That the Vatican and the Pope are marketing professionals par excellence is the theme of The Saint Business. The devastating article lashes out at the Pope and the Vatican. Sample this: The Vatican is the world's oldest, largest and richest multinational corporation. And perhaps the most rapacious. Microsoft, eat your heart out!. Intrigued? Enraged? Whatever, read the story

I love listening to Bill Joy, former chief scientist at Sun Microsystems. The first time I completely flipped my lid about his world views was when I read an April 2000 essay published in Wired magazine on Why the future doesn't need us. It spoke of how our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species. It's the kind of thing Ray Kurzweil talks about everyday. But you kinda dismiss it as sci fi ruminations. Not when Bill Joy talks though. Which is why, I positively loved this interview with him in Fortune where he talks about the challenges that faces Sun, the Internet and Microsoft.

Steve Ballmer's got an interesting argument on why developing countries like India, China, Russia and Brazil don't need sub-300 dollar PCs. And that they won't mind paying $600 for a PC. Quite honestly, I'm tempted to say buzz off. Do you even know what you're talking about? Have you travelled into the hinterland? But come to think of it. Maybe, I'm the idiot. I don't run a company that's sitting on $32-fuckin'-billion dollars of cash reserves. Just cash reserves!!!! That's almost half the forex reserves India holds. Precisely the reason why it makes sense to listen to Ballmer talk. The story's here on Always-On Network.