http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3372794

When your contract is 126 over 7, you should not be in the bullpen

So, as I am no longer part of any of that stuff. I wonder …

What’s preventing Microsoft from just trying to steal the good people from Yahoo and not buy the rest?

I mean, i don’t even think its that hard. You find yourself one good person, they will recommend others, and you just steamroll from there. It seems to me this would allow them to not only remove all the excess baggage of the useless people, but more importantly, have opportunity to target some of the really great people who has left in the past year.

Pistons and Red Wings both in playoffs. Usually they switch off days when they play.

Short of a early exit from Red Wings, I plan on being in front of TV every night.

Oh, and I guess work is busy too.

This article (which is only tangential to this post) reminds me of something that is occurring to me right now.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/_dell_s_still_a_dog_barrons

So, recently I think I hit the major difference between the Dell strategy versus the HP strategy.

I am right now looking for a tablet PC, and two of the choices I have (among others) is the XT from Dell and the tz2000 from HP. And here is where it gets interesting. The Dell XT has gotten great reviews, is considered top of the line with the best specs. For this, you are going to pay about 2.5k. On the other hand, the tz2000 has only gotten decent reviews, and uses an AMD processor (which is not nearly as good) but costs only about 1k. The 1k would provide more hard drive space, and more RAM.

Dell is trying to move upscale. The XT along with their XPS series is their plan to get higher profit margins per computer sold. HP on the other hand, is trying to move downwards. Marketing to the masses. Quite frankly, it looks like a “grass is greener on the other side” play by both.

So which side wins? Dell made their money initially by being the computer for the masses. Additionally, even laptops nowadays are becoming more and more commoditized. This leads to market share going to HP. On the other hand, selling a ton of computers for no profit is actually worse for a company than to sell a few computers at some profit. The hard part is creating something which allows you to differentiate yourself. Unfortunately, the lines like XPS and XT don’t have much other than their hardware to differentiate themselves. In a case like this, the only thing you can try and do is differentiate via your Brand (think Sony VAIO line).

So here’s the weird part. Dell already has a brand for this (They bought Alienware a while ago.) So why do they feel the need to have a line named after Dell to hit the exact same market? Alienware was never more than a brand built around high end generic hardware, which is pretty much what XPS is as well. They are putting in a lot of effort to redo something they already had from an acquisition.

So, which one will I end up going with? In this case, almost assuredly the HP. While the XT may be worth the money needed to pay for it, I just don’t have an interest in spending 2.5k for a tablet PC which is really just a gadget buy for me. After all, the screen size is the same, they both use the wacom digitizer, and those are the two main pieces of interaction I would be having. I am wondering if this is the case for most people.

Money: American Game Developers Make $73,600 (On Average)

Quality assurance is the lowest paid of the game development disciplines, averaging $39,063, and also receives the least in additional compensation

Business & Marketing: the business field as a whole remains the highest compensated group in game development - with an average salary of $101,848

And here is the reason why video games have bugs. QA is cared about the least and paid like crap. Marketers get paid the most to sell the crap. No wonder you will get bugs when the QA you hire are the ones who are treated like shit and work long hours for low pay. Maybe if they tried and flip these two numbers around, we won’t have to deal with so much buggy software.

From an AIM conversation I just had, I can’t believe they are now on AIM!!! I thought whispers are bad enough…

