Facebook recieves an Uzbek back up

Facebook Inc., the high-profile Silicon Valley start-up, looked far and wide before landing an investment this week from Digital Sky Technologies, and with it, indirect backing from controversial Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov.

Facebook disclosed Tuesday it has received a $200 million investment from Moscow-based Digital Sky, valuing the closely-held, Palo Alto, Calif.-based company at roughly $10 billion. See story about Digital Sky's investment in Facebook.

Usmanov, listed by Forbes as the world's 450th-richest individual with a net worth estimated at $1.6 billion, is a significant stakeholder in Digital Sky.

Though he now receives most of his public attention as a result of his ownership stake in British soccer club Arsenal, Usmanov also owns stakes in iron ore and steel producer Metalloinvest, telecommunications company Megafon and daily business publication Kommersant.

Kommersant reported Tuesday that Usmanov raised his ownership in Digital Sky to 32% from 30%, by purchasing a portion of the stake owned by investment fund Renaissance Partners.

A representative of Renaissance Partners was not immediately available for comment, nor was a spokeswoman for Usmanov. But a Facebook spokesman said that Usmanov's stake in Digital Sky came up during the due diligence process, but wasn't considered a factor.

"With any type of significant deal, there is a lot of due diligence that takes place," spokesman Larry Yu said. "Assuming all goes well with that process, the deal will proceed."

In addition to interests acquired through his backing of Digital Sky, Usmanov, who was born in Uzbekistan, owns other Internet properties including a stake in SUP, which bought blogging service LiveJournal from Six Apart in 2007, and in online video service Newstube.ru.

Usmanov has attracted a great deal of media attention as a foreign owner of Arsenal, one of Britain's most high-profile soccer clubs. In addition, he's drawn widespread questions in the news media about his personal connections and his past.

In an interview with the Guardian published in November, 2007, Usmanov fielded questions about his six-year imprisonment at a penal colony in the 1980s, and about his relationship with Uzbek businessman and boxing official Gafur Rakhimov. Rakhimov was denied entry to Australia for the 2000 Olympics, and later reportedly won a defamation case against author Andrew Jennings, who had linked Rakhimov to organized crime in his book "The Great Olympic Swindle."

Usmanov called the fraud charges that led to his imprisonment false, and noted that a "rehabilitation order" from the Uzbekistan Supreme Court has since cleared him of any wrongdoing. He acknowledged in the interview that he knows Rakhimov, though only "since he was a neighbor of my parents." See Rakhimov's personal Web site.

Still, Usmanov continues to draw criticism. Former U.K. Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, for example, has persisted in questioning Usmanov's character on his Web site.See Craig Murray's Web site.

In addition to its $200 million investment, Digital Sky has also agreed at a future date to purchase $100 million worth of current and former Facebook employees' shares in the company.

Facebook has long been seeking out a means to allow employees to cash in their shares, in hopes of rewarding and retaining them.

Digital Sky joins a roster of Facebook investors that includes Microsoft Corp.(MSFT 20.13, -0.21, -1.03%), hedge fund manager Peter Thiel and venture capital firm Accel Partners. 

BBC Presenter is attacked by a Labour Peer on air

A Labour peer turned on a BBC presenter demanding to know how much she was paid during a live interview on MP expenses.

Lord Foulkes clashed with Carrie Gracie on the BBC News Channel after she asked if MPs who had abused their expenses should pay the money back.

He accused the media of ignoring the good work MPs did and demanded to know how much she was paid.

Told it was £92,000 a year, he said she was being paid "nearly twice as much an MP - to come on and talk nonsense".

He added that BBC presenters such as John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman were paid hundreds of thousands of pounds "to come on TV and sneer at democracy and undermine democracy. The vast majority of MPs are being undermined by you."

Lord Foulkes was appearing on the BBC News channel to defend Commons Speaker Michael Martin's role in the ongoing row about MPs' expenses.

He said there were "far more important things going on in the world" - but became agitated when Ms Gracie asked why Mr Martin had tried to block the publication of expenses.

"The intention always has been to publish this. Perhaps one of these days you'll do a thing about how much the BBC is being paid. We're paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for presenters who come on three days a week."

Ms Gracie tried to ask another question and apologised for interrupting, prompting the Labour peer to tell her: "You're not at all sorry to interrupt me - every time an MP comes on you constantly harass them. How much are you being paid?"

Lord Foulkes, a former Scotland Office minster, is the only member of the House of Lords to also sit in the Scottish Parliament. He stood down as an MP in 2005.

Watch the video here

Your arrogance is so annoying

I am not a big philosophy fan! But sometimes, simple observations help so much. And there are so many annoying things around thinking of which will do you no good. But observing them, I have discovered, is rather helpful. Arrogance! Jesus, I never was that annoyed before.  Those to whom much has been given sometimes suffer from arrogance; or rather the people around them suffer. Arrogance is doubly a pity, because the talents of the arrogant serve primarily themselves. The arrogant assumes his views and opinions are The Truth. 

