Have We Learned from the New Economy? 237
prostoalex writes "The new issue of Fast Company magazine looks at the so-called New Economy in retrospect. There were some myths about the Internet that were not true, or could be considered true only partially in the brief history of the Internet boom, there were people who got burned and those who nicely cashed out and then there were those who had to start a new life because of the Internet."
I know what I learned (Score:5, Insightful)
2)???
3)Profit!
Actually, World of End's What the Internet Isn't [worldofends.com] (previously featured on slashdot [slashdot.org]) has the ideas that can be applied to the "new economy."
the people who grasped these ideas are the long term winners.
Sure, spammers claim that they make money, but just like intrusive telemarketers [slashdot.org] their days are numbered!
Some domain name speculators made out. Some vapourware employees made out. But these are flash in the pan events.
Jeff Bezos and Co turned a profit! How? By aggregating their shipping (that free shipping option that allows them to pack more onto a truck) they are using tried and true business methods to stay profitable.
So what have we learned form the new economy? If you don't have a sustainable business model (i.e. 1)hype 2)??? 3) Profit!) then cash out quick! (however I think that business model is pretty old; Con-men have been around for years!)
Re:I know what I learned (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I know what I learned (Score:2)
The key to saving our world is not reducing consumption but making consumption less costly to the environment.
Re:I know what I learned (Score:2)
Amazon: traditional or not? (Score:3, Informative)
Reinout
Re:I know what I learned (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wish that were true, but I don't think we'll see an end for a long time, if ever. I cannot think of a way to ever eradicate spam... even if 99% of us installed and use mail filters, kept our machines as secure as possible so they couldnt get hijacked and refused to buy from the spamming arseholes it doesn't matter: the less-than-1% who do the opposite will ensure the spammers go on being retarded, deluded money-grabbing fuckwits.
Charging for emails won't work either, in fact they will make it worse - the spammers will use other people's computers to send email, resulting in other people being charged for the privilege!
Re:I know what I learned (Score:2)
Yes, but this is not a steady-state result; do you really think the recipients of the spam bills are just going to smile and pay them forever? Or do you think they will do what they need to do to prevent them from continuing to come in?
Not to mention once spam crosses the line into out-and-out theft like that the law will become more interested (and not have First Amendment or free spee
Re:I know what I learned (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I know what I learned (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Hype
2. ????
3. Profit
4. Greed
5. Lose everything
Or
1. Wait until it's "safe" to invest (when the market's near the top)
2. Invest
3. Lose everything
Re:I know what I learned (Score:2)
1) Profit!!!! (via stock shares)
Re:I know what I learned (Score:4, Informative)
That's exactly what it is. The "new economy" people tried to shoo off the concerns of "old economy" people by calling them outdated. "Business model?" shoo! "revenue?" shoo! In the end, it was something like a pyramid scheme.
What happened was much like the online DVD retailers, many of them bled themselves dry by trying to undercut each other, then ultimately themselves by selling too close to actual cost or even below cost, so it was a race to see who can get bankrupted last. Bargain hunters jumped on loss-leading promotional coupons in droves, but they never did form an ounce of customer loyalty like the coupon issuers probably expected. Attracting this type of customer is bad because price differences as low as 1% made or broke deals with some people.
After a while, investors started demanding profitability and started cutting off the cash flow to the "new economy" flushing toilets.
Duh... (Score:5, Funny)
like me and NETFLIX (Score:2)
But by not having to support a brick and mortar Netflix lets me keep DVDs for as long as I want. And since I can drop it off at their box my turn-around time is phenomenal (a monday morning drop off results in a Wednesday delivery. A Thursday drop off can result in a Friday delivery. Kewl.)
Re:like me and NETFLIX (Score:3, Funny)
A PRESENT!
I guess someone's gotta keep internet stores a float.
P.S.- there are codes on line. DO you REALLY have to pay for postage?!
