I, Cringely . The Pulpit . End of Life | PBS

In a comment not related to the article's title:

"Maybe what IBM is doing is turning itself into a business that is mainly NOT in the U.S. Those rosy forecasts could be based on an active plan to essentially abandon the bottom of the U.S. market in favor of the top of every international market. It hurts the U.S. employees (especially those in services) but makes sense in so many ways. The model it scarily reminds me of is Tyco, which went so far as to switch its incorporation to Bermuda."

On the title: Wow, the new networked world did save a lot on "mainframes" didn't it? What ever happened to all that savings by the way?

As far as IBM goes:

Why should we be surprised if more companies don't follow suit? The US remains the freest country in the world generally, but "Big Business" is a dirty word here. The feds pass laws, most of which require the states and private companies to do the heavy lifting.

IBM was great to its employees at a time when no laws required it to be. It was a competitive advantage that attracted some of the best workers. They can still probably do this in some countries, but not here.

Our country has made enemies of the institutions that made us great and sang the praises of those who held us back. Welcome American, your bed is made. Now lay in it.

Just in time for HillaryCare.

GOOGLE ANNOUNCES FOURTH QUARTER AND FISCAL YEAR 2007 RESULTS - GooglePress | Google Groups

"Q4 Financial Summary

Google reported revenues of $4.83 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2007, an increase of 51% compared to the fourth quarter of 2006 and an increase of 14% compared to the third quarter of 2007. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs, or TAC. In the fourth quarter of 2007, TAC totaled $1.44 billion, or 30% of advertising revenues."

A 125-Year Picture of the Federal Government's Share of the Economy, 1950 to 2075

Federal Outlays, 1962 to 2001



Federal Outlays by Category, 1950 to 2075


Conclusion

Under the assumptions CBO made for this 125-year picture of the federal government's finances, the projected rise in expenditures for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would drive total federal outlays well above the level that they have been throughout much of the post-World War II period. The core costs of the federal government--that is, ignoring net interest on the debt--could rise from approximately 18 percent of GDP today to 24 percent in 2050 and 28 percent in 2075. Left unattended, that steady escalation in spending could cause major deficits to emerge and thereby push the government's debt and interest expenditures to unprecedented levels. The total cost of government, including interest expense, could more than double as a share of the economy, rising from 19 percent of GDP today to 40 percent in 2075 (see Figure 3 and Table 3).

"I’m tired of Bush and Clinton families running America and want a change."

I think I can summarize your choice in simpler terms: you've decided to vote for a Democrat no matter what, and you don't want it to be Hillary. Fine.

If Jeb Bush were running and a viable candidate at this point your statement above would be a good way to disguise the fact that you eliminated a Republican vote from the start.

Most people, rightly or wrongly, choose the party they are going to vote for well in advance of all the debates. It only irks me when people pretend that they are exceptions to this.

Go to the CBO web site and look at projected Federal spending as a percentage of GDP (and note where the money goes, also note the optimistic assumptions about "other", finally note that this is ONLY federal spending). Explain to me how any of the Dems are going to address this.

Have the Reps done a good job of addressing it? No. But at least they acknowledge the problem and resist the temptation to add yet another exponentially growing entitlement to what may be the downfall of our way of life.

Amy Iorio: Yahoo GM's nepotism irks as layoffs loom

"Surrounding yourself with people you know is a great survival strategy for middle managers and up. Very little backstabbing among relatives (relatively). Rarely is it good for the organization however, for that very same reason. Objective and clear communications go right out the window. It should have set warning bells off all over the organization long before now.

This is probably more a symptom than a cause of internal rot, meaning there is probably much more of it than has been leaked.

I'm sure companies like Google and Microsoft are not immune either, unless they have strict policies to prevent it."

Surrounding yourself with people you know is a great survival strategy for middle managers and up. Very little backstabbing among relatives (relatively). Rarely is it good for the organization however, for that very same reason. Objective and clear communications go right out the window. It should have set warning bells off all over the organization long before now.

This is probably more a symptom than a cause of internal rot, meaning there is probably much more of it than has been leaked.

I'm sure companies like Google and Microsoft are not immune either, unless they have strict policies to prevent it.

DOD considers prohibiting personal use of networks

"Unofficial early estimates, however, are that 70 percent of the traffic on DOD networks today is unofficial and would be banned, said sources close to the department."

