Google acquires 1 000 IBM patents

By Paul McDougall InformationWeek
July 29, 2011 12:40 PM

Google has purchased more than 1,000 patents from IBM in an effort to build up its intellectual property portfolio, possibly with an eye to fending off the increasing number of IP lawsuits the search giant faces from competitors such as Microsoft.

The 1,030 patents cover a wide range of technologies, including "the fabrication and architecture of memory and microprocessing chips," according to the blog SEO By The Sea, which first spotted the filings.

They also pertain to several other key aspects of computing infrastructure, including servers and routers. Google does not make such hardware, but has built a number of massive data centers that use such technology internally to store and serve up terabytes of data through its search engine and other cloud products.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/231002937

Malema may have some questions to answer

Sunday Times puts the boot into Malema

Unfortunately, this man could become our president

Wretched rhetoric
Hogarth is aware of the growing discontent among South Africa's aspirant mamparas who are struggling to occupy this space in the face of the single-minded idiocy of Julius Malema.

But what can we do when someone says in public: "You don't have a face, you bloody ape. I will explain where you can put your money, and it will be stinking money."

Or this: "If someone gave me a bribe, where is the receipt?"

Or this: "If I go to the toilet, they (the media) follow me. They say he went to the toilet but he didn't sh*t!"

To all the wannabe mamparas, you are going to have to up your game.

Latest in series of people who should not have children

Girl found suffocated was locked in box as punishment

(Reuters) - Four adult relatives of an Arizona girl found suffocated in a storage bin have been arrested after investigators determined she was locked in the container as punishment for taking a popsicle without permission.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/29/us-child-suffocate-arizona-idUSTRE76S04R20110729

If you support both Bafana and the Springboks ...

Kill your kid, earn R4m

Larry Flynt says he's offered Casey Anthony $500,000 to pose in Hustler
July 29, 2011

(CNN) -- If Larry Flynt has his way, Casey Anthony could reintroduce herself -- nude -- to America on the pages of Hustler magazine, and make well over $500,000 in the process.

The pornography magnate told HLN's "Nancy Grace" show on Thursday night that talks are ongoing that could land Anthony on the pages of his magazine, weeks after a Florida jury acquitted her of murder in her 2-year-old daughter Caylee's death.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/07/28/casey.anthony.hustler/

The most dramatic picture of this week's storm

Video of ship aground off Durban:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO8W4zBnZeE&feature=player_embedded

Ship aground just south of Durban

Snow in parts of Johannesburg

Update:

Snow also reported in Soweto 

1 702 reports Boksburg and Northcliff, Benoni, Springs and Germiston
2 Duncan McLeod reports some falling near the R21. He reports: "At a fibre-to-the-home conference on the East Rand. Saw a few snowflakes on the drive here. Damn, it's cold."


Will update as it happens

Classic Zapiro on Malema

Crappy way to live

Swaziland: HIV patients 'eat dung to make drugs work'

Some HIV-positive patients in Swaziland are so poor they have resorted to eating cow dung before taking anti-retroviral drugs, Aids activists say.

The drugs do not work on an empty stomach, so patients have to use the dung - mixed with water - instead of food, the activists say.

Several hundred people protested in the capital, Mbabane, on Wednesday against the economic crisis in the kingdom.

King Mswati III's government has admitted it is running out of cash.

It has asked neighbouring South Africa for a bailout.

Protest organiser Sipho Dlamini told the BBC that growing hunger was forcing HIV/Aids patients to eat cow dung.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14312425

Final 2 pics of the snow in Van Reenens Pass

Earth tremor in Sedgefield

Earth Tremor: Sedgefield, Southern Cape 26 July 2011

Moira Diamond Sedgefield writes: Around 23h30 26/7/2011 I was woken (my heart pounding!) by a weird loud, throbbing and rumbling sound. I thought it was a vehicle, then the upstairs area of our house started making the oddest noise - a rhythmic thumping and metallic sound. Sounded like something running up and down on the roof. This went on for about half a minute. Thereafter the upstairs timbers creaked (we have a timber house) for a while. My husband and the dogs did not hear a thing. I presumed it was an earth tremor and went back to sleep.

