While the fireworks were great, the most important thing that “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart elicited out of CNBC’s most famous stock jester, Jim Cramer, was the admission of using the malleable press to float fictional rumors about companies in order to make money on the negative news.

While Cramer at first tried to deny he did it, Stewart had the videotape of the “Mad Money” host talking about the practice, specifically in regards to Apple.

Kind of puts all those Steve-Jobs-Is-Dead-Right-Now rumors from a few months ago into a new light?

While we all know Jobs has been quite ill, grave-dancing rumors written without any serious reporting have also been a troublesome issue, because it was clear greedy short-sellers played a large part in stoking the fear about his immediate demise back then.

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For a tall man, Tim Armstrong has been on an awful lot of online companies’ short lists.

For a big Web exec job, that is. Indeed, whenever one opens up in the Internet space, the 6-foot 3-inch Google ad sales exec always pops up on it as a possible candidate to lead a variety of digital companies and start-ups.

Finally today–after longtime speculation that Armstrong had long wanted and would eventually leave his post at Google in order to try his hand at being top dog–he took over as chairman and CEO of the once-mighty, but now-not-so-much, AOL.

Armstrong, who will start at AOL on April 7, talked to BoomTown this afternoon about his new job.

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Early this morning, Bloomberg reported that regulators are looking into Apple’s disclosures about the health–or lack thereof–of its iconic CEO Steve Jobs.

And while BoomTown has railed against the creepy obsession the media have had with Jobs’s health and the publishing of rumors and innuendos about it as fact without a whole lot of reporting, I hope it is true.

It is also entirely appropriate that the government agency charged with keeping an eye on public companies does investigate–at the very least, to get the story right.

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Here is President Sue Decker’s memo to the Yahoo staff, which BoomTown neglected to post yesterday, what with all the corporate musical chairs going on over there.

As I said in a post earlier today, Decker’s departure was quick and classy, without a lot of the painful dragging on that can happen in these cases.

Therefore, to give Decker a big honking break, I will not do one of my typical snarky memo decodings.

Those I will now save for new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s first Yahoo memo.

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It took a lot of guts for Yahoo President Sue Decker to resign immediately yesterday and without the usual polite waiting period that happens in most major corporate management shifts.

In doing so, Decker left new CEO Carol Bartz with the cleanest slate she could.

It would be nice, then, if the man who was also just as, if not much more, responsible for the disaster that has been Yahoo for too long–Chairman Roy Bostock–would take a clue from Decker and outgoing CEO Jerry Yang and head out the door too.

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Here is a story, in full, by the always terrific G. Pascal Zachary, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal in 1992, about the newly hired CEO Carol Bartz and the “theocracy of hackers” at then-wacky Autodesk.

Three guesses about who eventually won that battle, and the first two don’t count.

Fast-forward to 2008, with Bartz now taking up the difficult reins of Yahoo, which is a little more behaved than Autodesk was then, but still a handful.

Déjà vu anyone?

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Oh, BoomTown really likes Carol Bartz as Yahoo CEO already.

In Yahoo’s conference call today, she has sternly lectured everyone to give Yahoo some “friggin’ breathing room” and noted that the company “frankly, could use a little management.”

The latter is stating the very obvious, but we like hearing it anyway, and she sounds like she is running the show already.

It’s like watching a digital version of “The Gladiator”!

Here is Boomtown’s live blog of the Yahoo call, starring Carol Bartz as its new CEO.

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It looks like Carol Bartz will be taking on the thankless role as new Yahoo CEO.

Sources close to the situation told BoomTown–which had first named the former Autodesk CEO the top pick for the top job at the troubled Internet company last week–that Bartz has been approved for the job by the Yahoo board and has accepted it.

The Wall Street Journal is also reporting the move.

But can the experienced tech exec turn Yahoo around?

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Following on BoomTown’s report earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal has also named former Autodesk top exec Carol Bartz as a contender for Yahoo CEO in a report today.

Since my post on Wednesday, I have been getting a lot of intense reaction from inside and outside of Yahoo to the idea of an old-line tech CEO–such as Bartz–with little Internet or online advertising experience, taking on the difficult role at Yahoo.

What’s most interesting about the reaction to Bartz is that the kudos and the knocks track very closely.

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BoomTown’s got nothing, which is not something I like to say very much.

I am talking about the Yahoo CEO search, which is either being done by the Internet giant’s board in such elegant secrecy and with such amazing stealth that it is getting by everyone.

That or it’s business as usual for the Yahoo board, which so far has never met a challenge for the company it could not drag out painfully and with great public dithering.

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Well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur Reid Hoffman will become CEO of LinkedIn again, taking on the job he had for nearly four years after founding the business networking company in 2003. Hoffman replaces current CEO Dan Nye, who has resigned and will leave the company in mid-January. More interesting in the shift is the appointment of former Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner as interim president, overseeing day-to-day operations at LinkedIn.

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With so many more ex-Yahoos out there now, BoomTown put out feelers to a range of them to ask whom they would like to run the company they no longer work for. After all, who better than to pick a new CEO than an ex? The response was swift and varied wildly, depending on which way the ex-Yahoo felt the company should go, from a basic turnaround expert to–drum roll, please–his digital Holiness, Steve Jobs of Apple. No kidding.

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While layoffs have become all too common across tech and this country, today’s at Yahoo feel a little worse, coming after 18 unceasing months of painful changes and stumbles at the troubled Internet icon. As previously reported by BoomTown, about 10 percent of Yahoo’s workforce–1,500–are expected to get their walking papers, starting this morning. I have gotten more than a dozen impassioned emails from Yahoo employees, some of whom are there and some who have left, this week alone–all of whom truly care for the company, in spite of obvious anger.

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BoomTown really does hope that in some secret airport hangar right now Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang are meeting, in order to hammer out a fair search deal that will benefit them both. I’d even insist that Yahoo’s noisiest board member, activist shareholder Carl Icahn, be there too, to make sure all sides were copacetic and there would be no last-minute switcheroos and backstabbings. Because, long ago in galaxy far, far away, what is now going on between Microsoft and Yahoo would have seemed inane.

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Earlier this week, in a piece about Yahoo layoffs, BoomTown reiterated the notion that Yahoo would pick its next CEO to replace its current leader Jerry Yang from its own board or some dark horse CEO, rather than one of the Web’s more high-profile players.

The Wall Street Journal raised such a name in a piece today–former Vodafone Group CEO Arun Sarin.

It’s an intriguing idea, to be sure, since Sarin meets the list of six key criteria the board has created, including having public company CEO experience.

But there are other dark horses who fit that bill.

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