Davis will not run for seventh term

"Davis has earned a reputation as one of the few, if not only, members of Congress to understand procurement and technology issues. He authored several key legislations, including the Federal Information Security Management Act and the E-Government Act of 2003, and pushed for further security and privacy laws. He also helped hold agencies’ feet to the fire by issuing IT security report cards each spring."

Damaged Cable Cuts Internet in Mideast: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Internet outages disrupted business and personal usage across a wide swathe of the Middle East on Wednesday after an undersea cable in the Mediterranean was damaged, government officials and Internet service providers said."

Microsoft oversight extended to 2009

"A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a consent decree enforcing the settlement would remain in effect until November 2009. A group of 10 states led by California and New York had requested the oversight be extended until November 2012."

John Naughton: Thanks, Gutenberg - but we're too pressed for time to read | Media | The Observer

"The study confirms what many are beginning to suspect: that the web is having a profound impact on how we conceptualise, seek, evaluate and use information. What Marshall McLuhan called 'the Gutenberg galaxy' - that universe of linear exposition, quiet contemplation, disciplined reading and study - is imploding, and we don't know if what will replace it will be better or worse. But at least you can find the Wikipedia entry for 'Gutenberg galaxy' in 0.34 seconds."

Oh, here it is.

Facebook-Based Applications Can Now Run on Other Sites - New York Times

"The social network's new JavaScript client library, released on Friday, ends the restriction that prevented developers from running Facebook applications on other Web sites, the company announced."

Slashdot Founder Questions Crowds Wisdom - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

"Mr. Malda, 31, spoke from his home in Michigan about Slashdot’s new site, Idle, a compendium of links to non-technology-related video and news bits. The new site, which is currently in testing mode, is clearly aimed at taking some audience away from weird-news-of-the-day sites like Digg and Fark.com."

Nokia to buy major Linux company - ZDNet UK

"Nokia is to buy Trolltech, the company whose Linux-based Qt application-development framework is at the core of many PC and mobile applications."

JerryLeeCooper.com

"Gems from the net guru"

Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy - WSJ.com

"The Democratic epiphany about the political tactics of Bill and Hillary Clinton continues, with scales falling from eyes on a daily basis. 'I think it's not Presidential,' said former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, about Mr. Clinton's steady barrage against Barack Obama. 'It's not in keeping with the image of a former President, and I'm frankly surprised that he is taking this approach.' Mr. Daschle supports Mr. Obama, but how he could be surprised is another matter."

Oh, don't worry. The scales will be firmly back in place by November.

Wall Street Journal Web Site To Remain Subscription-Based - WSJ.com

"The Wall Street Journal's Web site, WSJ.com, will keep a significant portion of its content behind its paid-subscription wall, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said yesterday."

Phoooey!

Bill Gates Issues Call For Kinder Capitalism - WSJ.com

Energy’s zooming cybersecurity attack rate calls for management reforms auditors say

"The IG report said it took 10 months to learn that a hacker had stolen the names and Social Security numbers of 1,500 Energy employees from an NNSA site in 2005. Seven of 11 field sites audited, three federal and eight contractor-operated, have not identified which of their systems store such personal information or evaluated the risks of exposing it.

Energy's CIO will now draft a formal departmental cybersecurity strategy by March 31, according to the IG's report."

MPAA admits movie piracy study is 29% full of @$#% | The Register

"Let's be fair: the number '4' is only single button down from the '1' on a keypad. And the '5' is immediately to its right."

Jerry O’Connell Channels Tom Cruise | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

Pointing to this with a ten foot pole.

Risk averse I am I am.

Both send-up and original are equally hilarious.

What to do if you’re laid off in 2008 recession « Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger

All good advice, but several of the comments indicate poor writing/typing/grammar skills. While you might just get someone to write your resume for you, you still have to demonstrate an ability to communicate during the interview. As an interviewer I would have always found some way to gracefully dismiss those with communications issues. This is not a foreign language issue as many immigrants have better English language skills than native Americans.

I don't think Yahoo is a good poster child for your headline though. Yahoo, and several other tech companies have their own unique problems with performance that have nothing to do with recession, but more too do with continued bad management.

If we are in fact at the beginning of a recession (which is still questionable) the factors driving it will be the housing bubble, and the fact that an upcoming potential change in leadership (as in 2000) gives a lot of people incentives to talk the economy down. So some of this recession will magically correct itself right after the November elections, other parts will take longer.

