Intermix: The daytime series continues

Intermix’s plans to sell to Rupert Murdoch were challenged by Brad Greenpan (Intermix’s former CEO), who made a counter-offer for Intermedia.  Intermix has rejected the offer, citing the following reasons:

  • Mr. Greenspan’s proposal does not compare favorably to the pending transaction with News Corporation. Mr. Greenspan would provide cash liquidity for only approximately one-half of the common stock held by Intermix’s stockholders, with the remaining stockholders continuing to hold equity securities in a post-transaction concern with a diminished public equity float.
  • The proposal entails a number of significant and unacceptable risks, including uncertainty relating to financing for the transaction. Freemyspace, LLC would need to raise over $300 million to complete the acquisition. Mr. Greenspan has indicated that these funds will be provided by “several private equity investment firms” that may provide commitments to fund the acquisition only after they have been provided with detailed financial data regarding Intermix that is not currently publicly available. Mr. Greenspan has not identified any of his potential sources of funds and the Intermix board is unable to assess whether they are credible funding sources.
  • The proposed transaction with Mr. Greenspan offers significantly less certainty of closing and would, even if consummated, take months to complete (in comparison to the transaction with News Corporation, which could be completed in a matter of days, subject to the approval of our stockholders).
  • Although existing stockholders would retain an equity interest in a portion of Intermix, the proposal does not provide any operating plan for Intermix, other than to indicate that Mr. Greenspan would propose to cause Intermix to sell off “non-core assets,” focus on the Myspace.com business and ask the management team of Intermix’ subsidiary, MySpace, Inc., to become the executive team of Intermix.
  • The return of Mr. Greenspan to a control position over Intermix could create morale issues with a significant number of Intermix employees, including members of MySpace’s management, and potentially harm the company’s business, particularly in light of the fact that when Mr. Greenspan was removed as Intermix chairman and asked to resign as chief executive officer, the company’s common stock traded for less than $2 per share, the company was struggling with an accounting restatement, its common stock had been delisted from the NASDAQ Small Cap Market, it was the subject of an informal investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, various stockholder lawsuits relating to the restatement had been filed, and the company was losing money. 

Alex Eckelberry
(Thanks, Ben)

Note:  I had inadvertently titled Intermix as “Intermedia” in a previous version of this blog.  Apologies.

“Shockingly risky storage behavior”

From a new article in Windows IT Pro.

After a summer filled with tales of data theft, natural disasters, and executives going to jail in part because of email messages they wrote, you’d think IT pros who oversee storage matters in their organizations would be totally focused on mitigating the real risks they and their companies face. But a series of research reports from the UK and Germany indicate otherwise. In fact, according to these studies, many companies haven’t yet implemented adequate business continuity plans, have failed to address email-compliance issues, and are ignoring the danger posed by widespread use of USB memory sticks. Disasters, compliance, and data theft are known risks. Yet many companies apparently still like to pretend they don’t exist.

Link here.

Alex Eckelberry

Orion Holtby

David Eastbrook at Hurricane Digital Media now has a blog dedicated to Orion Holtby.   I got this link from a post at Vitalsecurity.

(For those of you unfamiliar with Orion, it’s a long tale of a man alleged to be a fraudster in the online advertising community.  Wayne Porter at revenews has covered the tale extensively.)

From David Eastbrook’s blog:

Our mission is simple when it comes to fighting this crap. It is based on three principles:

  1. Naturally,self-interest – he stole $54,000 from us. Big mistake.

“Never forget, never forgive,
never let go.”

Screw us over, and we will hound your ass relentlessly.

  1. Prevent it from happening again. You won’t even be tempted.

“Slap me in the head, and I’ll
break your jaw.”

You sure won’t slap me in the head again without thinking it
over very carefully. I learned that playing hockey for many years against a lot of very unsportsmanlike fellows.

  1. Be
    prepared, willing, and ready to fight for yourself.

“Vengeance is mine. Period.”

Alex Eckelberry

 

The threat of Mobile viruses grossly exaggerated

Good for Sophos.

