The world's second richest man - who's now worth $44 billion - tells editor-at-large Carol Loomis he will start giving away 85% of his wealth in July - most of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

FORTUNE Magazine: Warren Buffett gives away his fortune - Jun. 25, 2006

Contracts are being canceled, deals are drying up, prices are starting to drop. The psychology is shifting even as thousands of new homes and condos join the for-sale listings each day - so the downward pressure will only get worse.

Speculators who bought overpriced condos in hope of a quick killing are going to get hosed.

Hold on to your hats.

Welcome to the dead zone

Do you remember the recent thread about treating waiters well, and how it relates to character?

Well, when USA Today ran the article, they provided Bill Swanson's list of management truisms.

Turns out they're not his, after all.

William H. Swanson has become something of a management guru thanks to "Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management." It is a compilation of folksy business advice from Mr. Swanson, the chief executive of Raytheon, that the company distributes as a free booklet. No. 3 in his list of 33 rules begins: "Look for what is missing."

What is missing from Mr. Swanson's 76-page booklet, as an engineer discovered last week, is any reference to what appears to be the source of many of his rules: the 1944 book "The Unwritten Laws of Engineering" by W. J. King, an engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"Swanson's Rules" are provided below. You'll notice several also appear in Rumsfeld's Rules.

1: Learn to say, "I don't know." If used when appropriate, it will be used often.
2: It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.
3: If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much
4: Look for what is missing. Many know how to improve what's there; few can see what isn't there.
5: Presentation rule: When something appears on a slide presentation, assume the world knows about it and deal with it accordingly.
6. Work for a boss to whom you can tell it like it is. Remember, you can't pick your family, but you can pick your boss.
7: Constantly review developments to make sure that the actual benefits are what they were supposed to be. Avoid Newton's Law.
8: However menial and trivial your early assignments may appear, give them your best effort.
9: Persistence or tenacity is the disposition to persevere in spite of difficulties, discouragement or indifference. Don't be known as a good starter but a poor finisher!
10: In doing your project, don't wait for others; go after them and make sure it gets done.
11: Confirm the instructions you give others, and their commitments, in writing. Don't assume it will get done.
12: Don't be timid: Speak up, express yourself and promote your ideas.
13: Practice shows that those who speak the most knowingly and confidently often end up with the assignment to get the job done.
14: Strive for brevity and clarity in oral and written reports.
15: Be extremely careful in the accuracy of your statements.
16: Don't overlook the fact that you are working for a boss. Keep him or her informed. Whatever the boss wants, within the bounds of integrity, takes top priority.
17: Promises, schedules and estimates are ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Raytheon Chief's Management Rules Have a Familiar Ring

WHAT ARE THE NVCA MODEL VENTURE CAPITAL FINANCING DOCUMENTS?

A "template" set of model legal documents for venture capital investments put together by a group of leading venture capital attorneys.

Has anyone worked with these?

National Venture Capital Association - Model Documents

The News Corp.'s purchase of MySpace is looking like that rarest of rarities in the media world -- a much-ballyhooed acquisition where it turns out that the buyer underpaid.

Interesting perspective.

News Corp. (hearts) MySpace | FORTUNE

The owners of the privately held company have turned down a $750 million offer and hope to fetch as much as $2 billion in a sale, senior industry executives familiar with the matter say.

That may sound like a huge amount of money, especially when you consider that the company was launched just two years ago by a group of sophomores at Harvard University, led by Mark Zuckerberg (see BW Online, "Under 30, On the Cutting Edge"). But already, www.facebook.com has become the seventh-most heavily trafficked site on the Internet, according to market researcher comScore Media Metrix. It racked up 5.5 billion page views during the month of February, the latest month for which complete data are available. That's more page views than the Web sites of Amazon.com (AMZN), Ask.com, or Walt Disney (DIS).

I know several other Memestreamers are working on some cool web apps. Seems that there is a lot of interest in the area. How misguided it may be is a different story, but it looks like there's a crazy money pile at the end of the rainbow.

$750 Million not enough for Facebook

Viacom has met with several of the handful of so-called Internet social networking businesses, but has not decided whether it would enter the market through partnerships or acquisitions.

Viacom to enter social networking market in '06 - Yahoo! News

Profits are up, but the wages and the incomes of average Americans are down.

Short and to the point.

What's wrong with the economy?

Just five years ago, white collar outsourcing was confined to data processing and call centers; today, courtesy of IT-enabled connectivity, it has moved to the upper echelons of the knowledge-worker hierarchy. The Internet is living up to its reputation of being the most disruptive technology in the history of the world.

The implications of these developments are profound. Long lacking in income support, the spending-addicted American consumer has turned to equity extraction from asset holdings in order to support the habit...

Globalization imposes a new paradigm of competitive survival on the high-cost developed countries of the world. Americs.. is... feeling the heat... Companies in high-wage economies see little choice other than to rewrite social contracts as the means for competitive survival. For the United States, it’s the end of labor as we once knew it.

Morgan Stanley - A Ray of Sunshine from Steve Roach... (Right....)

The reason that you've having trouble is that you don't know anything and you're not working very hard.

How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates