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Windows alternative relies on Linux and the cloudIBM is trying to hit Microsoft where it hurts, with a new offering designed to lure customers away from Windows 7. < IBM takes aim at Microsoft Windows 7 with new desktop offering IBM is trying to hit Microsoft where it hurts, with a new offering designed to lure customers away from Windows 7. The top 7 roadkill victims on the journey to Windows 7 IBM Tuesday said it is teaming up with Canonical to provide cloud- and Linux-based desktop packages in the United States at half the cost of upgrading to Windows 7. It's...

IBM Corp. put a top executive on leave Monday after he was charged in an insider trading scandal for allegedly leaking secrets about IBM's earnings and financial dealings with corporate partners. The company said Robert Moffat, a senior vice president and cost-cutting maven who was considered a possible candidate to succeed CEO Sam Palmisano, no longer serves as an officer of the company.

"My co-worker, Tim, explained that our company, a major software vendor, is seeing its mainframe workforce rapidly approaching the age of retirement. Tim said IBM and most other firms whose businesses depend on mainframes are also dealing with this industry-wide problem. "Since the 1980’s, PC’s and UNIX machines were supposed to have taken over the computing world, relegating mainframes to the scrap heap alongside rotary-dial telephones, suitcase-size boom boxes, and Plymouth Reliants. Indeed, most mainframes from that era have been consigned to the scrap heap – only to be replaced by bigger and faster mainframes. "Today the number of mainframes...

IBM is taking on Google in the cloud-computing based hosted business email service with LotusLive iNotes, which will be offered beginning Monday. Software as a service is a popular option for companies that want to rent, instead of buy, software and Google has been a big player in that area.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A former IBM employee who was fired for visiting an adult chat room while at work is appealing a court decision against him. The worker, 60-year-old James Pacenza (Puh-SEHN'-zuh), claims combat stress from Vietnam made him a sex-and-Internet addict who should have been treated, not dismissed.

The average American citizen has a very hard time believing that a world organization - in this case the WHO – could be so evil as to plan a “pandemic” of some kind in order to further some diabolical agenda. It is no surprise that an official document indicating that the pandemic has been planned YEARS ago would turn up from within the dark sewers of IBM. IBM is no stranger to getting involve in the blackest of evils.

I'm going to leave this as link-only.

IBM said it was looking to DNA "origami" for a powerful new generation of ultra-tiny microchips. The US computer giant collaborated with California Institute of Technology researchers to develop a way to design microchips that mimic how chains of DNA molecules fold, allowing for processors far smaller and denser than any seen today. "This is a way to assemble an electronics device of the future," said Bill Hinsberg, manager of the lithography group at IBM's Almaden Research Center in California, on Monday. "It offers a potential way to construct nano-scale devices. The industry has always gone in the direction of...

International Business Machines Corp is looking to the building blocks of our bodies -- DNA -- to be the structure of next-generation microchips. As chipmakers compete to develop ever-smaller chips at cheaper prices, designers are struggling to cut costs. Artificial DNA nanostructures, or "DNA origami" may provide a cheap framework on which to build tiny microchips, according to a paper published on Sunday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Microchips are used in computers, cell phones and other electronic devices. "This is the first demonstration of using biological molecules to help with processing in the semiconductor industry," IBM research manager Spike...

LAST week's audacious $US7.4 billion ($10.2 billion) play by Oracle to acquire Sun Microsystems has drawn comparisons with General Motors' moves in the 1950s to consolidate the US car industry. Oracle has touted the bid as a game changer that will help establish it as the first company to sell software and hardware products end-to-end. Rivals are sceptical of the rhetoric and believe the real motive is to kill off Sun's competing software products, which they say has been a theme of Oracle's buying spree, which has reportedly cost $US34.5 billion since 2005. If approved, Oracle will acquire Sun's global...

