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Yahoo! Businesses Google The Internet

Yahoo's Geek Statue 349

Posted by CmdrTaco from the worth-a-read dept.
Philipp Lenssen writes "Yahoo put up a life-size alpha geek statue in honor of the Yahoo Mail team, which they think beat the Gmail team. The statue's plaque says it's presented "in recognition of tremendous intellectual efforts put forth in order to defeat Gmail", and: "Not since the code breakers in Britain's Bletchley Park deciphered Germany's Enigma code during World War II has so much brainpower been focused on kicking an enemy's ass." Flickr has a photo." It's a nice little article on the difference between two of the net's superpowers.
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Yahoo's Geek Statue More

Yahoo's Geek Statue

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  • They lost... I've got both a gmail account and a yahoo account and I must say I like the gmail one better. The interface is just much nicer in my opinion.

    • Re:I've got news for them... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:09AM (#13962519) Journal
      gmail is simple and it works. What amazes me is that Yahoo has not asked users which they prefer. This is almost akin to Borland saying that OWL is better than visual (IMHO, OWL was better), or Dr Dos declaring its DOS better than MS-DOS. In each case, the product may have been better, but the vast majority of users said otherwise.

    • Re:I've got news for them... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kenneth Stephen ( 1950 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:14AM (#13962541) Journal

      Not just that, but gmail has indeed changed the way the game is played. When you sign up for gmail, they have a short intro which begins with "GMail is different". They key is that they are not gratuitously different. They are different because they analyzed the email processing process and saw a way to improve it. All the mail clients that I've used before had different ways of arranging things on the screen, but the function that they offered and the paradigm that they supported was the same. It took a little bit for me to get accustomed to the new way of doing things, but now that I'm acclimatized, I'm not going back.

      • Re:I've got news for them... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by RealBeanDip ( 26604 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:38AM (#13962620)
        How about GMail bringing back the good old DELETE button that we're all accustomed to instead of have it hidden in a drop down list. Sometimes different isn't better... sometimes we really do just want to DELETE something.

        • Re:I've got news for them... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Bertie ( 87778 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:51AM (#13962678) Homepage
          If you install Greasemonkey [mozdev.org], there's a script [userscripts.org] for it which will add a delete button to the page alongside the "archive" one Google seems to think you should use for even the most useless messages.
          • >If you install Greasemonkey,

            Thanks for that tip, I'll check it out.

            However, I really think it would just great if we didn't have to install a hack to do something as basic as deleting an email with one button. I mean if the GMail team *truly* watched people use email I suspect they would find out that "delete" is something people do commonly, even with GMail.
            • You suspect.
              They research.
              Most Human Interfaces specialists will tell you why "archive" is better than "delete".
              All actions should be reversible when possible. "Delete" is not reversible. That is a usability nightmare. getting rid of that function for good would even be nice.
              If you look at standalone mail programs, they don't delete the mail, they send it to a "Trash" folder. That way, you can undo that action easily. When you need space, you have to explicitly empty that folder. The problem is that now you

              • Re:I've got news for them... (Score:4, Interesting)

                by Servants ( 587312 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @04:09PM (#13964687)
                If you look at standalone mail programs, they don't delete the mail, they send it to a "Trash" folder. That way, you can undo that action easily. When you need space, you have to explicitly empty that folder. The problem is that now you lose that "undelete" operation. You might say you don't need it, but the reason that they have it is that people use it. The problem with common approaches to the trash bin, in my opinion, is that it's not clear for the user _when_ you actually lose the "undelete" option, specially if you have filters that delete messages older than _X_ days.
                With a new name for the trash folder ("archived"), Google keeps the functionality (one-button move-to-trash) but fixes it a bit (naming it "archive" helps understanding the importance of apparently unimportant mail.

                So if Google feels that it's valuable to keep apparently unimportant mail, why not simply cease to expunge old messages from the trash?

                The alternative they've chosen, as you say, is to use the archive folder as a trash can. Which makes it a rather strange place to keep messages I know I actually want to archive, since all the chaff interferes with search. Wouldn't three folders -- archive (never delete), trash (also never delete, and exclude from search by default), and spam (delete after n days, and exclude from search by default -- have been more elegant?

