No, they're digital to the amp, at best. If they're digital headed into the speaker, then they are internally amplified and will be converted to analog at the input to the amp, at the very latest. I.E. they're run through a DAC and put into the amplifier, since the only way you can amplify sound for a speaker is with... an amplifier. And amplifiers (despite marketspeak calling lovely Class D amps "Digital") are inherently analog processes.
If they're biamped, they might be digital through the crossover even, but that's only because the amplifier is after the crossover. The amplifier is, and will always be, analog.
I'll put my cents in for University of Michigan's WCBN, who were another early net broadcaster, as well as being one of the older student-run college radio stations about (33 years on FM, and 53 years on air).
They also play ridiculously good music on their freeform blocks, and have some amazing specialty shows.
I'm referring to welfare, food stamps, somewhat to social security, yes. Without those, a segment of our population *does not eat*. We don't let old people starve in the streets these days. Sure, we can now afford to do it because of capitalism, because of advances - but those advances alone wouldn't have caused the change, they required a *social* change, a decision not to let the byproducts of unmonitored capitalism fall out. We pay for welfare by the products of capitalism, and this is good. But if we left welfare recipients on their own devices, capitalism wouldn't do shit to help them. We've decided that we shouldn't let people starve in the streets, even if it lowers the overall efficiency of the system.
Similarly, I'm saying that for some things, we've decided that "the few who get squished" just aren't acceptable. We've said a lower rate of progress is acceptable, a lower efficiency is okay, that we're okay with the distribution no longer being normal. We've made the decision that we must not compromise on some things. With that decision made, capitalism fails to satisfy our desires entirely; we have to work around it on the edges.
Suppose society decided computers were a "right" to be enjoyed by all citizens, just as we've decided education is. So the government uses tax dollars to build factories, hire people, and gives away free computers. Everyone can now have a computer. Those who capitalism has rewarded can buy *better* computers than the free government computers, but *everyone* has a computer. The average quality of computers will go down, but the average quality of the computer owned by the average citizen, where not having a computer is equal to zero quality, will go up. See what I'm saying? Capitalism is good for the first goal, but doesn't necessarily succeed at the second.
Capitalism works great for *most* things. It fails when the goal is to provide something to everyone, regardless of demand, because it is rooted in supply and demand. Situations where, whether by desire, necessity, or law, everyone is required to acquire the product, are situations where capitalism is likely to fail some portion of society. If we've decided that all of society should have this product, this failure is an issue.
Food isn't a particularly good example for your point, given that prior to the existence of a social safety net (which is not a capitalist concept) starvation wasn't particularly uncommon. And even with that social safety net, that attempt to provide food for all, we fail and a few people starve or malnourish. Similarly, comprehensive compulsory education, while it may not achieve its goal of educating everyone, does a better job at it than a capitalist economic model can.
Capitalism has its benefits, and its drawbacks. Understanding the latter should be required before you preach the former.
Gee, that's funny. I have no idea what your position on the issue was, and what your teachers was, because you cannot seem to communicate clearly. However, it seems to me like you argued that right limits of a function don't exist at infinity, because infinity is the biggest number possible. However, infinity can be bigger than infinity. You're wrong.
Einstein could communicate clearly. I'm an engineer, focused in math - this doesn't excuse me from trying to write proper English. In fact, it makes it more necessary; no one cares if their server in a cheap diner can speak proper English. But if you ever want anyone to actually give credence to the research you do, being able to communicate that research clearly, properly, is a given.
So yes, if Einstein couldn't *write* properly, couldn't do math, and was fucking dumb enough to mouth off to a teacher when he was wrong... I would, in fact, make fun of him.
Eh, I got nothing better to do while I wait for this download to finish up.:)
Thanks for listening. Sorry I couldn't give happier answers; I don't much like watching the corporate lawyers go to work, but I don't get much choice either.
Should have talked to the ACLU - for a while (I think it has since shut down), my high school had exactly that - an independent paper, published by students, and distributed on school grounds without prior restraint.
The case would be "Independent Emery" vs. Ann Arbor Public Schools, Michigan courts circa 1992 - I couldn't find anything to link to online, though.
You're not completely correct; sports at *most* universities do not make any money at all. The figure, depending on whose accounting you use, and how the accounting was handled, for # of schools who make a profit on sports is around 40-100 (figure from NCAA reports, though you have to read a few and do some math to come up with an exactish number). Michigan, Ohio State, Virginia Tech, Florida, Oklahoma - these schools make money from sports. Grinnell, Ohio University, Northern Illinois - these schools do not. But they have them anyway.