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Funny)
dont be fooled (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually look at the business model first! Just because it has
Be aware of what the internet can and cant do, ebay is a wonderful perfect use of the internet, you pay for the servers and maintenance and everyone who uses it does the rest, however on the other hand an idea to sell toothpicks over the internet is not a good idea, even if it is a
Re:dont be fooled (Score:4, Funny)
you weren't listening in '97 (Score:2)
I was talking in '97, but everyone called me some sort of Luddite who didn't understand the new economy. (Though not in those words) The only difference is some (few) of them got their money out in time, most lost a lot of money, while I never had money in it; and now nobody understands the new economy.
If you had been listening there were plenty of people talking about how stupid a lot of these online businesses are. So, will you pay attention to my new words of wisdon: Pay attention to the nay-sayers
Re:dont be fooled (Score:4, Insightful)
Avg Investor: "But that's where the money was!"
Exactly. That's where the money was. It didn't seem to stick in many places, not even in this hemisphere.
Re:dont be fooled (Score:2)
If that doesn't work, invest in gold.
(I think that was the 1963 mantra. Did I get it? Did I miss something?)
GI Joe (Score:5, Funny)
And knowing's half the battle!
If you liked that one... (Score:2)
I'll answer the thread... (Score:2, Funny)
Lesson Number One (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lesson Number One (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lesson Number One (Score:3, Redundant)
I kept saying back theen that there never was no "New Economy". That it was all full of hot air. Everyone at the time thought I was not a 'team player' - an idiot. Billions of dollars of losses later, after the bubble burst, and the talking heads on TV still don't get it.
Nothing changed, just a bunch of syshters bamboozled many people out larges amounts of money. Rich got richer, poor got poorer and the guy in the middle got bent over.
Re:Lesson Number One (Score:4, Interesting)
Like economists and journalistic 'experts'.
Think about it, folks. If such people knew as much about economics as they thought they knew, they'd be on a yacht, not in a TV studio.
Re:Lesson Number One (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lesson Number One (Score:2)
I feel like I should defend economists seeing as that is what I started out as, however, defending the talking heads that you see on TV is not a task that I would want to take on.
It never ceases to amaze me what people will say when they get a chance to be on TV. There are 2 or 3 areas in which I would see myself as having some expertise and whenever I come across something about them in the media it is almost invariably rubbish. When you consider that mu
One way to stay in business (Score:3, Informative)
1. I saw that "information" on the web is still just "information". I'm a librarian so I knew I could do something with it.
2. I hired sharp, 20-something MLIS grads, promised them that they wouldn't get rich but that they might get to do something interesting, and told them, "throw out the rules you learned in Library School, but keep all the concepts."
3. I tried *very hard* not to spend more than I brought in in a given year and
What I Learned (Score:4, Insightful)
People unwilling to relocate, who thought customer orientation was beneath them, who only wanted to work on leading edge technology, funded by venture vultures got burned bigtime.
Those of us in other locations (say philly), who focused on customer-oriented services, and did work on boring old accounting systems and automating boring old work flows did fine. We were customer funded. We did fine. As a matter of fact we had to turn down work just to preserve our sanity.
what i learned from the internet boom (Score:5, Funny)
we were all... "slashdotted"
Re:what i learned from the internet boom (Score:4, Interesting)
the roaring nineties (Score:5, Informative)
Re:the roaring nineties (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting that he can be balanced when he's being critical of a man who wasn't President during the "roaring nineties" (#41 had little, if anything, to do with the new economy, #43 was elected after the bubble burst).
Re:the roaring nineties (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, considering that there wasn't a recession (we never had two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the definition of a recession), and all this talk about "lost jobs" ignores all the new businesses which have been started in the last two years, I'd say he did a pretty good job with what he was handed.
That said, I'm not sure either President deserves any real blame, and not a lot of credit, for the boom and bust of the turn of the century. Clinton did push through some things that helped the Internet and the larger economy grow (though he should've tried to keep things from getting as out of control with regards to wild market valuations), and Bush probably wasn't as proactive as he could have been (even though by the time he took office all of the forces were well in motion). But all-in-all, they both did fairly good jobs with the hands they were respectively dealt.
Re:the roaring nineties (Score:2)
The Republican Congress overrode Clinton's veto.
