Well given that even 20 billion is more than the shares are currently worth, I'd say the drop is pretty understandable.
Realistically, if Microsoft don't buy yahoo, they're probably going to go under anyway. About the only thing they've got left is selling API's so people can data mine anything you've got in Yahoo.
If that's true then Google really is an unstoppable behemoth now. Honestly, there isn't enough room on the internet for Yahoo to make a living too? I don't get it. But, I suppose that's why I'm a geek and not a suit.
Surely there's a way for a Yahoo to shed 50% of its mass and use its name recognition to drive some kind of revenue stream. Even if it is just selling tee-shirts or something dumb like that. It worked for/. and thinkGeek (sort of I guess).
Going under? I don't know. I certainly agree that they are not doing well at all. I'm sure there's a rabbit in a hat lying around here somewhere though.
I do believe they have a revenue stream and an "Exchange Killer" (at least a competitor) and they are definitely one of the top five search engines. I think search engine ranks right now must be... 1) Google, 2) Google, 3) Google, 4) Yahoo, and 5) Google. So a second MS acquisition attempt is very plausible.
I think you might appreciate this then: neuron-galaxy.jpg sorry if you've already seen it but it's a picture of a mouse brain neuron next to a simulation of the universe. They look strikingly similar. This probably means nothing but it's startling to think it just might mean *something*... all evidence so far points to comedic meaninglessness. It is probably the kind of apophenia that causes people to see religious figures in toast.
Actually, the existence or not of God or Gods is immaterial. We can't prove that 1 + 1 = 2 without the Peno postulates. We can't prove the Peno postulates without taking set theoretic constructs for granted. So even a thing like 1 + 1 = 2 is beyond our ability to prove or disprove empirically. We can merely establish that the Platonic conceptions of 1 and 2 may be understood in the context of 1 + 1 = 2 and remain useful and does not invalidate any other constructs we chose to build related to it. I will support the concept of God as coequal with the concept of 1 or 2. The possibility of empirically proving 1 or 2 exists or does not exist is equally silly as proving that God exists or does not.
If you say: "there is no such thing as God" you are saying the equivalent of: "there is no such thing as 2." You may in fact argue that 2 does not exist and you would be right in some senses. You would also be right to argue that the concept of "I" is equally an illusion. You may not exist yourself. It is all a matter of strata.
If God does exist he must exist the same way that 2 exists. Which may be only in our minds... or may be more fundamental to reality than the particles that make up our bodies. Either way God and 2 are beyond the use of microscopes and atom smashers.
I require some kind of empirical evidence or some kind of experiment I can perform to reproduce these results. So far I have been unable to prove the existence of an alternate reality as I only have this one to work with. I would like very much to believe in alternate realities except for the fact that I have no satisfactory evidence proving that they exist.
Similarly, I have no empirical evidence that intelligent aliens exist only smug retorts on how conceded I must be to believe that they do not. I merely lack any evidence that they exist. It would be insane for me to behave as if something I had no proof of was real.
I can only act upon the reality I see in front of me. I can't really be expected to act on imaginary things can I? The multiverse is beyond my experience so far so I can't be expected to react to it.
Tar and compress a set of files or directories shoot them over the network and decompress on the target machine using the target machine's CPU for decompression...
tar -czf - [list of dirs and files] | \
ssh [user]@[server] "cd/path/to/place/files; tar -xzf -"
I pay the same price for FTTH as I would for ADSL. I pay less for FTTH than I would for a Cable TV + Internet account. The FTTH comes with the equivalent of basic cable TV for free.
But, my wireless plan is absolutely stupid. I pay for incoming calls! That means the telecom is getting paid by the caller and the recipient! I pay $0.25 per text message that I send and $0.25 for the message I receive... double payment again. It's nuts.
I don't honestly know why we tolerate it. The most popular hack to the iPhone is one that lets you use wifi+voip. I'm not surprised.
In the US it makes good financial sense to avoid mobile phone use as much as possible. It can save you hundreds of dollars a month. And with McDonalds and every cafe offering free wifi (linked to cheap fiber somewhere I presume) you may not miss not having a "real" mobile phone too much just use VoIP.
I use wifi hot spots for everything since there is a free one every few blocks even in the rural township that I live in. So I am always near a wifi hot spot and having a "plan" makes little sense to me.
