Carl Icahn, the activist billionaire investor who made such a noisy fuss in his quest to force management and other changes at Yahoo, is taking a much quieter leave from the Internet giant’s board.

He said “there was not a need at this time for an activist investor” on Yahoo’s board.

That’s true, of course, but here’s BoomTown’s quickie analysis: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz completely ignores him.

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Champagne wishes and caviar dreams are now but a memory for billionaire shareholder-activist Carl Icahn, who lost about $125 million today by selling off 16 percent of his ever-losing stake in Yahoo.

The sale of 12.7 million shares at just under $15 a piece is a far cry from the hopes that the famously prickly Icahn had when he started his quest to bring about change and riches for himself by investing in stock of the turmoil-plagued Internet giant in 2008.

As it turned out, he came to Silicon Valley, he saw, he did not conquer.

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At the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, besides interviewing a lot of tech and media muckety-mucks, the All Things Digital staff and friends also got a terrific screening of a new documentary–“Autumn Gem”–by our Webmaster, Adam Tow, and his wife, Rae Chang.

The pair co-produced the project, which explores the extraordinary life of the Chinese revolutionary heroine and women’s rights activist, Qiu Jin.

Even more interesting is what it is like to get an indie film made and distributed in the digital age, which I talked about with Tow and Chang last week.

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With a $10 stock price, the turning down of Microsoft’s $31 a share offer, a collapsed search ad deal with Google, fleeing execs and bad news aplenty, it’s easy to blame Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and call for his ouster.

After all, the buck does stop with him.

Or does it? Because, to my mind, if there is anyone to cast stones at in the ongoing crisis at Yahoo, BoomTown would have to toss a large boulder in the direction of the company’s incredibly shrinking board.

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In another micro-move in the fight between activist shareholders and CNET, the Delaware Supreme Court given the thumbs up to a lower court ruling that the Jana Partners group can nominate a slate of directors to the board of San Francisco-based tech news and reviews site.

CNET has been fighting these efforts by Jana–along with Sandell Asset Management, Alex Interactive Media, Spark Capital and Velocity Interactive Group–to nominate two director and expand the board and add more of their own nominees–claiming it was contrary to its bylaw.

Apparently not!

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After dissident shareholders, led by Jana Partners, landed one right in the kisser to the board and management of CNET Networks yesterday–releasing a 38-page report that essentially called the company’s leadership incompetent, the tech news and review site gave the literary effort a kiss-off of its own.
First, rather politely, CNET said that Jana’s proposed strategies, [...]

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Unfortunately, for CNET (CNET) Networks, it’s not an April Fool’s joke, but more lump of coal to the tech news and review site’s management and board.
Today, a group of very obviously stubborn activist investors, who have been seeking to gain CNET board seats and make other major changes at the company to boost its moribund [...]

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While Microsoft (MSFT) still has not moved against the board of Yahoo (YHOO), which is one of the many options open to it, some of its more vocal advocates have.
Eric Jackson–who made a very correct nuisance of himself at Yahoo’s annual meeting back in June of 2007 by loudly complaining of management’s weak performance directly [...]

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