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The best method known for getting people extremely angry at you is simply to be right where they're wrong -- especially if you give them any opportunity to read a moral subtext into whatever they're wrong about. It's sometimes okay be a tiny bit smarter than the people you work with, but it's always devastating to working relationships to be proven right if that makes people feel you are somehow morally better than they are...

Last week a dashboard light in my car (a Volvo V70R) came on, leaving me groping for the manual while trying to survive traffic. As it turns out, an "ETS" light is a failure warning from something called the "electronic throttle system," so the obvious thing to do was find a place to pull off the highway and reboot the computer by restarting the car. That worked then, and it also worked a day later when the light came on again...

At a working lunch last week I had the misfortune of being seated next to some guy from Boston whining about the misery and risk introduced into his life by Sarbanes-Oxley. I kept wanting to ask him what he thought his job was as a CFO, since all Sarbanes-Oxley really does is establish a basis for legal penalties against financial executives who dishonor the job description by failing to understand, apply and maintain adequate internal financial controls...

Several weeks ago we were visiting my mother in law in Victoria, B.C., just across the strait from Port Angeles and close enough to Seattle to share some of its rain. She's proud of her Scottish heritage and rejoices in her ancestral stereotype when it comes to parting with a nickel. I was surprised, therefore, to hear that she's switched her grocery shopping to a chain rejoicing in the name of "Thifty's," which is anything but bargain basement...

My wife has a Dilbert cartoon on her office door in which one of the characters says: "If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how." She's a Mac user and they were worse even before they all became Unix users too ...

For the last three weeks I've been talking about the impact the new Sony, Toshiba and IBM cell processor is likely to have on Linux desktop and datacenter computing. The bottom line there is that this thing is fast, inexpensive and deeply reflective of very fundamental IBM ideas about how computing should be managed and delivered. It's going to be a winner, probably the biggest thing to hit computing since IBM's decision to use the Intel 8088 led Bill Gates to drop Xenix in favor of an early CP/M release with kernel separation hacked out...

Two weeks ago I looked at IBM's forthcoming cell processor architecture [Paul Murphy, "Fast, Faster and IBM's PlayStation 3 Processor," LinuxInsider, June 17, 2004] and last week speculated about the impact it might have on the x86 desktop [Paul Murphy, "Linux on Intel: Think Dead Man Walking," LinuxInsider, June 24, 2004]. This week, I want to go beyond that and look at the impact the cell architecture will have on the battle for server dominance over the next five years. IBM isn't the only company coming out with a new CPU technology. Sun's throughput computing is as revolutionary and as little understood, despite being closer to realization...

Last week, I talked about the cell processor expected from Sony and IBM [Paul Murphy, "Fast, Faster and IBM's PlayStation 3 Processor," LinuxInsider, June 17, 2004]. This week I want to think out loud about what happens in the industry if Toshiba launches a PC based on this processor into the Asian market and IBM promptly follows suit with a series aimed at the American and European markets. Such a machine would run Linux, be compatible with most Linux software, and come with a subscription license to a suite of IBM software built around Lotus Workspace...

Three years ago, IBM, Sony and Toshiba announced a partnership aimed at developing a new processor for use in digital entertainment devices like the PlayStation. Since then, the product has seen a billion dollars in development work. Two fabs, one in Tokyo and one in Fishkills, New York, have been custom-built to make the new processor in large volumes. On May 12th, IBM announced that the first commercial workstations based on this processor would become available to game-industry developers late this year...

The English language is a great tool. It's expressive, powerful, inclusive, and evolves through the democratic and open-source processes of accepting change on the basis of common usage. Great, but you know what it doesn't have? Enough useable swear words ...

This week's column is about the nature of the software needed to go with the elections administration hardware laid out in last week's column [Paul Murphy, "Using Tech To Fix Elections," LinuxInsider, May 27, 2004]. In brief, the idea was to ignore political reality long enough to imagine a system in which:...

What would your answer be if a selection team charged with hiring a new CIO to develop and implement an organization-wide "strategic systems architecture" were to ask you what management considerations most differentiate use of Windows from use of Linux? ...

The second largest pile of discardable studies are those whose conclusions derive from a single "big lie" -- an absurd assertion treated as unquestionable truth. This is the foundation, for example, of much of the third-party work offered by IBM in support of mainframe Linux with the pervasive belief engendered by years of exaggeration about mainframe performance setting the expectations that led to Microsoft's apparent embarrassment at having to call IBM on zVM performance [Paul Murphy, "Incredulity, Reverse Bias and Mainframe Linux," LinuxInsider, October 2, 2003].

In going through a stack of resumes last week, I came across one from a person, certified as expert by both Microsoft and Cisco, who claimed to have "architected secure network solutions" at a previous employer. When I recovered from the consequent daydream about flying lead balloons, I decided to sort the candidates according to claimed Linux experience -- and promptly found a problem worth warning you about...

In my recent commentary on the role dishonest and incompetent IT textbooks play in education [Paul Murphy, "Eight IT Textbooks, 4,031 Pages, 17 Mentions of Linux," LinuxInsider, April 2, 2004], I used the acronym PHB (pointy-haired boss) to refer to people who just don't get it with respect to systems. Unfortunately, that also demonstrated that I don't get the global nature of the LinuxInsider readership, because I didn't stop to think that not everybody gets the Dilbert cartoons and so a lot of people wouldn't grok the reference...

Two weeks ago, I wondered out loud about the top 10 worst IT business decisions ever made and nominated HP's decision to follow DEC down the road to oblivion for top spot. Today I'd like to suggest that the U.S. Defense Department's continued use of Microsoft's software is likely to top a future list of this kind ...

Sometimes bitter humor is the only sensible response to absurd injustice. A few years ago, for example, a lot of frustrated Apple fans were sure that if Steve Jobs walked across San Francisco Bay, the PC press would thunder "Jobs Can't Swim!" and The Wall Street Journal would editorialize the experience as a business disaster from which Apple should never hope to recover...

About a month ago we had some people over for dinner and the discussion, at least on my side of the table, drifted to top-10 lists of the Letterman variety. What had happened to make that topical was that Canada's entry into the late-night talk-show format had just been cancelled and the local papers were snitting about an American talk show host whose "insult puppet" had taken a round out of some walking embarrassment from Quebec.

Want to know why most business analysts and venture capitalists simply don't get it with respect to Unix? Take a look at the computer books they study while working toward their MBA, financial analysis certificate or accounting designation, and you'll understand that their ignorance isn't entirely their fault ...

Paul Murphy appeared on scene immediately -- arriving in a Solaris-powered personal helicopter -- to counter the naysaying. "The friendship between Stallman and Gates is the only hope computing has," said Murphy. "Unless, of course, Bill Joy comes back to Sun." "Besides," said...