Over the past 13 years, Sun Microsystems' Java language has become one of the computer industry's best known brands—and underappreciated assets. The tension wasn't lost on Sun's new owner, Oracle, which on Apr. 20 said it will purchase Silicon Valley pioneer Sun for $7.4 billion in cash. If Oracle has its way, Java will emerge not only as a strong revenue source but also a key component of plans to keep customers loyal for years to come. During a conference call with analysts Apr. 20, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison called Java "the single most important software asset we have ever...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - IBM (NYSE: IBM - news) plans to take advantage of the U.S. economic stimulus package signed earlier on Tuesday by offering Internet services over power lines to more rural consumers. IBM said its venture with International Broadband Electric Communications (IBEC), a company that provides broadband over power line (BPL) services, had begun to sign up Internet customers in rural parts of Alabama, Indiana, Michigan and Virginia and that it hoped to access more government funds. The economic stimulus law signed by President Barack Obama included $2.5 billion for the Agricultural Department to expand broadband service in...

I.B.M. withdrew its $7 billion bid for Sun Microsystems on Sunday, one day after Sun’s board balked at a reduced offer, according to three people close to the talks. The deal’s collapse after weeks of negotiations raises questions about Sun’s next step, since the I.B.M. offer was far above the value of the Silicon Valley company’s shares when news of the I.B.M. offer first surfaced last month. Sun, an innovative pioneer in computer workstations, servers and Internet-era software, has struggled in recent years and spent months trying to secure a suitor. With I.B.M. and others shying away from a deal,...

IBM and Sun broke off acquisition talks: report15 mins ago(Reuters) – International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N) and Sun Microsystems Inc (JAVA.O) broke off talks aimed at a $7 billion acquisition, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.Talks between IBM and Sun were on the brink of collapse, threatening to undermine a potential $7 billion acquisition, according to the newspaper. 

ARMONK, N.Y., Apr 3, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- U.S. technical giant IBM is close to an agreement to acquire rival Sun Microsystems for close to $7 billion, sources said. The estimated figure, $9.50 a share, is about a 100-percent premium on Sun's market value, The New York Times reported Friday.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- International Business Machines Corp. is lowering its bid for Sun Microsystems Inc. to a range of $9 to $10 a share,

The world's largest IT services company is attempting to boost its creative cost-cutting techniques with a patent application -- number 20090083107 at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office -- for a "method and system for strategic global resource sourcing." (Yes, "resource sourcing.") In short, IBM wants to patent its math for deciding where to offshore staff. A patented methodology for deciding where to send jobs overseas to cut costs would be a valuable tool that IBM could sell to its corporate clients. But IBM has plenty of opportunity to eat its own dog food: The company continues to slash its...

IBM Set to Cut More U.S. Jobs By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY International Business Machines Corp. is expected to inform a large number of U.S. employees in its global-business services unit that their jobs are being eliminated, with the work of many of them being transferred to IBM employees in India, according to people familiar with the situation. The planned cuts show that even companies that are successfully navigating the global recession are continuing to slash costs--some of them by taking advantage of cheaper Asian labor. IBM reported $4.42 billion in fourth-quarter earnings, a 12% gain. It has forecast profit growth...

Reports of deep job cuts at International Business Machines (IBM) come at a potentially delicate time for the company—just as it is hoping to secure money from the federal stimulus package. The company will lay off as many as 5,000 U.S. workers in its Global Business Services unit, transferring some of the work they performed to India. IBM spokesman Mike Fay declined to confirm or to comment on any job-cut plans, which were reported on Mar. 25 by The Wall Street Journal (NWS) and Bloomberg News. The cuts will affect mainly information technology and consulting work in such areas as...

For Sun Microsystems Inc., a reported $6.5 billion acquisition offer from IBM Corp. — is being called a "Yahoo moment." The company may be worth more than Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM (NYSE: IBM) is offering, but it also may be more money than Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun (NASDAQ: JAVA) will be worth if IBM walks away from the table. News of the offer came as competition for data center hardware is heating up and "Big Blue’s" offer is seen as an attempt to respond to San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems Inc.’s (NASDAQ: CSCO) announced plans that it would enter the next...

IBM will cut about 5,000 jobs in the United States, adding to similarly large cuts in the past few months, sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. The job cuts will account for over 4 percent of IBM's U.S. workforce, which totaled around 115,000 at the end of 2008. The sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, said the cuts will mostly be in IBM's global services business, which includes outsourcing and consulting services. An International Business Machines Corp spokesman declined to comment. The company, which had a total workforce of 398,455 as...

