PST, the average load time for a news site slowed from 4 seconds to 9 seconds.

This is not supposed to happen. More than a decade ago, when I was writing about computer servers and Sun Microsystems was advertising itself as "We're the dot in dotcom," the hardware vendors were all talking about "utility computing." Carly Fiorina, then the chief executive of HP, touted "adaptive computing," where software would automatically route traffic from one overloaded server to another. Sun called its version of utility computing "N1," after the code name for a project that aimed at rebalancing server loads on the fly. IBM, meanwhile, operated on a vision that it called "on demand."

These visions were great and they all made sense based on an understanding of traffic as a flow of data. Companies such as Akamai set up networks to deliver video in real time for events, such as Victoria's Secret's annual lingerie show on the web. In years past, Victoria's Secret had lots of trouble keeping a site up. But now it's not as hard. Akamai sets up server centers around the country to feed video to users as needed. But now we're talking the need to update in micro-seconds.

Servers have gotten better at being multi-headed beasts, especially with the arrival of hardware innovations such as low-power processors and chips with multiple cores, or processing engines, on a single chip. Virtualization software from VMware and others has arrived. That allows a server to split itself into two or three or more machines, just like the old mainframe computers, which had to do tasks in batches by necessity. Each instance of the server can handle a computing task, like fetching a web page from memory and sending it back to the user that requested it. Servers have become like hydras, doing all sorts of these trivial computing tasks at the same time.

And yet networks still buckle under the weight of traffic when something like today's events shakes the whole world. Mobile networks are particularly weak, as AT&T's activation problems related to the launch of the iPhone 3G S showed. In some ways, the servers worked today. As one site went down, another picked up the torch. But the transitions were rocky. The promise of utility computing is that you will be able to switch on and off server capacity as if you were switching on and off your lights.

And that leads me to consider the future. As tragic as Michael Jackson's death is, it's only a small taste of what would happen in a true calamity. If the servers go down, how are we going to get our Gmail or Yahoo Mail? Who will be there to listen when we collectively Tweet for help? What will we do if the emergency plan is stored on the network?

It's a wake-up call for the web, and for those who are building its infrastructure and plumbing for it.



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In the 1940s, the Big Bang theory was first conceived and detailed. But, to quote Niels Bohr, We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.  One of the staunchest opponents of the Big Bang idea was Fred Hoyle, an outstanding, prolific scientist in his own right. 

In the 1950s, Fred Hoyle found it inconceivable that all of the heavy elements in the Universe -- practically everything we find on Earth -- would have been made in the Universe's infancy. He thought, instead, that there must be a much simpler source of these heavy elements, one very close to home. Any guesses? 

Of course! The very process that powers the Sun -- nuclear fusion -- is the only process in the Universe that turns the light elements of the Big Bang (Hydrogen and Helium) into the heavy elements we have on Earth today. There's a brilliant scientific paper, co-authored by Hoyle in 1957, showing how all of the elements heavier than Lithium (which is only element #3!) are made in greater abundances in stars than in the big bang. How? Just by fusing the light ones together. (Click for your own, hi-res nuclear physics chart.) 

This man -- somehow overlooked for a Nobel Prize -- was legitimately the father of not just stellar nucleosynthesis, but of explaining how every living thing came to be. 

What? Are you serious, Ethan? Yes. He explained how every living thing came to be, because, as far as we know, life requires carbon. And Fred Hoyle was the one who figured out how this must happen.

Here's the deal. Carbon has 6 protons and 6 neutrons in its nucleus, for a mass of 12. In the Big Bang, things are hot and dense enough that any two nuclei can collide. But to make Carbon from a sea of Hydrogen (mass 1) and Helium (mass 4), you would need to have three Helium atoms collide at once. Why? Because there is no stable nucleus with a mass of 8. You can't make Beryllium-8 and then whack it with Helium, because Beryllium-8 doesn't exist. (Well, it decays after 10^-17 seconds, so for all intents and purposes, it doesn't exist for long enough to be interesting.)

