A not-entirely-successful attempt (using a 10mm lens) to link the lilies with the Mapplethorpe orchid picture in the background.
So is it really a big deal?
A Newsnight journalist rang me on Friday evening, just after we’d arrived in deepest Suffolk, to see if I’d be interested in coming on the programme to talk about the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. I declined gracefully on the grounds that (a) I like being in deepest Suffolk, and (b) I wasn’t sure the story was such a big deal anyway. Now, it looks as though I’m not alone in thinking that. Here’s John Markoff of the NYT on the subject:
SAN FRANCISCO — In moving to buy Yahoo, Microsoft may be firing the final shot of yesterday’s war.
That one was over Internet search advertising, a booming category in which both Microsoft and Yahoo were humble and distant also-rans behind Google.
Microsoft may see Yahoo as its last best chance to catch up. But for all its size and ambition, the bid has not been greeted with enthusiasm. That may be because Silicon Valley favors bottom-up innovation instead of growth by acquisition. The region’s investment money and brain power are tuned to start-ups that can anticipate the next big thing rather than chase the last one.
And what will touch off the next battle? Maybe it will be a low-power microprocessor, code-named Silverthorne, that Intel plans to announce Monday. It is designed for a new wave of hand-held wireless devices that Silicon Valley hopes will touch off the next wave of software innovation.
Or maybe it will be something else entirely.
No one really knows, of course, but gambling on the future is the essence of Silicon Valley. Everyone chases the next big thing, knowing it could very well be the wrong thing. And those who guess wrong risk their survival….
Update: Newsnight ran a piece with Charles Arthur and Robert Scoble. See it on YouTube here.
Spring morning…
… in a Suffolk garden, yesterday.
More complexity than we can handle
This morning’s Observer column
Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make clever. That, at any rate, is the conclusion to be drawn from recent ‘systemic failures’, all of which have occurred in systems designed and built by ostensibly very clever people…
On reflection…
… I should have paid more attention to the horizontals.
Tulip mania — contd.
Photo obscura
On this day…
… in 1970, Bertrand Russell died. I’ve always loved his essay In Praise of Idleness for its wonderful definition of ‘work’:
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.”
Great career advice for any young person.
Microsoft-Yahoo: What Will Stay And What Will Go?
Intriguing speculation about the detailed implications of a Microsoft-Yahoo merger.
While the tech world waits to see whether Yahoo will accept Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover bid, Microsoft and Yahoo employees sleep restlessly at the prospect of massive staff cuts if the takeover goes ahead. There’s a lot of duplication between Yahoo and Microsoft’s internet arms and services will shut and/ or be downsized as content and services from each cross-pollinate across the merged entity.
Here’s some upcoming clashes and which side/ service may continue into the future…
From my point of view, the only interesting question is what would happen to Flickr.
Quote of the day
The trouble with Oppenheimer is that he loves a woman who doesn’t love him — the United States government”.
Albert Einstein