] Royal Bank of Canada has notified SCO it has elected to
] convert 10,000 shares of SCO's Series A-1 Convertible
] Preferred Stock it currently holds into a total of
] 740,740 shares of SCO's common stock. Further, it has
] sold 20,000 shares of Series A-1 stock to BayStar so that
] "after completion of the conversion, Royal Bank of Canada
] will have no equity interest in SCO other than the shares
] of common stock it receives from the conversion."

[ Well, we knew that was coming, no? SCO continues it's circumnavigation of the bowl, on their way down the drain... -k]

RBC Cashes out of SCO

] Strategically, the I.B.M. approach is quite different
] from technology leaders, like Intel and Microsoft, that
] specialize in either hardware or software. "In the
] future, advantage is not going to be so much in the chip
] or the operating system, but in the management and
] control layer of technology," Mr. Zeitler said.

[ I read a bit about IBM's virtualization plans a few years ago and found it really compelling. It's interesting to see the tech come to commodity priced hardware... that's a bit unexpected, but ultimately good, i think.

The "return of the mainframe paradigm" has been a floating meme for some time now... i wonder how much traction it will ultimately have. Certainly if any company is in a position to bring together the necessary tech to work it, IBM is the one, I'd say.

My feeling is that the centralization may be illusory -- the part of the paradigm in which your relatively low power workstation offloads computation will come back, but the "mainframe" it offloads to may well be a broad distributed system, possibly a global, public one, though that may be the excess of scifi i've read.

I for one would be right on board with a super thin, super light, wireless tablet which offloads almost all of it's heavy lifting to other nodes. Perhaps even the data storage could be distributed...

ok, rampant speculation mode off... -k]

I.B.M. Plans to Build Servers That Act Like Mainframes

] Such scientific conundrums are of only passing interest
] at Superpower, a four-year-old subsidiary of
] Intermagnetics General, and at other companies like it.
] After years of false starts and setbacks, these companies
] say they are closing in on the goal of producing
] relatively inexpensive superconducting wire for power
] generators, transformers and transmission lines.

The Biggest Jolt to Power Since Franklin Flew His Kite

] Federal safety data has shown for years that booming
] sales of S.U.V.'s and large pickup trucks are adding to
] the death toll of people riding in cars, particularly in
] side-impact accidents. At the same time, S.U.V.'s and
] pickup trucks do not, as a class, better protect their
] own occupants, because they tend to be less stable and
] more prone to rollovers than passenger cars.

Guess what: if you're in a sedan and you get t-boned by an
SUV, you're fucked.

[ Proper fucked. This is a disturbing trend. Bad drivers want to feel safer so they get into massive trucks which are presumed to be more likely to protect them. Meanwhile they obliterate the poor sap they've caromed into because they were busy yammering on they cell phone while hauling their 4 rugrats to soccer practice. It'd be a lot safer to just put down the cell phone and learn how to drive.
p.s. most volvo drivers suck too. for the same reasons. -k]

Struck in Side, Many Cars Fare Poorly in Safety Test

]
] Now it's getting interesting. BayStar wants SCO to
] immediately redeem BayStar's 20,000 shares of SCO's A-1
] Convertible Preferred Stock. They say SCO has breached
] their agreement. SCO denies any breach. Here is the
] agreement that they are fighting over. Here is the press
] release. My, this was a short honeymoon.

BayStar is basically telling SCO they want their $20M back.

[ HA! Fuck you BayStar! You bet a lot of money on a very, VERY uncertain outcome (SCO beating IBM) and only then realized you'd tied yourself to a ship that's this close to a major iceberg impact, followed by flooding and lamentations and SINKING.

It was a risky speculation, investing in a company as, uh, tainted, as SCO, and they got hosed. Even if suits are brought, SCO may not even exist long enough to be served by them. Painful, but, man, I wonder if selling off those shares before demanding redemption was an option... SCO was at 9.66 this morning, it's at 8.40 now... that's a 13% drop. I see no good outcome for SCO or for BayStar. -k]

Baystar Sends SCO a Letter

] No sooner has digital tunes really started to catch on,
] we hear that the $0.99-per-song -- or less, if you go to
] Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) -- price tag is being threatened.
] According to The Wall Street Journal, the recording
] industry has been trying to cook up ways to charge folks
] more for music. Even Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes and
] Roxio's (Nasdaq: ROXI) Napster services have been
] charging premiums for some of the big names and hot new
] releases, the article said.

[ Yeah, awesome. Lets kill this whole music downloads thing before it even starts. -k]

The Death of Dollar Downloads? [Motley Fool Take] April 7, 2004

] Voters in Inglewood, Calif., a racially diverse and
] economically struggling suburb of Los Angeles, soundly
] rejected on Tuesday a ballot initiative to permit
] construction of a Wal-Mart complex that would have
] exempted the 60-acre development from virtually all local
] oversight.

Yay.

California Voters Reject Wal-Mart Initiative

]
] NEW YORK, April 2 (Reuters) - Sun Microsystems Inc.
] (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people) and Microsoft Corp.
] (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people) on Friday settled their
] long-running legal battle over patents and unfair
] competition, setting the stage for the arch-rivals to
] enter a new era of cooperation over their competing
] technologies.

[ Also noted are 3300 new people to add to the unemployment rolls as Sun slashes 10% of it's workforce. -k]

Sun, Microsoft settle long-running disputes

] Internet music piracy is not responsible for declining CD
] sales, claim the researchers behind a major new
] statistical study.

[ Yeah, I've seen a few of these recently. Too bad it's irrelevant. RIAA's gonna keep suing traders, which is just what I predicted last year. Sue little Suzy, and see Suzy's mom limit her computer usage in a heartbeat. And see all Suzy's friends' moms do the same to their kids. It *is* working for now, though I don't think it will forever...

The main reason the RIAA's actions are so despicable is that the industry should have been in on this whole "internet" thingie from the get-go. If the labels hadn't been so fucking backwards in the first place, none of these lawsuits would've been necessary, because we'd have had decent, legal download services 5 years ago. The labels figured they could avoid the costs of changing business models and ignore what consumers want. Napster showed them the error in their thinking. If someone in the big 5 had had the balls to push for modernized distribution models, we all could have avoided the massive war and grown naturally into the 21'st century. I still think it'll happen eventually... as long as consumers keep demanding what they want.

Of course, in my perfect world, the major labels all bite it, less money gets spent for promotion and marketing and more gets spent on offering a wider variety of music... -k]

Net music piracy 'does not harm record sales'

] A thread of carbon nanotubes more than 100 metres long
] has been pulled from a fiery furnace. The previous record
] holder was a mere 30 centimetres long.

[ holy crap! -k]

100-metre Carbon Nanotube Produced