With apologies to Warren Buffett, it's only when the tide comes in that you learn who can swim. With waves of growth on the horizon for the tech sector, it's becoming increasingly apparent that Dell (DELL), the declining PC powerhouse, cannot swim. So maybe it's time for Michael Dell (pictured) to hit the showers. The company's founder returned in January 2007, supposedly to save the company after it spent years adrift. But his performance of late has been so poor that it arguably represents a breach of his fiduciary duty to shareholders. What makes Dell's slide particularly troubling is the apparent strength of other companies in the tech sector, including makers of microchips, personal computers and enterprise servers.

"We think this is a Dell-specific problem," Broadpoint AMTech analyst Brian Marshall said in an interview with CNBC. "They've had some trouble over the last few years guiding their company from a strategic perspective."

Of all the slings and arrows Sarah Palin suffered on the campaign trail, perhaps the "most disruptive and discouraging" was having her email account hacked into, the one-time vice presidential candidate writes in her new book, Going Rogue: An American Life. She echoed that sentiment in an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity broadcast Wednesday night. At the height of the presidential campaign, a 20-year-old University of Tennessee student hacked into Palin's Yahoo email account and posted it online.

"That was quite devastating because I knew of some of the personal conversations I had that were in some inbox and I didn't know what was going to be out there," Palin told Hannity. "That caused a lot of disruption and even distrust within the campaign that was unfortunate."

The Federal Aviation Administration suffered a "widespread" computer malfunction Thursday morning, sending key parts of the national air traffic control system haywire and affecting Logan International in Boston, Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, and all three major airports in New York. Authorities said the pilots were having trouble retrieving flight plans. CNN reported that the same system -- the National Airspace Data Interchange Network -- also failed last year. All flight plans were routed through Salt Lake City. Inclement weather was also delaying flights in the Northeast. According to the FAA, the computer system has been brought back online.

"The FAA has not seen a meltdown like this in years," a Continental Airlines (CAL) pilot told his passengers, CNBC's Becky Quick reported from a plane stuck at the gate at Newark Liberty International Airport. Quick said the pilot told passengers the system "completely melted down" today at 5 a.m. EST, forcing airline personnel to fill out flight plans by hand.

When a powerful "sonic cannon" was not "effective" in repelling Somali pirates during a high-seas showdown Wednesday, armed guards successfully battled off the marauders the good old-fashioned way -- with firearms, said Vice Adm. William Gortney, who commands the Pacific region for the U.S. Navy. After pirates opened fire on the Maersk Alabama -- an American ship that was hijacked just months ago -- the crew first responded by deploying an LRAD or Long Range Acoustic Device. The dish-shaped device emits a directional stream of ear-splitting noise.

But the device didn't faze the bandits, Gortney said. The ship's four-man armed crew then returned fire on the pirates, who fled. "A well-placed round from an M-16 is far more effective than that LRAD," Gortney said. Right now, Somali pirates hold 11 ships and 254 crew.

Just over 100 years ago, the sociologist Max Weber wrote his seminal book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he portrayed the pursuit of profit as virtuous and described work as a kind of religious duty. The attainment of wealth was seen as the fruit of labor, a blessing from God in return for hard work, piety and frugality.

Weber comes to mind thinking of the recent comment from Goldman Sachs (GS) Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein (pictured) that the world's most successful bank is doing "God's work." It's hard to imagine that $16.7 billion in executive bonuses to millionaire bankers during a crippling recession is what Weber had in mind. In an effort to put its money where Blankfein's God-talk is, Goldman Sachs has announced it will partner with Warren Buffett, the very personification of virtuous capitalism, in a $500 million project to help small businesses.

During his short segment on The O'Reilly Factor Monday night, recently deposed CNN news anchor Lou Dobbs parried Bill O'Reilly's attempts to goad him into disparaging the Obama administration, but shed little light on his future plans. Dobbs said that in "the last 90 days," Jonathan Klein, the head of CNN, had made it clear that his vision for the network did not include "advocacy journalism" -- or Dobbs, a 28-year CNN veteran.

"Jon Klein and I talked about the issue of opinion itself and advocacy journalism and he wanted to take CNN in a different direction, and I tried to accommodate him." Dobbs, who graciously contented himself with $8 million to leave, also suggested that ideological opponents were responsible for an incident in which Dobbs's New Jersey mansion was fired upon.

Internet titan Google (GOOG) increased its Web search market-share again in October, while No. 2 Yahoo (YHOO) lost share at a "scary" pace, in the words of one analyst. Bing, Microsoft's (MSFT) new service and the No. 3 player, also registered gains, reported ComScore, an Internet metrics company.

Overall, Google's web search share climbed to 65.4% last month, up from 64.9% in September. Microsoft rose to 9.9% from 9.4%, while Yahoo fell to 18% from 18.8%. October saw the fifth consecutive share increase for Microsoft. But Google's share increased to the highest level ComScore has ever registered for the company. "Tonight's data was positive for Google and Microsoft, and scary for Yahoo," Broadpoint AMTech internet analyst Ben Schachter said in a note to clients.

Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, and General Electric, the giant industrial conglomerate, are finalizing an agreement that would create a new media titan anchored by NBC Universal. The deal would instantly remake the entertainment industry landscape. Negotiations are "moving in the right direction" but are not complete, sources close to the deal tell DailyFinance. Sunday was the first day of Vivendi's annual window -- from Nov. 15 to Dec. 10 each year -- to exercise its option to sell its 20% stake in NBC Universal.

Teams of lawyers and bankers huddled over the weekend. An announcement isn't likely on Monday, but it could come by week's end, according to knowledgeable sources. However, it's clear that the bankers and lawyers will make the deal happen -- it's what they're paid to do -- and they're looking to do it soon.

President Barack Obama is trumpeting the stern criticism he gave the military generals who hold dominion over Burma, the resource-rich South Asian nation now known as Myanmar, at a meeting of Asian leaders on Sunday.

The Burmese junta is one of the most loathed regimes in the world -- a posse of paranoid, megalomaniacal cadres who kill, torture and repress their people with impunity. A throwback to the 20th century's failed Marxist revolutionary movements, the junta relies on Burma's vast resource wealth to maintain its grip on power.

And it is precisely that wealth -- which the generals capitalize on through bustling trade with China and India -- that allows them to ignore Obama's entreaties for reform.

Federal authorities arrested two computer programmers who worked for convicted Ponzi patriarch Bernie Madoff (pictured), charging them with several criminal counts for their alleged role in the massive $60 billion scam. George Perez and Jerome O'Hara appeared in federal court Friday and faced charges of conspiracy, falsifying books and records of a broker dealer, and falsifying books and records of an investment adviser. The pair worked in Madoff's secretive 17th floor office at the Lipstick building, where the fraud was orchestrated.

"Jerome O'Hara and George Perez allegedly helped construct Bernie Madoff's house of cards," Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement. "The computer codes and random algorithms they allegedly designed served to deceive investors and regulators and concealed Madoff's crimes."