The nomination data for the Hugos has been released. You can very clearly see the effects of bloc voting with the Puppy nominees, but there's no evidence of such "clustering" for other nominated works. If there was an SJW voting bloc that just turned out to be not as effective as the Puppies' block, we'd see it in the data. We don't. The bloc just isn't there. And, hell, if the Hugo awards were really "corrupt" the way some of the more strident Puppies claimed -- if it was really a small group of people who just "chose" the nominees -- then the Puppy bloc wouldn't have been successful. A truly corrupt cabal would have just said, "Yeah, whatever, here's your stories about gay marrying dinosaurs."

And, yes, it's absolutely true that "No Award" came in ahead of all Puppy nominees save Guardians of the Galaxy. That's not a sign of a bloc, though, it's a sign of thousands of science fiction fans getting really, really pissed at the Puppies. I'm sorry, but Hoyt's claim boils down to "The fact that Hugo voters didn't give awards to works we gamed the system to get on the ballot proves they were gaming the system all along." No. No, it doesn't. It proves that Hugo voters don't like having the system gamed.

Android as a mass-market, Google-supported and actively sold and marketed product, accepted by mainstream industry is on borrowed time.

Don't think Linux. Think Open Solaris. How much of a dent is Open Solaris putting in the server room these days?

How about MeeGo? Hell, even WebOS is still being developed by a die-hard core after it was released to the world as open source abandonware. How many MeeGo or WebOS handsets you seen at the Verizon store? Android lives as long as Google and Samsung pour money and manpower into it. After that's gone, it's a hobby OS for die-hards and niche hardware companies.

And when ChromeOS matures, Android =will= be abandoned. Get used to the idea. It's a transitional system to get to the ChromeOS/Glass ecosystem Google has been saying VERY LOUDLY is their corporate direction.

Why is this notion a surprise?

(No, they don't expect everyone to wear the stupid headset. Does Google seem stupid to you? What did you =think= their goal for "ubiquitous computing" was? Everybody going gargoyle? No. Cheap phones have cameras and displays, all you need for augmented reality apps. Glass will be perfect for low-spec, low-buck locked-down featurephones currently ruled by various flavors of Java.)

Well, it =is= a spec bump. It's introducing some interesting stuff which is laying the groundwork for the future - most notably a 64bit processor - some stuff that's an interesting and well integrated minor selling point that will be aped by everyone else in the industry - the fingerprint reader and gold tone - and general refinement that makes it nicer to use than previous rev - the camera software. It's to keep the faithful in the fold. iPhone 6 should be the cart-upender you crave.

In general, tho, the dev tools for Android are fairly terrible and require more a lot more work to retool an app for a full size tablet, in a software market that subsists largely on ad-supported freeware. It's not as easy or profitable to support an Android tablet version of your software as it is in the Apple ecosystem, where users are more willing to pay money for software. This results in (comparative) lackluster demand for Android tablets, which results in lackluster tablets.

To be brutally blunt, despite, or rather because of, its enormous success, I think Android is on borrowed time. Touch-optimized ChromeOS is where the Google ecosystem is going to wind up. It will allow them to supplant Microsoft on the desktop, build demand in the tablet market, and cut Firefox OS off at the knees, all with the same code base and library of apps and complete visibility into user behavior (Google's in the business of selling ads and marketing data, remember).

Meh. MicroUSB and Lightning are both on borrowed time. I see no reason a charging pad that's also a wireless USB/wireless HDMI host won't replace both in the next year or two. Then we can whine that Apple's not on the Qi standard, and we have to buy two styles of charge/link pads at TJ Maxx or 5 Below for $5 each.

The issue isn't the quality of IT worker in India, but the age-old problem of hiring mercenaries. Some merc outfits are going to offer top notch fighters with lots of in-the-trenches experience and a good track record. They will not be a bargain. Other merc outfits slap any old loser into a uniform as cannon fodder, and pocket the difference. Both outfits will bail on you the instant it looks like things are going to go against you, and find some other sucker to pay the bills.

More, as India's domestic industries mature, and they are at speed, their best and brightest will be moving to local projects, where their co-workers speak the same language and work the same hours. There was a narrow window of time where outsourcing your IT operations wholesale to India seemed like a good idea. In addition to not being a good idea after all, the window has now closed - they have their own businesses to support and economy to grow. If you want to outsource just to save money, you're really only going to get the dregs, now.

I believe the intention is to make the high-end POWER chips more ubiquitous in the server room - heavy duty RISC/Unix(Linux) server platform. The intention is to squeeze x86 out of the datacenter with AMD systems at the low end, and POWER-based gear for the serious number crunchers.

