TheMacAdvocate » Steve’s liver

Google CEO and Champion of Privacy Steps Down; Market Gives Thumbs Up

JT — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 01:47:23 +0000

In addition to solid first quarter earnings, Google announced that CEO and potent quotable Eric “Dr. Strangelove” Schmidt is to step down as of April 4. Without any signaling of such a dramatic transition, you’d think the market would be poised to ignore Google’s financial reporting and tank the stock. After all, Google’s fearless leader is ambling off into the sunset. Instead, the market shrugged and the stock is trading at same price it was at the bell yesterday. Imagine the sell-off a Jobs resignation announcement would create; news of his leave of absence resulted in a week-long $15/share selloff – despite Apple’s utter annihilation of Q1 expectations.

In honor of Schmidt’s announcement, here’s a short list of some of his most memorable quotes, which I’m sure had no bearing whatsoever on his departure.

“One day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try and predict the stock market…and then we decided it was illegal. So we stopped doing that.”

Question from attendee at information session: “All this information that you have about us: where does it go? Who has access to that?”
Schmidt (ES): Paraphrase: Google servers and Google employees, under careful rules.
Follow-up Q: “Does that scare everyone in this room?” Applause
ES: “Would you prefer someone else? Is there a government that you would prefer to be in charge of this?”

“I think judgement matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Something Schmidt no doubt learned from Recovery Girl.

Google CEO and Champion of Privacy Steps Down; Market Gives Thumbs Up originally appeared on TheMacAdvocate on January 20, 2011.

Dan Lyons Narrowly Escapes Lightning Strike

JT — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 15:46:08 +0000

Out of respect for Steve Jobs’ announced leave of absence, Fake Steve Jobs pen and honored denizen of Douchbag’s Row Dan Lyons has announced that he will no longer be writing in FSJ. He goes on to deride the inevitable flood of scumbag journalists who will ignore SJ’s request for privacy as people who “hunger for unique visitors and pageviews ahead of a man’s right to privacy”. This is clearly not the same kind of scourge as “letting hunger for unique visitors and pageviews” come before “facts”, something you can witness clearly by searching for “Newsweek”, “Lyons” and “Apple”.

The more successful parasites go out of their way not to permanently harm their hosts. Looks like someone knows where his dinner hangs.

Dan Lyons Narrowly Escapes Lightning Strike originally appeared on TheMacAdvocate on January 19, 2011.

Associated Press Exposes How Organ Transplants are Rigged for the Rich

JT — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:46:46 +0000

Actually‚ my headline is only tangentially related to what I’m going to write about. But if you’ve read the tripe from the AP about how money influences the organ transplant game‚ you’re already familiar with the practice. In three easy steps‚ the game of rigging news works thusly:

Game a headline to suggest something unseemly that would make the blood of the average reader boil. In this case: “Jobs’ liver transplant shows power of wealth”
Use your opening paragraphs to pull a 180 away from your seedy‚ eye-catching headline (wouldn’t want the power of wealth’s attorneys knockin’ would we?) and state clearly that no one can “officially” game the system‚ setting up the reader for the dirty little secret about the relationship between money and undue influence you promised in said headline.
Drop your payload. “Here’s where money comes in.” If you’re rich‚ you can buy a home anywhere in the country‚ so when the hospital makes that life-saving call to you‚ you can be on the operating table within hours.

Fucking. Awesome. Journalism.

You could also rent a home‚ or an apartment. Or stay with a friend or relative. But that wouldn’t be seedy and poor people might also be able to do that. That might drive people to other sources for their sensationalistic news fix‚ a category that the Associated Press is apparently now happy to populate.

Associated Press Exposes How Organ Transplants are Rigged for the Rich originally appeared on TheMacAdvocate on June 25, 2009.