Boy, that sure was some crisis
Wall Street banks in $70bn staff payout
Pay and bonus deals equivalent to 10% of US government bail-out package
Imagine if we had not had the bailout bill! The Wall Street types who shit the worldwide bed might have missed their outlandish compensation! One shudders to think.
But we’re safe now; at least until their bonuses come due next year, when we’ll have to have another emergency to make sure they get paid.
I just turned 44, which kind of sucks, but as they say, it’s better than the alternative. I think I’ve been old for a long long time, but now I have to admit it. Virtual World have been growing up, too, and my feelings are somewhat the same. Despite reports by Gartner and Forrester, articles in the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Information Week, and even popular press like the LA Times, I still hadn’t quite caught on to the idea that we now have an industry. But when I saw Christian Renaud’s blog, I had to admit that “Virtual Worlds” is an industry category, and I’m in it. None of these articles are about the technology (what I do), but about what people do with it and how businesses make money with it. I guess it’s better than the alternative. OK, it’s pretty cool, but kind of weird. This stuff isn’t household technology or household names yet. The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet. It’s an interesting life-span inflection point.
Yesterday, in the still pre-Murdoch Wall Street Journal, Siobhan Gorman brings us the deeply disturbing but unsurprising news:
I try not to gloat, but it’s impossible not to take a certain amount of satisfaction in the Wall Street Journal‘s confirmation on Nov. 16 that Google intends to bid in the 700 MHz auction in January, regardless of whether it has partners in a bidding consortium. This confirms my prediction back on August 2 in Econoklastic that Chairman Martin’s refusal to impose a wholesale open access condition on the C block would not prevent Google from bidding, despite naysayers in the press and on Wall Street.
The underlying reality is that Google needs a third broadband pipe to escape imposition of monopoly rents by the wireline and cable carriers, since net neutrality provisions with real enforcement teeth are nowhere to be seen on the horizon: that means do it themselves or get someone to do it for them. That reality hasn’t changed, and the guys at Google clearly recognise this fact. I am equally heartened by assurances from Google counsel Rick Whitt at a conference in NYC week before last that Google still intends to implement its full wholesale open access business plan over any spectrum it obtains in the 700 MHz auction.
I just got a phone call. It was Fox News calling to tell me “shocking news about Hillary Clinton.”
I wonder who they had to pay to get around the fact that I’m on state and federal “do not call” lists.
And these guys just bought the Wall Street Journal.
Here’s a nearly complete list of Harold Feld’s “Tales of the Sausage Factory” articles here on Wetmachine. Real Soon Now I’m going to get organized and use the blog software to keep track of this stuff so I don’t have to manualy copy and paste to generate lists like this. . .
On the Nader copyright case
Justin/Janet part 2
Justin/Janet part 1
The ICANN Train Wreck
Unlicensed Spectrum Access
Why Disney/Comcast Merger Sucks Rocks
On RFID
CBS Caves Again for Bush
Yet more on Fileswapping
Fileswapping — whither to in ’04
ABA article:“More than a Toaster with Pictures”
On making the Wall Street Journal’s Shit List
Golden Globes, Former Presidents, Media Ownership”
