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Yahoo's Geek Statue
Philipp Lenssen writes "Yahoo put up a life-size alpha geek statue in honor of the Yahoo Mail team, which they think beat the Gmail team. The statue's plaque says it's presented "in recognition of tremendous intellectual efforts put forth in order to defeat Gmail", and: "Not since the code breakers in Britain's Bletchley Park deciphered Germany's Enigma code during World War II has so much brainpower been focused on kicking an enemy's ass." Flickr has a photo." It's a nice little article on the difference between two of the net's superpowers.
I'm sure a handshake and a smile would have been more fitting but hey, it is a nice statue.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
- George Orwell
I hope that Yahoo releases something competitive, maybe this will finally make GMail team add an option to GMail preferences so that I can receive these attachments... Well, I'm not a big fan of sending stuff as e-mail attachments, but a lot of people prefer this way, and not everyone is aware of GMail's attachment killing habits...
Sorry guys, but the work at Yahoo doesn't come close to the efforts made at Bletchley Park to defeat the Germans. The teams at Bletchley were the finest British minds of a generation assembled to beat an evil empire whilst lives were at stake. Comparing this to a phoney war between two email applications is kinda insulting.
Ed Almos
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't exactly make me more inclined towards Yahoo. Quite the opposite - if I have the choice between a vendor who keeps on patting himself on the back and bragging about how great they are and one who actually focuses on making a good product, I'll always chose the latter. I just can't stand that kind of "w3 43r l33t!!!111" attitude.
And FWIW, it sure seems to me that Google does have the superior product, too. But of course, I may be biased (heck, I *definitely* am), so if you're not sure yourself, do give both a try. I think you'll come to the same conclusion that I've come to, though.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
It's like how the republicans do business. They first declare victory. Then they hire people to go to different places, at the same time, and call their opponants "Poor sports" and "losers" for disagreing with them. Through repitition through what appear to be different sources many are easily convienced that so many different people can't be wrong.
Not just that, but gmail has indeed changed the way the game is played. When you sign up for gmail, they have a short intro which begins with "GMail is different". They key is that they are not gratuitously different. They are different because they analyzed the email processing process and saw a way to improve it. All the mail clients that I've used before had different ways of arranging things on the screen, but the function that they offered and the paradigm that they supported was the same. It took a little bit for me to get accustomed to the new way of doing things, but now that I'm acclimatized, I'm not going back.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
I'm the richest man in the world, I have all the great looking girls, all the sex I want, best food in the world and well respected worldwise. I'll tell you how to do the same, just send me $20.
hint: marketing
The war is far from over, if you judge them both at this point, that'd be like comparing Windows 3.11 with Linux kernel version 1.0. Though you must admit, the statue is a cute gesture. You can tell it's just the competitive spirit, nothing defamatory or serious.
Nobody's gay for Mole-Man.
They lost... I've got both a gmail account and a yahoo account and I must say I like the gmail one better.
Maybe you should inform Yahoo that you are the judge here.
How about GMail bringing back the good old DELETE button that we're all accustomed to instead of have it hidden in a drop down list. Sometimes different isn't better... sometimes we really do just want to DELETE something.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
Beats them to what? Yahoo mail is nothing special; gmail is so good I've moved all my personal email to the gmail account. Yahoo has 1 GB, gmail has 2.6 (at last count.) Yahoo has obnoxious ads with lots of motion, colors, and occasionally (ick) noises. Gmail has a column of well-behaved test ads that actually occasionally have something interesting, and spam recipes in the spam folder.
I don't get it.
What amazes me is that Yahoo has not asked users which they prefer.
What amazes me is that they spent money on a statue instead.
>If you install Greasemonkey,
Thanks for that tip, I'll check it out.
However, I really think it would just great if we didn't have to install a hack to do something as basic as deleting an email with one button. I mean if the GMail team *truly* watched people use email I suspect they would find out that "delete" is something people do commonly, even with GMail.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
No they didn't loose they are measuring their incredible success in volume of emails per second that get throw the system....
Wonder if that includes the massive amount of mail that their utterly useless spam filter lets through?
As of writing this, my yahoo mail account (that I haven't used anywhere for 5 years now) contains 4,630 bulk mails, plus another 1,829 messages that didn't get filtered and ended up in my inbox. I don't mind the bulk mailbox - that's where they should go, and it's good for a laugh every once in a while. The amount of crap flowing into the inbox as "real" mail, though, makes the account essentially useless.
gmail : 2.5 gig and rising
yahoo : 1 gig and staying that way
gmail : paid for by text ads which generally don't show up because I'm not in the target group.
yahoo : paid for by pop up flashy irrelevant ads, and a SPAM trailer in the mails I send. Forget about using it for any serious mail.
gmail : k.i.s.s. interface, allowing for rich text
yahoo : no rich text possibilities found
gmail : no spam
yahoo : presents you with a botfilter with unreadable gibberish. Maybe you can't send spam, probably you receive lots
gmail : ssl pop & smtp
yahoo : had the features, removed them
gmail : threads
yahoo : no threads
Yahoo beats google ?????
