I'm not a seismologist, but I've worked with them.

The general consensus is, predicting earthquakes is impossible. Even if you think a "big one" is coming, you don't know if it's minutes or decades away. The timing is impossible to predict. *Sometimes* they get lucky, but it's just that - luck.

The only thing you can do is predict the risk of quakes, and encourage local planners to enforce earthquake proof buildings. In earthquake-prone areas, wooden houses are a good idea, and unreinforced masonry is a death-trap. In hurricane-prone areas, masonry is better, and living below the flood-lines is a death-trap.

The bad decision was to let people live in unreinforced masonry death traps, in a quake-prone area.

Isn't funny how many countries with good medical systems have free (or at least, cheap) education for doctors, and more sane malpractice laws?

OK, since no-one read TFA, let alone TFA's comments:

TFAuthor clarifies his position:

>Traditionally, the "patent troll" (or "[whatever-kind-of-IP] troll") term has been reserved for companies that buy underenforced IP and then make money by litigating it. FWIW, I have little inherent problem with this "trolling" act either because it's simply investing in an asset (the particular IP) that is obviously well in demand. The original creator wins by being able to realize a purchase price for his creation without having to go through the trouble of managing the IP, and the investor wins through selling licenses and/or getting judgments and/or settlements on violations. In practice, of course, there have been legal system abuses, but that should not speak to the inherent practice.

In other words, there's no problem with leaving a bunch of cookies on a table, then selling the rights to cookies to a debt collector, who shakes down everyone who ate one for a fair price (determined through a process of valuing their kneecaps).

Given the size of the company, and number of customers, $275k for a General Council or Head Engineer, $300k for a COO, and $500k for a CEO (plus potential 45% bonuses for all) is a pretty fair deal. Theses guys work long, hard hours, and have a lot of responsibility.

1) If you pay any reasonable price, more CPU and memory is generally wasted. My Macbook Air rarely fells slow, and it's running a crappy C2D. Any modern system (i5 and up) will be fine.

2) I think you are underestimating the current Intel GPUs. I'd still advise a basic dedicated GPU if you play any games at all, but Intel is finally making GPUs which are not complete crap. Intel on new chips is now comparable to low-end outdated dedicated GPUs.

The first generation Intel GPU was the GMA 900, in 2004, on P4 chipsets. The less said the better. Actually, it's big brother the 950 ran on Core2 mobiles - think early MacBooks. It was not good.

The next big redesign was the GMA X3000 in 2006, which also kind of sucked. It ran on the later Core 2s.

Finally, Intel put the GPU on the CPU, with Intel HD Graphics. The first lot (on Nehalm) was OK. The second lot (on Sandy Bridge) is actually good. The Atoms run some licensed 3rd party chipset, I think.

The problem now is, Intel's names are so confusing you don't know whether you've getting a good one or not.

Well, look at the lead time on a hard drive factory. You can probably get one up and running in what, a year?

Hard drives are still cheap, in historical terms, and HDD is the limiting factor for many systems - nobody runs out of CPU, only servers and power users (programmers, video editors, numerical scientists) run out of RAM, and Intel graphics are now sufficient for some tasks (gasp).

People held off because they were higher than usual, but now that the price is going down (not up) demand will pick up again. People don't "maximize utility" (as economists say), they just respond to *relative* price changes.

Voice commands aren't realtime. Initiation has to be realtime ("Listen for 'Siri'"), but cleaning up the whole command can be take a couple of seconds. Realtime software is stuff like synthesizing notes from an electronic keyboard - you don't want the note to play a second after you hit the key. Or cruise control on an airplane - lag is bad when you are trying to land.

In Australia, the police and customs are much more effective. It's also really hard to get assault guns, so gangs tend to be massively outgunned by the authorities. We had some locally made "Owen Guns" (WWII carbines) getting made in an illegal factory in 2004; that's how starved our gangs are for hardware. Even the "good" African countries will have trouble, because gangs will be able to smuggle guns and ivory across land boarders to and from the "bad" countries.

Q: What do you do if an elephant comes through your window?

A: Swim!

It's possible he's referring to online-only book stores. I hear there's this new company called "Amazon", which is doing OK.