Sports *are* big publicity raisers. They are considered valuable in an educational sense, in that they provide many people with an opportunity to compete at a high level, to work in team environments. They provide the student body with pride, they provide the school as a whole with publicity that can be used to recruit students. Don't think of the big money Division 1-A football players, the guys who play on national TV. Think of the track team, who compete in front of an audience of 100 on a good day. Think women's field hockey. Those are the sort of sports most college student-athletes play. Football, men's basketball, these are the exceptions, the ones that (occasionally) make enough money to cover the rest of the sports, the other 15 or 20 that lose money.
To paraphrase the West Wing - public schools *should* be expensive, just like defense. There are certain things where we shouldn't be willing to let the market decide, where we simply say "We want the best, and we're willing to pay for it." We shouldn't skimp on education, any more than we should skimp on defending our country.
And the truth is, how many people, if education weren't mandatory, would simply choose not to, or be unable to, pay? You can argue options would exist, but would there be free options? Public education provides an opportunity, as piss-poor as it sometimes is, for those with no means at all to rise. Capitalism isn't perfect; it inherently fails when the desire is to supply something to everyone. We would not be a better country without compulsory, comprehensive education. Capitalism could not provide it; capitalism is the wrong way to solve that problem.
A patent, a hatred for open source, and a *willingness to spend money*.
I pointed out that it isn't cheap for the open source developer. But it is equally, if not more so, expensive for the corporation prosecuting the case. Very, very few corporations will blow $1 million on a patent case unless they think they'll make at least half of it back in some fashion, and most of them are more media savvy than you think, so bad press is considered as a cost of these things. Unless they've got funding and nothing else to lose (see: SCO), most corporations aren't going to launch an all out IP case based solely on a grudge. If a FOSS project is threatening to a company's core business, yes, they will nail you - on the other hand, if you're threatening a company's core business, you damn well better know what legal clubs they hold so you can do your own due diligence. But the big guns don't hold patents to stomp on FOSS projects that won't even ding their bottom line - they hold them as MAD against the other big guns.
So, while it is worse than the idealists think, it ain't as bad as all that.
It's legal in 10 counties in Nevada, as each county has the right to decide for itself whether or not to allow prostitution within its borders, excepting (as you mentioned) Clark County, due to its population.
Last estimate I know of is that there were around 300 legal prostitutes in Nevada.
I wasn't so much insulted as irritated - the answer varies, obviously, but the answer "Not cheap" remains an accurate answer. You can pay the cost in time, or in money, but either way you have to pay.
So, we both got a bit heated on it. Sorry about that.
Unless it is blatantly, blatantly obvious, such that you could obtain a summary judgement immediately (for example, a patent for a specific breed of dachsund being used to prosecute a case against a piece of software that sorts apple inventories), they can probably drag it out long enough to make it more of a pain to fight than it'll be worth to you.
Even the summary judgement will cost you some money in filing and court fees; I can't give you a specific figure, because I was engineering on the cases I've been involved in, not legal, but my understanding is that those fees start around a grand and go up quickly.
So, you were completely wrong, your teacher took points off for it, and you said "This is bullshit" and you're surprised you got in trouble?
The First Amendment guarantees your right to say things without (generally) prior restraint - it does not guarantee you will not face some sort of consequence as a result.
Similarly, the 5th guarantees you from self-incrimination in CRIMINAL proceedings. In civil cases, you don't have 5th amendment protection. Why the hell would you get it in a non-judicial proceeding?
Seriously - more attention in math class, English class, and take a course in law/civics. I promise, it will be worth it.
What if the interviewer said "What is the answer?" and didn't accept "I don't know", just said "Well, make a guess!"
Are they still stupid, or just ignorant?
Being that you lack any specific knowledge of the interview process, and yet speak about it, I'm going to bet that while the interviewees may or may not be stupid, you've pretty much proven you are.
Yes, and if you read that, you'd realize it wasn't their patent, and was only assigned to them by mistake, and that they relinquished the patent to the proper owner almost immediately.
Also, it has nothing to do with my point - IBM's patent portfolio is not anywhere near as huge as people seem to think. Big? Yes. But not hundreds of thousands big, not active.
