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ARMONK, NY, May 18, 2006 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- IBM today announced it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Rembo Technology, a privately held software company based in Geneva, Switzerland. Financial details were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2006. Rembo is a leading provider of software that helps organizations automatically install or upgrade operating systems on thousands of servers, laptops and desktop computers simultaneously, which eliminates the need for IT specialists to spend days or weeks installing software manually on each physical or virtualized computer. Installing and configuring...

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - April 10, 2006 - Think your phone bill is high? A Malaysian man says he nearly fainted when he got $218 trillion phone bill, and yes, that's in U.S. The man, Yahaya Wahab, says he's been ordered to pay up within ten days or face prosecution. The New Straits Times reports the bill was for a line that was supposed to have been disconnected in January. The unhappy phone customer says he can't wait to face Telekom Malaysia in court, if the company follows through with its threat.

April 8, 2006 Robots are on the march again into the last bastion of labour intensive industry - farming and horticulture. Researchers from Warwick HRI (the University of Warwick's horticultural arm), and its manufacturing engineering section, Warwick Manufacturing Group, are working on a suite of robots and automated systems which could transform farming and horticulture over the next decade. One of the best ideas we’ve seen in a long time is this inflatable conveyor belt developed for UK-based agricultural machinery company Aeropick. Due to an ingenious wheeled and inflatable system, up to 100 metres of powered conveyor belt can be...

DANVILLE, Va. - More layoffs were announced Wednesday at Dan River Inc. as the textile manufacturer eliminated 110 jobs at its Brookneal, Va., sewing and finishing plant. Approximately 300 workers will remain at the Brookneal facility, according to Calvin Barnhardt, Dan River’s vice president of human resources. A total of about 600 area workers will stay with the company - 300 in Danville. Many employees leaving work at the Brookneal plant on Thursday were unaware of the layoffs. Those who did know about the cutbacks worried about losing their jobs. “They’re just giving us bits and pieces (of what is...

A new system which provides fast online arbitration, mediation and conciliation services to help organisations quickly resolve disputes has been launched. The e-Dispute system, which has already been successfully piloted at the European Court of Arbitration and the Emilia-Romagna Chamber of Commerce in Italy, is now being trialed at a number of hospitals in the UK where it is being used to assist with claim resolution. Using e-Dispute, claimants and respondents can put their case before an independent online arbitrator (or "robot agent") who having reviewed the case will then set up a meeting between the two parties via chatrooms...

NEW YORK (AP) - John Diebold, a business visionary who preached computerization during the era of Elvis and Eisenhower as the future of worldwide industry, has died at the age of 79. Diebold died of esophageal cancer Monday at his home in suburban Bedford Hills, said a nephew, John B. Diebold Although Diebold is now hailed as a prophet of the computerized future, his zeal for computers was not widely shared in the 1950s. After graduating from the Harvard Business School in 1951, he was hired by a New York management consulting firm and was fired three times for insisting...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Supermarket checkout clerks are going the way of the bank teller - available if you want one, avoidable if you don't. Self-checkout machines, which let customers scan, bag and pay for their own groceries, offer shoppers a chance to avoid the lines at the checkout stands. "This is like an ATM for them. It's quicker and easier," said Jennifer Panetta, a spokeswoman for the six-state Harris Teeter chain, based in Matthews, N.C. "They are in pretty much all our stores." About one-quarter of grocery chains are trying them now, with some 34,000 machines in use in stores...

MMOKALEE, Fla. — Chugging down a row of trees, the pair of canopy shakers in Paul Meador's orange grove here seem like a cross between a bulldozer and a hairbrush, their hungry steel bristles working through the tree crowns as if untangling colossal heads of hair.In under 15 minutes, the machines shake loose 36,000 pounds of oranges from 100 trees, catch the fruit and drop it into a large storage car. "This would have taken four pickers all day long," Mr. Meador said. Canopy shakers are still an unusual sight in Florida's orange groves. Most of the crop is harvested...

A robot for "printing" houses is to be trialled by the construction industry. It takes instructions directly from an architect's computerised drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs. The precision automaton could revolutionise building sites. It can work round the clock, in darkness and without tea breaks. It needs only power and a constant feed of semi-liquid construction material. The key to the technology is a computer-guided nozzle that deposits a line of wet concrete, like toothpaste being squeezed onto a table. Two trowels attached to...

I hate my job. I wish I could live a comfortable life without having to work. Can the best and brightest Freeper minds devise a way of life in which nobody has to work, yet we are all living comfortably? There could be a technological solution to this problem.What if we created intelligent robots to do our work for us, while we all relax and enjoy life? The pace of advances in computer technology is increasing and a solution to the problem of having to go to work may occur in this century. My hope is that we will all...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - The shutdown of West Coast docks, unless ended quickly, could empty shelves in stores and malls and quickly shutter factory production lines across the United States and in Mexico, economists say.</p> <p>Millions of dollars in cargo sat idle Monday as workers were ordered off their jobs at the 29 major Pacific ports for a second day. The labor dispute between shipping lines and longshoremen could cost the nation $1 billion a day.</p>

June 21, 2002 ........ Fears for Jobs Could Bring Shutdown of West Coast PortsBy STEVEN GREENHOUSE ONG BEACH, Calif., June 19 — For decades, the West Coast longshoremen's union could boast that its members had some of the highest-paying blue-collar jobs in the nation. Workers who unload ships commonly earn more than $90,000 a year.But now the longshoremen fear that their jobs — and those of future generations of longshoremen — are under siege. Those fears could lead to a shutdown of all seaports from San Diego to Seattle on July 1, a move that could send shock waves...