And then, I started learning Japanese formally, it has been interesting.
I have also decided to follow up on my driving lessons.
Things have gotten less busy and I’ve finally have got the time to do a bit of consolidation of my websites.
This blog is going to be partially hosted in Amazon S3. I’ve tolerated lots of years of hot-linking, this time I’m partially disabling some images from hot-linking due to raising costs.
I never liked the price is right. I don’t really look at the prices of things before I set to buy it. I am probably cheated many times but I can’t do a thing. I just don’t know the prices of things. But well, here is one reason why one should watch The Price is Right. It can be rather entertaining. Just for 4 seconds I guess.
Well, you can find Osama in the US$20 bill. Something interesting.
I get a little irritated when I see the elliptical stroke not elliptical enough. I just want to let that Photoshop user know that you could have set your stroke blending to ‘Outside’ instead of ‘Inside’ or ‘Center’.
Microsoft withdraws Yahoo! bid! One of the rare news where I can put two exclamation marks instead of one.
Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo
The about-face followed a meeting on Saturday morning in Seattle between Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, and Yahoo’s chief and co-founder, Jerry Yang, according to a person familiar with the talks.
At the meeting, which also included Yahoo’s other founder, David Filo, and a Microsoft president who oversees its online unit, Kevin Johnson, Mr. Ballmer increased Microsoft’s offer to $33 a share, or a total of about $47.5 billion, from $29.40 a share. Mr. Yang told Mr. Ballmer that Yahoo would not accept an offer below $37 a share, this person said.
“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo has not moved toward accepting our offer,” Mr. Ballmer said in a statement. “After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal.”
Microsoft’s decision to walk away casts a cloud of uncertainty over Yahoo and its shareholders. The breakdown in the talks is likely to send Yahoo’s shares plunging, and Mr. Yang and his team will have to decide how to placate investors. (Source: NYTimes)
I think this is good news for Microsoft shareholders. Yahoo isn’t that worth the money to purchase, plus Microsoft has the technology, they just need to work out their visitor numbers. For Yahoo!, it perhaps it a good thing too, but I just kinda have a bad feeling that Yahoo! won’t be doing too well in the coming months to come.
Yahoo Inc.’s board plans to reject Microsoft Corp.’s bid to buy the Internet pioneer, The Wall Street Jornal reported on its Web site Saturday.
Board members concluded the unsolicited $44.6 billion offer massively undervalues the Web pioneer, a person familiar with the situation told the newspaper.
Probably drops in shares. Yahoo probably won’t have a good year ahead. They’ve got a few key people who just left. Yahoo has Flickr, delicious.com and pretty cool stuff for developers. They lack a good ad network though.
Microsoft, being Microsoft would go on of course. But their internet arm still is pretty weak. They’ve recently bought a couple of firms to enhance their mapping services. I wish they do something with social networking instead. And Microsoft needs to have a video streaming service like YouTube. They have one that no one uses so it’s not counted.
TODAY Singapore reports that, in order to solve the MRT squeeze, Singapore is to build two new lines that run parallel to the present routes at the cost of $20 billion.
(Map of the new $20 billion MRT lines. Image credit: TODAY Online)
Answer to the MRT squeeze
THE problem is a familiar one: The passenger squeeze in MRT trains.
The solution is radical at least in the Singapore context: Build two new lines that run parallel to the present routes at a cost of $20 billion.
One will run from Marina Bay and end at Woodlands, very similar to the present North-South route adding new townships like Sin Ming, Kebun Baru, Thomson and Kim Seng. The other will mirror the eastern portion of the East-West Line, running through Tanjong Rhu, Siglap, Marine Parade and Bedok South.
By 2018 and 2020, respectively, the 18-station Thomson Line and the 12-station Eastern Region Line will be up and running.
The routes of the two new underground lines caught National University of Singapore (NUS) researcher Han Songguang off-guard. Said Mr Han: “In most cases, you wouldn’t run parallel rail lines because they would be tapping into the same market.”
Still, Assistant Professor Terence Fan of the Singapore Management University’s (SMU) Lee Kong Chian School of Business pointed out that such a model is seen in New York, London and Hong Kong.
The two new lines are not the only changes to the rail network announced by Transport Minister Raymond Lim in part two of his big bang strategy on Friday: There will also be extensions to the existing lines to be ready by 2015. The North-South Line will be stretched to Marina South to take commuters to the upcoming Gardens by the Bay and the Marina Barrage. And workers at the Jurong Industrial Estate will be able to make use of the five-station Tuas Extension to get to work.
My mom’s already confused with the MRT tracks, with an additional 100 stations coming up, she probably has to ask around more often in future. Even as the government announces these new MRT tracks, people are still wanting their cars. I’m not sure if we can even fill the trains by 2020, we’re likely to fill up the roads first.
Woman thinks she’s about to be fired, goes into office over weekend and destroys past 7 years’ worth of archives.
Angry Employee Deletes All of Company’s Data
When Marie Lupe Cooley, 41, of Jacksonville, Fla., saw a help-wanted ad in the newspaper for a position that looked suspiciously like her current job — and with her boss’s phone number listed — she assumed she was about to be fired.
So, police say, she went to the architectural office where she works late Sunday night and erased 7 years’ worth of drawings and blueprints, estimated to be worth $2.5 million.
“She decided to mess up everything for everybody,” Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office spokesman Ken Jefferson told reporters. “She just sabotaged the entire business, thinking she was going to get axed.”
It didn’t take Steven Hutchins, owner of the architectural firm that bears his name, much time to figure out who’d done it — Cooley was the only other person who had full access to the files.
Police arrested Cooley Monday evening and charged her with causing greater than $1,000 damage to computer files, a felony. She was bailed out the following afternoon.
