ShadowRAM: September 11, 2006

Someone at CBS once received e-mail sent at 4 a.m. by Eryck Bredy, president of Bredy Network Management, a small-business VAR in Woburn, Mass., and thought he might be the perfect subject. CBS contacted Bredy Thursday, Aug. 31, and on Sunday night, Sept. 3, broadcast the two-minute, five-second feature.

Bredy, who appeared on camera at his desk surrounded by four LCD screens and a laptop—with his son on his lap—told CBS the last time he vacationed was a week in 2002 for his honeymoon. Even then, he spent a day working.

Bredy chalks it up to an understanding wife. "She's wonderful," he told CBS correspondent Bianca Solorzano. Solorzano asked Bredy to finish the phrase, "All work and no play makes Jack" His response: "Makes Jack a successful boy."

Labor Day week often proves to be a slow one for news, but HP's "PretextGate" scandal—in which Chairman Patricia Dunn hired outside "counsel" to investigate leaks by HP's board, a move that led to the fishy acquisition of communications from several directors—provided plenty of copy.

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Earlier this year, venture capitalist Tom Perkins quit in protest as an HP director when it was revealed that private investigators hired by Dunn used tricky and ethically questionable methods—known as pretexting—to dig into the private, personal records of board members. In a subsequent SEC filing, HP outed the leaker as board member George Keyworth.

This isn't the first time in recent memory the company has encountered this kind of controversy. We remember during the hot-and-heavy proposal to merge HP with Compaq, when someone stole, copied and sent out to reporters one of then-chairman Carly Fiorina's voice mails to another executive discussing the merger. It was a source of significant personal embarrassment to Fiorina.

Funny, but we don't remember any board members quitting in a huff (or even protesting a little) when Fiorina had her privacy violated. We also don't remember California authorities launching an investigation, as they are doing now.

Bill Gates' "visual solutions" company Corbis has signed a deal to license a collection of archival photos from Playboy. From the press release: "The collection, which combines retro images that reflect the brand's rich heritage with contemporary classics, includes illustrations, pictures of Hugh Hefner and Playboy Bunnies, as well as lifestyle images."

Yeah. That's it! We're only interested in Playboy's archive for the photos of Hef and, er, "lifestyle images."