- Former Presidential hopeful John Edwards publicly endorsed Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for this year’s historic election. Don’t get hyped up at the idea of Edwards as Veep though, he quickly extinguished those rumored flames. I think his eyes are more set on the Attorney General position.

- Warren Buffett also endorsed Barack Obama as his choice amongst the nominees. While billionaire investor Carl Icahn said Obama would be a “horrible choice.” It’s what makes the world go ’round.

- Research in Motion, the makers of the popular Blackberry smartphones, apparently does not plan to go down to Apple without a fight. RIM announced that the Blackberry Bold had gone official for this summer exclusive to AT&T as a direct competitor to Apple’s 3G iPhone. Also, RIM is in secret works to create another ‘iPhone killer’ exclusive to Verizon for a Fall launch codenamed ‘Thunder’. It is a touch screen with the 4 basic buttons at the bottom, a big step away from their long stance on no touch screen keyboard.

I just find it amusing that all we hear about are these iPhone killers. Remember when every MP3 manufacturer was producing iPod killers? How’d that work out for all of them? Regardless, it’s nice to see RIM stepping up their game and changing the business as usual model to stay competitive, a lot of companies should learn that lesson. The Bold does look great. Enough to make me not get an iPhone? Probably not.

- Iron Man came out to fantastic reviews and a plus $100M opening weekend? Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau just teamed up to create a summer superhero blockbuster. I still can’t get over it.

- Mozilla released Firefox 3′s first Release Candidate and I’m pretty pleased. It loads pages noticably quicker and hasn’t crashed like the last Beta did when I was overloading it. Pretty pleased. Hopefully American brower market share shifts to Mozilla with the update.

- With a strong finishing kick from “American Idol,” Fox captured the distinction of America’s most popular television network for the first time since it began operation in 1987. Fox is now our nation’s most watched station. I am worried about our future.

- Thanks to the genius of NBC’s Hulu.com, I can finally watch all of the Arrested Development episodes in order. How this show ever got cancelled continues to plague me. Hopefully the movie will be great and a wakeup call to some bloody network to pick the thing back up.

- Google billionaire co-founder Larry Page criticized a potential Microsoft takeover of Yahoo, saying it would concentrate too much power in the online communications market, stifling innovation and curbing competition. But he discounted the idea that an advertising deal between Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.—one the two companies are now exploring—would present any potential antitrust problems. How convenient Larry.

- The Internet Party #2 was released. Check it out.

In High School I was one of the first to have a cell phone. It was the first camera phone and it was exclusive to Sprint. And with any product that is new and shiny, I bought it and the cell phone revolution of the era commenced. Sprint sucked then. In fact, it was atrocious. Dropped calls, bad customer service, terrible reception, and inflexible plans.

I served my two years and moved on to Verizon and was quite pleased. Great reception, great customer service, nice variety of plans, and at the time, great phones.

Anyway, when AT&T snatched up Cingular to push back into mobile, it became a two-man race for mobile superiority between Verizon and themselves. Sprint faltered every quarter in revenue, profit, and subscribers.

Anyway, Sprint bought Nextel to try and invigorate the business. That failed. When they brought in current CEO Dan Hesse, I thought he was a good hire. I still think he’s a good businessman and a creative guy and all, but here lies the rub.

Sprint lost more customers again Q1, while Verizon and AT&T continue to increase. Many attest this to the new phones Verizon and AT&T are using to push their brand. So what does Sprint do?

Sprint goes out and spends $100M on a series of ads that try to convince customers that the Samsung Instinct is better than the iPhone. Fair enough right? But did anyone tell Sprint that Apple will be unveiling a 3G iPhone in about 3 weeks? Rebuilding a company like Sprint is not easy. But spending $100M on irrelevant ads isn’t a good start.

Here are the ads for your viewing pleasure courtesy of GooTube.

Boston.com featured an article the other day entitled “7 reasons why this is the dumbest generation”. It obviously caught my attention, and even though it was written by some Masshole, I found most of it pretty interesting. Here is the article, my opinions and comments follow each in bold.

1. They make excellent ‘JayWalking’ targets

This comes from the popular Jay Leno bit where he asks random people seemingly obvious questions and people, more often than not, have no idea what he’s talking about. The ignorance is hard to believe … It isn’t enough to say that these young people are uninterested in world realities. They are actively cut off from them. … They are encased in more immediate realities that shut out conditions beyond — friends, work, clothes, cars, pop music, sitcoms, Facebook.