(11:09:43 PM) onmyway200810: how are u doing
(11:09:53 PM) onmyway200810: i am cindy fro m china
(11:10:14 PM) fudouri: cindy from china?
(11:10:20 PM) onmyway200810: yeah
(11:10:45 PM) fudouri: as in your in china right now?
(11:10:54 PM) onmyway200810: yeah
(11:10:59 PM) fudouri: on vacation?
(11:11:00 PM) onmyway200810: wher e are u now?
(11:11:07 PM) onmyway200810: nope
(11:11:21 PM) fudouri: okay, this is going to sound stupid.
(11:11:22 PM) fudouri: do i know you?
(11:11:37 PM) onmyway200810: do u know wow?
(11:11:52 PM) onmyway200810: o r the game called lotro
(11:12:19 PM) fudouri: nope
(11:12:35 PM) fudouri: should i?
(11:13:09 PM) onmyway200810: i work in the wow company ,and add some player from wow guild,.so i think u must play wow
(11:13:37 PM) fudouri: WoW company?
(11:13:39 PM) fudouri: WoW guild?
(11:13:47 PM) fudouri: what wow company?
(11:14:05 PM) onmyway200810: wow meaan world of warcraft
(11:14:43 PM) fudouri: and you are part of this guild thing that you were adding someone off of?
(11:15:14 PM) onmyway200810: nope
(11:15:35 PM) onmyway200810: in my company , we do some business about wow
(11:15:49 PM) onmyway200810: so i want to know weather we can cooperate well?
(11:15:57 PM) fudouri: doing what?
(11:16:24 PM) onmyway200810: do u play it always or just a little?
(11:17:18 PM) fudouri: why?
(11:17:39 PM) fudouri: what are you offering?
(11:17:56 PM) onmyway200810: 1.we buy and sell golds
(11:18:16 PM) onmyway200810: 2.we rent account and offer golds or cash as rental fee
(11:18:41 PM) onmyway200810: 2.use golds exchange services , such as powerleveling , honors
(11:19:00 PM) onmyway200810: 4.if u are 60+,we also do free powerleveling

I chatted a little bit more afterwards, and it looks like a former guildie of mine had sold their account to some chinese gold farmers. I was still on their buddy list. Not really sure how they got my AIM name as well, they very well could’ve just used my WoW screenname, but its very interesting how far these gold farmers are willing to go.

Hm…This Yahoo stuff reminds me of something…

http://valleywag.com/378098/now-ballmer-and-murdoch-versus-yang-schmidt-and-falco

Ah yes.

It reminds me of a game of Diplomacy.

Right down to the taking over of people (Microsoft-Yahoo). Teaming up (Yahoo-Google, Yahoo-AOL, Yahoo-FIM, Microsoft-FIM). Even the amateur tactics (see Balmer and Yang letters). Only thing left is the backstabbing.

P.S. In case you are wondering which is Yahoo, that would be Austria. They are position right in the middle of everything, and can’t possibly win. The only thing they can do is try to team up with their neighbors before they are completely conquered by someone.

See link:
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080407/172509780.shtml

I believe this is what you call penny-wise, pound foolish.

Just read the most recent Seth Godin post

Essentially, he says that Firefox users are a different breed than IE users, and as such should be treated differently. These people are the ones who went out of their way to download a different browser. He likens them to people who went to college.

I can’t help but first think what this means for internet advertising.

The Firefox users, while being a key demographic for many advertisers, are also the ones least likely to click on ads. They are the ones most likely to have extensions which block ads. Essentially, these are the users who in the current context of internet advertising are worth the least to a publisher. If you are going to “treat them differently” as Seth suggests, should it be treating them better or worse?

Now the hard part. How do you fix this? It is a big problem, as Advertisers right now are very much into hard metrics, its one of the big upsides to advertising on the internet in general. In fact, if I was an advertiser right now, I’d try and target these people at low cost, knowing I’m throwing out brand awareness while paying out very little for these users (who are some of my most coveted demographic). The long term solution, ironically, may come from the out-of-favor CPM. Sales needs to convince advertisers that if they are looking at branding, low CTR does not make a campaign fail. The metrics do not explain the true value.

My first review got a lot of feedback. Mostly from the fact it was a bad review. Still, pretty fun. I can’t wait til I get people to do their own rankings.

—-

It was listed as a comedy on Netflix, yet wasn’t that funny.

I mean, it was a decent movie, but wasn’t as great as I had hoped. In the end, it felt more like a women empowerment movie…which makes me not the target audience.

[rankna http://widget.rankna.com/?list_id=3&item_id=55]