What does that even mean? Can you actually be specific cause we're all sitting over here saying "gee, that must be bad" when we have no idea what you are talking about. Statements like that just make us more ignorant.
It means they blew around $1 million, just to drive somebody else off of using their patent. I think we're getting $250,000 a year until the patent runs out from the person we litigated against; that wasn't the goal. The goal was to aggressively defend the patent, to send the message "Back off our IP". Whether or not I agree with the technique, it seems to have worked in this case.
What does "it isn't pretty" mean? It means 3 full time lawyers who do nothing but IP litigation writing briefs and filing motions, appearing in court when needed, for about a year. It means their entire support staff of paralegals, technical infrastructure, fees to research libraries, etc. It means that the opposition had to spend nearly as much time to keep up.
As for how many days can I miss work, as many as I like. I have an excellent employer and a lot of accrued holidays. How many evenings can I waste? Why is it a waste to fight for what you believe is right? I spend my whole life doing that, another few months won't hurt.
How about another few years? These cases aren't a few months. A year is the minimum time I've ever seen a case go when they didn't fold right away. Will your employer let you take 2 days off every week, every other week, for a couple years? Do you have that much accrued holiday? Are you willing to spend every evening buried in a law library doing precedent research, buried in a technical library doing prior art searches? You say you are, but are you really willing to dedicate your entire life to the case, probably screwing up the portion of it that actually pays you anything, for an extended period of time, just to prove "You can fight a patent case all by your lonesome self"?
Fighting the case by yourself is just a dumb fucking idea, is the point I am trying to get across. Programmers wouldn't consider trying to implement a back-end system for a bank on a 286 - why are you insisting on fighting a major court case without the proper support structure?
Jesus christ - how many times do you need to hear "It varies depending on who is litigating against you, but costs are invariably quite high because you CANNOT DO THIS WITHOUT SUPPORT STAFF, all of whom are professionals who command quite a large fee." before you actually listen?
I've watched a Fortune 100 company's lawyers go to town on someone (relatively smaller) in a patent dispute. It isn't pretty. So yes, I have seen this first hand, from the winning side.
The question remains - how much can you afford? How many days can you miss work to go answer in court? How many days can you stay out, or evenings can you or will you waste, in order to do research and write briefs? How many hours can you spend? If the answer is too low, you might wind up with a summary judgement as the judge decides you aren't serious about this because you *aren't* willing to spend to defend.
Many larger universities (roughly 40-100 of them, last estimate I saw, depending on how they do their books) do manage to self-fund (i.e. make profit for the university from) their sports, mainly through gate receipts, television, and merchandising deals. That's 4-10% of the schools with formal college athletics, by the way - the NCAA lists 1036 members.
The ones that don't make a profit, you can hardly call it a massive financial emphasis on sports when the athletics operating budget is generally minimal for these schools (extreme example: Washington University, which has an athletic budget of around 0.1% of its total operating budget). The average deficit, excluding institutional support (which is the stricter standard), is $1.75 million. This is dwarfed by the average university's operating budget. We're in the single digits here, percentage wise, even at the biggest losers.
Nationally, 1-3% of budget is a rough estimate for athletic costs in high schools. Which is not outrageous when you consider some of the ancillary benefits, like improved health, and it being a student activity. Again, hardly a "massive financial emphasis".
They may get massive media emphasis, but they hardly get massive financial emphasis.
"Damages when you lose because you didn't allocate the appropriate resources to the battle" pretty well summed it up.
You can try to defend yourself; how exactly do you plan to do it when the company can afford to pay 3 or 4 $100,000 a year lawyers, many paralegals, expert witnesses, engineers, and other folks money *just to keep you tied up in court*.
How long can you support yourself financially, while still fighting a time-consuming court case?
That's the real question. They don't even need to win - they just need to keep bleeding you until *you* run out of money, and then they'll force you to settle.
It ain't pretty, but that's the way it will go down.
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Wireless mics are used for convenience, not sound quality.
Let me put it this way - ever seen a wireless in a recording studio? Hell no. Because wires are better.
No, they're digital to the amp, at best. If they're digital headed into the speaker, then they are internally amplified and will be converted to analog at the input to the amp, at the very latest. I.E. they're run through a DAC and put into the amplifier, since the only way you can amplify sound for a speaker is with... an amplifier. And amplifiers (despite marketspeak calling lovely Class D amps "Digital") are inherently analog processes.
