One of the ironies of the current broadband situation in the US is that staunch free marketeers defend the status quo even though the result of their views has been duopoly and high prices. Meanwhile, other countries including those with a reputation in some quarters for socialism have taken aggressive steps to create a robust, competitive, consumer-friendly marketplace with the help of regulation and national investment.
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Critics, it s time to stop the quibbling: the data collection practices that show the US dropping year-over-year in all sorts of broadband metrics from uptake to price per megabit might not prove solid enough to trust with your life, but we re out of good reasons to doubt their general meaning.

On March 26, 2004, George Bush talked up the importance of broadband. This country needs a national goal for... the spread of broadband technology, he said. We ought to have... universal, affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007, and then we ought to make sure as soon as possible thereafter, consumers have got plenty of choices when it comes to their broadband carrier.

But multiple reports show that countries around the world are beating us at broadband, and we re putting our economy and technological leadership at risk through a truly stunning failure to cast a national vision. Other countries are doing better at this, and they re doing it through a combination of financing, fear competition , and federal mandates.

Broadband: other countries do it better, but how?

Google Inc.'s long-anticipated acquisition of online ad service DoubleClick Inc. is expected to turn the Internet search leader into an even more powerful marketing vehicle that's fueled by better insights about consumers.

The $3.1 billion deal, completed Tuesday after nearly a year of regulatory wrangling, also may intensify the pressure on Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. to resolve their stormy courtship so they don't risk further distractions while Google tries to sprint further ahead in the race for Internet advertising.

Google took control of DoubleClick a few hours after Europe's antitrust regulators removed the final stumbling block by approving a deal that was first announced 11 months ago.nullnullnullnullnullnull

Google Completes $3.1 Billion Takeover Of DoubleClick

Working in IT isn't always pretty. After all, we can't all work on the cutting-edge technologies all the time. Some of us have to get dirty -- in some cases, literally.

Unfortunately, dirty jobs -- whether you're being chained to a help desk, hacking 30-year-old code, finding yourself wedged between warring factions in the conference room, or mucking about in human effluvia -- are necessary to make nearly every organization tick. (Well, maybe not the human effluvia part.)

The good news? Master at least one of them, and you're pretty much guaranteed a job with somebody. We don't guarantee you'll like it, though.

Here are seven of the dirtiest jobs in IT, and why your organization needs them.

The 7 dirtiest jobs in IT

As its leadership has changed, so, too, has Microsoft. But I am never going to stop being skeptical of Microsoft’s motives.

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie may profess that the company’s top priorities are transparency, standards and interoperability. But regardless of these kinds of pronouncements, the Softies seem to believe that insisting their actions are altruistic and customer-motivated — even when they are really motivated by lawsuit threats and other, less-palatable reasons — will fool its constituencies.

This is why I’ll always remain a Microsoft skeptic

Sprint's recent troubles have made plenty of investors and subscribers uneasy, which has led to a number of acquisition-related rumors and highly speculative analysis. Here are three:

Sprint to spin-off Nextel

According to a Seeking Alpha report, Sprint Nextel has hired Morgan Stanley to implement board director Ralph Whitworth's plan to spin-off Nextel. Rumor has it the spin-off will be announced within the next two to four weeks. Most of Sprint's trouble can be traced back to the Nextel acquisition in the first place.

T-Mobile may acquire Sprint

Merrill Lynch analysts told the Kansas City Star today that Deutsche Telekom, owner of T-Mobile USA, might be considering a takeover of Sprint in an attempt to prevent a price war between the mobile carriers. Sprint's low share price and the weakness of the U.S. dollar both favor the European company, but Merrill Lynch said it is not privy to any inside information--it's just speculating.

Should Verizon buy Sprint?

Last week the Wall Street Journal's deals blog considered whether Verizon should acquire Sprint. The post brings up Verizon's stellar decision not to make a bid for Sprint back in 2004.

What do you think? Do any of these ring true?

Sprint's troubles inspire rumor mill

It had been hoped members would boost the supply of oil to help prices fall from their historically-high levels.

The price of a barrel of oil reached another record of almost $104 during trading on Monday in New York.

Oil ministers from Opec member nations are gathering in Vienna ahead of their meeting which starts on Wednesday.

"I don't think Opec would consider increasing production because then we would be increasing to meet a demand that doesn't exist," Opec President Chakib Khelil said

Damit... These people with their S.E.G's are going to kill us at the pump...
"I don't think Opec would consider increasing production because then we would be increasing to meet a demand that doesn't exist," my ass.

They are going to milk the USA for every dime, every time.... period.

*EOR (end of rant) *

Opec dashes oil supply rise hopes

With no news from regulators and a merger agreement set to expire this weekend, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio have agreed to buy themselves a little more time.

