News Roundup

MS vs. Yahoo: The big news today is the plummeting value of Yahoo, whose stock price is several miles higher than I think any company with a red exclamation point at the end of its name should ever enjoy. That, and its pretty obvious that the stockholders aren’t going to be too happy with the management on this one– after dropping the ball so obviously, the only thing that could possibly save Yahoo for the long term would be a Web 2.0 service for curing cancer. Oh sure, I think they’ll make it out of today alright, but given the fact that they blew the early lead back in the 90’s and ever since have been foundering about like an epileptic manatee staring down the twin screws of the Titanic, something tells me the necessary stroke of genius isn’t on the way.

If you haven’t had a chance to read Ballmer’s letter, you should. Behind every word you can almost see the condescension dripping like dirty motor oil, mixed, of course, with Ballmer’s famous rage. I’m guessing a few more chairs are getting merrily chucked through the air in Redmond today– rumor has it, if Ballmer doesn’t get this deal done, he going to be banished from the Kingdom of Microsoft Forever. Which wouldn’t be an entirely bad thing– I think the guy could use a decade-long vacation sailing one of his sinfully large yachts around the world a few times, if only to get his blood pressure down to a manageable level.

Iron Man: Caught a showing of Iron Man this weekend. Yes, its as good as everyone says it is, and yes, Downey-Jr. makes the entire movie. I was impressed that the Hollywood elites behind such a smashfest didn’t take the “all weapons manufacturers are evil route”, or even the “American capitalism is the source of all that is wrong and immoral” one either. After all, the bad guys in Iron Man aren’t bad because they sell weapons, their bad because they sell them to terrorists who then, of course, turn them loose on American soldiers. Its a fine distinction, but an important one. Efficient means of killing bad people are glorified for pretty much the entire film– on particularly amusing part features smart missiles able to veer around human shields and kill only the bad guys hiding behind the innocents. Forget network-centric warfare, I think the U.S. needs some of that in the field. I’m sure the good folks at Lockeed-Martin (whose logo is conspicuously similar to that of the fictional Stark Industries of the film) are hard at work on it. God Bless them. Even if they make Jeremiah Wright a little angry once in awhile. After all, its not many rational human beings take that guy seriously.

Clinton’s “Nuclear Option”: Seems that Clinton has saved the best for last. The HuffPo reports on the “nuclear” option which could ram through a decision giving Clinton more delegates than Obama. Interesting, isn’t it, that although Obama supporters are on record claiming that their candidate is the only one “real” Democrats support, he still can’t manage to keep a delegate lead if you actually, say, count all the Democrats. I’ve long posited that Howard Dean’s decision to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates is both stupid and wrong, and it seems that it might also be somewhat impossible as well. (By the way, Karl Rove wrote a piece wherein he noted that controlling the Democratic Rules committee would be key to winning about a month ago. Maybe Obama should have paid more attention to it).

Its going to be interesting to see how Obama supporters react if Clinton gets her way and pulls ahead in delegates. I mean, they can’t exactly claim that she’s subverting the will of “the people” as her strategy revolves around getting more votes counted and more voices heard. They might make the claim that its “unfair” that Obama was told he didn’t need to care about the people of Florida and Michigan, but that just begs the question why he doesn’t care about them anyway. If this decision does go through, the “ethical” and “non-divisive” decision would be to cede the nomination to Clinton. But I’m guessing, based on the fact that Obama is about as serious about the “bipartisanship/hope/change” mantra as Nicolas Sarkozy is in Rosie O’Donnell, that he’s going to fight tooth and nail to ensure that every last voter in both states is silenced. So much for riding the high horse.

GTA IV: I still haven’t managed to play this one at all– and I don’t plan to purchase it until I’m finished with Bioshock, which may take awhile. Sony and Microsoft seem to be doing alright without this particular customer, except, that is, with PS3 owners who no longer have a working console after attempting to get their gansta’ on. (The 360 fanboy inside me is desperately wanting to point out that, while the “freezing” issue affects both the PS3 and the 360, no one’s yet lost a 360 to the game. But then PS3 fanboys bring up that pesky Red Ring of Death, which has eaten far more 360’s than GTA IV has PS3’s. Sigh. Objectivity’s a bitch, ain’t it?) I’m still waiting to find a review of GTA IV dumb enough to spark a reprise of my classic “Mass Effect and the End of the World” bit. Perhaps one of these days, I’ll get up the nerve to actually visit the Focus on the Family website and locate their thoughts. I’m sure they come up with a nice big batch of frozen stupid.