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I find it interesting that the growth in data is constant and should not be terribly affected by the economy. After all, we still produce Word documents, fiddle with spreadsheets, and get movie trailers from our friends. Yet somehow, enterprises are finding ways to cut back on storage spending -- a fact all the storage vendors I've met with recently have lamented. The data has to go somewhere, and it could well be going onto cheaper and cheaper boxes from the likes of Compaq. Or perhaps enterprises are getting smarter and refuse to make twenty copies of the latest Pamela Anderson JPEG.

I've always been a big fan of game machine technology. Game designers understand UI, pure graphics power and total cost effectiveness. And I've long been anxious to see these attributes applied to general-purpose personal computing. I think Sony may be just the company to make that leap. It already offers browsers, high-speed connections, hard drives and keyboards for its PlayStation line. Now the Japanese giant is offering Linux. In fact, there are two versions of Linux already prepped to run on the PlayStation 2 -- one from Sony itself and the newest one by way of Czechoslovakia. The downside? PlayStation Linux is only available in Japan.

Last week we talked about Microsoft crawling on its hands and knees, begging to bundle an AOL client with Windows XP. Well, shortly after that report ran ["Only the Paranoid...", talks broke down. The two monopolists are back at the bargaining table trying to craft a deal. It seems simple enough: Include the AOL software with XP, let AOL nab more customers and make it easier for XP users to get online. But with companies this big, nothing is simple.

With Cisco flailing, it appeared that Alcatel smelled blood in the water. The company was poised to buy Lucent and create an unstoppable service provider/enterprise market powerhouse. Lucent, more interested in a merger of equals, doused the deal. The Bell spinoff must have taken a good look at Alcatel's balance sheet. The French company expects to lose more than $2.5 billion this quarter. Deal's off!

Here's one more sign that the peace and love of the sixties are gone for good. Former free spirit Dennis Hopper is now hawking storage area networks, voice over IP, and VPNs. The edgy actor's photo takes up 75 percent of Broadwing's latest ad for no apparent reason. The ad actually works. It got me thinking, and I read the darn thing looking for a connection between Hopper and the Broadwing technology.