Rodney Smith, the former chairman and chief executive officer of chipmaker Altera, died Friday after a bicycle accident. He was 67.
Smith died about 25 minutes after a car struck him while he rode his bicycle in Menlo Park, Calif., according to the Associated Press. Smith, of Portola Valley, Calif., was riding eastbound along Sand Hill Road when he was struck by an automobile, the California Highway Patrol said.
Smith served as CEO from 1983 to 2000 and spent 20 years as the company's chairman before retiring in 2003. The San Jose, Calif.-based company makes chips that can be programmed to perform a variety of tasks.
The accident occurred on a stretch of road where Smith once worked picking up garbage, according the San Jose Mercury News. Smith and his wife, Mary, were also active philanthropists, donating $1 million to the Portola Valley Open Space Fund as part of cleanup efforts in the area.
Jack Valenti, the longtime Washington lobbyist for the motion picture industry has died, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
Valenti suffered a stroke in March and was treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for weeks before returning home to Washington on Tuesday, the newspaper reported.
As chief of the Motion Picture of Assn. of America for nearly 40 years, Valenti became famous for creating the movie-rating system (G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17).
In Silicon valley, many technologists considered Valenti an antagonist and enemy of innovation.
Twenty-five years ago this month, Valenti testified before a congressional committee reviewing whether it was legal for people to use VCRs when he uttered his now famous quote: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
Under Valenti, the MPAA has waged an aggressive legal battle with those it accuses of pirating copyright work. The MPAA has also actively policed peer-to-peer sites, supported the broadcast flag and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. In addition, Valenti was a vocal proponent of strong digital rights management.
In a interview with CNET News.com 2004 just before he retired, Valenti said that he thought that the biggest challenge facing his successor would be protecting content.
"If you can't protect what you own, you don't own anything," Valenti said.
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