Now this is thinking outside the box. An online auction for patents.

The world can be a rough place for independent inventors. They can often find themselves in court, battling big corporations, spending piles of money on lawyers and leaving it up to judges and juries to determine the value of their hard-won patents.

That could be changing. Wrangling over patents is beginning to move out of the courtroom and into the marketplace. A flurry of new companies and investment groups has sprung up to buy, sell, broker, license and auction patents. And venture capital and private equity is starting to pour into the field.

The arrival of these new business-minded players, according to patent experts and economists, could lead to a robust marketplace for patents, where value is determined not so much by court judgments but by buyers and sellers, perhaps, someday, like eBay.

Just saw on the Dow Jones Newswire that some sort of agreement has been made for Chrysler to enter Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Not sure if the deal was struck between the company and auto-task force and with the bondholders or the company/auto-task force and the UAW. More to come.

UPDATE: Just as I was to hit the post button, CNBC is now reporting the same thing. CNBC (and now updated Dow Jones Newswire) is that it is a deal between the Treasury and the UAW. It will be a prepackaged bankruptcy.

Well how about this. Seems the bean counters and the HR folks at Microsoft screwed up when they laid off some employees. Turns out they somewhat overpaid on those severance checks. Now the company is demanding that these terminated employees refund the company the money. A copy of the letters sent out to those employees can be found here.

Kudos to Techcrunch.com for bringing this up. 

Now that the teachings of business school have proved to create groups of blind mice, some of the better ones are rethinking their programs.

For some academics, the financial crisis is the ultimate "teachable moment" for anyone destined to work in financial markets, big business and start-ups, and is forcing the schools to rethink the way they teach the art of making money.

Preparing future executives for any eventuality at the top of corporations is becoming the new vogue, replacing an emphasis on simply making money using short-sighted business plans and discredited risk models.

Our younger faculty are willing to entertain ideas that would have been offensive 20 years ago," such as psychological biases in markets, he said.

I'm sorry but this guy is a fucking idiot. Now Friedman takes some incredibly racist comment from some Indian newspaper claiming Indians would pay their mortgage because not to do so is shameful (as if Americans think it's ok to not pay their bills?????) and complete fiction that a temporary visa holder will buy up subprime houses (uh, you are temporary, why the hell would you buy a house in a temporary visa?)
As if magically an American worker given a decent job would not magically buy a home.

Hello asshat! Have you seen the layoffs in the United States, the numbers of unemployed Americans? Anyone connect the idea that income might have something to do with getting a mortgage?

It appears Vivek Kundra will be the new CTO but also the position might be moved to be under the House Science Committee.

The Obama administration plans to announce it has appointed Vivek Kundra, the District of Columbia's chief technology officer to take the top information technology post in the federal government, according to a source.

Kundra, who has deployed advanced applications to improve the performance of public services during his nearly two years as CTO for the District, will replace Karen Evans as administrator for e-government and information technology in the Office of Management and Budget. The position effectively serves as the federal government's chief information officer. The administration could announce Kundra's appointment as soon as Thursday.

Kundra could not be reached, and a spokesman for Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty declined to comment.

This is a pretty incredible report by CNET:

Microsoft said Monday it had no plans to change its position on H-1Bs.

Last year, when Bill Gates appeared before Congress, BusinessWeek reported that Microsoft had received 959 visa petition approvals, roughly "one fifth as many as Infosys (Technologies, the top participant), while Intel got 369."

When it reported its quarterly earnings last week, Microsoft announced plans to fire about 5,000 employees. A spokesman said that some of the employees let go held H-1B visas but declined to get more specific.

Intel, which last week announced plans to close two plants in the U.S., similarly said that layoffs resulting from the economic slowdown would not factor into the company's H-1B plans.

I also have to include this line, which should be geek quote of the week:

Here come the tech layoffs. Microsoft is laying off 5,000, including R&D engineers. Intel shuts 4 plants and lays off 6000, 1000 from Oregon alone.

Ebay will surely announce soon for their quarterly earnings dropped 31% and the largest garage sale in the world should be more recession proof.

What bodes ill for United States Technical and Science Professionals is Obama's choice for Department of Homeland Security, AZ Governor Janet Napolitano.

So much for change right? So much for the United State middle class or U.S. workers!

Computerworld points out DHS controls the guest worker Visas, including H-1B.

Just what women techies need to hear when massive layoffs are headed to Silicon valley. Oh yeah, get this, the layoffs aren't really layoffs but more of an excuse to offshore outsource even more jobs, age discriminate and our usual high tech blame game, insulting people working their ass off as dead wood to justify their staff thrashing....(TechCrunch loves to blame the victim and promote global labor arbitrage).

Back to women techies....they are not having families, working their ass off, much more than their male counterparts and yet...all of that effort just isn't paying off: