Slashdot Mirror

You've got the first part absolutely right on the head. An active and informed citizenry is crucial to a free state. You are also correct in pointing out that Americans are rarely active and informed. Yes, this is a problem.

But blaming the "Corporate Republic" is an intellectual cop-out. First of all, the entire concept is a load of bullshit. You better damn well believe that if the government had any real desire to shut down Microsoft or AOL, they could. Corporations aren't more powerful than government, they only sometimes seem that way. If America were really owned lock stock and barrel by corporations then we wouldn't be seeing the load of regulatory garbage that gets passed through Congress each year.

The idea that corporations are able to shirk all responsibility is also BS. Corporations live and breathe by the market, and the market is driven by the consumer. The reasons we're seeing all this vertical integration is sure as hell not out of some kind of diabolic plan to squelch the voices of independent content producers, but because it's getting harder and harder to attract the kind of audiences that media outlets are used to. Hence AOL buying everything from ICQ to Netscape - they need to get subscribers to keep their bottom line. If you've got several million eyeballs, you can keep afloat of ads... and even then it's a crapshoot. "Big Media" isn't more powerful than ever... it's trying desperately to keep from hemorraging cash by spreading itself around. In the end, that may only make the situation worse.

Unless corporations understand market demands, they're doomed to end up pretty well fucked. Corporations have an *extreme* amount of accountability, to their shareholders, to the market, and more important to the consumers. AOL is sucessful because it caters to a large group of people and does it well. Ditto Microsoft, or almost any other major corporation.

This whole "corporate republic" bullshit is getting real old. It's the same anti-capitalist rhetoric that should have been buried a long time ago. The alternative proposed by this New Left is a socialist system where the *government* runs everything - and all you need to do is go take a little trip to a former or current Communist country to see where that would lead us. (And don't talk about Sweden like it was paradise either - they have a yearly national dept equal to 133% of their GNP. That's a burn rate that would make some dot coms flinch!)

Amen! I bet some investors in a wide range of dot-coms and "enterprise B2B exchange portal" thingies would love to find the guy who wrote that these would be multi-billion dollar markets by now...

DotCom Guy, yet another fucked company.

On a prior thread, the subject of plastic.com came up. In my prior and current opinion, plastic.com doesn't have a long-term future as a viable community. It seems, at least to me, that the operating assumptions regarding the generation of meaningful, tangible value- are inherently flawed.

Plastic.com has mistakenly assumed it could replicate the success of Slashdot simply by repurposing the Slashdot message board system for the purposes of broad-minded subjects mostly related to pop culture, pop technology and pop politics. They have failed to realize that Slashdot's success has come through its specialization. The broader the subject matter, the less compelling the appeal to a broader base of people. The narrower the subject matter, the stronger the potential appeal to a smaller base of people. They are failing because they thought if they focused on broad subjects, that all your base would belong to them. But they ain't CATS. They are on their way to destruction. They have no chance to survive, make their time.

Seriously, though- I think most people who read and participate in Slashdot would agree that there is something of a Slashdot POV that is reinforced through the editorials, through the article selection, through much of the posting activity, etc. While you see a lot of variation in the worldviews of participants (agnostics, christians, atheists, relativists, absolutists, humorists, nihilists, etc.)- the community still has several hundred thousand participants who fit the profile one-way-or-another (in short, they understand at some level the Slashdot narrative, and want to participate in and contribute to it).

What is the Plastic.com POV? There isn't one, really. It isn't created BY a certain specialized community FOR a specialized community. It is a created by a conglomerate of differently-minded interests, lacking in a coherent POV, and it feels like it. Oh sure, it has a sort of ironic, detached postmodern perspective- that is reflected in the cheeky commentary here-and-there, but come on- isn't that the standard TONE of almost web-based content sites these days? Salon, Slate, Wired News, etc.? So how original is that?

Now, Plastic.com will have two less sources funnelling a readership towards its community board. No Feed readers, no Suck readers. Who will it continue to receive readers from? Modern Humorist? (who jokingly noted in a recent press release that they were almost out of the seven-figures in venture capital they raised only a year ago, and could be in trouble?) Netslaves? (who repeatedly asks on their own site if they should discontinue the site itself since their purpose has been satisfied and frankly, Netslaves isn't exactly making anyone richer OR happier?) Inside.com? (who at their PEAK had less than 2000 paying subscribers, as noted by Poynter.org a week ago?)

I don't bear Plastic any ill-will, that isn't why I'm bringing this up. I think the concept is flawed and in time, this will be manifest. But I'd be happy to I was wrong about that.

But, backing up, it begs the question- who in the Internet content business is going to survive?

Jim Romenesko's Media News had a link today to a story in which Slate publisher Scott Moore "was kind of funny, drolly knocking down anybody's ideas about what might make a dollar online... He didn't seem to think any known model will sustain a Web-media company. Because his publication is paid for by Bill Gates, he can afford to be pessimistic."

Truth be told, Moore is wrong. We see that at least The Onion has been able to make a ton of money ($2,000,000 in ad revenues alone last year, for their website only). They also have print advertising in their print publication, and several best-selling books they've released, plus "The Onion" radio news (syndicated for indy & college radio stations, mostly), and have made money optioning articles to Miramax for film development (two to date that I know of).

So, there is a hybrid new media / old media company that is making serious money in content. And, most would agree, they are the best at what they do.

Another content company making money online is Fu----company.com. Founder Pud runs the thing pretty much by himself. He's got a book deal with Simon & Schuster, he's got at least $60,000 a month in subscriber revenues to his unedited gossip / rumours database, he's got some banner advertising (prolly not too special revenue wise), and he's got f'dcompany-branded products he sells on his site (I think I read this may bring in over $100,000 this year, but I'd need to double check).

There are other Internet content players who are surviving, generating revenues and even profits. I don't know of ANY that have done so after raising venture capital. Ironically, the sites that raised capital to fund content are the ones who are dying here, there and all over the shop.

I wish I could think of some more Internet content "pureplays" that seem likely to survive, but I can't off the top of my head.

Where was I going with all this? I don't know. But now that I'm here, I think I'll rest and pretend this was where I was intending to head.

Good luck to the content players still out there, still trying to make something work while remaining independent. I feel obligated to say that after reading that 4 corporate players control over HALF of the public's internet browsing needs or some such nonsense.

All of this speculating has got me depressed. Think I'll go read some old USENET articles and think of a simpler time. A time when it looked like Netscape was going to change the world, when it looked like Microsoft had finally been bested, when Amazon was just selling books and it seemed like the people starting companies left-and-right were doing it because they wanted to make a change in something other than their personal worth.

I'm betting by September 2002 - they are out of business.

Well, it's about time Netscape got with it and jumped on the dot com bandwagon. The whole "media hub" thing is a really cool new idea...I mean nobody's doing that.

Subscribers who pay a monthly fee will be able to load any other digital audio files -- like the music of independent labels, their own recordings or other material -- onto their computers and share it with other Napster users. The fidelity will be just below the sound quality of compact discs and users who obtain files over Napster will be precluded from loading them onto their own discs or sending them outside its network.

So their participation in SDMI makes some sense - until you try to use the service of course. Oh well, I added them to my FC list months ago.

"The days are very long and you have to keep yourself busy," said Jose Maria Casado, who used to install cellular antennas.

One can sympathize with the protesters, but they have to understand, that's business, and over here in the US it does happen regularly (people getting laid off without pay) and shamelessly by many in the technology industry [see FuckedCompany] however most people here simply move on to other jobs.

Are things that bad in Spain where they have to protest in such fashion because there are no jobs or something? Personally I would get another job and move on with life. Perhaps after I got another job I would use my own money to take them to court in an appropriate fashion as opposed to sitting around waiting for someone to listen.

Yes I know protesting for a cause is semi politically correct, but being without work isn't going to pay my bills, and I'll be damned if I forcefully made myself live in a camp town when I could do as I said, make money then take them to court. They're lucky Spain doesn't have FEMA over there or that shit'd be over quickly

But if you want to know how not to develop games, check out Fat Babies. It's game industry news and rumors from actual industry insiders. Sort of the fuckedcompany.com of the gaming world. --Shoeboy

Remember the whole eFront fiasco from a few months ago? Well, eFront did the same thing as UGO is trying to do: in order for webmasters to get back to their domain names, they had to forfeit 5 months of backpay, and agree not to sue eFront at any time in the future. As far as I know, a lot of webmasters agreed and signed the contract in order just to get their domains back quickly, as one weekend eFront blocked out all webmasters from updating their sites for "security reasons".

Looks like UGO is on it's way to becoming a member of Pud's list...oh wait, nevermind...Pud has an article that UGO just bought Bla-Bla!. Sheesh! Rough times indeed...

a quick look at fuckedcompany.com shows that they are not fucked yet. as a matter of fact there are only fucks for Eazel. The last one dated May 12th.

Anyway it's sad to see Eazel go, I've been saying for quite a while that linux and the like would never get a good thoughtout consistant user interface without traditional software development.

-Jon

a quick look at fuckedcompany.com shows that they are not fucked yet. as a matter of fact there are only fucks for Eazel. The last one dated May 12th.

Anyway it's sad to see Eazel go, I've been saying for quite a while that linux and the like would never get a good thoughtout consistant user interface without traditional software development.

-Jon

Ok, it's not a surprise I'm having trouble finding a job, I can't even remember to close an href. What I meant to say was that "... as is evident by fuckedcompany.com"

Ok, it's not a surprise I'm having trouble finding a job, I can't even remember to close an href. What I meant to say was that "... as is evident by fuckedcompany.com

I work about 0 hours a week at my last job. Layoffs are a bitch as is evident by . I've been out of work two weeks now and the job market sure isn't what it was a year and a half ago. Pretty soon I may have to start reverse-spamming the spammers asking them if they need any help.

"Eazel has burned through at least $13-million in venture capital "
What we are talking here is a first class material for this site.

Unlike the woes i have heard from many other dsl users, @link actually had an incredible amount of reliability (one 15 minute outage in 2 years!) and great tech support. It is sad to see even the good providers crash and burn before they can get off the ground.

wow, i wish I had a mod point left for this post. Look at FC... you'll see lots of Pets.Com, but Kara's doesn't seem to be there. And I think that Pud would tell all of us about that one as soon as he became aware of it...

#incldue
#include <rants.h>
#incldue <clues.h>

Just to be absolutely clear about what I'm saying, in my opinion the "big three" embedded OSes are, at the moment: (1) VxWorks, (2) Embedded Linux, (3) Embedded Windows -- or (1) VxWorks, (2) Embedded Windows, (3) Embedded Linux -- depending on how you count.

I guess he's never heard of/used QNX, ChorusOS Nucleus, or ThreadX. I did however like the gadgets, but taking a look at the last week, with all the Linux related companies going to the dogs, and 4 distributions going "kaput" within less than 6 months time, I would be looking at other alternatives to Linux, especially if my business were going to depend on them.

© Gbonics changing the futurismisms of vocabularities worldomwide

Fcuked

Pobox.com has never believed in advertising. Email forwarding isn't web-based, so when banner ads aren't even an option, what do you expect from Bigfoot? You're basically opting in to be spammed. If you're not paying, you're not a customer: you're the product.

If Bigfoot is ad-driven broadcast TV, we're the rental store. Yes, we cost, but we're not ashamed: we're in the business of providing permanent email, and if we didn't make an honest profit we'd be letting you down.

mengwong@pobox.com

is here

Why? Businesses come and go all the time. Most startups fail. It has always been this way. The only difference is that many more dumb startups got funding (and huge PR) in 1999-2000, and now more of them are toast now.

Here in SF everyone wants to dump on the dot-coms, because they brought too many of the "wrong" (smart, educated, young) people into a city that the locals think is exclusively theirs. Certainly many of the stupid startups were a waste of time, money, and office space. But you have to put up with a lot of failures to get the diamonds in the rough.

So while I think it's fun to make fun of the bad ideas, we shouldn't forget the good stuff. Think of the auto industry: 100s (maybe 1000s) of companies have failed between the invention of the auto and today, but autos got vastly more reliable by 1950 than they were in the 1920s - in no small part because of this innovation.

Tech is no different.

IOmega is a fucked company
---

Simple sites are: 1) easy to set up 2) easy for the users to understand ...and most importantly... 3) easy to maintain They took a simple idea and didn't go apeshit with javascript and java applets and flash and all kinds of eye-candy bullshit you see on other sites these days. Content wins. Sure, they're still headed on the way to destruction financially, but they got the right fucking idea for site development...


You finding Ling-Ling's head?
Someone come into yard, kill dog.

The German term "Schadenfreude" has seen a lot of play in recent months. It means, "Taking joy in the suffering of others", and it perfectly encapsulates the spirit of not only the "eCompanyNow" article but of many of the new websites that have popped up to celebrate the downfall of the dotcom economy.

The eCompanyNow article was something of a cute encyclopedia of some of the greatest excesses witnessed in the midst of the tech bubble. I enjoyed reading it, and laughed out loud at seeing so many portraits of hubris and foolishness in so compact a setting. But it makes for ironic reading, considering the origins of the magazine itself.

eCompanyNow was a rag brought into existence by Time, Inc. for the express purpose of soaking up a fair share of the funnymoney dotcom advertising dollars being generated by the mania itself. But the timing was less than opportune, since they came to market in May of 2000, as the bubble had already begun its rapid deflation. The dotcom advertising budgets that had led magazines like "FastCompany" and "Business 2.0" to swell to the size of phone books were suddenly gone, and as a result, the new economy magazines have all found themselves in a perpetual state of whithering, many looking anoxeric compared to their 1999 selves.

Not all new media rags were guilty of contributing to the bubble. Some were actually attempting to do a public service by reporting on the bubble as a genuine problem that was undermining both the common sense of the investing public, and the morality as well.

"Red Herring" was somewhat lonely as tech rags go, as they constantly decried the ever-inflating bubble in 1999, even at the risk of alienating the dotcoms that were advertising in their magazine.

Consider this prescient story from October of 1999, called "Internet bubble popping American business ethics?". I admired Redherring enormously for continually bringing the bubble to the attention of their readership in the midst of the madness, when so many other tech/stock rags didn't have the stomach or brains to do the same. It takes guts to tell your readers that they are delusional and your advertisers that they are doomed, but Redherring did as much when the mania really got overwhelming.

Now, "f-ckedcompany","downside.com" ,"NetSlaves" and "failure magazine" have all become the order of the day, each basically engaging in the time-honored tradition of "kicking them while their down". It is to be expected.

But one has to wonder, how long can the gleeful celebration of the death of stupid dotcoms last? Like vultures surviving off of the carcasses of dead and dying animals in the midst of a sudden drought, after a while, you've picked the bones clean, and there is nothing left to eat.

Kicking the recently humbled dotcom stars I guess is to be expected, but it will itself become tiresome. And then what will fuel the existence of those sites that were created solely for the Schadenfreude? Will they fail and be mocked by a 2nd generation version of themselves? Or simply forgotten? (I suspect they'll be the last to die before a new phase begins.)

And what will become of "eCompanyNow"? Soon they have have no more companies to mock, and no more advertisers to subsidize the mockery. Consolidation is already whittling the new media magazines down to a precious few, and I believe I've heard rumors that "eCompanyNow" will be merged with "Business2.0" and renamed "Business2.0". I hardly care what happens to either, given the fact that both are predicated in their very names on the myth we now have watched vanished before our eyes. There is no "Business2.0" model- that was the lie that we were being sold in the midst of the mania. There is no "eCompanyNow" model to embrace. We're back where we started, looking to the "Fortune" and "Forbes" magazines that preexisted the latest bubble and the "RedHerrings" that decried it for wisdom about what is coming.

