Archive for May, 2007
May 31, 2007 at 5:29 pm · Filed under Abn Amro merger
http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/05/31/afx3774342.html
AMSTERDAM (Thomson Financial) - ABN Amro Holdings NV CEO Rijkman Groenink said in a letter to all staff that the uncertainty surrounding the takeover of the bank is ‘far from over’, newspaper De Telegraaf said on its financial news website.
The longer the uncertainty goes on, the less attractive the deal can easily become, and these kind of things can easily affect employee loyalty, an offer to work elsewhere can look attractive particularly if you don’t know where you are..
However, business continues, service needs to continue and the traders need to trade, so until everything’s signed, you could argue, life goes on..
May 31, 2007 at 5:28 pm · Filed under Technical stuff, blades
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070531005115&newsLang=en
ATLANTA–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The College of Computing at Georgia Tech today announced it will host the Georgia Tech Cell Broadband Engineâ„¢ (Cell/B.E.) Processor Workshop from June 18-19, 2007, focusing on applications for the Cell/B.E. processor, including gaming, virtual reality, home entertainment, tools and programmability and high performance scientific and technical computing.
The two-day workshop is sponsored by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI), Toshiba and IBM and will be held at the Klaus Advanced Computing Building on Georgia Tech’s campus. Keynote speakers at the event include Bijan Davari, IBM Fellow and Vice President, Next Generation Computing Systems and Technology; Dominic Mallinson, Vice President, US Research and Development, SCEI and Yoshio Masubuchi, General Manager, Broadband System LSI Development Center, Toshiba’s semiconductor company. More information on the workshop may be found at http://sti.cc.gatech.edu/.
Very cool, this workshop is covering the Cell/B.E processor and looks very interesting, its got some great speakers and should cover some relevant topics, these to include high performance computing as well as virtual reality?
May 31, 2007 at 5:26 pm · Filed under Other things
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132385-c,techindustrytrends/article.html
Helios has figured out how to install its media asset management software on a PlayStation 3’s IBM-made Cell processor.
The company has customized a version of Linux to allow its server suite to run on the PS3 hardware, and will release a free installer (which uses the Yellow Dog Linux distribution) through U.K. distributor, JPY’s website on 1 June.
The installer includes a test drive version of Helios UB, the enterprise client server solution which customarily works on a more expensive IBM Blade Server or Xserve. Helios reckons using a PlayStation 3 cuts the cost of deploying such solutions to under £500 (US$1,000).
Very cool, the playstation3 has been used in a grid solution, it seems that there is now a version of Linux you can download and install to make your playstation an effective server, check it out.
I’ve heard they make great grid engines due to the Cell processor and this news brings new opportunities to the Playstation platform, I’d love to do play with one in a grid/server solution and see how practical this is.
May 31, 2007 at 2:05 pm · Filed under Technical stuff, rackmounts
http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4600/
Hi Martin,
We’ve just ordered our first Sun server, we’re going to use it with VMWare to consolidate our wintel servers, (we looked at the DL585G2, but we got a better deal from our reseller on the Sun boxes).
A quick question, the wintel guys are used to HP ILOs, what’s the Sun equivalent?
Thanks
Andy
Excellent sir, congratulations on your new Sun server! Very pleased for you and hope it works great with your virtualization project, good luck with it.
The ILO is referred to as the ILOM and should be fairly similar to the ILO in nature, the Sun site says:
Called ILOM, this separately powered controller monitors system and component status, supporting standard management standards (SNMP, IPMI, DMTF).
Lights out, remote visibility, full control
Remote management with full keyboard, mouse, video, storage (KVMS)
Remote media capability (floppy, CD)
Full DMTF CLI, a browser interface, IPMI 2.0 compliance for management and control
SNMP v1, v2c, v3 for system monitoring
The ability to monitor and report system and component status on all FRUs
If you check out http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/html/820-0280-10/ that’s the ILOM administrators guide, there’s a pdf available here: http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/Servers/x64_servers/x4600m2/index.html including the documentation for it.
If you find any secret tips let me know so we can spread the word.
May 31, 2007 at 1:44 pm · Filed under Abn Amro merger
http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=allBreakingNews&storyID=2007-05-31T115958Z_01_L31374593_RTRIDST_0_ABNAMRO-TAKEOVER-LASALLE.XML
LONDON, May 31 (Reuters) - Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L: Quote, Profile , Research) is expected to restart talks with Bank of America (BAC.N: Quote, Profile , Research) to divide up LaSalle Bank and clear a path towards a takeover of ABN AMRO, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday. RBS and Bank of America (BofA) both want to buy ABN’s (AAH.AS: Quote, Profile , Research) U.S. arm LaSalle and the issue has become the key sticking point in a takeover battle for the Dutch bank between a consortium led by RBS and rival suitor Barclays (BARC.L: Quote, Profile , Research).
ABN struck a deal to sell LaSalle to BofA for $21 billion when it agreed to be taken over by Barclays, but the sale is the subject of a legal battle. A Dutch court is due to rule in July.
