“Why would I throw away the six million dollars they were supposed to give us yesterday? Why would I do all of these things unless I was stark raving mad?” — MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, trying to defend the One Laptop Per Child charity’s contentious and short-lived partnership with chip manufacturer Intel. Thanks for clearing that up, Nicky. [BBC]

The libertarians are coming! But don’t let a Republican explain it to you. Instead, crazy fun local lefties the San Francisco Bay Guardian report on the Ron Paul phenomenon. I’ve culled some easily-absorbed bullet points from the lengthy article.

• It’s rare to see GOP campaign signs in Mission District windows and beat-up old cars, or crowds of enthusiastic supporters flooding the city’s streets.

• Paul’s frank assessment of the United States as an overreaching empire [remember, this is the Bay Guardian] got his campaign rolling.
• Paul’s libertarian platform is attracting support from lifelong members of the National Rifle Association to medical marijuana activists to disenchanted college students.
• One unifying theme among all Paul supporters is their absolute belief in their candidate’s integrity. “My gut tells me Ron Paul is different.” “Ron Paul’s not trying to sell you on himself; he’s just selling you the message of freedom.” “He is the only Republican nominee who would not steal the election.”
• Paul’s Dec. 16 fundraising push raised more than $6 million in a 24-hour period, breaking the record for funds raised in one day held by the John Kerry 2004 campaign.
• Most of the donations to the Paul campaign are small contributions from committed individuals. The average size of each donation is around $100.
• There is no political mystery to Paul; he has been articulating the same message — one of limited constitutional government, low taxes (if any), and free markets — since he was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1976 from his home state of Texas.
• Paul is a self-proclaimed noninterventionist and has opposed the war in Iraq from the start. He is by no means liberal or progressive; he’s more a classic conservative who opposes government regulation.
• He sees the USA Patriot Act as a breech of civil liberties; wants to stop US involvement in the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and other free trade agreements; and supports bringing American troops home from Iraq posthaste.
• He is also staunchly antichoice, introduced legislation in 2004 to repeal bans on assault weapons, and wants to beef up the US’s borders.
• There are more than 80,000 Ron Paul online meet-up members around the country — 452 in the San Francisco group as of the writing of this article — and most of them find themselves in complete agreement with Paul’s perspectives. “We’re right where Kerry was in 2004 going into the primaries, when Dean had already been crowned winner by the media,”

(Photo by Anarchyware)

Source:Valleywag

“I just threw away 5 months of Wired, unread. There may be some newly-minted jargon for that, but I have no way of knowing.” - Adam Lisagor

Last night, Steve Jobs attended a Product (Red) party with Bobby Shriver, the charitable venture’s chairman, and Steve Jurvetson, the spotlight-hungry, Nazi-missile-loving venture capitalist. Jurvetson got a wall-of-fame shot with his new pals, and transcribed the following conversation:

Somehow we got on the topic of makeup for TV interviews…
Jobs: I have never worn makeup.
Shriver: Really?
Jobs: I don’t give a s**t what I look like.
Shriver: But some people do.
Jurvetson: Yeah, like Schwarzenegger. Boy, does he layer it on. Have you ever seen him close up?
Shriver: [chortles] Have I ever seen him close up? I can’t believe you asked me that.

(Photo by jurvetson)

“It’s trying to set up an economy of writing and the Web is a great place to try to experiment with different economies. Wikipedia has already succeeded with one, and these are two different styles.” — Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki and a Wikipedia board member, responding to Google’s competing Knol, an experiment to create its own repository of content. And I thought the all-volunteer Wikipedia was just beginning to experiment with economies themselves. [Read/WriteWeb]

American laws and economists may favor YouTube in the United States, but overseas the copyfight is not going well for Google. On Monday, major Indian content owner Super Cassettes Industries won a restraining order against YouTube, forcing it to remove all of SCI’s infringing content immediately. SCI also seeks a permanent injunction and damages, according to reports. It’s likely they’ll get it.

In the U.S., laws prevent Internet service providers from being held liable for their customers’ actions. You can’t sue Six Apart for a defamatory remark written on one of its TypePad blogs, and you can’t sue YouTube for a video clip uploaded by a user. (Or so the legal theory goes, for now.) But in India, there are no such laws. In fact, India’s Information Technology Act of 2000 explicitly makes services such website hosting companies, search engines, email services, and social networks liable for their users’ content. There’s no word yet on whether Viacom plans to move its headquarters to Mumbai.

Source:Valleywag

Stuart Scott, Microsoft’s former CIO, is not the only Microsoft employee unceremoniously being shown the door. Some staffers who are putting in their notice are being escorted off campus immediately. Why? Because they’ve put in their notice to join Google. In Microsoft’s eyes, Google is Enemy No. 1. Anyone leaving Redmond for the search leader is a threat. Not because they’ll scurry around collecting company secrets — as if Google’s interested in Microsoft’s ’90s-era technologies. Departing employees, however, might tell other ‘Softies how much better Google is. If an employee is leaving for Amazon.com or another second-tier employer whichdoesn’t make Microsoft so paranoid, they’ll probably serve out the traditional two weeks of unproductive wrapping up. So if you’re planning on leaving Microsoft for Google, pack up your belongings and say goodbye to friends ahead of time. There’ll be no cake and two weeks of paid slacking for you. And, Microsoft, don’t expect former employees who are treated like security threats to ever want to come back, even after their Google stock options have vested.

Source:Valleywag

“The two platforms are very different in the user experience … MySpace pages become a home on the Internet, it’s where they discover people, content and culture … Facebook, on the other hand, tends to be a Web utility, similar to a phone.” — News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch on the differences between his MySpace and competitor Facebook. [Sydney Morning Herald]

AOL has lost 5.1 million subscribers — a third of its paying user base — in a year, according to the latest numbers from Time Warner. AOL is down to 10.1 million subs from its peak of 30 million shortly after the merger between AOL and Time Warner in 2001. This could be why AOL is moving to an advertising-based business. Just a guess. [TG Daily]

Source:Valleywag

There are these small bands of people who are trying to take over the world. This is so much more fun than working at a hedge fund or an investment bank.

— Gideon Yu, having a Dr. Evil moment in describing his startup career as CFO at YouTube and then Facebook. [Portfolio]

“The day before Google went public in 2004, Wayne Rosing, then the vice president for engineering, stood on a stage during a companywide meeting and brandished a baseball bat. He threatened to use it on anyone’s car in the Google parking lot that was anything flashier than a 3 Series BMW.” — NYT reporter John Markoff details the Googletards’ militant ban on conspicuous consumption. Because really, two Boeing jetliners is all anyone needs.

“I am embarrassed by [the price] … There’s the homeless and charity and there are lots of things you could do with that money that would improve the world, right? So you know, ‘How selfish is this guy?’ … is the criticism. So the answer is pretty selfish, but I am not going to put a number on it.” — Tom Perkins, to CBS’s 60 Minutes, on the price tag for his ubermegasuperyacht Maltese Falcon. We bet he’ll feel better after he goes for a quick sail — and would be happy to take it off his hands if he’s still feeling guilty.

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker again denied rumors of a possible sale of the company by parent General Electric. Zucker noted that GE chief Jeff Immelt “has said numerous times that NBCU is not for sale.” Sort of like NBC’s new fall season on iTunes. [Reuters]

Source:Valleywag

“That is not a drug. It’s a leaf. My real drug was pumping iron, trust me.” — California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger to GQ magazine, regarding a scene in a 1977 documentary in which Arnie puffs on a lit joint of BSD-sysadmin-grade bud.

“CUPERTINO - Apple announced today that it would no longer be accepting purchase requests for the iPhone. ‘We feel the iPhone is too good for regular humans,’ says the Apple spokesperson. ‘To protect our brand image, we have decided to stop selling our product altogether to maintain a level of exclusivity unattainable by any other product currently on the market.’ The spokesperson also announced they would continue advertising in order to maintain the feel of unattainability.” — Commenter paul34, on Apple’s new refusal to accept gift cards for iPhone purchases. [Engadget]