Posts by James

English vocab poised to hit 1m words

Fortyneologisms

podintrafuckantagemeister

perbuzzfuckantagemeister

retrointrafuckomicstech

neoshockfuckomicstech

percocockantageeer

podenormocockarianosity

superbuzzfuckantageeer

circumshockfuckarianeer

superenormococktasticeer

retroshockcocktasticeer

superintrafuckomicseer

procofuckantagetech

perbuzzcockarianosity

superintrafucktasticmeister

neoshockfuckantagetech

retrointrafuckomicstech

pershockcockarianmeister

neoshockfuckomicsosity

percofuckarianmeister

supershockcocktasticeer

perintrafucktastictech

pershockfuckariantech

superintrafuckomicsosity

perenormofuckomicsmeister

prointracocktastictech

prointracocktasticmeister

neobuzzcockarianmeister

pershockcockomicsosity

podintracockantageeer

retrococockarianeer

retrobuzzfuckarianosity

circumcofuckarianmeister

circumbuzzfuckarianmeister

supershockcockantageosity

pershockfuckomicstech

neoenormococktasticmeister

podenormocockantageeer

retroshockcockarianmeister

perenormofuckomicseer

retrointrafuckomicseer

I know I have heard retrobuzzfuckarianosity somewhere before. Thomas Pynchon?

Itanium: 'A special cause for optimism'

Itanium Also = Windows and SQL Server

If you want to run a very large SQL Server-based database then Itanium is really worth considering. The only alternatives are units like IBM pSeries and similar. You can run Windows Enterprise Itanium Edition and SQL Server Enterprise Itanium Edition. The overall cost is much less than that of a Unix and Oracle configuration. The cost of SQL Server software is a fraction of the cost of Oracle for a similar configuration - up to 95% cheaper.

Admittedly the only real Itanium-baser server vendor is HP with the Integrity and Superdome series. But banish your prejudices when considering large scale database solutions for high-volume transaction processing.

Note that there are architectural limitations in Windows Server Enterprise Edition where a maximum of 32 processors/64 cores can be supported.

Storage systems: Reg readers speak

Riverbed?

What has Riverbed got to do with storage? Do the tables referring to Riverbed for storage mean using WAN optimisation to avoid using remote storage. Riverbed supply networking equipment that may or may not be used in a storage context.

Swine flu spam clogs inboxes

USD19.95 for Madonna to Get Swine Flu

A bargin at twice the price.

Scots to pioneer remote sex via glowing ring

One Word

Teledildonics

The concept has been around for some time. Look it up - it is a real word , albeit a neologism. It has real potential in this internet remote sex age. Remote interactive sex toys. Woody Allen meets JG Ballard.

EMC federates Symmetrix controllers in virtual matrix

Day Late and £0.674435 Short

These have been around for years:

IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/software/virtualization/svc/

NetApp V Series

http://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/v3100/

http://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/v6000/

They both provide for a unified storage environment for heterogeneous multi-protocol, multi-vendor storage systems.

AMD offers Opteron upgrade discounts

Utterly Pointless Pedantry

Two is Latin is duo not dual.

Four in Latin is quattuor not quod

Six in Latin is sex.

6-core should probably be seni-core from the Latin senus meaning six each.

For those who say it should be hexa-core, hex is the Greek for six.

I'll get my coat.

New York mulls terrorist cell phone jamming

UMTS Access Classes

GPP TS25.304 v3.12.0 5.3.1.3 and TS22.011 v3.8.0 4.4 describe details of how to determine if emergency calls are allowed in cells using the IE "Access class barred list" which is broadcast in System Information Blocks 3 and 4 (SIB3 and SIB4).

Network access for emergency calls is controlled by Access class 10. A normal UMTS user equipment (UE) is assigned an access class randomly from 0 to 9; this is stored in the Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM). A special UE may also be assigned an access class from 11 to 15, these would typically used by emergency services, network staff, etc (see 22.011 4.2 for details).

When determining if a typical UE (access class 0 to 9) is allowed to make a normal non-emergency call in a cell, the entry in the "Access class barred list" which corresponds to the access class of the UE is examined. If this indicates the access class is barred, the UE is not allowed to make the call.

When determining if a typical UE is allowed to make an emergency call in a cell, access class 10 needs to be checked.

In the case where emergency calls are barred in a cell, is there a need to check access classes 0 to 9 to determine if normal calls are allowed? It would seem reasonable that if emergency calls cannot be connected then all other calls would be barred too.

Just bar access to calls from specific cells to UE with access class of 0-9.

Intel accused of stealing chip virtualization, violating God's law

Long Sentence

He appealed in 1992 challenging the state court's use of his guilty plea. He is due for release in 2019:

Offender ID: 6242666

Offender Name: MATTHEW R YOUNG

Date of Birth: 07/04/1965

Age: 43 Custody

Status: In Custody

Scheduled Release Date: 10/01/2019

Location of Offender: SNAKE RIVER CORRECTIONAL INSTI

Race: Black

Gender: Male

Whatever he did it was serious.

Companies burying themselves in IT gear

I Wouldn't Hire These Guys

These are second-hand comments, based on the summary in this article rather than on the original but ...

1. Over the past four years, the companies that Compass studied saw a 5 per cent drop in the cost of PCs, but the number of machines they acquired rose by 18 per cent.

PCs have dropped more than 5% in price in the last 4 years. Where are these guys buying PCs?

2. Ditto for servers, which had a unit cost reduction on average of 66 per cent at these customers over four years, but volumes also more than tripled.

Any company I have analysed significantly underuses its Windows servers. Bear in mind that the penetration of virtualisation is still much less than 10% of servers. So companies are not looking for consolidation.

An 18% increase in PC numbers is not a capacity issue. It is a people issue.

3. Pacileo cited one Compass customer, a large commercial bank, that had a core banking system with 127 interfaces to a slew of applications; Compass recommended that the company stop adding their own interfaces to the software every time they added an ancillary application and buy a new core banking system, which required only 33 interfaces to be supported by the development staff.

Way to go. The most risky, costly, delayed and ultimately the type of projects than fail most are those involving the implementation of new core banking systems. With advice like that, these guys must be looking to offer a range of expensive project governance and other services that will fall out of such ill advised projects.

How about other options: SOA, message broking or other similar inexpensive options that will deliver real benefits more quickly?

4. "Organizations that effectively rationalize their application portfolios reduce overall spend by 20 to 40 per cent, enhance quality and organizational agility, and reallocate savings to implement more innovative and competitive solutions," Pacileo says.

Application consolidation relates to reducing the number of servers or server images on which applications run.

Using a large number or variety of applications can add unnecessary overhead to both application use and administration. Consolidating these applications can reduce this overhead by making applications more easily accessible to users and administrators, and also by decreasing the needed amount of resources, such as server time.

It differs from server virtualisation and consolidation because this retains the same number of server images but reduces the number of physical platforms on which the servers run by encapsulating the previously physical servers as virtual servers that run as applications managed by a virtualisation hypervisor.

Server virtualisation on its own may not be the best solution. It can mask underlying problems. The result is the same number of server images and applications, just not physical servers.

A comprehensive application and infrastructure consolidation view allows organisations see the bigger picture to identify wider set of cost savings opportunities. It identifies all the issues and can provide a business case for investment. It also provides a checkpoint before selecting implementation vendor.

Many of the approaches to application consolidation involve application and underlying business process changes:

• Replace old applications with newer one

• Consolidate many small applications with smaller number of more functional applications

• Replace existing individual applications with components of larger systems (such as SAP)

• Modify business processes to eliminate the use of applications

• Redevelop custom applications to use Web application server infrastructure and consolidate onto small number of shared Web application servers (WebSphere , WebLogic, etc.)

There is an cost associated with these changes that is probably substantial. Also, the timescale to implement application changes is long.

You can look at simpler options: SQL Server consolidation (using Polyserve), File and Print server consolidation using NAS (NetApp.IBM N Series, etc.), Citrix (use AppSense), etc. They all deliver benefits more quickly and incrementally rather than risky big bang projects.

Holy f**k, Microsoft covers up ‘undesired’ words

The swanky people of Scunthorpe are really fucated

A phrase that will arise infrequently but may cause some problems.

The IBM DS5000: Best in a field of one

|BM N Series = NetApp

IBM resell the NetApp as N Series - see http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/network/ - so they should win either way.

Peruvian football team has really bad day

At least they did not start eating their dead

while wating to be rescued.

Prince Charles declines Doctor Who cameo

Pass the Very Small Teacup ...

... so I can create a miniscule storm.

Sanyo beams as next-gen laser cuts it for 100GB Blu-ray Disc

Optical is Too Slow and Expensive

Optical is still an answer to a question no one is asking. The UDO write speeds are simply too low - 6 MB/sec. The reading speed is 12 MB/sec. The effective cost is still to high - a fully populated Plasmon 638 slot, 38.3TB optical library with six 60GB UDO2 drives, single SCSI Bus with a full set of media would cost about €112,000 or €2,900 per TB. Writing a TB would take over 46 hours. There is a manual over is managing removable media. You could buy two SANs and implement hardware replication for a lower cost per TB.

Boris to give out Olympic 'BlackBerries'

Bozberries

You could call them Bozberries - small annoying devices that cling to arseholes.

Reg hack insults the Parachute Regiment

The Old Ones are the Best

Thirteen dead but not forgotten: we got eighteen and Mountbatten.

EU abolishes the acre

16.118 Hectares and an F1 Horse and Donkey Hybrid

Why bother standardising? What is the need? This is just irrelevant, pointless change because people have too little else to do.

if it is not broken, why waste effort fixing it?

Using the same standardising logic, why not all speak one language?

Why can't both measures co-exist?

Mile = 1,760 yards

Square mile = 640 acres

Simple arithmetic thereafter.

Report fingers prints as ID scheme's point of failure

Focalism

This is just one more example of what is termed Focalism - focusing too much on the event in question and not enough on the consequences of other future events.

Projects, IT and otherwise, and those involved in these projects all too frequently suffer from focalism. Those involved consider only the focal event - the project - and do not consider the consequences of other events that are likely to occur. The projects acquires a momentum all of its own. Saying stop is not tolerated and seen as treachery and taken personally by those who have invested so much in the project.

In reality, there is no such thing as the point of no return in projects such as this. They can be cancelled at any time. They should be constantly reviewed to avoid the bias of focalism.

Gordon Brown simply cannot admit that he is wrong - on 10p tax rate, on car tax, on 42-day detention, on ID cards. He would rather spend more - such as 10p tax rate - that admit he is wrong and go back.

EMC CEO's ego has cost investors billions

Two Words

Virtual Iron

It is the only true VMware competitor. Unlike Hyper V, Xen, Virtuozzo, etc, blah blah, it has all the required features: HA, DRS, VMotion, VirtualCentre. Intel own some of it via Intel Capital as does SAP. The only major downside is that it uses hardware virtualisation features found in newer Intel and AMD chips and so you cannot reuse older servers when virtualising.

Someone needs to buy this company and then drive it as the only product that currently exists, works and matches and is significantly cheaper (about 80% less) than VMware.

Blind spot - the trouble with optical drives

Optical, Tape and Disks Costs and Performance

Optical performance:

Media Load Time 5 sec

Media Unload Time 3 sec

Average Seek Time 35 msec

Buffer Memory 32MB

Max Sustained Transfer Rate - Read 12 MB/s

Max Sustained Transfer Rate - Write 6 MB/s (with verification)

Optical vs. tape performance:

GB <---------------------- Hours ---------------------------->

Tape Read Tape Write Optical Read Optical Write

Time Time Time Time

100 0.2 0.2 4.6 2.3

200 0.5 0.5 9.3 4.6

300 0.7 0.7 13.9 6.9

400 0.9 0.9 18.5 9.3

500 1.2 1.2 23.1 11.6

600 1.4 1.4 27.8 13.9

700 1.6 1.6 32.4 16.2

800 1.9 1.9 37.0 18.5

900 2.1 2.1 41.7 20.8

1,000 2.3 2.3 46.3 23.1

Road map for LTO:

LTO4 (Dec 2006) - 1.6TB (2:1 compression) and data transfer rates of up to 240 MB/second, assuming2:1 compression

LTO5 (Planned) - 3.2 TB (2:1 compression) and data transfer rates of up to 360 MB/second, assuming a 2:1 compression)

LTO6 (Planned) - 6.4 TB (2:1 compression) and data transfer rates of up to 540 MB/second, assuming a 2:1 compression