Sad but true. Even most people my age couldn’t tell me who the Secretary of State is, tell me how the dollar is doing vs the Euro, or a new tech product unveiling. When most of these people could sing word for word the latest hip-hop song, the entire plot of MTV’s The Hills, or Vanessa Anne Hudgens next movie.

2. They don’t read books — and don’t want to either.

It’s a new attitude, this brazen disregard of books and reading. Earlier generations resented homework assignments, of course, and only a small segment of each dove into the intellectual currents of the time, but no generation trumpeted aliteracy … as a valid behavior of their peers.

True and true. I can’t tell you how many Facebook profiles have something like, “Nah, fuck that shit” or “Who reads books?!” in the Favorite Books section. I can attest some of this due to reading online versus a book, but it is definitely a generational trend. As Confucius said, “No matter how much time you have or how busy you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.”

3. They can’t spell

Lack of capitalization and IM codes dominate online writing. Without spellcheck, folks are toast.

While this is probably true, it is accelerated because everyone is online. I am the only one I know who really writes correctly on instant messages. And I’m usually quick to criticize others who don’t — my brothers can attest. I’m sure previous generations had spelling dummies but they weren’t online misspelling everything for the world to laugh at. Spell check was a good invention, so spelling may just become a thing of the past in our lives. My favorite is when I come across blatant spelling errors for someone that wants to “start their own business” or “change the world”. Classic.

4. They get ridiculed for good writing and original thought

On MySpace, if you write clearly and compose coherent paragraphs with informed observations on history and current events, ‘buddies’ will make fun of you. Wikipedia writing is clean and factual, but colorless and judgment-free. Often the most clever students, with flashes of disorganized brilliance on MySpace, switch to dull Wiki-writing formats for school papers. If we could combine the style and imagination of MySpace with the content of Wikipedia, we might get good stuff.

It has always been ‘cool’ to be stupid. Somewhere along the line that just became common. Grease the movie reinforced it, and MTV just fuckin pushed it right to the forefront. Being smart is not cool. And that is a huge problem. Sure when you’re old enough everyone breaks out and you start to see those smart people as cooler, but at the young ages minds are being hampered by the fear of being a smarty pants outcast. This goes back to the whole educational system being horrible and in dire need of an overhaul, but that argument is for another day.

5. Grand Theft Auto IV

The stats tell the story here. First week’s sales: $500 million. The sales of GTA dwarf movie premieres, CD sales, or, book sales. All that video use has hurt in the classroom, too. Thousands of Massachusetts public school graduates are ending up in remedial reading and writing classes in college.

This one is just stupid. First of all, GTA is rated Mature and is only for appropriate ages. Of course kids are playing it, but that is up to the parents. If a kid is mature enough to know the difference between reality and a fictional entertainment experience, I have no problem with the kid playing it. Does it stunt progress? The kid would probably be better off reading. But games like GTA do offer great enjoyment and entertainment hours while being educational to a small degree in that criminal life is exposed. I’m of the philosophy that children should not have anything kept from them. If my kid is interested in something, I’m going to tell them the exact truth based on my experiences. Is GTA hurting kids? I think its video games in general and that parents let games babysit their kids. And that is a parenting problem, not a GTA problem.

6. They don’t store information

For digital immigrants, people who are 40 years old who spent their college time in the library acquiring information, the Internet is really a miraculous source of knowledge. Digital natives, however, go to the Internet not to store knowledge in their minds, but to retrieve material and pass it along. The Internet is just a delivery system.

I have been arguing that this is a good thing and the essense behind a necessary academic overhaul. There should be no tests on memorization anymore, it simply isn’t necessary. Open information is going to eliminate the need for it. Well, what if there isn’t a computer around? Within 5 years everyone will have a mobile phone with at least 3G internet speed, so the information will always be there. Unless someone is on Jeopardy, memorization is going to be pointless. And that is a good thing and I’m glad our generation is utilizing the internet.

7. Because their teachers or parents don’t tell them so

Parents don’t halt the instant messaging. Kids are drowning in teen stuff delivered 24/7 by adult realities. Another factor: It’s the era of child-centered classrooms and self-esteem grading.

Yes and Yes! Parents and Teachers are fine with telling every kid they are great and special and brilliant and full of untapped potential. Sure the dream is always there, but realities are not addressed until it is too late. Till the kid who’s parents insisted on him going to college drops out his Sophomore year with $70 grand in student loans when he wanted to be a carpenter out of High School. The merit of a Bachelor’s Degree isn’t even going to hold up in the next decade. There are a lot of dummies running around with degrees because college isn’t as hard as it once was, and it should be.

