OK, I will take a break from the stock lesson today. I am going to talk about the TV media here. I bet president Bush doesn’t like what he sees on TV these days, not just daily casualties in Iraq and Afganistan, and the conspiracy theory of lower gas price. Being a president, the president can not be a winner on this gasoline price issue. When the price goes up, people complains; when the gas price goes down, people are suspicious why the price goes down exactly before this congress mid-term election. Of course the biggest headache for him and republican party, is this “Foley” scandal. Yes, it’s not Shanghai had the big scandal lately. These days when you turned on the TV (say, CNN, FOX, or NBC), you will hear and see the Florida congressman Floey’s scandal (criminal investigation is under way). The center of the matter, is Mr. Foley sent instant message to under aged boy who works for congress. So let’s call it “Instant Message Scandal”, or “IM Gate”?
Many people think the instant message does not have any record. And I think that’s one reason people say stupid thing in IM. Wrong. It turns out many IM providers keep copies of conversation on the server. Also the participants can save the conversations on the computer. More specifically, the Google talk (by default) stores the chat content in your Gmail account.
I remember Warren Buffett once said : when he was not sure about doing something in business, he will use the criteria “can this be put on the front page of local newspaper”. He certainly meant put be on the paper as a good story. Ironically, Mr. Foley’s story did show up in a lot newspaper’s front page, in a totally different tone.