Rob McNealy interviews Nathan Seidle of SparkFun Electronics, a company he started while working on his electrical engineering degree at the University of Colorado.

Nathan Seidle,A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Nathan Seidle came to CU-Boulder as an electrical engineering student in 2000. During his junior year, Nathan was designing one of his first micro controller projects when his programmer sparked and burned out. While looking for an affordable replacement, he noticed a lack of resources and online stores catering to developers and prototypers.

During winter break from school, Nathan maxed out his credit cards with inventory and pizza and went to work building an easy to use website. SparkFun launched shortly after that, in January of 2003.

Nathan maintained SparkFun Electronics part-time during his junior and senior years, and grew it as much as he could while keeping up with schoolwork. By the time he completed his degree in 2004, the company had grown enough to support his full-time efforts—and his first employee’s as well. Now in its fifth year, the company employs over three-dozen people and maintains a growing office on the outskirts of Boulder.

Nathan Seidle of Spark Fun Electronics on Being a Young Entrepreneur ....

Public Service Announcements in the medium of comics regarding the dangers of... well whatever the popular perils of the time are, have been hoisting well-intentioned gibberish on kids for generations. PSA comics have touched on everything from drugs, to smoking, to famine, and land mines.

The latest in a long heritage of comics urging you to do right comes without any super heroes or association with an established comic outlet like Marvel or DC. Justice Case Files really... is an in-house effort from the National Center for State Courts, which we can only assume is a front for the RIAA, the most dastardly group of super villains to ever grace the pages of a comic book.

This disgrace to the label of propaganda bulges with misinformation so dense you d have to bushwhack your way through its pages to find even a kernel of truth.

Issue one centers around Megan, a student with a file sharing addiction that puts her freedom and scholarship seriously? jail time isn t motivation enough? at risk. Megan is charged with Criminal Copyright Infringement by her fictional city government and faces charges at the state level that could net her a total of $25,000 in fines and 2 years in prison. Of course, in real life Criminal Copyright Infringement involves the selling of copyrighted materials, not peer-to-peer file sharing, and CCI is prosecuted by the federal government not local courts, but who s paying attention? Apparently, not the legal non-profit handing out this mumbo-jumbo.

You can download the entire comic in PDF form here, or for those with a taste for the ironic, you can search Limewire and BitTorrent.

Major LOL!

Comic Book Does the RIAA s Bidding...

A second Federal Communications Commission Democrat voted against Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.'s plan to buy XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., leaving the merger's fate to the sole undecided Republican.

Democrat Jonathan Adelstein, who voted against the $3.5 billion merger today, said in an e-mailed statement that the combination would create ``a monopoly with window dressing.'' Fellow Democrat Michael Copps already voted no.

Two Republican commissioners, Chairman Kevin Martin and Robert McDowell, have backed the merger, leaving the outcome to the agency's fifth member, Deborah Taylor Tate, a Republican who has yet to vote. A telephone call to her office wasn't returned. Reuters reported Tate is nearing a ``yes'' vote, without saying where it got the information.

``Commissioner Adelstein would only cast a dissenting vote once it was fairly clear that Commissioner Tate would support the deal,'' Paul Gallant, a former FCC official and Washington- based analyst with Stanford Washington Research Group, said in an interview. He continues to predict approval.

Commissioners, who face no deadline for a decision, vote electronically at the time of their choosing.

Traditional radio companies led by the National Association of Broadcasters oppose the merger, saying it will create a harmful monopoly. Sirius and XM, the only two pay-radio companies, told regulators their union would bring consumers more programming at a lower cost.

``a monopoly with window dressing?'' These are pay services... I don't understand what the squib is all about!

XMrius/SiriXM.... FCC Quibs on Vote..

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