How many of you knew where Malaysia is? I didn’t either. It’s here. It’s a rather small country in southeast Asia. They’re getting a huge rollout of 224 megabits per second (direction not specified) broadband over power (Internet over power lines – plug an adapter into a wall socket and off you go) for $1.58 per month. FiOS is about the fastest thing available at an average consumer level, (and it’s nowhere near national rollout at this point) and it costs $43-$50 per month, offering up to 50 megabits per second downstream and up to 20 megabits per second upstream. If they can do it, why can’t we?
I’ve read about this huge island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean, but I’ve never seen it. I looked on Google Earth – it isn’t there. It makes sense to me why Google wouldn’t take extensive pictures of the ocean – in the most part it’d be a waste of satellite power. I recently found a series in which some people get a boat and go out to this patch of plastic. It’s thought-provoking. You can watch it here.
On the subject of satellites: space is full of them. Not just operational satellites, but shards of them. Here’s a picture.