tequila bomb

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier tonight that Microsoft–in what would be its most aggressive acquisition in the digital space–was zeroing in on buying Skype for $8.5 billion all in with an assumption of the Luxembourg-based company’s debt.

Sources told BoomTown tonight that the deal for the online telephony and video communications giant is actually done and will be announced early tomorrow morning.

The purchase–which has been spearheaded in closely held negotiations by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, with an assist from top dealmaker Charles Songhurst–is a bold move for the software giant and its biggest acquisition in more than three decades.

This deal is utter madness. Microsoft’s only option to make this deal work is to monetize Skype (and its other VOIP services) in ways that Skype itself already knows will only lead to alienation of its users, and a mass exodus from the service. Despite all the reliable sources confirming this story, I still find it hard to believe that even Ballmer is this dumb, or this desperate.

Apple, with their strong presence in mobile and Facetime, must be turning backflips right now. Not to mention the other existing VOIP companies out there (who have always had Skype as their main competitor), including Google.

The big price will give Microsoft–which has struggled in its online efforts and has lost billions of dollars for its work–a big brand name on the Web.

With Skype, which has been aggressively expanding, Microsoft will continue to lose money in its Internet efforts. Skype lost $7 million on revenue of $860 million. Operating profits, which Skype preferred to highlight, were $264 million.

And–let us not forget–Skype’s debt is $686 million. Silver lining: That’s slightly less than Microsoft’s Online Services division losses in its most recent quarter!

But, sources said, the concept is bigger than just money, including getting access to Skype’s 663 million registered users.

From All Things D

Are we really expected to believe that Microsoft is paying $13 per registered Skype user, and assuming all the companies debts to boot?

Good luck with that. Skype is simply going to disappear, along with a huge chunk of Microsoft’s remaining cash hoard and credibility.

The only good thing to come from this is that Ballmer will finally be ousted from the company.

UPDATE : Bloomberg are reporting that Skype only has around 170 million active users. Which would mean that Microsoft could be paying around $52 for each of them!

Walt Disney Co. (DIS) investors re- elected Apple Inc. (AAPL) Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs to the board of the entertainment company, rejecting the views of proxy advisers who say health issues may impair his ability to serve.

Thankfully real investors have carried the correct decision again. I can only assume that the same fuck-wits who wanted to cripple Apple’s strategic planning by forcing it to announce a succession plan were also behind the move to block Steve Jobs’ re-election at Disney.

First, at magnitude 9.0, this was one of the top ten strongest earthquakes in recorded history.  (Wow!)  The subsequent tsunamis, combined with the earthquake, make this one of the worst natural disasters EVER.  (Also Japan is apparently having a minor problem with a volcano, now.  Guys can’t catch a break.)

The reactors were designed 40 years ago, and in 2008 were certified for ground motion corresponding to about a magnitude 6.7 earthquake right under the plant.[11]  The reason this ground motion was selected was that Japan’s regulatory agency expected (rightly so!) that a ground motion stronger than that had a chance of happening only once in 10,000 years.  We lost the statistical gamble on that one.

One of the best plain English explanations of what has happened, and is likely to happen at Fukushima.

If you are still having problems deciphering the inane babble about Fukushima, from so called “experts” on international news networks, then this cartoon actually does a better job than any panel of guests on a news show has done to date…

Stick with it. It’s worth it.

According to research firm, Telegeography, the following cables have been damaged:

• APCN-2, which is an intra-Asian cable, forms a ring linking China, Hong Kong, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan.
• Pacific Crossing West and Pacific Crossing North, which are out of service.
• PacNet has reported outages on segments of its East Asia Crossing network.
• Korea Telecom reports that a segment of the Japan-U.S. Cable Network is damaged
• NTT has reported damage to some segments of the PC-1 submarine cable system.

A report from Dow Jones Newswires suggests most companies are working hard to fix the network problems. The Dow Jones report has the following additional details:

• KDDI says its cable between the U.S. and Japan is broken and it cannot transmit signals.
• NTT is using back-up cable systems.
• PCCW says the Internet traffic to the U.S. is slow.

