Windows HPC Server RTMs
Microsoft has RTM’d Windows HPC Server 2008, which it’s been pushing at Wall Street this week of all weeks for – get this – risk analysis. For what it’s worth Morgan Stanley has been working with Microsoft on it. Cray is bundled the software on its new $25k-to-start CX1 compact supercomputer. HPC Server will cost $475 a node.

3Leaf Gets $35m C Round
Virtualization player 3Leaf Systems has gotten a $35 million C round from LSI with follow-on investments from Intel, Alloy Ventures, Enterprise Partners Venture Capital and Storm Ventures. The money is earmarked for accelerating the development of the company’s enterprise virtualization widgetry and expanding its sales and marketing. LSI expects to collaborate with 3Leaf, figuring on tickling its storage and networking. 3Leaf previously raised $32.5 million.

Linux Foundation Nails Another One
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has joined the Linux Foundation and will chair the User Advisory Council. LF’s people say the move might appear to have “some dark irony considering the financial markets’ crash; however, the Linux Foundation and many of the banks with which it works believe that Linux and open source will be more and more considered as we move into a new economic environment.” CME is one of the financial services industry’s biggest users of Linux.

rPath Enables VMware Appliances
rPath says that virtual appliances designed for the VMware Ready Virtual Appliance Program can be developed using its rBuilder and rPath Lifecycle Management Platform, widgetry that’s supposed to – poof – transform apps into virtual appliances. The stuff’s also meant to leverage SUSE, at least just enough of it to run.

Shorting IBM Outlawed
After IBM asked, the SEC put its name of the new list of stocks thou shalt not short, at least until October 2 when the economy presumably stops being in freefall. IBM apparently qualifies because of its global financing arm. IBM hasn’t been a target of the shorts. At close of business Thursday there were 299 names on the list and according to the AP some of the companies haven’t a clue how they got there.

Google Defends Yahoo Deal
Google has put up a web site to sell its deal with Yahoo to the unconvinced and utterly opposed at http://www.google.com/yahoogooglefacts/.

Citrix Subject of Repeat Acquisition Rumor
Barron’s has been passing along the latest rumor redux, which has Citrix back being an acquisition target. Off and on the rumor mill has had Microsoft interested.

Financial Crisis Will Hurt IT Spending: Ballmer
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told Bloomberg Wednesday that hardware and software sales will probably be hurt by the financial crisis. Microsoft would use the slump, he said, to “invest more in our future than the other guys we’re competing with.”

Microsoft Just Saved $1.5b
That weeping and gnashing of teeth you heard is coming from Alcatel-Lucent because it won’t be getting that $1.5 billion in MP3 damages from Microsoft that a jury awarded it last year. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld a lower court’s decision finding one patent wasn’t infringed and Microsoft had a valid license to the other one from the Fraunhofer Institute.

Windows 7 Mobile Reportedly Delayed
Based on what Microsoft partners have been whispering in its ear and with no rationale offered, CNET says Redmond is going to delay the release of Windows 7 Mobile, its next iPhone-leveling smartphone OS, by six to nine months – from early 1H09 to 2H09. Microsoft has previously made no pronouncement about timing.

Dual-Core Atoms Move Out
Intel has released its dual-core nettop-seeking Atom chips, which run $40 in 1,000-unit quantities, 11 bucks more than the single core. The 1.6GHz Atom 330 has a 1MB L2 cache and a 533MHz front-side bus. It dissipates 8W.

Wistron Eyes Dell Plants
Wistron, Taiwan’s third-largest contract manufacturer, told Reuters it’s interested in those factories Dell wants to sell. Talks were described as “very, very early stage.”

Pioneer Latest To Sign Microsoft Patent Cross-License
Pioneer is going to be paying Microsoft for the patent cross-license deal they just cut. It covers Pioneer’s TVs and auto navigation products.

Six Years & Microsoft Documentation Still Lacking
A documentation-challenged Microsoft got its ears boxed Thursday by the lady judge overseeing its 2002 US consent decree. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly disabused Microsoft of the notion that what it’s produced lately “fully complies with the full judgment” and told it to cough up the systems documents so licensees could interoperate with Windows. Microsoft is predicting it’ll take over a year, months past when oversight is supposed to end.

HP To Expand Board
Come January Rohm Haas CEO Rajiv Gupta, whose company makes specialty materials, will join the HP board, which will then expand to 11 seats, 10 of which are filled by outside directors.

OASIS To Push Information Cards
OASIS has formed an Identity Metasystems Interoperability Technical Committee to push the use of Information Cards to manage personal digital identities. They let people authenticate themselves on multiple web sites without maintaining passwords for each site. The committee includes IBM, CA, Microsoft, Novell and the DOD.

Mess Spreads to India
Credit Suisse figures “a majority of Indian IT companies are likely to miss their FY3/09 revenues guidance.”