Wonko

Microsoft tries to run before it can walk

Stuart Parr — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:39:00 GMT

Yahoo has rejected a takeover offer of $41bn (nearly £21bn) from Micro$oft saying that it undervalued the company!

Shares in Yahoo closed at $19.18 (about £10) on the 1st February when Micro$oft made their offer and the $41bn offer would have been worth $31 (about £15) per share. Amazingly, the Wall Street Journal reckons that Yahoo won't accept less than $40 per share and that Micro$oft will probably pay it.

A combined MSN/Yahoo will put Google back in the position of plucky underdog which can only be a good thing because they've been turning corporate lately. But increasing the dominance of Micro$oft is generally a bad thing for the consumer and, of course, merging MSN and Yahoo reduces consumer choice.

Micro$oft reckons that by merging with Yahoo it can offer a better and cheaper service but Google already offers a better search engine and better free web applications than Yahoo and Micro$oft for nothing. As painful as it is to admit it, Micro$oft is good at writing software. Ok, it tends to be bloated and full of features that are useless to most people, not to mention incredibly expensive, but technology would be nowhere near where it is today if it wasn't for Micro$oft. They now need to move away from the desktop and look at ways of better supporting remote working but for that they need the communications industry to "grow up". Micro$oft are approaching the challenge the wrong way - at this stage they would be better off investing their $40bn in the communications industry to develop the technology that will allow them to deliver their bloated applications into the home over residential internet connections than investing in a company attempting (and failing) to create a market for online content that only a relatively small percentage of the population can fully benefit from.

Online Backups

Stuart Parr — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 21:34:00 GMT

I thought Box.Net would help me keep up to date with backups but it hasn't worked like that, partly because I never get round to doing it. Problem now solved, though, by your-data. The backups are made via an SSL connection to a server in the UK and backups can be scheduled on your PC to happen automatically. The standard package is £10pm for 1GB of disk space but you can buy more if you need to. There's also a server option aimed at SME's and uber-geeks. The service is pitched at the UK market but they tell me that it will work anywhere in the world. I've been using it for just over a week now and no problems.

Click here for their website.

RIP Dave Barr aka 3b-Photo

Stuart Parr — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 08:31:00 GMT

Box.net - free online storage

Stuart Parr — Tue, 16 May 2006 14:52:00 GMT

I had an invite to Box.net yesterday from a friend so I went and had a look to see what it was all about.

Basically, it's an online storage type thing with 1gb of free space similar to Flickr but not restricted to pictures. I used to use something similar a long time ago which disappeared off the web back in the 90's.

There's an upgraded version with extra features and a 5gb limit which is $5 a month.

The free version gives you 1gb of space, drag & drop and public/private files. You can't deep link files using the free version but you can share them with a url which will serve a page with a thumbnail link.

Anyone can register for Box.net and there is an affiliate-type scheme where you can get a free upgrade by referring 5 people to their service.

300Gb "holodisc"

Stuart Parr — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 09:52:00 GMT

A division of Lucent reckons they'll have a 300Gb "holodisc" on sale this year.

The name "holodisc" isn't really accurate but in a nutshell, this is how it works:

On a normal disc (CD or DVD), the data is burnt as a series of pits in the surface of the disc representing 1's and 0's. On the new "holodisc", the data is written at various levels inside the disc itself. A CD or DVD drive can only write one layer of the disc but the new drives will feature lasers that can vary their angle and intensity allowing them to write at multiple levels within the disc. It doesn't burn through the other layers because it combines multiple lasers with beams too weak to burn the disc but where the two beams meet, that point is sufficiently strong enough to burn to the disc.

No idea of the costs but ... 300Gb on a CD-type disc? That's pretty impressive.

Vista = Pretty

Stuart Parr — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 19:03:00 GMT

I installed a "skin/patch" to make XP look like Vista. The best word I can find to describe it is "pretty". Anyone else tried it?

Microsoft sues spammer for $7m

Stuart Parr — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 12:41:00 GMT

Miscrosoft has successfully sued Opt In Real Big, one of the worlds most prolific spammers, for $7m (£3.9).

Microsoft estimated that Opt In Real Big was sending up to 30 million spam emails a year.

They have pledged to spend the $7m on its anti-spam campaign.

New blog!

Stuart Parr — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 11:11:00 GMT

When I started blogging the occassional thing about politics I here didn't realise it would take over my blog in quite the way it has. The intention was that this blog should be primarily a programming/computing blog so in an effort to put it back on track and give the other stuff a bit more relevance, I have set up a new blog for everything that's not to do with programming/computing/vbCity.

The new blog can be found at http://blog.wonkosworld.co.uk or http://www.wonkosworld.co.uk/blog/blogger.html (whichever you prefer).

If you have a link to Wonko's Rants on this blog then please update it to the new url.

I'm not abandoning this blog, I will continue to post here but from now on it will be focused on IT.

American Taliban

Stuart Parr — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 22:31:00 GMT

This website was brought to my attention. Funny yet scary. Some of the most influential men and women in America give their views on all sorts of things but mainly god and why America is so great. Includes Traitor Blair's best mate and his dad as well.

Ding, dong, the EU constitution is dead!

Stuart Parr — Sun, 29 May 2005 23:11:00 GMT

The French have today voted NO to the EU Constitution, a result that pretty much kills the EU Constitution off. France has been one of the key drivers for EU integration and a no result from there shows have naff the constitution is.

Am I right in thinking that this is the first referrendum to be held on it and that the only countries to ratify it did so without consulting their citizens?