For 11 bucks you can get yourself a terrific little portable hard drive for transferring files, on-the-fly backups, and so on. Sweet.

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

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Meritline)

So you pulled that cramped old 40GB hard drive out of your notebook and replaced it with 160GB of storage goodness. Ever wonder what you should do with the leftover drive? Simple: stick it in an enclosure and use it as a portable USB hard drive.

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SINTEF ICT)

ACM-R5

For its design of a robot for use inside pipes, the SINTEF ICT part of the SINTEF Group, a Norway-based technology research company, was inspired by snakes.

The ACM-R5 robot that came out of Hirose’s lab first debuted at the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan with improved versions shown publicly in 2007. An incredibly life-like snake robot, it is shown in the video below, gliding through water in a test pool.

The ACM-R5 robot can slither both on land and in water.

Carnegie Mellon’s roboticists, meanwhile, have their own Snakebot slithering in the labs.

The final robot will be approximately 1.5 meters long, made of aluminum and consist of about 11 modules connected by joints. SINTEF sees its robots being used to check on the quality of oil and gas pipelines, or as a cleaning tool in ventilation systems.

(Credit:
Hirose Lab, Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Tokyo Instite of Technology)

There’s no doubt that many scientists are looking to nature for mechanical inspiration. This past spring we have seen robotic bugs, robo-fish, and perhaps even the promise of a robotic dolphin.

“When the robot enters a vertical pipe, it lifts its head in the pipe and meets the pipe wall. It can then either move sideways with its abdomen against the pipe and twist itself upwards or it can topple backwards, attach itself to the pipe wall, in the same way as we would put our feet against a shaft wall to hold on, and then roll upwards,” according to a statement from SINTEF.

The SINTEF robot could be considered a distant cousin to the ACM-R5 amphibious robot that came out of the Hirose-Fukushima Robotics Lab at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan.

New robotic snake design can climb pipes vertically.

The robot as designed (it’s still not a finished prototype) maneuvers itself not only horizontally like a team of train
cars, but can climb vertically as needed inside pipes with a squirming motion.

But right now, the SINTEF snake can not autonomously navigate any set of strange pipes. The team is currently using a Lego Mindstorms robot with an attached camera that navigates a pre-programmed pipe system. The roboticists are working on a visual system that would allow the robot to detect pipe turns ahead of time so that it could navigate itself as needed through any system of pipes. A prototype of that robot should be complete by the end of 2008, according to SINTEF.

In conjunction with Electronic Arts, that official Hasbro Scrabble app is now up, in beta. How does it compare to Scrabulous? Pretty well. Too well, actually. While Scrabulous fans will see no reason to switch to the official Scrabble app, newcomers to the game on Facebook (like me), will find Scrabble easier to get into, easier to use, and just as competitive and fun.

Scrabulous: No reason to switch, but if you're starting from scratch, Scrabble's the way to go.

A dissenting review from the AP: Facebook Scrabble flashy, but not better

Scrabble’s game interface is more intuitive than Scrabulous, and it looks nicer, too. The screen automatically redraws when an opponent makes a move or leaves a message; Scrabulous requires a manual refresh. This is not a big deal if you’re playing a drawn-out asynchronous game with a correspondent, but if you want to play in real-time with someone it’s a drag to use Scrabulous.

Scrabble is finally on Facebook. Officially. While the Scrabulous game has been online for a while and is wildly popular, it’s had a sword hanging over its head since launch. Hasbro, owner of the Scrabble franchise, has threatened and tried to kill Scrabulous–while at the same time prepping to launch its own, official, Scrabble app on Facebook.

Scrabulous, for its part, has a faster interface for playing a turn. You can select a location on the board to place letters and just start typing. In Scrabble you have to drag your letters to the board one by one. And if you’re playing multiple games at once, it’s much faster, since there’s a “next active game” link that puts you in the action on another board with just a click. Scrabble takes three clicks and makes you sit through tedious board-swap animations and load times.

Scrabulous has many more online users than Scrabble does, at least so far. But this game has just begun, and there’s no reason that Scrabble’s official online app–the developers of which don’t have to worry about getting sued out of existence–can’t surpass Scrabulous on the Web in general. Although Scrabulous could maintain its lead in the Facebook universe for a time, the world of social gaming goes beyond just that one platform, and Hasbro/EA could (and should) push its new, fully legal online game out to social networks all over the Internet.

Scrabulous’ biggest advantage is that any stats or ranking you’ve collecting while in the game don’t transfer out. If you don’t want to have to earn your rank all over again, avoid Scrabble. Also, avoid Scrabble if your gaming partners are overseas: Scrabble is available for U.S. and Canadian users only.

The two apps have a lot in common. Both let you quickly and easily invite people from your list of friends. Both let you manage multiple games. Both keep track of games scores and multiple-game ratings. Both have useful features that let you shuffle the tiles in your rack, chat with your competitors, look up valid two-letter words and access a Scrabble-official word look-up feature.

Related:
‘Scrabble’ on Facebook: Too little, too late
‘Scrabulous’ debate may rewrite the rules of the game

What's a seven-letter word for, "So long, Scrabulous?"

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Canon)

The Canon PowerShot SD990 IS replaces the SD950 IS, which we thought pushed limits with its 12 megapixels. Canon obviously thought different, opting to drive the PowerShot SD990 IS Digital ELPH up to 14.7 megapixels. That’s a lot of resolution for a camera that’s still small enough to fit in a shirt pocket.

Along with a sporty new design, the SD990 IS uses Canon’s latest image processor, DIGIC 4. The processor is apparently what we can thank for Servo AF, “a form of continuous focus tracking for moving subjects,” as well as Intelligent Contrast Correction and enhanced face detection features.

Click for larger view

(Credit:
Canon)

Other specs include a 3.7x, 36-133mm-equivalent lens, optical image stabilization, and a 2.5-inch LCD.

Look for it in October for $399. It’ll be available in black, silver, and a special-edition red version commemorating the manufacture of the 100 millionth PowerShot camera.

Earlier in the year, a group of young Egyptians used Facebook to organize support for a strike by textile workers on April 6. To put it mildly, Egypt’s authoritarian government did not welcome this extension of civil society into cyberspace.

They liked it even less when the so-called 6 April Youth Movement, as they call themselves, met for the first time in late June at a Cairo gathering where they were feted by the local journalists’ syndicate.

In their speeches, the young men and women expressed their dreams for their country calling for collective brainstorming to decide on their next step. The idea of forming a new political youth movement was blessed by some representatives of the older generation who attended the meeting, such as George Ishaq Kefaya founder and former coordinator, judge Hisham Bastawisi, deputy head of the Cassation Court, and MPs Anwar and Talaat El Sadat.

Reading that passage, I was reminded how first-time political activists in this country used Meetup.com and blogs to rally support for Howard Dean in the 2004 Democratic primaries. But open political discourse in Egypt–especially when critical of the regime–is more fraught.

Push came to shove last week. Some of the Facebook youth, as they’re being called, rallied at a local beach in Alexandria to sing songs and fly kites (with the colors of the Egyptian flag) to celebrate the anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. That’s when the authorities moved in and arrested them. Here’s a video shot just before state security goons took them away.

Here’s what Al-Ahram Weekly reported:

“A truck packed with Central Security personnel arrived and arrested 14 of the 30 demonstrators while the rest managed to flee,” Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, who met the arrested group while in custody, told Al-Ahram Weekly. “They were beaten by plain clothes security personnel and taken to Al-Raml Police Station where they were referred to the prosecution which accused them of assembling, hampering traffic, and attempting to topple the regime.” The arrested denied any links with political parties or the Muslim Brotherhood. “They told investigators that they did not advocate destructive ideas, let alone toppling the regime. They said they would not even incite people to stage a civil disobedience,” says Eid.”

Also, here’s more on the same topic from Almasry Alyoum.

Several other airlines, including American Airlines, Virgin America and JetBlue, have announced similar in-flight Wi-Fi plans, but Delta’s roll-out is among the most aggressive plans announced.

Delta Air Lines will begin offering Wi-Fi throughout its domestic fleet by mid-2009.

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Delta )

Specifically, the Atlanta-based airline plans to outfit its domestic fleet of 330 aircraft with Wi-Fi, which amounts to around 60 percent of Delta’s seats flown every day. The service won’t be available aboard Delta’s smaller aircraft, which typically seat 50 to 75 people.

The wireless service, which will allow people to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi-enabled laptops, PDAs, or smartphones, will cost $9.95 on flights of three hours or less, and $12.95 on flights of more than three hours. The airline is partnering with Aircell, which also supplies in-flight Wi-Fi technology to other carriers, such as American Airlines and Virgin America.

Virgin America has said it will offer the Aircell Gogo service in the fall. And like Delta, it is already planning a massive roll-out. It hopes to have its entire fleet Wi-Fi-enabled by April 2009.

But other airlines are still testing the in-flight service and haven’t yet announced plans for massive deployment. JetBlue has been testing a free Wi-Fi service since December on one plane that flies between New York City and San Francisco.

American Airlines, which announced its service more than a year ago, is currently testing the service. It expects to offer Wi-Fi on only 15 planes that fly its transcontinental routes later this year.

US Airways said it will offer Wi-Fi service on a trial basis on one Airbus aircraft in the fall. And Southwest Airlines is using a satellite-based service from Row44 to provide Internet access on four planes on a trial basis.

Other major airlines–including Northwest Airlines, United Airlines, and AirTran Airways–have not announced plans to offer in-flight Wi-Fi, according to the Associated Press.

Airlines have been talking about offering in-flight broadband for years. But so far the service hasn’t really caught on. Boeing first offered the service called Connexion, which debuted in 2004 on a few international carriers including Lufthansa, SAS, All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines, and Singapore Airlines.

Boeing canceled the service in 2006 when the company was unable to find business among domestic airlines. A big problem with Connexion was that the entire system was bulky and weighed around 400 pounds, making it nearly impossible for it to be used on smaller domestic planes.

The Aircell Wi-Fi technology is much easier and cheaper to deploy. But with fuel prices at all-time highs, it’s difficult to say whether airlines will find wireless broadband services lucrative enough to spend the necessary capital to upgrade their plans with routers and power outlets for passengers.

Everyblock gathers hyper-local news and info.

Being lazy, I favor the geo-focused sites that don’t require that I do any work. Everyblock (review) wins the lazy-geo award from me: It scans local news sources and public records and shows me what’s happening in my ‘hood. My participation with the site consists solely of entering my address. Outside.in (news) has a similar function, but its user interface is less clear.

What I really want, though, is a geo-enabled Yelp, both on my desktop browser and in my mobile phone. Yelp has all the location data I could possibly want; it just doesn’t have a very good location-focused interface, or the capability to auto-locate me when I am on my mobile phone.

The personal location-reporting sites (Loopt, Brightkite, Whrrl, etc.) require a change in behavior: I have to tell these apps who my friends are and where I am to get them to work right. Integration with existing social nets should help these products take off, but until people start hooking these apps into their network profiles, they are going to languish.

At least one geo site has a CEO who’s aware that you can grow your audience more by giving users a lot before you ask them to give anything to the site. Platial’s CEO, Diann Eisnor, recently relaunched her site with a new reader-focused interface, replacing a previous design that appeared to be made more for contributors. Platial, unfortunately, doesn’t have the rich data set of reviews that Yelp does, but it does a better job of displaying Yelp-like content. We can hope for a partnership.

Platial's new UI is great for browsing local info, but it needs a richer reviews database.

It’s when the
iPhone app store opens up next month that we’re really going to see geo-focused reviews sites and networks take off. Despite its lack of GPS (so far), a core component of the iPhone is location reporting (using a combination of Wi-Fi router mapping and cell tower triangulation). All of the Web 2.0 geo execs I’ve talked to are working on iPhone apps; many will be available on day one of the app store opening.

Western Digital is the second-largest hard disk drive maker in the world behind Seagate Technology. Fujitsu’s HDD unit is ranked sixth.

Fujitsu would sell all of its plants–including those in Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines–for between 70 billion yen and 100 billion yen (approximately $660 million to $944 million), according to Japan’s Nikkei news service.

This would be one of the largest business unit sell-offs for a Japanese electronics company, Nikkei said, adding that Fujitsu’s hard disk drive business has been posting losses.

The deal would be finalized by the end of the year, according to Nikkei.

A Western Digital representative would not comment on the report.

Beyond the brutal price competition that is typical in the hard disk drive industry, there is a clear-and-present threat now from solid-state drives. Until this year relegated to digital camera and music player storage, solid-state drives are now making inroads–albeit small–in laptops, particularly ultraportables like the MacBook Air, Dell’s new E4200 line, and Netbooks such as the Asus Eee PC.

Solid-state drive suppliers such Intel, Micron Technology, Samsung, and STEC are also beginning to target SSDs as replacements for hard disk drives in the enterprise.

At the Web 2.0 Expo last week, I had a long conversation with Tolles, who runs Topix.com, about the fragmentation of media and where technology is taking it. If you’re not familiar with Topix, get to know it.

Chris Tolles

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Topix.com)

Tolles operates on the sound assumption that the media outlets with the most engaged audiences will thrive. Nowadays, about 60 percent of the content on his site consists of original user content. Reader opinion gets featured prominently next to regular news feeds. In addition, Topix uses a network of volunteer editors (around 4,400) who package and post news tailored to their localities.

My hunch is that most mainstream media would choke at the prospect, but you want the most people participating.

This is how Tolles put it to me: “As we’re seeing all the time, newspapers, which once were local monopolies, are watching that one-time windfall go off to money heaven. When newspapers go on the Internet, they make 10 percent of what they used to make. I’m giving Molotov cocktails to the mob. If the sheriff is a bad guy in a small time, what you want is some guy who just got shafted to go online while he’s still hot and say this jerk sheriff, etc. etc. You want a platform for opinions that can speak truth to power for the individual.”

The formula’s working. ComScore now rates Topix just behind The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today in terms of individually branded Web sites. Knight Ridder, the Tribune Company, and Gannett liked what they saw and bought up a 75 percent chunk of the company.

Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.

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Trinity United Church of Christ)

Most people in New York and San Francisco many not be using Topix, but Tolles has a bigger audience in mind: most of the folks between the coasts, who are increasingly underserved by corporate media.

I’m generalizing here, but it’s safe to say that vapid television coverage that’s less and less relevant to their lives has become the norm, rather than the exception, everywhere in this country–especially outside the big urban population centers.

Does anyone seriously doubt that we’re at a point where the need to talk back to the talking heads is super-important? The orgy of idiocy surrounding the Jeremiah Wright coverage is a perfect case in point. I thought I was inured to the banality that informs the punditry of Matthews, Joe Scarborough, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the blabatocracy. Not even close. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the electronic media had collectively adopted the new corporate slogan: “All Jeremiah Wright, All the Time.”

Let me see if I’ve got this right. Oil’s hovering near an all-time high, rising prices combined with food shortages are responsible for riots around the world, and we’ve got ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN are literally wasting hours on the existential significance of a Chicago pastor. As we used to say in Brooklyn, give me a frigging break.

Topix is on to a big idea, and so if Tolles or any other start-up can shake up the media landscape, more power to them. Too many important stories are passing by without notice.

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Declan McCullagh/News.com)

q&a SAN JOSE–T.J. Rodgers is an unapologetic capitalist who happens to be the chief executive of San Jose, Calif.’s, Cypress Semiconductor. The two roles, as you’ll soon see, are deeply intertwined.

Cypress’ product catalog includes things like programmable logic devices, USB controllers, and SRAM chips–the basic building blocks of modern gadgets and computers.

Today in Silicon Valley, though, Rodgers is just as well-known for his role in buying and building up SunPower, which sells rooftop solar systems that provide power at prices competitive with utility rates. SunPower’s market capitalization is more than $5 billion, which isn’t bad for a company that Rodgers kept alive with his own money until his board came around.

In the political world, Rodgers is famous for his plain-spoken approach and verbal skewering of his opponents, who have included everyone from Jesse Jackson (complaining about the so-called digital divide) to a nun from the Sisters of St. Francis on Philadelphia. Sister Doris Gormley wanted racial and gender quotas for Cypress’ board; Rodgers responded in detail, saying her advice was “immoral,” and that “we pursue talent–and we don’t care in what package that talent comes.”

Rodgers recently married Valeta Massey in a ceremony at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. In a choreographed ceremony, he had a faux IRS agent stand up and object to the nuptials on grounds that the U.S. treasury would lose money. Silicon Valley uberlawyer Larry Sonsini provided some on-the-spot legal advice, and bagpipers provided a counterpoint.

