Matt Asay has offered a rather strange post noting that if history had been different the roles of IBM and Microsoft would be reversed. If history were different I’d be George Clooney. It’s not. This is Clooney’s good fortune. Matt’s point is that, in future work, Microso...

Once upon a time I was going to be a lawyer. One reason I didn’t go that way was to avoid running down rabbit holes like the one our own Jason Perlow offered us Thursday. (This puzzle called Down the Rabbit Hole is now on sale over at Legendary Toys.) Microsoft owns FAT32, but it didn’t ...

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 10 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy. A quiet economic war is now being fought and the future of Europe hangs in the balance. As with much of the Cold War this struggle is mostly happening in secret. Unlike the Cold War (until, as ...

Continuing its effort to get by with a little help from its friends, Nokia released a new version of its Qt user interface framework and Qt Creator, an integrated development environment (IDE). The new software is offered under the Lesser GPL for the first time, as well as the main GPL and two comme...

How The Grinch Stole Christmas I have always been a sucker for The Grinch That Stole Christmas. Not the Jim Carrey live-action version, but the Chuck Jones cartoon, which uses all of Dr. Seuss' original artwork and concepts. A version of that story may be playing out right in front of us. I did not ...

Lost in this clip from the 1958 movie "Teacher's Pet" is the class war embedded in the plot. Clark Gable (right) plays a newspaper editor who considers journalism a trade, Doris Day a journalism professor who considers it a profession. In the end Gable's boss is flattered and the two sides compromis...

AIG may be the most unpopular bailout ever. With Wall Street. With Main Street. With the people. Probably even with the President. Yet it is absolutely essential. Here is why. AIG created a ton of what I call Confederate Money. They insured crap that was then called gold. When the gold turned back i...

When I wrote my book about Moore’s Law early this decade I knew there were many areas where Moore’s Law did not apply. Software for one. Training for another. (Picture from Yes-Minister.com.) Government is a third. In the U.S. Constitution this is a feature and not a bug. The three branc...

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 9 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy. At ZDNet Healthcare I get this kind of crap all the time: obama is a liar and traitor to his oath of office. dems are traitors to the US Constitution, helped by RINOs. the world will pay the pri...

Novell is now facing the consequences of leaving its fate in another company’s hands. (Picture from OS2Voice.org.) Its terrible horrible, no good, very bad quarter was driven partly by its troubles in the proprietary market, partly by its failure to line up the big Linux licensing deals that c...