Here is a common sentiment about the stock market: "No fun at all. As I have said before, I believe it has turned into one big casino largely divorced from its original goal of providing capital to companies who produce something of value."

There's a lot of truth to what "granny" recently said to me in an e-mail. Fortunately she also noted "FYI Granny's up 5.86% + dividends." That would give her a gain of about 10% in the past ten months since I posted Where should granny put $50,000, suggesting a very conservative portfolio for an uncertain time.

Not only has she earned a very nice return, surpassing her CD account by 9.5% (20 fold), but she was able to do so with a great deal less volatility than the overall market most of us have lived through.

Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ), which just had a very good first quarter, is set to continue expanding its consulting gigs with a new service called "Cloud Design Services." Sounding like something from a private kindergarten class, the new service has a heavy statement: that more computing is shifting into the internet and off the local server.

HP's new offering here will be to design private "clouds" companies can use to connect users and the information they seek using intelligent design unique to the needs of each business it consults with. This is something new -- and a step above "off the shelf" offerings by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) -- and it puts HP in an enviable spot: designing private "internet clouds" for businesses from the ground up.

Your e-mail account is a goldmine. Technology companies push hard to keep your data secure, but there are plenty of scumbags out there who always seem to find a new way to gain an edge over the guys in white hats. Phishers, in particular, are eager to find new ways to profit from your identity and information, and they're getting some new tricks.

Phishing scam activity was quiet at the beginning of this year, according to a report in USA Today, but these attacks surged 200% from May through September, says the X-Force team at IBM (NYSE: IBM). Webmail, social media and gaming accounts are their primary targets. E-mail access, in particular, is highly sought after, since they can be use to push out spam ... while bypassing filters.

These "virgin" e-mail accounts command top dollar: a digital criminal can pick up as much as $2 for a clean account from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Live, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Gmail, Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) YahooMail or AOL (NYSE: TWX). This is more than twice the amount typically paid for a stolen credit card account, according to Fred Rica, principal in the security practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Many webmail users actually do half the criminals' job for them, with 33% using just one password online and 48% using only a handful.

Raj Rajaratnam's life has just changed profoundly. The 52-year-old founder, fund manager, and partner at the Galleon Group has been accused of insider trading, conspiring with others (now named as defendants with him) to trade shares of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Hilton (OTC: HLNQ), and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA), among others. Rajaratnam generated $25 million in profits on these trades, but that's moot now.

Rajaratnam, who is #559 on the list of the world's richest people, with a net worth of $1.3 billion, now faces fines of up to $250,000 and from 5 to 20 years in prison. I doubt he'll be in the same slot on next year's list of billionaires.

Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) has a new champion: Dell (NASDAQ: DELL). The PC manufacturer is promoting the online sales force-enablement platform as a way to gain access to the hefty sums available in the technology services business. The deal would give Salesforce.com access to Dell's clients in the small and medium-sized business categories. Dell would sell Salesforce.com products and provide consulting services to help clients integrate the solution with their other enterprise applications. The dollars and cents of this union weren't disclosed.

Dell sees the margins of the services business and wants a piece of the action, particularly since the PC sector is low margin. Also, sales have been hit pretty hard as a result of the financial crisis. With PCs accounting for 60% of Dell's top-line, a bit of diversity isn't a bad idea. Currently, services account for only around 10% of Dell's sales.

IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) is a name many businesses know very well. The former largest computer company on the planet left the hardware game a long time ago to concentrate on consulting services and business software. But, IBM's next nemesis won't be a company out of Redmond -- but a name on the tongues of millions these days -- Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).

If IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) really does go ahead and buy Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) for a cool $6.5 billion or more, the two former adversaries could be joined into a powerful computing combination. One of its -- no, its largest competitor would be: Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT). With many powerful players challenging Microsoft's dominance these days (Google in the consumer space), here's another one. That is, if the merger speculation turns out to be true.

Hewlett-Packard, Inc. (NYSE: HPQ) has been on a roll lately. The company has basically battered Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) in the last two years as it increased its PC marketshare in the consumer and retail arena.

Now it has set its sights on IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), as it tries to become the largest computer service and consulting company in the world. It's already the largest by sales, topping $100 billion annually.

When Mark Papermaster decided to leave IBM for Apple, it sent a strange signal to many industry pundits. Why would Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) be hiring a dyed-in-the-wool microchip designer to run its consumer products division? Does it need help in the hardware engineering department or is it out to create another breakthrough in consumer product design to keep the iPod and iPhone cash cows alive as those categories age?

Although we didn't get an answer to those questions, Papermaster was forced to play a bit of tug of war, at least legally. IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) was able to convince a judge to put an injunction on his reporting to work at Apple due to a non-compete clause with his former employer. Papermaster has now countered by saying that IBM and Apple do not compete at all in the area where he will be employed at Apple. He's right -- in fact, IBM and Apple don't compete on any level at all any longer.

So, we have to wonder what IBM's beef is here. Some clauses in his contract with IBM are so broad that apparently Papermaster should not be able to work for any tech company for a year after leaving IBM. The non-compete portion of this contract states that he can't go to work for the competition, even if there is no competition in the product space. In other words, Papermaster's countersuit will try to find this section of his contract to be invalid due to the fact that IBM's interests won't be hurt in any way by his employment at Apple. Good luck on that one. Today there will be a meeting between the two companies to hash out details, so this may become a bit thicker soon.