par

In its latest salvo against the financial industry, Anonymous claims to have leaked sensitive information related to Bank of America executives and the company's alleged effort to "spy and collect information on private citizens."

Par:AnoIA, a group that identifies itself as the Anonymous Intelligence Agency, said in a press release (PDF) yesterday that it had released 14 gigabytes of data on hundreds of thousands of executives at companies around the world, including Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, and TEKSystems, which the hackvisit collective claims was hired last year to spy on hackers and social activists.

The group says … Read more

Today's news that Hewlett-Packard may sack its relatively new CEO points to an ongoing identity crisis at the big PC maker.

The fact that the world's No.1 supplier of PCs has been trying to disown that very business and everything that goes with it--like its TouchPad tablet--then simultaneously holding out the possibility that it won't spin off PCs points to some very serious identity problems. CEO Leo Apotheker's potential ouster is the latest symptom, according to analysts.

First, a quick look at recent events that preceded today's news. When HP announced earnings back in … Read more

Flick Golf Extreme is the sequel to Flick Golf, a very well-made arcade golf game. But instead of the usual golfing experience of trying to work your way to the green in the least amount of shots, in the Flick Golf games your goal is to get as close to the hole as possible in one shot--ideally with a hole-in-one. Flick Golf Extreme takes the game a step further by moving off the grassy links in traditional golf games to taking shots in all sorts of strange environments.

The interface and controls in Flick Golf Extreme were made for the … Read more

Super Stickman Golf is a 2D golf game that's really easy to pick up and play, with tons of fantastical themed courses, interesting power-ups, and excellent physics-based gameplay. Though the game has a huge amount of arcade-like features, the goal is always the same: try to get the ball in the hole in as few shots as possible. The challenge is that it can be much harder than it looks.

Rather than your standard 3D layout seen in many golf games, Super Stickman Golf offers up a 2D platformer experience. The courses often have multiple levels you'll need … Read more

The computing industry is seeing dramatic growth in the use of "shared nothing" database architectures where each node functions independently of one another and is self-sufficient (Hadoop Distributed File System for example). For the sake of performance, contention among nodes for shared disk resources (SAN and NAS) is one of the things these architectures avoid by dedicating storage resources to each node, i.e. no shared disk.

While these computing architectures are best-known in the context of Web-based applications and development activities, they are no longer confined to the Web. EMC Greenplum, IBM Netezza, and ParAccel are all … Read more

Dell finally got its storage acquisition. On Monday, Dell said it is officially buying Compellent Technologies in a deal valued at $960 million, or $27.75 a share.

According to Dell, the Compellent acquisition will allow it to better focus on data management, thin provisioning and storage for cloud computing shops.

After a failed bid to acquire 3Par--Dell lost out to Hewlett-Packard--the company needed to do something to bolster its storage line-up and remain a top 5 player. EMC is the storage leader and then the field is bunched with the likes of HP, NetApp, and IBM. Dell was … Read more

A recent frenzy of storage acquisitions--with 3PAR going to HP, Isilon to EMC, and now Compellent to Dell--brings storage full-circle. Your next enterprise storage purchase? Almost guaranteed to be from a leviathan.

One of the once-amazing changes in the computer business was the birth of independent storage vendors. For decades there've been a few odd after-market and third-party storage vendors. But they were mere pilot fish congregating around the truly big, important swimmers: systems vendors. When you bought storage, it generally came from the same company that made your computer. That was the natural order.

But in the 1990s, … Read more

Hewlett-Packard said Wednesday that David Scott, who joined the company via the 3Par acquisition, will become general manager for its StorageWorks unit.

Scott was the CEO of 3Par. He will report to Dave Donatelli, executive vice president of HP's server, storage, and networking unit. Scott is already familiar with HP since he worked there before going to 3Par.

With the move, HP strengthens its management bench for its storage unit. HP will be looking to sell high-end 3Par systems throughout its channel. HP's storage portfolio includes the P4000 storage area network, StoreOnce for data deduplication, and the X9000 … Read more

Hewlett-Packard has finalized the acquisition of data-storage specialist 3Par following a successful tender for the company, according to a statement released on Monday.

The deal closed for a total of $2.35 billion, representing a cash value of $33 per share and significantly more than the $1.6 billion that HP first bid for 3Par in an effort to trump Dell.

The purchase allows HP to move into the enterprise-class public and private cloud environments. "As part of the HP Converged Infrastructure portfolio, which integrates servers, storage, networking and management technologies, 3Par solutions will further strengthen HP's ability … Read more