I live 30 minutes outside a major telecommunications and biotechnology center so I might not be a typical USican. YMMV. I realize how different it seems to someone not in the US.
Well, when I was living in the EU I thought you guys seemed to be a bit ahead of the US in some ways and behind in others when it came to telecom. It was hard to get what a USican would call good high speed wired service (no cable modems for example and I currently have FTTH/FiOS I couldn't get that in EU).
I think EU wireless services were more pervasive, better, and made a heck-of-a-lot more sense from a customer perspective.
So, yeah, mobile phone services in the US are pretty sad by comparison...
I think that you've spotted the major flaw in his thinking. He seems to think that if Open Source suffers then traditional pay-per-use media/software will thrive. ORLY? Where's the money come from to pay for these services? If the pay-per-use service is cheaper or better than another service... yes it will be boom town for them... but if the pay-per-use service is not 10x better and not cheaper than the _free_ service then how would you figure that having less money flowing in the economy would mean that my 10x worse and 10x more expensive service will thrive?
No, sadly a bad economy means EVERYONE suffers. Open Source and closed source alike. There is no silver bullet. It will just plain suck for everybody. Sorry. No silver lining. No magic elixir. No, you can't dodge this. You _can_ use the time you have to distinguish yourself as much as you can before they turn out the lights going down in a blaze of glory... or go down quietly taking jobs that pay less and less hoping things will turn around.
The hunker down and the shot-down-in-a-blaze-of-glory strategies are both legitimate and both have their weaknesses and advantages.
When, in 50 years time, the definitive histories of the Web 2.0 epoch are written, historians will look back at Andrew Keen, Silicon Valley author, broadcaster, and entrepreneur with a mixture of incredulity and amusement.
I have TV. I still set my MythTV to record it, and started watching about an hour in.
Why ? So I could use time-stretch to watch it at 1.5X speed. They take forever to say the simplest thing.
Time stretch is amazing. Get done in less time, without everyone sounding like chipmunks.
My MythTV box died a while ago and that time-stretch feature is by far the number one thing that I miss. I am going to replace my MythTV box just for that. I'm not aware of any other DVR that does that. It's an awesome little feature. The debates would have been so much more interesting in time-stretch.
Actually, I just read the article. It looks like similar results could be gotten if the photos of people's faces were bump-mapped on top a wire-frame face modeled from the Da Vinci notebooks... but I suppose using a 2D "warp field" sounds much cooler. I wonder if any of the Eigenfaces are in the "beautiful" set.
Congratulations you are having an experience that few developers will ever have. You are playing deal or no deal with your code...
Sounds to me like it's a case of taking money now for something that could be much more valuable later. The question you need to ask yourself is... do you think 450 hours now is the best value I'll ever get for this work or should you finish the work with 0 hours now and potentially much greater reward later.
Obviously the business offering you the money thinks it will be worth far more than 450 hours of your time to have exclusivity over the work. Do you think the work will pay future dividends to you greater than 450 hours?
Is it possible for you to build a franchise around the completed work? Is it possible for you to survive long enough without the money to see that happen? Would you take that risk?
After all you know you've got 450 hours in front of you do you take it?... do you open the next suit case? Deal or No Deal?
*LOL* just reread my post. It should say that the temperature at T2 near the ratchet an pawl assembly is small enough and the temperature T1 at the paddle assembly is large enough then the energy can be extracted... sorry... the physical size of the assemblies is not the critical factor.
Slashdot Mirror
Well given that even 20 billion is more than the shares are currently worth, I'd say the drop is pretty understandable.
Realistically, if Microsoft don't buy yahoo, they're probably going to go under anyway. About the only thing they've got left is selling API's so people can data mine anything you've got in Yahoo.
If that's true then Google really is an unstoppable behemoth now. Honestly, there isn't enough room on the internet for Yahoo to make a living too? I don't get it. But, I suppose that's why I'm a geek and not a suit.
Surely there's a way for a Yahoo to shed 50% of its mass and use its name recognition to drive some kind of revenue stream. Even if it is just selling tee-shirts or something dumb like that. It worked for /. and thinkGeek (sort of I guess).
Going under? I don't know. I certainly agree that they are not doing well at all. I'm sure there's a rabbit in a hat lying around here somewhere though.
