Does the Microsoft-Yahoo deal remind anyone else of Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of MySpace?
On the web, infrastructure counts for very little; what matters most is mindshare. Yahoo were historically "equals" with Google - both started at a similar time as small organisations offering a similar service - and in fact Yahoo had a head start IIRC, but Google grew to lead the pack because people liked their site better. Sure, you could argue that their search processes were technically superior, but 99% of internet users don't know and hardly care as long as they can find a cake recipe when they want one.
So the fact that Yahoo is an established corporation doesn't mean all that much. If people keep drifting away to Google there's not a lot they can do - you can't offer discounts on a free service.
That means the main value Microsoft gets from buying Yahoo is Yahoo's traffic. Sounds ok. But that's roughly what Murdoch was trying to get at when he bought MySpace, and, well... I haven't seen MySpace's traffic recently, but when was the last time you heard someone mention MySpace instead of Facebook?
I don't think Yahoo will be gaining ground on Google any time soon, no matter who's backing them.
Your post was informative, but it was also way more aggressive than it had any call to be. As neither an American nor a Brit, taking the two of you as examples, I'm much preferring the British method of communication: the arseholery quotient is much lower (or "assholery", whichever way you ride).
(No, I'm not seriously judging two entire cultures on the basis of two forum posts. Just making a point.)
It's great when the English visit American webpages and then presume to tell us how we're using the language all wrong.
Excuse me? "American webpages"? Yes it's hosted in America, yes it's dominated by American readers and yes it's probably administrated entirely by Americans. But there are no borders on the internet, so can we please leave the xenophobia at the door?
Hey, American and British English users, don't take it out on each other. If you want to blame someone, blame Microsoft. Seriously! Nearly all people with computers have to use Microsoft Office a lot, and while doing so they all have to spell according to their own dialect. But a copy of Microsoft Office bought in the UK or elsewhere still defaults to American spelling. You think it's annoying to be cheekily told you're spelling something "wrong" every now and then on the Internet? Try being told it in total seriousness every single time you write an essay, draft a letter or (in some cases) write an email. Sure you can set the dictionary language to English (UK), but it still doesn't recognise some very common spellings, plus it has an infuriating tendency to reset back to English (US) at random intervals.
And to add insult to, er, inconvenience: if you're writing in Word in UK English and accidentally type "color", it says it's correct. But if you're writing in US English and accidentally type "colour", it's big-red-squiggly-line WRONG. Why?
It's minor, petty discrimination, but it still feels like discrimination. So can you really blame us for wanting to remind the world there's another way of honouring our colours now and then?
[UPDATE] Hmm... on checking, it seems Word 2004 no longer features this dashed injustice. Jolly good show, old bean. May old wounds begin to heal.
The Straight Dope has it as the above poster has said: between about one and four per cent. The 10% stat seems to be an urban legend based on old, slapdash research.
Methinks he doth protest too much...
"possibly 2) Allison Aiello is allowed to be sloppy because she is attractive"
Can we please avoid the baseless libel? Attack the ball, not the player. Your one-sided FA-bashing already makes you sound like Triclosan's PR manager without denigrating the author.
I don't like censorship. I think it's used too often, I think it's regularly applied to undeserving texts and I don't think it works.
BUT
If you did rank all the media items in the world on their likely ability to incite violence, Manhunt 2 would surely be right near the top of that list.
In general I don't support censorship. But I don't think it's always totally unreasonable, and the government would have a much easier time of convincing me on restrictions for a game like this than on material like Hot Coffee.
If we're going to be ashamed and fearful of something, at least this time it's brutal violence instead of nudity and consensual sex.
I wondered about that too. Keep in mind that it is a 2D image of "a 3D map of the blogosphere", presumably oriented for maximum clarity, so a minor-but-significant outlier like LiveJournal might have been swung out to one side so as not to eclipse the core image. If that's the case, we could be looking at the thin edge of a flat section, pressed up against the outside of the sphere to represent the low-link gulf.