If they're biamped, they might be digital through the crossover even, but that's only because the amplifier is after the crossover. The amplifier is, and will always be, analog.
I'll put my cents in for University of Michigan's WCBN, who were another early net broadcaster, as well as being one of the older student-run college radio stations about (33 years on FM, and 53 years on air).
They also play ridiculously good music on their freeform blocks, and have some amazing specialty shows.
I'm referring to welfare, food stamps, somewhat to social security, yes. Without those, a segment of our population *does not eat*. We don't let old people starve in the streets these days. Sure, we can now afford to do it because of capitalism, because of advances - but those advances alone wouldn't have caused the change, they required a *social* change, a decision not to let the byproducts of unmonitored capitalism fall out. We pay for welfare by the products of capitalism, and this is good. But if we left welfare recipients on their own devices, capitalism wouldn't do shit to help them. We've decided that we shouldn't let people starve in the streets, even if it lowers the overall efficiency of the system.
Similarly, I'm saying that for some things, we've decided that "the few who get squished" just aren't acceptable. We've said a lower rate of progress is acceptable, a lower efficiency is okay, that we're okay with the distribution no longer being normal. We've made the decision that we must not compromise on some things. With that decision made, capitalism fails to satisfy our desires entirely; we have to work around it on the edges.
Suppose society decided computers were a "right" to be enjoyed by all citizens, just as we've decided education is. So the government uses tax dollars to build factories, hire people, and gives away free computers. Everyone can now have a computer. Those who capitalism has rewarded can buy *better* computers than the free government computers, but *everyone* has a computer. The average quality of computers will go down, but the average quality of the computer owned by the average citizen, where not having a computer is equal to zero quality, will go up. See what I'm saying? Capitalism is good for the first goal, but doesn't necessarily succeed at the second.
Capitalism works great for *most* things. It fails when the goal is to provide something to everyone, regardless of demand, because it is rooted in supply and demand. Situations where, whether by desire, necessity, or law, everyone is required to acquire the product, are situations where capitalism is likely to fail some portion of society. If we've decided that all of society should have this product, this failure is an issue.
Food isn't a particularly good example for your point, given that prior to the existence of a social safety net (which is not a capitalist concept) starvation wasn't particularly uncommon. And even with that social safety net, that attempt to provide food for all, we fail and a few people starve or malnourish. Similarly, comprehensive compulsory education, while it may not achieve its goal of educating everyone, does a better job at it than a capitalist economic model can.
Capitalism has its benefits, and its drawbacks. Understanding the latter should be required before you preach the former.
Gee, that's funny. I have no idea what your position on the issue was, and what your teachers was, because you cannot seem to communicate clearly. However, it seems to me like you argued that right limits of a function don't exist at infinity, because infinity is the biggest number possible. However, infinity can be bigger than infinity. You're wrong.
Einstein could communicate clearly. I'm an engineer, focused in math - this doesn't excuse me from trying to write proper English. In fact, it makes it more necessary; no one cares if their server in a cheap diner can speak proper English. But if you ever want anyone to actually give credence to the research you do, being able to communicate that research clearly, properly, is a given.
So yes, if Einstein couldn't *write* properly, couldn't do math, and was fucking dumb enough to mouth off to a teacher when he was wrong... I would, in fact, make fun of him.
Eh, I got nothing better to do while I wait for this download to finish up. :)
Thanks for listening. Sorry I couldn't give happier answers; I don't much like watching the corporate lawyers go to work, but I don't get much choice either.
Should have talked to the ACLU - for a while (I think it has since shut down), my high school had exactly that - an independent paper, published by students, and distributed on school grounds without prior restraint.
The case would be "Independent Emery" vs. Ann Arbor Public Schools, Michigan courts circa 1992 - I couldn't find anything to link to online, though.
You're not completely correct; sports at *most* universities do not make any money at all. The figure, depending on whose accounting you use, and how the accounting was handled, for # of schools who make a profit on sports is around 40-100 (figure from NCAA reports, though you have to read a few and do some math to come up with an exactish number). Michigan, Ohio State, Virginia Tech, Florida, Oklahoma - these schools make money from sports. Grinnell, Ohio University, Northern Illinois - these schools do not. But they have them anyway.
