In Memoriam: Dell Computer

Fake Steve Jobs wrote a fantastic essay on why Dell is on its way down:

To think Michael Dell can do at Dell what I did at Apple is like thinking that if you give Michael Dell a striped shirt and put him in Picasso's old studio and let him buy supplies from Picasso's supplier then you'd have another Picasso. No. Apple is just that -- it's my paint store, the place I get my brushes and canvases and frames and smocks and the metal or clay or whatever Picasso used to make his sculptures. Apple is the loft where I do my work and make love to my nude models. Figuratively speaking. It's the kitchen where I pose for wacky photos with loaves of bread.

The truth on Dell? Dell is Gateway. Dell is Kaypro. Dell is Osborne Computer. It's DEC and DG and Apollo. It's a flower that bloomed and now must die. It's roadkill. It's mulch. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's a good thing.

[From Fake Steve Jobs]

I have a love-hate relationship with Dell computers that goes back more than ten years. It always frustrated me that their servers and desktop machines were so good, while their laptops, well, at least every single Dell laptop I have ever used, are shit. My last Dell laptop was less than one year old when handed to me at work, it was twice as thick as my previous laptop, a 15" Apple Powerbook G4. It also weighted about 10 pounds and its battery was already fried. The LCD screen eventually died, but at least it was replaced under warranty. The chassis CREAKED (I had an Apple iBook, which was mostly polycarbonate shells around a magnesium space frame, and that damn thing was sturdier than the Dell).
Still, it bothers me to see the company sucking on it, because they are my preferred source for cheap and reliable servers.

(dumbass) Yahoo CEO Yang is now on the hot seat

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang has gotten what he wanted: a chance to prove his company is worth more than the $47.5 billion that Microsoft Corp. offered to buy the Internet pioneer.

It will be a daunting challenge, as Yang will be pointedly reminded Monday when investors are expected to show how little they think of Yahoo without a takeover bid on the table. Faced with resistance from Yang and the rest of Yahoo's board, Microsoft withdrew its offer over the weekend.

[From Yahoo CEO Yang is now on the hot seat - U.S. business- msnbc.com]

Let the lawsuits begin.

Jerry Yang just turned down an offer to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion. This was the second offer, which was still lower than what he counter offered to the original bid. Microsoft walked away, since their second offer was already a stretch.

The anti-Microsoft camp is delighted, being too god damn stupid to realize that this could easily be the end of Yahoo as we know it. On Monday morning Yahoo is going to take a nasty dive, which will trigger the first shareholder lawsuits against Yahoo for not doing what was in the best interest of the shareholders. Microsoft is going to recover a little bit from the egg in their faces from three months of saber rattling.

And the next high profile company that receives an unsolicited offer from Microsoft is going to be a hell of a lot more receptive about it than Yahoo. The problem right now is that even if somebody were to step up and offer more than the $47.5 billion for Yahoo, it would be a stupid deal. There is no way the company is worth half of that.

Microsoft and Yahoo met to discuss merger: report | Technology | Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) met on Monday to discuss Microsoft's takeover offer for the Internet company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The meeting was said to be the first since Microsoft made its unsolicited offer for Yahoo, worth nearly $42 billion, on January 31. Yahoo rejected the offer as inadequate last month.

[From Microsoft and Yahoo met to discuss merger: report | Technology | Reuters]

I love how they call it a merger, as if the end result of this mess is going to be a new company called MicroYahoo! or something like that.
The article goes on to say that the meeting was not a negotiation, that instead it was a way for Microsoft to pitch their vision of a combined company. If by combined they meant Microsoft as it is today, plus possession of whatever Yahoo! users don't jump ship between now and the merger, plus whatever other cool stuff Yahoo! owned that Microsoft has no use for it.
Yeah Flickr, I am talking about you. You are looking forward to very limited choices in the future:
1. As is. Flickr stays as is, with a redesigned logo that adds "A Microsoft company" to it.
2. Same as #1, but with the MSN butterfly instead of the word Microsoft.
3. All of Flickr gets migrated to some new Microsoft-centric platform.
4. Whatever Microsoft uses for photo sharing is migrated TO Flickr, plus the branding changes in either options 1 or 2.
5. Flickr is left alone, maybe even as a stand alone company owned by Microsoft but retaining its own branding.

