"There's a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets
flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them
with tin cups in their hands. It's almost like seeing a guy
show up at the soup kitchen in high-hat and tuxedo. . . . I
mean, couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or
jet-pooled or something to get here?"
- Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.)
We're not going to follow the red herring and start barking
about executive compensation for the big dogs, but
these guys need a good image consultant.
Should The Government Stop
Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?
The information is laughing at us
The ticker tape feeds the night
Looking for a lost transmission
A heaven that we left behind
When the information comes
We'll know what we're made from
- Beck
We put a damper on more than one dinner party conversation a
couple of years ago when asked for our opinion on the future of
The Economy. These days, of course, it is hard to tune
into any media without being bombarded with
doomsday information 24/7. Our favorite financial news
source continues to be Bloomberg which offers up the
stuff that trades are
made on.
While news reports focus on the global financial crisis and the
U.S. debate on bailing out dinosaurs, we remain bullish on
innovation and entrepreneurship.
It's Global Entrepreneurship Week
A series of events promoting entrepreneurship is taking place
around the globe this week. Details on Global Entrepreneurship
Week are at unleashingideas.org.
Just the other day we were reminded of The Sting, a film
carried by the rhythm of its actors. We will miss
Paul Newman, husband, father, actor, activist, auto racer
and generous philanthropist.
Mr. Newman is survived by his wife actress Joanne Woodward
and their daughters Susan and Nell; he is also survived by
three other daughters, Stephanie, Melissa (Lissy) and Clea; two
grandchildren Peter and Henry Elkind; his brother older Arthur;
and his sons-in-law: Raphe, Kurt and Gary.
The government of Portugal will provide 500,000 Intel Classmate
PCs to school children under its "Iniciativa Magalhães"
(Magellan
Initiative) in the next year.
Classmate PC
Intel's Classmate PC, which will soon use their new low-power
Atom processor, runs Windows and varients of the GNU/Linux
operating system such as
Mandriva Linux. Mandriva, formerly Mandrake in France,
acquired Brazilian Linux company Conectiva in 2005. Mandriva is
also providing a customized version of Linux for the Gdium
"netbook" which runs on a USB key.
We're reminded of former executives of a now bankrupt film
company disagreeing over the color of their new corporate jet's
leather seats in reading the piece about
comfort capsules for U.S. Air Force Generals.
One request was that the color of the leather for the seats
and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown
to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another
was that the color of the table's wood be darkened.
Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in
a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240.
When California's failed IndyMac Bank reopened under the
administration of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
(FDIC) regulators, customers met with confusion.
Everyone thought these guys were the best in the market
at evaluating mortgages, so they let them skate by with
huge debts and tiny financial cushions. But now it’s less
clear they knew what they were doing, and it’s really
hard to know who’s right and who’s selling pipe dreams
and then hoping for the best.
Little emerald soul
Little emerald eye
Little emerald bird
We must say goodbye
- Memorial Tribute
Patti Smith
Memorial Day originated in Greece 2,500 years ago when
flowers and garlands were laid on the graves of heroes. The
custom was adopted in the United States and the Confederacy
during the American Civil War.
Contributions for China Earthquake Relief may be made to
MercyCorps, a
U.S. non-profit organization partnered with the China Foundation for Poverty
Alleviation (CFPA). Staff from these organizations are on
the ground in Sichaun Province and will be coordinating
humanitarian assistance from a temporary office in Chongqing.
MercyCorps, which has been active in China since 2001, will
provide clean water, food and shelter to victims of the
earthquake. They are also planning a Cash for Work
program to provide jobs to local people to help with clean up
work.
According to filings with the Oslo Børs, Norway's stock
exchange, major Trolltech (TROLL.OL) shareholders have
pre-accepted a tender offer by Nokia.
The Deal
Trolltech CEO and co-founder Haavard Nord (7,250,120
shares), board member Eirik Chambe-Eng through his
Vuonislahti Invest AS (7,188,120 shares), Teknoinvest
and funds managed by Index Ventures,
(9,693,018 shares) have agreed to tender their shares. An
aside: Index Ventures is also a shareholder in MySQL which
is being acquired by Sun for 1 billion USD.
Lars Knoll, VP of Engineering (75,200 shares) and
Volker Hilsheimer, employee representative on the board
of Trolltech, (56,500 shares) have also pre-accepted Nokia's
offer.
According to Thompson Financial, Nokia's cash bid of 16
Norwegian Kroner per share values Trolletech at around 843
million Norwegian Kroner, or 105 million Euro, and represents a
premium of 6 NKR per share to Trolltech's closing price in Oslo
on Friday. TROLL closed Friday's regular trade at $35.08, down
$1.4, on a volume of 31.28 million shares. It's shares were up
57% on Monday after the announcement. The company operated at a
loss in 2006 and 2007.
Some Background
Looking beyond the Symbian and Windows CE mobile operating
systems, Nokia was first attracted to Linux desktop GNOME's
GTK+ library, in part because its rival desktop KDE library Qt
was maintained by a sole company, Trolltech, rather than a
distributed group. GNOME's origin ten years ago was as a freely
licensed alternative to KDE. This distinction helped founder
Miguel de Icaza attract a sizeable and energetic young
base of developers.
After heated discussion in the
developer community, Trolltech eventually released its Qt
toolkit under the GPL 2, dual licensing the code in 2000 and
removing most of the license distinction which GNOME held.
Recently, Trolltech announced that its Qt cross-platform
development framework was now licensed under the GNU General
Public License version 3 (GPL v3.)
Quick Analysis
Nokia's strategy to broaden its revenue model to services such
as Ovi,
makes cross platform delivery and developer mindshare a key
dependency to its future. With Trolltech's Ot in hand (and on
its line of mobile handsets) together with GTK+ based Maemo on
its Linux Internet WiFi tablets,) the former rubber boot
manufacturer musters a new challenge to other players in the
wireless and WiMax market. Simultaneously, the company
strenghtens its corporate leadership role in open source
technology.
