They say Lions eat regular but vultures never get injured. Personally I don’t know as I have never been on safari. But rumor has it that Microsoft has launched another safari on Yahoo. With the former CEO out of the way this could be a real possibility now. —

SOFTWARE giant Microsoft is in talks to acquire Yahoo’s online search business for $20 billion (£13 billion).

The proposal forms the centrepiece of a complex transaction that would see Microsoft support a new management team to take control of Yahoo. But there is no intention of Microsoft tabling another takeover bid for the web giant, after its aborted $47.5 billion offer this summer.

It is thought that Jonathan Miller, ex-chairman and chief executive of AOL, and Ross Levinsohn, a former president of Fox Interactive Media, have been lined up to lead the new management team. Senior directors at Microsoft and Yahoo are understood to have agreed the broad terms of a deal, but there is no guarantee that it will succeed.

What is interesting about this deal is its only for Yahoo’s search component, not the whole company. That begs the question, of what is wrong with Microsofts MSN, LiveSearch efforts? I also wonder if Microsoft believes that it must reach some critical presence level to compete with Google. A Yahoo acquisition being their only way of increasing that presence.

It might work, but I doubt it. More likely the Yahoo crowd will just go to Google.

Linky.

[Update]: Well Yahoo is denying there is any deal in the works –

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) — Yahoo! Inc. isn’t planning to sell its Internet search business to a group of investors backed by Microsoft Corp., people familiar with the situation said today, denying a report in the Sunday Times of London.

The Times said Microsoft Corp. is backing a new management team to take control of Yahoo’s search unit following its failed takeover attempt. There are no plans to sell the business, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.

Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, has been seeking ways to revive its online advertising business as the global recession stifles spending and Google Inc. wins more search users.

Which probably means that there is a deal in the works. Microsoft would not want a run up in the stock to keep costs down.

Many times life imitates art, or at least what goes for art. For those that are old enough to remember there was a show called WKRP in Cincinnati. The meme of the show was the antics of a group of crazies running a top 40 rock radio show whose primary advertiser was a funeral home. Its the source for my ‘phone cops’ reference. (Had to be there I guess.) Well one media outlet is so desperate to improve their ratings they have actually changed their call sign to WKRP –

CINCINNATI (AP) — WKRP is back on the air in Cincinnati — but this time it’s for real.

A low-power TV station has changed its call letters to WKRP, the same as the fictional radio station in the 1970s hit series “WKRP in Cincinnati.”

The station changed its call letters to promote its new digital TV signal. It formerly went by WBQC-TV.

General Manager Elliott Block says the new call letters give the station recognition because so many people remember the television sit-com.

Now I wonder if the TV station will reenact the ‘helicopter turkey event’? Nah….

Linky.

A few big name server manufacturers are already delivering self contained server farms in a containers as a quick scaling option for their larger customers. With the growth of out sourced data centers and cloud computing, the shipping container yard could represent a future alternative for the data center and colocation facility. Derelict rail yards not only could provide low cost real estate, but since the rail is also often a conduit for fiber and power transmission, little investment would be required to connect and power up. Better yet, do it in a rural location where the labor costs are low, and vagrancy and vandalism are non-issues.

Compared to building, a top-tier data center that can cost $1,000 per square foot, setting up a container park could be done relatively cheaply — all is needed is a plot of land with the appropriate physical security, a power distribution plant, backup generators and abundant Internet connectivity. These items are available in metropolitan locations where server huggers and their employers congregate. While the containers themselves are self-contained, there should be no reason that multiple organizations and their server huggers could not share servers in a single container. After all, server huggers already share cabinets and cage space in data centers today. (GigaOm)

$15 a month for slow pokey 1.5MBPS service isn’t a bad deal for single line VoIP, basic surfing and the occasional video download. Actually, we’ve seen this before, but not lately since US broadband providers have been inching prices upward the last couple of years. It’s  should be a real money maker too, considering the cost of delivering this service level is pennies and it could capture the remaining dial up hold outs. There’s one gotcha - the bill automatically goes up after 12 moths, so mark you calendar if you sign up. I wonder if the cable guys will respond or ignore.

In an apparent response to a souring economy and strong triple play competition from cable operators in some markets, Qwest appears to be bringing back some promotional DSL tiers for new customers. According to the telco, they’re once again offering their 1.5Mbps Qwest Connect Silver High-Speed DSL service for $14.99 a month for a year — after which users will pay $39.99 a month. The telco is also offering their 7Mbps Connect Platinum DSL tier for $24.99 a month for a year — after which users pay regularly priced at $49.99 a month. (DSL Reports)

Our world today is dominated by the Longtail. The smallest of blogs (like ours) can stumple across a story, post it, and have it become a national story in a matter of hours. It is happening more and more frequently and even crosses national borders with regularity. –

Current Belgian Minister of Defense Pieter De Crem apparently stumbled into a Belgian bar in New York City on Monday evening with his entourage. Following his visit, bartender Nathalie Lubbe Bakker blogged about their visit (in Dutch), talking about how disgusted she was of how drunk De Crem was and how embarrassed she was about his behavior. Worst part, she wrote, was the fact that one of the politician’s advisors admitted to her that the meetings they were there for on taxpayer’s money were in fact canceled because the UN was meeting in Geneva (which is about 330 miles from Brussels). He reportedly told her they had decided to come to NY anyway despite being aware of the cancellation because the policital situation here was ‘calm’ and that he’d ‘never visited the city anyway’.

A couple of days later, someone from De Crem’s office had a telephone call with Nathalie’s boss, after which she was promptly fired. This was initially denied by the politician, and it remains unclear if her termination was a direct result of the call or the blog post in question.

