Pencils Down

While programming away I failed to notice this occurring.  Last time I saw this Microsoft had the same problem getting corporations weened off of NT and trying to get them on 2000/XP.  In both cases (and probably others) the latest production mode o/s from MS is not useful (currently Vista).

I hate Vista.  I made the mistake of buying a machine running Vista (after the vendors stopped issuing new machines with XP).  It dies/stops at random locations and applications.  Unclear if network support is the reason cable modem needs to be reset weekly.  Plus a great printer I had (and I assume a large number of other devices) were not supported under Vista.

The difference this time round is the importance of security updates to Windows operating systems.  I am pretty sure I am getting at least monthly updates to my machine.  It is a real nuisance to attempt to deal with that amount of change on a production environment, but at least you have the choice and can queue up the changes.  If you are running XP in production you are completely at risk.  Even better hackers can just wait for a fix announcement from Microsoft and can quickly put out a nice hack that will NOT be fixed on XP.  Nice touch.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said emphatically that his company will not make a renewed bid for Yahoo. His comments come after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said yesterday that Yahoo, which spent months dodging Microsoft’s bid, is now their best option.

Yang said he remains open to selling Yahoo at the right price, adding “people who know me know I don’t have an ego about remaining independent versus not remaining independent.” Ballmer left room open for future partnerships based on the two companies’ search engines, but was definitive on the point that Microsoft does not plan to acquire Yahoo.

With no Microsoft bid in sight and its Google partnership dead on arrival, Yahoo has reached what many analysts conclude is a strategic dead-end.

Why are Yahoo shareholders so in love with this guy?

It looks like the deal may go through.  Many people are talking about how this is a MS attempt to compete with Google; admitting that MSN is not getting enough traction to do so.

No one seems to be bothered by the oligopolistic/monoplistic implications of this:  You have the parent of MSN with x % of the search space buying Yahoo with y % of the same market, isn’t this a bad idea for the end users/consumers/businesses that advertise?

As an end user, I like having the choice of MSN vs live.com vs. Yahoo.  They may overlap, but mostly do not.

As an advertiser I dread the increase in advertising costs since the whole will be munged together into one target audience size and higher fees.  Someone will have to pay for Yahoo besides MS.

Overall, this merger appears to be the latest in a series of oligopolistic advances taken by business where no one seems to be throwing up a flare.  Maybe people are reminiscing about the robber barons of the early 20th century and have decluded themselves into thinking that was a good thing.

At what point does a billion dollar fine not matter?  How much money are you making to think this is just a cost of doing business?  MS didn’t even issue a press release about the fine.

Is it just arrogance that MS thinks they will eventually win the suit, so the intermediate fines are meaningless?  I am assuming they aren’t actually paying the fine(s) (The amount has been building steadily since they lost the dissemination suit a few years ago)

Isn’t this arrogance the real reason the suit was brought in the first place?  Does Ballmer or Gates actually think about the issue?