Fair Use News & Views

Larry:

I hope you decide to run for the Lantos seat.

The reason is simple. — you get it. (or maybe IT)

A short story with my perspective:

A few years ago I met Sherwood L. Boehlert at a political event in DC. At the time he was head of the Science Committee (as his business card proudly proclaimed), so I started talking to him about the Internet. I’d written a white paper about the benefits of growing the US broadband infrastructure and he seem like a place to start.

After a sentence or two he told me he really knew nothing about the Internet and I should talk to someone whose name I can’t recall. I asked why the head of the Science Committee knew nothing about the Internet. My sarcasm was obvious, so he responded in kind. “The trouble with you people is that you need to pay more attention to what we are doing here in Washington.” — could he give me a better straight line? I told him the last time I checked he worked for the citizens and he should be paying attention to me instead. Well, not surprisingly he turned on his heel and ran away as fast as he could.

The problem is that Congress needs someone on the inside to explain it to them. —- because they will never listen to obnoxious people like me.

I know that you will NEVER be Mr. Boehlert. — because i’ve met both of you and I can say you are no Sherwood Boehlert.

Be the guy who gets it!

Here is a grassroots surge that we should all get behind

Roy Bostock has only been chairman of Yahoo for just over a week and he is already following their proud tradition. — doing something incredibly stupid. He is trying to negotiate by reaching over the table and poking Monkey Boy in the eye. Balmer will not like that, Roy. You think the worst that can happen is that he goes hostile. He may start a nuclear war that will consume you and your whole company. Memo to Roy. — get real dude!

What will come of the Microsoft/Yahoo combination? Lost in their strategies is the reality that business combinations are multiplicative not additive. So to see what falls out we simply need to come up with a factor for each piece and multiply.

Microsoft — the glory days are over and not coming back. Low innovation, but huge presence and distribution. — Give ‘em .8 (of Apple)

Yahoo — totally a legacy company with sinking relevance. Email and Flickr are nice, but is there really anything else? Couple this to a long chain of clueless management and I’ll give them a .3 (of Google)

So .8 x .3 = .24. — that’s 1/4 in my book. Must be something canonical here, because two half a loaf companies definitely feel like 1/4 a loaf. It’s not the steel industry Mr. Balmer. — don’t tell me about economies of scale. Bill Gates has got to be thinking “Let these guys run it for a couple of months and they fly it into a mountain.”

MicroWho?

I’ve always insisted that people be prepared for meetings. — after all they are group time wasters and the loss of productivity due to unprepared participants is huge. But this rule applies to people on both sides of the table. If I show up for a meeting with another company, investors or in any other business setting and my counterparts don’t have business cards, I might as well just leave. — it means that they have come to be entertained. Consider the following lame excuses:

I forgot my cards — did you bring your brain?

They are being printed —- OK, call me when they come in.

I didn’t want to use my old address. —- what, the basement in your Mom’s house has no suite #?

I don’t have cards — you are too cheap, unimportant or clueless?

I recently met with some “investors” . Some of them had no cards. That wasn’t all they were missing. One told me he really wasn’t a tech investor and couldn’t understand my pitch. He suggested I treat him like a smart child to make it understandable. — OK, would you like a sucker? (I’m not it)

Steve Jobs announced a new version of AppleTV at MacWorld to considerable and deserved fanfare. He said that the old version was wrong because did not understand that people wanted to rent movies. from the TV — you’re kidding? I really wanted to download movies on my PC and then see if I could coax the AppleTV into finding and streaming them from my PC to the TV. Now there are lots of studios on board and they have a good (albeit siloed) three-screen solution. This is a major improvement, but not the one that will win unless it becomes truly open.

Questions:

Ok, I need a third box on the TV (in addition to my DVD and Tivo) Can I play any of my own content on it or only what Apple approves?

Can I rip DVDs I already own and store them on the AppleTV?

What happens to all the content I buy from Apple if I want to switch vendors?

I’m pretty sure I won’t like the answers.

In today’s NYTimes, Paul Krugman distills the sub-prime lending mess down to a bite sized, easy to understand piece.  His outlook is not really that gloomy but you can see that there is not a simple solution.  However, today President Bush will announce the preliminary plan for a stimulus package.  Don’t expect much meat.  It will be the usual solution to all problems  — tax cuts.  At least this is more entertaining than Rudy Giuliani’s solution to all the country’s ills.  — more 9/11.

Gregory Reyes, the ex-chairman of Brocade has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for stock backdating. It is surprising how many people here in the Valley see this as a “victimless crime.” He argued that he never personally benefited from the practice and 400 hundred letters sent to the court agreed with his personal acessment as a fine citizen. If you take look at this stock chart, I suspect there are some who beg to differ. This is just like the Martha Sewart case. — it’s about lying and obstruction of jusctice, which are in fact crimes.

Consider another high profile case that is still open. — Apple computer. You’d have a hard time finding anyone who could find a crime in what Steve Jobs is accused of (and that the company has essentially admitted to). Apple stock has been a rocket in the last couple of years, so in this case even stockholders have a hard time finding the crime. In this SEC report, you see that they have settled with various former officers at Apple. Since the Jobs options were repriced/reversed he seems to be out of the firing line. — again the argument of no personal benefit. But consider another little known fact. At the time Jobs rejoined Apple he brought two key employees with him from his former company (Next). Both of them received in the money options that someone dated and priced in a very advantageous manner. The two subsequently became head of Apple’s hardware and software operations. — and contributed in no small part to the reborn Apple. Of course they reaped millions on the options. The both “retired” in the spring of 2006 while the SEC investigation was starting. One of them sold some $30M of options in the days running up to his “retirement”. With a little digging you find that one was hired immediately at a $250k/year “consultant” to Apple with an employment contract that can be easily found on the Net, outlining the fact that no particular tasks would be expected of him. Fishy or not?

Fake Steve echos my feelings on Facebook and Faceborg. For a little more insight on the whole privacy/Beacon controversy take a look at this Wired story. I know you can turn off Beacon, but it’s still on by default and was kind enough to share with the world that I bought tickets to “There Will be Blood” on Fandango. The 60 Minutes interview really captures the depth of the problem.  —- take a look if you want to see Kara Swisher bitting her tongue.  Faceborg has no idea how to make money other than with advertising. Just as mayonaise makes any foods into a salad, advertising makes any website into a business. — NOT. Oh yeah, how DO I shut it off.