If we are in fact also experiencing a tech bubble-burst, it may in fact be a continuation of what happened in 2000 which is I think a VERY healthy shift away from everyone's desktop being treated as an independent "data-center". Businesses should be able to get by with far fewer "administrators" than they use today, and home users should not have to learn the details of how a PC operates in order to do ordinary tasks. Web (meaningless number) technology will continue to move toward big server farms that will support appliance-like devices at home (or in the office) that are cheap enough to be thrown away when they stop booting (failure to boot being a very rare event). It's fairly easy to see which companies are helping this process along versus companies that are fighting it all the way. Don't underestimate Wall Street's ability to pick the eventual winners and losers.

Stupid Ways the Government Spends Your Money Number: 475

"The NASA Learning Technologies (LT) Project Office supports projects that deliver NASA relevant content through innovative applications of technologies to enhance education in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Research and development in each of the STEM areas are at the core of the LT mission. LT seeks to enhance formal and informal education in STEM fields with the goal of increasing the number of students in those fields of study. The LT is currently evaluating the development of a NASA-based massively multiplayer online educational game (MMO)."

The Internet Is Down -- Now What?

"It’s likely that the Internet will soon experience a catastrophic failure, a multi­day outage that will cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars.

Or maybe it isn’t likely.

In any case, companies are not prepared for such a possibility.

But then again, some are.

These mixed messages come from credible sources. The confusion stems in part from the fact that the Internet has never seen anything much worse than local outages and brief slowdowns. But could it? And if it did, how ready would your company be?"

I have some valuable thoughts on this, which are unfortunately too large to fit in the margins of this blog.

Alternate Google Usernames

Flashback, with new comments...

I'm terribly afraid that if I experiment around with these new naming systems in Google I'll end up doing something dreadfully wrong that can't be undone.

Hearkening back to my earlier comment (at the target blog), it would be good to have a sense that someone at Google is taking a long-term view of the Google namespace which is looking woefully used-up about now.

Should we not expect from a company that has outperformed the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft in so many areas a simple explanation of where their naming scheme is headed? Some hints to users regarding preserving the privacy of their e-mail addresses while at the same time making web pages and photo albums public. A few examples would go a long way toward explaining this to those of us who haven't yet intuited where they are going with all of this.

This is one area where Google continues to disappoint.

AOL adopting XMPP aka Jabber

"Proprietary protocols are things from yesterday. Today, Opensource technologies are taking over the world! AOL / ICQ has just launched a test server using XMPP, an open technology. This means that you’ll soon be able to talk to your ICQ / AIM contacts via Jabber. Google has already started using it. So who’s next? MSN!"

I guess anything is possible. One of the comments on linked blog post indicates MS is indeed working on some sort of Gtalk compatibility (as of Oct. 2007). I certainly look forward to only having to signed on to one thing to do IM, E-mail, and a few other things, but more importantly, I look forward to having a choice of who I sign on with without locking myself away from those who chose differently. E-mail ought to serve as an example of how everything else should work on the internet. I shouldn't have to be an AOL user to communicate with AOL users, or a Microsoft user to communicate with other Microsoft users. Clearly the technologists at these companies understand this even if the MBAs do not.

Google Sites Closer to Launch?

"We all know how long it can take Google to roll-out new services, but could these final touches mean that Jotspot’s successor Google Sites is slowly getting closer to launch?"

About time!

Yahoo to Support OpenID Single Sign-On - New York Times

I've posted something good about Yahoo. Day ruined.

White House discloses details of e-mail backup system

Too little too late it would seem.

Early Conceptualization of the Internet

Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK: Scrabulous, Facebook and Scrabble

"You may have heard that Hasbro, which produces the popular board game Scrabble, is asking Facebook to remove its Scrabulous app. As the name suggests, Scrabulous is an online version of Scrabble that has become one of the most popular Facebook apps - even founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recently admitted in a 60 Minutes interview that he enjoys playing the game with his grandparents."

Sun Microsystems Announces Agreement to Acquire MySQL, Developer of the World's Most Popular Open Source Database

Good news or bad news? Hard for me to say.

Is Sun going to re-make itself into an Open Source powerhouse? Should previous examples of Java, Open Office and the Sun OS itself serve as encouragement or a warning to Open Source supporters?

