Maybe Vannevar Bush's prediction of giant electronic brains wasn't so far fetched?? It just is showing up in a different form from the giant skyscraper towers he predicted. It seems like the progression towards centralized computer a la mainframes is trying to make its way back.

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism gives a scathing editorial of this article:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/01/woefully-misleading-piece-on-value-at.html

In summary, the NY Times piece has basic assumptions of how VaR works all wrong specifically that the models assume normal distributions.

And AMD is still shooting blanks at the year old Intel Q6600 which has hit the $200 mark on various deal sites. Even the AMD quads have their hands full against the old Kentsfield Q6600.