November 06, 2005

Yahoo Godwins Itself Yahoo has erected a statue in honor of the Yahoo Mail team. The plaque tells all and sundry Yahoo's goal. (Hint: the goal ain't improving its products for its users.)
posted by Skrik 19 years ago
  • Is the statue made of spam?
  • dang. Second post and already too late.
  • That's just sad. To Godwin is to Godlose.
  • rolypolyman wins. Though I'm tempted to award the trophy to the plaque itself. For fuck's sake, that's the best unintended self-parody I've seen in awhile.
  • phutttt :P to Yahoo
  • Could somebody explain to me exactly what the outrage here is all about?
  • Second flongj. I totally don't get it.
  • Did you read the link?
  • Yahoo is comparing its efforts to defeat GMail to cracking the Enigma code and defeating the Nazis in WWII, and actually erected a statue declaring just that. It's not outrage, really, just amusement.
  • Amuserage.
  • Having agreed with the above Godwinizing sentiment, I must say that the new Yahoo mail screenshot looks pretty interesting. If it wasn't pretty much exactly like every email program out there I'd be tempted (hell, I'd interact with it using Thunderbird anyway, so who gives two shits about the interface so long as it supports POP, IMAP or both?). For me it's not the interface, it's the intrusiveness of the company that makes me not want to use it. The goddamned Yahoo toolbar has inserted itself in so many places that I reflexively hate it. Even in the goddamned Adobe reader now, there's a Yahoo toolbar. Frigging twits. If you want me to use your shit, trying to spam me into submission isn't going to help your cause, you smug spyware-spreading bastards. And while I'm on a tirade, why is it that every dork who posts a screenshot of some new web app insists on making sure you can tell just how cool he is by ensuring that no less than 20 browser add-on toolbars and extensions are present in the shot? I don't give a crap how many tabs you have open you moron, take a second to generate a clean shot with just the relavant info showing. Christ.
  • I know someone who works at Yahoo! and there is a very pronounced "We hate Google" mentality. I've always thought it was a little strange. The upside is that they're really working on making their services cool because of this hatred. For example, the new beta maps is hella cool.
  • *pours Dr. Frogsy a shot* I hate those cluttered-ass screenshots, too. The one you linked looks like a frigging AOL session, it's so filled up with junk.
  • *1930s GERMAN NERDS* Adolf: Reichsmarschall Goering, I think you have taken my hot chocolate by mistake. Herman: I don't think so - isn't that your cup of warm, creamy chocolate over there, Adolf? Adolf: GODWIN! I win, mutterfucker!
  • Har! That screenshot not only has a GMail tab open, but also displays the email address of someone who now wishes he'd never sent the screenshotter one of those 42000 messages.
  • Did you read the link? Of course not. I looked at the picture. The picture made no sense. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, that thousand words of nonsense overwhelmed any sense that might have been in the article, so I ignored it. Besides I like nonsense better.
  • Yahoo: Saving the world--one bit at a time.
  • Last night I reread P. K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, published 45 years ago, which would have been only seventeen years after the fall of the Nazi regime. It has aged extraordinarily well. I wonder: did Holocaust deniers exist back then, with the discovery of the Konzentrationslagern still fresh in the world's memory?
  • It has aged extraordinarily well. Agreed, and precious few sixties-era science fiction novels have, though it remains one of my favorite times for sci-fi. I wonder: did Holocaust deniers exist back then, with the discovery of the Konzentrationslagern still fresh in the world's memory? It began pretty much before the war even ended. See The Drama of the European Jews, authored by Paul Rassinier in 1964 (sorry for the Wikipedia link, but Googling the book brought up page after page of hate sites I'm not in the mood to sift through). See also the controversial Harry Elmer Barnes (see above wiki-pology, my brain ain't up for haters and wackos this morning).
  • No, that's great, I wouldn't have known where to start. Thanks. The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed. And here Wikipedia serves not only as a reference, but as an example, too.
  • Heh. I just went back and reread the OP link. There's a fascinating conversation in the comments section going on between users "car-lease," "free-residential-lease-form," "LEASE," "daryl-lease," and "blow-gay-interracial-job." I love the intertubes so much it hurts.
  • Like, whoa, Zeitgeist.