If this deal does go through, it will be great news for anyone who competes with Microsoft - a combined MS/Yahoo would be a crippled behemoth bleeding staff and losing projects. The Vista launch might be looked back on as a relative success after this.

The funny thing is this: EU regulators will probably try to stop the deal if it gets that far. However - if they really wanted to improve competition, they would allow it to happen. The raw chaos that would ensue the consummation would be a boon to all the other players in the industry.

Charles Miller shows how some companies (Comcast) are trying to fake their way through customer service.

The Times seems to be trying out a new angle to combat the competition from blogs and other new media sources: "Stop, it will kill you - only us pros can deal with the stress":

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

Dial the clock back to the early 20th century (or the 19th, for that matter) - it wasn't much different for the newsies of the day. We forget that many newspapers put out multiple editions a day, as news broke. You think the reporters responsible for getting those leads didn't work as hard (or harder - the news didn't come to them over the fiber)?

You would think a NY Times writer would know that, but maybe I'm expecting too much...

Technorati Tags: news

Spotted in Scripting News:

Google's search engine cost nothing to use and had no ads for the first few years, and look at how well that turned out. Flipped around, I don't see why Amazon charges me to use AWS. I think I produce as much value for them as I use just by writing about it, but they haven't been willing to bend (not that I've asked them to). If there was no cost to it, I'd use their services for new things that I'm not willing to try as long as I have to pay. I know that because there are projects I've not attempted because the cost was prohibitive.

I think Winer needs to read Heinlein, and ponder the idea of TANSTAAFL. Google pays for their "free" services with ads. If they offered the kind of service Amazon does, and decided not to charge for it, it would mean ads - that's how they pay the bills.

So how would Amazon provide their services if we didn't have to pay? It's simple - they wouldn't offer them. At first, the service was a simple matter of trying to monetize things they were already doing for themselves. Over time though, as it started to get more popular, they had to start adding scale based on growing demand. So how would they support that in Dave's world? Servers, backup capability, power - none of this stuff is free. Here's a thought for Winer - maybe he should build the web services stuff he wants to see available for free, and just give it away. I'll let him figure out the economics of that on his own.

Technorati Tags: free lunch

I thought Dave Winer said he'd stop blogging? Oh, wait - he has - he went into content-free mode a long time ago...

Eric Sofge is a sad, pathetic little man. Gary Gygax, the man who brought us D&D, died last week, and here's how Sofge paints him:

But it has to be said: Gary Gygax wasn't a visionary to all of us. The real geeks out there -- my homies -- know the awkward truth: When you cut through the nostalgia, Dungeons & Dragons isn't a good role-playing game; in fact, it's one of the worst on the market. Sadly, Gygax's creation defines our strange corner of the entertainment world and drowns out all the more innovative and sophisticated games that have made D&D obsolete for decades. (As a game designer, Gygax is far outclassed by contemporaries such as Steve Jackson and Greg Stafford.)

Barely in the grave, and this guy can't wait to pee all over him. Here's the thing: the RPG market exists because of Gygax. I stopped playing AD&D in favor of a system I created myself, but I never would have done that without the inspiration provided by Gygax and his cohorts.

Rest in Peace, Gary - you'll be remembered fondly long after losers like Sofge shuffle off this mortal coil.

Technorati Tags: role playing, rpg

I guess basic decency would be too much to ask for from Scoble, or from an SXSW audience:

I'm going to try to interview Sarah Lacy, and I''ll apologize for my part in being an audience asshole, but I''ll also explain to her why I'd do it again. I hate being captive in an audience when the people on stage don''t have a feedback loop going with the audience. We're used to living a two-way life online and expect it when in an audience too. Our expectations of speakers and people on stage have changed, for better or for worse.

Here's a thought: if you don't like the way a talk, interview, or presentation is going, then get up and leave. It might be the case that other people in the audience are enjoying it, and by being a jerk you're ruining it for them. Do you yell in movie theaters, too? Who died and made you god?

Perhaps the "Dave Winer, center of the universe" problem is contagious.

Technorati Tags: sxsw, sarah lacy, twitter

It's Dave's World; the rest of us just live in it