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The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Dearly Departed: Companies and Products That Didn'

Esther Schindler writes: "Some products just didn't deserve to die. But they did, because the companies made bad business decisions. This CIO.com article, Dearly Departed, revisits several favorites—from minicomputers to software utilities—and mourns the best and brightest that died an untimely death.



Let's face it; geeks are not necessarily good accountants. Or marketers. Or distribution experts. And, sadly, some get taken advantage of by savvy businessmen who see an opportunity for profit.

Nostalgic souls that we are, we pulled together a list of a few of the dearly departed to honor their memories with a brief look at their prematurely truncated lives. Some of their products live on with other vendors, but the essence that made each company special has disappeared into the annals of time.


What companies or products would you add? Which of them make you say, "Sheesh, that one deserved to go!"?"
Nintendo

Submission + - Harrison: Wii Hardware Revision 'Not Out of the Qu (gamedaily.com)

njkid1 writes: "Today GameDaily is pleased to present the full E3 interview with Nintendo of America's George Harrison, SVP of Marketing and Corporate Communications. Harrison talks about the sales and marketing move, acknowledges that Nintendo may "lose some purists" while attempting to broaden the audience, and he doesn't rule out a Wii revision. That and much more inside..."

Feed World Business Briefing: Malaysia Mobile Phone Buyout of 5 Billion Planned (nytimes.com)

A Malaysian tycoon, Ananda Krishnan, plans to buy out the country’s largest mobile phone operator, Maxis Communications, the company said on Monday, in a deal that could be worth at least $5 billion. Maxis gave no reason for the buyout plan, but industry analysts speculated that Mr. Krishnan, left, might want to relist Maxis offshore and raise foreign capital to finance international expansion. Maxis, which faces a price war and a maturing market at home, is expanding into larger and less-developed Asian markets to drive growth. Chong Tjen San, a telecom analyst at Malaysia’s Aseambankers, said the buyout plan could be a first step toward raising money to finance major investments in India and Indonesia. Usaha Tegas, which is controlled by Mr. Krishnan and is a major shareholder in Maxis, has notified the company that it and its affiliates will make an offer by Thursday, Maxis said.

Feed The Growth Of The Pirate Bay As A Political Movement (techdirt.com)

Tim Lee points us to an LA Times article on the growing success of The Pirate Bay's political movement, noting that its membership is growing in Sweden and is nearly equal to that of the country's Green Party. This is ironic for a few reasons -- most of all being that the entertainment industry was so proud over the raids on the Pirate Bay's servers last year, insisting that it had killed off the site. Instead, the site was back up in days, and the attention propelled what had been a fairly minor search engine for BitTorrent trackers into the limelight -- helping to get it many more users and to get the political movement some traction. In fact, we've now seen other political parties take on some of the Pirate Bay's platform. To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this. I don't support the Pirate Bay's position that unauthorized downloads are defensible. Instead, I think that copyright holders need to come to the realization that they're actually better off by letting people download content -- not that it needs to be forced upon them by users taking matters into their own hands. That said, by taking such an extreme position (and having it get some attention), perhaps it's more likely that content holders will come to this realization. They'll simply be forced to adapt and will start coming up with more successful business models that actually benefit from free downloads rather than trying to block them and sue their best customers.

Feed Cubic pillow lets sound in, dignity out (engadget.com)

Filed under: Household

Continuing on in the grand tradition of products designed to let you be a lazy as possible, the "All-Sound-Catch Cubic Pillow" doesn't look particularly comfortable, but that doesn't appear to be the point. The cushion lattice allows you to stretch out on the couch without muffling any sound, allowing you use the smallest possible amount of energy to, say, talk on the phone. We're just worried that the Lazy Wii Guy will get a hold of one and cause, like, a negative energy vortex that destroys the universe.

[Via TokyoMango]

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United States

Journal Journal: Yes, Fire collapses steel structures 5

"9-11 Truthers" say that there is no possible way that fire could cause the support beams in The World Trade Center to weaken, causing the buildings to collapse. On April 29, 2007 in Oakland California, a tanker truck hauling gasoline wrecked and burst into flames. Fortunately, no one was killed, but the resulting fire weakened t

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