Mailbag: Just Say 'No' to Yahoo
With Steve Ballmer's
continued
push to overthrow the Yahoo board, Doug asked readers yesterday whether
buying Yahoo is even a good idea. Here's what some of you had to say:
Should Ballmer buy Yahoo? Simple answer: NO!
-Anonymous
This makes no sense at all. You have an open source culture in one company
and one of the most proprietary cultures in another. Also, the DOJ should
can this deal as being bad for consumers -- one less chat system out there.
For as bad as "Yahell" is claimed to be, it has features no one
else has; it just doesn't leverage them via advertising very well. Then you
also have overlap in the online ad industry.
This should not be allowed -- period.
-Bruce
When I bought my 100 shares of Yahoo five or six years ago and saw it
split two for one a year or so later, I thought I had boarded the gravy train.
I've seen nothing since. So what have I got to look forward to? Maybe it would
be nice to exchange my Yahoo for MS. I'd be willing if they offered -- just
to have something different now.
-Steve
And readers share their thoughts on what would make IE 8 more
secure than its predecessors:
IE 8 would be several LARGE steps in the right direction if all support
for iFrames, ActiveX controls and Java were withdrawn, and if JavaScripts
were allowed only for browser-related actions rather than for system activity.
Certainly, those are my default Internet settings in IE 6, which I override
only for Internet banking and for editing my GooglePages.
-Fred
IE 8 intregration? No! I really think that anything that has the potential
for compromising the system should not be tightly integrated into the OS,
EVER. Browsers are the attack point of choice these days, so why would you
want something you know is going to be a serious security problem to be tightly
integrated with your OS?
The only reason -- and one of the reasons Microsoft has overpowered the
competition -- is the features and ease of use to be gained by that integration.
Microsoft's previous approach was to focus on features and ease of use even
if it meant that security had to be compromised, and look where that got it.
It is really exciting when a design flaw in IE allows another program, e.g.,
Safari, to compromise your system and open it up to attack...NOT!
-Anonymous
I gave up on Internet Explorer during the IE 6 era, when Firefox came
along. To get me to go back to IE for anything other than Windows Update,
it would have to be as easy to use as Firefox is. I really doubt that Microsoft
can make anything that easy anymore. Vista was enough for me to realize that
it has really lost sight of what the users are trying to do. Most of my home
computing now is done through Linux and I am really now looking at a Mac.
Just for the record, I am one of the legion of "Mort" programmers
who have worked with Microsoft products for years. Still, I find Office 7
a major pain to work with and Vista a disaster. Good luck, MS. You'll need
it.
-Angus
We have applications that run fine in IE 6 but break under IE 7. I shudder
to think what additional problems we might run into under IE 8.
-Thomas
Tell us what you think! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 07/09/2008 at 1:15 PM