Once upon a time the FDA or one of them mounted a James Bond action to entrap AMD for international grain price fixing. They spent a bazillion on the sting and recovered a buck ninety eight after taxes, plus their prime mole went to jail. (He also bit on the Nigerian gold spam, but that's another story.)

Along about that time, or another one, Treasury Secretary O'Neal was not happy that Dohbya intended buying votes in Ohio and PA with a steel quota or tariff. That ain't the Repugnant way, says O'Neil, better to conspire with other steel exporters to set a price.

In other words, the Sec of Treasury was recommending price fixing.

I'm lost.

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Why was there no liveblog of the Hans Reiser trial? Why is no attention paid to the utter hilarity of the Ruby on Rails "community"? (Pound for pound, Rails blogs have replaced LKML for the highest density of quotable insanity in the programming world. Even TechCrunch knows this.)

Owen's problem was the he saw himself as an analyst, rather than an anarchist. It was a problem for two reasons. First, the 'insider' approach is at odds with everything Gawker has ever done successfully. But more importantly, Owen doesn't know anything. He's divorced from both the technical realities that frequently influence business decisions in the Valley, and from the madness of the engineering community.

Because that is where the meat falls off the bone: it's not in the comings and goings of a couple of mid-level Valley execs (which are amply covered by about 900 other media outlets), but rather in the engineering teams and the mid-level management. These are the dark places; where a multi-billion dollar industry is built on the backs of talented but basically crazy people:

- Smart engineers who have been Peter Principled into management positions where they are no longer effective

- Open source projects who have "rejected" traditional industry power structures by replacing them with even more byzantine social constructions of their own devising

- Fairly gross, persistently male-dominated communities that don't understand where all the women went

- A narcissistic toy culture which is different in focus, but not degree, from that of the Manhattan elite

There is material enough for a dozen weblogs, if anyone had the gumption (and the sources) to make it happen. So best wishes to Owen, and best of luck to Ryan Tate. The Valley desperately needs a better 'Wag. We deserve the abuse.

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Are we living in the same country? When was the last time you heard of these so-called "antitrust cops" that are out their somewhere riding into battle on their unicorns looking askance at anything?

Oh, wait. The Whole Foods takeover of Wild Oats Markets. Thank god the Feds took a hard line with that one. Excessive consolidation in the hippie/yuppie grocery sector posed a serious threat to our economy.

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