The prize for ultimate inefficiency goes to America. We have built in so many checks and balances that our 'leaders' are the most thoroughly hogtied of any on Earth.

My career at Microsoft really was getting in the way of my cooking.

We're more familiar with what economists call an English auction - prices start low and rise as people bid. However, there is also the Dutch auction, where prices start high and go lower until somebody bites. Movies are sold to the audience via a very slow Dutch auction, where each phase between price drops can last weeks or months.

Regardless of how it's done, transaction costs will continue to plummet as computers get more powerful. Low transaction costs are a wonderful thing if you're in the transaction business. They're wonderful for consumers too, making it cheaper and easier to buy things and creating new things to buy.

The ever-growing size of software applications is what makes Moore's Law possible: 'If we hadn't brought your computer to its knees, why would you go out and buy a new one?'

Software sucks because users demand it to.

The magic words 'on the Internet,' if inserted into nearly any sentence, seem to protect it from normal critical scrutiny.