Philip Greenspun is closing any accounts he holds with firms that do investment banking and IPOs. He admits you can’t always stay away from the criminal classes:
“Sometimes there is no alternative but to deal with an organization that has been convicted of violating federal law and cheating its customers. For example, if you want to send your kid to an Ivy League college you will become a customer of an organization that was prosecuted for tuition and financial aid price-fixing in violation of antitrust laws. If you want to listen to your favorite musician and don’t have time to waste on Kazaa you’ll be buying a CD from a record company that was very likely guilty of violating those same antitrust laws. If you want to run the same software as everyone else you’ll be a customer of Microsoft, no stranger to the Federal court system.”
He also offers sobering investment advice: “if you’re someone whose performance is evaluated by a clueless MBA and whose job could conceivably be done by a guy sitting at a computer in a low-wage country, plan for early retirement by investing in assets that won’t wither in the face of inflation”.
The Bush-Cheney re-election campaign has a weblog. It’s a pretty sorry affair, with only an anonymous voice (GeorgeWBush.com is the “signature”). And, no surprise, no comments allowed.
Joe Rospars on the Dean weblog has the best response: “Mr. President, I’m a blogger. I know blogs. Bloggers are friends of mine. And your site, sir, is not a blog.”
Doc Searls recently wondered whether blogrolls need fixing in an era of RSS feeds.
Even though I rely on RSS (if a blog doesn’t syndicate, it pretty much drops off the map for me), I also am a big fan of blogrolls. When I find a new weblog that appeals to me, it’s the blogroll that leads me to more, serendipitous discoveries.
Since Doc got me thinking about it, I’ve made sure to update my blogroll to include new discoveries like Jay Rosen’s PressThink.