Larry Ellison delivers cloud computing its annual spanking
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison brought his audience to laughter and cheers at the Churchill Club last week, with a spontaneous lampooning of people who throw around the current tech buzzword “the cloud.”
A year ago, Ellison told an Oracle OpenWorld keynote audience, ”We’ll make cloud computing announcements. I’m not going to fight this thing. But I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud.” To Ellison, talking about cloud computing makes light of… Continue Reading
Roundup: European leaders agree on rescue plan, Microsoft to release Silverlight 2 and more
Here’s the latest action:
European leaders agree on financial rescue plan — The move will involve the injection of billions of Euros into banks in Germany, France and other countries. It was spurred by a similar British plan announced last week.
Memeorandum Colors visualizes political bias — The new Firefox extension/Greasemonkey script identifies the bias of the different publications on political news aggregator site Memeorandum.
Microsoft to release Silverlight 2 on Monday? — The company says it has “a significant announcement… Continue Reading
Biotech chameleons: Quark Pharma aims for $81M IPO
(UPDATED: See below.)
For some reason, biotechnology is rife with chameleons — companies that suddenly and radically alter their scientific strategy, disease focus or business model, sometimes to recover from a major failure, and sometimes just to be whatever faddish investors want them to be.
Today, for instance, Quark Pharmaceuticals — now a Fremont, Calif., developer of drugs that work via a new mechanism known as “RNA interference” — said in an SEC filing that it now… Continue Reading
Silicon Valley’s search for Fountain of Youth; Thiel joins Ellison in quest
Peter A. Thiel, co-founder and former chief executive officer of the online payments company, PayPal, has pledged $3.5 million “to support scientific research into the alleviation and eventual reversal of the debilities caused by aging,” and has invested in the Methuselah Foundation, a Springfield, Va., a nonprofit started and run by a colorful but controversial expert (pictured above) in aging research: Aubrey de Grey.
De Grey, a 43-year-old English researcher says he hopes to “radically… Continue Reading