Supporters of opposition parties including Nawaz Sharif's PML-N and the PPP of the late Benazir Bhutto have been celebrating in the streets.Opposition parties in Pakistan have strong leads in elections, a spokesman for a party close to President Pervez Musharraf has conceded.He is not standing in the parliamentary election himself, but a clear defeat of his supporters could herald struggles over his presidency, analysts suggest."If the results are confirmed we will play the part of the opposition as effectively as we can," he said."The result will be the voice of the nation and whosoever wins we should accept it - that includes myself," said Mr Musharraf.
Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent.The engineer believes machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health."But that's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us." Machines were already doing hundreds of things humans used to do, at human levels of intelligence or better, in many different areas, he said.
Man versus machine
"I've made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029," he said."We're already a human machine civilisation; we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that."Humans and machines would eventually merge, by means of devices embedded in people's bodies to keep them healthy and improve their intelligence."We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons." The nanobots, he said, would "make us smarter, remember things better and automatically go into full emergent virtual reality environments through the nervous system".
Despite its bold rejection of Microsoft $44.6 billion buyout offer, there is not peace around the Yahoo board table.The Bostock group is concerned that Yang's strong emotional resistance to the Microsoft deal is trumping his fiduciary duty to look out for shareholders' interests. All corporate directors face personal liability for actions that violate the "duty of care" and the "duty of loyalty" to shareholders."The emotional part of Yang would rather do anything but sell to Microsoft, but he doesn't have the cards to come up with a value-creating, competitive alternative for shareholders," an unidentified source told the newspaper. Aligned with Yang are Eric Hippeau of Softbank and Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision, said the Post's source, who appears to be closely aligned with the Bostock faction. "They're just as emotional as Jerry and as biased against selling to Microsoft as he is."
Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for more than $40bn (£20.5bn).But AOL is thought to be keen on being the firm that helps Yahoo avoid falling into Microsoft's clutches.Yahoo has dismissed Microsoft's $31-a-share offer as undervaluing its brand, audience, investments in advertising platforms and future growth prospects, free cash flow and earnings potential.An influential Microsoft investor has called on the software giant to walk away from the Yahoo offer.He, like many other investors, believes that buying Yahoo would prove a distraction to Microsoft.Microsoft shares have fallen by about 10% since it made the Yahoo offer - wiping almost $35bn from its share value.Microsoft wants to merge with Yahoo to increase its online presence and enable it to better compete with industry leader Google.
Supporters of opposition parties including Nawaz Sharif's PML-N and the PPP of the late Benazir Bhutto have been celebrating in the streets.Opposition parties in Pakistan have strong leads in elections, a spokesman for a party close to President Pervez Musharraf has conceded.He is not standing in the parliamentary election himself, but a clear defeat of his supporters could herald struggles over his presidency, analysts suggest."If the results are confirmed we will play the part of the opposition as effectively as we can," he said."The result will be the voice of the nation and whosoever wins we should accept it - that includes myself," said Mr Musharraf.
