Bayosphere

TheStreet.com: eBay’s CEO Is Quitting Goldman’s Board. The investment bank did not offer any explanation for Whitman’s departure, although her tenure on the board became part of a controversy when it was revealed that she and other prominent executives received shares in initial public offerings handled by Goldman.

The explanation is fairly obvious. This arrangement smelled to high heaven.

What’s most disappointing about Meg Whitman’s behavior in this case is her pretense that she did nothing wrong. Even it was all entirely legal, as she’s insisted, it was improper.

As examples of greed go, Whitman is penny ante. But I and many others expected more from her, because she and her colleagues built a great company. That’s the big disappointment.

Now she’ll be remembered, in part, as a member in good standing of the “I’m entitled, because I’m in the club of rich people” crowd that turned American capitalism into a sham during the 1990s. A billionaire, she wanted more, more, more. That $1.8 million she grabbed in those offerings was pocket change for her, not for the investing stiffs who lost their children’s college money.

Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right. Whitman doesn’t seem to get it.

Comments

What good news to hear that ElcomSoft was acquitted of criminal copyright charges by a federal jury in San Jose. It was a verdict for common sense, but it’s probably too optimistic to hope that the law sparking the prosecution — the infamous Digital Millennium Copyright Act — will now be reconsidered.

Coming on the heels of the launch of Creative Commons’ first public license, the ElcomSoft verdict marks a rare occurrence: two good days in a row for the people who want rational copyright policy.

More in my Wednesday column.

Comments

AP: Russian software company found innocent in copyright case. The case against Elcomsoft Ltd. was the most high-profile under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which many in the technology industry consider unduly restrictive.

This is fantastic news. More soon…

Comments

Steve Cisler posted this report about the World InfoCon.

“He stands out for his blandness. Business suit, crewcut, an earpiece to keep in touch with his team leader, and an open newspaper. But he’s looking elsewhere, over his shoulder, at a suspicious character, probably looking at you and listening as well. This man-in-black is the poster child for World-Information.Org’s exhibit and conference in Amsterdam.”

Comments

I’ve been talking about the next version of journalism for a while now. Card-carrying conservative John Podhoretz gets it in his column about Trent Lott.

Tomorrow’s journalism is multi-directional. We are all writers (if we want to be), not just readers. Substitute “producers” for “writers” in that last sentence to include multimedia. The point is: We aren’t just consumers anymore.

Gerhard Fisher also gets it in this piece on FirstMonday, entitled “Beyond ‘Couch Potatoes’: From Consumers to Designers and Active Contributors” — it’s fascinating reading.

Comments

Hong Kong is part of China, but the “one country, two systems” mantra is sounding a bit hollow. That’s because Hong Kong may soon enact Draconian “anti-subversion” measures that are more appropriate to a police state than an open society.

More in my Sunday column.

Comments

Just turned on CNN to catch the headlines. The network is running a report about Iraq and the likely upcoming war.

The channel is also, in the middle of a supposed news report, playing ominous-sounding music in the background while the anchor/reporter talks and the images are displayed on the screen. This is a technique movie-makers use to stir up viewers’ emotions. It works.

Most likely the purpose of this technique is to make the broadcast more interesting. But it’s smells of propaganda, not serious journalism.

CNN’s credibilty has been shrinking for some time. This kind of overt viewer manipulation puts it closer and closer to zero.

Comments

I love this story. A ripoff artist gets caught because the network worked. A human network, in this case, augmenting the virtual one.

Comments

At the very end of this interview on GoodExperience.com comes the following question and answer:

Q: AOL is getting into weblogs?

A: In a way, we’ve had them for a while. A few years ago, in our Digital City area, we called them “comment boards.” Type your thoughts, click a button, and they’re published sequentially on the page. It was essentially the same thing as blogging, only it was a group environment rather than one author publishing to many readers. So yes, we’re looking at that type of environment for members to publish in.

Weblogs, over the last several years, have migrated to replace, in some cases, people’s home pages. It’s natural that the blog and the home page would combine. And when you remember that AOL has the largest collection of home pages in the world, it kinda gets interesting.

Very, very interesting indeed…

Comments