                Personally, I don't have a need for the archive folder at all; my messages pretty much stick in my inbox forever, and it appears to have exactly the same properties as the archive (never delete, search by default). But I also have no objection, as the feature requires no extra clicks out of me, and I understand some people like keeping their inboxes small as a kind of to-do list.

                That said, I do like basically everything else about GMail. Labels and rules work very well for me.
          • Wouldn't it be great if we could hit Delete to delete mail without applying a crutch like this? I've never archived anything under GMail and don't plan to.
        • You know, the whole point of Gmail is NOT deleting things. A "delete" button is against gmail spirit: You don't want to "delete things", you just want to get the things you want, and you don't need to delete the non-important emails to get them, you just need a way to ignore them (gmail)
          • But I often WANT to delete certain messages. Sometimes I want to read them (like junk email I've signed-up for), but after I do so, I want to delete them, forever and ever. It's a common task, and I'm surprised the geniuses at Google can't seem to get that common tasks should be easily accesible, like with a BUTTON instead of a drop-down list.

            Deleting a message is a common task, and that paradigm isn't going to change, regardless of how much space they give me.

            And while we're talking about the drop-down lis
          • But it's not Google religion, it's just e-mail. If people want to delete something, why not make it easy for them to do so? I frequently delete e-mails on Gmail, and I don't care that Google thinks I shouldn't.
          • Oh, yeah, delete nothing. God knows it would be a big, fat, hairy shame to delete any of those "Topic Reply Notifications" I've received from varioius message boards I've posted to.
    • The war is far from over, if you judge them both at this point, that'd be like comparing Windows 3.11 with Linux kernel version 1.0. Though you must admit, the statue is a cute gesture. You can tell it's just the competitive spirit, nothing defamatory or serious.
    • They lost... I've got both a gmail account and a yahoo account and I must say I like the gmail one better.

      Maybe you should inform Yahoo that you are the judge here.
      • Probably a less biased one than Yahoo themselves.
      • He is a neutral Internet user, he is the target of both systems: he is the judge, he isn't just the only one.

        Anyway I've found that Gmail interface it's more confortable to use at work and for tech stuff (like mailing lists) while Yahoo's one is more confortable for the normal user, the one who store photos about their trip to the coast and stuff like that.
    • No they didn't loose they are measuring their incredible success in volume of emails per second that get throw the system....
      • No they didn't loose they are measuring their incredible success in volume of emails per second that get throw the system....

        Wonder if that includes the massive amount of mail that their utterly useless spam filter lets through?

        As of writing this, my yahoo mail account (that I haven't used anywhere for 5 years now) contains 4,630 bulk mails, plus another 1,829 messages that didn't get filtered and ended up in my inbox. I don't mind the bulk mailbox - that's where they should go, and it's good for a laugh e
    • Yep, just look at the top of Slashodt, how Google logo overlaps Yahoo logo :P

    • AJAX for Yahoo! Mail (Score:2, Informative)

      by cciRRus ( 889392 )
      I like GMail because it supports AJAX, and Yahoo! Mail seems to be behind in this area. Then, I chanced upon a Firefox extension [mozilla.org] that adds AJAX support to Yahoo! Mail. It's pretty neat. :)
    • "Not since the code breakers in Britain's Bletchley Park deciphered Germany's Enigma code during World War II has so much brainpower been focused on kicking an enemy's ass."

      This statement is a joke, right?

      Is it possible to mod the start message of a thread as "funny"?

    • I just wish yahoo would send and receive standard mail. You know, with the headers and whatnot. Just last Friday I spent an hour trying to figure out why I was getting a mail loop, and it was because it was coming from a Yahoo account.

      Grrr.

  • First Post! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by wundabread ( 242160 )
    Also, how is it that they "defeated" Gmail? I have accounts with both and find Gmail superior.

  • Here, have a trophy. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dubpal ( 860472 ) * on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:02AM (#13962495) Homepage
    After reading the linked blog, I don't think Yahoo are claiming to have "beat" GMail, as the summary claims (what sort of goals have they set to do this?), rather they're congratulating the Yahoo Mail Team for the effort they've invested thus far in their quest to defeat Google.

