Monthly Archives: April 2009

Donna’s painting clearance sale :-)

Posted on by

My wife Donna has been painting and sculpting for years (not to mention writing and composing), and has sold almost 100 of her originals worldwide so far. Problem is that she paints far faster than people buy them so she’s doing a bit of a clearance sale on eBay at the moment as we’ve run out of room in the house! 🙂

The 13 pieces are both figurative and abstract pieces of autistic art; some in oils, some in acrylics and some in mixed media. The starting bids on these pieces are just $10-$15 and have 4 days to go. You too can be a budget collector of outsider art!

DNA evidence not always what it seems to be

Posted on by

Bruce Schneier has posted a link to a story about the German Police having an interesting time with DNA analysis of a series of murders due to a consistent false positive result; Bruce writes:

The German police spent years and millions of dollars tracking a mysterious killer whose DNA had been found at the scenes of six murders. Finally they realized they were tracking a worker at the factory that assembled the prepackaged swabs used for DNA testing.

I hope this gives pause for thought to those who think that programs like CSI reflect reality and that DNA profiling is always right..

RIP SGI – now owned by Rackable Systems

Posted on by

Silicon Graphics (SGI) is no more, they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on April 1st and have just been bought by Rackable Systems. I don’t think this is an elaborate April Fool (and if it was I think the SEC might have a thing or two to say about it). Both Rackable and SGI have identical press releases (Rackable PR – SGI PR) on the transaction for a mere US$25 million.

FREMONT, CA and SUNNYVALE, CA., April 1, 2009 – Rackable Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:RACK), a leading provider of servers and storage products for medium to large-scale data centers, today announced its agreement to acquire substantially all the assets of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) (NASDAQ: SGIC) for approximately $25 million in cash, subject to adjustment in certain circumstances, plus the assumption of certain liabilities associated with the acquired assets.
[…]

Rackable has signed an Asset Purchase Agreement to acquire substantially all the assets of SGI, and to assume certain liabilities relating to the assets, pursuant to Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, under which SGI filed its petition in New York on April 1, 2009

I guess it’s better than SGI going under completely, but there’s going to be a number of customers now rather worried about their investments..