Certainly, requiring Comcast (CMCSA) to disclose more information about its traffic management practices seems a mere slap on the wrist for a company that deliberately interfered with BitTorrent traffic in violation of Internet openness principles. But Comcast, which wants a court to reverse and vacate the FCC decision, feels even it was too much.

“The order is unlawful because it enforced mere policy–not any provision of federal law–against Comcast,” the company said in a brief filed with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this week. “The commission’s action was procedurally improper and violated bedrock principles of fair notice…the FCC erred in enforcing mere policy…and this court can and should dispose of this case on that ground alone.”

In other words, since the FCC’s Network neutrality principles haven’t yet been codified, Comcast can’t be held accountable for violating them. The FCC, of course, disagrees. In a filing of its own, it wrote, “[FCC] determinations were lawful and reasonable….Congress created the FCC for cases such as this one.”

Indeed. And while it’s true that those Net neutrality principles Comcast ran afoul of aren’t yet official rules, they clearly will be soon.

Which is interesting since Sewell has been quarterbacking Intel’s (INTC) fight against antitrust allegations at home and abroad since, well, since they were first brought against the company in Japan. And Korea. And the United States, and now the European Union as well.

So to hear he’s leaving today after 14 years with the company with no explanation of why or where he’s headed…

to hear there’s no one lined up to take his place (Suzan Miller, currently deputy general counsel, will become interim general counsel until a replacement is found)…

and to hear this at a time when the company is grappling with some of the most important legal issues it’s ever faced…

when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission are both probing Intel’s alleged antitrust violations in the microprocessor market…

when the company is just six months away from going to trial with rival chip maker AMD (AMD), which accuses Intel of using illegal inducements to dissuade OEMs from buying AMD processors and “knee-capping” those who did….

Well, it’s all a bit odd, isn’t it?

I mean Sewell’s Intel bio is already returning “Page Not Found” errors (see below; click image to enlarge).

What’s going on in Intel legal? Reached for comment, the company didn’t have much of an answer to the question other than to say that Sewell is leaving of his own accord and it’s sad to see him go. “All I can say is that Bruce has decided voluntarily to leave the company,” Intel spokesman Chuck Molloy told me. “We are not talking about his plans. He was not forced to leave and we were surprised by his decision.”

UPDATE: Sewell’s leaving Intel to become General Counsel at Apple.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sirius XM said it will raise Karmazin’s base salary to $1.5 million from $1.25 million beginning on Jan. 1, 2010, and grant him an option to purchase 120 million shares at an exercise price of 43 cents a share. His reward for steering the company clear of bankruptcy after driving it right up to its very edge, I suppose.

Sirius (SIRI) investors who’ve seen their stock plunge to 46 cents from $2 a share can be forgiven for questioning the wisdom of such a move and wondering if perhaps there wasn’t a better use for a quarter of a million dollars at a time when the company is buried in debt. But there’s nothing much to be done about it now. Suffice it to say, the odds of Karmazin being forced out at this point are likely pretty slim.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Fee Increase Coming for Sirius XM Subscribers [Internal Doc]
• Sirius Founder: You’re 10 Years Too Late, Karmazin
• Call Me Mel “Save-My-Own-Keister” Karmazin
• Sirius-EchoStar-Liberty: Ménage-à-Blah
• Sirius: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Ergen
• A Bankruptcy Filing, Mel? Surely You Can’t Be Sirius…
• Sirius Rolls Out New 24 Hour Investor Keening Channel
• Sirius Debt Problems? Call EchoStar! No Upfront Fees!
• Sirius XM: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?
• Your Report Card Is Your Stock Price? Guess Sirius Is Making Straight $.13’s…
• Trade You 77 shares of SIRI for 1 Month of “Sirius Everything”

Sacconaghi believes that Dell (DELL) isn’t interested in a “transformational” acquisition, though its interest in the handset market might suggest otherwise. Rather, the company is mulling the acquisition of small- to medium-sized enterprise-related companies.

“While there has been speculation that Dell could look to acquire a handset company and we continue to believe that a consolidation play in the PC space could make sense for additional details, Dell appears focused on boosting its enterprise business by acquiring small to medium sized companies with strong margin profiles and higher levels of recurring revenues,” Sacconaghi writes.

Which companies? Software, services or storage and networking outfits, most likely, says Sacconaghi. Companies like Perot Systems (PER), Salesforce.com (CRM), Compellant (CML) and 3Com (COMS).

“We see Dell potentially looking to acquire a smaller remote infrastructure management company, or a smaller outsourcer–Perot fits the latter description, and is possible, but it is unclear that it is a willing seller, and its unique concentration (50 percent) in healthcare may be too narrow a platform for Dell’s offerings,” the analyst writes.

“…Dell’s software acquisitions to date have largely centered around systems management and we believe that similar types of companies could be acquired to further expand Dell’s capabilities. Also in software, we believe that [Salesforce.com] would be strategically consistent with Dell’s efforts to drive business at mid to large enterprises, but would be expensive ($4.8B current market cap) and would have a limited impact on revenues ($1.1B in their last FY)….

“Given that Dell’s biggest enterprise partnership is in storage, we believe the company could look to acquire additional IP for its own use. Compellent and CommVault (CVLT) could be appropriate targets. We think a networking deal is less likely, but purchasing someone such as 3COM and attempting to commoditize the networking space would not be inconsistent with Dell’s stated enterprise strategy.”

An interesting list of targets. Still, you’ve got to wonder why it doesn’t include Palm (PALM). After all, Dell really can’t afford to miss out on the handheld market completely. Can it?