In a story on Friday, Stacey Higginbotham pointed out that Chunghwa of Taiwan had reported an outage on the APCN-2 system, while China Unicom had reported some unspecified damage to “two or three cables.” There is clear decline in Japan’s Internet performance, according to the data from JPNAP.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has begun accepting applications for its fourth annual Gamers In Real Life (G.I.R.L.) scholarship in the U.S.

The selected student will win $10,000 (£6,100) toward tuition fees and educational expenses and a paid internship of up to 10 weeks at one of SOE’s development studios (not including room, board, transportation and living expenses not included).

“The most recent industry studies show that although a large percentage of the game playing population is female, they make up only about one in every 10 game developers,” said Laura Naviaux, vice president of global sales and marketing at SOE.

gi.com

Sometimes Sony does some really cool things.

I was visiting with a company in Asia last week, and we joked about beating the industry norm as one of our lunch group was indeed a female programmer. It would be nice to see Sony roll this out in other parts of the world.

The FBI yesterday executed 40 search warrants around the US to gather evidence on the Anonymous distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in defense of WikiLeaks last year—attacks which targeted Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Amazon.

During those raids they waved guns around, interrogated confused mothers of teenagers about ’4chan’, seized iPhones, thumb drives and any laptop anywhere in the family homes of which they had kicked the front doors down to gain entry to.

The FBI yesterday reminded the public that “facilitating or conducting a DDoS attack is illegal, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as well as exposing participants to significant civil liability.”

Let’s hope that they are also pursuing those that participated in DDoS attacks against Wikileaks as aggressively.

Anonymous have this to say in their manifesto…

As traditional means of protest (peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins, the blocking of a crossroads or the picketing of a factory fence) have slowly turned into nothing but an empty, ritualised gesture of discontent over the course of the last century, people have been anxiously searching for new ways to pressure politicians and give voice to public demands in a manner that might actually be able to change things for the better. Anonymous has, for now, found this new way of voicing civil protest in the form of the DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, attack. Just as is the case with traditional forms of protest, we block access to our opponents’ infrastructure to get our message across.

New York State senator Karl Kruger from Brooklyn has proposed a new law for New York City that would ban pedestrians from using handheld devices such as MP3 players and cell phones while crossing the street. The law was proposed in part after a recent fatality involving a pedestrian who was hit by a truck when distracted by his music player. According to Kruger, there’s been an increase in pedestrian fatalities in the city, and distraction is being blamed. “When people are doing things that are detrimental to their own well being, then government should step in,” Kruger said. Those caught violating the law will be subject to a $100 fine.

From PhoneScoop.

Kruger is a prat. Let’s hope lawmakers in Australia and the UK don’t hear about this little fundraiser.

How many more laws are we going to have to endure that reduce all of us to the same level as morons who find it impossible to use their common sense?

Anyone killed crossing the road because they have their music too loud, or are distracted using a mobile phone, are simply being removed from the world as part of natural selection, in my opinion.

Five men have been arrested over a spate of recent web attacks carried out in support of Wikileaks.

The five were arrested this morning at 0700 GMT in connection with offences under the Computer Misuse Act.

Three of the ‘five men’ are 15, 16 & 19.

And the ‘web attacks’ were nothing more than the equivalent of a digital sit in which attempted to prevent customers from entering a virtual store. In this case PayPal, Visa or Amazon’s websites.

The ‘attacks’ were not endorsed by Wikileaks.

Record Mac, iPhone, iPad Sales Drive Highest Revenue and Earnings Ever

Revenue Grows 71 Percent; Earnings Grow 78 Percent

CUPERTINO, California—January 18, 2011—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2011 first quarter ended December 25, 2010. The Company posted record revenue of $26.74 billion and record net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $15.68 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 38.5 percent compared to 40.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 4.13 million Macs during the quarter, a 23 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 16.24 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 86 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 19.45 million iPods during the quarter, representing a seven percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company also sold 7.33 million iPads during the quarter.

“We had a phenomenal holiday quarter with record Mac, iPhone and iPad sales,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We are firing on all cylinders and we’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline for this year including iPhone 4 on Verizon which customers can’t wait to get their hands on.”

“We couldn’t be happier with the performance of our business, generating $9.8 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $22 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $4.90.”

From Apple PR.

Stellar!