MANILA, Philippines -- Imagine a world where people truly care for each other.

That is something rather quite difficult to do. Right now, I am sure even John Lennon would find it hard to sing his song about people not waging war or killing each other.

Lately, some of the killings we have been hearing about are making us lose whatever faith in humankind we have left. A father killing most of his family, freedom fighters killing peacekeepers en masse, a security guard and a tricycle driver raping and murdering a scholar — the list goes on and on.

Sometimes, it makes me wonder where all these would lead us.

Chillin’ Lawmakers

Just when we think we have seen it all, along comes news from Chile where the country’s Congress is set to endow its 120 lower-house legislators with an iPad each. Apparently the Chilean legislature has too much time and money on its hand.

Justifying their taxpayer-subsidized move, a four-member panel of the lower house claims that the iPad tablet computers will help Chilean legislators become more productive, enabling them to remotely access their work.

I guess, right now, Chilean taxpayers are rather grateful that their legislators have settled on the iPad instead of giving themselves a supercomputer or mainframe computer each.

Know what? Just change some of the details and we could be talking about our own legislators. I sure hope, however, that our lawmakers never get any funny idea about gifting themselves an iPad each, as their Chilean counterparts seem intent on doing.

Can’t Touch This Search Engine

MC Hammer, the rapper, dancer, and preacher from Oakland, plans to go toe-to-toe with Google and Bing by launching his own search engine, WireDoo.

Hammer announced his startup at O’Reilly Media’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week. According to the rapper, whose real name is Stanley Kirk Burrell, his search engine will offer “deep search” and related data that Bing and Google do not provide.

I sure hope Hammer’s venture would prosper although I am not too optimistic about it. If Microsoft with all its money and marketing power has not been able to trump Google, how on Earth can WireDoo do?

Microsoft Beats Forecasts

Software giant Microsoft reported first-quarter sales that are better than market analysts’ forecasts. Apparently, companies’ investments in Office and server programs have more than made up for the drop in consumer demand for computers.

Sales increased 7.3 percent to $17.4 billion, while net income jumped 6.1 percent to $5.74 billion, or 68 cents a share. As BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis said, “People are still buying billions of dollars worth of Microsoft products every month.”

Love or hate it, the company is most likely to be around for quite some time, doing what it does best — selling lots of software and productivity tools.

That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.