Blue collar Americans are accustomed to groaning about seemingly excessive CEO compensation while they struggle with rising gas, food, and general living expenses. Most don’t stop to think about the ‘work’ that a CEO is responsible. CEO’s are largely figure heads now. Political figures that are the face of a corporation. While they are directly responsible for company performance to their board, life isn’t all pretty.

Take Antonio Perez, CEO of Eastman Kodak for instance. My Dad worked at Kodak forever, most have a relative or neighbor that did. Anyway, Pop was never really in jeopardy of a layoff like so many of his friends had to deal with. But resentment grew in him toward the company, understandably, he’s of that blue collar baby boomer generation that just came seem to come to grasp with the new generation. Anyway, back to Perez, he has tens of thousands of people just like my Dad that are going to blame him for losing their jobs and steady paychecks. When in all reality, Kodak was late to cut those payroll expenses and are now hurting for it as they fight their way back into the digital photography industry. When Mr. Perez took that job, he knew people would not think kindly of him, but he knew what had to be done for the business and its shareholders. It’s not pretty but it was his job. With more and more and more and more and more media coverage of Wall St, pressure is on CEO’s more than ever to sell their company, to pitch their stock to the street. So if he cuts a few hundred million dollars in employee compensation expenses and reassures shareholders to hold and new investors to hop on, does he deserve the $3M bonus? Maybe, opinions will differ as always.

So back to the post title. Yahoo spurned Microsoft’s takeover offer yet again last weekend. MSFT came in originally with a rich 62% premium obviously designed for a quick and efficient changing of the guard at YHOO and allow MSFT to realy challenge GOOG. While laying such a dramatic offer on the table, MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer had to send to his shareholders, “This is the only way I see forward.”

That brings us to Jerry Yang, CEO and Founder of YHOO. Yang knew MSFT was the only company in the world that could offer that much for his beloved company. So when he came out and said MSFT’s offer ‘undervalued’ YHOO’s worth…he was really saying MSFT should pay more before we sell.

So then Yang heads into untreaded waters and makes a deal with GOOG to start outsourcing part of their online advertising. So now MSFT has the sirens blaring at full level. They tried a YHOO coup precisely to confront GOOG as the internet giant, this was threatening YHOO join the bigger and baddest of them all, GOOG. A clever ploy quite obviously designed to get MSFT back on board and up their bid. Which they did.

So when news broke last Thursday/Friday that negotiations were once again on the table, I thought for sure the deal would be done by this past Monday. The lesson as always? I’m an idiot. But maybe not as much of an idiot as Jerry Yang (Who is a billionaire). Yang once again turned down MSFT over a difference of about $4 a share.

For his part, Ballmer deserves my respect. Not many CEO’s would have the nerve and humility to float a gotta-have-takeover offer and then just walk away. Moral victories don’t count on the street, but humans can still keep score without dollars involved.

The reality is MSFT needs YHOO, and YHOO will sell to MSFT. The value of YHOO for MSFT is to great to pass up, it is a viable threat to equality to Google. That simple. And at that value, MSFT could pay any price. And Yang knows that, so maybe he’s not that much of an idiot after all.

But the fact remains, that CEO’s are supposed to act in the best interest of the company. Gone are the days of Yang wandering the halls as celestial choirs sing and the sun rises on his command as the revered ‘Founder’. It’s his company and I know his relationship (and opinion) of MSFT is a bit murky, but he is responsible for shareholders and his employees best interests. He has left the company now with indecision in the air and the fear of irrelevance in the minds of tech followers. I don’t like MSFT at all. In fact, I seriously dislike them for the most part. But Jerry Yang should call MSFT back ASAP.

I was about 5. Santa brought me a Nintendo. With it came the two first best games of all-time, Mario and Duck Hunt. Little did my parents know that by letting video games babysit your children, that child becomes a bit of a lazy bastard at times.

Next came Blades of Steel for Nintendo. A awesome gameplay hockey game with the best right hooks ever captured in a game. Endless hours of Blades of Steel.

Next came Little League Baseball. A baseball game with kids from teams all over the world that was one of the more fun gameplay games ever. Endless mind numbing hours spent in front of that little diddy.

