Hey, IBM want to impress me?

IBM is getting kudos (BusinessWeek calls it the "Rock of Gibraltar") for pre-releasing earnings to give Wall Street something to cheer about.

That impresses me as much as watching Safra Catz brag to financial analysts about the high margins Oracle makes off maintenance - as she did a couple of weeks ago

After the meltdown on Wall Street, and growing proof that Wall Street has few answers, you think we would have a rethink on our priorities.

How about a "We realize it is going to be a painful recession, and we will lower our 80 to 90% software margins to help our customers out"

Or "Let's ignore Wall Street for the next couple of years and make some real investments in innovation, cloud computing etc - things we should have been doing for years but the Street constrained us from doing"

I know  - I have been called naive many times before.