In my opinion, IBM is the best stock to buy. It has a clear strategy, you know the end goal of the company. A smarter planet solution implementation. A business Analytics Comapny with a clear strategic future. Unlike many of the new startups, one question do you know where google, facebook, HP,  will be doing in 5 years from now? How much is the public involve in its growth & decision making? Who knew that the interface of facebook would change dramtically in 1 year. Would you recognize google 2 years ago business model and today approach? I have to give them a lot of credit because theese genius of new CEO brought their companie to complete success.

The fact that worries me, is that in 5 years from now it really depends on these CEO strategy. I can guarantee in 5 years from now you will find IBM still focus on the same growing strategy. Tha is being a comapny that interconnect the business and IT world.

In 5 years from now you know where IBM will be. Delivering smarter solutions, and transforming government & cities into smarter cities interconnected to reduce Electrecity, erney and Water cost. 

IBM

Listing in 1916, IBM is the original poster child for technology boom and bust. After eight years on the New York Stock Exchange as Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, the company changed its name to International Business Machines and ushered in a period of extraordinary growth – becoming a kind of early 20th century equivalent of Apple.

Between 1927 and 1929, demand for its time cards and accounting machines helped to more than quadruple its value from $54 a share to a peak of $216 shortly before the Wall Street crash.

Then, along with the rest of the market, it came a cropper. By 1932, IBM’s share price had sunk to just $9.125.

Its then-president, Thomas Watson, declared that IBM would spend its way through the slump, investing $1bn in research and development and keeping its factories running at full speed even though it meant stockpiling computers in warehouses. It was a high-risk strategy, but one that paid off and helped propel IBM shares steadily higher until the early 1980s.

The company raised cash through a series of share splits, such that one share in 1924 would by now have proliferated to 3,460, worth more than $500,000 and nearly $9,000 in annual dividends.

Last month, IBM posted Q1 profits of $3.1bn on revenues of $24.7bn

Facebook:

We’re off to the races as Facebook (FB) begins to trade; the stock has trimmed most of its gains after initially surging more than 10 percent in its debut on the Nasdaq.

This is a good time to compare the giant social network with some of the other well-known tech outfits of the modern day, such as Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL).

Now, anyone who remembers the dot-com era certainly recalls bust after bust, but the tech sector is also full of success stories. And some of the best-known companies in technology have made it for a reason: They provide something people want, and the businesses are run the right way. Shareholders in these particular companies have done well, too. In a number of cases, they’ve done astonishingly well.

STEUBENVILLE, OH (Catholic Online) – I graduated from the Franciscan University of Steubenville in May of 1977. As a "revert" to the Catholic Church, I came back to the faith after turbulent years searching for truth and meaning. I was a teenage "hippie", caught up in the sixties and early seventies.

During this period I became enamored with the little poor man of Assisi, Francis. In my faith journey I reached out to one of his brothers, a holy Franciscan priest named Fr. Michael Scanlan, T.O.R. who was the rector of a seminary in Pennsylvania. He had just agreed to assume the Presidency of a small college in Steubenville, Ohio and was dedicated to returning it to fidelity to the Catholic faith.

I had a year of philosophy while I was discerning a monastic vocation and wanted to continue my studies once I left the monastery. So, with his full support and encouragement, I joined him at that College as one of the "first responders" to his vision. I became a part of the early renewal of that great work of the Holy Spirit now called Franciscan University of Steubenville .

I led one of the first student households and helped in many other ways to form the Catholic culture on the campus, one of the distinctive marks of that now extraordinary Catholic College. I became a worker in the vineyard, a part of that miracle of the Lord. I graduated with honors in philosophy and theology.

After marrying my wife on the campus we began to have children. I went on to law school in nearby Pittsburgh.  Upon graduation I stayed to serve the work of Steubenville in any way that I could, standing with Fr. Michael Scanlan. I learned so much from that wonderful priest and champion of the Church.  

PROVIDENCE, RI (Catholic Online) – Thomas J. Tobin is the Bishop of the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island. He has stood strong in his defense of the dignity of every human person from conception to natural death as well as his defense of true marriage and the family and society founded upon it. He has tried to help erring Catholics, including Catholic politicians in his own Diocese, to turn from error and turn toward the truth. He is solid as a rock in his orthodoxy, but always defends the faith with a pastor’s heart.

In June of 2011, Rhode Island passed "civil union" legislation. The Bishop knew that such legislation was dangerous to the common good. He recognized that the continuing moral erosion of our culture which has as one of its bad fruits, the movement to eliminate marriage and the family and society founded upon it by giving a moral and legal equivalency to homosexual relationships.

