According to its 10-K, the company “anticipates utilizing approximately $1.9 billion for capital asset purchases during 2010, including approximately $400 million for Retail facilities and approximately $1.5 billion for corporate facilities, infrastructure, and product tooling and manufacturing process equipment.”

That’s a wide range of potential applications–wider, in fact, than it has been in years past, as Caris & Company analyst Robert Cihra notes. “Interestingly…this year’s 10K added wording for purchases of ‘product tooling and manufacturing process equipment’ which could imply Apple reversing course to actually build certain products/components in-house,” Cihra said in a note to clients today. “Beyond that are signals of Apple investing in massive new data center capacity (e.g., North Carolina) that could support anything from iTunes/iPhone Apps through new ‘cloud computing.’”

Sounds plausible. After all, there’s a lot a company like Apple could do with an additional $1.9 billion in capital expenditures. Certainly, an iTunes TV subscription service would require some investment. A tablet/slate device might as well. Whether that’s where this money is headed–if it’s headed anywhere at all–remains to be seen. Who knows, perhaps Apple intends to blow it all on CEO Steve Jobs’ dream of the “ultimate computer factory.”

Looking ahead, IBM (IBM) expects full-year 2009 earnings of at least $9.85 a share, compared to its previous estimate of $9.70 per share.

“Our long-term strategic shift to higher-value businesses again enabled us to deliver outstanding margin, earnings and cash flow growth in the third quarter,” IBM CEO Sam Palmisano said in an earnings release. “We also saw improved revenue trends in our business and share gains in software and hardware. We continued to invest for growth in areas where clients see potential for value creation including Smarter Planet solutions, cloud computing and advanced business analytics.”

Looking ahead, Palmisano added, “We are optimistic about 2009 as we again raise our full-year expectations and we remain well ahead of pace for our 2010 roadmap of $10 to $11 per share.”

Taken together with Intel’s (INTC) latest earnings, which also beat expectations for revenue and profit, IBM’s report provides more evidence that the tech sector recovery is underway.

In a 13-page letter to the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday, the carrier again said that Google should play by the same rules as its telecom competitors. AT&T also took issue with the search giant’s claim that Google Voice restricts calls to certain rural areas to avoid the so-called traffic pumpers that route calls there to drive up charges.

“Contrary to the public pronouncements of Google and its allies, Google’s rural call blocking regime is not limited to Google simply blocking calls to ‘adult sex chat lines’ and ‘free’ conference calling services to avoid high access charges,” wrote AT&T’s senior vice president, Bob Quinn, in the letter to the FCC’s wireline bureau. “In fact, Google is blocking calls to, among others, an ambulance service, church, bank, law firm, automobile dealer, day spa, orchard, health clinic, tax preparation service, community center, eye doctor, tribal community college, school, residential consumers, a convent of Benedictine nuns, and the campaign office of a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.”

My God. Google, the company whose business philosophy proudly proclaims “you can make money without doing evil,” blocking calls to small businesses? To Benedictine nuns? Don’t be evil?

Don’t be evil, my ass.

“We can now see the power of Internet-based applications providers to act as gatekeepers who can threaten the ‘free and open’ Internet,” Quinn continues. “Google’s double standard for ‘openness’–where Google does what it wants while other providers are subject to Commission regulations–is plainly inconsistent with the goal of preserving a ‘free and open’ Internet ecosystem.”

That established, Quinn goes in for the kill, arguing that the FCC should regulate the search giant not just on the wires, but on the Web as well.

“Google’s call blocking begs an even more important question that the Commission must consider as it evaluates whether to adopt rules regarding Internet openness,” he writes. “If the Commission is going to be a ’smart cop on the beat preserving a free and open Internet,’ then shouldn’t its ‘beat’ necessarily cover the entire Internet neighborhood, including Google? Indeed, if the Commission cannot stop Google from blocking disfavored telephone calls as Google contends, then how could the Commission ever stop Google from also blocking disfavored websites from appearing in the results of its search engine; or prohibit Google from blocking access to applications that compete with its own email, text messaging, cloud computing and other services; or otherwise prevent Google from abusing the gatekeeper control it wields over the Internet?”

An interesting question. And one for which Google (GOOG) is presumably already preparing a long-winded answer. This is far from over yet, and we’ll continue to go round and round until the FCC puts a stop to it.

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do,” Ellison said. “I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements….These people who are writing this crap are out there. They are insane. I mean it is the stupidest. Is it ‘Oh, I am going to access data on a server on the Internet.’ That is cloud computing?…Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

In conversation with former Sun (JAVA) CEO Ed Zander at a Churchill Club event a little over a year later, Ellison expanded on those remarks, suggesting that if the cloud is anything, it’s a cloud of BS.

Cloud’s water vapor….Cloud computing is not only the future of computing, it is the present and the entire past of computing.

…Salesforce.com has been around for a decade. And so has NetSuite…and people are saying, “Well, that’s cloud computing.” Google is cloud computing. Everyone is cloud computing….Everything is in the cloud now….It’s this nonsense.

…But it’s not water vapor. All it is is a computer attached to a network. What are you talking about? I mean, what do you think Google runs on?…Water vapor? It’s databases and operating systems and memory and microprocessors and the Internet!

…And the VCs, I love the VCs. [They ask their start-ups] “Oh…is that cloud?” [And the start-ups go] “Oh! Oh! Microsoft Word! Change ‘Internet’ to ‘cloud’! Mass change. Give it back to these nitwits on Sand Hill Road.”

…What do you mean by “cloud computing”?…All the cloud is is computers on a network.

Our industry is so bizarre. They just change a term and they think they’ve invented technology….You can’t just come up with a [slogan] like “Let’s call that ‘cloud.” [But] it sure beats innovation.”

