How might you compensate management for a year in which profits plunged, you spent $550 million of shareholder money to settle a fraud investigation and your stock ended up more or less exactly where it started?

You might be tempted to nix raises or withhold bonuses to send a responsible message about linking pay to performance. But if so, you wouldn’t be Goldman Sachs.

It just had the year described above – and responded by tripling everyone’s base salary while boosting bonuses by 40%. Is this a great country or what?

full article at Fortune’s Street Sweep blog>>

Really, that was it? That was the commercial that had activists all in a tizzy?

Almost two weeks ago, Mike Celizic (writing for NBC) announced that money is the only reason CBS would agree to air this ad: 

There is no other reason — and certainly no good reason — for anyone, including a television executive, to decide that the ethical standards which had stood for generations are suddenly no more worth preserving than that hairball the cat just coughed up.

Really? You mean commercials during the big game have NEVER challenged ethics before? Those ethical standards have stood for generations?

Let’s take a look at the other ads that have aired tonight (so far). Back in the early days of this game, I seriously doubt any TV executive would have allowed an ad with:

1. men and women parading in their underwear around the office;
2. a woman ripping her shirt off (albeit with a camisole underneath) and an address where you can view the rest (which, the company is proud to say, was banned from TV); 
3. a man falling out of a casket full of snack chips – during his funeral;
4. a group of men walking the hills without pants on;
5. a close-up of a middle-aged football player’s rump with a cheetah-print thong visible above his pants; or even
6. Betty White getting thrown into a muddy puddle.

But they probably would have allowed an ad with a football player’s mom saying how much she loves her son. Which is all this ad really says.

@ridedali: you’re the first sane commenter on this Giz post. Thank you for acknowledging that the iPad is not anywhere near perfect, but at the same time has great potential.

Apple has introduced game-changing things in the past. Unfortunately, having set the bar high with both their original products and the subsequent evolution of those products, Apple is their own worst enemy. We expect something slicker and better than their previous innovations, even if things like the iPod have taken time to evolve.

So, I think people were hoping that the iPad would be a tablet/netbook/Kindle killer, and it’s not. Instead, it fills a gap somewhere between the iPod and the MacBook Air.

I will be watching to see how the iPad develops. (Unfortunately, until color e-ink is available, I don’t think any pad, netbook or slate will fill the entire digital entertainment gap.)

At the same time, there is room for someone to fill significant niches. As a creative web person, I would love something with the capabilities of iPad/JooJoo/Wacom all in one. Maybe others would like an iPod/iPhone/Kindle. I expect this to happen in time, but I no longer expect Apple to do this in one felling swoop.

P.S. I tried to leave this comment at Gizmodo directly, but since I’m using an iPhone, clicking the “Share” button did not show me the next screen where I could sign up. Rather than waste my typing, I copied it and posted it here. Ironic.