Arbitrary Secondaries

“By deliberately corrupting the most basic functionality of their customers’ computers, Sony broke the rules of fair play and crossed a bright line separating legitimate software from computer trespass. Their actions may be civilly actionable.”

“I’ve created this little applet which computes and displays your blog’s worth using the same link to dollar ratio as the AOL-Weblogs Inc deal.” It claims mine is worth $82,987.38. Fax in your bid today!

A great way for a city to raise extra funds. Imagine the number “Peachtree Street” signs Atlanta could sell. In this case, they’ll make at least one sale to TextDrive, where the servers are named after Vancouver streets.

Isn’t this how the movie Terminator began, except it was called “SkyNet”?

FedEx ought to be ashamed, not only at the intent, but the foundationless legal means they tried. A smart company would make a guerilla ad out of this, not a cease and desist order

$75 billion in profits will get a taxable rate of about 5% instead of 35%. Why? It was part of the “American Jobs Creation Act,” yet these companies are cutting employees, and “the I.R.S. lacks the resources to challenge the companies effectively.” Over $20 Billion in tax revenue, more than has been spent on reconstruction in Iraq, down the tubes.

An interesting summary from Ev, in which he also pimps TextDrive

“The idea came from EarthLink’s public relations department because of worries that news was traveling faster on blogs than in conventional media.”

The ugly media coverage begins, with more sure to follow

A good method to quantify a process that is often too subjective

I’ve got a dead printer and TV that need to go

“I spend about three weeks a month on the road doing completely weird stuff like going to Microsoft to talk about DRM”

Vince was the master of lowering expectations and poor mouthing his chances, while talking up his competition

“By speaking directly to the world, without benefit of management approval, we are accepting higher risks in the interest of higher rewards”

“Betty, after laying off 2,600 of EarthLink’s 5,100 employees, got a 76 percent increase in his annual bonus this year”

There’s a phrase I never thought would be open to trademarking...

Replacing six deployed airbags can cost $15,000

Costco earns $2,500 more per employee than Wal-Mart, by treating their people better

Reminds me of the old Mindspring ... their service garnered unusual loyalty in the same ‘hands-on’ ways