Next came a system upgrade and such classics as Mario Kart, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Mortal Kombat. I can not express the hours logged in front of these games. So much of my childhood was video games and not playing tag. Think that is sad? Not to me, it was awesome. I take it back to my theory on products…why use a product if something better is out there? Why not demand the best? Entertainment the same. Cost was a non-factor as I was like 8, so run around in a treehouse or shoot virtual ducks in my basement? Easy choice for meh. But I wasn’t a complete shutin, the woods near my first house provided more than enough devestating bike crashes and poison ivy escapades.

Anyway, later came the newer systems still. Madden on Playstation was revolutionary. And then Grand Theft Auto 3 came along. It changed the very scope of what a game had traditionally been. Get objective, complete level, go on to next level. GTA played out like a movie with you making the action sequences possible. A completely open world where you could literally do anything you wanted to. It was groundbreaking, and changed the gaming industry.

Vice City and San Andreas went on to be incredible experiences. But with PS3 and xBox 360 looming as the next-gen platforms, thoughts went to what GTA could do to top itself.

Four years later, GTA IV was released last week. I haven’t played as much as I intended on, but there is some open time on the horizon. Anyway, initial reactions:

- Grand Theft Auto has always been about mocking pop culture. And this game is hilarious. I haven’t laughed this hard from a game ever. Openly mocking stupid shows like America’s Next Top Model, Survivor, and family sitcoms. I strolled into a comedy club and am all of a sudden watching quality standup from Katt Williams and Ricky Gervais. Sensational stuff. The biting satire is everywhere, and it’s so broad and well done I can’t really grab a specific instance and describe it. It’s just really well done.

- The city is breathtaking, and an experience in itself. Flying a helicopter over Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty makes you realize how much work Rockstar really did on this game and the depth they went into to make Liberty City feel like a real living breathing city. I have just sat and people-watched. Each pedestrian is uniquely designed and go about their own lives and offer some really funny commentary. Rockstar broke down census data to decipher which nationality should be more prevalent in this neighborhood, not too mention all of them speak to each other in their native languages usually. Pretty effin impressive to hear Chinese, Russian, or SPanish conversations going on around you.

- I love Niko Bellic. The main character is easily my favorite in the series because the player can really empathize with his struggle and his emotions. Not too mention the presentation of the cutscenes produces some Oscar worthy dialogue and engrossing story content.

- The radio. From 9 stations in San Andreas to 18 here. And each truly feels like a unique entity.

- Multiplayer! I haven’t played as much of the story as I thought I would because I keep going back to this. Over 10 game modes available with 15 friends in an open Liberty City where literally anything goes. I wasn’t sure how great this feature was going to be, but I’m a fan. And it’ll keep me coming back long after the main story is complete.

- The highest grossing movie of all-time is Titanic at just over $600M. The seconed highest grossing is Star Wars III at ~ $450M. Shrek 2 rounds out the top 3 at ~ $400M.

GTA IV is expected to surpass $400M in sales in this first week. And will probably climb past Titanic as the single highest earning entertainment item ever. Pretty impressive if you think about it. Sure it’s $60 compared to ~$8 for a movie. But even Titanic at 3 hours long doesn’t hold up to the game, which takes about 30-40 hours to complete the story. So your bang for the entertainment buck holds up, especially with the replayability of multiplayer.

Take-Two (TTWO) Rockstar’s parent company has been fending off a takeover offer from Electronic Arts (ERTS) for months now, and insisted it would renegotiate after GTA’s release. The $2B offer ($25.74 a share was spurned in anticipation the stock would surge upon release.)

Given the current price of the stock – $26.63 – Take-Two obviously is not going to accept an offer for $25.74. So that’s that, then? Electronic Arts will have to raise it’s offer? Actually, not necessarily. The issue is going to be more complicated than that. For its part, Electronic Arts has said all along that it expected a huge unveiling of GTA IV (industry analysts said it could sell 5 million copies in two weeks). “We’ve seen a share price above and below our offer and it doesn’t change anything. We knew the game would be an extraordinary success,” said Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts. “All of that was factored into our offer of $2 billion.” Also, Electronic Arts could make the case that the modest increase in Take-Two’s stock shows some caution on the part of Take-Two shareholders. After all, with a huge game like GTA IV hitting shelves, one could rightly expect a more considerable boost to Take-Two’s shares.

I guess we’ll just see in the ensuing weeks how the business end of this epic game plays out. Till then, I’m more focused on stockpiling $500,000 for Mr. Bellic to get an achievement.