The legislation contained what are called "religious exemptions". However, a group of homosexual equivalency activists who called themselves "Marriage Equality Rhode Island", who represent the "LGBTI"  (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender and Intersex) community  issued this statement upon the passage of the legislation:

"We are extremely disappointed that the Senate brazenly ignored the commonsense objections raised by equality and civil rights leaders here and across the country. This civil union bill contains dangerous and discriminatory language that, without question, will cause significant harm to countless gay and lesbian couples in loving, committed relationships, and we will continue to fight it through whatever means are necessary."

"Furthermore, we renew our request that the governor veto this hurtful and ill conceived bill. To not do so would be a slap in the face to the gay and lesbian community, and every Rhode Islander who cares about equal rights and protections for all our state’s citizens."

  Hail to the Chief President Michel Suleiman, His excellency General Michel Suleiman  brilliant leadership as he rose to the Lebanese presidency  has strengthen the office of the Presidency role Thanks to our  President Suleiman he invited all Lebanese leaders to join his cabinet in prominent roles. Suleiman success is founded in a character that […]

Compare and Contrast French and US election. Surprising numbers.

Compare and Contrast electoral Map and votes of the  United States presidential election in 2008  vs Electoral Map in France votes in 2012.

Surprising numbers about  French and US elections

 Blue votes  represents the Right (under Sarkozy) and the Red votes represent the Left (under Hollande).  In USA the Red represents the GOP and the Blue represents the Democrats. So French voters are completely opposite compared to USA voters
Notice, In France, the people  from rural cities vote Left, while in USA the center vote RIght.
Cities such as Marseille, Nice, Saint Dennis vote overwhelmingly Right in France  vs in USA,  California, Hawaii, Boston vote Left.
I cannot not question myself, why corporate France vote overwhelmingly Right in France and in USA cities as New York, Chicago, California vote overwhelmingly Democrats.
Sarkozy faced the same faith as George H Bush. Sarkozy faced strong opposition from the extreme conservatives in France (LePen) and George H Bush faced strong opposition from conservatives in 1992 election (Perot votes)
Sarkozy and George H bush came after 3 terms of Right being in power (2 terms for Reagan and 1 Term for Bush41) While in France Sarkozy lost after 3 terms of the right being in power (Chirac 2 terms, Sarko 1 term)
The economy in both cases is extremely bad
George H Bush strong in Foreign policy but dealt with bad economy. Sarkozy strong on Foreign policy but weak locally. 
Both of them Lost faith of their own parties

By Joe McKendrick | May 4, 2012, 2:31pm PDT

Perhaps “cloud computing” has become one of those redundant phrases as well. I recently had the opportunity to moderate a panel discussion on cloud at IBM’s Impact conference. One of the panelists, Dr. Angel Diaz, vice president of software standards & cloud for IBM, predicted that we may not even be using the term “cloud” within the next five years – any and all forms of computing will be taking advantage of a mix of network and local resources.

In the meantime, another IBMer, Chris Dotson, wants to make the point that cloud, as it exists today – occurs in many different forms.  He provides four reasons why the term “cloud” gets brutally misused across the industry:

• There isn’t a single cloud: Every vendor has a different type of offerings, such as Apple’s iCloud or Amazon’s EC2 Cloud or IBM’s SmartCloud. “Even within an organization, it is certainly possible that there would be different private clouds for different purposes,” he adds.
• There are many types of cloud: Consider all the different purposes and architectures cloud performs:“private development/test compute cloud, a private storage cloud, a private desktop cloud, analytic cloud, and many others.
• Many people think that “the cloud” is magic: Clouds just don’t automatically run every workload you throw at them; it still takes a lot of integration and development work. “Cloud computing is simply a different model with the same old mundane computers beneath it,” says Dotson.
• Talking about “the cloud” implies that it’s a thing rather than a service model: “To me, the most important piece is on demand self-service, meaning that you can use services in an automated fashion without waiting for another human to help you unless something goes wrong.  Practically anything that meets these requirements can be used or sold in a cloud model, even some things that have been around for years!  What’s different here is that the number of these services is growing so quickly, the interfaces between them are standardizing somewhat so that different services can be swapped in and out for different purposes, and that these services are able to make use of other cloud services in an automated fashion. The biggest impact of cloud computing might not be in humans requesting services, but in cloud agents requesting services on behalf of humans!”

Atallah al-Salim The Lebanon Daily Star,

Lebanon’s media received poor marks on a newly released report on media in the Arab world, receiving an overall grade of just over 2 out of 4 in the Media Sustainability Index for 2010-11.

Surprisingly, its grade for freedom of speech (1.99) was one of its lowest in six different areas related to the media, although the country is often hailed as an oasis of media freedom compared to other countries in the region.

The rankings were announced during a panel discussion organized Thursday by Maharat Foundation, a local media watchdog, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day.

The index is composed of six "objectives," or areas in which a country receives a numerical grade on a scale of 4: freedom of speech, professional journalism, plurality of news, business management, supporting institutions and serving public needs.

Representatives of media outlets, NGOs, professional associations and academic institutions served as the primary sources of information in drafting the report.

