Apparently, the 747 lost its market-share to twin-jets such as the 777 and the Airbus 320 when the smaller jets were able to fly just as far as the 747. There are international standards on how far you can be from a landing strip based on the presumed flight time of your engines. The 747 has four engines, which was, for a while, necessary to maintain that rating. However, better technology allowed smaller twinjets to have similarly high ratings.

I agree, however, that the 747 will be around for a super long time even if manufacture stops right away. There are just so many of them out there, and Boeing makes a lot of money supporting them.

Based on Wikipedia, the freighter variant of the 747-8 is unexpectedly popular. The 747 already dominates the civilian air freighter market so it's a good bet the 747-8 will be around for a very long time, if only due to the numerous freighter versions being operated around the world.

And when America is under attack by Martians, the nation is unable to defend itself because the entire Executive Branch was destroyed while waiting for a flight at Dulles International Airport.

Microsoft is being audacious in unifying the tablet and PC operating systems. The changes in Windows 8/Windows 10 is necessary to this end. Windows 7/Vista are painful with a touchscreen. I think we should recognize what Microsoft is trying to do is very daring. I don't see Android trying to reach the desktop (other than through the browser) and I don't see Apple unifying iOS and MacOS.

I won't be surprised if we're all running full-blown Windows on our phones within five years. Processors keep getting smaller, more powerful, and more power efficient. Phones are also getting bigger. By the end of 2016, Intel is supposed to have Skylake matured, which is a 14 nm processor with a system on chip option. By 2020, we'll see Intel going to a 10 nm or even 7 nm. Similar trends are being paralleled with regard to SSDs and RAM.

At the same time, all the major players are trying to make the PC wireless. Intel's Skylake is supposed to move the ball forward on wireless docking. We have a wireless recharging standard already. So by next year, we'll see devices being docked without wires. Once that technology matures, we'll have phones powerful enough to run Windows and MS Office that we can dock without any wires.

The vision of the future that Microsoft envisions is one where we carry around a phone that is powerful enough to be a desktop replacement for most office users. If all you do is word process and check your email, then you can be on the go all the time. Android and iOS should be concerned because Microsoft may be getting into mobile in a very big way should this vision come to pass, and that's why Microsoft is willing to take a risk on Windows 8, Windows 10, and other attempts to bring Windows onto mobile.

Rumsfeld said that the Iraqi people can do bad things to each other, and I'm sure that he would allow Americans to do bad things to each other as well. I will bet you, however, that he's against TERROR and TERRORISM.

I use Root Call Blocker on Android. It hacks the phone sub-system so that calls you do not want to receive do not even register on the phone system. RCB picks up the call and then hangs up. Your phone doesn't ring, and the caller get to voice mail, and no one is wiser. I have nothing to do with RCB other than a satisfied user.

The FTC authorized the merger as long as some terms in a consent degree were followed by both parties. It's very possible that the FTC just said "yeah, whatever the Pentagon wants" and waved it through. But to be honest, I'm not sure if keeping the two companies separate would have been any more efficient. It's already a duopoly with a single, captive buyer, and there's no way that one provider is going to charge much less than the other guy. It's like the airlines. One company set its rates on Monday, and on Tuesday, everyone else sets the same rates.

It also sounds like Boeing and Lockheed Martin was suing their crap out of each other before joining the ULA. If you look at the KC-X program to provide an aeriel refueling plane to succeed the KC-135, lawsuits can keep a program from going forward for years. The Air Force/Pentagon/Boeing/Lockheed/FTC might have just looked at all this horseshit, and said, screw it.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/...

The IRS has always promulgated regulations after Congress passes a statute. This is not unique in our growing administrative law state. Congress may tell the Patent Office to allow patents. Then the Patent Office, which is more specialized than Congress, will work out the details in the form of regulations. The same is true of the IRS.

Well, you have to understand that Google provides many other services, and their customer support isn't necessarily that good for those services. If you bought a phone from Google Play, for instance, it was a pain to fix things. No humans. You had to send an email and hope for the best.

The problems with the system are obvious but I think it's hilarious that a contractor was finally held responsible for fucking up. I mean, they lost 90% of their contract price for this year because of this accident. Hopefully, this would make them act more properly now that their bottom line is at risk.

At some point in time, each and every aircraft will have satellite Internet. How hard would it be at that point to have the black box data streamed in near-real time to a command base? You can make the link one-way so even if security is compromised, there would be no risk to flight systems.

Amazon has been successful because it has been diversifying into various revenue sources instead of relying on only online sales. Amazon makes money from: (1) Kindles and their content; (2) Amazon Web Services; (3) online advertising to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year; and (4) selling on Amazon.

Amazon's misfires on the Fire tablet and phone are not the mistakes of a company that is trying to preserve a monopoly. It is a company trying to expand their revenue base and not succeeding at first. I have an Amazon TV Stick. Now I look at Amazon Prime Videos all the time. At some point in time, my cheap ass will be buying or renting videos from them.

This has to be more highly rated. Amazon has its fingers in many pies, but in terms of putting physical products in your hands, Amazon is really facing off with Walmart. We've all read the crazy articles about Walmart's distribution network where suppliers have a ten minute slot to show up and unload their trucks into Walmart's warehouses. Well, this pretty much applies to their online sales as well.

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.