And that's just one Yahoo! owned service. This drama is going to play out on every single one of their properties.

Microsoft chops Vista retail prices

In what may be an unprecedented decision, Microsoft said Thursday that it plans to lower the retail prices for several flavors of Windows Vista.

For those in the U.S., Microsoft is cutting prices only on the higher-end versions of Vista, and only for the upgrade version used to move from XP or another copy of Vista. The suggested price for Vista Ultimate drops to $219 from $299, while Home Premium falls to $129, from $159.

Other developed markets will also see price cuts, while in emerging markets, Microsoft is eliminating the distinction between full and upgrade versions of Home Basic and Home Premium as it attempts to convince more users there to use genuine software.

[From Microsoft chops Vista retail prices | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News.com]

I would love to know where those numbers come from. The $129 is obvious, it has been the retail price for Mac OS X for at least half a decade. The rest of the numbers look like they were pulled out of a hat. I would also love to know the statistical breakdown of people that can, with a straight face, list the names of each version of Vista out for sale, and can tell them apart.

Goodbye Present

Great homage to the goodbye present scene in Office Space:

Where is your God now?

For years the FOSS camp has taken for granted that one of the reasons that open source / free software technologies will always be superior is because of the price of admission. Microsoft and many others simply charge too much damn money for their development tools. Any of us that have been around the Microsoft camp for long know that programming for ASP.net and SQL Server costs a pretty penny, plus every server that the solution is installed to has to pay for licensing. We usually don’t care about the end server licensing since the customer pays for it, but we do care about how expensive the tools are. This is why most of us are glad to jump at the opportunity to grab a MSDN license, since it is the only way that most of our shops can afford to use these products legally.

But what happens when Microsoft turns around and says, “you know what, fuck FOSS. Let the college kids use all our tools for free, so when they graduate they will be proficient and will pursue Microsoft-centric jobs.”

How the hell do you offset this? If the programmer doesn’t have to spend a penny for the tools to learn, then what is the motivation to spend his time on the FOSS toolset when he damn well knows that on graduation the better paying jobs are going to the Microsoft-centric programmers?

Microsoft did just that. College kids can now use the following free of charge, the only condition is third party verification of the student’s school status:

• Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
• Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• XNA Game Studio 2.0
• 12-month free membership in the XNA Creators Club
• Expression Studio, which includes Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design and Expression Media
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition
• Sql Server Developer Edition
• Virtual PC 2007
• Visual Basic 2005
• Visual C++ 2005
• Visual C# 2005
• Visual J# 2005
• Visual Web Developer 2005

Oh yes. Can you feel the burn?

Microsoft to authorize Yahoo proxy battle - U.S. business- msnbc.com

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. will authorize a proxy battle for Yahoo Inc. this week to convince the Web company's shareholders to agree on a takeover deal that the Yahoo board so far has rejected, the New York Times' DealBook blog said on Tuesday.

Quoting people briefed on the matter, the Times Web site said that Microsoft, which has been expected to raise its cash-and-stock bid originally worth $44.6 billion, would seek to nominate a slate of directors by March 13, if Yahoo's board did not enter talks.

[From Microsoft to authorize Yahoo proxy battle - U.S. business- msnbc.com]

Can't we all just get along? First Yahoo said that Microsoft's offer was not good enough (the balls!), then the whole financial press assumed that they would meet halfway at $35. Next, Microsoft said nope, we stand firm by our original offer. And now this: they are ready to go the proxy war route. You wanted a hostile takeover? You got it.

Gamerscore Blog : HD-DVD Statement from Xbox

Today's chapter of the HD-DVD saga is brought to you by some Baltimore-style damage control from Microsoft's Xbox team:

HD-DVD Statement from Xbox
We do not believe the recent reports about HD DVD will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or our position in the marketplace. As we’ve long stated, we believe it is games that sell consoles and Xbox 360 continues to have the largest next-gen games library with the most exclusives and best selling games in the industry. We will wait until we hear from Toshiba before announcing any specific plans around the Xbox 360 HD DVD player. HD DVD is one of the several ways we offer a high definition experience to consumers and we will continue to give consumers the choice to enjoy digital distribution of high definition movies and TV shows directly to their living room along with playback of the DVD movies they already own.

