Joe;

Thanks for a wonderful experience. I don't usually listen to podcasts or watch or listen to videos as a rule. Mainly, it's not readable so I have to bring a stopwatch, and my transcription isn't really that good and the player on Vista sucks for mpgs.

BUT, something about this one smelled good so I listened to it.

I would like to recommend it to your readers.

I think you'll find the conversation interesting because they're talking trash portuno style. I should sell seminars. No?

I offer this small passage I transcribed as a sample - you'll find this portion around 10 minutes into the discussion although the entire tape is wonderfully strong and dead on although one poor guy is trying his best to support Microsoft and, well... I'll let you decide.

I don't know who was whom on the tape and I'm far too lazy to go anywhere and find out (because then I will have to go back and assign transcription to each person. I have my social life, you know.

Also, I think with the one guy in there that I like that Yahoo's stock will be revalued based on what they've done over the past few months.

Microsoft did Yahoo a huge favor and showed Microsoft's nakedness in the bargain. I'm satisfied. Now we can get along with the tasks at hand building a semantic interoperation across the planet. If we're going to do it, let's do it fast and get it over with.

begin transcription @ a bit more than half way in:

I think Mesh shows some evidence that they are starting to get it as an organization.

...I look at mesh and to me it shows that Microsoft doesn't get it. That it's very much a client-centric approach. I mean on the one hand there's the web browser and a desktop but you gotta have locked client code running on every device or PS. Anyone else here use this or think differently about Live Mesh?

I think to michael's point, its kind of a baby step and its someone stepping out from that client world and acknowledging, to some degree, you know, we made an error here and we have to start correcting it. I think there's, you know, no doubt that Microsoft shouldn't be underestimated.

But the question now is if they DO get the Online strategy, how are they going to do it without a Yahoo?

I think there's a sense now that they are behind the eight ball to such a degree...

...is this going to have some ongoing corrosive effect within Microsoft this big vote of no confidence for all the online irons they already have in the fire?

...but isn't it more than just a vote of no confidence? Isn't it tacit acknowledgement that Microsoft just hasn't been able to do it? That the management is saying, you know, we can't build it fast enough so we have to buy something big.

In some way it was a white flag.

I don't agree with that at all. I mean, I think that there's a big difference between saying "Gee, if we add Yahoo we enormously we suddenly become this enormous thing to contend with online.... the difference between saying that and saying, well, you know, we're throwing our hands up because we just don't know how to do this. I think what they were doing was saying pretty simply "this is a quicker way to get a lot bigger".
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I leave the rest of the file to your hearing.

Woops. Correction. "PS" = "PC"

Literally.

Terribly poignant and ironic, isn't it? By text, the kingdom dies.