A Victim of Moore's Law. To no one's surprise, SGI declared Chapter 11 and its assets were purchased by Rackable Systems. Yet another object lesson on the fate of those who end up making specialty computing hardware. SGI was of course formerly Silicon Graphics, king of CGI before that was swallowed up by renderfarms of commodity hardware. It made a stab at transitioning to a server company in the mid-90s (their brochures were awesome!), but didn't have the well-tested software platform of Sun. If open source had been as powerful then as now, the story might have ended differently, but SGI ended up slowly squeezed into a high-performance niche selling to government agencies among others, and then out entirely. SGI leaves a legacy of graphics pioneering, and some pretty nice office buildings north of 101.
Out from under the TARP. Unsurprisingly, good banks that took bailout money from the government have started giving it back, now that the strings attached are apparent. If you're an investor, not a borrower, that's good news as it's now obvious that TARP banks are not run for the benefit of depositors, or stock or bond holders, but for polticians and their mob appeal. Let's hope this sets a trend.
Political Legacies. Zimbabwe: Grubbing for gold to survive. Detroit: 50% illiteracy. Urban prairies. Human-built cages for the human spirit. Just the saddest thing in the world.
It's the revolutionaries that need the new media. Mapping the Tax Day Tea Parties. Simon & Garfunkel meet the Founding Fathers. (HT: Michelle Malkin)