If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. – Isaac Newton, 1676
On August 7th I received an email stating that Vinay Deolalikar from HP labs has proven that P in fact does not equal NP. What does that really mean? In layman terms it checks if a solution to a problem can be efficiently checked by a computer, then the computer can efficiently solve the problem. The problem was introduced by Steve Cook in 1971. In this email it stated: "... And Steve Cook says that it is to be taken seriously".
http://mashable.com/2010/08/24/bing-powers-yahoo-search/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Twitter Could this be the demise of Google? I doubt it. With a 65% search market share it will take some time for Microsoft to catch up to Google. Google's primary business is in search and ads while Microsoft is touching every sector of IT from OS, Browser, Search, and so on. It wouldn't shock me if Microsoft decides to buy out Dell to touch a little on the hardware side as well.
My masters supervisor Dr. Jian Pei had forwarded this to his students: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/. Its an article on a graphical representation of what PhD is. I must say its definitely a good representation :) A must look. Thusjanthan.