Analysis: Clinton, Obama, and New Hampshire by the numbers

Here is a large cut-and-paste from arstechnica, but I wanted to give an idea of how on-target this article is. Nothing much has improved since the Gorites and Kerryistas protested the last two elections. They go silent 30 days after the election is over, leaving it to incompetent bureaucrats to throw the babies out with the bathwater. Next election cycle rinse and repeat (curious mixed metaphor). Anyway the whole article is worth a read, complete with gory details (pun purely coincidental).

I want to draw a few general lessons from the story of the symmetrical percentages, and specifically from the amount of attention that these percentages got from traditional press outlets, blogs, and online news sources.

* Lesson 1: The Internet is full of people who have four things that make them dangerous, both to would-be election fraudsters and (paradoxically) to the larger cause of election integrity: computers, intermediate math skills, a mix of patriotic and entrepreneurial zeal, and the ability to publish in the blink of an eye. When you add a stream of evolving vote tallies to this mix and shake vigorously, the resulting concoction will produce lots and lots of foam. (Some of that foam may look just like the Virgin Mary for a bit, so you can get on the evening news with it if you're quick enough. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

* Lesson 2: The larger the cloud of numbers and statistical analyses grows, the less inclined reporters will be to actually download a spreadsheet and tackle the data themselves. They're just going to report what this or that group has uncovered, especially if it's juicy.

* Lesson 3: The e-voting activism world is an odd mix of patriotism, territorialism, and old-fashioned entrepreneurism. Basically, everyone is racing to find that remarkable scoop that's going to get them quoted on CNN.

Breakdowns: Flickr's big failure

(story about Flickr being down for a good part of the day)

I've been saying for quite some time (but nobody picks up on it) that Google will run its competitors (Yahoo, MS, Facebook) into the ground in the competition to house huge amounts of user data.

The beauty is that while MS and Yahoo certainly have the money to invest in server farms, these scaling issues will drive up support costs, aggravate users, piss off advertisers.

These train wrecks are more fun to watch if you are expecting them (and not using the affected service). Grab some popcorn.

PS: I don't find Flickr nearly so awesome, unless you go for the paid options. In fact the strange ways they make your life miserable if you just want to store photos for free is more annoying than their 3 meg inboxes used to be. Keep filling up those disks though! Storage is dirt cheap they keep telling everyone (which shows how much they've thought about the problem).

Other related story (which I may or may not have already mentioned) was a recent graph showing the speed of various social networking sites. Results show Facebook to be almost the slowest of such sites on the planet, while Orkut is just about the fastest. Myspace comes out somewhere in-between. I also read today that most of Facebook's growth is in Europe. That was a surprise. It makes things nice and simple though, with Myspace keeping the US and Orkut still going strong in India and Brazil apparently.

pathetic MacWorld keynote today! by Comic Strip Blogger

Not that I was in the market for any new Apple equipment, but I was at least hoping for something interesting to read about. Apple has reached a dead-end in creativity with it's computer products. I predicted that. Boring.

It would be more boring if it had happened when I predicted it would though.

Oh well.

Yahoo: The Parts of Its Sum?

More Yahoo suckage.

Apple Unveils Ultra-Thin Notebook - WSJ.com

"Investors seemed to be unimpressed by the new products: Apple shares dropped more than 6% Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market."

Yawn.

Myers fears Hollywood's end is near

Good news everyone!:

"'The strike impasse is speeding the end of Hollywood filmmaking and television production,' says Myers, who has been working in the biz since 1939 and is still an IATSE member."

EU Opens New Probes of Microsoft - WSJ.com

"This time, the commission is focusing on two core areas of Microsoft's business: its Web browser, Internet Explorer; and Office, its massively profitable software suite. The EU is examining whether Microsoft harms alternative browser vendors by including Internet Explorer with its ubiquitous Windows operating system, and whether it harms alternative office-suite vendors by controlling the file format used to store office documents."

Yahoo’s Core Value Is Falling - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

I was going to add my two cents to this negative mention of Yahoo (and Microsoft), but 30 posters beat me to it. Sometimes it's just good to sit back and watch the ball pick up speed.

Two Views of Innovation, Colliding in Washington - New York Times

"It is easy to see the imperfections of the current law and its impact on consumer products. For example, although the Apple iPhone has many superior features, its e-mail function is in most cases clunky when compared with the earlier R.I.M. BlackBerry. Industry executives say that’s because Apple has been forced to tiptoe around the patents held by NTP. Although the patents have been largely invalidated by the United States Patent Office, there are still active lawsuits that NTP has brought."

