Today I had another go with Google Trends; a web application John 'Beautiful Mind' Forbes Nash would possibly drool over. I started comparing some of the programming languages, standards and aspects that are used in modern day web development and I was quite suprised by what it came up with.

The crack of the bat, the smell of the grass and the pain of losing your purchased content to DRM deactivation. In what can only be called the biggest bonehead move since Bill Buckner's error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Major League Baseball has deactivated a DRM license server used to verify your worthiness to play back video of games you purchased online.

What's the most exciting technology of the next few years for the enterprise? Forget folding displays and virtual worlds: Think open source ERP, say some pioneering information technology leaders.

Now Compiz, Beryl is all over the place and there are massive discussions about it. But I have a few doubts about it. First of all, how do we benchmark an interface, especially its efficiency. I would like to propose a few speculations that could hopefully evolve into some sort of quantifying standards of a desktop interface.

"About a week ago Wal-Mart began selling a $200 Linux machine running on a 1.5 ghz VIA C7 processor and 512 MB of RAM. While the specs are useless for Vista, it works blazingly fast on Ubuntu with the Enlightenment Window Manager. The machine is now officially sold out of their online warehouses (it may still be available in some stores).

With Wal-Mart reporting that it is sold out of the Everex gPC -- a $200 Linux-based desktop -- some are suggesting that a new day for Linux is dawning. But, said analyst Greg Sterling, if initial gPC buyers find that not being able to run Microsoft Office is problematic, the excitement around the $200 Everex computer could soon dissipate.

Blue Cloud itself consists of Xen and PowerVM virtualized Linux operating-system images and Hadoop parallel workload scheduling, all supported by IBM Tivoli server-management software.

John Picklo, manager of high-performance computing (HPC) at Chrysler, describes himself simply as an "IT guy" who's also a NASCAR fan. And he will be rooting Sunday for drivers of Dodge cars in the final race of this year's Nextel Cup.