I do believe they have a revenue stream and an "Exchange Killer" (at least a competitor) and they are definitely one of the top five search engines. I think search engine ranks right now must be... 1) Google, 2) Google, 3) Google, 4) Yahoo, and 5) Google. So a second MS acquisition attempt is very plausible.
Hey, leave my favorite massively multilayer on-line editing game alone you insensitive clod!
+1 funny. But, no citation moderation was reverted.
How long before we see a patent on "a system of placing letters and numbers in sequential order in order to convey something meaningful"?
Sadly, there's no prior art for this on the internet...
Yes. There is. /. is a great example.
I completely disagree.
No, it's worse than that. They basically patented XSLT, and the application of it to target different devices.
Another completely retarded patent.
That's how I read it. And I can believe that a gray bearded judge would completely miss something that obvious.
I think you might appreciate this then: neuron-galaxy.jpg sorry if you've already seen it but it's a picture of a mouse brain neuron next to a simulation of the universe. They look strikingly similar. This probably means nothing but it's startling to think it just might mean *something* ... all evidence so far points to comedic meaninglessness. It is probably the kind of apophenia that causes people to see religious figures in toast.
Actually, the existence or not of God or Gods is immaterial. We can't prove that 1 + 1 = 2 without the Peno postulates. We can't prove the Peno postulates without taking set theoretic constructs for granted. So even a thing like 1 + 1 = 2 is beyond our ability to prove or disprove empirically. We can merely establish that the Platonic conceptions of 1 and 2 may be understood in the context of 1 + 1 = 2 and remain useful and does not invalidate any other constructs we chose to build related to it. I will support the concept of God as coequal with the concept of 1 or 2. The possibility of empirically proving 1 or 2 exists or does not exist is equally silly as proving that God exists or does not.
If you say: "there is no such thing as God" you are saying the equivalent of: "there is no such thing as 2." You may in fact argue that 2 does not exist and you would be right in some senses. You would also be right to argue that the concept of "I" is equally an illusion. You may not exist yourself. It is all a matter of strata.
If God does exist he must exist the same way that 2 exists. Which may be only in our minds... or may be more fundamental to reality than the particles that make up our bodies. Either way God and 2 are beyond the use of microscopes and atom smashers.
I require some kind of empirical evidence or some kind of experiment I can perform to reproduce these results. So far I have been unable to prove the existence of an alternate reality as I only have this one to work with. I would like very much to believe in alternate realities except for the fact that I have no satisfactory evidence proving that they exist.
Similarly, I have no empirical evidence that intelligent aliens exist only smug retorts on how conceded I must be to believe that they do not. I merely lack any evidence that they exist. It would be insane for me to behave as if something I had no proof of was real.
I can only act upon the reality I see in front of me. I can't really be expected to act on imaginary things can I? The multiverse is beyond my experience so far so I can't be expected to react to it.
And why can't I find a decent telegraph office for my telegrams? Where have all the telegrams gone?
From Behold The Power of Pipe
Tar and compress a set of files or directories shoot them over the network and decompress on the target machine using the target machine's CPU for decompression...
tar -czf - [list of dirs and files] | \ /path/to/place/files; tar -xzf -"
ssh [user]@[server] "cd
This is like saying...
... everyone ready? one... two... three... *gasp*!!!
Might I ask *which* EU-country you were living in, and when? EU is a big place, with significant differences when it comes to things like this...
well, JawTheShark knows... it was Germany and he's in Luxembourg IIRC... we knew what we were talking about...
I pay the same price for FTTH as I would for ADSL. I pay less for FTTH than I would for a Cable TV + Internet account. The FTTH comes with the equivalent of basic cable TV for free.
But, my wireless plan is absolutely stupid. I pay for incoming calls! That means the telecom is getting paid by the caller and the recipient! I pay $0.25 per text message that I send and $0.25 for the message I receive... double payment again. It's nuts.
I don't honestly know why we tolerate it. The most popular hack to the iPhone is one that lets you use wifi+voip. I'm not surprised.
In the US it makes good financial sense to avoid mobile phone use as much as possible. It can save you hundreds of dollars a month. And with McDonalds and every cafe offering free wifi (linked to cheap fiber somewhere I presume) you may not miss not having a "real" mobile phone too much just use VoIP.
