“I went into a McDonald’s yesterday and said, ‘I’d like some fries.’ The girl at the counter said, ‘Would you like some fries with that?’” - Jay Leno
Archive for June, 2007
Britain hasn’t banned a game since 1997, but now the country’s ratings board decided to ban sales of “Manhunt 2″, a game developed by the “Grand Theft Auto” makers Rockstar Games. The game’s main character is mental institution patient who wants to escape and kills everything that comes across his way out. As said, this is the first game Birtain has banned since not allowing sales of “Carmageddon” in 1997 (Carmageddon is a game in which players have to drive vehicles over pedestrians). David Cooke from the ratings board said they decided to ban the game, because it was “distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing”. Rockstar spokesman Rodney Walked, on the other hand, said they wanted to create a game that is more like a horror game similar to the Saw-like gory movies that have been released lately. He continued saying the board’s decision was censorship, because they had taken away the right of the public to decide for itself.
There is a lenghty but very interesting article, written by John Heilemann, in the New York magazine that quotes an anonymous person saying that Google might acquire Apple.
“I think that Google is going to buy Apple,” this person says. “It would be a victory for Apple; they’d get major-league partners, money, and engineers. And it would be a victory for Steve—a huge win that lets him leave the stage.”
This doesn’t sound very far-fetched. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on the Apple board, engineers from both companies are developing Google Maps for the iPhone and Apple has a deal for their Apple TV service with Google-owned website YouTube.com.
Link: Steve Jobs in a Box
The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II (QE2) was sold to the Dubai-owned company Istithmar, which is a devision of Dubai World, for $100 million. The QE2 has carried more than 2.5 million passengers since 1967 and after 40 years it will become a tourist attraction in Dubai.
As of June 18, Jerry Yang is Yahoo’s new Chief Executive Officer after having worked closely with the company’s board of executives for 12 years. Yang founded the company with David Filo. On Yahoo’s Yodel blog he said he believed that Yahoo! has an “incredibly bright future”. Commenting on his vision of Yahoo’s future, he said:
What is that vision? A Yahoo! that executes with speed, clarity and discipline. A Yahoo! that increases its focus on differentiating its products and investing in creativity and innovation. A Yahoo! that better monetizes its audience. A Yahoo! whose great talent is galvanized to address its challenges. And a Yahoo! that is better focused on what’s important to its users, customers, and employees.
I, too, think Yahoo! will have to better monetize its search engine and make better use of their established advertising platform. They can achieve this by either displaying their ads on more web pages or, and this is more important, get higher quality traffic for their advertisers, which would lead to higher pay-per-click prices.
About Jerry Yang, from Yahoo’s press release:
Jerry Yang co-created the Yahoo! Internet navigational guide in April 1994 with David Filo and co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in April 1995. He was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the company in June 2007. Mr. Yang, a leading force in the Internet media industry, has been instrumental in building Yahoo! into the world’s most highly trafficked Web site and one of the world’s most recognized brands. Since the company’s founding, Mr. Yang has been a key member of the executive management team. His focus at Yahoo! over the years has included corporate strategy, Yahoo!’s technology vision, strategic business partnerships and international joint ventures, and recruiting key talent. In addition to serving on the Yahoo! Board of Directors, Mr. Yang also currently serves on the boards of Cisco Systems, Yahoo! Japan, and Alibaba, and is a member of the Stanford University Board of Trustees. Mr. Yang holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and is currently on a leave of absence from Stanford’s electrical engineering Ph.D. program.
Link: Official press release.
[via Apogee]
Just a heads up: I finished the final draft of chapter seven yesterday and it’s safely lying in my desk’s top drawer. It will be published tomorrow, you’ll find it posted in the “Lettered” category as always.
“In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” - Warren Buffett
The Washington Post article “The Measure of a Life, in Dollars and Cents” says that the USA Government Accountability Office released a report last month which sets a monetary value to the life of an Iraqi who got killed “as a result of U.S. and coalition forces’ actions during combat.”
The Pentagon has set $2,500 as the highest individual sum that can be paid. Most death payments remain at that level, with a rough sliding scale of $1,000 for serious injury and $500 for property damage. Beginning in April of last year, payments of up to $10,000 were possible for “extraordinary cases” but only with a division commander’s authorization.
The report says that these are voluntary payments that are an expression of ”sympathy or remorse based on local culture and customs, but not an admission of legal liability or fault.”
The report, titled “The Department of Defense’s Use of Solatia and Condolence Payments in Iraq and Afghanistan,” offers a particularly coldblooded example of how payments are estimated, drawn from CERP’s operating procedures: “Two members of the same family are killed in a car hit by U.S. forces. The family could receive a maximum of $7,500 in CERP condolence payments ($2,500 for each death and up to $2,500 for vehicle damage).”
It is disgusting to see a government assessing the “value” of a human life. Every human being has the right to live and to be free. In fact, life is the most valuable good one has as a human being and I do not see how anybody has the right to say how much the life of another person is worth. We are all equal and having the same right to live our lives.
[via Think Progress]
Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart from Chicago are the founders of Threadless. They got the idea for starting Threadless after they had taken part in an online T-shirt design contest: Why do stores print so many shirts with different designs and only make money on the ones people actually like and buy? Nickell and DeHart figured they would make more money if they found a way to only print popular shirt designs. Therefore, the duo started Threadless, which is an online shop where people can design their own T-shirts and submit them for an Internet competition on the site. Other people then have the possibility to hold a vote on the six best T-shirt designs among the roughly 700 designs that are submitted to Threadless in a week. Threadless does not only get lots of design ideas almost for free, but they also found a way to only sell popular T-shirts that people are more likely to buy. And their profit margin is high: the shirts only cost $4, but Threadless sells them for $15 and up. Last year Nickell and DeHart have sold $16 million worth of shirts. They had just finished high school when they had the idea for their online store. It was an idea, and it made them millionaires.
Link to a more detailed story: ‘Project Runway’ for the t-shirt crowd
The Associated Press reports that China has plans for a new generation of carrier rockets. China wants to establish itself as one of the world’s leading nations in science and technology, therefore planning to build rockets with a payload capacity large enough to launch an entire space station. It is not clear though when the rockets will be ready to be launched into space.
Earlier this month China already launched a new communications satellite for better radio and TV signals in their country.