International Business Machines (IBM: 97.89, -0.41, -0.42%), a blue-chip tech company that has managed to continue to grow despite the global recession, is expected to eliminate a large number of U.S. employees from its global-business services unit, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Weeks after slashing nearly 5,000 jobs, IBM is expected to shift the work of a large number of U.S. workers to IBM employees working in India, the latest example of a successful company that is continuing to slash costs and take advantage of cheap Asian labor, the Journal reported. Representatives from IBM did not immediately respond to...

Commentary: Sale to IBM seems last, best hope for Sun Microsystems SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- It is ironic that an executive widely heralded for his technological brilliance likely will end up best known as a scavenger salesman. When Jonathan Schwartz became CEO at Sun Microsystems Inc. in 2006, the ponytailed software guru was expected to pull a struggling Silicon Valley icon away from its reliance on tech hardware and finally make some serious money out of the company's notable slate of software products, including the ever-popular Java programming language. Though Sun started to see revenue in the software business, Schwartz...

BANGALORE (Reuters) - IBM is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems Inc for at least $6.5 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported, in a deal that could bolster their computer server products against rivals such as Hewlett-Packard Co. That would translate into a premium of about 100 percent over Sun's Nasdaq closing price Tuesday of $4.97 a share, the paper said, citing people familiar with the matter. Sun, which was not immediately available for comment, has long been cited as a takeover target for International Business Machines Corp, HP, Dell Inc or Cisco Systems Inc, which this week unveiled its...

International Business Machines (IBM.N) is in talks to acquire Sun Microsystems (JAVA.O), the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. IBM is likely to pay at least $6.5 billion in cash to acquire Sun, the people told the paper. That would translate into a premium of about 100 percent over Sun's closing price Tuesday of $4.97 a share on the Nasdaq, the paper said.

IBM Unveils Building Blocks for 21st Century Infrastructure IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new services and products to help clients build a new, more dynamic infrastructure that will bring more intelligence, automation, integration, and efficiencies to the digital and physical worlds. As a result, it will enable businesses and governments to better respond to and manage challenges presented by today's globally integrated planet. The new products and services enable clients to use powerful computing systems to manage and gain insight from an increasing number of things in their physical infrastructure that are being instrumented with intelligent sensors. For example, a...

Canonical offers Office 'alternative'LinuxWorld IBM is today expected to announce expanded backing for Ubuntu in a desktop and collaboration software deal to challenge Microsoft's Windows and Office. Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, has agreed to re-distribute IBM's Lotus Symphony productivity suite with its public Linux repositories. More details are expected later today. The news follows IBM's decision earlier this year to offer a version of its Open Collaboration Client Solution (OCCS) for Ubuntu. Ubuntu is, according to the suits at IBM, "a Linux operating system that scores high marks on usability and 'the cool factor.'" The deal is expected to be...

IBM employees being laid off in North America now have an alternative to joining the growing ranks of the unemployed - work for the company abroad. Big Blue is offering its outgoing workers in the United States and Canada a chance to take an IBM job in India, Nigeria, Russia or other countries.

InformationWeek IBM Offers To Move Laid Off Workers To India Big Blue wants to help redundant U.S. employees relocate to developing markets, according to an internal document. By Paul McDougall, InformationWeek Feb. 2, 2009 URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213000389 The climate is warm, there's no shortage of exotic food, and the cost of living is rock bottom. That's IBM's pitch to the laid-off American workers it's offering to place in India. The catch: Wages in the country are pennies-on-the-dollar compared to U.S. salaries. Under a program called Project Match, IBM will help workers laid off from domestic sites obtain travel and visa assistance...

Seven months after IBM delivered the world's fastest supercomputer, it has announced an even speedier one. IBM said on Tuesday it is developing the technology for its new Sequoia computer, with delivery scheduled in 2011 to the Department of Energy for use at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Sequoia will chug along at 20 petaflops per second and is one order of magnitude quicker than its predecessor. The earlier machine, delivered in June to the Energy Department, broke the 1 petaflop barrier. Peta is a term for quadrillion and FLOP stands for floating point operations per second. Sequoia, and a smaller...