This buccaneering, free-market spirit makes Rodgers an interesting fellow to interview, so I did. Here’s a lightly edited (I abbreviated some of my questions and some of his answers) transcript of our conversation from last month. Part 1 of the Rodgers interview was published Thursday.

Q: The solar tax credit expires at the end of this year, which hasn’t helped SunPower’s share price. Should governments pick winners and losers by doing things like passing laws and tax credits boosting specific industries?
In general, I’m against subsidies to private industry. My testimony five times before Congress is against corporate welfare. Not only is it an unethical waste of taxpayer money, in general, it doesn’t even help the industry it goes to.

Having said that, solar energy is very close to being at parity with power you buy at utilities, in certain situations. I’m talking about panels on your house. The subsidy the government gives is not going to the industry. The government, in effect, gives tax breaks and rebates to homeowners who want to put solar panels on their house. Therefore, they make the return-on-investment calculation. If you spend $20,000, your utility bill is going to pretty much vanish in California.

If you want to look at the analogy in Japan, 12 years ago, the Japanese had a subsidy. Now Japan is one of the largest solar nations in the world. We’re behind them. You can look at the Japanese experience and say a finite subsidy to individuals launched the industry. Now it stands on its own. In the U.S., the ending of the subsidy would, in effect, say the industry is now on its own. That’s not a catastrophic thing. It will slow down sales.

Would you support a renewal of the solar tax credit?
Let me give you an anecdote first. I once bought a company, Silicon Light Machines, that had a contract with the government. It was peanuts.

The people on the other side found out about this and said, “T.J.’s a hypocrite.” I called up Milton Friedman and said, “I have an ethical problem. The company has a contract with the government, and I’m against corporate welfare.”

Friedman answered me in an analogy. He said, “Do you believe in a flat tax–the government not meddling with or incentivizing behavior?” I said yes. He said, “So this year, you’re not going to take any deductions?” I said, “Of course I will.” He said, “So why would you do any less for your shareholders than you would do for yourself?”

You wrote an opinion article for the San Jose Mercury News in 2005, warning about technology, coupled with police power, drawing us “closer to Orwell’s Big Brother.” It’s been more than two years since then–are we closer to or further away from that?
Closer. Because now we’ve got a federal government that doesn’t care too much about personal freedom, and it’s got some bad guys it can use to encroach on our privacy.

And if the Democrats win the White House?
There are good and bad Democrats. If you forget his personal traits, Bill Clinton was the second-lowest-spending president.

I don’t identify either party as being good or bad. I think Hillary in the White House would be a disaster. She said everything she needed to say when having FBI files of her enemies. If Obama becomes the president, the war’s over. That’s great. On the economic side, I’m not sure he’s (concerned with) economic freedom.

Now it looks like we’re going to be in a continuous war for the rest of our lives. When I say continuous war, I don’t mean Iraq. I mean a continuous war against terrorism that will pop up here and there. Giving (power) to people who will take away freedom to protect us.

On your Cypress job site, you list 138 jobs in India and the Philippines, and 130 jobs in the United States. China accounts for 23 more positions. How much of your future hiring do you see happening in the U.S. versus elsewhere?
Our policy is to hire in high-wage areas only where it’s economically justified. So we have, for example, 15 years ago moved assembly and test to the Philippines. We were one of the last ones to do it. I tried to keep it in the U.S. by automating it, but it was a bad call.

In order to get a job at Cypress in the U.S., you have to have productivity that’s five times higher than elsewhere in the world. It happens. But you’d better be doing things (and have skills) that are high-value and can’t be done elsewhere.

We now no longer have a fab in Silicon Valley.

When we spoke in 2004, you said you had a test fab here.
We sold it. It’s gone. The state of California, and Silicon Valley in particular, is very hostile to manufacturing. They’ve driven most of the manufacturing jobs out of California.

The organization founded by David Packard to make sure that regulations and taxes were reasonable in Silicon Valley used to be called the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group. It’s been renamed the Silicon Valley Leadership Group because it’s failed so miserably.

Its president rides around on a bicycle to show the flag (and say) we need to have high taxes for what I call the Hooterville trolley–this tram system. It can’t even pay its operating expenses from the fare box because nobody rides it.

Of course, when the state of California and Silicon Valley taxed the formation of factory jobs, Silicon Valley companies said “screw you” and moved out.