Very interesting, the LaSalle part of the transaction seems to be an emotional component, the quicker we can resolve it, the better for all involved and it might possibly make the RBS deal seem more appealing?
May 31, 2007 at 8:53 am · Filed under Abn Amro merger
http://news.sky.com/skynews/xml/article/0,,91070-1180555309,00.html?f=mf
On Tuesday a consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland (LSE: RBS) launched a takeover offer for ABN Amro (AMS: ABN), outbidding an earlier ‘agreed’ €64 billion offer by Barclays (LSE: BARC).
Has RBS delivered a knockout blow to Barclays’ loft ambitions of global expansion?
An interesting article talking about how ABN might perceive the RBS offer, it also covers the differences in the two offers, check it out.
May 30, 2007 at 6:14 pm · Filed under Other things, vmware
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070530005097&newsLang=en
CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Blue Lane Technologies, Inc. today announced that it has been named “Best of Interop†in the Security category. VirtualShield for VMware Infrastructure 3 protects virtual servers from attacks against known, unpatched vulnerabilities. Blue Lane is a VMware Technology Alliance Program partner.
“Winning Best of Interop this year is well deserved validation for our state-of-the-art approach to server security,” said Jeff Palmer, president and CEO at Blue Lane. “There were more than 100 security vendors exhibiting this year. This was clearly a watershed win for all of us championing signature-free security for virtual and physical servers.â€
Very cool, well done to BlueLane for winning the award, VirtualShield remains an interesting solution for protecting your virtual machines from vulnerabilities and could make your security patch process easier.
There are other solutions out there, so do try them and see which one works for you and your business, also consider the volume of virtual machines and whether this kind of thing would add value to your infrastructure.
May 30, 2007 at 5:40 pm · Filed under Other things
http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=9481
A survey by BT Business has revealed that many UK organisations are wasting more than 20 hours a month on frustrating IT issues and are spending up to £5,000 a year trying to
fix them.
The survey revealed that 36 per cent of businesses in the UK are experiencing IT problems everyday - 66 per cent are experiencing them more than once a week.
Productivity is being seriously affected by these problems with 33 per cent stating more than 20 hours a month is wasted looking for a solution.
Check out this article, its talking about how much time is wasted by organizations as a result of an IT failure, it shows the rate and time lost, very interesting, will virtualization of the desktop reduce this I wonder?
May 30, 2007 at 5:35 pm · Filed under How IT works, Other things
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/05/30/microsoft-surface-it-is-like-an-iphone-in-table-form/ and http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
It looks like interactive surfaces are all the rage nowadays. First we had the iPhone from Apple with its multi-touch technology and now we have Microsoft’s Surface (of course neither of these devices is actually shipping yet, but when does that stop us from talking about them?). Surface is a 30 inch screen that is mounted in a table. It uses a similiar touch interface as the iPhone does, but on a much larger scale. It can also interact with objects that are tagged using RFID tags, displaying information about the object. Microsoft eventually sees a point in the future when you would be able to rest your Zune (ha!) on the Surface and transfer songs from your library using only your fingertips as well as interact with other devices in the same fashion.
It does actually look very cool, granted as a concept it might take a while to become mainstream, and it might not be right for everyone, but in the meantime, it will be interesting to see what response they get, what applications it can be put to, could it identify me and then load my hotmail, my calendar etc? Start my applications? Would this mean I’d never have to wait to order/pay in one nandos/tgi friday’s restaurant again?
Also is it noisy? I don’t want a table that gets emotional, noisy and warms my legs… My trader workstations do that already..
May 30, 2007 at 5:03 pm · Filed under Other things, environment
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/index.jsp?epi-content=GENERIC&newsId=20070530005697&ndmHsc=v2*A1180504800000*B1180560991000*DgroupByDate*J1*N1000017&newsLang=en&beanID=1379240094&viewID=news_view
ROUND ROCK, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) today is extending its commitment to deliver the most energy-efficient products in the industry with configurations of its OptiPlexâ„¢ 745 and 740 corporate desktops designed to meet Energy Star 4.0 requirements.
The company also said that it expects to be one of the first in the industry to complete its Energy Star 4.0 compliance work across multiple systems within its commercial desktops, notebooks and workstations product lines before the July 2007 deadline. In the coming weeks, Dell will offer configurations of Dell Precisionâ„¢ workstations that meet the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements. In addition, the recently announced Latitudeâ„¢ D830, D630 and D531 notebook systems are also available with a broad selection of configurations that are also compliant.
…The OptiPlex Energy Smart 745 and 740 feature 80 percent efficient power supplies that enable more efficient energy consumption management. Configured with flat panel monitors, these systems can help customers save up to 77 percent in power consumption compared to previous generation systems when combined with Energy Smart power settings….
Very cool, anything the manufacturers can do to bring the consumer more energy efficient desktops has to be a good thing, lowering the energy requirements for the desktop reduces my desktops’ carbon footprint and my energy costs.
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