While most of the scores saw slight increases and decreases since 2005, when the process was launched, Lebanon’s score when it comes to "supporting institutions" for the media significantly dipped from 2.34 in 2005, to only 1.64 in 2011.

Even though the report cited several initiatives undertaken by different universities, newspapers and NGOs to launch training programs for journalists, these efforts have largely failed in terms of sustainability, resulting in the low "supporting institutions score."

The report highlighted the inactive role of the Journalists Union, which it said has "closed its doors to working media professionals, failed to hold elections for years, and had done little to defend the rights of journalists."

Other reasons provided by the report were difficulties in the country’s electricity, Internet and infrastructure which negatively affect the performance of media.

The media’s lowest grade (1.28) in "serving public needs," a newly introduced objective in the index.

According to panelists who contributed to the report, media outlets are not undertaking reform or supporting discussions leading to reform; they only wait to see what politicians say in order to identify their reporting angle.

In an unprecedented move in French diplomacy, newscasts on several TV channels showed the first few minutes of a video link-up between the French president and his Washington counterpart.Days before the 22 April first-round vote in the French presidential election, the rare glimpse of banter between world leaders shows Obama saying of the campaign, "It must be a busy time." He adds: "I admire the tough battle you are waging." Sarkozy replies, grinning and with arms folded: "We will win, Mr Obama. You and me, together." The cameras leave before the presidents talk about Syria, Iran and oil. Washington told Le Monde it had indeed been aware that cameras were authorised to film the first few minutes of the video conference.

Three Musketeers of Obama’s in mission to Paris: John Del Cecato presidential strategist David Axelrod, Cornell Belcher, pollster, and Stephen Geer, "inventor" of fundraising on the Internet. They have contributed to the electoral triumph of 2008 and remain mobilized alongside the outgoing President for appointment in November 2012. Suffice to say that the visit "private" in recent days in the French capital, at the initiative of Olivier Piton, installed French lawyer in the U.S., instead of motivations "professional".

Venus auscultate the presidential campaign, they met with the staffs of Nicolas Sarkozy, Francois Hollande and Francois Bayrou, and various elected officials and polling institutes. On the Internet, France has caught up Lessons to be learned? "The political and electoral rules are of course different, but when an incumbent President is nominated, it is always a referendum on his person and his record," said John Del Cecato.

"It is interesting to observe your" best practices "and see how you handle the specific constraints of a campaign. For example, while we spend a lot of time raising money, the French candidates are focusing much more on direct contact with voters. And if we had the lead in Internet use, you have largely caught up with your delay. " In the U.S., said Cornell Belcher, a campaign based on "the three M: Money, Message, Mobilisation. Here, money has much less importance and the message depends much more on the press, since a candidate can not pass directly into a barrage of commercials. So, it’s on voter mobilization that carries most of the campaign efforts. "

By Michael Terheyden, Leaders of the Salafist movement are calling the late Coptic Pope, Shenouda III, the "head of the infidels."  Wagdy Ghoneim actually celebrated his death in a message posted on Facebook. The Salafist cleric said, "We rejoice that he is destroyed…. May God have His revenge on him in the fire of hell – he and all who walk his path." This is true hate speech. As we enter into Holy Week we need to pray for the Coptic Christians. KNOXVILLE, TN (Catholic Online) – According to an article written by Wayne King and published on Compass Direct, as the Coptic community mourns the death of their beloved religious leader, his Holiness Pope Shenouda III, Salafis are hurling hateful insults at him. The title of the article is "Salafist Leaders Celebrate Death of Coptic Pope in Egypt." The writer says that these attacks reflect open contempt for the Copts.

Leaders of the Salafist movement are calling the late Pope the "head of the infidels," among other things. Furthermore, during an official moment of silence in remembrance of Pope Shenaouda in the lower house of Egypt’s parliament, several Salafi members refused to stand in remembrance of him. Some even walked out. The Salafis make up 20 percent of Egypt’s new parliament, so all this hostility does not bode well for the Copts or for freedom in Egypt.

Can IBM fix Boston’s bad traffic? By Michael B. Farrell, Globe Staff/

Can the data experts at IBM improve Boston’s notoriously bad traffic?

That’s the hope when the computer giant lends several engineers to the city for three weeks this summer, to come up with solutions for fixing traffic problems more quickly and ideas for reducing vehicle emissions.

Boston is one of 33 cities around the world that will get access to IBM know-how as part of the company’s 2012 Smarter Cities Challenge. The winners of the grants, worth about $400,000 each, were revealed Thursday.

“This is another example of how we are piloting innovative work in the city of Boston and sharing it with our colleagues around the world,” said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, in a statement.

The city competed with 140 applications from 40 countries in the challenge, which grew out of IBM’s Corporate Service Corps. Since it began in 2008, the program has sent about 1,400 IBM employees on assignments in 24 countries.