IBM just sold off its entire hard disk division to Hitachi for USD 2.05 billion! For a company that has developed many of the fundamental technologies used in our hard disks [think Giant Magnetoresistive (GMR) heads and Partial Response Maximal Likelihood (PMRL)], this is a really sad ending. Although their hard disks do have a reputation for being unreliable, to the point of self-destruction, we are going to miss their phenomenal R&D...