[From Gamerscore Blog : HD-DVD Statement from Xbox]

In other words: HD-DVD is dead, yo. Don't expect any games published in HD-DVD, don't expect any more free movies when purchasing the Microsoft HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360, and sure as hell expect the Xbox 720 (if we ever see it) to ship with either a current generation Blu-ray, or simply move on to pure online distribution channels.

Yahoo board set to rebuff Microsoft bid: report - Yahoo! News

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc's (YHOO.O) board believes Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) unsolicited bid of $44.6 billion to acquire Yahoo "massively undervalues" the company and directors are set to reject the offer, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing an unnamed source.

Microsoft's $31 per share offer fails to take account of the risks that a merger between the world's largest software maker and Web media giant would be rejected by regulators, the paper reported, citing "a person familiar with the situation."

[From Yahoo board set to rebuff Microsoft bid: report - Yahoo! News]

And the plot thickens.
There is a lot of activity on the web due to the leaked announcement, so far my favorite reads are Phil Greenspun's position that the "Yahoo Board seems to be insane" and the obligatory clusterfuck over at Slashdot.
What I find shocking is how basically everyone noticed that the bid is simply crazy. I know literally nothing about corporate finances, but I can tell that there has to be something wrong with a company that is trying to buy another one for 62 times the amount it earns.
Not only is that crazy, but then the Yahoo board counter offers for $40. Even if this a negotiation so both sides agree on $35, for fuck's sake, what the hell?
Is it even legal for the Yahoo board to turn down such an offer? Whatever happened to the grand old American tradition of "take the money and run?"
So far the predictions that I have seen are so wild that I may have come up short when I started describing this mess as a soap opera:
1. Yahoo counter offered $40 so both sides would meet at $35.
2. Yahoo has some other deal that lets them float without getting swallowed whole.
3. Microsoft doesn't care how much they have to pay for Yahoo. They can turn around and turn this into a real hostile takeover attempt.

I bet Microsoft stock holders are excited about the prospect of the company blowing their cash reserves into AOL/Time Warner part II.

More suitors for Yahoo tip up - The INQUIRER

JUST when you thought the Yahoo deal could not get more silly, Apple and Rupert Murdoch's News International are apparently thinking of matching Microsoft's bid for the search outfit.

The pair need to match Vole's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo and for Apple that would mean a lot of iPods and Murdoch would have to sell his favourite watch.

[From More suitors for Yahoo tip up - The INQUIRER]

I told you it was a soap opera! How long before that teenager that runs Facebook decides to jump in with his own bid? At this pace *I* will be the last one to try to buy Yahoo. Hell, at today's stock prices I doubt I could merge this blog with Yahoo in exchange for ONE share of Yahoo stock.
Or maybe it is a tactic to shift attention to the FCC's 700MHZ spectrum auction.

So Microsoft decides to (try to) buy Yahoo ...

And what did Google do? They blogged it.

I guess it's a sign of the times. I just hope that the blog does not turn into the corporate equivalent of what Kofi Annan would call the UN's "strongest warning:"

First of all, I disagree with their characterization of the offer as a hostile bid. I am a bit rusty after my failed attempt at an MBA almost a decade ago, but I do remember that hostile takeovers happen when somebody tries to takeover a company without the cooperation of the board. If the board accepts, it has to go through due diligence, otherwise the bidder has to rely on just public information, which means a hell of a lot more risk.
Basically, the main reason for calling it a hostile bid is because Microsoft did it. Had Google or Apple done it, it would be seen as business as usual.

And so the Microsoft/Yahoo soap opera starts

Image by judland, used under the Creative Commons license.

Earlier today, we were set us up the bomb: Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo, badly. They are willing to pay $44.6 billion for it. That figure kept most of the people busy until sometime this afternoon some genius figured out that, horror of horrors, Yahoo owns Flickr!

Oh boy, we got us a rebellion.

This is the kind of thing that I was referring too a while ago, when I decided to bail out of Flickr into the less sexier Picasa. While Picasa is nothing more than a simple photo dump (with really handy hooks to online printing, thank you), Flickr is a full fledged community. And what is an integral part of every community? Douche bags that think that they own the site and that its mere existence is a constitutionally protected right. $25/year buys them the right to dictate to stock holders how the company should be run.

Where were they when Flickr was sold to Yahoo? Yahoo is a big faceless monster, no different than Microsoft. Why these people did not go up in arms?

Suddenly Picasa looks extremely attractive, don't you think?