    I'm sure a handshake and a smile would have been more fitting but hey, it is a nice statue.

    • I'm sure a handshake and a smile would have been more fitting but hey, it is a nice statue.


      To me, that poor statue/guy looks _very_ troubled. I guess he just read some reviews of the Yahoo mail service =)
    • handshake and a smile might have been more fitting for Yahoo. Since they allowed the business ppl to take over, all the money flows to the marketers. The techs get paid lousy. Even if they produce new ideas which lead to a new product, they get NOTHING. At Google, the techs are not only encouraged, but paid well. The marketers are kept minimal.
      >
      The statue is a simple way around paying these ppl what they would make elsewhere.

    • Re:Here, have a trophy. (Score:5, Informative)

      by mallumax ( 712655 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:13AM (#13962535) Homepage
      They are claiming that Yahoo Mail is better than GMail.Check out this sticker
      http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentbrew/60225255/in/ photostream/ [flickr.com] It says
      Thanks to the new YAHOO! MAIL we can all give the competition something to kiss.
      The New Yahoo! Mail is superior to GMail
      Wall Street Journal
    • Yes, and by congratulating their team they've put some urban myth...on statue's plaque :/
      Namely, it weren't code breakers in Britain's Bletchley Park that broke Enigma code, those accomplishent was done by polish matematicians before WW2. Granted, Bletchley Park team perfected he methods, making them faster in deciphering and faster adapting to changes in Enigmas...but they didn't decipehred it (and BTW, where do you think those polish matematicians ended at the beggining of the war with whole their knowled

      • Re:Here, have a trophy. (Score:4, Informative)

        by clap_hands ( 320732 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:41AM (#13962634) Homepage
        Breaking Enigma wasn't a one off-event (like breaking an egg). You had to do it each time the settings changed, which was at least once a day. So it's quite accurate to say that Bletchley Park broke Enigma, and that Polish mathematicians broke Enigma (and the US too). As considerable as the Polish work on Enigma was, the British work was certainly quite comparable as an accomplishment in its own right.

        It is true that the Polish contribution is often overlooked, but we needn't diminish BP in order to rectify that state of affairs.
        • Uhmmm...sorry, you have no idea how far Poles get. By 1938 they were able to rutinelly decipher all intercepted transmission in realtime practically, on a daily basis.
          The only problem remaining was that in rare event when THE ENIGMAS ITSELF SLIGHTLY CHANGED (yes, the machines itself, not just settings) figuring out what/how changed took few weeks minimum.
          But Enigma was fully broken by them. Heck, they introduced new theorems to mathematics, theorems without which braking the Enigma simply wouldn't be possib

          • Re:Here, have a trophy. (Score:5, Interesting)

            by clap_hands ( 320732 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @10:21AM (#13962792) Homepage
            You're misinformed, I'm afraid. Most of the Polish techniques relied on exploiting weak indicator systems used by the sender to convey the start positions of the Enigma rotors to the recipient. The indicator system was changed in May 1940, obsoleting the Polish techniques. British codebreakers responded with other methods, primarily the Turing-Welchman bombe, which required a short "crib" of known plaintext (most of the Polish techniques were ciphertext-only attacks).

            I would also question whether the Polish mathematicians (Marian Rejewski, you're thinking of) actually introduced new theorems into mathematics. I believe that the theorem which is sometimes called "the theorem that won World War II" was already known. Rejewski's insight was that this branch of abstract mathematics could have an application in cryptanalysis -- something that nobody had ever thought of before.

  • One word (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tx ( 96709 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:04AM (#13962503) Journal
    Hubris.

    And someone needs to get over there and mod that statue pronto.

    • Re:One word (Score:2, Funny)

      by dubl-u ( 51156 ) *
      Hubris.

      No shit. They give themselves a statue for being smarter than anybody since Alan Turing? For Yahoo Mail? Sheesh.

      Of course, I guess Google can read it as a compliment; since Gmail is, by all reports, better, I guess that means that Yahoo thinks the google people are smarter than Turing.

