Twitter co-founder and CEO Biz Stone said Thursday that Rupert Murdoch's potential plan to block Google from searching New Corp.'s (NWS) websites is doomed to fail. Murdoch has accused Google (GOOG) of stealing content from his publications, which include The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post in the U.S., and The Times and The Sun in the United Kingdom. The cantankerous tycoon said last week that blocking Google could be part of his strategy to get more people to pay for content online.

Here's a young man, all of 35, who runs a company that makes no money, telling an old man, 78, who runs companies that have made billions, that he is wrong. But while it's easy to dismiss Stone's comments as youthful bravado, I think he's giving Murdoch some valuable advice.

My friend has a Tesla Roadster. For those who are unfamiliar with Tesla Motors, the Roadster is the Ferrari of the electric-vehicle world, a high-performance two-seater with more sex appeal than Mae West. How ironic, then, that my friend pines for her old Honda Insight, a dinky little hybrid that has been a commercial failure but remains a cult favorite among the green car set. Why would any sane, hedonistic California resident wish their Ferrari were a Chevy Chevette?

Because the Insight had a wonderful feature that told her how efficiently she was driving. That feature was a light on her dash that glowed green when she was driving smoothly, braking gradually, and accelerating at a moderate piece. It glowed red when she drove like a bat out of hell, braked hard, and turned sharply. While driving her clunky little Insight, her focus was on how to make that light stay green.

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."

Several years ago, when I was doing research for hedge funds, I spent a month talking to Autodesk (ADSK) resellers. Autodesk's AutoCAD software suite is the standard tool used by designers and architects in the construction trade, and it dominates its market much like Adobe's Creative Suite dominates the print, graphic and interactive design fields. Its resellers are the hundreds of consulting organizations and systems integrators that sell Autodesk licenses to customers in the construction business. Like many big software companies, Autodesk relies on a huge reseller channel for the majority of its sales volume.

What my favorite resellers all told me was that they like to play construction-related stocks based on what they see happening at Autodesk, which serves all segments of the construction trade including building, civil engineering, office building design, and factory design.

Nancy Floyd was early to the greentech investing game. A prominent venture capitalist, she founded and remains the managing director of Nth Power, an early-stage venture capital fund based in San Francisco. Nth Power, a $180 million fund, has seen a number of successful exits, including companies specialized in biofuels and "smart" meters.

More than a quarter century ago, Floyd founded NFC Energy, one of the country's first wind development companies. She has also been active in non-profit energy projects, such as home audits, and sat on the Vermont Public Uitlities Commision. These days, she makes bets on the future of greentech. I sat down to talk with her in San Francisco. Here's an edited transcript of our conversation:

Dell (DELL) said Thursday that its net income dropped 54% in the latest quarter amid signs the company isn't fully benefiting from the computer industry's fledgling recovery. Dell's numbers missed Wall Street's forecasts, and the shares fell almost 6% in extended trading.

In the last quarter, Dell lost its ranking as the world's No. 2 personal computer maker, a slot now held by Taiwan's Acer Inc. Dell rivals such as Acer and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) have stolen market share in part by exploiting their bigger presence in retail stores. That has been a big weapon because consumer interest in little laptops called "netbooks" has helped the PC industry start to pull out of its worst slump in years.

Google (GOOG) likes to blow up entire industries. Two weeks ago, the search giant dropped a bomb on the GPS industry with the release of its free and open-source voice-activated navigation app -- sorry, Garmin (GRMN) and TomTom. Google is also in the process of blowing up the productivity applications business with its Google Apps offering, a suite of online email, word processing and other tools that costs a fraction of the price of Windows Office and other Microsoft (MSFT) software.

Today, Google's new Chrome browser-based OS came into clearer focus, and from the looks of it, Google may be en route to blowing up a handful of other businesses.

AstraZeneca (AZN) has had a good week with its anticlotting drug Brilinta (ticagrelor). It impressed many observers by announcing positive results of a late-stage head-to-head study and a mid-stage study for Brilinta, and on Thursday, it said it had filed for Food and Drug Administration approval. Brilinta could be on the way to becoming a megablockbuster drug.

Study results for the experimental drug -- which fights acute coronary syndrome -- were first presented Sunday. For the study's 8,430 sickest patients, those taking the drug suffered fewer serious cardiovascular events (or deaths) than those taking Plavix, from Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) and Sanofi-Aventis (SNY).

Facebook looks like its worth close to $10 billion right now, based on actual transactions in the stock. The social networking site has seen its shares surge on an exchange for private companies, suggesting that the company is perceived to be headed in the right direction. Of course, private companies don't have to disclose all their dirty laundry, so assume that the current "market" value is based on only the rosiest of impressions. Some see this as a leading indicator of a Facebook IPO, which is bound to ignite unparalleled excitement.

There's room for a little common sense, though, and investors should take advantage of it. Facebook remains down 33% from its 2007 peak value of $15 billion, and the recent trading activity implies a value slightly below that defined by the latest investment in the company. It probably makes sense to keep the corks in the champagne bottles a little bit longer, but only because the vintage isn't quite right yet.

Two weeks ago, in a post about AT&T's spotty third generation wireless coverage, I posed a simple question: "How about an announcement telling customers how AT&T has been working with Apple to help boost the quality of its iPhone service?"

Now, that seems to be exactly what is happening. AT&T (T) reported on Tuesday that it had spent $65 million upgrading its wireless network in San Francisco since 2008. The phone company said it upgraded about 850 cell sites because of the rising demand put on its network since the iPhone started selling two years ago. That's good news to many iPhone users, whose phone has become synonymous with "dropped calls."

High school and college students are usually leagues ahead of their elders, technologically speaking. As they're dizzyingly texting and Tweeting and multitasking to their hearts' content, they're reading far fewer books than students of previous generations. No wonder some institutions are adopting drastic measures to stay on the cutting edge.

To that end, Blyth Academy in Toronto is claiming to be the first school to wholly replace textbooks with e-readers. Blyth contracted with Sony to provide its Touch Edition device to all of its students. The school has a kindred spirit in Cushing Academy, an elite Massachusetts prep school that this fall threw out 144 years of tradition and replaced its entire library collection with all-digital offerings, including e-books. "When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books," headmaster James Tracy told The Boston Globe in September.

A problem with the FAA system that collects airline flight plans caused widespread flight cancellations and delays nationwide Thursday, the second time in 15 months that a glitch created such problems.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the problem was fixed around 10 a.m., but it was unclear how long flights would continue to be affected. Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union, said controllers were still entering flight plans manually in some locations.

FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto said the problem started between 5:15 and 5:30 a.m. and affected mostly flight plans but also traffic management, such as ground stops and ground delays.

Yet again the Golden State has set a de facto national environmental policy. It came this time when officials moved on Nov. 18 to ban sales of all big-screen TVs in California after 2010 if the sets don't meet state energy efficiency requirements. The ban has been brewing for several months now as the California Energy Commission (CEC) has debated a mandate that would require a 33% improvement in energy efficiency for all TVs sold starting Jan. 1, 2011, and a 50% improvement for sets sold starting Jan. 1, 2013.

These mandates would force off the market all current-generation plasma TVs with screens over 40 inches. LCD (liquid crystal display) sets tend to be more efficient, but many of the current models also wouldn't meet the new requirements. In short: Hasta la vista, Señor Plasma!

Uh oh, Is Amazon.com (AMZN), an example of Bubble 2.0?

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Why Ron Paul is wrong about everything he says on the economy.

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Interesting to see which are the best stocks of the decade.

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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.