“JAVA” is, of course, the ticker symbol for Sun Microsystems. The news is that Southeastern Asset Management, along with the subsidiary Longleaf Partners, has become the largest Sun stockholder in recent weeks by accumulating a stake totaling 14% (107,719,299 shares) of the company. There isn’t a lot of information out there on Southeastern; their public persona is as the parent company of Longleaf Partners Funds, a mutual fund company that “Invests primarily in mid- to large-cap U.S. companies believed to be significantly undervalued.”

A recent SEC filing on June 6th disclosed that Southeastern passed the 5% ownership threshold and thus was compelled to report their total holdings. This makes them the largest single investor in the company by a factor of almost 2x. The next largest institutional holder, Lord Abbet LLC and their Affiliated Fund, has slimmed down their JAVA holdings by about 25% in the last reporting period. Other institutions are also cutting back on Sun stock in recent months, according to the WSJ institutional investor tracking service. Insider holdings (McNealy, Jonathan, etc.) have negligible holdings relative to the public float and their shares.

Taking a cursory look at Longleaf didn’t reveal a whole lot. They are value investors, looking to buy solid companies on the cheap and then reap the rewards when the rest of the investment world catches up. They have large positions in a number of companies, but don’t seem to take an activist role. They also aren’t technology-centric; their holdings are widely diversified in a number of different industry sectors. So why take this big position now? And what are their plans for the future, if any?

A speaker (Kris Kaspersky – who I don’t think is affiliated with Kaspersky Labs) at the upcoming “Hack in the Box” Security Conference in Malaysia is garnering headlines with his presentation, “Remote Code Execution through Intel CPU Bugs.” Kaspersky is saying that bugs in Intel Core 2 and Itanium processors allow hackers to remotely control or crash any systems using the chips. In his session, he will outline methods that bad guys can use to convert systems running these procs into robots or, best case I guess, just crash the systems outright. He will also discuss his new CPU malware detection research, which was funded by Endeavor Security.

  Kaspersky’s most outlandish claim is that these bugs can be exploited locally or remotely regardless of any operating system safeguards or security software. He also states that there aren’t any existing workarounds or SW solutions to close the security holes. Hmm…this sounds pretty nasty and is, from a computing standpoint at least, end-of-world type stuff. But, before we give in to panic and start the looting and burning, let’s consider this for a moment…..

Don’t just download our papers and scroll through our disjointed rants… listen to Dan Olds, GCG Principal Analyst, talk data center hardware and strategy with host Ashlee Vance of The Register. 

From the The Register:

Episode 17 of Semi-Coherent Computing takes a look at the "white box killer" hardware available with Chris Hipp and Dan Olds joining yours truly for an action-packed discussion.

The show starts off by probing IBM's new iDataPlex unit and then moves to Dell's custom Cloud program. We also explore Microsoft's decision to go hog wild with data centers in shipping containers.

Overall, these service provider-friendly systems build on a lot of the high performance computing work done over the years at labs and big businesses. So, once again, we're seeing HPC goodness makes its way downstream.

Dan is so enamored with this the trend that he's planning to set up a data center van, which will let him go from customer site to customer site for on location analysis. "All I need from you, Mr. Customer, is an outlet, a hose and perhaps a storm drain," he said.

The show wraps up with a chat about Citrix's struggles to pull meaningful revenue away from VMware. We wonder if Microsoft will have any more luck once it gets its act together.

Truly a must-listen! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/22/scc_17_idataplex/