The median price of a previously owned home fell for the first time in 11 years last month, and inventories of unsold homes swelled to levels not seen in more than a decade.

Home Prices Drop After 11-Year Ascent

Intel Corp., facing slowing demand for personal computers and stiffer competition, is selling its division that makes processors for handheld devices in a $600 million deal announced Tuesday with Marvell Technology Group Ltd.

Intel is selling off XScale aka ARM.

Marvell to Pay $600 Million for Intel Unit - New York Times

AS the frenzied pace of downtown residential development slows in major cities like New York and Chicago, some second- and third-tier markets are just now experiencing an upswing. Especially in cities, like Nashville, where no residential population had existed, people are suddenly hungry for an urban lifestyle and are willing to pay for it.

Creating Demand for City Living in Nashville - New York Times

Scott McNealy, the often acerbic co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc. and one of Microsoft Corp.'s harshest critics, stepped down as CEO after 22 years Monday as the pioneering maker of computer servers reported its latest quarterly loss.

Sun Microsystems Chief to Step Down

Thanks to an overzealous copy-protection scheme enforced by content holders (read: movie studios), forthcoming next-generation optical disc players, including Blu-ray and HD-DVD models, will give studios the option to hobble the resolution of the players' analog outputs. In a decision reached earlier this week, the eight-company consortium behind AACS (Advanced Access Content System), the mandatory copy-protection system used by both formats, has decided to let each studio choose whether to "downconvert" the output of the players' component-video outputs to 960x540 resolution--exactly one quarter of the potential 1,920x1,080 resolution of true high-def.

Linked from penny-arcade.

Blu-ray and HD-DVD: crippled HD analog output option - Alpha Blog - alpha.cnet.com

In March 2006, Peter Quinn (former Massachusetts chief information officer (CIO), made comments about clothing that set off a bizarre firestorm of news and discussion. His comments were noted in ZDNet Australia's article, "Sandals and ponytail set cramp Linux", CNET's article 'Sandal and ponytail set' cramping Linux adoption?, and many others. There were even articles in Linux Weekly News (LWN) and Slashdot.

What did Quinn say? He simply stated that the appearance of many free-libre / open source software (FLOSS) developers detracts from FLOSS adoption. "Open source has an unprofessional appearance, and the community needs to be more business savvy in order to start to make inroads in areas traditionally dominated by [proprietary] software vendors. [Having] a face on a project or agenda makes it attractive for politicians [to consider open source]."

Guess what? He's right.

Dress for success? Decide on your goals, then act to reach them

The price of gold touched $600 an ounce today, rising to a level not seen in 25 years as investors poured money into precious metals.

Gold Prices Reach 25-Year High

Goals of the OpenSPARC Initiative

* To significantly increase participation in processor architecture development and application design by making cutting-edge hardware intellectual property freely available.
* To eliminate barriers to the next big build-out of the Internet.
* To improve collaboration and cooperation among hardware designers.
* To enable community members to build on proven technology at a markedly lower cost.
* To encourage innovation.
* To foster bringing bold new products to market.

Apparently, you can download Verilog of Niagra under GPLv2, now. This is an interesting move but I can't imagine it will make SPARC any more relevant.

OpenSPARC: Sun's initiative to create a community and participation in processor architecturedevelopment and application design by making cutting-edge hardware IP freely available

Decius wrote:

AT&T Inc. said Sunday it will acquire smaller rival BellSouth Corp. for $67 billion in stock, in a deal that goes a long way toward resurrecting the old Ma Bell telephone system.

Night of the living dead...

The breakup of ATT in the early 80s didn't necessarily make a lot of sense anyway, in particular, it only created competition in long distance but failed to do anything about the monopoly on the cable plant. Its easy to lay fiber or put up microwave towers to link up COs; its really hard to build out the last mile to everyone's house and whoever owns that wins. At least until wireless came into the picture.

Pretty soon, all across the country, you will be able to get voice, video and data (aka data, data and data) to your house from either of Bell or Comcast or maybe even satellite TV and CDMA/GSM voice and WiMax data. I've long wondered if the the competitive landscape becoming a little more uniform by way of choices between multiple "one stop shop" players could end up being a net win for consumers.

RE: CNN.com - AT&T reaches deal to buy BellSouth - Mar 5, 2006

AT&T Corp. is planning to acquire BellSouth Corp., according to several people familiar with the negotiations who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Whoa!!

AT&T Is Said to Be Near Deal for BellSouth