I mentioned that I was in Europe last week (I will be in Tokyo and Sydney next week). One thing I wanted to mention from being in England for a few days was the heavy promotion I saw for partypoker.com This is the online poker site that went public a few months ago and has an incredible market capitalization of $13 billion. I have mentioned in several posts over the years how absurd the absurd USA position about legalized online gaming. 80% of partypoker's revenues come from USA players! One of the places I noted partypoker's ads was on the European version of the cable channel CNBC (obviously an American owned property)! I just cannot believe how stupid American laws are --makes me want to run for public office. Think of the American tax laws ---could they be more complex? Also think of Sarbanes-Oxley. Our company is now running a SOX bill of over $2 million annually and growing. Sarbanes-Oxley has very little validity in terms of stopping fraud. All the public needs is for the top 5 people in every public company to sign documents every quarter swearing that all filings are honest and true and stating that they are prepared to go to jail and suffer huge fines if the filings are proved fraudulent.

CNET

I own very few stocks other than Jupitermedia (JUPM). I must confess that I own a few hundred shares of Google (GOOG). I bought the Google shares for fun back in the 200s. In 1995 I bought 100 shares of Yahoo (YHOO) and let it ride for 5 years --I think I made about $50,000. It appears that I will do better with Google?! As for CNET, I do not own the stock. But I have watched it for years. Several months ago the company announced that it would consider a sale. No new news on this topic has been published, but note how the stock price has been rising. Sales have a way of leaking out and I wonder if the rise in the stock price means an imminent sale or that CNET is just having a good run with its stock price?