Good Morning Silicon Valley

The best music video ever: Hurra Torpedo covers Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” - on kitchenware (.WMV version here; thanks Rob)

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Looks like it’s 25 years in the ol’ graybar hotel for former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers. U.S. District Judge Barbara S. Jones, who rejected Ebbers’ request for a new trial on Tuesday, this morning threw the book at the “gentle-giant-of-the-ponderosa” for his role in the $11 billion fraud that drove WorldCom into bankruptcy. [...]

The Internet Archive, the Web’s institutional memory, stores about 40 billion Web pages on its servers, among them a few it probably wishes it hadn’t. Last week a company called Healthcare Advocates filed suit against the archive, alleging its operators had failed to block access to certain documents related to a 2003 trademark dispute. [...]

“Make the hacker spend 16 hours a day fielding help-desk inquiries in an AOL chat room for computer novices. Force him to do this with a user name at least as uncool as KoolDude and to work on a vintage IBM PC with a 2400-baud dial-up connection. Most painful of all for any geek, make [...]

Couch potatoes who’ve refused to acknowledge the obsolescence of their rabbit-eared sets best begin saving for that digital TV, because broadcasters said Tuesday they’re willing to accept a firm date for switching off their analog signals. At a hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee, National Association of Broadcasters President Eddie Fritts said his members would [...]

Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has traded the world of diplomacy for the entrepreneurial arena. This morning, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley’s most storied venture capital firms, said it has signed Powell as a “strategic limited partner” — a position apparently created especially for him. As a limited [...]

CBS may not be the first news purveyor to offer a 24-hour broadband network, but its vision may well be the most ambitious. Revealed Tuesday, plans for CBSNews.com call for a build-your-own-newscast service that replaces the network’s mind-witheringly tedious “voice of God” format and a Web log called “Public Eye” that will offer “greater openness [...]

Chocolypse Now
Everybody gets everything they want. I wanted a Golden Ticket. And for my sins, they gave me one

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