The climate is warm, there's no shortage of exotic food, and the cost of living is rock bottom. That's IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s pitch to the laid-off American workers it's offering to place in India. The catch: Wages in the country are pennies-on-the-dollar compared to U.S. salaries. Under a program called Project Match, IBM will help workers laid off from domestic sites obtain travel and visa assistance for countries in which Big Blue has openings. Mostly that's developing markets like India, China, and Brazil. His challenge? Creating open environment for Internet users without compromising information security and privacy."IBM has established Project...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- While a number of technology giants have been making public disclosures about job cuts in recent weeks, IBM Corp. has been quietly eliminating positions in a number of divisions including its storied research unit, according to an organization seeking recognition as a union with the company. nearly 200 jobs have been cut from the research group, 1,200 from the systems technology group, over 300 from finance nearly 100 from human resources. an IBM spokesman, said the company is not commenting on the number of job cuts underway or on which business units are affected. Alliance@IBM believes...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- With the recession forcing tech companies to announce thousands of layoffs, IBM Corp. is joining the fray -- but not advertising it.The Armonk, N.Y.-based company has cut thousands of jobs over the past week, including positions in sales and the software and hardware divisions. IBM says the cuts are simply part of its ongoing efforts to watch costs, and the company won't release specific numbers, even as reports of firings stream in from IBM facilities across the country.Workers have reported layoffs in Tucson, Ariz.; San Jose, Calif.; Rochester, Minn.; Research Triangle Park, N.C.; East Fishkill, N.Y.;...

US mainframe maker T3 Technologies has filed a lawsuit against IBM with the European Union's antitrust authority for alleged illegal bundling of mainframe software and hardware. The company is accusing IBM of violating antitrust law by refusing to sell its z/OS operating system to clients who want to run the software on systems manufactured by T3. It also accuses IBM of harming competition by withholding patent licenses for its mainframe operating system and certain intellectual property. The company has asked the EC to investigate IBM's market price for its mainframe systems. It said that based on data from San Francisco-based...

IBM Corp. is forecasting significantly higher profits for 2009 than Wall Street expected, a sign that the company's focus on high-margin services and software contracts is paying off even while overall sales are slumping. The Armonk, N.Y.-based company predicted at least $9.20 per share in profit in 2009. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters were expecting $8.75 a share. The rosy forecast came as IBM reported that fourth-quarter profit rose 12 percent, beating analyst estimates, . . . [but] sales fell 6 percent, missing the consensus estimate.

IBM Research scientists, in collaboration with the Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University, have demonstrated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with volume resolution 100 million times finer than conventional MRI. This result, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), signals a significant step forward in tools for molecular biology and nanotechnology by offering the ability to study complex 3D structures at the nanoscale. By extending MRI to such fine resolution, the scientists have created a microscope that, with further development, may ultimately be powerful enough to unravel the structure and interactions of proteins, paving...

After a great deal of courtroom drama and mounting legal fees, the SCO Group is expected to file its Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan in court tomorrow. Jeff Hunsaker, SCO’s president, wouldn’t provide exact details of the plan, but he said the reorganization will hopefully help the company come out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which the company filed for in September 2007. Utah-based SCO has been up to its ears in legal battles over the years, a notable one being a suit against Novell over who was the true owner of Unix. In August 2007, a U.S. District Court Judge ruled...

The final judgment [PDF] from Utah is here at last. It recites what the August 10, 2007 and July 16, 2008 orders said, but it also resolves the recent dispute over SCO's desire to voluntarily waive some claims and then bring them back to the table after an appeal, should it prove successful. Here's SCO's motion to voluntarily dismiss, and Novell's response, so you can verify that this judgment indeed represents another loss for SCO. You'll see that it was Novell that suggested the wording regarding SCO's voluntarily dismissed claims that we see in the judgment, that they be dismissed...

Commentary: Jobs has the cash, and may want more control of devices SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- A brewing battle between Apple Inc. and its frenemy, IBM Corp., over the role of an executive who at one time managed Big Blue's PowerPC chip business may be an early sign that the Silicon Valley wunderkind is considering designing some of its own semiconductors. On Tuesday, Apple said it was hiring Mark Papermaster from IBM as a senior vice president of devices hardware engineering. Apple made the hire despite a lawsuit last week by Big Blue against Papermaster. IBM wants to keep him...