It singled out manufacturing jobs?
No. It was a sales tax. It applied to capital formation for major projects like factories. When, in fact, every other state would not tax you–it would give you a subsidy for building factories and jobs.

Silicon Valley is very hostile to business. Having said that, the new mayor of San Jose, Chuck Reed, is not. But he’s kind of like a salmon swimming upstream; there’s a lot of damage that’s been done and a lot of things that have been changed irrecoverably.

If you were starting Cypress again today, would you locate it in San Jose or somewhere more business-friendly, with a lower cost of living?
Would I locate somewhere else? No. I put assembly test and fab here, foolish boy that I am.

I’d have headquarters here. The analogy that’s usable here is, being in the high-tech business and not having your HQ in Silicon Valley is like being in the brokerage business and not having your office in New York. Silicon Valley is the technical capital of the world. Period. You’ve got to be here.

For example, I’d be foolish in Wall Street to have a very large accounting department (present there). In Silicon Valley, you put the jobs where you can earn the return on that job. Those jobs are typically, if you had to put one attribute on it, cross-function. I deal with technology. I deal with the press. I deal with lawyers. I deal with design. I deal with customers. That’s a lot of fun. It’s hard. It’s challenging. That’s the kind of people you can justify having in Silicon Valley.

What’s your take on the current state of science and technology education, the quality of the education, and the ability of U.S. secondary schools to foster independent and skeptical thought?
When we finally made the decision to have a presence in Bangalore, you have this arrogant assumption–take chip design–that Silicon Valley is king for that, designing chips, and everyone else is third-world. I’ll do design here and derivative products there.

What you find out pretty quick is that the talent you can assemble almost anywhere is equivalent in quality. As a matter of fact, in India, the quality is exceptional. One of the reasons is the market. I may have to recruit like hell and go financially overboard to convince a 75th percentile Stanford student to come here. I can go to India and recruit people from IIT (Indian Institutes of Technology).

In one way, India is kind of old-school. You take the tests. The tests are hard. The tests will change your life. By the time you’re good enough to graduate, you are really smart, you are really educated, and you have worked your ass off for 25 to 26 years for an advanced degree.

You can hire really good talent in foreign countries. Where they fall off is their ability to do cross-functional thinking and work. They’re not exposed to the information flow that you are here. The Internet helps, but it doesn’t completely eliminate the problem. Their culture is not a Silicon Valley culture.

It differentiates us. It differentiates Americans. It differentiates Silicon Valley people from the rest of America. The concept of losing $38 billion dollars and trying to buy out union workers is so alien to Silicon Valley.

The last time we talked, you were having problems getting zoning approval with your wineries in the Santa Cruz mountains. What’s happened since?
We’re still determining if a vineyard is going to do environmental damage to an agriculturally zoned piece of land. Hopefully, we’re in the last few months of that. We’re worried about the river being polluted. Of course, the river is 6 inches wide and is dried up nine months of the year.

The NIMBYs who use the environment as a way to tell others what to do (are concerned). So I have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to prove that it’s not polluted.

You haven’t been at the heart of as many controversies recently–no more Jesse Jackson encounters or run-ins with the nuns. Have you mellowed?
No, I haven’t mellowed at all. As a strategy to avoid controversy (at Dartmouth), I avoided left-right issues. I don’t weigh in any of the great issues of the day, the Indian mascot, or the lack of it, etc.

It’s also true in my life that I’ve moved away from the left-right controversy of the day, feeling obliged to say Ralph Nader is stupid and counterproductive when he says something that is stupid and counterproductive. I feel those people don’t matter very much. In general, I don’t feel–there are exceptions–the people who are in politics are worth my time. I’m much better off running my company, creating wealth, inventing technology.

I just don’t feel the need to say something anymore. That’s not mellowing at all.

It’s a change in focus?
I’m working on substance. I do get dragged into that stuff, defensively. For instance, I did a rant on the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group. It harmed my company. I wrote an editorial and said, “you’re fired” in the last paragraph.

We’ve had a terrible attack on stock options. We’ve had one of the most evil groups in the U.S.–FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board)–a bunch of theoretical accountants who sit in Connecticut, not one of which has ever started a business, trash the value of our company.

These are bad people. So I will go out of my way to label them as bad people and use provocative words like “evil” to describe them. That’s because they’re doing damage in my turf. Otherwise, I don’t care.