Some people shape the world through hard work and creativity, while others do it by force and forcing others into submission. I don't know exactly who is Carl Icahn, if you ask me details about his past, but I know one thing for certain: after following closely the Yahoo-Microsoft match, and seeing his intervention taking place, every time I talk about something he has done, I have "its" in my mind, instead of "his," and I don't think I have to explain too much - after all, that's what a corporate raider is - a predator, a human that's less of a human, and more of a machine without soul, but let's not make this personal. After all, today he just addressed his "fellow Yahoo! shareholders" a message showing real concern about the company's fate, as we're going to see right away...

Although the open letter to the Yahoo! Shareholders is available on Carl Icahn's blog, and you can easily view it by using the link in the previous paragraph, I want to help you spare some of your precious time, so I'll quote the most interesting(or simply outrageous, for some) parts. Here we go...

"Dear Fellow Yahoo! Shareholders:

Over the years I have attempted to make changes at many companies but I have yet to see a company distort, omit and twist events and facts in the manner that Yahoo! has done in their press release issued Saturday night, July 12th," started Carl Icahn his open letter. Oh, well, as if Yahoo is the big bad wolf here, and Mr. Icahn, the poor little girl...

Now, here's the interesting part. It may be a bit long, but it's worth your time, believe me!

"During the last week, Goldman Sachs called me a number of times asking me to relate to them any transaction that Microsoft might be interested in transacting with Yahoo! I discussed with them the possibility of doing a “Search only” deal wherein Microsoft would purchase “Search” from Yahoo! and pay Yahoo! for any searches that would originate from a Yahoo! content page. Yahoo! felt that a deal of this nature would be very interesting, but only if Microsoft would guarantee the revenue that Yahoo! now received. This would obviously be a great deal for Yahoo! because Yahoo! would, for five years, receive a minimum of the $2.3 billion they are currently receiving as long as they continued to supply the page views and affiliate traffic they now had. Heretofore, Microsoft had been unwilling to even come close to making this guarantee. However, after I negotiated with Steve Ballmer for the better part of a week, he agreed to the guarantee. He also agreed to commit $7.7 billion dollars to the transaction (consisting of a $1 billion payment for “Search”, a $2.8 billion loan and a $3.9 billion tender offer to Yahoo! shareholders). Under the transaction, Yahoo! shareholders would receive $16.25 per share in distributions (consisting of cash and securities) and be left with a content company which would have a minimum guarantee of $2.3 billion per year of “Search” revenue from Microsoft and cost saving synergies from exiting the “Search” business that <-336x280 Large Rectangle - right->
Yahoo! has publicly stated would be $750 million per year (excluding the benefits from reduction of stock compensation and other non-cash items). However, Microsoft believes the synergies from Yahoo! exiting “Search” would be far superior and that Yahoo!’s 2009 GAAP operating income would exceed $2 billion. Microsoft would be making a substantial equity investment in the remaining company at a valuation of $19.50 per share. Furthermore, Yahoo! would be spared the great expense of maintaining “Search” as well as having to spend billions in developing new technology to compete with Google and Microsoft - which it is highly doubtful they would be able to do successfully. Additionally, Yahoo! would be able to avoid the great risk of seeing “Search” continue to lose market share and eventually melt away."

So, Carl Icahn is saving Yahoo? Come on! Who said Yahoo needs to be saved, and how is it possible to say such things like Yahoo Search "melting away??!" I wonder, and I have no answer to that yet, but I think the game is getting uglier with each day.

As a Yahoo user, I still think they have much to offer, and I don't think they'll ever "melt away," but I would really like to hear the opinion of some small Yahoo shareholder, so if you're one of them, please drop your comment below. What do you think? Would you like to see this company becoming a puppet in Icahn's and Ballmer's hands?

When I found out that Carl Icahn gets involved in the Yahoo-Microsoft battle, I got scared a little. Considering his past similar interventions in various companies, seeing Yang pushed aside and Yahoo offered on a plate to Microsoft started to look like a possible scenario. Now, I finally got my piece of mind back. It's funny to notice that some of the important announcements in the Yahoo-Microsoft match were announced during weekends, so let's see what did they do this Saturday...

For now, everything looks good to me - Yahoo announced they rejected the offer to sell the search business to Microsoft, and leave the remaining part of the company at Carl Icahn's disposal. In a statement, the search giant said the joint proposal from Microsoft and Icahn received on Friday was a quick "take it or leave it" one, being given less than 24 hours to accept. Even more, the two sharks made it clear they were unwilling to negotiate the fundamental terms, including the immediate replacement of Yahoo's board.
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Yahoo's Chairman, Roy Bostock, said "This odd and opportunistic alliance of Microsoft and Carl Icahn has anything but the interests of Yahoo's stockholders in mind," and I fully agree with that one. Continuing to state the obvious, he added "Clearly, Microsoft, having failed to advance in search, is aligning with the short-term objectives of Mr. Icahn to coerce Yahoo into selling its core strategic search assets on terms that are highly advantageous to Microsoft, but disadvantageous to Yahoo stockholders."

I am not a Yahoo shareholder, so I can't say anything from that point of view but, as a Yahoo user, I only wish to see them continue along the current path and, if needed, go together with any other company they wish, apart from Microsoft and AOL, and I guess you can figure out why, in both cases!

