(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.

I have The Moose

In programming circles, it is common to keep a small stuffed animal to be kept by whatever team member has done something gloriously stupid. Some places use a Big Mouth Billy Bass, but most of my friends use a moose. Whenever one of us screws something up big time, we request possession of The Moose.

Today I took a double possession. The first incident involved a boolean function. Here is more or less a breakdown of what I did:

[20:40] <VP|bofh> function returns true/false

[20:40] <VP|bofh> function uses sproc to return true/false

[20:40] <VP|bofh> sproc uses a record count to decide true/false

[20:40] <VP|bofh> zero records = true

[20:40] <VP|bofh> > zero = false

[20:40] <VP|bofh> the ACTUAL function returned zero records = false

[20:40] <VP|bofh> > 0 records = true

This basically means that my true/false function was returning false/true instead. This ate two hours of work last night, and another hour this evening.

The second incident was subtle. I had a sequence of events:

1. Check authentication status

2. Check secondary authentication status

3. Execute a function

4. Execute another function

5. Execute another function

6. Auto-login

And it wasn't working. Since I was still reeling from the boolean error, I started adding breaking points and checking every line of code. One hour into it, I found the culprit: when I copied the function I needed to use for step #4, it had a built-in self-authentication check, which made sure only logged-in users could run the function. This meant that even after I had checked the two authentication methods, I had a rogue third check within my code that was raising all sorts of hell.

So now I have The Moose.

Photo Credit: Photo by grizzbass, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

AOL to Acquire Global Social Media Network Bebo

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AOL announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Bebo (http://www.bebo.com), a leading global social media network. Together with its AIM and ICQ personal communications network, the acquisition will give AOL a premier position in the fast growing world of social media with a network of approximately 80 million unique users.

With a total membership of more than 40 million worldwide, Bebo is a global social media network which combines community, self-expression and entertainment to enable its users to consume, create, discover and share content. Bebo is one of the leading social networks in the UK, and is ranked number one in Ireland and New Zealand, and number three in the U.S. Its users are heavily engaged and view an average of 78 pages per usage day. Bebo has approximately 100 employees operating in offices in the UK, San Francisco and Austin, TX.

The deal comes just one week after AOL’s launch of Open AIM 2.0, an initiative that allows the developer community greater freedom to access the AIM network and integrate AIM into its sites and applications, and the announcement by Apple of a downloadable AIM application for the iPhone.

[From AOL to Acquire Global Social Media Network Bebo]

You gotta be shittin' me. First some morons want to add $5 to everyone's internet bill to pay for piracy, even if the user can't spell "P2P." Now AOL, a company that was the symbol of the Web 2.0 sinking ship until Microsoft decided to buy Yahoo out of existence, are blowing $850 million on a god damn website?



WTF is Bebo anyway? I spend pretty much my whole day online, so I expect to have a slightly higher exposure to new sites than say a guy that works at a counter for 8 hours then goes home and surfs for one hour. And I have no clue wtf that site is, except that from reading the press release it is obvious it is some kind of Facebook competitor.



Is it a full moon by any chance and all the dumbasses are coming out of the woods, howling for dumb deals? What's next?



BTW, AOL: I have another site, it is called Veraperez.com. I am willing to sell it to you for 1/1000th of what you paid for Bebo.com. I'll even give you a free USB wireless adapter for the Xbox 360 and an Airport Extreme wireless card if you send me your purchase proposal by COB 4/15.

Photo Credit: Photo by Grant Neufeld, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs

Having failed to stop piracy by suing internet users, the music industry is for the first time seriously considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users.

In recent months, some of the major labels have warmed to a pitch by Jim Griffin, one of the idea's chief proponents, to seek an extra fee on broadband connections and to use the money to compensate rights holders for music that's shared online. Griffin, who consults on digital strategy for three of the four majors, will argue his case at what promises to be a heated discussion Friday at South by Southwest.

[From Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs]

This is the stupidest idea in the still short history of stupid ideas in regards to online piracy. For starters, why is everyone getting taxed? What would happen if the feds said "you know what? Let's make everyone with a driver's license pay $5 a year to pay for people that don't get caught speeding..."?





There would be riots.



Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia we went up in arms simply because they asked us to pay more money as the moving violation got worse.



Also, wouldn't this legalize all online piracy? After all, if we are paying the $5, it means that the owner of the copyright is not suffering damages, right? Not so fast, because this piracy surcharge would only affect music piracy, they are not collecting the $5 to pay Microsoft for all of the Vista licenses being pirated, or Vivid for all of the porn sales that they lose to piracy.

Nope, it is all about the music.



How much do you want to bet that somewhere in a dusty desk drawer there is a music sales market research study that says that, with zero piracy, the average US household would consume $5 in music CDs every month?



Dumbasses.

Photo Credit: Photo by ndh, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

Landocalrissan Butler, 27, under arrest after leading police on a high-speed chase

A City of Poughkeepsie man was arrested Thursday after leading police on a high-speed chase through the city, which came to an end on the lawns of two Washington Street homes.

Officer Garth Mason was on Market Street at 6:37 p.m. when he saw a car, operated by Landocalrissan Butler, 27, of Winnikee Avenue, speeding and moving into the officer’s lane, almost striking his car, said Deputy Chief Tom Ghee.

Mason attempted to pull Butler’s vehicle over, Ghee said, but Butler allegedly did not comply and would not stop his vehicle.

Butler led Mason on a chase through several city streets, eventually ending up southbound on Washington Street, Ghee said.[From PoughkeepsieJournal.com - Chase ends in crash, arrest]

This is the kind of headline that is tailor made for Fark.

Landocalrissan? And then people still bitch and whine that I named my son "Pedro."

Screw THAT

Thanks to Paul for this one:



One of the things that set us apart from animals is that animals don't do the same kind of stupid shit that us humans do.