Category: Puzzled Over

Strange, odd, or otherwise WTF.

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Puzzled Over

Oh God, Not You

Everyone’s all up in arms today because Time Magazine, in an effort to cop out from making a decision that means absolutely nothing in the long run, has named You – yes, *you* – as the Person Of The Year. By playing the horrible, horrible Web 2.0 card:

And we didn’t just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software.

…they utterly fail to consider that almost all of these things were happening *last* year. And most, the year before that.
I expect the market demand for [Lebowski mirrors](http://uplued.com/waffleimages/files/f4/f4210882602b1543edcd41420e6c7b377d2703c4.jpg) to go through the roof. I also expect Chrysler’s marketing department to get axed.

Chrysler, you see, is sponsoring this year’s online article for Person Of The Year, and [if you watch the ad](http://cache.ultramercial.com/d/005-434/chrysler_flash.html), you’ll notice the immediate irony:

The hell I’m not!

I look forward to the Person Of The Year 2007 being “Everybody”, followed by “Humanity” in 2008, and as a complete twist, “Those Guys” in 2009.

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Puzzled Over

Citigroup Needs A CluePod

Marketwatch is reporting that [Citigroup hires buffoons](http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7B83E83BF9%2D6CD7%2D4D36%2D994E%2DFB7F2BCF63AC%7D&siteid=mktw&dist=nbs):

> Citigroup cut Apple Computer to hold from buy, citing valuation. The broker told clients it sees little potential for revenue upside versus consensus in the third or fourth quarter of the year. It said gross margin upside should yield 4 cents to 6 cents of earnings-per-share upside in both quarters but that this is largely priced into the shares. On the product front, Citigroup said recent checks suggest that Apple is unlikely to introduce a new video iPod with a larger screen and “virtual click wheel” before the peak holiday season, as the broker had hoped.

It’s a shame that textual blogging is not effected by timespace, because I would love to just replay the words *”as the broker had hoped”* for a straight thirty seconds. Why would the broker hope such a thing? Oh, right, [the damn rumor sites](https://vjarmy.com/archives/2006/09/three_little_words.php).

Is this how the financial world really works? Someone reads rumor sites, sees that the rumors don’t come true, and then downgrades the company because of it? This is lunacy, sheer and unbridled.

I’m not against financial decisions based on the reality of the situation – say, if the refresh of the entire iPod line had not yielded anything of interest. In my limited experience, this is not the case. There is a lot of interest in the new Shuffle, reasonable interest in the new Nano, and the new iPod Video certainly isn’t dissuading people from purchasing it. Never mind the *rest* of Apple’s product line, which I’ve never seen so much interest in.

But don’t let me stomp on your dreams, Citigroup.

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Puzzled Over

MTV To Buy Out Harmonix

[New York Times reporting](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/business/media/22mtv.html):

>MTV, the cable TV channel some critics have accused of straying too far from its musical roots, is to acquire Harmonix Music Systems, a maker of music-oriented video games, for $175 million in cash.

Harmonix, of course, are the programmers behind Guitar Hero, Karaoke Revolution, Frequency, and Amplitude.

This is not an entirely unexpected move – MTV has had its own line of mostly-crap music games for years – but is at least odd in the sense that we now have RedOctane/Activision on one side, and Harmonix/MTV on the other.

Interesting times indeed.