I don't think Clinton deserves ANY of the blame for the Enrons, Tycos, and Worldcoms, or any of the other fraudulent pump and dump schemes that were the hallmark of the New Economy.
Bush, on the other hand, didn't even talk about tightening rules, or beefing up the SEC or FTC. The Republican Party's
Manias, Panics and Crashes by Kindleberger (Score:3, Interesting)
What does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
i) think they know why this one is going to be different or
ii) will have forgotten the lessons of this one anyway
What I learned from the New Economy (Score:5, Insightful)
The more things change, the more they stay the same (ref: "Golden Rule" - he who has the gold, makes the rules).
I know the above comment is cheap, but IMO, one thing that *hasn't* changed in the "new economy" is that (white-collar) crime still pays for too many high powered execs and that corporate accountability is hard to enforce.
Again, IMO, this is one of the reasons more people lost their jobs, in high-tech or anywhere else, than was neccessary.
New Economy is the myth (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who understand that have successful internet businesses. Those who don't have failed internet businesses.
Re:New Economy is the myth (Score:3, Interesting)
If you couldn't explain how your .com business leveraged that 'paradigm shift'[1], then your .com business was going to be titsup.com real soon.
Justin.
[1] First time in ages that phrase has been used correctly.
Re:New Economy is the myth (Score:2)
So's telephone. So's fax.
What makes the Internet 'special' is that you can communicate with MANY people easily and cheaply directly in their homes. And with the web, those people get to do it at their convenience.
Learned about mirror images (Score:3, Insightful)
This is well known stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole phenomenon was down to greed. I worked on a big project, and it happened like this:
- A good idea started
- Good people got hired
- Investors dumped in a load of money
- Stuff got too big too quick
- People on stupid salaries started thinking they had to change stuff all over the place, new logo new this new that
- The web visitors just said no thanks had enough - it wasn't working like it used to
- The site that is left is no more, but you can see the changes here:
Links: what was left [archive.org] The new look [archive.org] The old look [archive.org] country site [archive.org]The idea was OK, but by the time a load of stupid shit like free email, instant messaging and all that was tacked on, it just didn't work any more, cost way too much money...
But we had a great launch party for Orientation Morocco, let me tell you!
Re:This is well known stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
What I've learned from all this: (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet continues to be my preferred source of education. I've taken online classes through a community college. Newsgroups have helped me solve most of the problems I have at work, and I look sharper for it. I've regularly used online news sources to keep me aware of what's new in the world, given that local news anchors have more brilliance in their smile than their skulls.
Aside from my service costs, the Internet remains as free as Al Gore intended
-m.
it grabbed media attention .. (Score:4, Interesting)
made technology startups mainstream news; focused public awareness and attention on the internet and what it can allow you to do. All of these are good things. It showed people what would work and what wouldn't. Sometimes in a stark and brutal fashion. I can't say it was an era that should have never happened, because sometime, somewhere, you need to make that leap of faith from merely thinking about a business to actually starting one. The new economy gave lots of budding entrepreneurs the chance to get their feet wet, chances that they may not have gotten before..Google came from the dotcom era, didn't it?
The best thing to come out of the whole "new economy" for me was the experience that I got.. Never jump into a project without a cold blooded analysis of risk vs reward, never go into a company because they "look" exciting; check the fundamental things out first. Feather your nest, because you never know if things could change for the worse tomorrow. In short, be conservative.
All the same, I wish I had graduated just a couple of years sooner (1997-1998) because regardless of competency or suitability, being called an "architect" fresh out of college gives you experience at that level that would otherwise take years to achieve.. Good times, good times.
Lessions learned (Score:5, Insightful)
All the day traders I knew during the boom didn't know how to read the financial statements. They just relied on advises of some hot shot, other day traders who knew no better, and their gut feelings.
Re:Lessions learned (Score:2)
Almost by definition, day traders are NOT going to be interested in financials. The basic premise of day trading is that you can make money on short-term trades. Depending on the strategy, short-term can mean seconds, minutes, or days, but almost never weeks or months. Such strategies do not care about u
Re:Lessions learned (Score:2)
Another goo
True Story... (Score:4, Insightful)
Closing the magazine, I thought: "Either these guys deserve a Nobel Prize in Economics, or they just don't understand anything about Economics".
Late 1999, I remember talking to a friend about Yahoo and other companies offering free services over the World Wide Web. He could not understand how these companies could offer a valuable service (email, personal web space, etc) for free and (a) make money, (b) have a stock price that went through the roof.
I remember telling him: "This is not going to last. The stock market is going to crash really badly and most of these companies are going to go down in flames".
Today, I am really happy most of my money was not invested in stupid schemes such as pets.com or any other "new economy"/Internet company.
Bottom line? Here are my most basic rules for economy, new or otherwise...
One last thing: 90% of all the people who made money in the new economy where insiders, people who knew if a stock was going to go up or down. Think about that for a second.
Sendmygift.com (Score:5, Interesting)
The only problem was that the owners allegedly sold private shares of stock illegally. (A court Minnesota ruled against the company is several lawsuits brought by shareholders). The bankruptcy still lingers on. The thousands of shares I received for being an employee are worthless. My belief now is that the owner never intended to make money or operate a successful business. All he talked about was 'going public' and how rich we (he) were going to be.
The "New Economy' taught me a lot. After working to two other companies with the same business model I now work for an 'Old Economy' business that actually believes in making a profit, serving it customers and taking care of it employees. There is no IPO in sight for this company and that's fine with me.
I'll take a steady paycheck today instead of the promise of stock pay offs tomorrow.
We were conned - had nothing to do with technology (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the key indicators of just how well the ruse worked is that 60% of the working public was in one way or another invested in "Wall Street" during the late 1990's. The last time this many of the "regular working public" invested was during the 1920's.
Another, perhaps clearer indicator of how well the ruse worked is looking at just how much money was drained from the US economy (ie: your wallets and mine): $3.3trillion.
It's tragic, really. The technology was in some cases quite good. eBay roars along. Dell digitized their entire business model. And governments around the world have started to adopt Open Source works as the foundation from which to build upon. But greed extracted a huge price on the economy and our ability to reinvest those dollars in continued Research and Development.
Re:We were conned - had nothing to do with technol (Score:4, Insightful)
If you look at human nature, I mean really look at it and how it behaves in a system that advertises to them, teaches them how money works, expects them to be greedy and spend money to make money, then turns the whole economy upside down on them we see that this is natural for capitalism.
It will happen over and over and over again until we either decide to value eachother more than money or get rid of money itself. Personally I feel like managing all this money is inefficient in a digital world. But most people don't understand what it means to live in a digital world where a computer connected to the internet can replace a TV, telephone, Postal service, library, newpaper, and many other things for most common uses. And these internet-connected computers can be made smaller than a cellphone or a walkman.
That's why we're in such bad shape. We've got everything, but no incentive to use it because we only wanted the money.
Re:We were conned - had nothing to do with technol (Score:2)
It's detractors warned about this.
The president vetoed it.
Money-grubbing market fundamentalists paid off their congressmen to override the veto.
And the result?
Enron. Tyco. Worldcom. etc.
Re:We were conned - had nothing to do with technol (Score:2)
Cash as an investment is almost always a loss as are the vast majority of savings accounts. If the interest gained on an investment is below inflation, one is losing buying power, and therefore value. Cash is useful if you wish to make sure you have some money later on to fall on, and you're willng to tolerate the loss. Otherwise, spend your money or invest it proper.
HELLO (Score:2, Funny)
e-BS? That is so last year (Score:2)
Kim Polese (Score:5, Funny)
Really? Judge for yourself [typepad.com]...
Re:Kim Polese (Score:2, Funny)
I'd hit it (Score:2)
She looks sweet.
Re:Kim Polese (Score:5, Funny)
>
>She may not have the looks but powerful professional women like her (and Hillary C) turn me on.
>
> Either of them is free to whip my ass raw with a riding crop and ream me with a strap-on dildo - anytime, anywhere.
You worked at HP too, huh?
Speculation bubbles are not modern inventions (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Speculation bubbles are not modern inventions (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like the tulip mania or the South Sea Bubble [www.dal.ca] or all the other bubbles since, once all the attention is on the stock rather than the intrinsic value of the product or service, then winning or losing depends on timing the market. (Or on having insider information.)
One thing that I think made the Dotcom Bubble a different twist was that it coincided with the rise of daytrading, the ubiquitous information age, and the age of easy credit card debt, so it was even easier for the people who have only the foggiest notion of evaluating and forecasting a stock's value to get into the market.
Certainly during the previous bubbles, lower-income people could still get in on the speculation, but there were several new forces converging to add to its capacity to reach investors.
Re:Speculation bubbles are not modern inventions (Score:4, Interesting)
Hot damn! (Score:2)
Rich
What I learned during the bubble... (Score:5, Interesting)
And when I get ready to hire? The number one thing I'll be looking for on those resumes is a history of self-reliance and individual responsibility. There are a lot of professional committee-manipulators out there who like their comfortable BigCorp positions, and good for them. I'm confident that in twenty years, when we both look back and to see where we stand, my contributions to the world will be both worthwhile and significant.
Really, it all boils down to trust. That's what underlies the economic viability of open source: you're dealing with people and standardized network protocols and not organizational entities or proprietary lockin.
different but the same (Score:2)
Allow me to outdo your skepticism. In ten years, if I spent that time pursuing the buildout of a 100+ employee firm, I'd be MORE of an asshole than our current generation of bosses. Why? I've learned their tricks at their hands, and have a few of my own. But I'm not out to outcompete or destroy my competition. They can win as far as I care. I know when to say when. I eat well. I live well. My bills are paid. And now I get to work because it will make the world a better place for my children. A 10
what goes around comes around (Score:5, Interesting)
I was one of the folks who stood around scratching his head at the explosion of IPOs for "dot coms" that had no legs to stand on. Why the imposion occurred shouldn't have surprised anyone who was paying attention, but it played on many peoples' sense of greed at the expense of their common sense.
I was one of the people who was there in the early days with technology and services that were way ahead of their time. OTOH, I was one of those that didn't run out, sign up a bunch of pimply-faced MBAs for a management team and then rush to do an IPO. Today, my company is far from the largest, but we're very stable and have a solid client base. I don't have a personal helocopter, but I did get my small slice of the dot-com pie when I sold a domain I registered in 1994 for an insane amount of money. That was exciting and depressing at the same time. It wasn't what I ever imagined would be one of the big payoffs relative to what we were doing. I suspect there may have been at least a few other companies who really wanted to build an honest solid net-based business model, that were overshadowed by the parade of spineless, over-hyped dot-coms run by people who perhaps a month before were selling life insurance.
Re:what goes around comes around (Score:2)
You and me both. Back during the boom I'd gotten a job as a telecom technician. My father kept saying "get out of that crappy job. Any monkey who can turn on a PC is making $50K." (this from a guy who worked for one company all his life and always managed to sell his bonus-acquired company stock a
Re:what goes around comes around (Score:2)
That is a compliment. At least Cosmo gives good fashion advice and more than one girlfriend has got some interesting bedroom ideas from it (why this is ok for women and men's entertainment mags can't be displayed in public is another issue)...
FastCompany is written for 30 something middle managers at large corporations. Not surprisingly, it's a vehicle to sell big hats to the no cows crowd (act ric
Lesson #1: Don't Believe the Hype! (Score:3, Insightful)
the list is huge, but here are a few leading contenders: Fast Company, Wired, Henry Blodgett, Mary Meeker, any VC firm, Wall Street, and on and on...
i think the lesson to take from the internet boom/bust is don't get taken for a ride by some body who wants to build a next-generation, new-paradigm ecommerce portal (or a monorail) with other people's money...