Sports *are* big publicity raisers. They are considered valuable in an educational sense, in that they provide many people with an opportunity to compete at a high level, to work in team environments. They provide the student body with pride, they provide the school as a whole with publicity that can be used to recruit students. Don't think of the big money Division 1-A football players, the guys who play on national TV. Think of the track team, who compete in front of an audience of 100 on a good day. Think women's field hockey. Those are the sort of sports most college student-athletes play. Football, men's basketball, these are the exceptions, the ones that (occasionally) make enough money to cover the rest of the sports, the other 15 or 20 that lose money.
To paraphrase the West Wing - public schools *should* be expensive, just like defense. There are certain things where we shouldn't be willing to let the market decide, where we simply say "We want the best, and we're willing to pay for it." We shouldn't skimp on education, any more than we should skimp on defending our country.
And the truth is, how many people, if education weren't mandatory, would simply choose not to, or be unable to, pay? You can argue options would exist, but would there be free options? Public education provides an opportunity, as piss-poor as it sometimes is, for those with no means at all to rise. Capitalism isn't perfect; it inherently fails when the desire is to supply something to everyone. We would not be a better country without compulsory, comprehensive education. Capitalism could not provide it; capitalism is the wrong way to solve that problem.
A patent, a hatred for open source, and a *willingness to spend money*.
I pointed out that it isn't cheap for the open source developer. But it is equally, if not more so, expensive for the corporation prosecuting the case. Very, very few corporations will blow $1 million on a patent case unless they think they'll make at least half of it back in some fashion, and most of them are more media savvy than you think, so bad press is considered as a cost of these things. Unless they've got funding and nothing else to lose (see: SCO), most corporations aren't going to launch an all out IP case based solely on a grudge. If a FOSS project is threatening to a company's core business, yes, they will nail you - on the other hand, if you're threatening a company's core business, you damn well better know what legal clubs they hold so you can do your own due diligence. But the big guns don't hold patents to stomp on FOSS projects that won't even ding their bottom line - they hold them as MAD against the other big guns.
So, while it is worse than the idealists think, it ain't as bad as all that.
It's legal in 10 counties in Nevada, as each county has the right to decide for itself whether or not to allow prostitution within its borders, excepting (as you mentioned) Clark County, due to its population.
Last estimate I know of is that there were around 300 legal prostitutes in Nevada.
I wasn't so much insulted as irritated - the answer varies, obviously, but the answer "Not cheap" remains an accurate answer. You can pay the cost in time, or in money, but either way you have to pay.
So, we both got a bit heated on it. Sorry about that.
Unless it is blatantly, blatantly obvious, such that you could obtain a summary judgement immediately (for example, a patent for a specific breed of dachsund being used to prosecute a case against a piece of software that sorts apple inventories), they can probably drag it out long enough to make it more of a pain to fight than it'll be worth to you.
Even the summary judgement will cost you some money in filing and court fees; I can't give you a specific figure, because I was engineering on the cases I've been involved in, not legal, but my understanding is that those fees start around a grand and go up quickly.
So, you were completely wrong, your teacher took points off for it, and you said "This is bullshit" and you're surprised you got in trouble?
The First Amendment guarantees your right to say things without (generally) prior restraint - it does not guarantee you will not face some sort of consequence as a result.
Similarly, the 5th guarantees you from self-incrimination in CRIMINAL proceedings. In civil cases, you don't have 5th amendment protection. Why the hell would you get it in a non-judicial proceeding?
Seriously - more attention in math class, English class, and take a course in law/civics. I promise, it will be worth it.
Literacy for rich white men was ~95% in the 1700s, but I'm willing to bet dem black folk didn't read so good. Wimminfolk too.
(I.E. What kind of crack have you been smoking? The population now is more literate, as a whole, than the whole population during the 1700s.)
What if the interviewer said "What is the answer?" and didn't accept "I don't know", just said "Well, make a guess!"
Are they still stupid, or just ignorant?
Being that you lack any specific knowledge of the interview process, and yet speak about it, I'm going to bet that while the interviewees may or may not be stupid, you've pretty much proven you are.
Yes, and if you read that, you'd realize it wasn't their patent, and was only assigned to them by mistake, and that they relinquished the patent to the proper owner almost immediately.
Also, it has nothing to do with my point - IBM's patent portfolio is not anywhere near as huge as people seem to think. Big? Yes. But not hundreds of thousands big, not active.
