IT Confidential: It's Time To Play The IT Industry Game

With all the name changes, strategy changes, and executive changes in the IT industry these days, it's a good time to crank up the old IT Industry Game. Let's play:

Question 1: Computer Associates recently changed its name to:

The answer is, of course, A. See how easy it is. Let's do another.

Question 2: Sony recently suffered a black eye for incorporating anti-copying technology into its CDs that:

That's an obvious one--D. Sony put its foot in its mouth with its recent digital-rights-management technology and created a consumer backlash that forced it to pull the offending CDs.

Enough of the easy ones, here come the hard ones.

Question 3: Oracle has begun to make available a free version of its database because:

So, while answer D may or may not be true, and C isn't true, B and A both are true, but A is probably truer than B--at least in today's environment.

Question 4: The Justice Department intervened in a court case on behalf of Research In Motion because:

The answer must be D--the BlackBerry has become too valuable a product to the legal community to let it languish in the legal system.

Question 5: Microsoft reorganized into three new divisions in order to:

The answer is A--Microsoft is running scared of Google and others that have gotten a big jump on it.

Question 6: The United States insists on retaining control of the Internet, despite pressure from the United Nations, because:

Though the correct answer is probably D, the politically correct answer is B, so we'll go with B.

That's it for this edition of The IT Industry Game.

I don't test well. On true-or-false quizzes, I'm always looking for "other." It's true I could use an industry tip, so don't be false about sending one--to [email protected], or phone 516-562-5326.

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