Alsop's Small Thoughts

Hacker Dad, Slacker Dad

Michael is a friend of mine. He's also a total geek. And he has a 16 year old son, who is not really a geek. Friend. Geek. Father. What a combination.

After he decided to bond with his son by getting Guitar Hero for the Nintendo Wii, he discovered his son just beat his butt. So he got back by modifying the Guitar Hero and reprogramming it. On behalf of all the fathers around the world who have been beaten by their sons, I salute you, Michael!

Here's is Michael's summary at the end of the web site he created to commemorate his accomplishment: "Thanks to my son Alex for being a great kid. He's SO MUCH BETTER THAN I'LL EVER BE AT THIS AND SO MANY OTHER THINGS. By the way, when he found out what I was doing with his Wii, he commented that this was, by far, the stupidest project he'd ever heard of. He went on to comment that he had NO idea why I would waste my time on this. My answer: I did what I had to do to beat you (which is getting harder and harder as time goes by). Now I can beat you in my sleep. Take that!"

The Department of There Is No Justice Department

When I worked at New Enterprise Associates, one of my most successful investments and one of my most energizing experiences was working with Xfire and its outstanding CEO, Mike Cassidy.

The only really troubling part of that experience was when Yahoo! sued Xfire for infringing its intellectual property. It was a spurious claim; we could never figure out what motivated the claim, other than some mysterious political infighting inside Yahoo!

But, in the way of the world, they had more money to pay lawyers than we did, so the company settled with them so that it could be sold (which it was to Viacom). It cost the shareholders a lot of money. It really reduced my personal opinion of Yahoo! as a company, since it had been founded on what I perceived to be a principle of innovation and open competition in an information economy, rather than legal bullying, and had never previously sued a venture backed startup for infringing on its intellectual property.

Yahoo! recently posted this note on its site:

http://videogames.yahoo.com/multiplayer

The irony is that, of course, no one who was involved with suing Xfire back then is actually still on the "The Yahoo Games Team" to remember that Yahoo! sued Xfire, extracted its toll, and is now freely referring people to the site, claiming to have "no formal connection".

There is no justice.