IBM (NYSE: IBM) is showing that some companies can still raise cash in these troubled times. Big Blue is selling $4 billion in debt in a multiple maturity offering. The company is showing that the credit market terms may not be ideal but the credit markets are at least somewhat available for strong companies. It appears that the company is selling 5-year noted at a spread of 387.5 basis points over treasuries. The deal spread for a 10-year issuance was also at a spread of 387.5 basis points over treasuries, and its 30-year component has a spread of 400...

IBM Corp. announced its third-quarter results earlier than expected Wednesday, and the company beat Wall Street's profit estimate and reaffirmed its full-year 2008 guidance. The stock, a component of the Dow Jones industrial average, gained nearly 4 percent in after-hours trading on the news.

IBM is threatening to leave organizations that set standards for software interoperability because of concerns that their processes are not always fair. ... IBM was one of the most vocal opponents of a file format created by Microsoft and approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as an international standard earlier this year. ... Microsoft has long been accused of dominating the market for office productivity programs due to its use of closed file formats. Microsoft changed course, however, and submitted its OOXML format to become an international standard, which means other vendors could implement OOXML in their products....

WASHINGTON - A former vice president of imaging and printing services at the Hewlett Packard Company (HP) pleaded guilty today to stealing trade secrets, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello for the Northern District of California. Atul Malhotra, 42, of Santa Barbara, Calif., was charged on June 27, 2007, in a one count information with theft of trade secrets. According to court documents, from Nov. 17, 1997, to April 28, 2006, Malhotra was employed by International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) as director of sales and business development in output...

Portland, Maine - An adult adoption involving lesbian partners and a claim to a share of a family fortune built on IBM has been annulled, bouncing the case to Maine's highest court. At issue is whether it was legal for a judge to allow Olive Watson to adopt Patricia Spado in 1991 in Knox County, where the longtime partners spent several weeks each summer on an island in Penobscot Bay. Watson was a daughter of Thomas Watson Jnr, who took International Business Machines Corp from punch cards into electronic computing. The relationship between Spado and Watson ended a year after...

IBM has obliterated the competition in the supercomputing stakes with the top 10 of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, but Microsoft has surprisingly scraped in at number 23 with its Windows HPC Server system. While Microsoft is an unlucky 13 numbers away from the top 10, does the wow start now? Microsoft can’t claim any particular ‘wow’ with its results until it can wrest a top 10 position, let alone the No.1 position away from IBM, but 23 isn’t too bad when we’re talking about a list of 500. But the real news isn’t about Microsoft, it’s about...

Intel Corp. disclosed that an internal team has been working on technology for use in solar panels, and now is spinning off that effort to form a new company. The chip maker said the company, SpectraWatt Inc., will make photovoltaic cells, the primary component in solar panels that use sunlight to generate electricity. It will receive $50 million in initial funding from a consortium including Intel's venture capital arm, Goldman Sach's Cogentrix Energy subsidiary, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund, and Solon AG, a German solar-panel maker. Intel's move is the latest in a scramble among Silicon Valley companies to...

"Liquid Metal" at the Center of IBM Innovation to Significantly Reduce Cost of Concentrator Photovoltaic Cells ARMONK, NY, May 15, 2008 IBM today announced a research breakthrough in photovoltaics technology that could significantly reduce the cost of harnessing the Sun's power for electricity. By mimicking the antics of a child using a magnifying glass to burn a leaf or a camper to start a fire, IBM scientists are using a large lens to concentrate the Sun's power, capturing a record 230 watts onto a centimeter square solar cell, in a technology known as concentrator photovoltaics, or CPV. That energy is...

Preventing the conflict of interest is one of the main goals of the American system of checks and balances. The scandal that erupts when Americans find out about conflict of interest is one of our national guilty pleasures. And it’s so much more gratifying when it’s the ones you least expected that get caught with their fingers in the cookie jar. Hooker or Saudi royal family photo album – we’re a nation of great diversity after all, you never know where you’ll find those sneaky politicians next. Maybe that’s why it’s so interesting that the Supreme Court will not hear...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IBM is under investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over an $80 million bid it made in 2006 to modernize EPA financial systems and has been suspended from seeking new contracts with all U.S. agencies, the company said on Monday.

International Business Machines Corp. has been temporarily banned from new business with the federal government and is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia over a contract awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency, the company said Monday.