Either Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Steve Ballmer is trying to get Yahoo! Inc.’s (YHOO) shares as low as they’ll go, making for a cheap takeover, or he really means it: Microsoft will not buy Yahoo!. "Let me be as clear as I think I've tried to be publicly: We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo," Ballmer told shareholders on Wednesday. "We ... (142 words)
Reuters - Fed up with ugly routers and clunky hard drives, a growing number of consumers are looking for well-designed gadgets that complement decor instead of cluttering desktops and clashing with furniture.
Reuters - Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer ruled out an acquisition of Yahoo Inc on Wednesday but said his company was interested in resuming talks on a Web search partnership.
As quite a few folks have sent in, it appears that the always funny team of folks who made up Monty Python actually seem to get the concept of giving away infinite goods to increase the value of scarce goods. They've set up a Monty Python channel on YouTube, where they'll be putting up pretty much all of their videos in high quality. The video announcing this is quite amusing, and a good contrast to all those content providers who decided to sue YouTube, rather than learn to embrace it:
First, it points out that plenty of folks have already been posting content to YouTube, and while they could sue, instead, they decided to fight free videos with free videos by putting up their own versions -- in higher quality. There's a funny segment where the Monty Python crew reacts to being told that all of this content will be available for free, and then the video notes that while this content will be free, they're hoping people viewing the videos will go to the Pythonline site and buy DVDs (scarce goods) of their movies as well. What an idea. Instead of suing, give fans what they want, and give them a reason to buy. Ideally, they would provide extra reasons to buy the DVDs, rather than just praying that people will, but this is definitely a much better reaction than so many others.
InfoWorld - Marking the two-year anniversary of their controversial interoperability agreement, Microsoft and Novell this week are announcing upcoming availability of both the beta version of Moonlight, which puts Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application technology on Linux, and the general release of Advanced Management Pack for Suse Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.
Inova Solutions has introduced a plug-and-play wallboard for call centers to view queue statistics in real time. QReader integrates seamlessly with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express and requires no additional software or dedicated server. QReader displays queue statistics, such as abandoned calls or calls waiting, on bright LED wallboards, readable from more than 100 feet away. Because some QReader models ... (151 words)
Australian politicians have been pushing to censor the internet for years, with its latest initiative being the most extreme and most ridiculous. Of course, even though each and every past effort by the Australian government has failed miserably, they always seem to think that this time it will be different. At least the largest Australian ISP thinks the government is out of its mind. The CEO of iiNet has agreed to sign up for the filters, but only to collect hard data in order to prove to the government "how stupid" the plan is:
"They're not listening to the experts, they're not listening to the industry, they're not listening to consumers, so perhaps some hard numbers will actually help. Every time a kid manages to get through this filter, we'll be publicising it and every time it blocks legitimate content, we'll be publicising it."
Good for them, though it seems unlikely to work. In the past when similarly ineffectual filters were demonstrated, Australian officials just interpreted it to mean they needed to pass stricter laws.
AFP - Inspired by ancient Alexandria's attempt to collect the world's knowledge, the EU launches Thursday its Europeana digital library, an online digest of Europe's cultural heritage.
NewsFactor - IBM plans to buy Transitive to help its customers cut costs. Big Blue announced Tuesday that it will acquire the Los Gatos, Calif.-based virtualization-software company for an undisclosed amount.
