Slashdot Mirror

Besides continuous Slashdot harvesting, 90+ percent of their content seems to be taken from other sites. Look here:

http://parislemon.com/2008/05/another-classic-rip-off-job-by-ars.html

http://www.ipdemocracy.com/archives/002984ars_technica_has_no_shame_but_thats_nothing_new.php

These days they will put a little link at the bottom if they think they might get caught, but basically Fisher takes stories from other sites, writes them again, and publishes them (or has his lackeys do it) and then whines about not getting ad revenue. Having not read Ars in years due to the shameless ripping off, I find it quite unsurprising that he had to sell off the site, and if the comments below are at all insightful, he probably does have a performance-based contract. But even years ago, Ars would beg people to click the ads and put up with interstitials and other nonsense.

Ken Fisher is just another leech on the rear end of society. Nothing of value will be lost.

(Yes, I am posting anonymously, as Ars fans have obviously been "moderating" this Slashdot discussion, and I don't wish to have my unrelated posts modded down as a result of this post in this discussion)

Let's take a look at the whole MicroHoo saga from the start...

• On February 1st, 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo. They offered $44.6 Billion which was a 62% premium above Yahoo's price of $22.97 a share.
• Yahoo goes to Time Warner, and ask them to fold AOL into Yahoo, but TW drops out of negotiations on March 5th.
• Rejected by TW, Yahoo goes to Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp, but on March 10th Yahoo is again left playing alone.
• On February 11th, after being rejected by their other potential suitors, Yahoo rejects Microsoft's bid claiming that it undervalues the company.
• After being rejected by both TW and Newscorp and turning down a Microsoft offer that is still 40% more than the total value of the company, Yahoo execs decided to http://thetechstop.net/?p=1024">reward themselves with record bonuses, giving their president, Susan Decker, a $1.1 million bonus for a job well done.
• Towards the end of March, Yahoo shocks everybody by claiming that they could http://thetechstop.net/?p=1046">double their revenue within three years.
• On April 9th, Yahoo announces that they are http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080409/20080409006247.html?.v=1">partnering with Google to place AdSense ads within Yahoo searches. This is designed to be a limited, 2-week trial.
• All the while, Yahoo continues to claim that the Microsoft bid http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1011006/000095013408002135/f37927exv99w1.htm">dramatically undervalues their worth.
• Microsoft raises their bid to $37-a-share, or http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080505/yahoo_fallout.html?.v=9">$47.5 Billion). They are ignored by Jerry Yang and company, so they walk away from the table.
• Fast-forward to today... Google has walked out, Yahoo stock is in the crapper, MS won't even entertain a low bid for the whole company. Jerry Wang is offering the wall-street equivalent of a BJ but the only people listening are the share holders who feel as if THEY'VE been screwed.

I wrote about this on TheTechStop.net back in May...

Let's for a moment forget that Jerry Yang is now http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120999265277067343.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo">getting grilled by Yahoo shareholders who think that he just lost them billions of dollars. Let's forget that they overplayed their "Poison Pill" position. The consequences of this bid battle will last for many years, assuming that Yahoo doesn't eventually fall to Microsoft for a much lower price or suffers the slow death of spinoffs and layoffs.

They will now have to make good on their 100% growth prediction. They will have to appease stock-holders who could almost taste a huge payday before it was seemingly taken away by Jerry Yang's stubbornness. They will have to shore up their battle-lines with Google even after they allowed Google into the Yahoo camp. They will be second-guessed, over-analyzed and criticized into the grave --- and Microsoft doesn't even have to lift a finger to make it all happen.

Say what you want about MS as an evil empire. Yahoo got Googled

Somehow I don't feel at all threatened by the MPAA, the RIAA and the like. I have nothing whatsoever to worry about from them.

Yes, of course, because we all know that if you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

Yeah, they should just link directly to the articles that Ars copies their content from.

So which part of this writeup did Ars Technica plagiarize from someone else?

Well, considering that it's ars technica, I'd wonder what percentage of this "review" they plagiarized from other sources.

If you don't like blogs, don't read 'em.

I understand why you wouldn't want to read the "Why I like the color pink" blog, or the "I just took a dump" blog.

But you're bashing on an entire medium. Hell, even television has a lot of good content hidden among the chaff. When you discount blogging out of hand, you're lumping sites like Daring Fireball, The Technology Liberation Front and IP Democracy in with the navel-gazers.

Sure, there are a lot of useless blogs. There are also a lot of useless magazines and books. Personally I prefer a world where there are more mediums of expression, not fewer. Slashdot is an excellent example of this. It could easily be considered a group blog, filled with useless opinions, but it is obviously more than that. Get all your information and all of your opininions from Big Media if you want. I like having more options.