A scathing analysis of all the anti-shareholder actions Jerry Yang has taken in the last few months. I think Joe Nocera is right on here - when your company goes public, you can no longer treat it as your private plaything. Neither can it be run for the benefit of the employees....it's the owners of the company, the shareholders, who's interests must be paramount.

Arrogantly, Mr. Yang appears to ignore this fact, and is now being sued by large shareholders, pension funds, and Carl Icahn.

How can he NOT be forced to step down (much less cost Yahoo many tens of millions in defending against these suits)?

Quoted: Since Yahoo went public in 1996, the company has had new owners — its shareholders — but it is unclear whether Jerry Yang, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, knows this.

Sounds to me like some companies are abusing the "internship" status of summer students to get unpaid labor that violates federal labor laws and minimum wage standards.

I think if companies are primarily hiring students to do work for them, they should be compensated by at least paying them minimum wage.

A true internship has to PRIMARILY benefit the student - and not the "employer". Students certainly desire to get real-world work experience - but why should they do so when they are providing real-world value to their employers in the process.

Quoted: If the school or other employer is the primary beneficiary, the individuals will be considered employees, but if the interns are the ones who primarily benefit from the work experience, they will be considered trainees.

Why is his wife still holding his hand?

Quoted: Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute, according to a person briefed on the inquiry.

I thought Scrabulous would have been shut down by now. All the threats to take it down by a specific date have come and gone w/o anything happening.

Scrabble is old enough, that I think there is some chance that it could be shown that it is already in the public domain. It would be ironic if this is the case that will unearth something that shows that to be the case.

Anyone have a Scrabble board that was published w/o a copyright notice prior to 1977? There's the smoking gun!

Could be relevant to the Scrabulous debate. Since Scrabble was invented in 1931 (as Lexico), if it was ever (?) published without a copyright notice before 1977, then it falls into the public domain. Scrabulous could continue w/o violating rights to the game since the board layout and tile distribution can only be protected by copyright (a patent, if any were filed, would have expired long ago - and then the work would have entered the public domain automatically - copyrighted or not).

EU just levied another $1.3B fine against MS despite this "announcement". What excuse did MS *ever* have for keeping proprietary such interfaces as:

- NTFS file system
- Active Directory
- Exchange Server

Not only is it bad business - it's also anti-competitive. MS: learn to compete on the merits of your products (clients or servers) and NOT on the illegal tying of one to the other.

Microsoft needs to provide the documentation not JUST to a bunch of API's that allow limited interoperability to these products. It also should enable RECPLACEMENT by a 3rd party of either clients or servers. For example, has anyone made a clone of:

- Exchange Server
- Domain Controller
- Exchange Client

Would there not be a large and profitable market for any of these? The fact that no one has, tells me that MS protocols are not yet "open enough".

Quoted: As an immediate next step, starting today Microsoft will openly publish on MSDN over 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows client and server protocols that were previously available only under a trade secret license through the Microsoft Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP) and the Microsoft Communication Protocol Program (MCPP). Protocol documentation for additional products, such as Office 2007 and all of the other high-volume products covered by these principles, will be published in the upcoming months.

R.I.P. Scrabulous

Quoted: The saga of Scrabulous is nearing an end. The Facebook version of Scrabble raised the ire of Hasbro and Mattel, which jointly own ...

The attachments are really interesting in this article - especially the Word document here which contains Microsoft's explanation of the online Advertising market and how the Google DoubleClick acquisition would harm competition.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/other/technology/bitsantitrust.doc

Quoted: Bits is a blog about technology, innovation and society from The New York Times.

I disagree with the author here. I think Amazon strikes a good balance for this v1 product. Unlike iTunes, digital media purchased on Amazon is stored in your account on their servers. If you lose your device in the future, you can download books from your library for free to a replacement device - in perpetuity (in contrast, if you lose an iTunes dowloaded song - Apple says "tough luck" - and you have to buy it again).

Amazon DOES support a minimum level of sharing of media - I have multiple Kindles in my account (for different family members). Since they are all part of our family's library, any one in our family can download these media to their Kindle to read.

I agree, it would be better to have an ability to transfer media to another user (delete from my devices and library, and add to someone else's). 20 years hence, I would imagine that my online digital library at Amazon will be itself quite a valuable personal asset. When I die, do I get to pass that on to my heirs? Can I sell my account to another person?

Once lawmakers understand how much is at stake for individuals (thousands of dollars of digital assets per person), I would hope they will be compelled to enact legislation protecting our investments.