Chiquita notes

Oct 15 2011 ∞

Computer great Dennis Ritchie dies at 70


The New York Times reports that Ritchie’s body was found in his New Jersey home.While working at Bell Labs in the 1960s and early ’70s, Ritchie served as the principal designer of C and was the co-developer of the Unix operating system. C, renowned for its clear, simple language, would become a vital tool in website development, while Unix is the foundation for computer operating systems such as Apples iOS.”The tools that Dennis built — and their direct descendants — run pretty much everything today,” Brian Kerhighan, Ritchie’s colleague at Bell Labs, told the Times.According to reports, Ritchie had been treated for prostate cancer and heart disease.News of Ritchie’s death comes just days after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and, while their respective contributions to computer science might invite comparisons to the two, Ritchie and Jobs led very different lives, according to computer-history expert Paul Ceruzzi.”It’s sort of ‘apples’ and oranges,” Ceruzzi told the Washington Post. “Ritchie was under the radar. His name was not a household name at all, but … if you had a microscope and could look in a computer, you’d see his work everywhere inside.”Born in Bronxville, NY, Ritchie began working at Bell Labs — where his father was a scientist — in 1967, earning his Ph.D. from Harvard the following year. He retired from Bell in 2007.In 1983, Ritchie and his Bell Labs collaborator Ken Thompson received the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. In 1998, then-President Bill Clinton bestowed Ritchie and Thompson with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for their invention of C and Unix.

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Oct 14 2011 ∞

Credit agencies settle suits with Connecticut


Oct 14 (Reuters) - Connecticut’s attorney general announced Friday that he had reached a settlement with the three major credit-rating agencies over allegations that they underrated public bonds compared with their corporate counterparts.The deal ends a three-year battle between Connecticut and the agencies over the rating of public bonds.It requires Moody’s Investors Service, Inc, part of Moody’s Corp ; Standard & Poor’s, a unit of McGraw Hill ; and Fimalac SA’s Fitch to pay roughly $900,000 to the state to defray the cost of securing future credit ratings on sales of state bonds.Connecticut sued the agencies in July 2008, accusing them of violating the state’s unfair trade practices law by assigning lower ratings to public bonds compared with corporate debt.The lower ratings forced cities, towns and school districts to pay higher interest rates on the bonds or purchase unnecessary bond insurance to improve their ratings, the suits said.In addition to seeking monetary damages, Attorney General George Jepsen said the actions sought to make sure the agencies clearly defined the meaning of their rating symbols and applied the symbols consistently across all securities. These are now requirements of the Dodd Frank Act, which was enacted by Congress in July 2010.The settlement does not extend to separate suits Connecticut brought in 2010 against Moody’s and S&P over claims they misrepresented the analysis of structured finance securities.Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s did not immediately return calls for comment.A spokesman for Fitch said in a statement that the settlement “reflects our strong belief that Fitch’s ratings were fair and transparent.”

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Oct 11 2011 ∞

Wall Street open off, key European vote due


With all the other member states having ratified a pact to boost the size and powers of the European Financial Stability Facility bailout fund, all eyes turned to Slovakia.Slovakia is likely to approve a plan this week to strengthen the rescue fund despite opposition from a junior coalition party that was abstaining from a vote on Tuesday.U.S. stocks jumped 3 percent on Monday after a pledge by German and French leaders to come up with a program to tackle the debt crisis, lifting the S&P 500 above its 50-day moving average for the first time since late July, a bullish technical signal.”We had a good day yesterday, a lot of sectors participated. The only thing was that it was on light volume and yesterday was Columbus Day … The better indication if the action is real or if is going to hold is what does the market do today. How are those (sector) leaders going to react?” said Sam Ginzburg, head of capital markets at First New York in New York.”I have not seen yet a tremendous amount of long-only participation in this. It’s mostly hedge fund to hedge fund pinging stocks back and forth. I haven’t seen the commitment from the ‘long onlys’ in there from where I sit right now, that they are in there buying in any kind of big way.”The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI dropped 20.85 points, or 0.18 percent, to 11,412.33. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index .SPX shed 2.33 points, or 0.19 percent, to 1,192.56. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC gained 2.15 points, or 0.08 percent, to 2,568.20.More delays in coming up with a euro zone plan could unhinge markets already under pressure from signs the crisis was spilling beyond Greece’s borders.Financials were among the worst performers, with the KBW bank index .BKX down 1 percent after jumping more than 5 percent on Monday. JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) lost 2 percent to $31.63.Potentially adding to investor nervousness, Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, said the debt crisis has become systemic and risks to the economy were increasing rapidly with Europe’s banks in the danger zone.The euro dipped on caution over the Slovakia vote. The fortunes of U.S. stocks have been closely tethered to the single currency in recent sessions.Investors will shift focus to the start of the earnings season, with results due from top U.S. aluminum producer Alcoa Inc (AA.N) after the closing bell.Global economic concerns have sparked a precipitous drop in metals prices in recent months and led analysts in the past week to lower their consensus earnings estimate for Alcoa.

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