Even so, given the prevalence on LJ of syndicated feeds and such, I wouldn't be surprised if the map was misleading. But perhaps that's the narcissism talking.
Was that elitism a good thing, do you think? I suppose in an arcade setting it encouraged fanatical replay by the relative few who were into games (compared to the mass audience games have today), but it shut out an awful lot of people who would have liked games if they weren't so hostile. For example, the great majority of girls could never get into most old games, not because the games weren't pink and pony-filled, but because they were so ruthlessly competitive.
Even though I've played video games for hours every day since pre-adolescence, I could never call myself a hardcore gamer; I don't have that fanatical, masochistic stubborn streak that leads true gameheads to play something over and over until they are M4D 1337. I enjoy playing games, not beating them. If something gets too hard, I'll reach for a walkthrough. But I believe I should never be completely stumped by a game that I paid for. I'll never get the latest Ninja Gaiden because I'll probably only ever see 10% of it, despite paying 100% of the price. And most people are like me - especially the female/older/non-gamer audiences with whom we'd love to share our hobby, and who would love to share it with us, if only they could get their heads around it. It's hard enough for a new gamer to learn to relate precision button-mashing controls with on-screen action without the games themselves being so $#&%!@ difficult sometimes.
Sure, there will always be a hardcore market for hard games. But to say in general "games aren't hard enough these days" isn't nostalgia, it's snobbery.
...like comparing a cave painting to a Picasso. They're so different, and so much products of their time, that it's dfficult to say one is better or worse than the other.
Slashdot Mirror
They do, there's just never been a news day slow enough.
Does the Microsoft-Yahoo deal remind anyone else of Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of MySpace?
On the web, infrastructure counts for very little; what matters most is mindshare. Yahoo were historically "equals" with Google - both started at a similar time as small organisations offering a similar service - and in fact Yahoo had a head start IIRC, but Google grew to lead the pack because people liked their site better. Sure, you could argue that their search processes were technically superior, but 99% of internet users don't know and hardly care as long as they can find a cake recipe when they want one.
So the fact that Yahoo is an established corporation doesn't mean all that much. If people keep drifting away to Google there's not a lot they can do - you can't offer discounts on a free service.
That means the main value Microsoft gets from buying Yahoo is Yahoo's traffic. Sounds ok. But that's roughly what Murdoch was trying to get at when he bought MySpace, and, well... I haven't seen MySpace's traffic recently, but when was the last time you heard someone mention MySpace instead of Facebook?
I don't think Yahoo will be gaining ground on Google any time soon, no matter who's backing them.
The Straight Dope has it as the above poster has said: between about one and four per cent. The 10% stat seems to be an urban legend based on old, slapdash research.
Methinks he doth protest too much... "possibly 2) Allison Aiello is allowed to be sloppy because she is attractive" Can we please avoid the baseless libel? Attack the ball, not the player. Your one-sided FA-bashing already makes you sound like Triclosan's PR manager without denigrating the author.
I don't like censorship. I think it's used too often, I think it's regularly applied to undeserving texts and I don't think it works. BUT If you did rank all the media items in the world on their likely ability to incite violence, Manhunt 2 would surely be right near the top of that list. In general I don't support censorship. But I don't think it's always totally unreasonable, and the government would have a much easier time of convincing me on restrictions for a game like this than on material like Hot Coffee. If we're going to be ashamed and fearful of something, at least this time it's brutal violence instead of nudity and consensual sex.
I wondered about that too. Keep in mind that it is a 2D image of "a 3D map of the blogosphere", presumably oriented for maximum clarity, so a minor-but-significant outlier like LiveJournal might have been swung out to one side so as not to eclipse the core image. If that's the case, we could be looking at the thin edge of a flat section, pressed up against the outside of the sphere to represent the low-link gulf. Even so, given the prevalence on LJ of syndicated feeds and such, I wouldn't be surprised if the map was misleading. But perhaps that's the narcissism talking.