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Sun’s stock plummeted nearly 23 percent this morning to $6.68 a share in premarket trading

This follows reports in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal that the company rejected a formal buyout bid of $9.40 a share or less, and terminated an exclusive negotiating agreement, prompting IBM to withdraw its offer.

The IBM offer represents a premium of more than 100% of Sun’s recent stock trading price. Investors are sure to be upset.

The deal was opposed by a group led by chairman and co-founder Scott McNealy.

While the final terms of this deal may have been an issue, we suspect this may have been more of a problem with ego. CEO Johnathan Schwartz had solicited IBM and others early on. Dell and HP were slow to respond, IBM stepped up.

Now as Sun’s share float below $6.50 per share, one has to ask “what is next?”

Given Sun’s silicon valley locale, did HP regret passing on Sun and giving IBM a stronger foothold in the server market? Will McNealy and crew try to take Sun private? Have we all forgotten about Cisco?

We expect to see an outcry from the battered Sun stockholder’s (those poor folks who also hold Yahoo shares), IBM to return to the table, and perhaps Cisco to enter the fray.

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Palm Sunday seems an appropriate day for 110,000 workers at AT&T to go out on strike.

Communications Workers of America and AT&T are in the process of contract negotiations in Austin, Texas, said Jason Burns, president of CWA Local 6401 in Topeka.

The bargaining is for wages, benefits, pension and work rules, said Marty Richter, a spokesman for AT&T Corporate Communications. It includes land line operations employees from across the country in both network and call center roles, he said. The contracts don’t include AT&T Mobility.

Landlines include DSL service and network support. With a few gremlins and bad luck, the US could experience major internet outages from a strike as AT&T is such a large piece of the nation’s internet infrastructure.

Burns said the biggest sticking point is health care.

“It’s really silly for a company that made $12.9 billion net profit in 2008 to ask us to pay even more for health care,” he said.

AT&T spokesman Richter said although the company doesn’t expect a work stoppage, it is prepared.

I guess we’ll just have to see.

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Are you infected with the Conficker worm virus? Also known as the Conflicker virus?

This new virus is infecting millions of PC computers (running Microsoft Windows), is  creating havoc by turning off the automatic backup service, deleting previous restore points, disabling many security services, blocking access to a number of security websites and opening infected machines to receive additional programs from the malware’s creator. The worm then tries to spread itself to other computers on the same network.

The Conficker worm is also known as Downadup or Kido or Conflicker and is estimated to have infected over 10 million computers worldwide. While no one knows who is behind the Conficker virus, there is a $250,000 reward offered by Microsoft for the arrest and conviction of the worm’s authors.

An easy way to detect if you are infected with the Conficker worm is to try to surf to www.f-secure.com, Microsoft.com, Symantec.com or McAfee.com with your browser. If you can’t get to these sites, you very likely are infected with Conficker as it blocks access to security vendors’ websites.

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President Barack Obama’s first speech before Congress, February 25, 2009. Memorable, inspirational, and plain talking.

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