Below, the full video. Ellison’s rant begins around the 45:54 mark.

First the company gave us CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity), an “artificial intelligence” tasked-array system with the personality of a 12-year-old girl and accompanied by its own homepage, YouTube channel, blog, monograph and versions of Google Earth and Google Maps. And to these, Google has added Google LOLCODE, Google Brain Search, Google Chrome with 3-D and a new Gmail auto-reply feature. The search giant also announced a new upside-down viewing option for YouTube and an automatic red-eye function for Picasa.

Overkill? Maybe, just a little. Google (GOOG), of course, wasn’t alone in pumping the Web full of pranks. Seems people with Web sites everywhere fancy themselves Don Rickles today. Hotels.com began taking reservations for rooms on the Moon. And Expedia (EXPE) began offering flights to Mars. Microsoft (MSFT) renamed its Kumo search product Omuk and unveiled Alpine Legend for Xbox 360. Some angry librarians staged a Kindle burning in a Los Angeles park. Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media appointed Gary Busey as Director of Human Resources. Torrent index The Pirate Bay partnered with the hopelessly litigious Warner Bros. The Guardian adopted an all-Twitter publishing model. Gizmodo was taken over by spam overlords. Amazon (AMZN) launched a brand new cloud-computing dirigible called Floating Amazon Cloud Environment, or FACE. Yahoo (YHOO) debuted an Ideological Search. And, finally, Qualcomm (QCOM) took convergence a bit too literally.

There are plenty of others, of course, far too many to mention here, and most of them unworthy of that mention in the first place. As Good Morning Silicon Valley aptly notes, “The sad fact is that pranks are like fireworks–once amateurs get to fiddling around with them, somebody’s going to end up lame.”

“When the Open Cloud Manifesto is officially released on Monday, March 30, the CCIF’s name will not appear as a signatory,” Reuven Cohen, a CCIF founder and co-author of the manifesto, said in a message to CCIF members last night. “This decision comes with great pain as we fully endorse the document’s contents and its principals of a truly open cloud. However, this community has issued a mandate of openness and fair process, loudly and clearly, and so the CCIF can not in good faith endorse this document.”

The CCIF’s withdrawal of its endorsement comes a few days after Microsoft publicly trashed the manifesto as flawed. “We were admittedly disappointed by the lack of openness in the development of the Cloud Manifesto,” Microsoft manager Steve Martin wrote in a post to a Microsoft blog. “What we heard was that there was no desire to discuss, much less implement, enhancements to the document despite the fact that we have learned through direct experience. Very recently we were privately shown a copy of the document, warned that it was a secret, and told that it must be signed ‘as is,’ without modifications or additional input. It appears to us that one company, or just a few companies, would prefer to control the evolution of cloud computing, as opposed to reaching a consensus across key stakeholders (including cloud users) through an ‘open’ process. An open Manifesto emerging from a closed process is at least mildly ironic.”

Indeed, but perhaps to be expected given its leading proponent. IBM (IBM), after all, doesn’t really have a cloud offering of its own. Which is why the company is so keen on pushing this standard–and controlling it. As ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn aptly notes, “While [Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.com] are selling cloud services, IBM is going into the business of building actual clouds. Open standards would benefit IBM, giving its customers assurances they are future-proof.”

Those who can, do; those who can’t, propose standards…

Software is dead.”

– Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, June 2000

Salesforce.com has seen a fair bit of its value evaporate amid the economy’s downward spiral. But the same cannot be said of its business, which is apparently doing quite well. Posting fourth-quarter earnings today, Salesforce.com (CRM) reported record revenue of nearly $290 million with annual sales exceeding $1 billion. Pretty damn good for a cloud computing company weathering a recession. Far better than the Street had expected. Consensus estimates had Salesforce.com earning seven cents a share. Instead, it earned 11 cents a share. “Salesforce.com is proud to be the first billion dollar cloud computing company,” said salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. “At a time when capital is precious, big-ticket software purchases just don’t make sense.”

Seems Benioff’s infamous “software is dead” pronouncement is slowly coming to pass.

Sun shares are trading up on the news. That said, they’ve been trading higher for a few days now, inexplicably up about 20 percent versus Nasdaq, which isn’t doing nearly as well.

Odd, that, isn’t it?

Yes, the SAAS enterprise applications vendor loves everyone, but none more than Google (GOOG). This morning, Salesforce (CRM) expanded its alliance with the search behemoth, linking its Force.com online development platform to Google’s App Engine. The move essentially allows consumer applications built on Google App Engine to call on data stored in Force.com. And that heralds more robust cloud computing applications, more–and better–alternatives to Microsoft’s (MSFT) core business applications, which are only just now adapted for the cloud.

At an event in London today, Ballmer said Microsoft (MSFT) will debut its own “cloud operating system” at its Professional Developer Conference at the end of this month. “We need a new operating system designed for the cloud and we will introduce one in about four weeks, we’ll even have a name to give you by then,” Ballmer said. “But let’s just call it for the purposes of today ‘Windows Cloud.’ Just like Windows Server looked a lot like Windows but with new properties, new characteristics and new features, so will Windows Cloud look a lot like Windows Server.”

Ballmer offered few details beyond that, saying only that it will enable “light editing” of Office documents. Presumably, that means Microsoft still doesn’t see products like Office moving entirely off desktop PCs and onto the Internet any time soon. I imagine we’ll be hearing quite a bit about Software plus Services later this month.

It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: It’s a marketing hype campaign. Somebody is saying this is inevitable — and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true. One reason you should not use Web applications to do your computing is that you lose control. It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s Web server, you’re defenseless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.

– Free Software Foundation founder Richard M. Stallman joins Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s Cloud Computing Skeptics Support Group