Things you will learn in Silicon Valley apartment living: One of my next door neighbors, Aaron, works for Yahoo. He says that in the past six weeks the labor market has tightened up here in the valley. "It's a lot harder to find 'stars' who are out of work." Yet another sign that the economic troubles are over? Maybe, but a lot of my friends are still out of work.

I just got back from traffic court and I see that Dave thinks it's a requirement to tell the truth in court.

Dave: Since when? And whos truth?

Out of the three cases I witnessed today I suspect that all three were "spun" by the defendants. My case certainly was. The lady who hit me back in October tried to argue that I was out of control of my car and that I was already airborne when I hit her.

The judge read her the riot act. He said "[Scoble] had the right of way and what you say about his case doesn't matter."

What I took away from the day in court is this: if Gates is spinning, that's his right. It's the judge's job to listen to the evidence and decide which spin he'll listen to.

In discussions with other lawyers they admit that they spin all the time. Does anyone watch the Practice? My lawyer friends say that show is sensationalistic, but realistic. Sensationalistic because an average lawyer might only get one or two cases in his entire career that are worthy of being on the show. Realistic because it realistically portrays what happens in a courtroom.

It's interesting how two people can judge an event so differently, though. The lady who hit me honestly believed she had the right to make a left turn and she perceived my car as already being airborne when she hit me.

Our eyes and senses are imperfect. That's been proven over and over again.

Am I able to tell you that Bill Gates is lying? Can you? Let those among you who are software architects and have access to Microsoft's source code throw the first stones.

Can IE be turned into an API? I thought it already was? VB'ers for years have been using IE's object model.

Can IE be made to be a module that can be pulled out of the OS? Of course it can. But, what is IE? Personally I always thought Microsoft was stupid for calling an HTML rendering engine Internet Explorer.

Is IE just the Window? Or is it the rendering engine underneath? Heck, AOL's client uses the rendering engine underneath (well, at least it did until this month). Microsoft's own help files use the rendering engine. So do other apps here and there.

Having HTML rendering technologies built into the OS is a good thing, in my view. Do we get upset because Windows includes graphic display capabilities? Heck, NVidia might be mad. After all, imagine a world where you have to buy a piece of software from Microsoft or Apple, and then you need to visit a display manufacturer like NVidia to see anything on your screen.

See, I can see both sides to this argument. I can see where folks might say Microsoft is in the wrong and I can see where Bill Gates might say the OS and the HTML rendering technologies are inseparable.

It's up to the judges to figure out who's version of the truth is correct.

Personally, if I was on the court, I'd probably side with Microsoft on this one. Any OS that doesn't include HTML rendering technologies today would be pretty lame. Hence, if they are forced to remove those from the OS, my experience would be lessened. I -- as a consumer -- would be harmed.

Why? Cause I'd need to go and download an AOL browser.

Which monopoly would I rather deal with? Bill Gates or Steve Case's? I can answer that one easily: I fired Steve Case from my computer seven years ago and I ain't planning on letting him back on any time soon.