The total costs of the libraries, including a full set of media, cards (in Euro unfortunately) and the cost per TB is:

Plasmon Optical Libraries Capacity Cost Per TB

24 slot, 1.44TB optical library with one 60GB UDO2 drive, single SCSI Bus 1,440 €4,900.00

24 slot, 1.44TB optical library with two 60GB UDO2 drives, single SCSI Bus 1,440 €6,800.00

32 slot, 1.92TB optical library with one 60GB UDO2 drive, single SCSI Bus 1,920 €4,600.00

32 slot, 1.92TB optical library with two 60GB UDO2 drives, single SCSI Bus 1,920 €6,000.00

80 slot, 4.80TB optical library with two 60GB UDO2 drives, single SCSI Bus 4,800 €3,800.00

174 slot, 10.5TB optical library with two 60GB UDO2 drives, single SCSI Bus 10,440 €3,200.00

238 slot, 14.3TB optical library with four 60GB UDO2 drives, single SCSI Bus 14,280 €4,200.00

238 slot, 14.3TB optical library with six 60GB UDO2 drives, single SCSI Bus 14,280 €4,600.00

238 slot, 14.3TB optical library with eight 60GB UDO2 drives, dual SCSI Bus 14,280 €5,000.00

238 slot, 14.3TB optical library with twelve 60GB UDO2 drives , dual SCSI Bus 14,280 €5,700.00

238 slot, 14.3TB optical library with twelve 60GB UDO2 drives, triple SCSI Bus 14,280 €5,800.00

438 slot, 26.3TB optical library with four 60GB UDO2 drives, single SCSI Bus 26,280 €3,200.00

438 slot, 26.3TB optical library with six 60GB UDO2 drives, single SCSI Bus 26,280 €3,400.00

438 slot, 26.3TB optical library with eight 60GB UDO2 drives, dual SCSI Bus 26,280 €3,600.00

438 slot, 26.3TB optical library with twelve 60GB UDO2 drives , dual SCSI Bus 26,280 €4,100.00

438 slot, 26.3TB optical library with twelve 60GB UDO2 drives, triple SCSI Bus 26,280 €4,100.00

638 slot, 38.3TB optical library with six 60GB UDO2 drives, single SCSI Bus 38,280 €2,900.00

638 slot, 38.3TB optical library with eight 60GB UDO2 drives, dual SCSI Bus 38,280 €3,100.00

638 slot, 38.3TB optical library with twelve 60GB UDO2 drives , dual SCSI Bus 38,280 €3,400.00

638 slot, 38.3TB optical library with twelve 60GB UDO2 drives, triple SCSI Bus 38,280 €3,400.00

The cost per TB of large scale tape libraries is less than €200, again with a full set of media, interface cards, etc.

The cost per TB of disk, including offsite realtime replication, is of the order of optical. So twice the capacity for the same price at greater speed and usability.

Optical is an answer to a question no one is asking.

Sorry for the crappy table formatting but I got tired entering TABs.

'Anaconda' 200m rubber snake generator scheme gets funding

Knobtastic

That's knobalicious.

Sun picks away at NetApp's patent claims

NetApp/IBM High-End Configurations

IBM N7000/NetApp FAS6000

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/network/n7000/appliance/

http://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/fas6000/fas6000-tech-specs.html

Simultaneous multiprotocol support for FCP, iSCSI, CIFS, NFS, HTTP, FTP

File- and block-level service in a single system

Upgrade up to 1.176 PB of physical capacity while avoiding service disruption

Support for Fibre Channel and SATA disk drives

16 TB maximum volume size

Broad range of built-in features

Multiple supported backup methods including disk- and host-based backup and tape backup to direct, SAN and GbE attached tape devices

16 GB to 64 GB ECC memory

512 MB to 4 GB nonvolatile memory

Up to 52 full-duplex 10/100/1000 Base-T Ethernet ports

Up to 56 4-Gbps Fibre Channel ports

10-GbE adapter card (optional)

Quad-port 4-Gbps adapters (optional)

Dual FC LVD SCSI Tape adapter

Dual redundant hot-plug integrated cooling fans and auto-ranging power supplies

with software:

FlexClone™, FlexCache, MultiStore®, SnapMirror®, SnapRestore®, SnapDrive®, SnapManager® for Microsoft Exchange, SnapManager for Microsoft SQL Server, SnapManager for Oracle®, Single Mailbox Recovery, SnapVault®, SnapMover®, LockVault™, SnapLock® Compliance, SnapLock Enterprise, SyncMirror®, MetroCluster, NearStore® Personality Option, CommandCentral™ Storage, Protection Manager2 , VFM® (Virtual File Manager™) Enterprise Edition, VFM Migration Edition, File Storage Resource Manager, SAN Manager, Operations Manager3, ApplianceWatch™ for HP Openview, ApplianceWatch for Tivoli®

Two of these replicating in real/semi-real time should be enough storage and business continuity for most organisations.

IBM woos Microsoft with iDataPlex oddity

Specification Information

For some light reading, see:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.idataplex.doc/dg9idp_r_serverpubs.html&resultof=%22%69%64%61%74%61%70%6c%65%78%22%20

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/topic/com.ibm.idataplex.doc/dg1bfmst.pdf

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/topic/com.ibm.idataplex.doc/dg9idp_r_rack.html

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/topic/com.ibm.idataplex.doc/dg9idp_r_hx.html

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/topic/com.ibm.idataplex.doc/dg9idp_r_server.html

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/topic/com.ibm.idataplex.doc/dg9idp_r_pdu.html

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/topic/com.ibm.idataplex.doc/dg9idp_r_dx340ug.html

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/topic/com.ibm.idataplex.doc/dg9idp_r_dx340pdsg.html

Spec.org benchmark results:

http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2008q2/cpu2006-20080422-04135.html

http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2008q2/cpu2006-20080422-04134.html

http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2008q2/cpu2006-20080422-04132.html

http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2008q2/cpu2006-20080422-04133.html

http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2008q2/cpu2006-20080422-04131.html

North Carolina targets WTF licence plates

OMG NC NFW WTF RIP WTG TFN FBI CIA

and so on...

YouTube rant missus hauled into court

Benny Hill

Was she the one that admitted blowing "Uncle" Benny regularly and then not getting a share of his estate when man died?

Paris - because even if he is a skanger, she is not an old, haggard, has-been old-man-blowing, money-grubbing skanger.

US hackette ponders jub-powered iPod

Energy Harvesting

See http://www.advancedcerametrics.com/files/File/articles/adcera_200710.pdf.

"Perhaps the most well-known of the

ACI PFC solutions have been those for

active sports equipment for Head NV’s

family of Intelligence™ “smart” tennis

rackets and skis. In these unique products,

the PFC acts as a sensor of vibration,

an energy harvester (converting

that energy to electrical power for the

dampening circuit) and an actuator to

dampen the vibration. The positive

result for the smart skis is better control

and speed, and the result for the tennis

racket application is enhanced comfort,

elimination of tennis elbow and better

control dynamics with the racket. A

number of other consumer-oriented

sporting and leisure goods are in the

works."

You could modify the garment to reduce bounce by harvesting energy to run a damper. This would remove some of the fun as well as making the bra around ten times its size with all the mechanical and electrical add-ons. Still a worthwhile project.

Bus-spotting paedo terror bust: Shock CCTV image

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Croydon ...

Irish man with a bag and a puffy anorak is arrested by Croydon fuzz harking back to the good old days when terrorists were terrorists - likely for Croydon

CCTV camera looking down the top of a passing hottie - unlikely for Croydon - hottie that is rather that innapropriate use of CCTV by slack-jawed operatives

Student steals traffic cone for bedroom - do they still do that or has this being replaced by installing meth labs?

Man buys steak knife in local shop - obviously looking to commit a stabbing spree

Many downloads software to recover images deleted from SD card - traced by IP address and house raided by SWAT team

Overweight doughnut guzzling (or donut or doughnought) police man gets heart attack from the excitement

Child takes photograph of another child with a mobile phone and is excluded from school

Motorist fined from driving at 30.000000001 MPH

Kate Moss does a line of Coke longer than the Brighton Main Line railway route which passes through Croydon

The blue plaques for famous Croydon scions - Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Roy Hudd, John Ruskin, Ian Wright, Peter Sarstedt (one piece-bathing suit, Aga Khan, HuH Euh Huh), Francis Rossi, Captain Sensible, Ralph McTell and many others - are stolen, melted down and sold to the Chinese for making batons to beat Olympic protestors

Croydon burberrylicious SUV driverette puts on her hazard lights and magically makes herself, her fat arse and her bloated machine disappear from blocking traffic

Is it safe to download al Qaeda manuals yet?