IBM hopes that by bringing competitors into their platform, they can use economies of scale to make their systems more cost-competitive, and name recognition to separate themselves from the other POWER platform providers. Reduce the cost advantage of Intel-based gear and eliminate the single-source disadvantage of POWER, and they'll put some more daylight between themselves and HP and Dell, their closest rivals.

Juniper and Cisco auto-switches on their 10Gbase-T gear, too. You are arguing against an inevitability - a grand for a workgroup switch with that kind of bandwidth is a bargain, and will be a $500 switch next year, and a $250 switch the year after next. People are already deploying 100Gig-E top-of-rack uplinks.

There are Thunderbolt 10Gb-T adapters out there, but this is one of those things that should be standard on the box: gigabit is crusty and old.

You are aware that 10GE is not backward compatible with 10/100/1000 ethernet, correct?

Incorrect. 10GBase-T is backward compatible with Gigabit and 100Base-T, as it just so happens, I'm looking at the spec sheet of a Netgear switch at the moment. A USB dongle will suffice for those stuck on 10base-T networks.

Looking at the site - this thing is modular as all hell. Looks like a backplane at the bottom that everything plugs into... upgrade bits and pieces as required or tech progresses. It's kind of a bold thing to do.

They're also banking on PCIe3 being overkill for (current) workstation applications... TB2 being plenty for most use cases. Speaking of cases, expect lots and lots of cylindrical PCI expansion chassis and RAID arrays from third party soon. The old Unix workstation days are back, baby! Daisy-Chain 4 Lyfe! This actually makes sense, as few videographers will want to pop open the case on their editing workstation to add more storage, and special PCI card applications would probably be more at home in its own case with a robust power supply and cooling, anyhow. Sharing a small metal box with a pair of GPUs, high end CPU and some seriously serious RAM can be a little heated.

On the other hand, the gigabit ethernet is unforgivable. It really needs to be dual 10Gbase-T ports in this day and age.

What will the IT department look like in five years?

Well, there's going to be the guy with the beard and suspenders, and the guy with the "wacky" sense of humor, and they may be the same guy. Then you're going to have the angry guy who seems to know how to do only one thing, but it's something way important, and he does it incredibly well. Then there's the woman who stares at you blankly whenever you talk to her, but seems to have absorbed what you were trying to say anyhow. You will also have the really smart guy who can't seem to get any aspect of his life together, but seems to know everything about everything if you need to ask him anything. There's going to be the very stylish and personable guy who calls you "broham", and it's going to drive you nuts when it turns out he's pretty good at his job, because no fair, right? And the very nice person who can't figure out how to work the badge reader, nevermind anything he's supposed to be working on, but everyone likes him anyway. There's also going to be a kid fresh out of college who's sure she knows how everything works, and will break everything at least once trying to prove it, usually when your users are busiest. You will send her out to look for a wireless cable tester at least once, and then tell her it's an app she can download, she should search for it on google. Then there's the guy who never seems to be at his desk, never answers the phone and is never available in IM, but all his tickets get resolved with no follow up customer complaints. And there's also the woman who will do whatever a customer wants, no matter how stupid, and everyone hates her. Plus, everyone will fly jet-packs to work.

Replace IQ? I think it's a stake in the heart of IQ testing. Being a champ at "Where's Waldo" is not a good predictor of problem solving, imagination, communication and knowledge retention, which are the only real measures of intelligence. Spot-checking pattern recognition skills doesn't tell us much about an individual, apart from "Wow, he matched that pattern he was familiar with because he grew up in the same society as the test designers pretty darn quick. Yup."

Actually, large granular salt is kosher salt. It's got two advantages - it's easier for the cook to measure "by eye" and sprinkle onto the dish (or into the ground coffee) in a controlled way, and it contains no additives that can affect flavor (like iodine). Table salt is much finer, hence easier to dissolve in liquids, and is available on the counter at every greasy spoon in the country, which is why I recommended it for brewed coffee. I don't think any iodine flavors will be all that noticeable against the strong backdrop of coffee.

Actually, yes - a sprinkling of kosher salt in the grounds before brewing, or table salt in the coffee itself, reduces bitterness and brings out flavor complexities... a great alternative for those avoiding dairy or sweeteners.

Interesting assertion. Now, fire up Excel, and prove it.

I have no problems with pure R&D projects like this in peacetime - it's where any sensible civilization should be spending the bulk of its military money when there's no major conflict afoot. My problem is with immensely inefficient and corrupt programs designed from the get-go to produce a less-than-adequate result (F-35), and with enormous standing armies and fleets we neither need nor can afford. (12 carrier groups. Really? We need all that? The Chinese have, umm... one. The one they bought second-hand from the Russians, that's not even operational yet.