OSAF Announces Financing and Personnel Shakeup - New York Times

"'OSAF has been primarily funded by one person up to this point, Mitch Kapor. Our goal going forward is to modify our organization and our funding model to grow into a publicly supported community project, not propelled by one individual,' Parlante wrote."

I got this e-mail letter too. I didn't see it so much as a "shake-up" however, maybe it is something that should have been happening more gradually. If the only way Open Source can succeed is for philanthropists to continually dump money into it, then that is as good as failure.

It has taken what seems like a long time for them to get out anything that is usable. I had hoped for a quick replacement for the floundering Evolution, but have since just started using Google for everything. Maybe the whole project is OBE at this point.

It would still be nice for small organizations to have a viable alternative to Exchange (if that is still what they are calling it), but I haven't read much about such things happening lately.

I did see a brief demo of this project though and it would seem it blows the doors off of anything already out there.

Timing, if not everything, is a whole lotta thing.

Patterico’s Pontifications » I Hate Microsoft Word

"Word processing programs that think they know best: Has section 3553 of Title 18, United States Code, been copyrighted, or is the Second Circuit in this opinion issued today attempting to cite to subsection “c” of that provision, and some word processing program has turned the cite into a copyright symbol, “©”?"

My favorite among the 48 suggested remedies so far: Use a Selectric Typewriter...

In short, I am the master of that machine, and I have tried to use Word and other word processor programs, but there is nothing they can do that I cannot do faster on an old fashioned electric typewriter.

Laptop Project Would Welcome Intel Back - washingtonpost.com

"He called it unfortunate that Intel made statements that OLPC asked the chip maker to stop working on the Classmate PC. 'The picture that painted was one of OLPC being anti-competition, which is ridiculous. We'd like to see as many laptops out there as possible and kids have the widest choice possible,' he said."

KDE 4: a New Dawn For The Linux Desktop?

"Trolltech's Knoll noted that while KDE has a somewhat weak stand in commercial distributions and mindshare in the US, KDE does fare a lot better in Europe and in South America. Knoll also pointed out that recent OpenSuSE survey shows that 71 percent of their users are using KDE versus 21 percent GNOME. Plus, he noted, Mandriva Linux is mainly KDE based."

About time they let KDE out of the penalty box. With each new release of Debian I try Gnome, but end up switching to KDE. Gnomes only advantage is that it runs a bit faster on older hardware, but when that has been an issue I often end up running one of the really slimed down desktops.

I wonder how many people know that KDE runs MUCH faster from the command line rather than from the KDM Desktop manager? I'm not sure what KDM does that is so expensive, but the ability to login using a GUI vs character mode isn't worth a lot to me.

Potrzebie System on Google Calculator

I didn't know that!

Not only didn't I know that Google now supports the Potrzebie measurement system, but...

1. I didn't know how to spell Potrzebie.

2. I didn't know that it was a measurement system.

3. I didn't know that Donald Knuth invented it.

Learn something new every day (several somethings on most days).

Report: TSA Site Exposed Travelers To ID Theft - Security Fix

"The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform began its investigation into security lapses at the TSA's Traveler Redress Web site last year, after Security Fix and other media outlets pointed out that the site accepted Social Security numbers and other sensitive information from travelers without encrypting the data, potentially allowing hackers to intercept the data. Wired.com noted in its coverage that the site was so laden in spelling errors that it resembled a phishing Web site, the sort typically set up by scammers to lure people into giving away personal and financial data."

Mini-Microsoft Cutting Room Floor

Who da'Punk must have really liked my comments on the Windows Control Panel, he posted it three times!

HD DVDs Fall Like Dominoes

"Nothing has been announced, but Variety is reporting that the last two major studios backing HD DVD — NBC Universal and Paramount — are opening the door for a switch to Blu-ray. These studios have commitments to release some discs this year in HD DVD, but both have ended their exclusive commitment to that format, which is backed by a group led by Toshiba."

Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li's Blog): The "open" social graph on the horizon

"And that's the reason why I think Facebook has joined the Data Portability Workgroup. By joining the workgroup, they haven't committed themselves to opening up their social graph. I admit, this is a potentially a pipe dream because anyone who is in the position of power -- like MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn -- have little incentive to open up their social graph vaults for start-ups to exploit. But Facebook et. al. are smart, and know that unless they participate, they can't influence the outcome to of the open social graph to their benefit."

Or just totally screw it up.

Programs take advantage of open technologies but department needs to develop policies on use

“If the project is of a sufficient scale, you cannot get there without an open-source approach,” said Dewey Houck, a senior engineer at Boeing, who spoke at a conference last month about DOD’s use of open source, sponsored by the Association for Enterprise Integration.

“On the battlefield, the enemy gets a vote,” said Brig. Gen. Nickolas Justice, Army program executive officer for command, control and communications tactical. “The software has to change if the business changes. We want young sergeants and captains to be able to change things in their battle command applications as conditions change.”

FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Paramount in HD DVD blow

"Paramount is poised to drop its support of HD DVD after Warner Brothers’ recent backing of Sony’s Blu-ray technology, in a move that will sound the death knell of HD DVD and bring the home entertainment format war to a definitive end."

Official Google Blog: The flow of information at the Googleplex

I have no idea what this is about.

Time, the guys who were out in the parking lot smoking dope instead of attending class.

Got the link above as an example from here (click anywhere):

But I'm not focusing on the accuracy of horse-race predictions here, but instead, on the fact that the traveling press corps endlessly imposes its own narrative on the election, thereby completely excluding from all coverage plainly credible candidates they dislike (such as Edwards) while breathlessly touting the prospects of the candidates of whom they are enamored.

The Physical World as a Virtual Reality

"This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but our world as a virtual reality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be an information simulation running on a multi-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, if the essence of the universe is information, matter, charge, energy and movement could be aspects of information, and the many conservation laws could be a single law of information conservation. If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang would no longer be paradoxical, as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that whether the world is an objective reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve. Modern information science can suggest how core physical properties like space, time, light, matter and movement could derive from information processing. Such an approach could reconcile relativity and quantum theories, with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how it creates energy and matter."

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Clarkson stung after bank prank

"TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has lost money after publishing his bank details in his newspaper column."

He should have put it on Facebook, it would have been much safer as I think it is in fact not only against the law but also a Facebook TOS violation, which some people seem to think is more important.

Sony's Hirai eyes PS3 profit as costs decline | Reuters

"gaming chief Kaz Hirai hopes to turn a profit on the PlayStation 3 console business in the entertainment conglomerate's next fiscal year, fuelled in part by falling costs for the parts used to make the device."

Some of my "I-told-you-sos" are so old I can't remember them straight.

Here is what I remember: PS/2s were profitable from almost the beginning. XBoxes have never been. Whoever is making PowerPC chips is the winner since 100 percent of game consoles now use them, until they switch to something else, which doesn't seem to be in the near-term cards.

The rest, still not so obvious to some: Apple making their "PC" indistinguishable from all the others allows for a graceful exit from the business. Jobs, following Gates, Ballmer and others will finally move on to the rest of his life leaving the company to be run by luminaries such as Al Gore! And others.

The end is nye! Really. Get used to it.

An Interface of One’s Own

"Oh, Word. For 20 years, you have supported and tyrannized me. You have given me a skimpy Etch A Sketch on which to compose, a cramped spot on the sentence-assembly line — and then harangued me with orders to save or reformat as you stall and splutter and assert points of ludicrous corporate chauvinism (“Invalid product key”! “Unrecognized database format”!)."

Intel Resigns From Board Of One Laptop Per Child - WSJ.com

Alternate Headline:

Bully Takes Toys, Goes Home

"Corp. says it has dropped out of a non-profit project to sell millions of low-cost laptops in the developing world, citing disagreements with the organization's founder, Nicholas Negroponte."

Free the Scoble 5,000!! | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

"As goofy as it seems, it looks like Scoble has aimed perfectly at the Achilles’ heel of Facebook–the testy issue of data portability and how much control you should have over your own information online."

Record Number Of Data Breaches Reported In 2007 -- Security -- InformationWeek

"Foley reluctantly characterized 2007 as the worst on record from a statistical perspective, but cautioned that the T.J. Maxx breach skews the statistics. 'I don't know whether we're seeing more breaches because there's mandatory reporting or because there are more,' she said, adding that 39 states and the District of Columbia now require organizations to report data breaches."