Carly Fiorina unleashes her Bada Bing!

Here at silicon.com we've long admired the uncanny resemblance between Hewlett-Packard boss Carly Fiorina and television actress Edie Falco, who plays Carmella in US gangster drama The Sopranos.

Has anybody ever seen them in the same room? Probably not, but that may all be about to change this week, as HP has booked the cast of the hit show to host a drinks reception at this week's LinuxWorld Conference and Expo.

The notion that Carly Fiorina is playing up to this Sopranos association certainly paints the company in a new light... and makes you wonder, whatever happened to Walter Hewlett? Did he get 'whacked' for shooting his mouth off? Probably not, after all he was a made guy. Even if Fiorina wanted him gone, he's family - whadda ya' gonna do?

After a 'sit-down' with Big Mikey 'The Capo' Capellas in May, Fiorina now runs all operations out of the newly merged families - using the front of a legitimate desktop and peripherals business to hide the real money spinner... which needless to say has a lot to do with her organisation's dealings down in Bolivia.

That's right, HP will use LinuxWorld to hail a number of successes including one with ASP Futuro Bolivia - which uses Linux and Oracle 9i RAC using four, four-processor HP servers to manage 50 per cent of the Bolivian pension market... well, what did you think we were talking about?

Also, HP will be using the event to announce a new Intel-based workstation, with pre-installed Red Hat Linux 7.3. Which probably goes to show - no matter how hard you try, no matter who you book there are just some things which will never sound cool.