Pause a moment ... the grief around Amy Whitehouse ... her funeral in photos

http://bit.ly/oMhn3D

Porn star jailed for harassing Sandra Bullock's ex

There are times the world makes no sense.


http://www.tmz.com/2011/07/27/jesse-james-janine-lindemulder-arrested-texas-child-custody-daughter-sunny/

One of the most prominent casualties of the epic storm we had

The best beer I have tasted in many years

 Quite the finest around. What a find. Available at Makro.


http://www.draymans.com/home.html

PhotoShop anticipates what we all know

Thanks to David Blood for this!

This was the front page of The Citizen yesterday

Piece of ice drifting south of Labrador

Size of Manhattan. Quite spectacular.

The other side of our savage winter

People live here in Harrismith, no electricity, no heaters.

Surreal pic: Saturn moon blasts water into rings

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/110726_saturn.htm

RIP Dan Peek

I saw America in Cape Town in the early '80s. Great band, even if they had really crappy lyrics on occasion. To this day, their production is so clear and crystalline in its purity that you would battle to find the tiniest imperfection. Every single chord, line and chorus was perfectly structured. To listen to America even today is to listen to something of impeccable magic.

Dan Peek died yesterday, aged 60.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/26/us-danpeek-idUSTRE76P7KZ20110726

Our fearless leader

The man who has bedded more women than even he can count. Who has 27 children and ...

Photographed by Platon Antoniou

ANC Youth League website hacked again yesterday

And this posted. The funniest one so far.

Latest casualty of the weather: ship aground in KZN

You kill more than 80 people, and this is what you get

http://bit.ly/kbagbl

Weather update

Cathedral Peak

Queenstown

 Above: Sutherland a few minutes ago

Update: All taxi passengers saved, partly through social media. No one dead in ship disaster, ditto.

Durban being hammered beyond belief. Here is why.

Update: Philani Nkosi writes: There is a taxi from Eastern Cape which is stuck in Van Reenens Pass between Tugela Plaza and Mount-Trose in this taxi there is a pregnant woman with her 3-year-old son with her sister and with her 25-day-old baby girl they have been stuck there since yesterday. 

Update: This Volksrust, on the border of KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga:


http://saweatherobserver.blogspot.com/2011/07/these-pictures-was-captured-this.html


Update: Hundreds of people trapped, power lines down, hundreds caught in buses in the snow. Massive flooding cutting off roads. Maximum temperatures as low as ,4C.

Update: All the roads that have been closed

R61 Route: Road Closed between Graaff-Reinet and Cradock
N9 Route, Road Closed between Middelburg and Graaff-Reinet
N5 Route, Road Closed between Bethlehem and Harrismith
N11 Route, Road Closed between Newcastle and Volksrust
N3 Road Closed Johannesburg / Durban between Villiers  and Tugela Plaza
N6 Penhoek Pass between Jamestown - Queenstown
R58 Barkly Pass between Elliot - Barkly East
R67 Nico Malan Pass between Whittlesea - Seymour
N9 Road Closed between Middelburg and Noupoort
R61 Route: Road Closed between Graaff-Reinet and Cradock
N10 Route: Road Closed between Middleburg and Hanover
R61 Route: Road Closed between Cradock and Queenstown via Tarkastad
N3 Van Reenens Pass, Road Closed due to snow and ice
N1 Road Closed between Springfontein and Gariepdam
R58 Kraairiver Pass between  Lady Grey en Barkly-Oos.
N6 Road Closed between Reddersburg and Smithfield

Original post:
1 There is a real chance of snow in southern Gauteng today, especially in Vereeniging
2 Many roads are closed across the country, notably Van Reenen's Pass, Victoria West-Three Sisters, Beaufort West-Richmond and most of the Eastern Cape
3 Temperatures are expected to drop to as low as 7 today in Johannesburg
4 Massive swells on the coast
5 East London took 152mm yesterday, extensive flooding in PE, which took 60mm in a few hours, and all dams are full, but
6 First sleet ever recorded in Mossel Bay
7 Durban will not rise above 13
8 Giant storm hit Pietermartizburg yesterday