Pedantry

" overweaning vastness"

Surely you meen overweening or are you creating a new word indicating faster process for stopping BAA executives from slurping from the mammaries of the travelling public?

On a slightly more serious note, in my barely misspent youth, I used to buy large amounts of salt petre (one stone bags) from a local laboratory supplier and make home-made (not very powerful) explosives and sell them at school. Simpler times.

Editor's note: Spelling now fixed, ta. In mitigation we plead that a splendid lunch influenced the final sentences of the piece. And, we might observe, using saltpetre to blow stuff up rather than to make salt beef really is a sign of a misspent youth...

IBM's Power6 slaughters world+HP in transaction cranking

Real World

While TPC-C benchmarks are useful, they rarely reflect the real world concens of what is really wanted and what is effectively possible. For databases, this means Oracle or SQL Server. If you want Oracle, this means a UNIX server such as the IBM pSeries. If you want SQL Server, this means a Windows server. Itanium servers can run Windows Datacenter Itanium Edition and SQL Server 2005 Datacenter Itanium Edition and run it very effectively. The OS and SQL costs for even the largest Itanium server such as the HP Superdome is less than €50,000, because of the SQL server-based licensing model. The Oracle licencing costs for a configuration such as 32 processors/64 cores each running at 1.66GHZ would be extraordinary. Many organisations and very familiar with SQL Server and have personnel, skills and applications.

It is a very effective real world alternative.

Also, have a highly performing database server is irrelevant if it cannot handle the I/O load associated with the processing. A real world configuration will require a highly performing I/O subsystem with associated disk storage.

I have not been keeping up to date but the architectural limitations in Windows Server Data Center Edition enable support of a maximum of 32 processors/64 cores. I don't know how this will be updated with the new 4-core Itanium processors.

9/11 an inside job, says Irish pop folkster

WanCORR

Yes one more correct application of the phrase Shut the Fuck Up

NetApp shares fall on downbeat forecast

IBM and NetApp

If they can drive the IBM relationship hard, via the IBM rebadging of the NetApp units as IBM N Series (see http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03004c/systems/storage/network/) they should do much better. Unfortunately IBM sell NetApp as NAS and there are few skills within IBM on the more complex N Series. IBM prefer to sell their DS range. This, combined with poorly performing local agents/distributors in many countries just fulfilling orders to the large buyers such as Yahoo and Google, has contributed to flat sales.

The NetApp story is quite attractive, especially when combined with virtualisation and business continuity. Their snapshot technology enables protection against software corruption and the SnapMirror replication software is better than similar products from EMC and HP. Maybe they should try should modelling of price elasticity and see if dropping the software prices will increase sales.

HP in talks to buy EDS

Some Analysis of HP's Numbers

HP can't do services or software. They just do not understand. They just sell profitable servers and printer cartridges and barely profitable PCs.

Software and services account for just 18% of turnover with software at 2% - $2.1 billion. They consistently fail to get value from any software acqusition they make. People leave. The $4.5 billion paid for Mercury Interactive represents a loss.

They spent $10 billion in 2007 acquiring service and software companies. That's an additional $10 billion over their previous investments and existing business. That bought them $18.7 billion in turnover and $1.7 billion in profits. In any language that is a piss-poor return on investment.

Their profits are $9.6 billion - 9% of the massive turnover. They would be better off buying shares in IBM than being in business. They would make a better return.

35% of their turnover is still from PCs, mainly laptops - that is $36.4 billion. It only makes a tiny margin and drags down all the other percentages. As a business area, it is not worth the effort

Rather than spending billions on buying EDS, HP could invest the money considerably more profitably in building a EDS business unit from within. $12 billion would buy a lot of discounts to win contracts and competent staff to run them.

Lesbians turn on lesbians in battle of Lesbos

Arsebandit

I bet the inhabitants of the island of Arsebandit are watching the outcome of the case carefully.