So if we couldn't make this during the Big Bang, Hoyle reasoned, we must have made it in stars. Carbon exists, he said, and it must have been made from hydrogen and/or helium alone. So he proposed a new process, never seen by nuclear scientists before, the triple-alpha process. If you have three helium nuclei close together, like in the center of a star, you can fuse them together to make Carbon, like so. 

Here comes the part that makes Fred Hoyle the man of the 1950s for me: he did the math, and found that if you add up the mass of 3 helium nuclei, it turns out to be more massive than a carbon nucleus. So, Hoyle reasoned, there must be an atomic resonance of carbon that is almost exactly equal to the combined mass of three helium nuclei. One of his colleagues, Willie Fowler, looked for it, and found it, almost exactly where Fred Hoyle said it would be. This is now known as the Hoyle State.

This is the only instance in all of scientific history that the anthropic principle has been used to successfully predict anything. And for this, Willie Fowler won the Nobel Prize, and although he credits Fred Hoyle tremendously, Hoyle was left out. Somehow, understanding where practically all the matter on our world comes from -- and on all worlds, for that matter -- didn't merit it. 

Why? Because for all of his contributions, for all of his innovation, and for all that he advanced our understanding of the Universe, he did something that was unforgivable in a scientist.

He loved his Steady-State Theory so much that he refused to accept the Big Bang, even when the evidence became overwhelming. And the evidence became overwhelming in 1964; Hoyle railed on against the Big Bang until his death in 2001. He would speak at conferences, declaring, We live in a fog, calling the leftover glow from the big bang a "mysterious fog" that his steady-state model simply didn't explain. Not only didn't, but couldn't. Serious scientists pointed out irreparable flaws in this model, making it incompatible with our observations. And our observation support this: 

The real tragedy is that this brilliant man simply couldn't accept new evidence and adjust his world-view accordingly. And so he died in ignorance, clutching onto his discredited theory, in futility, for nearly the last forty years of his life. As a scientist, I don't believe in string theory, extra-dimensions, technicolor, chaotic inflation, proton decay, or fundamental scalar particles, among other things. But if the evidence comes in validating these theories, I hope I'm savvy enough to change my world view, rather than hang on to my old prejudices. And this may come sooner rather than later, depending on what turns up at the LHC! Read the comments on this post...

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Nokia Siemens Networks negotiated a shrewd $650 million agreement to buy the crown jewel of the bankrupt Nortel Networks-the shrinking, but highly profitable voice-only wireless technology called CDMA-together with an RD group developing systems to upgrade carrier networks to ultra-broadband speeds. 
Bloomberg News

A metal sculpture of the Nortel Networks logo stands outside the company's Toronto headquarters in January.

After months of negotiations in Munich, Toronto, Dallas and New York, and a tense final day in the offices of the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen  Hamilton, the companies signed a deal late Friday. The timing was somewhat unfortunate for Nortel. It believed it had to announce the deal quickly, along with its decision to wind down its business by selling off its assets and delisting its shares, to comply with the rules of the Toronto Stock Exchange but feared the announcement would be seen as if it were trying to bury the news.

Nokia Siemens, the world’s No. 2 maker of wireless telecommunications gear by sales, has long sought to expand its North American presence and is feeling the heat across the globe from Huawei Electronics Co. of China, which soared into the No. 3 slot this year (as it improved the quality of its low-cost equipment).

Nokia Siemens ended up agreeing to buy a smaller, but richer, slice of Nortel's carrier networks division since Nortel rejected its initial $850 million unsolicited bid made in March. In the intervening months, orders had crumbled amid uncertainty created by the bankruptcy process and Nortel’s chief executive, Mike Zafirovski, lowered his expectations for the value the company's assets would fetch.

Instead, Nokia Siemens is buying "substantially all" of the CDMA business, but leaving behind some unprofitable international contracts including that with the carrier China Unicom. The unit had $2.2 billion in sales last year, and people familiar with the matter estimated its operating profit at around $700 million. Gone from the deal was Nortel’s market-leading VoIP business, used to transmit voice calls over the Internet, and a legacy voice technology known as TDM. Given the offering price, Nortel decided to separately sell those assets, bundled into a unit called Carrier Valued Added Services. 

"We believe the agreement signed with NSN maximizes value while preserving technology innovation, our customer base and employment to the greatest extent possible," said spokesman Jay Barta. 

