Archive for December, 2010

and best wishes for good health and good humour in 2011.

Having said yesterday I didn’t know where share price was headed, I proceeded to predict there would be a major move either up or down once Research In Motion results were released today. Well, RIM was up $3 at one point and down $1 at another in after-hours trading, but then settled out a mere 2 per cent higher despite posting a 40 per cent improvement in profits and beating the estimate on guidance.

Not so long ago, a year or two back, such powerful results would have sent share price higher by as much as 8 per cent. These days, RIM is like Marley’s ghost, dragging the chains and lock boxes of negative comments by so many analysts.

I have no idea, unlike those analysts who purport to know everything, what the numbers will look like when Research In Motion reports third quarter earnings after the market closes tomorrow. All I know is that one side or another is going to be right and the share price is likely to make a major move up or down. The other thing I know is that things have come to a pretty pass when BusinessWeek (no stranger to bad times itself) takes to laughing at the co-CEO’s tie. What’s that got to do with anything?

Meanwhile, if you want the longest read ever on what’s right and what’s wrong with RIM, at least according to one observer, here’s the link.

Julian Assange is a hero; Julian Assange is a criminal. Those are the two schools of thought about the anarchist (we can all agree on that) who through WikiLeaks has released thousands upon thousands of documents from multiple sources. He claims all he wants is justice but what he’s done is illegal.

I’m not one of those angst-ridden writers who sees conspiracies at every turn and claims Assange is all about free speech. The video showing the Eighth Cavalry aboard an Apache helicopter killing unarmed civilians and a journalist in Baghdad is one thing, but the most recent avalanche of not-so-scintillating views by second-string foreign-service officers is little more than an embarrassment.

Some of the leaders quoted, such as King Abdullah of Jordan, sound no better. “Thank God for bringing Obama to the presidency,” says his excellency, then changes his mind and proceeds to call the president “camel poo-poo.”

Assange started out life in Australia as a hacker, worming his way into supposedly secure computers to leave behind taunting messages. All these years later, he hasn’t become any more useful to society. Releasing details about companies that make critical components for missiles just delivers new target information to terrorists.

One of the civilizing aspects of living in a democracy is consenting to keep some matters secret for a variety of agreed-upon reasons. Assange doesn’t belong, never did, and should be halted in his hacker tracks.