Somehow, the story was picked up and got a lot of attention from local bloggers and the mainstream media, which ultimately lead to the Minister having to defend himself about the NY trip in Parliament. Yesterday, he made a statement to the Parliament admitting that a call was made but that there was never any insinuation about the girl getting fired from her job (which makes me wonder why the call was made at all then).

The message here is –

• No one should assume anonymity in your discussion with strangers or with friends in a strange locale. I am not suggesting paranoia just some diligence. If you want a private conversation, then arrange the setting to be so. But a bar or restaurant is not the venue for that.
• If you do blog, be aware of the ramifications of what you post. Blowback is a b@#%@ as this young lady found out about.
• It is wise not to blog about your employer good or bad generally. Even less so if it gets personal. What appears to be a innocent comment on your part may divulge processes or details that are not to be known to the public.

Having said all this, what the young lady did was a public service. She should have just provided it in a format that would have covered her personally. It grates to hear of a public servant, on the public dime, swilling like a drunken pig. Especially when the rationale for the event had a change of venue but the slob wanted to go road tripping to New York anyway.

Bottom line: Mr. De Crem, if you want to go gutter slogging bar to bar have at it. Just do it on your own dime.

Linky.

The Russian Federation has an ambitious goal to have all their school systems running FOSS based operating systems in 2 years. As much as I have scoffed at the timeline the Russians seem to be making it a reality —

[Via Google Translate: An interesting experiment decided to meet in Vladivostok State University of Economics and services - instead of traditional paper notes and account statements visits all the work of high school is available in electronic form. And teachers and students (without exception) are currently free netbuki Asus Eee PC 900 to work with electronic resources in university classrooms or at home. Total until December 4, only 997 students will be transferred netbukov.]

The Vladivostok State University of Economics and Services is providing eePC 900’s to the students. All the courseware is now downloadable here. Great if you know Russian.

If the Russian Federation pulls this off it will be a IT event of mammoth proportions. It will be shown that one need not be beholden to the M$ cartel. FOSS will be shown to have come of age in an academic environment. That conversion costs can be mitigated through volunteers and only doing a rolling conversion of content. [Open Office can read native MS Office files.]

Linky.

If you read this article it sounds like RIM may have laid an egg on their latest addition to the Blackberry line. The Storm maybe more of a drizzle it seems. –

Well, there’s a new one, just out ($200 after rebate, with two-year Verizon contract), officially called the BlackBerry Storm.

But I’ve got a better name for it: the BlackBerry Dud.

The first sign of trouble was the concept: a touch-screen BlackBerry. That’s right — in its zeal to cash in on some of that iPhone touch-screen mania, R.I.M. has created a BlackBerry without a physical keyboard.

Hello? Isn’t the thumb keyboard the defining feature of a BlackBerry? A BlackBerry without a keyboard is like an iPod without a scroll wheel. A Prius with terrible mileage. Cracker Jack without a prize inside.

R.I.M. hoped to soften the blow by endowing its touch screen with something extra: clickiness. The entire screen acts like a mouse button. Press hard enough, and it actually responds with a little plastic click.

Well if you change the metaphor that defines your product sometimes it just does not work out.

Linky.

Dr. Dog and I send our sincere thanks to all of you for helping Thirdpipe grow, doubling readership again this year. A very big thanks to those of you who have registered and contributed your thoughts, and to those of you who have patronized out sponsors.

The thread is open for any subject, including turkey and football. Go Cowboys!  Have a great holiday.

It’s been more than a year since I brought the idea forward that we need to establish a 1 gigabit symmetric connection as the new gold standard for consumer broadband. Cable Modem inventor Rouzbeh Yassin seems to be in agreement with this idea, although he’s trying to push the envelope on coax cable to get the job done. If you are burying cable today, only fiber makes sense looking ahead to the future.

As Comcast begins rolling out DOCSIS 3.0-based “wideband” services that provide up to 50 Mbps, he is already anticipating Gigabit-per-second broadband connections that deliver more than 20 times that. Yassini, founder and CEO of YAS Broadband Ventures, which engages in consulting, research and investments, spoke recently with Multichannel News technology editor Todd Spangler (Multichannel News)

Why do we need a gigabit? It’s a Field of Dreams scenario. If the pipe exists, it will be filled, creating nearly unlimited opportunities to enrich our lives as well as creating a conduit for abundant economic growth.

The time has come to quit looking to traditional service providers like the cable /  telecom duopoly to build for the future. Federal government policy is still stuck in the 1960’s and is unlikely to produce any advances with a new “connected” administration beyond more regulations for the incumbent providers. Those of us who can see beyond what we have today need to work locally and create the new connected world ourselves. Call it the mother of all open source projects.

In a significant accomplishment for a fixed wireless broadband provider, Airspan has demonsrated WiMAX’s ability to form a seamless national network utilizing multiple bands. The bandwidth Airspan is delivering to its customers wirelessly competes at speeds comparable to fixed line up to all but carrier class fiber. How mobile fits into the company’s plans is anyone’s guess, but the idea of mobile combined with almost unlimited capacity makes the future look even brighter for both Airspan and Wimax.

(Airspan) announced today that it has successfully demonstrated a unique, seamless, uninterrupted handover from one frequency band on a mobile WiMAX network to another frequency band.

A handover is the terminology used to define the seamless transfer of a wireless device from one base station to another without loss or interruption of service. A handover would be conducted when a user device is moving away from the area covered by one base station and entering the area covered by another. (Marketwatch)