Today, another episode in the eternal Microsoft vs Apple vs Linux unfolds, and this time, it seems the Redmond giant is winning. As usual, the results coming from different sources could be anything else but the truth, so don't worry - Microsoft's products are not better than Apple's, and they are not kicking the penguin around, either. This is all about statistics, research, and the results of a study conducted by a certain Web monitoring firm, but it is worth being mentioned, and here's why...


According to Pingdom, the Windows Update site was up and running 100% of the time, in the second quarter of this year, while Apple's Software Update had a 99.9% uptime, with Ubuntu falling on the third place, with "only" 98.64%. OK, these are the percentages, but what about measured downtime?<-125x125 Button - right->

For the three-month period considered in the study, the Apple Software Update was down for 2 hours and 34 minutes, while Ubuntu didn't respond for a full day, 5 hours, and 45 minutes.

Just as a side note, I guess Apple would have got the same score as Microsoft, if the iPhone 3G wouldn't have started the online madness which caused the servers to go down... as for the Linux competitor, I think the release of Ubuntu 8.04 had its contribution in the large downtime measured.

If only overall system reliability could be the same as the one of the software update service...we would surely have a completely different OS landscape, don't you think? :)

Remember Google Lively? I am sure you do, and despite the fact less than two days have passed since we talked about it for the last time(and first time ever, by the way), today I'll get back to it! You are probably wondering why, but here's the deal - I just noticed that, if I force full anti-aliasing in the Direct3D settings, Google Lively looks great! Heh, it's not quite that...it's just the pleasure of discovering new things with each login into the virtual cartoon world offered by the IT giant, which is getting one step further from the "search giant" label with each new project(I don't know about you, but I think this is a good thing)!

Since talking about the whole thing may not be that interesting, here you have a few tips and tricks:

1. Right click a character in the room, switch to the Animations tab, and then choose one of the following actions: bodyslam, kungfu1 or kungfu2, as well as tickle, but there are plenty of choices, so feel free to explore all of them.

2. Right click your own character, go to Animations, and choose one of the following, for the start: dance1, evillaugh, workout, or roft, my absolute favorite!

3. To adjust your view properly, use the icon in the upper left corner of the Google Lively screen, as you can see in the screenshot below. This can save you a lot of wasted time, believe me!

4. If you liked The Dragon Tower room, which can be seen in the last 3 screenshots above, feel free to fully enjoy it below...

I see a lot of good looking rooms, and it seems people are really getting involved in this already. To create a new room is easy, but to create a good looking one, can be pretty hard, so I will try to help you with this as soon as possible. In the meantime, the question remains - what do you think about Google Lively? Even more, what would you like me to discover for you? ;)


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Ooh, it seems I forgot to tell you one thing - if you notice that Google Lively keeps disconnecting you after fairly short periods of inactivity, don't worry - I've been there too, so I guess this is one of those things that the boys and girls at Google will have to work on, sometimes in the near future. I know we're talking about a virtual world here, but why not keep me logged in, just like in Gmail? After all, it's my computer who's doing all the hard work here, isn't it? Don't shoot me yet, I know it may be because staying in a room may cause a certain amount of load on Google's servers... but that's what are they for, right? :)

Did you ever thought about how large could be Microsoft's piracy losses? Well, I know most people don't really care about this, especially those that are using pirated products, but piracy could lead to some people remaining without a job, in the end, and I think this is the most important consequence of this modern plague. Anyway, while I think about people, Microsoft has a colder view of the whole deal. How? In the end, it's all about money, so the Redmond giant made public its concerns about "lost opportunities" due to piracy. Financial opportunities, obviously...

Leaving Microsoft aside for now, we'll look back 5 years for a short moment. Why? Because I want to remind you that, according to a IIPA report from 2003, the US economy lost over $9 billion in 2002 through copyright breaches in other countries, with almost $2 billion in China, where estimations were that motion picture piracy was at 91 percent, records and music piracy at 90 percent, business software piracy at 93 percent, and entertainment software piracy at 96 percent. Now, let's get back to the present day, shall we?

In 2008, Microsoft claims that for each dollar lost to software piracy, there are also lost opportunities worth $5.50, but what are these "lost opportunities," after all? While stolen software can slow down sales, as expected, especially in emerging countries("if I can get it for free, why pay for it?"), sometimes entire projects could be halted by the discovery of illegal copies. According to Microsoft, "in many emerging markets where legally licensed software is difficult even to obtain, it can be next to impossible for a legitimate partner to operate."

It seems those $5.50 are coming from increased revenues, combined with lower operational costs, but how Microsoft and the IDC are obtaining piracy figures leaves a lot of room for errors, and past proved that such errors occur pretty often.<-125x125 Button - right->

Microsoft's director of License Compliance, Michael Beare, said "Even in a healthy ecosystem, illegal software causes hidden costs and friction in the sales and deployment processes. At its worst, rampant piracy in some economies is tearing down the opportunity for legitimate businesses to exist and thrive."

I have a brilliant idea, and I will gladly say it out loud, so Microsoft could use it - you want to avoid piracy? Then make them all free! I never heard of piracy when talking about software support, because that's what some free software companies do for a living, and they do it quite well!