      Maybe it's a secret plan to get Google engineers' heads to swell so much that they burst, splattering Google's curvy walls and free juice refrigerators with glial cells and overweening pride.
    • It also strikes me as pandering. I can't put my finger on it, but it feels like an attempt to both say "We have geeks, too!" as well as telling said geeks "No, really, we like you, just don't expect a raise or job security or anything."

      Maybe I feel like it's pandering because, if I worked at Yahoo, that'd be the last thing I'd want. Other than a paycheck, they do their job for the problem-solving aspects. If they wanted attention and glory, they'd all be playing football. This statue was thought up by P
  • is spam. Everyone I know uses their yahoo accounts to sign up for pr0n.

    I wonder what Google will do in response to this...

  • As a GMail user... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fionbio ( 799217 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:09AM (#13962517)
    I hope that Yahoo releases something competitive, maybe this will finally make GMail team add an option to GMail preferences so that I can receive these attachments... Well, I'm not a big fan of sending stuff as e-mail attachments, but a lot of people prefer this way, and not everyone is aware of GMail's attachment killing habits...

  • Launch for New Yahoo Mail? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gabeman-o ( 325552 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:10AM (#13962522)
    I've heard so much about the new Yahoo Mail interface except I haven't heard a launch date. Am I missing something?

  • This is Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ed Almos ( 584864 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:10AM (#13962525)
    Sorry guys, but the work at Yahoo doesn't come close to the efforts made at Bletchley Park to defeat the Germans. The teams at Bletchley were the finest British minds of a generation assembled to beat an evil empire whilst lives were at stake. Comparing this to a phoney war between two email applications is kinda insulting.

    Ed Almos

    • Re:This is Wrong (Score:5, Informative)

      by clap_hands ( 320732 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:21AM (#13962567) Homepage
      Yes, it's certainly hyperbole.

      (A bit off-topic, but, because it's not as widely known as it should be, it might also be good to point out the considerable contributions of Polish and American codebreakers to the reading of Enigma. The Polish had been solving Enigma since the end of 1932. Shortly before the start of World War II, they passed their techniques and knowledge onto the British. Without the Polish head start, it would have taken Bletchley Park much longer to get going on Enigma (if at all). The US chipped in later.)

    • Re:This is Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Woy ( 606550 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:27AM (#13962587)
      Insulting? It reveals a staggering smallness of mind! You rarelly "kick someone's ass" and brag about it. You do one or the other. And Yahoo has made its choice.

      It also shows how distorted one's world view can become if you live in an echo chamber. If everytime i went to the bathroom i had a group of lapdogs cheering me for it, i'd end up comparing it to the Manhattan Project too.
      • If everytime I went to the bathroom I had a group of people cheering me on, I'd know there was either something horribly wrong with the world... or that I was being setup to have my ass glued to the toilet seat.

  • New Yahoo dictionary? (Score:4, Funny)

    by mikaelhg ( 47691 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:11AM (#13962528)
    Did Yahoo accidentally swap "win" and "lose" in their new dictionary? That can happen when database keys get mixed up!

    To win (in Yahooneese):
    • fall back: retreat
    • fail to make money in a business; make a loss or fail to profit; "I lost thousands of dollars on that bad investment!"; "The company turned a loss after the first year"
    • allow to go out of sight; "The detective lost the man he was shadowing after he had to stop at a red light"
    • fail to keep or to maintain; cease to have, either physically or in an abstract sense; "She lost her purse when she left it unattended on her seat"
    • suffer the loss of a person through death or removal; "She lost her husband in the war"; "The couple that wanted to adopt the child lost her when the biological parents claimed her"
    • misplace: place (something) where one cannot find it again; "I misplaced my eyeglasses"
    • miss from one's possessions; lose sight of; "I've lost my glasses again!"
    • fail to get or obtain; "I lost the opportunity to spend a year abroad"
    • miss: fail to perceive or to catch with the senses or the mind; "I missed that remark"; "She missed his point"; "We lost part of what he said"
    • suffer: be set at a disadvantage; "This author really suffers in translation"

  • Maybe it's just me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slavemowgli ( 585321 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:11AM (#13962530) Homepage
    Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't exactly make me more inclined towards Yahoo. Quite the opposite - if I have the choice between a vendor who keeps on patting himself on the back and bragging about how great they are and one who actually focuses on making a good product, I'll always chose the latter. I just can't stand that kind of "w3 43r l33t!!!111" attitude.