We’ve been noting some of the overhyped stories of mobile viruses lately — all spread by one anti-virus firm or another trying to convince people that there’s really a problem where none yet exists. There was another such hyped up story yesterday, but they’re getting so common it didn’t even register much interest. However, today, another anti-virus firm, Sophos, is taking a stand and claiming that they’re sick of all of their competitors hyping up mobile viruses that aren’t a real threat. In fact, they say that yesterday’s claim of the first “serious” mobile virus threat is “plain bonkers.”…

Link here.

Alex Eckelberry

Taming the Transportation Security Administration

Blog link here.

From EPIC: “The Transportation Security Administration has abandoned plans to use information from data aggregators to check airline passengers’ backgrounds. TSA made the decision shortly before a working group issued a scathing report (19 pages, PDF) on the program. Last year, an EPIC FOIA request revealed (4 pages, PDF) that Axciom proposed to water down federal privacy laws so that it could sell data to the government for traveler screening. For more information, see EPIC’s Secure Flight page.”

Alex Eckelberry

New blog on the Real ID act of 2005

Those of you who follow this blog know that I’m extremely concerned about the privacy implications of the Real ID act.

MIT now has a blog on the subject.

Many people and organizations have sharply criticized the “national ID” aspects of the REAL ID Act. Even before REAL ID, the National Academy of Sciences recognized that a system of national ID not only poses a “wide range of technological and logistical challenges,” but has “serious potential for infringing on the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.”

Link here via BeSpacific.

Alex Eckelberry

 

 

 

Hurricane Rita scams

CNET rightfully warns of impending Rita frauds.

So far, I haven’t seen any scams.  But I have seen hurricanerita.com, which is apparently owned by the people that make the Eldervalve:

It’s not a hurricane scam.  Apparently these effluent-minded people have gone ahead and registered ALL the named storms until 2009.

Alex
(Btw — this ElderValve thing actually looks rather interesting).

UPDATE:  The site has apparently been sold to the State of Texas, which is why the links in this blog are such a mess. 

Curious about the ElderValve (since the above graphic is busted)?   

Link here.

 

Community reaction to WhenU’s writeup

Earlier, I mentioned that Bill Day, CEO of WhenU, has written about how adware companies must behave.  

Alex Morganis froths vituperatively. To wit:

“Bill Day, the CEO of WhenU, wrote up this piece of crap on ethics of adware. I know Bill, you have been doing a good job trying to clean up WhenU’s image, but really: Nothing will stop people from saying your business sucks; It does.” 

Oh dear.

ZDNet, on the other hand,  is encouraged:

“…other adware companies would do well to adopt WhenU’s philosophy and emulate some of their practices.”

Master spyware samurai PaperGhost is also encouraged, noting that he’s never actually even seen a stealth WhenU installation:

“It’s almost like taking your distribution in house solves 90% of the problems that people scream about so much (myself included)….Woo-woo! Here comes the clue-train! Next stop, Cluesville! Perhaps some of WhenU’s competitors would like to purchase a ticket..” 

Paretologic’s Sascha reasons dryly — and even goes the extra step of using literary analogs from Dickens and Conrad in his analysis:  

“My overall opinion of his essay is that it doesn’t say a whole hell of a lot, but what’s said is quite pleasant. Continuing the literary analogy, it’s the difference between Dickens and Conrad. With Dickens, you get a lot of words without much behind them — a great story leading into a good sleep, maybe. With Conrad, you’ve got economical language backed up by themes of race discrimination, the “white man’s burden,” colonialism, innate human savagery, all wrapped up in a mindbending frame narrative. “David Copperfield” is about 358 thousand words. “Heart of Darkness” is slightly longer than the printed directions on a can of ravioli. They’re both great books.”

(Well, any blogger who refers to Conrad – an author I admittedly worship – immediately gets extra props from me.)

And to all this, I’m left with no choice but to close this wandering blog entry with the Conrad quote: “All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.” —Joseph Conrad

Alex Eckelberry
(Note: Some think that my Conrad quote was meant to be critical of WhenU.  It wasn’t meant that way at all. It was merely an implication of the real problems out there — the really bad guys who deserve the real vituperative froth)