"The companies have agreed not to exercise their rights to terminate the merger agreement until May 1," the companies said in a joint statement without commenting further.

The $4 billion all-stock merger is still waiting on approval from the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. The two agreed to merge in February 2007 and had set March 1, 2008 as a deadline.

The companies want to merge to cut expenses and turn profitable sooner than they might alone. Critics have said the merger would stifle competition by creating a satellite radio monopoly.

"satellite radio monopoly" sounds like a buch of who-ha to me.
Hmm what was there before, FM/AM Broadcasting... Which is sorta free...
I see no real harm it them getting together....

XM, Sirius extend merger agreement

Herman Lay's first business enterprise was selling Pepsi-Colas from a makeshift stand in his family's front yard in Greenville. He was 11 years old. He was successful, charging a nickel a bottle while the city baseball park across the street was charging a dime. Ironically, just 45 years later, he was selling Pepsi-Colas again, but this time as chairman of PepsiCo, Inc., a multibillion-dollar conglomerate that he helped create.

As a young man searching for a career during the Great Depression, he suffered some lean years, but no hard-luck lessons were lost on Lay. He finally found his niche in the snack foods industry and literally wrote his own success story, making his name and Lay's Potato Chips synonymous with snack foods throughout the South and later the world, and becoming one of the nation's most successful entrepreneurs.

As i much down on a bag of chips here is the bio of 1/2 of the 2 man team who started the snack food craze ... :)

Herman Warden Lay

First up was a brief revival of last year's hit musical "Oh God, my smartphone is dead" as RIM's Blackberry network bit the big one for a second time in less than a year, leaving millions of addicts — including a certain Leader of the Free World who shall remain nameless — without their beloved Crackberries. RIM — anybody else think they should rename it RIP? — is blaming it on a routine upgrade gone wrong, but we're thinking it's time to switch to Android, 'cause everyone knows crack is wack.

Speaking of all things wack, the UK is planning an ISP-level game of Wack-A-Mole with file-sharers under a new proposal that would require ISPs to disconnect users who access pirated materials under a three-strikes-you're-out system. The ISPs say the plan just isn't cricket, as cutting off pirates could cost them billions of pounds in lost revenues. Meanwhile, New York is moving to cut off registered sex offenders from sites like MySpace and Facebook, which frequently act as an online smorgasbord for predators. The plan — which would require registered offenders to hand over their screen-names to the government so they can be blocked by social networks — seems a bit naïve given the technical loopholes available online, but if passed would be the first of its kind.

While we're on the subject of government regulation, Intel's German offices felt the sting of regulation yesterday as EU investigators raided several locations and and collected evidence for the Commission's ongoing anti-trust probe. Intel says it's "cooperating," but we suspect that means "hiding the evidence while they climb the stairs." Comcast, meanwhile, has , admitting openly to the practice in their response to the FCC's probe, despite several months spent denying the practice to everyone from customers to Congress. Here's hoping they get what they deserve.

Last but not least, it's your daily dose of Yahoo news, with the shocking announcement that the stock-picker in charge of the investment fund that owns the second-largest share of Yahoo wants Microsoft to offer more money. Gasp — how could we not have seen that coming, a stockbroker wanting to sell high? Meanwhile, Yahoo finally scored one on their arch-competitor, convincing T-Mobile to drop Google for Yahoo as fast asStarbucks dropped T-Mobile for AT&T. The day wasn't a total bust for the number-one searcher, though, as Nokia announced they still have love for Big Daddy G.

That's about all the wack we can take, so we're out.

Crackberries Go Wacked, Downloaders Get Smacked, and Intel's Been Jacked

We all thought it was time to party, that the enemy was finally vanquished, that it was time for Champagne and cigars. We learned our lesson yesterday afternoon, though, when SCO smacked us all in the face with a hundred million dollars.

That's right, SCO suddenly has deep pockets, courtesy of their friend Stephen Norris, the uber-finance geek. Norris and his private equity firm — Stephen Norris Capital Partners, LLC — have decided to buy a stake in SCO, though the exact amount won't be clear until the Utah courts decide how much SCO has to pay IBM and Novell. What is clear is that they suddenly have a $95 million line-of-credit to pursue all the litigation their cold, black hearts desire. Others have pointed out that these guys are the biggest, baddest, beat-the-crap-out-of-anyone-in-their-way-ist, and won't have a moment's pause about coming after everyone in the Linux world, from IBM and Novell right down to us, the everyday users.

As the ever-vigilant White Knights over at Groklaw point out, there's still some hope — the all-powerful Bankruptcy court can quash them with the stroke of a pen, and the European Commission not to mention the SEC may well have a thing or two to say — but the outlook certainly isn't as rosy as it was on Wednesday.

Lord have mercy..

I think i am going to vomit...

SCO is Back, and This Time It's Personal | Linux Journal