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Goodbye, Schumi!

Ah so it all ends. Not exactly in the way fans of Schumi would have wanted it to be, with a victory to lap it up all, but still he went out with more than enough to prove that he was among the greatest race drivers of all time. Going from go-karting in his childhood to the beasts he drove in these times, he definitely turned The Prancing Horse’s fortunes around when he joined Ferrari.

Me as a computer enthusiast would also like to point out here that AMD was one of the major sponsors of Ferrari, and Schumi had endorsed the Acer Ferrari range. Hope that stays, because those powerful machines look nice next to Schumi.

With his deparature, I definitely think F1 won’t stay the same. ‘Iceman’ Kimi now joins Ferrari, new teams are in the doldrums and there are going to be so many driver changes next season. Plus, no Bridgestone.

I think what drew most fans to Michael Schumacher (me at least) is the fact that he always looked confident and as cool as some inert gas at absolute zero. The aura of confidence just used to inspire something in me. He defined F1 when he was there, as rules had to be changed at certain stages just to see less of dominance. That speaks in itself about his talent.

You can read the Wikipedia entry on him here, and then here’s a news entry on his retirement on Yahoo! News. However, for diehards, there’s some hope of him returning back to the circuit too…

Categories
Technology

Micro-copycat-soft

Sheesh, just LOOK at Microsoft! It’s a real copycat, you know. Hardly gets anything original done, and then rips off from its competitors. AND ends up winning because once upon a time their marketing tactics were strong enough to give it an edge in the current market. It is THAT monopoly which always bails it out.

Now you may have heard of the Zune, it’s attack on the iPod’s market. Firstly, it teaches all not to trust Microsoft, since it had first promised manufacturers that it’d let them take on the market with its pathetic product, Origami. Since it has obviously failed, Microsoft’s now promptly ditched others and is striking out on its own with a [giggle giggle] brown colored music player.

What prompted this outburst from me though is the changes it has made to its Windows Live Mail Beta service, which obviously shows creativity is the last thing on the planet Microsoft designers have. For the better, it now supports Firefox more readily, unlike the earlier version which kept on nagging you to download Internet Explorer, in the sense that this one doesn’t even ask for it. Seems like the Big M has finally understood it can’t keep on locking users out.

It’s interface though, is a TOTAL rip-off of Yahoo! Mail Beta. Which, me being a Yodel fan, obviously angers me. More themes are there yes, each more garish than the earlier one. And believe me, the rest of the interface is a shameless copy of Yahoo!’s. Well, that goes on to show at least that YMB is good that even its competitors are copying it.

Nothing related, but did want to say this. The ads of its Xbox 360 console, in India, are not something which would entice me to go and buy it. Stupid ad concept, coupled with the fact that the ad has pretty cheap animation effects (both metaphorically and literally). Not something I’d want to see in a next-gen console ad…