Posted at 2:09 p.m. PDT Tuesday, August 8, 2000
Henry Blodget dons cape,
becomes Captain Obvious
SAN FRANCISCO (The Industry Standard) - Too little, too late.
Shutting the barn door after the horses got away.
The media, and even former dot-com cheerleader Henry Blodget
himself, enthusiastically dished up both cliches in reference to
Blodget's Monday downgrade of 11 Net stocks.
The famous Merrill Lynch analyst didn't recommend actually selling
anything -- ``the 'sell' rating apparently being held in reserve for the
apocalypse,'' said TheStreet.com's Katherine Hobson -- but did slap
some stocks with ``neutral'' ratings.
Henry Blodget, neutral? This may be the apocalypse after all.
``Now he tells us,'' began Robert McGough's article in the Wall Street Journal. ``Looking at Mr.
Blodget's record, it becomes quite clear that he completely missed the current downturn in his ratings
of the companies he covers,'' complained the Motley Fool. The verdict was pretty much unanimous:
Mild-mannered Henry Blodget jumped into the phone booth and emerged as Captain Obvious.
A few outlets did cut Blodget a break, perhaps out of deference for his past predictive glories; after
all, his crystal ball showed Amazon.com's stock going through the roof just before it actually did.
``To be fair, Blodget had the best record of Internet analysts in TSC's analyst survey,'' conceded
TheStreet's Hobson. ''Nor is he the only analyst who might be accused of being a little, er, breathy
during the earlier, happier days of e-tailing.'' The Journal's McGough said Blodget ``isn't the only
Internet analyst to lower his ratings after the sector's stocks have fallen.'' So it's OK to downgrade in
the wake of 90 percent price drops, as long as everyone else does it, too.
Oddly, Net stocks didn't tank the way they usually do when a prominent analyst gets the blues. It
helped that Blodget's downgrades didn't extend to Yahoo, Amazon or AOL.
But the headline of Ian McDonald's TheStreet.com article might have said it best: ``Internet Funds
Too Numb to Feel Blodget's Kick.'' It would take a real superhero to make some of these clunkers go
any lower. -- Jen Muehlbauer
Press Shrugs at Major Java Bug
Maybe the press is still recovering from DefCon, the hacker conference in Las Vegas. A veteran bug
hunter found a doozy of a security hole in the Netscape browser on Friday, and stories didn't start
trickling in until Monday afternoon.
The stories that did show up were slim, and some played fast and loose with the technical details.
Programr Dan Brumleve found a way to use Java and a Netscape browser to turn your PC into a
Web server, offering all the files on your hard disk to the world. Brumleve named the new security
hole ``Brown Orifice'' and posted a demonstration server-in-a-Java-applet on his Web site. He also
offered visitors the source code.
This morning the Wall Street Journal's Ted Bridis turned in a fairly thorough piece on Brown Orifice.
Noting the bug's impact on business users, Bridis called it a ``mixed bag.''
And he covered all the bases, getting statements from AOL (Netscape's owner), Brumleve himself,
security company ISS and antivirus software maker McAfee.
The New York Times ran an AP story that took off from a security alert issued by ISS Monday
afternoon. The AP reporter misinterpreted ISS' warnings, treating Brumleve's demonstration as a
major security bug in its own right and claiming that Brown Orifice enables remote users to delete
other people's files (it doesn't).
MSNBC's reporter helpfully gave instructions for how to protect oneself by turning off Java in one's
Netscape browser. But he added a note about turning off JavaScript, which is not involved in Brown
Orifice.
Wired News' Farhad Manjoo apparently interviewed Brumleve to get the figure for the number of
visits to his exploit page and the number of downloads of the source code: ``thousands.'' CNET's
report spent 12 paragraphs on a different bug, a complicated affair involving Microsoft Word, Access
and Outlook; Netscape's Java woes rated only four paragraphs. -- Keith Dawson
Big Biz Hearts Joe Lieberman
Sen. Joe Lieberman represents Connecticut, but his selection as Al Gore's running mate made the
Silicon Valley smile.
Industry-friendly tax policies, more visas for foreign techies, trade with China ... you sure this guy's a
Democrat?
Lieberman has already picked up one celebrity endorsement from the Valley: Netscape and
LoudCloud founder Marc Andreessen called him a ``fantastic pick'' and ``smart as hell.''
Republican VP candidate Dick Cheney is strong on tech issues, too, but a Bush campaign higher-up
admitted to News.com that Cheney hasn't had an actual voting record since 1988.
Some business-focused publications said little about Lieberman's voting record but practically stood up
and cheered for his ethics.
``For the first time in decades, the Democrats will have a candidate for national office willing to say
things about religious values that many Americans want to hear,'' said Business Week's Howard
Gleckman. ``He's Gore's conscience,'' said CBS MarketWatch.
We suspect they wouldn't be so jazzed about Lieberman's integrity if he favored Net taxes.
The Lieberman enthusiasm wasn't unanimous, though. Since Lieberman is an outspoken enemy of
violence in the media, including computer games, the gaming industry was not amused.
``Lieberman was elected to the Senate in 1988 and wasted no time in making the censorship of
videogames one of his top priorities,'' said an agitated writer at IGN.com's game site.
Wired News' Declan McCullagh also seemed to flinch at the selection of Lieberman, who ``is as
strident as the most right-wing Republican'' on media and free-speech issues. Lieberman has also
suggested creating a .sex or .xxx domain as a roped-in online smut zone, a suggestion McCullagh
covered in June under the fabulous headline ``Senator Seeks .Sex.''
You've got to love both the pro- and anti-Lieberman business writers, though.
They were among the few who didn't make a big deal about Lieberman's Judaism -- except for the
Business Week scribe, who considered it a plus. After all, why should they care? Wall Street shuts
down on Friday night, too. -- Jen Muehlbauer |
