Bloviating Ignoramuses and Politics
George Will this morning called real estate mogul Donald Trump a "bloviating ignoramus" and says he sees no way to find a political upside to GOP Presidential candidate former MA Gov. Mitt Romney associating with the guy. Except when he writes about baseball, I'm no big fan of Will's, but the man does have a keen wit and a way with words.
My favorite pull quote:
"Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics,"
Facebook Courting Opera? Now THAT's Interesting!
Forbes.com is reporting a rumor it picked up yesterday that Facebook is actively pursuing the acquisition of Opera Software ASA, makers of what may be the most popular commercial Web browser. Perhaps the most interesting thought sequence here goes something like this:
- Facebook sucks at mobile.
- Opera makes one of the very best mobile browsers with great HTML5 support.
- Facebook has a boatload of cash.
- Ergo, ipso facto and a bunch of other Latin.
This would be a natural move on the part of Facebook. And it would presumably give Opera access to enough cash to push for, if not dominance, at least greater commercial success.
Of course, the assumption is that if FB bought Opera, they'd revise the browser to be a social media-focused app. And that could become worrisome to users concerned with privacy issues. At the same time, though, it would merge browsing and social in ways that presumably anyone without access to the FB code vault could only dream about.
This is one worth watching.
Musings on the Facebook IPO ((Target: Technology, Business, Facebook))
The Facebook IPO is being shouted down as a corruption-ridden, badly managed disaster. That's true if you were one of the insiders who didn't make out like quite as much a bandit as you'd hoped when the stock went out at $38, climbed briefly and slightly and then dropped to about $32 yesterday.
As Joe Nocera says in the New York Times, "Facebook maximized its take, at $16 billion. Long-term investors should be happy about this outcome; the company now has plenty of capital as it competes with Google and the other Internet big boys." In the long term, it's better for investors if the company has enough money to compete and grow.
The problem, of course, is that folks who invest in IPOs are typically never long-term investors. They are in it for the quick big gain. But the truth that Nocera gets is that the company offering its stock to the public for sale benefits most when the stock price is near or even a bit above what the market decides the company is actually worth. Otherwise, the company ends up raising less money than it could have if it had priced the shares right to begin with.
Nocera again: "We’ve all become brainwashed into believing that, when it comes to I.P.O.s, up is down and down is up. A successful I.P.O. is one where the company gets hosed by Wall Street. A failed I.P.O. is one where the company’s interests, not those of Wall Street speculators, are served. It’s Alice in Wonderland goes to Wall Street."
Precisely.
Whole New Use for the Cloud
USA Today had a story today about a woman who located her lost/stolen iPhone because the thief used it to take pictures of himself without realizing she had her phone set up to automatically upload photos to her iCloud account.
Now that's what I call cloud computing!
The Biden-for-Clinton Swap: Why It's a Stupid Idea
The WEEK today has a nice roundup of the five major reasons all the crap floating around mostly in the echo chamber that is the right-wing media about Obama dumping Biden for Hillary Clinton is garbage.
Unless something drastic happens to Biden, there's no way Obama makes this switch. The WEEK -- my favorite current news source -- outlines nicely why that's the case.
Raise the Retirement Age, Worsen Unemployment. We Need Means Test
I was reminded this morning in an email from a colleague that one of the proposals for reforming Social Security is to raise the retirement age, which any nimrod with 15 minutes' math training knows only postpones the problem rather than solving it. But that approach has another side effect I don't see talked about much: it would worsen unemployment.
One of the many, many factors that has driven up unemployment in our country is the necessity for people to work into later years. The original employment model assumed a certain amount of job turnover as people retired, making room for younger people, and particularly for younger workers to advance as their supervisors and managers retired. That spigot has slowed a lot in recent years. If you extend retirement age, that bottleneck gets worse.
I think the only really permanent fix for Social Security -- assuming it actually needs a fix and I think the jury is still out on that one -- is a means test. Social Security is insurance. Insurance is designed to cover the downside of a risk event. You buy auto insurance but if you never have an accident or a claim, do you feel cheated? No, you just feel fortunate. Same with retirement. You buy insurance against the eventuality that your Golden Years will be tarnished by lack of resources. It's designed to ensure us old folks don't starve. But I personally know dozens of people who draw Social Security checks for whom those checks are less than petty cash. But they are, under the current law, entitled to them. Meanwhile, the actual size of a Social Security check is absolutely insufficient to sustain life for millions of older Americans.
