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Ten IT Stories We'd All Love To See In 2006

With that in mind, and in the giving spirit of the holiday season, here's my gift to you: a list of ten dramatic IT stories that would capture our imaginations in the coming year, if only they were possible:

-In a departure from the usual hum-drum outsourcing deal, the cast of Desperate Housewives takes over Wal-Mart's IT operations, and all hell breaks loose when Teri Hatcher starts sleeping with one of Target's IT execs.

-Sony shocks the world when it buys IT security firm Symantec, declaring, "We'll show you that we know security!" Sony then follows by quietly buying up the world's supply of scotch tape, just to be safe.

-Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, having purchased the NFL's New Orleans Saints and moved them to Los Angeles, launches a hostile takeover attempt of the Green Bay Packers, spurring an outraged group of Packers die-hards to dump 20 tons of melted cheese on Oracle's headquarters.

-European leaders, fed up with playing second fiddle, engineer a covert operation in which all of the computers in the U.S. that direct the flow of the Internet are simultaneously sabotaged, bringing the Net to a standstill and causing giddy Europeans to proclaim, "Ha ha ha, the Internet is now OURS, you greedy Americans!"

-Now in possession of a vast database of the preferences of every person on Earth, Google sends each one of us an absolutely perfect Christmas gift, causing even the most militant Google-bashing privacy advocates to mumble, "Gee, it's exactly what I wanted."

-With no more NFL games on his calendar until next season, former Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens takes his antics to the technology world, telling a group of reporters watching the shirtless Owens build a super-computer in his driveway that Microsoft would make a lot more money if Brett Favre, not Bill Gates, were leading the company. Gates responds by buying the NFL and sunsetting Owen's football career.

-Having tackled the pedestrian areas of online gaming and TiVo-like recording with the latest version of its Xbox video game console, Microsoft starts working on a next-generation version that does dishes and gets the kids to school.

-As a result of Microsoft's entry into the world of high-performance computing, IBM slowly turns from Big Blue into Big Green as it collectively gags, devolves into seizures, and eventually flips on its back, flailing about in search of a new area of focus, preferably one not eyed by Microsoft. Fast food, perhaps?

-With RFID chips finally implanted in the brains of the small target group they coveted, the aliens who planted the technology on Earth decide it's time to turn on RFID's REAL functionality by taking control of the cast of Survivor to ensure that at least this one time, the blandest person doesn't take home the million bucks.

-Weary from the overwhelming volume of RSS blog feeds, devotees of the blogosphere call for a WWF death match in which only a small group of winners will be allowed to continue their pursuits. However, they question their decision when it turns out the winners are all ringers hired by the cable news networks.

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