Sounding off in a barrage of research notes today, analysts suggested Palm investors view the transition in leadership as a positive. “The timing was certainly awkward, coming just four days after the launch of the Pre,” Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Matthew Sheerin said in a note to investors. “Our take is that Rubinstein was being groomed for the last two years to run the company, and is ready for the next challenge, having put together a solid engineering team.”

James Faucette of Pacific Crest agreed. “Our turnaround thesis on Palm has always been rooted in the development team that Palm had recently put together, particularly the addition of Jon Rubinstein as head of development,” he said. “Today’s announcement effectively ensures that one of Silicon Valley’s best talents not only remains with Palm, but is fully engaged with the company’s future.”

And Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry said the streamlining of senior management roles at Palm was an absolute necessity. “I think this is the right move, a smart move,” he told the Mercury News. “[Rubinstein’s] involvement in the company has to be more mainstream. He has to be responsible for the success, and accountable for the failure, if there is any.”

Palm shares were up nearly eight percent, to $12.94 at the time of this writing. That’s up more than 500 percent since last December.

According to Sacconaghi, the smartphone market isn’t a natural fit for Dell, which could see its efforts hamstrung by its historically lousy industrial design sensibility and lack of software development experience and wireless technology, not to mention unenthusiastic carriers hesitant to add a Dell phone to their lineups.

“We believe Dell’s foray into the smartphone market is risky and its success uncertain,” Sacconaghi writes. “In our view, the biggest risks are that (1) Dell invests a disproportionate amount in the initiative…; (2) the high margins earned on smartphones today collapse by the time Dell establishes itself in the market…; (3) it causes too much management distraction…; (4) the business simply fails.”

(4) the business simply fails.

A harsh prediction–especially when we don’t even know if the business will ever exist. Clearly, Sacconaghi doesn’t have much faith in Dell’s ability to execute on an initiative like this. And why should he? Dell’s track record in adjacent electronics businesses is littered with the corpses of PDAs, MP3 players and TVs.

Eventually we’d like to make money out of it.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt on YouTube

It’s been two years since the $1.65 billion acquisition and Google (GOOG) has yet to truly monetize YouTube. And while Google CEO Eric Schmidt insists the company has the “luxury of time” as it searches for ways to recoup its investment in the popular video site, it’s clear the issue is gradually becoming more pressing. “We’re waiting for the innovations,” Schmidt said recently. “The innovation will come. We know it will come. We know it’s there.”

Could the “it” to which Schmidt refers be the new e-commerce platform YouTube is launching? Perhaps. Beginning this week, YouTube is embedding “click-to-buy” links in certain videos on its site, which refer users to affiliate services selling the music featured in them. “Click-to-buy links are non-obtrusive retail links, placed on the watch page beneath the video with the other community features,” YouTube explained in a post to the Official Google Blog. “Just as YouTube users can share, favorite, comment on, and respond to videos quickly and easily, now users can click-to-buy products–like songs and video games–related to the content they’re watching on the site.”

An interesting idea. And should it prove successful, it could begin to justify YouTube’s jaw-dropping $1.65 billion purchase price. “This is just the beginning of building a broad, viable e-commerce platform for users and partners on YouTube,” the company explained. “Our vision is to help partners across all industries–from music, to film, to print, to TV–offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted, audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos. And those partners who use our content identification and management system can also enable these links on user-generated content, by using Content ID to claim videos and choose to leave them up on the site.”

Split up in such a way, Yahoo would be worth nearly $39 a share, or about 44% more than its current price–theoretically, anyway. “It appears that Yahoo will not take bold measures to right the ship,” Lindsay wrote. “We believe that Yahoo still has a potentially high intrinsic value. We believe, however, that to stop the inevitable slide into irrelevance, the management team must consider more radical actions and strategies.”

More radical than inviting 300 employees holding the title of vice-president or higher to a motivational event with Apple CEO Steve Jobs? Yes–sacred cow-slaughtering radical. Otherwise, you’ll be inviting Jobs back again next year, this time for a crowd of 600 VPs.

“We do not believe that Yahoo will alter its current course,” said Lindsay. “We believe that management is committed to a path of incremental revenue improvements which we believe will lock the company into a lower value trajectory.”

Greg Coleman, executive vice president of global sales, will leave Yahoo in February. His responsibilities will be assumed by executive VP Hilary Schneider, who’s been tapped to lead the company’s new sales division, called Global Partner Solutions. “As many of you know, Greg Coleman has been actively engaged in leading the integration of Yahoo!’s search and display ad sales teams and communicating the benefits of our more integrated capabilities to our major clients, who have been very receptive to this holistic approach,” Yahoo President Sue Decker wrote in the memo. “This integration is now well underway, and his leadership and expertise have helped enormously to effect a smooth transition. He and I have discussed for some time the need to further integrate Yahoo!’s capabilities in order to better support the needs of our key customer groups.

“Therefore, with the decision to create this new Global Partner Solutions unit under Hilary’s leadership, we mutually agreed that Greg would leave Yahoo! to pursue other opportunities. We are fortunate that he will continue to assist us in this transition through February, closely advising the team. We deeply appreciate Greg’s contributions to Yahoo! over the past six and a half years, a period in which our advertising revenues have increased from $600 million a year to more than $6 billion, with substantial growth not only in the U.S. but in Europe, Asia and key emerging markets around the world. We wish him the best of luck in the years ahead.”

Which, as loosely translated by BoomTown’s Kara Swisher, means: “OK, we’re not going to smack you publicly like we did ex-ad sales exec Wenda Millard, even after she made us piles of ad money over the years, as you did, as long as you go quietly and don’t disparage us after you go.”