No accounting for taste 

I love it when Cringesters send fan mail. Over the years I’ve gotten recipes, flu cures, reams of advice, and offers of companionship from residents of women’s correctional institutes. But I recently got the best compliment from a reader who wrote, “Cringely is like the trash magazines at the checkout counter of the supermarket. What a waste of space in an otherwise hi-class [sic] weekly.” It’s been my lifelong dream to write for Weekly World News. Mom would have been proud.

Weapons of Mass Infringement: The SCO Group, which has yet to produce a single piece of evidence that bits of the company’s copyright Unix code were used in IBM’s Linux build, seems perilously close to having its $5 billion suit against Big Blue dismissed. And if it is, well, CEO Darl McBride might want to start thinking about a second career. Then again, maybe he can blame the CIA for providing faulty intelligence.

It’s Not You, Carly, It’s Us — Really: The real reason Carly Fiorina stepped down from the Big Chair at Hewlett-Packard? Apparently the company’s board told her it wanted to start seeing other CEOs. I’m sure $42 million in severance and stocks will cushion her fall nicely. However, there’s no truth to the rumor that she will be starring with McBride in a new ABC show, Desperate Chief Executives.

V Is for Victory: Cringehead Michael R. shares the news that, if you include numbers and garbage characters, there are more than 600 quintillion ways to spell the name of the drug that starts with a V and ends with a smile. And yet there seems to be no way to spell it here without triggering the spam filters of many of my e-mail subscribers. That kind of thing really gets a rise out of me.

Daddy, That Software Hurt My Feelings: UCLA researchers have discovered that computer users can be just as traumatized by rude computers as by rude humans. I understand that after hearing the news, thousands of Windows users began preparing a class action suit against Microsoft for two decades of neglect and abuse.

Got hot tips or Bat Boy sightings? Send ’em to cringe@infoworld.com and you may get a bag suitable for carrying hi-class magazines.