IBM will stay around for a long, long time because they spend a ridiculous amount on research and development. I know this is an imperfect metric, but IBM has has been granted the most US patents for twenty straight years. These patents are good for over a billion dollars in licensing rights each year, and give IBM blanket immunity from patent infringement lawsuits from any practicing entity. IBM created technology as varied as excimer lasers used for LASIK surgeries, microprocessors used in the Playstation 3, XBox 360, and the Wii, bar codes, and Watson.

IBM has moved from mainframes to data analysis. Heck, IBM has announced deals with Apple to push into the enterprise and with Twitter to mine data. IBM will be around for a long, long time. Even if it suffers huge setbacks and missteps, its patent portfolio will keep it in the running for a long, long, time.

There's this story about IBM, the patent troll. A bunch of IBM dudes show up at Sun Microsystems claiming infringement of seven patents. After the IBM presentation, the Sun guys get up and explain in detail how these patents are all bullshit, and not infringed. The IBM dudes say, well, we have 10,000 patents. We can go back to our office and come back with seven patents that you do infringe. Sun had to write a check.

http://www.forbes.com/asap/200...

Microsoft is definitely going to be around in 10-20 years, if only because of the captive audience that is their enterprise customers. The large corporations made huge investments in training, customized software, and back-end support for Microsoft Windows, and Office. Heck, there's no real alternative to Outlook for businesses, and Excel/Powerpoint are industry standards at this point. Moving to another operation system or office suite will require back end changes, and retraining their IT staff and employees, and Microsoft has moved quickly to fix all the fuckups with Windows 8, which was a stupid attempt to grab up the consumer market for commodity products.

Enterprises are okay with paying the Microsoft tax because they are more concerned about long-term support. You can always find someone who can provide technical support for Microsoft server products, but it's harder for Linux.

In sum, Microsoft just needs to be "good enough" for its enterprise customers to stay with their solutions. Microsoft has been playing the "follow the follower" strategy that game theorists suggest that market leaders should be doingâ"when you have a large lead, you shouldn't innovate. Rather, you should let people with smaller market shares bear the burden of innovation, and when they succeed, you follow them. That's what has been called "embrace and extend" but you don't embrace dead ends. That's why you see Microsoft getting into business cloud solutions (Office 365) to compete with Google Apps.

Also, Microsoft will only get stronger as Intel's mobile processors get more powerful. You already have tablets running Windows 8. Within five years, you will see smartphones running full versions of Windows.

I am pretty wary of the police state but even so, cops have to be able to lie in order to be successful in their primary mission of stopping crime and arresting criminals. Pretend that you are interrogating a murder suspect. You find the gun, and there are fingerprints on it, but they're too messed up to give you a solid match. But you have a suspect, and you tell him that his prints on the gun, and he should confess for a better sentence, which is also a lie because it's the DA and the court that sets his sentence. So he confesses.

Now, is this unfair? Perhaps. Perhaps you'll say that this leads to false confessions. But how is the police going to stop crime otherwise? The suspect will simply ask if they have his fingerprints, DNA, or any forensic evidence, then the police either has to answer truthfully or refuse to answer, which he can take as evidence that the evidence doesn't exist, then he sits back and relaxes.

Read the grand jury testimony. The witness who said that Mike Brown was kneeling when he was shot in the head execution style changed her testimony three times while on the stand. She initially had told the FBI that Mike Brown was shot four times in the back after he was on the sidewalk prone. She then changed her story after she read that he was only shot in the front, not the back. The witness was completely unbelievable.

The blood spatter evidence reveals that Mike Brown was headed towards Darren Wilson even after he was shot. The spatter does not reveal how fast he was moving, but it contradicts some witnesses who said that he dropped to the ground almost immediately.

What Mike Brown did immediately before getting shot is relevant to whether or not Darren Wilson was liable. If Mike Brown had not done anything violent at all, and was headed towards DW, then DW could not shoot. But MB had tried to get DW's gun. (There was a gunshot wound to MB's hand between the index finger and thumb, and his blood was found on the gun and inside of the car.) A reasonable person would fear that a person who had already went for the gun would be trying to get the gun again if he's walking towards you AFTER YOU DREW YOUR GUN.

Wasn't the entire probe and lander cold-soaked for ten years prior to the landing? Or is being removed from the sun so much colder than space? I'm seriously asking. I don't know the answer.

Microsoft is the dark horse in this race. Intel's trump card is that their products run on x86. Computing power is getting to the point where mobile devices are able to run Windows 8 quite well. I have a Dell Venue Pro 8 from last year that can run full-on Windows 8.1, and it's based on the old Atom. While the device has flaws, it is still goddamned amazing (and very useful!) to have Windows instead of Android in terms of application compatibility.

The new Intel Broadwell processors promise even better performance and lower power consumption. If Microsoft does not fuck up Windows 10, then this would push sales of Intel-based tablets. Why bother running Android or iOS when you can get desktop applications running on your tablet, even if you pay a slight premium? Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 sold $900 million in the last quarter. Competing devices such as Yoga 3 would only get more users onto the idea of a Wintel tablet.

Tell that to Obamacare.
MDs and institutions now get less money when they take care of sicker patients whose socioeconomic status causes them to be less compliant and have more adverse outcomes. Congratulations, now no one wants those patients doubly. Oh, and they still can't pay for health insurance.

The problem with your logic is that die shrinks, if yield problems can be resolved, also provide cheaper costs per chip (thus boosting profits) and lower energy consumption. I have AMD chips that heat up the room when I use the computer for extended periods of time. A comparable Intel Core processor does not have this problem. The problem can become more pronounced with server farms and mobile devices.

Desktops will also be a smaller piece of the puzzle as everyone starts to buy more and more mobile devices. Thus, Intel is first focusing getting Broadwell into mobile devices such as tablets and convertibles. The desktop and server versions will follow later. I have a Dell Venue Pro 8, which runs Windows 8 on a tablet. It's not a perfect device, but there's something astounding and unholy about running a full on operating system on a freaking tablet. Once we start cramming Broadwells onto tablets, then we'll start to see AMD start getting more and more irrelevant.

That's just patently wrong. Having antibodies to Ebola doesn't mean you had the disease, it means you were exposed to the virus. There was a study in 2000 Lancet which looked at seroconversion in close contacts of individuals ill with ebola, which showed that 11/24 people seroconverted in the absence of symptoms. However, the scientists were unable to isolate virus from these patients. This suggests that there are people who have either a defect in the ability of Ebola to infect them, or their innate immune response is able to deal with Ebola. There is no evidence from the last 30 years that there any asymptomatic individual acts as a carrier.

That's not insightful.

If you cannot isolate infectious virus or amplify its genetic material from someone's bodily fluids, they are not infectious.

Making assertions based on panic is not reasonable. Maybe if the nurse wasn't treated like a criminal leper on coming home, she wouldn't be lashing out and would stay home.

Are you kidding be. Would be stupid to do that. The whole point is that many of not most H1B ers are working for less because they'd much rather be in this country. The threat of losing the visa it's what keeps them indentured servants. Just look at the biomedical research industry. No one will ever give them citizenship ebb masse... it would destroy the system by which having a PhD became about as profitable as being on welfare.

You mean someone who spent 7 years getting a PhD being abused and working 6-7 day 80+ hour weeks, then working as a post-doc with no hope of ever being faculty, at 60+ hour weeks and being paid $40k or less until their retirement without any benefits?

It's a talent all right.

But the question is "does it matter"?

This is obviously not news to Christians outside of the US. But this statement making the news in the US is a step in the right direction.

You know, you're absolutely right. From a liability standpoint, I don't think that trucks will go fully automated without a man in the cockpit. But certainly this technology would make a lot of sense for long haul truckers. These guys have very well-plotted routes, so they can chose major thoroughfares that have been carefully mapped by Google. For most of the "routine driving" the trucks can drive themselves. The driver can take control in bad weather or other emergencies. I'm sure the computers can detect when they cannot see the lanes or have some other issue pop up and then they can tell the driver to take over. So the driver can relax a bit while the truck is taking care of things on easy driving, and the driver can be more alert when things are dodgier.

MSFT is really under the gun to show they can produce quality. This is why competition is great for us and why we should pat ourselves on the back for pushing MSFT towards anti-monopoly standards. Google's Android releases keep looking better and better. Apple has their own embarrassments. MSFT has to do the software process to get it right and they know they can't afford another Win8 / Vista / WinME. We can always use Linux which is getting better and better every day. They are giving away Win8 now for $65 WITH A TABLET. (that's how bad it is.)