Stories by: Robert X. Cringely

The Vista Capable class-action law suit is the gift that keeps on giving.

Is the "world's biggest store" going through an awkward phase, or has it just gotten so arrogant that it no longer cares what its customers think?

CNET blogger Don Reisinger has an interesting take on the biggest threat to the success of Windows 7: Journalists. His reason?

The problem with writing about the endless Microsoft-Yahoo-Google mini-series is eventually you run out of metaphors. So I'll quote Michael Corleone: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

Game on, dude. In what it hopes will be a game-changing move, the Obama campaign is taking out ads in, of all places, video games. The Obamanistas are placing billboard ads inside nine EA games on the Xbox Live network, hoping to reach 18- to 34-year-old males who'd rather twiddle their joysticks than pull a voting machine lever. It's a smart idea, though I think inserting Obama into Grand Theft Auto and having him bust a cap in McCain's a** was overdoing it a bit. [Note to the ironically impaired: I'm just kidding.]

Google's ad programs have made it possible for thousands of small businesses to a make a go of it in the Net economy. Get on Google's bad side, though, and it's like waking up a hibernating grizzly bear -- you'll be lucky to escape with all your limbs intact.

More bad news for fans of the "I bought it, I own it, I can do what I want with it" approach to living.

I don't know about you, but all the news about Europe's Large Hadron Collider has me more excited than a kid in a candy store.

When stories collide. There’s some weird Cringely mojo going on. Three big stories I’ve blogged on over the past year have converged in a perfect storm of geekiness. First there’s the cosmetically enhanced political canine (aka lipstick pitbull) and current queen of Internet searches, Sarah Palin. There’s Wikileaks. org, the whistleblower site I covered back in February when an offshore bank tried and failed to cut it off at the knees. Then there’s Anonymous, who apparently got bored making life hell for the Church of Scientology and turned his/her/its attention to hockey mums. They’re all together in one story – the “hacking” of Sarah Palin’s Yahoo inbox. Kind of like when the cast of Green Acres showed up in Petticoat Junction.

Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen, Siegfried and Roy, Gates and Seinfeld. Years from now, they will be remembered as the some of the great comic duos of all time.

But officer, she told me she was 16: Among the many technological marvels on display at the recent Beijing Olympics, the Chinese added yet another: The magical age extender. It can instantly make anyone several years older; the catch is that it only works on members of the Chinese Olympic gymnastics team. Per The Register: