Three sentence version: Hey, Ruby on Rails is cool. The guys who invented it are so arrogant and cool. And, they don’t care if you don’t like it. If you really want, you can read the original here.

So, the stock market rallied today based on S&P’s affirmation of MBIA’s AAA rating. What was their justification for affirming the rating? That MBIA was able to sell notes at 14% interest to raise $2.6 billion of capital. Name me any other AAA rated institution that is forced to pay 14%. Guess what? You won’t be able to find one. 14% is what junk bonds pay, not AAA rated bonds. Read the details at The Big Picture.

Hey, if you are a PHP coder who is looking to work at a hot startup, check out these jobs at OpenDNS. This is a great company that provides a really great service.

I never thought that I would ever say this, but Dan Farber is wrong and the New York Times and Henry Blodgett are right. Microsoft has wasted billions of dollars, and many years, trying to succeed on the web. Buying Yahoo won’t help them get better. Instead, as Blodget writes, they should swap their internet division for a stake in a combined web company, and concentrate on the enterprise market. Yahoo won’t fit into Microsoft, but a combined unit could be a competitor for Google.

UPDATE: Scavo thinks buying SAP would be a mistake. He’s probably right, but I still say it is a smaller mistake than buying Yahoo.

I ran across Waldemar Hansens’s The Peacock Throne: The Drama of Mogul India in the Palo Alto library, and decided to re-read it. The majority of the book is about the later years of Shah Jahan’s reign. I think that’s the right emphasis, because it was the failure of the tolerant Dara Shikoh to succeed Shah Jahan that led to the destruction of the Moguls. It’s amazing how quickly Aurangzeb was able to bankrupt and destroy the richest empire in the world. There’s a lesson there for everyone who believes in the “too big to fail” theory of world politics.

If you are a blogger, and want to get a real idea of your significance, then add that Feedburner badge that shows the number of your RSS subscribers to your blog. My ego really took a hit when I went from 8 subscribers to 6. It’s going to be tough to recover.

Can anyone give me a single, good reason for the existence of Valentine’s day? Other than commemorating St. Valentine, that is.

According to Reuters, it is rumored that Google will buy CNET. I find this almost impossible to believe, since Google has never shown any interest in content companies, but it was good enough to lift the stock seven percent.

Google has announced a new local news option on Google News that allows you to type in a zip code or city name and get news from that locality. So, let’s compare the coverage! On TechCrunch, we have a restatement of the press release, accompanied by a prediction that Topix is all done. While on Between the Lines, Larry actually tries the new service, and find that it doesn’t work worth a damn. Which do you think will get more play? Sometimes, I have to ask why we even bother doing analysis?

Today is Trent Lott Appreciation Day. According to The Mississippi Press, it’s a “well-deserved honor.” They also note:

Today’s honors may not be as fancy as receptions held in Washington, D.C., but it is very likely Lott is among more friends here.

It’s hard to argue with that. On a related note, January 24th was National Compliment Day.