internet - Fausta's Blog

February 7, 2011 By Fausta

Where did AOL come up with $315 million?

Betting on News, AOL Is Buying The Huffington Post (emphasis added)

The Huffington Post, which began in 2005 with a meager $1 million investment and has grown into one of the most heavily visited news Web sites in the country, is being acquired by AOL in a deal that creates an unlikely pairing of two online media giants.

The two companies completed the sale Sunday evening and announced the deal just after midnight on Monday. AOL will pay $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. It will be the company’s largest acquisition since it was separated from Time Warner in 2009.

AOL is not the most solid company around; it’s laid off thousands of employees, shows no profit and pays no dividends. It has 106 million shares outstanding, currently trading at $21.39 (down since the announcement of the purchase) in the NASDAQ, and this deal will cost $3 per share outstanding.

HuffPo is not publicly traded.

So, my question is, Where did AOL come up with $315 million?

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February 3, 2011 By Fausta

Good-bye, stability

Ann Marlowe thinks that the US should abandon its “stability” fetish since,

We’ve forgotten that extremist ideology mainly emerges from forced “stability,” not from free societies. As Elliott Abrams wrote in a Washington Post op-ed Sunday, “regimes that make moderate politics impossible make extremism far more likely. Rule by emergency decree long enough, and you end up creating a genuine emergency.”

That is not untrue, but that’s not the reason “stability” has become a thing of the past.

The reason is that technology has caught up with repressive regimes. Daniel Henninger, in his article Stability’s End, encapsulates in a sentence this fact,

Technologies with goofy names like Twitter and Facebook are replacing political stability with a state of permanent instability.

Mubarak unleashed the camels after trying to shut down the internet, the Iranian mullahs carry out executions by the thousands. The Medieval measures won’t work, any more than the Jimmy Carter 1979 approach to foreign policy would.

Indeed,

This new, exponentially expanding world of information technologies is now creating permanent instability inside formerly stable political arrangements.

This stuff disrupts everything it touches. It overturned the entire music industry, and now it is doing the same to established political systems.

Adding to the instability is the increasing food inflation. Larry Kudlow points out that

In addition to Egypt, the people have taken to the streets to varying degrees in Algeria, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, and Yemen. Local food riots have even broken out in rural China and other Asian locales.
…
The CRB food index is up an incredible 36 percent over the past year, including 8 percent year-to-date. Raw materials are up 23 percent in the past year. Inflation breakouts have occurred in China, among various Asian Tigers, and in India, Brazil, and other Latin American countries. Even Britain and Germany are registering higher inflation readings.

In dollar terms, the price of wheat has soared 114 percent over the past year. Corn has surged 88 percent. These are incredible numbers.

And let’s not forget that the world’s poor are the hardest hit by food-price inflation. They literally can’t afford to buy bread. It brings to mind the French Revolution in the 18th century. When you see this kind of mass protest in the streets, spreading from country to country, you see a pattern that cannot be explained by local conditions alone.

In our hemisphere, Venezuela has the highest inflation – 28%, as the economy contracts while the government takes over private property and food production and distribution. Chavez is ruling by emergency decree: if “Rule by emergency decree long enough, and you end up creating a genuine emergency” is the case, for how long will Hugo Chavez’s regime stand, considering these numbers?

“Instability is the new status quo”, states Henninger, and I agree.

The question remains, how will political systems and societies adapt to it? How will the US, when its own administration is passing thousands of pages-long laws that haven’t even been read?

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November 18, 2010 By Fausta

Tweet your way to jail in China

Chinese woman jailed over Twitter post
A woman in China has been sentenced to a year in a labour camp after posting a message on the social networking website Twitter.

The fiance of human rights activist Cheng Jianping told the BBC she had been accused of disrupting social order, but her message had been a joke.

She had repeated a Twitter comment urging nationalist protesters to smash Japan’s pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, adding the words “Charge, angry youth”.

Twitter is banned in China.

However, many people use it by circumventing internet controls.

So, Tom, what if we could just be China for a day?

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November 12, 2010 By Fausta

Let’s hope there’s a prenup: “Daily Beast, Newsweek to Wed!”

Tina Brown giddily announces that Daily Beast, Newsweek to Wed! The offspring will be called The Newsweek Daily Beast Company.

Stacy wonders about The Weekly Newsbeast’s money flow:

The investors can expect to lose a crapload of cash in the process. The New Yorker reportedly lost $42 million in three years (1995-97) under Ms. Brown’s editorship. Talk lost an impressive $80 million during its two-year existence. Whatever else you might say about Tina Brown, she’s undeniably brilliant at convincing investors to lose money on her projects.

Two things:
1. The Daily Beast’s code is such that, every time I have been to the site, it takes a couple of seconds for the text to ungnarl itself into readable form.
2. I can’t recall when was the last time I read Newsweek.
Perhaps it is a match made in heaven, after all.

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June 29, 2010 By Fausta

Psst, wanna make $100,000? UPDATED: $100, PBR, and now, subway fare, too!

Andrew Breitbart’s got how:
Reward: $100,000 for Full ‘JournoList’ Archive; Source Fully Protected

I’ve had $100,000 burning in my pocket for the last three months and I’d really like to spend it on a worthy cause. So how about this: in the interests of journalistic transparency, and to offer the American public a unique insight in the workings of the Democrat-Media Complex, I’m offering $100,000 for the full “JournoList” archive, source fully protected. Now there’s an offer somebody can’t refuse.
…
I therefore offer the sum of $100,000 to the person who provides the full “JournoList” archive. We will protect that person’s privacy and identity forever. No one will ever know who became $100,000 richer – and did the right thing, morally and ethically — by shining the light of truth on this seamy underworld of the media.

Cash, undeclared, and ready.

Someone’s got to take that offer.

UPDATE
Offer: $20 and a Case of PBR for JournoList Emails About The Weekly Standard.
Heck, I must join in the offers:
$2.25 or 1-way subway fare for JournoList emails about Fausta’s blog.

UPDATE, Wednesday 30 June,
GM Roper:

I think if Fausta threw in a Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich she’d have a taker.

It’s a deal, GM! Subway fare and a PBJ!

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June 19, 2010 By Fausta

VIDEO 3 Reasons The FCC Shouldn’t “Touch” The Internets

3 Reasons The FCC Shouldn’t “Touch” The Internets!

H/t Instapundit.

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April 7, 2010 By Fausta

Ed explains net neutrality

In today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern,
Ed Morrissey explains net neutrality and the court of appeals FCC ruling.

August 29, 2009 By Fausta

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

A sign of things to come:

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.
…
Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to “direct the national response to the cyber threat” if necessary for “the national defense and security.” The White House is supposed to engage in “periodic mapping” of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies “shall share” requested information with the federal government. (“Cyber” is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)

“The language has changed but it doesn’t contain any real additional limits,” EFF’s Tien says. “It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)…The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There’s no provision for any administrative process or review.

Like those dozens of Czars, that are not subject to Congressional oversight?

That’s where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it.”

Translation: If your company is deemed “critical,” a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network

This is yet another piece of legislation that is being pushed through and foisted upon the unsuspecting public: Reporter Declan McCullagh is waiting for an answer to his question,

The revised version gives the executive branch 180 days to “implement” a “comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy” and 90 days to develop a plan to implement a “dashboard pilot project.” But the mandated legal review won’t be done until 1 year. Why not wait until the legal review is done before implementing a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy?”

Doug Ross

In all seriousness: if you were elected President and wanted to transform the U.S. into a third-world banana republic like Venezuela, how would your policies differ from those of Obama?

Indeed, as I have pointed out in the past, the latest Venezuelan Constitution grants Chavez control over the internet.