What does that even mean? Can you actually be specific cause we're all sitting over here saying "gee, that must be bad" when we have no idea what you are talking about. Statements like that just make us more ignorant.
It means they blew around $1 million, just to drive somebody else off of using their patent. I think we're getting $250,000 a year until the patent runs out from the person we litigated against; that wasn't the goal. The goal was to aggressively defend the patent, to send the message "Back off our IP". Whether or not I agree with the technique, it seems to have worked in this case.
What does "it isn't pretty" mean? It means 3 full time lawyers who do nothing but IP litigation writing briefs and filing motions, appearing in court when needed, for about a year. It means their entire support staff of paralegals, technical infrastructure, fees to research libraries, etc. It means that the opposition had to spend nearly as much time to keep up.
As for how many days can I miss work, as many as I like. I have an excellent employer and a lot of accrued holidays. How many evenings can I waste? Why is it a waste to fight for what you believe is right? I spend my whole life doing that, another few months won't hurt.
How about another few years? These cases aren't a few months. A year is the minimum time I've ever seen a case go when they didn't fold right away. Will your employer let you take 2 days off every week, every other week, for a couple years? Do you have that much accrued holiday? Are you willing to spend every evening buried in a law library doing precedent research, buried in a technical library doing prior art searches? You say you are, but are you really willing to dedicate your entire life to the case, probably screwing up the portion of it that actually pays you anything, for an extended period of time, just to prove "You can fight a patent case all by your lonesome self"?
Fighting the case by yourself is just a dumb fucking idea, is the point I am trying to get across. Programmers wouldn't consider trying to implement a back-end system for a bank on a 286 - why are you insisting on fighting a major court case without the proper support structure?
Jesus christ - how many times do you need to hear "It varies depending on who is litigating against you, but costs are invariably quite high because you CANNOT DO THIS WITHOUT SUPPORT STAFF, all of whom are professionals who command quite a large fee." before you actually listen?
I've watched a Fortune 100 company's lawyers go to town on someone (relatively smaller) in a patent dispute. It isn't pretty. So yes, I have seen this first hand, from the winning side.
The question remains - how much can you afford? How many days can you miss work to go answer in court? How many days can you stay out, or evenings can you or will you waste, in order to do research and write briefs? How many hours can you spend? If the answer is too low, you might wind up with a summary judgement as the judge decides you aren't serious about this because you *aren't* willing to spend to defend.
I'm not a programmer. Please don't assume.
Many larger universities (roughly 40-100 of them, last estimate I saw, depending on how they do their books) do manage to self-fund (i.e. make profit for the university from) their sports, mainly through gate receipts, television, and merchandising deals. That's 4-10% of the schools with formal college athletics, by the way - the NCAA lists 1036 members.
The ones that don't make a profit, you can hardly call it a massive financial emphasis on sports when the athletics operating budget is generally minimal for these schools (extreme example: Washington University, which has an athletic budget of around 0.1% of its total operating budget). The average deficit, excluding institutional support (which is the stricter standard), is $1.75 million. This is dwarfed by the average university's operating budget. We're in the single digits here, percentage wise, even at the biggest losers.
Nationally, 1-3% of budget is a rough estimate for athletic costs in high schools. Which is not outrageous when you consider some of the ancillary benefits, like improved health, and it being a student activity. Again, hardly a "massive financial emphasis".
They may get massive media emphasis, but they hardly get massive financial emphasis.
"Damages when you lose because you didn't allocate the appropriate resources to the battle" pretty well summed it up.
You can try to defend yourself; how exactly do you plan to do it when the company can afford to pay 3 or 4 $100,000 a year lawyers, many paralegals, expert witnesses, engineers, and other folks money *just to keep you tied up in court*.
How long can you support yourself financially, while still fighting a time-consuming court case?
That's the real question. They don't even need to win - they just need to keep bleeding you until *you* run out of money, and then they'll force you to settle.
It ain't pretty, but that's the way it will go down.
What if an open source project uses the CDDL (or whatever Sun has termed their modified license)?
Are they allowed to use the patents?
Yes, but oddly enough many of those patents are *not* software related.
Does IBM have *lots* of valid patents? Yes. On the order of 50,000, most likely (17 years*~3000 per year).
However:
Not all are software related - many are related to things like chip manufacture, device physics, etc., areas IBM still does tons of research in.
Thousands is a good unit to measure in; they might have 10,000 software patents active, but they certainly don't have 100,000.