The research firm Dell’Oro Group expects global CDMA sales to decline from $5.9 billion last year to $1.2 billion in 2013. Still, some say the technology will have a longer life if carriers delay upgrades, or keep legacy networks operating longer to handle voice calls, to keep it off advanced networks already straining to handle a crush of video and data traffic. 

In addition, Nokia Siemens agreed to acquire an RD team developing LTE access, designed to most efficiently use wireless spectrum and speed data transmission. The deal also requires Nortel to provide back-office, IT and other support services to the buyers of its assets over an extended period.



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Hey, all you volatility junkies, are you bored yet? 

You must be. Today was a jolt, but the SP 500 has barely budged over the past month. And we haven't had a nice big scandal since the AIG bonus brouhaha of March.

So, why not spice things up with another round of arbitrary, speculative predictions as we approach the mid-year point?

Some of you may recall the ten predictions for 2009 that I made last December. Click here and judge their accuracy for yourself. 

I score that tally at one win (GM bankruptcy), one loss (Madoff's insanity plea) and eight still to be decided. Of the eight  only two (Steve Jobs and the art market) are clearly going my way. But is a .300 or .400 average so shabby in the art of prognostication? 

Try it for yourself and let me know. In the meantime, here are a half-dozen more predictions. Just remember, Caveat Lector! I'm only human.

Prediction No. 1: Look to health care and pharmaceuticals for the stock market's best gains over the next six months.

Maybe history does repeat itself. Just like "Hillarycare" of 16 years ago, "Obamacare" is already looking shaky. That's why the health-care providers like Aetna, Humana and Wellpoint soared between seven and 13% in a flat market last week. 

Plus health care has missed out on the big rally. The XLF, the financial sector ETF, is up 93% since the market's March low. The XLV, the health-care ETF, is up a measly 19%. 

Prediction No. 2: By next January, Congress will be screaming again about Wall Street bonuses. 

It looks like a pretty good year for bonuses at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan. Just check out the comp the banks are already setting aside. So around New Year, when Wall Street declares its plentiful $15 million and $20 million bonuses, Congress is bound to go bananas. But it won't matter. With the TARP repaid and a new financial regulatory regime in place, Congress will be all words and no action on the bonuses.

Prediction No. 3: A tale of two CEOs: Citi CEO, Vikram Pandit will survive. Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis won't.

Citi and Bank of America will soon be Washington's favorite playthings. CEO Pandit will prove himself a wily survivor, in part, because no one else will want a job that is all aggravation and no pay. Ken Lewis will think he's home free as he readies Bank of America to repay the TARP. But in the end, he'll get fired as a new Bank of America board seeks a new start with a new CEO.

Prediction No. 4: The stimulus plan won't stimulate and CEA Chief Christina Romer will go.

Come autumn, unemployment will hit 10%, the stimulus plan will be discredited and the White House will ask Romer to take one for the team. After all, it was a January, 2009 report authored by her and Jared Bernstein that was the faulty foundation for Obama's faulty promise to create four million new jobs by the end of 2010. And what president likes to make promises he can't keep? 

Prediction No. 5: Chrysler-Fiat will be deemed a failure by its first anniversary next June.

Okay, so this prediction isn't exactly novel. But hey, Lee Iacocca said just today that he would invest in Chrysler if he could. 

That's a bad call from Chrysler's former savior. By winter, the smiles in Auburn Hills will turn to more tears. Fiat will demand further job cuts and plant closures as Chrysler continues to lose share. And the UAW will turn on Fiat when Fiat insists on actually making money. A year from now, Chrysler's fate will be sealed, although it may still limp along to the launch of the Fiat 500 in 2011. 

Prediction No. 6: How about some fun with forecasts? On June 30, 2010, a jobless recovery will be underway and 
U.S. unemployment: 10.9% - 11.3%   
SP 500 index: 1200-1275  
Yield on 10-year Treasury: 4.8% - 5.2%  
Benchmark crude (August delivery): $85-$95 a barrel  
Spot price of gold: $1,075-$1,150 an ounce 

Call it a win if I get three out of five. Call it a miracle if I get them all right. 



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