    And FWIW, it sure seems to me that Google does have the superior product, too. But of course, I may be biased (heck, I *definitely* am), so if you're not sure yourself, do give both a try. I think you'll come to the same conclusion that I've come to, though.

  • sigh.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Janek Kozicki ( 722688 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:13AM (#13962536) Journal
    no one ever remembers that it were polish scientists who cracked [wikipedia.org] enigma...

    • Re:sigh.. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ed Almos ( 584864 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:24AM (#13962578)
      Some of us do. Without the work of the Polish scientists on a captured Enigma machine the task at Bletchley Park would have been impossible. Perhaps we should educate the rest of the Slashdot readership.

      Ed Almos
    • Bush didn't forget !

    • Re:sigh.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Bletchley Park did more than the Enigma work (the Lorenz cipher being most notable) and while polish "scientists" did the indeed do the initial work on the Enigma, it still required considerable manpower to "crack" individual messages -- a task which Bletchley Park is rightly credited with.

      I see no reason to belittle Bletchley Park.

    • Re:sigh.. (Score:3, Funny)

      by c_forq ( 924234 )
      Stop spreading these lies! We all know the Americans did everything useful in World War II. And only the Americans captured an Enigma cipher device as you can clearly watch in this documentry. [imdb.com]

      For those of you too lazy to click the link it is to the movie U-571.

  • Didn't Yahoo! have webmail first? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eples ( 239989 ) * on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:16AM (#13962550)
    Did I miss something? Yahoo! had webmail for like a decade, then GMail put it to shame, then Yahoo! ... well did they really update their interface much? It looks and works the same to me.

    And now they're giving out statues? Whatever.
  • 1. This is not news, it's gossip. Who cares what stupid tricks Yahoo! management uses to try to motivate their employees? Oh wait, I know, I better sell that Yahoo! stock.

    2. If any of the Yahoo! Mail team members is actually motivated by a 3D cartoon character with a plaque, they've already lost to GMail.

    3. The plaque says the team's bravery, blah, blah... won't be forgotten until the next version of Yahoo! Mail is released. What happens then? We forget?

    4. I just checked my Yahoo! Mail account (which I o

    • Just wanted to point that if you use your Yahoo account for "stupid registration-required sites" and keep your GMail box private, then you shouldn't be surprise if the Yahoo one gets filled with spam while the GMail one doesn't.
      • Just wanted to point that if you use your Yahoo account for "stupid registration-required sites" and keep your GMail box private, then you shouldn't be surprise if the Yahoo one gets filled with spam while the GMail one doesn't.

        See, that's the thing - i've been using my GMail constantly to sign up sites and otherwise put out on the web since I got an account, and I still only get one or two spams per week in my inbox, and sometimes not even that.

        Comparatively, my yahoo account gets around 4500 bulk mail and
    • I prefer MONEY as an bonus for doing good work. But, hey, I wouldn't mind a statue too. Why not. But make it bronze.
  • Sheesh, of all the childish things. They don't even have the enemy beaten yet and they're already trumpeting their success. WTF? I'm not so sure they should be this cocky anyway, because Microsoft is doing the exact same thing for Hotmail.

  • making claims true...after the claim is made... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @09:23AM (#13962573) Homepage Journal
    I'm the richest man in the world, I have all the great looking girls, all the sex I want, best food in the world and well respected worldwise. I'll tell you how to do the same, just send me $20.

    hint: marketing
  • I don't think the comparison with the Bletchley Park cryptographers does justice to the codebreakers. They broke codes that good mathematicians assumed were unbreakable and produced the first digital electronic computers, all in a comparitavely short amount of time. They probably saved hundreds of lives by shortening the war. About 10,000 people worked there, selected for unusual skills in linguistics, mathematics or cryptography. They did incredible things like deducing the structure of a mechanical crytog
  • If they can a) back the claim to have beaten GMail and b) demonstrate an understanding of how to maintain their competitive advantage *after* GMail is out of Beta, _then_ I will be more interested in paying attention to either crying "We're #1!"
  • Gmail is missing important features that have been part of email programs for decades. 'aemail' (anyone remember THAT?) defeats gmail.

    Gmail should've been a regular email design, rather than following Opera's M2 design, with a Google search shoved into it.

      Not that there's anything wrong with Opera's M2, but M2 has more useful functions than Gmail, and a lot of M2 is still so far back it's ancient.
  • 1. Who's teh Yahoo posted as CmdrTaco on TFA?

    2. Is teh plaque right side up, or must read from AlphaGeek's perspective? (sit on his lap?) um, not?

    3. If Y yahoos quit for google, who will throw teh chair?

    4. Dude. Is Neal Stephenson pissed or what?
  • They created what now?

    \Downloads RoundCube Webmail
    \\Installs on web host
    \\\Ups mail quota to 10GB
    \\\\Turns on SpamAssassin

  • they beat google mail ???? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stud9920 ( 236753 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @10:24AM (#13962805)
    gmail : 2.5 gig and rising
    yahoo : 1 gig and staying that way

    gmail : paid for by text ads which generally don't show up because I'm not in the target group.
    yahoo : paid for by pop up flashy irrelevant ads, and a SPAM trailer in the mails I send. Forget about using it for any serious mail.

    gmail : k.i.s.s. interface, allowing for rich text
    yahoo : no rich text possibilities found

    gmail : no spam
    yahoo : presents you with a botfilter with unreadable gibberish. Maybe you can't send spam, probably you receive lots

    gmail : ssl pop & smtp
    yahoo : had the features, removed them

    gmail : threads
    yahoo : no threads

    Yahoo beats google ?????

    • Rich Text (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cciRRus ( 889392 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @10:41AM (#13962867)
      gmail : k.i.s.s. interface, allowing for rich text
      yahoo : no rich text possibilities found

      Actually if you had used the Internet Explorer, you would be able to enable the rich text capability of Yahoo! Mail. Ahh I see, you must be on Linux.

  • Note to Yahoo!: Try "don't be evil" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by metamatic ( 202216 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @10:29AM (#13962826) Homepage Journal
    In April 2004, a Communist Party official told Chinese journalist Shi Tao how to report the upcoming 15th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre.

    Shi Tao took notes at the meeting, wrote up what he had been told to write, and e-mailed a copy to a pro-democracy web site in New York.

    Unfortunately, Shi Tao used Yahoo web mail to send his e-mail. When the Chinese government approached Yahoo and asked them to reveal the personal information of the person who had signed up for the account, they gladly did so.

    Asked about this at a conference in China, Yahoo's Taiwanese co-founder Jerry Yang said:

    "To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law."

    Since then, people have pointed out that the journalist hadn't been convicted of any crime. A Chinese lawyer--as in, a lawyer who actually practices law in China--has said that Yahoo was under no legal obligation to reveal the journalist's name. It certainly seems that no legal action was taken against Yahoo to force them to rat out the guy.

    It's a pity there's no Adolf Eichmann Award for Excellence in Only Following Orders, Jerry Yang would have a good chance of winning.
  • if they Put forth so much brain power to kick the enemy's ass... that at leat their links would work... I cant get to the mail from the yahoo home page... and yes, I have JS enabled.
    • AH!!! But I am using FireFox... so what? I cant browse Yahoo with FF? is Yahoo really content with cutting out 10% of their market share?

      I'll stick with the big G.
      • And when I attempt to login to the email account with IE... it tells me that I have to update my toolbar(which I dont have) to access the email account...

        Since when do I need a plugin to view webmail?!?!? WTF Yahoo!?
  • "A Journey to the Center of Yahoo [nytimes.com]" - Yahoo is ever conscious of Google and determined to match it, but in the long run its plans for search seem quite different.