In April 2004, a Communist Party official told Chinese journalist Shi Tao how to report the upcoming 15th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre.
Shi Tao took notes at the meeting, wrote up what he had been told to write, and e-mailed a copy to a pro-democracy web site in New York.
Unfortunately, Shi Tao used Yahoo web mail to send his e-mail. When the Chinese government approached Yahoo and asked them to reveal the personal information of the person who had signed up for the account, they gladly did so.
Asked about this at a conference in China, Yahoo's Taiwanese co-founder Jerry Yang said:
"To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law."
Since then, people have pointed out that the journalist hadn't been convicted of any crime. A Chinese lawyer--as in, a lawyer who actually practices law in China--has said that Yahoo was under no legal obligation to reveal the journalist's name. It certainly seems that no legal action was taken against Yahoo to force them to rat out the guy.
It's a pity there's no Adolf Eichmann Award for Excellence in Only Following Orders, Jerry Yang would have a good chance of winning.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
But I often WANT to delete certain messages. Sometimes I want to read them (like junk email I've signed-up for), but after I do so, I want to delete them, forever and ever. It's a common task, and I'm surprised the geniuses at Google can't seem to get that common tasks should be easily accesible, like with a BUTTON instead of a drop-down list.
Deleting a message is a common task, and that paradigm isn't going to change, regardless of how much space they give me.
And while we're talking about the drop-down list, why is the "Move to trash" right below the "Add star" button - I've added a star accidently many times I wanted to move a message to the trash.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
Wow, what an angry crowd. You really need take this a little less seriously. It's just an internal messin' around at yahoo. They're trying have some fun and the same sort of thing goes on at google. For starters, they're obviously talking about they're next email encarnation, which is still in testing. It's been well publicized that they're working on a new version, so please stop posting silly "Yahoo mail be looking teh same for years". Secondly, NO, they don't seriously think they're new email is comparable to breaking enigma. There's just exagerting to make things funny. (Am I really explaining what humor is?) Finally, please do realize that you guys *don't* actually work a google. So stop pissing in a circle around Mountain View.
And how is this comment appropriate?
I've met and talked with math researchers. I keep up with the things crypto. I've worked in industry as a web developer. I must say, there is no possibility that the yahoo people have more brain power than the code breakers.
I've been seeing this type of ludicrous statement more and more over the past years. I think it's just that these people know that they are losing and need to generate an over inflated sense of self to cover there inferiority.
Likening corp. competition to WWII?!?! Seriously...
Churchill had many faults but without him we would probably be speaking German.
In the 1930's, he was one of the few politicians speaking openly about the rise of Facism in Germany and Italy. In 1938 he gave a speech saying that the German involment in the spanish Civil War was a rehersal for battles to come. He was openly derided by many on the Left & Right of Britich (& International) Politics. But history has told us he was right to do so.
In WW2, Britian turned to him as being the one leader around at the time that could possible lead Britain and its Empire to vicroty over Facism. Try listening to his radio speached sometime. He was an effective speaker who could motivate and inspire people at a time when we needed it.
At the time of the general election in 1945, the war was effectively over and the people voted him out of office as they began to think of a post war country. Many (if not all) of the senior minister of the Labor Government of 1945 actually served under Churchill in his wartime cabinet especially Atlee & Bevin. They began formatting the ideas that lead to the creation of the NHS in 1942 at the behest of the PM himself.
Yes Churchill and Britian (along with many other countries) have episodes in their history they would rather forget and in hindsight, recognise that they have done wrong. We have put out hands up and in most cases ack'd this fact. There are other nations in existance today who should be vilified for not doing this. For example, the Japanese for their treatment of POW's.
Churchill was an accomplished Artist and Author( remarkable like one Adolf Hitler in that respect). He was after the war awarded the nobel prize for literature. He was an obstinate and often obnoxious bastard at times. He was the right person to lead Britian in her time of need.
If you want to criticise people in History please don't be so biggoted to only mention their bad faults. I suggest you try reading Churchill's "History of the English Speaking People". He does acknoweledge a lot of the bad things that was done on behalf of the Britiah Empire over the years.
Ah, but the more irrelevant mails I have lying around, the higher the risk that a search will come up with more results than I need, requiring me to sift through them. That's a whole lot more work than deciding whether to press "y" for archive or "d" for delete.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
Oh, yeah, delete nothing. God knows it would be a big, fat, hairy shame to delete any of those "Topic Reply Notifications" I've received from varioius message boards I've posted to.
If you actually have any input: put a fscking delete button on there NOW, how f-ing hard is it? I can't believe adding "auto-save drafts" was more important then a delete button!
What is the big deal about deleting? Gmail is my primary email and I delete a lot of messages, it's never been a problem. Just move to trash and then every few days go to trash, click all, click delete forever and done. Geez, mellow out you 'one delete button' fanatics.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
Wouldn't it be great if we could hit Delete to delete mail without applying a crutch like this? I've never archived anything under GMail and don't plan to.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."