I draw Social Security. I didn't think I'd ever need to do so. But economic downturns in my last few years have resulted in my actually needing that income to survive. But I have a friend who has annual income in the low seven figures, all of it passive. He draws a Social Security check every month that is a little larger than mine. He doesn't need it. But he didn't want to just leave it in the bank, either. And there's the rub; we shouldn't view Social Security contributions as money with our name on it in a savings account somewhere. Rather, it should be viewed as what it was originally intended to be: insurance against calamity in later years.
Google CIO Says Tipping Point Near on Cloud Computing in Enterprise
Google CIO Ben Fried has told a tech executive summit in New York that he thinks the tipping point for Cloud computing to explode into the Enterprise space is at hand. And Fried says the prospect is scary and disturbing.
Of course it's clear that Google has a vested interest in spreading this meme, but that doesn't mean the meme is a lie. As Fried points out correctly, "The macroeconomic tides — you can’t fight them forever — will force companies to adapt. "
This shift opens myriad opportunities for entrepreneurs and for mid-size companies with agile development capabilities to jump in and provide services and supporting products that could fuel another round of economic expansion. At the same time, as large companies outsource IT infrastructure, jobs will be lost. My guess is that the smart IT guys have already figured this out and begun joining the ranks of the self-employed to tie into and support the Cloud services their former employers need.
What say ye?
Romney, Religion and the Right
Religion columnist and professor Stephen Prothero wrote today in USA Today about Mitt Romney in the context of the current Presidential political campaign and his Mormon faith. It's a piece with an intriguing slant based on a paper he assigned his students at Boston University, and it's something I think everyone interested in the future of the country and Romney's possible role in it should read.
Here's my favorite pull-quote:
I do not want liberals or evangelicals to use this election as an excuse to attack the Mormon faith. I am glad there is no religious test in the Constitution, and I would be happy to call a Mormon (or a Hindu) my president. But I am chagrined to see our public square stripped of real religious conversation.
HuffPost's Problem With the iPad: Aggregator Beware!
I love-love-love the Huffington Post. It has become my second favorite source of online news (behind one of the best-kept secrets in America, The Week). When they upgraded their iPad app recently, I downloaded it to give it a try. Earlier versions of the app had been...sort of ok but not exciting.
The new version is much better. I like it a lot. But it continues to suffer from one problem HuffPost can't help because by its very nature as a content aggregator, it is stuck with stupid decisions made by its sources. This means that very often a video re-published by HuffPost ends up a blank spot on my iPad. A quick random sample this morning suggests that less than 20% of the videos they share are usable on iOS. Which makes me wonder about whether their sources are ignoring HTML5 or using some proprietary player-required format in a misguided effort to protect their IP.
Whichever it is, the whole thing makes HuffPost much less enjoyable on the iPad. Which in turn dramatically limits the number of hours I spend on the site each week.
Facebook IPO Price Was Exactly Right. For the Company
There's been so much "analysis" in the popular press over the meager 23-cent uptick in the price of Facebook's initial stock offering that it seems like someone has forgotten Business 101.
The company that went public here obviously did so precisely correctly. By pricing its initial stock at $38, the company hit exactly what the market agreed it was worth. That is rare. And it means, among other things, that Facebook didn't leave a lot of money on the table.
See, if they offered shares at, say, $33 and the price jumps to $38, a bunch of investors are delighted. But the company only sees the proceeds of the initial sale, not the subsequent re-sales between investors. So if the stock is priced so low it makes these investors happy, it means the company didn't take in as much as it could -- and should -- have.
As it is, the company realized nearly as much from the IPO as the market felt it was worth. Brilliant job by the investment bankers who priced the offering. The purpose of the market is to enable companies to raise funds for expansion and operation, not to make a bunch of individuals whose only claim to fame for the most part is being in the right place at the right time wealthy.