I use wifi hot spots for everything since there is a free one every few blocks even in the rural township that I live in. So I am always near a wifi hot spot and having a "plan" makes little sense to me.
I live 30 minutes outside a major telecommunications and biotechnology center so I might not be a typical USican. YMMV. I realize how different it seems to someone not in the US.
Well, when I was living in the EU I thought you guys seemed to be a bit ahead of the US in some ways and behind in others when it came to telecom. It was hard to get what a USican would call good high speed wired service (no cable modems for example and I currently have FTTH/FiOS I couldn't get that in EU).
I think EU wireless services were more pervasive, better, and made a heck-of-a-lot more sense from a customer perspective.
So, yeah, mobile phone services in the US are pretty sad by comparison...
The hunker down mentality you mention IS the most prevalent. People tend to starve in place.
Going for "Shot down in a blaze of glory" this time myself. Last time I hunkered down it was 7 years of hell that never actually paid off.
I think that you've spotted the major flaw in his thinking. He seems to think that if Open Source suffers then traditional pay-per-use media/software will thrive. ORLY? Where's the money come from to pay for these services? If the pay-per-use service is cheaper or better than another service ... yes it will be boom town for them... but if the pay-per-use service is not 10x better and not cheaper than the _free_ service then how would you figure that having less money flowing in the economy would mean that my 10x worse and 10x more expensive service will thrive?
No, sadly a bad economy means EVERYONE suffers. Open Source and closed source alike. There is no silver bullet. It will just plain suck for everybody. Sorry. No silver lining. No magic elixir. No, you can't dodge this. You _can_ use the time you have to distinguish yourself as much as you can before they turn out the lights going down in a blaze of glory... or go down quietly taking jobs that pay less and less hoping things will turn around.
The hunker down and the shot-down-in-a-blaze-of-glory strategies are both legitimate and both have their weaknesses and advantages.
If I had super-moderator privileges you would get a +2 insightful.
When, in 50 years time, the definitive histories of the Web 2.0 epoch are written, historians will look back at Andrew Keen, Silicon Valley author, broadcaster, and entrepreneur with a mixture of incredulity and amusement.
There. Fixed that for ya...
On Windows, you can watch any movie with time-stretch using the ReClock driver.
Wow, thanks, I'll have to try windows one of these days! I hear that windows is pretty good but I've never used it.
Right on! A good programmer will learn any programming language in a fortnight. But sadly average programers don't.
Below average programmers build forts around their favorite languages at night when the boss isn't looking.
I have TV. I still set my MythTV to record it, and started watching about an hour in.
Why ? So I could use time-stretch to watch it at 1.5X speed. They take forever to say the simplest thing.
Time stretch is amazing. Get done in less time, without everyone sounding like chipmunks.
My MythTV box died a while ago and that time-stretch feature is by far the number one thing that I miss. I am going to replace my MythTV box just for that. I'm not aware of any other DVR that does that. It's an awesome little feature. The debates would have been so much more interesting in time-stretch.
Actually, I just read the article. It looks like similar results could be gotten if the photos of people's faces were bump-mapped on top a wire-frame face modeled from the Da Vinci notebooks ... but I suppose using a 2D "warp field" sounds much cooler. I wonder if any of the Eigenfaces are in the "beautiful" set.
Congratulations you are having an experience that few developers will ever have. You are playing deal or no deal with your code...
Sounds to me like it's a case of taking money now for something that could be much more valuable later. The question you need to ask yourself is... do you think 450 hours now is the best value I'll ever get for this work or should you finish the work with 0 hours now and potentially much greater reward later.
Obviously the business offering you the money thinks it will be worth far more than 450 hours of your time to have exclusivity over the work. Do you think the work will pay future dividends to you greater than 450 hours?
Is it possible for you to build a franchise around the completed work? Is it possible for you to survive long enough without the money to see that happen? Would you take that risk?
After all you know you've got 450 hours in front of you do you take it? ... do you open the next suit case? Deal or No Deal?
Good Luck!
*LOL* just reread my post. It should say that the temperature at T2 near the ratchet an pawl assembly is small enough and the temperature T1 at the paddle assembly is large enough then the energy can be extracted... sorry... the physical size of the assemblies is not the critical factor.
I am not a physicist but I know one.