I made out ok... (Score:2, Interesting)
There was some grave apprehension "selling out" at the time, like I was going to lose what I had worked on for three years. Also, I was making low six figure
No new economy... (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, there was (and still is) clear preferrential allocation of shares, thereby allowing only a select few to gain the benefits of an IPO. What we need is non-preferrential allocation of shares, akin to what Bill Hambrecht is doing with the OpenIPO system.
Nonetheless, the (historical) "new economy" was a lot more riskier than the "old economy", not less. There is a lot more reliance on innovation and high-risk investments to drive growth, which is great when the innovations work out in the long run. However, when big gambles, such as the dotcoms, fail to pay off (eg: no revenues, or costs exceeding profits), then the whole economy suffers.
This is likely the largest mistake that investors made. They failed to understand the high-volatility nature of the "new economy", and took far greater risks than they should. They failed to realize that by investing in new IPO's, they were effectively taking the same risks that venture capitalists do.
nope, not really (Score:2, Troll)
Re:nope, not really (Score:2)
The Single Sad Lesson (Score:2)
At least in the USA, and probably in other developed countries, is the demise of the old model where a widespread increase in the standard of living was not only possible, but economically sound, as long as wage increases were no larger than worker productivity increases. Letting wages rise faster than productivity was a recipe for inflation.
Lately, productivity has been climbing spectacularly. That's good, very good. But the benefit has not been translated into increased wages.
Why?
Because of globalizat
The Economist free newsletters (Score:2)
http://www.economist.com/email/
Whew. (Score:2)
Its about time someone finally wrote an article discussing what went wrong with the
Lesson: Dont reply on having your job in 10 years (Score:2, Interesting)
Quick question (Score:2)
* I'm Too Lazy To Google
People smelled money (Score:2)
What I DIDN'T count on what that they'd take the rest of the NASDAQ with them. I lost quite a bit of money, but that
Thank you Ellen! (Score:2)
A Fable About the Interweb... (Score:3, Insightful)
The system that evolved was not and is not, and hopefully will not be, designed as a system for the generation of enormous amounts of profit. It is designed to be a communication, publishing, and media-distribution system that enables all comers to take part based on their willingness to learn the techniques.
The internet bubble was not created by techies, it was the creation of assholes from wall street and their MBA bearing offspring who saw the geeks working late on something they did not understand. Being typical assholes, they figured that there must be a lot of money to be made, otherwise why would Poindexter be spending all of his spare time and losing so much sleep over this hobby of his. So they came forward with offers of money, and Poindexter, surprised as he was, accepted the money in return for writing code to implement these poorkly though out and vague ideas.
The MBAs began to get restless during the mid 1990s, wondering when the return on this interweb thing was gonna come rolling in. They began sending their offspring to college for CS degrees, because obviously Poindexter was doing something wrong. He seemed happy whenever his code worked well, but never seemed concerned about the money (why should he be, he was getting paid). The MBAs figured it must be a cultural thing, and seeing that they knew what clothing was in style (and Poindexter did not), and they drove the right SUV (and Poindexter did not), that their own children would be better for running this interweb thing, and they would have to find a way to take it away from Poindexter (because he was obviously not doing it right, as he ghadn't made them their billions like that other Poindexter out in Redmond had). Their children came back from school and began starting internet businesses left and right, they knew how to talk to venture capitalists (as that was their culture) and how to play the media. Their businesses gathered money from investors and they paid themselves (and each other) high salaries until the money ran out.
A few of them, who had somhow discovered a clue by spending tiome with their classmates (in the process discovering their own inner Poindexter), created strong businesses that were based on rather mundane things, like selling fasteners or books, or providing usefull services for free to the public that could be sold a specialized services to companies, such as non-biased searches.
The rest of the children of the MBAs folded their companies, while wiping a crocodile tear from their eye, fired all their Poindexters on short notice, and drowned their sorrows in the huge amounts of money they had scammed from their parents and their parents business partners (because, of course, that was the way of their culture). And they complained about it. Obviously, Poindexter must have done something wrong.
Now the investors, the MBAs, the venture capitolists are all crying "foul! foul! Where are the billions you promised? Why did you not make me even more rich than I am already? There must be something wrong with that internet thingy, and I'm gonna get my congressman to fix it for us."