    Last year, Yahoo overtook Hotmail to become the world's most-used free e-mail service. Its new e-mail system, now running in a limited beta version and scheduled for release next year, applies technology called Ajax, discussed in a previous column, to mimic the speed and power of a normal desktop program.

    When I tried the beta release of the new mail

  • Most important for me... (Score:4, Funny)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @10:41AM (#13962869) Homepage Journal
    Google has most usernames free and open to use.
    [a-z]{1-7}@yahoo.com address is impossible to get. Yahoo claims all of these: sharp, shrp, shrpy, sharpy, sharpfang, shrpfng, sharpfng, shrpfang, sfg, sfng, shfng, shfg, sfang, sharpf are "busy". Imagine this, all of them. My answer: BULLSHIT YOU FUCKING LIARS! fuck you Yahoo, whoever wants a name like Mike674 or cutegirl_969696 go, use Yahoo. If you want to save digits, semigraphics etc for password and keep your nickname strictly alpha, gmail all the way.

  • Image provenance? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mysticgoat ( 582871 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @10:44AM (#13962876) Homepage Journal

    Can anyone identify the artist and/or supply a pointer to the original image?

    I'm interested in what ray tracer was used (POV-Ray? [povray.org], what modeller (looks like maybe Blender? [blender3d.org], and time and details about the rendering.

    I also think the artist should get some credit.

  • Yahoo Mail is better than GMail ? (Score:4, Funny)

    by ^avenger ( 52282 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @10:52AM (#13962912) Homepage Journal
    Since when ? It is like microsoft presenting an award to themselves that Windows is the most secure OS - Exactly.

  • You don't get it do you? (Score:3, Informative)

    by animus9 ( 765786 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @11:04AM (#13962969) Homepage
    Am I the only one that recognizes this as being a joke?

    About the text on the plaque: Do you people really take this literally?

    The giant life sized plastic geek doesn't give it away to you?

    It's just a harmless gag.

  • Inappropriate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Secret Rabbit ( 914973 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @11:06AM (#13962980) Journal
    "Not since the code breakers in Britain's Bletchley Park deciphered Germany's Enigma code during World War II has so much brainpower been focused on kicking an enemy's ass."

    And how is this comment appropriate?

    I've met and talked with math researchers. I keep up with the things crypto. I've worked in industry as a web developer. I must say, there is no possibility that the yahoo people have more brain power than the code breakers.

    I've been seeing this type of ludicrous statement more and more over the past years. I think it's just that these people know that they are losing and need to generate an over inflated sense of self to cover there inferiority.

    Likening corp. competition to WWII?!?! Seriously...

  • Yahoooooooo, are you listening ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by itsme1234 ( 199680 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @11:27AM (#13963091)
    ...because I have a couple of ways in which you could really, really improve your service. I might even consider switching back to you.

    1. insane captcha when SENDING mails. There shouldn't be any captcha for sending emails, especially when I have the account for 5 years or so and I sent like 233 mails in total. But no, what if I'm spammer ? You know, when I click "send" I expect to be able to just walk away (and one time I did !) but the mail hasn't been sent because of this crazy captcha. AND I have to admit I failed the captcha at least two times. There's no IQ test, just that you have more than one option to "read" the damn thing.

    2. crazy spam filter. I'm getting mail from people who use ONLY the web interface and send like 2 emails/month and it's marked as spam. Is it that hard to flag the mail sent internally as NOT-SPAM (that is if the sender is not reaching a threshold of emails/day/hour/whatever) ?

    3. crazy, moving ads (sometimes offensive or sexual). Slashdot is getting there too

    4. I understand I have to click thru' as much as possible to get more money in displayed ads but the emails are in yahoo "one click too far" compared to Google

    5. please don't silently change my outgoing emails: don't change "medieval" to "medireview" for my own protection, don't add ads (or at least let me see the ads before), etc

    6. lack of features (free features, that is): google has pop3, forwarding, 2+G and the ability to send email from any address (as long as you can receive email on that address).

  • Actual photo link, without blogs, etc. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday November 06, 2005 @01:17PM (#13963644) Homepage
    Direct link to actual photo. [flickr.com]

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