Yeah, right. Do the cable news stations really think they still have credibility? Have they managed to convince themselves that the crap spewing from their gaping maws is actually untainted fact? They've misreported, embellished, and twisted so many stories over the past couple of decades that it's almost impossible to tell what's real and what isn't. I can tell you right now that CNN doesn't give a rat's ass about holding BP accountable for the Gulf oil spill. All they care about is their bottom line. They will report this story whichever way nets them the most viewers and the most money.

I've largely stopped watching the news. I get my information as factual tidbits from raw Internet news feeds. And why not? When you think about it, the BP story can be distilled into a single headline: "BP oil rig explodes, oil leaking into Gulf of Mexico, problem yet unresolved." Done. It's not necessary to have a stone-faced reporter, with a pulsing forehead vein, speaking emphatically into a camera while clips of black sludge belching from an underwater vent loops in the background. What the hell does this do for the average US citizen? Nothing. It just whips people into a frenzy, sows fear & panic, and gets them to keep watching.

News, in it's pure form, is dead, folks. The days of Walter Cronkite are far behind us. No longer does television news seek to educate. Instead it seeks to stir up emotion and draw forth primal reflex - a task that is best left to the fiction wizards in Hollywood.

Like it or not, we're careening towards a future that is based on cloud computing. I believe Steve Jobs knows this and is doing everything he can to gear Apple up for these upcoming "cloudy" days. I also believe that other companies know this, but are having a difficult time adapting to the paradigm shift due to rigid business plans. And why not? Desktop computing has been the de facto standard for the better part of three decades. Why would it be in danger of collapse?

That's the problem. Smart companies anticipate changes and adapt their business model to compensate. For example, fuel companies have begun to invest capital in alternate fuel technologies (hydrogen, ethanol, solar, wind, etc.). Think about all of those BP commercials you see on television: "Beyond Petroleum." They know that fossil fuels are not endless, times will change, and they want to be ready for it. Companies such as Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have not adapted yet. Microsoft is the biggest purveyor of desktop operating systems in the world, while HP is one of the largest producers of desktop computers. They have become fat and happy on the gigantic revenues of the desktop era. Now they see that the desktop market has become saturated and there is a global push to go mobile. I'm guessing that this is probably why HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion. They need to play catch-up.

Do I think the desktop/notebook industry is going to collapse and we're all going to be walking around with iPads and iPhones in five years? No. Cloud computing is not for everybody and it will not be adopted immediately. Heck, even I prefer to keep my personal files on a local backup hard drive. But the promise of perpetual mobile computing certainly sounds fantastic and the allure of convenience has a funny way of reshaping our lives.

Anyway, I'm just paraphrasing much of the information that exists in the above linked article. Give it a read next time you have five or ten minutes of spare time. I think it's a great snapshot of the future of computing.