Poindexter shrugs. His code is working fine. It does exactly what it was intended to do, and given enough time it might possibly be possible for a guy to make a living without being harassed by a bunch of venture capitalists and MBAs wearing the latest ugly suit and driving those ugly road hogs. Meanwhile he'll just sit at his computer, and design yet another application protocol or device that the assholes will finance never understanding that the internet is not designed to make the money people rich.
It is designed to diminish their control.
lesson learned (Score:3, Interesting)
The gold rush model (Score:2, Informative)
1) Early on a number of folks find potential. E.g. a new gold field or new technology.
2) Usualy at that point enterance barriers are low, so a lot of small organizations enter, flooding the field.
3) Large organizations tend to be risk averse and slower so they may miss the initial 'pop', but they have huge resources.
4) The survival stragegy for a small outfit is 2 fold:
a) get b
Re:Al Gore invinted the Internet? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Al Gore invinted the Internet? (Score:2, Funny)
He invented programming too?
Re:Al Gore invinted the Internet? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wigg
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/c
and there are many, many more.
FWIW, we actually get the dead-tree edition of Fast Company magazine (don't ask why, it's a long story) and it's just as slick and empty as any of the old Dot-Com business plans. These people are just a waste of ink and pulp.
Re:Al Gore invinted the Internet? (Score:2)
That's the lie. I know it's not what he meant, though, and I also think it was blown out of proportion.
It's not at all like the left claiming Bush lied when he said Iraq was an imminent threat, because in that case Bush actually said quite the opposite. But Gore did say that he "took the initiative in creating the internet." Yes, we should let it die, but it *is* what he said.
The two are similar in the same respect that politicians will take an imaginar
Re:Al Gore invinted the Internet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Tim Berners Lee invented HTML and HTTP. That's no
Programming is a means to an end (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked and society's need for programmers is much, much less.
Re:Libertarianism has failed. (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, I see this a lot from the leftie types, but none of them ever seems to have the knowledge to be able to put an explicit percentage on exactly what "fair" is to their little minds, or exactly what "rich" is for that matter. Let us take the IRS data for 1999, the newest date Google finds in its top ten links:
A) Do you think "rich" is "the highest 1%"? Well, they earned 19.5% of income, but paid 36.2% of income taxes. What would you think "fair" for that 19.5% is, if d
Re:Is fairness a sinister, un-American idea? (Score:2)
Re:So? He's quoting Rush Limbaugh. (Score:2)
Returns with extraordinarily high reported incomes pay at least some level of income tax 99.8% of the time, as of 2001. Total tax paid as a proportion of adjusted gross income ("AGI") averaged 27.4% for this group. (By contrast, 27.2% of all individual tax returns in 2001 showed no income tax at all, and the average tax as a proportion of AGI for all taxpayers was 15.2%.)
Returns with very high levels of income typically account for a substantial proportion
Re:refactor in payroll, excise, and local taxes. (Score:2)
A worthless friend of my wife just got pragnent by a equally worthless guy (who lives with his mom and is too lazy to hold onto a job). She will end up with medicate and walfare and she does not pay a cent in tax (she doesn't have a job right now, she quit her past jobs for various BS reasons). So she puts in zero in taxes for her benifits. So she gets "rewarded" for her moronic actions while rest of us gets punishe
Re:Libertarianism has failed. (Score:2)
Plus, owning things does not make one rich. If I win the lottery and spend my $236 million on a warehouse full of footballs, am I rich? The footballs aren't exactly legal tender; I couldn't trade 10,000 of them for a car. You're only rich if the things you own are generating money for you.
Hamster
Re:Libertarianism has failed. (Score:2)
Number one is that the airline industry subsidies are probably a good thing. If the three largest airlines were to collapse and disappear, the USA (and a good chunk of the world) would enter a 2-year recession. While it would probably be replaced by a more efficient airline industry, millions would suffer in the meantime.
Number two is that most corporate entities don't pay any income tax (since they're smart enough to spend their income on assets that will
Re:learning curves (Score:2)