In arrogance, natural confidence goes sadly awry. Rather than the self-assurance born of knowing his own strengths and limitations, arrogance admits no limits. The arrogant brooks no weakness in himself and may even secretly rejoice to find flaws in others. But imperfections are inherent in being human, so the arrogant, like everyone else, always has feet of clay, however well hidden they may be. Fearing exposure, haughtiness forms a hard shell masking inner emptiness.

The arrogant sees first himself. Rather than offering respect to all, arrogance demands respect from all. Dismissive, arrogance poisons all relationships: with himself, with others, and with the spiritual depths. Worshipping the grand but empty edifice of ego, the self-important sees others as less human, as cardboard cutouts, relating as I-It rather than as I-Thou, in Martin Buber’s apt phrase.

Like so many self-centered traits, arrogance in others activates the arrogance in us, or its opposite of timidity and self-doubt. Confronted with arrogance, we might erupt indignantly or we might lapse into dwelling piteously on our own limitations. We then infect others and the vicious cycle continues.

A subspecies of arrogance, spiritual arrogance, takes at least two forms. In the first, the victim concludes that he has made progress, perhaps due to having a few deep experiences. Or he prides himself for being part of the in-crowd, or for being friendly with the teacher, or for being the teacher. Whatever the reason, the spiritually arrogant mistakenly determines that he or she is special and then vaunts that assumed eminence over other people. This may be explicit in his outward behavior or implicit in his inward self-image. When a spiritual teacher contracts a case of spiritual arrogance, hubris typically leads to abuses of his unfortunate students.

In another form of spiritual arrogance, the true believer aggressively proselytizes, pushing his own path as the one and only way, browbeating people by claiming that they will not be saved without the chosen path, or that they are misguided. In actuality, this wide Earth harbors many valid and effective paths. The appropriate path for any particular person is a highly individual discovery, and cannot be decided by anyone else. It sometimes happens that when people first enter a path, an obsessive infatuation sets in. They may see their path as the one true way and attempt to convert others, even over protests of disinterest. Maturity brings respect for and acceptance of the validity of other paths.

All forms of arrogance lie well beyond the pale of true spirituality. Freedom from arrogance begins with seeing. At first we may only receive hints from how our behavior affects those around us. Then we might glimpse, in action, our overwrought and inflated assumptions about ourselves. Gradually, we learn to allow ourselves, in our own estimation, to be at the same level of importance as others: not higher, despite our gifts, and not lower, despite our defects - just ordinary. This is the antidote to arrogance and its second greatest fear: to be an ordinary person. How bloody marvelous!?

Are you Cocky? Or do you have Balls?

Uncocky people don’t like cocky people. This is likely because you are both jealous of them and repulsed by them at the same time. They represent both what you hate and what you aspire to be and have. You want their confidence, their swagger. You also want their jobs. But how do you get what they have without turning the asses that they are?

You need balls.

Having balls is an unappreciated strength. Having balls can open doors and create opportunities like you could never imagine. Having balls will change your life.

There is a person I know very well. He is taking something related to computers in school. The school sucks. They are not providing the education he paid for. This is a concern.

One of the classes he’s taking has to do with databases. His teacher, hereafter referred to as “Database Dude”, is not actually a teacher but a database administrator at a very big company nearby. He didn’t think it was necessary to provide his students with a textbook or tutoring or even open office hours. He comes, he babbles, he leaves.

This person is concerned because many people are failing this class and he doesn’t want to be one of them. Database Dude is being unhelpful, as is the college’s administration. This person does not know what to do.

His class is divided into three types of people.

Group One does not worry because they are certain they will be fine. They are smart and if they fail this course, f*ck the college, they don’t care.

Group Two is generally hysterical. “OhmygodwhatamIgoingtodo?” whines Group Two. “I’mgoingtofailandIwon’tgetmydegree! ThenI’llnevergetajob! I’llnevergetlaidagain!”

Group Three consists of one man, the very person we started talking about in the beginning of this post. He’s calling in favors from every nerd he knows. He’s asking his brother-in-law, his neighbor, some guy his wife met on the internet - everybody. He’s going to figure this out if it kills him. He’s close to knowing more about databases than Database Dude.

Pretend you’re in this situation. You want to be in Group Three.

Cocky people are in Group One. Wimpy people are in Group Two. People with balls are in Group Three.

I’m not going to give you a nice, handy list of ways to get balls, but you need them to run a home business. Balls is not something you can Google. (Well, you could, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t get the kind of results you were looking for.) You just need to be conscious of balls. You need to channel balls. You need to look your life in the eye and say, “I have balls.” (This is very different from looking your life in the balls and saying, “I have eyes.”)

Christine at Self Made Chick has a post called The Closed Mouth Doesn’t Get Fed (or something like that). When I read it, I was thinking of writing a post about asking for what you want, but I’ve decided not to bother. Hers is better. This is a tremendous tutorial on one of the most important aspects of balls. Please go and read it. Seriously, this is one of the most important things you can do for your career.

When you’re done, can someone figure out how to get a keyword density on how many times I’ve said “sucks,” “cocky”, “balls”, and “ass” in this post?

And they ask me why I didn’t run a picture.