FIN.

My vote has to go to Pixelon. This company was created by a vagrant bum that lived out of his car. He managed to convince everyone, including several venture capatalists, that he had created a video streaming technology that would work well across the slow modem connections that prevailed at the time.

All they had done in reality is apply a custom skin to the windows media player.

They blew most of their venture capital in this crazy party (hehe the PR is still readily available), featuring Hosts David Spade and Cindy Margolis; The Who (they got back together for this!?!?!), KISS, Faith Hill, Dixie Chicks, Tony Bennett, LeAnn Rimes, The Brian Setzer Orchestra. They were going to broadcast this event on their new "technology". In the end, they folded and jerky boy is in jail.

You can read more about it here or if you're that type, here.

While I don't really agree with the shaky basis of the opinion that hardware sales will go UP next year (cases get yellow?), it seems apparent that a fair amount of consolidation is taking place among online companies. With consolidation, we have increased viability, naturally...

It also seems pretty obvious that there is a lot of thinning of the herd going on right now, but that is because there was a new market for growth, and people saw other people getting rich no matter how stupid the idea was. Anyone who has looked at the Nasdaq anytime in the last 8 months can see that hemmoraging money is not a viable business model. Which brings me to the idea of viability. Is anyone surprised that companies like you mentioned, J.C. Penneys et al. are doing well and www.buyyourfreakingnecktiesonline.com is tanking? People that know how to run catalog operations are seeing this as a great opportunity to get their same customers without having to send out dead trees... It is not surprising that people with no experience and hence no name recognition or established customer base will have troubles.

As for venture capital - of course businesses started with personal savings are more likely to succeed... Your ass is on the line!

Market cycles dictate that there will be high and low points in our economy, but the rationale presented for a date of 2002 for a recovery seems unconvincing.

...for fscked company.

Make sure you add it! It's about the only really accurate record of the collapse of the IT industry.

It looks like I'll be adding an entry myself in October...we're getting cutback from 30+ employees to 6.

I'm "guaranteed" a slot, but I have to say that our little corner of the IT world has been GROSSLY MISMANAGED.

if the truth ever comes out, this collapse has everything to do with COPORATE WELFARE SCAMS and nothing to do with the talented people at the bottom.

See here for numerous examples of this.

I installed a Linksys router/802.11b AP last Thursday. Everything was fine, but a few hours later, my link to the Internet went dead. I troubleshot for a couple of hours, thinking it was the router. Finally determined that the Reflex connection was dead. Called 1-877-FLEXNET. Number was disconnected. Called the local Portland office # (503-248-9366) and got a message saying to call back during business hours. They did have a number for customers to call for tech support (don't have it with me), which I did. All I got on the phone was a recording saying they had filed for Ch. 7 bankruptcy, and were out of business. I got no notification, or warning, or anything. They were up one day, then dark the next.

The scary part is that because they own the DSLAMs and lines in the communities they service, and signed exclusive marketing agreements with many properites, many of the customers they screwed aren't able to switch to another ISP, because the lines and equipment are tied up in the bankruptcy proceedings...

I called Speakeasy, and they say they can still hook me up, regardless of the Reflex lines, but we'll see. The install will, of course, take weeks. Hopefully, my apartment complex isn't in that boat.

You can see more of the bloody detail of what happened at f*'edcompany.com

(If the URL gets munged or dirty-word-filtered, just go to www.f*'edcompany.com and search for Reflex.)

They're dropping like flies... Rhythms' CEO resigned the other day, and Covad still hasn't released financials, so who knows how they're doing. I just hope Covad stays around, if I end up going with Speakeasy.net. Can't get cable, and I've heard too many horror stories about ILECs (Verizon, etc.) and big providers like Telocity...

Jenova_Six

Ummm, you don't need President Bush to budget cash for cable/DSL to be available. You just need companies with business models that aren't stupid. The fact that only 5% of users have broadband has more to do with its currently poor reliability and higher cost than dial-up service - and the fact that many users haven't seen the killer app (Napster notwithstanding).

There's a difference between neat stuff and significant stuff. ... [D]o Harry and Martha in Dubuque need peer-to-peer?

I think so. Napster adoption has been extremely fast, and not specific to techies. Legal Napster or other apps (not Gnutella, probably, if only because the name sounds obscure and the obvious web address is useless) will drive people to use P2P and adopt broadband soon enough, I think.

And don't forget porn. I've read that there are pic trading P2P tools out there (haven't used any myself of course!) but if there's anything that will sell to Harry and Martha in Dubuque, it's quicker access to hardcore. Don't believe me? Remember VHS, which took off in no small part because it was adopted by the adult industry - and all of those pay sites that were profitable long before Red Hat.

How long is it, before corporations begin to carve up the English dictionary and we won't be able to use a single word without following it with "(tm)"?

Not long. After receiving a strongly-worded letter from Idealab, FC has had to show the company's name as "idealab! (sm)". Still, Idealab (notice that I'm not complying with them?) is the reigning champion in corporate failures on that site.

How long is it, before corporations begin to carve up the English dictionary and we won't be able to use a single word without following it with "(tm)"?

Not long. After receiving a strongly-worded letter from Idealab, FC has had to show the company's name as "idealab! (sm)". Still, Idealab (notice that I'm not complying with them?) is the reigning champion in corporate failures on that site.

FuckedCompany.com getting hacked by idealab! employees angry at the beating and ridicule their company has taken on Fucked Company's news and message boards.

Classic!

FuckedCompany.com getting hacked by idealab! employees angry at the beating and ridicule their company has taken on Fucked Company's news and message boards.

Classic!

Anybody who didn't see northpoint going under 3 months ago and take appropriate action deserves what they got. Jato suffered the same fate. It was pretty clear several months out that they were becoming a FC.

Sorry, I don't have the inclination to waste time and bandwidth on stuff that looks like it might be crap. The guy with the bone in his mouth didn't inspire any confidence. Sites like fucked company or Netslaves and Bubble Economy do a fine job of pointing out the idiocy of the "new economy" thanks very much. As far as my story not getting posted - I'd like to see the submission queue opened up so people could vote on which submissions they'd like to see added.

According to Pud, Wedding Channel is on its way out

According to Pud, Wedding Channel is on its way out

Too bad there isn't a Fucked category...

...now isn't the ideal time for an IPO.

Hell, now isn't a good time to work for a potential Chapter 11 company. The stock options that used to entice people into employment are now meaningless, since the companies have stock values so low (or, like Turbolinux, can't even make an IPO). Everyone's watching FC right now, and the companies can barely keep any bad news held within the walls of their buildings.

This recession isn't just about plunging stock values. It's about the loss of trust between companies and their employees.

Um, AllAdvantage is toast. As is your link.

Pud has instituted a premium service that is worth the money to anyone in the dotcom world. Premium Fucks.

(3) Banner ad leads to TCP_error or 404 or missing page or somewhere else.

Enough of these have reduced my click-throughs due to wasted time.

I don't know about VA, but Red Hat is actually doing OK. They're on track to make a profit this year.

The point isn't whether RedHat can make a profit or not but whether they were justified in IPOing and fostering expectations as unrealistic as they made early on in their creation. A consulting firm with two friends making websites and balancing the budget can be profitable, it doesn't mean they should IPO and try to become a multimillion dollar corporation.

Public companies have higher standards than merely turning a profit to justify an investors expenditure. Sizable return on investment (i.e. better than if the investor just stuck the money in the bank) and high potential growth are also factors. No one has yet convinced me that supporting Linux is not a market with low barrier to entry. Dell, Compaq and IBM have already lead the way in showing the folly of thinking a first mover can win out in the Linux hardware world, I wonder who is going to prove RedHat wrong in the software space.

By paying people to develop software, they have the knowledge in house to provide superior support. Their people don't need to grovel over the code because they wrote it.

Any company that has developers doing support or being in any way connected to support services deserves to be on Fucked Company. Do you think Sun and Microsoft have their kernel programmers answering phones?

That's in the USA. I imagine that it's Mandrake or SuSe in Europe, TurboLinux in Asia. Red Hat is probably the solution for support. That's in the USA. I imagine that it's Mandrake or SuSe in Europe, TurboLinux in Asia.

SuSe has had difficulties. Turbolinux has had similar problems. The fact of the matter is that reality is strongly countering the unbridled optimism that most of the first-mover Linux companies had in the potential commercial viability of support services.

20 or so years ago Jerry Pournelle, writing in Byte, said that in the future (i.e. now) the money wouldn't be in selling software, it would be in selling support (like Red Hat) and documentation (like O'Reilly). He was right.

How was he right? Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Computer Associates, Sun, SAS Institute, etc are making billions in revenue and profit from selling software. Who is making anything remotely close to what the afforementioned companies are doing by selling services?

Ummm, no, it's the engineers, the admins, the IT people, the CEO's, the janitors, the marketroids, the bagel boy, and everyone else who is getting fired. Don't you read f**kedcompany????

If you don't, here's a hint: the dot-com bubble has burst, and silicon valley start ups are dropping like flies. Most of them were started by really "smart" degreed engineers who didn't have a clue how to run a business or make a profit.

- Twid

An interesting example of just this is detailed on FuckedCompany.com where some ICQ logs of eFront's CEO were nabbed and posted by a disgruntled employee. He was discussing his plans to screw affiliates....

I remember when I went to Sillycone Valley last year for a company I was working for, and while searching for prospectable employees for my department I noticed the majority of resumes coming via fax had employment histories for some people as little as about 3-4 months.

After talking with management then arguing with them about why I did not want someone with 4 months experience here and there in my department (security based), they told me to take a quick look around at where I was. Sillycone Valley, home of dot.com computing land, where anyone could lose a job today and have about 2 more the same day.

Well it may have been true late 90's and early 2000, but most of the companies as we all know are history. Its sad to see these things happen (companies going out of business) and that does not set a record though for shortest amount of time in a company.

True story
When I was about 15 years old, I went for a job at Wendy's (hamburger fast food joint). After being interviewed I got the job and was instructed to come back for work later that night. Upon me getting back later that night, I was shown how to clean grills, wash dishes, etc. Then told to buy some black shoes, and some shirts and ties for work (no bs). The whole rundown of job tasks took about 40 minutes.

After I was told how to do everything, I was told to get lunch and hurry back for work. So I ordered lunch sat down and ate, thinking whether or not I would stay. I decided I didn't want to work there. So I quite after eating (hehe).

Total time employed, less than 2 hours. AND I was sent a check for a whole day too.

First, check out: http://www.fuckedcompany.com/extras/efront_letter. cfm

As you can see, eFront's "legal department" is sending out cease and desist letters to anyone who is hosting or linking to the ICQ logs. Wonder if Slashdot will be hit by one?

If you have read the logs, you'll know that in a previous situation, eFront simply copied a cease and desist template off a web page to send. Look's like they've done it here as well.

I like this comment made by bored2 on Pud's website. He says:

regarding the letter:

* It's not signed by a person (but was sent by email? what was the email address in the relevant headers?) A lawyer would sign his/her name. or perhaps the current efront legal dept. consists of Sam in his boxers and a google search for cease and desist letters.

* It starts: "We are contacting you on behalf of eFront Media ("Company")." Umm, but I thought this letter was from eFront? Sam is obviously using a letter from a law firm writing on behalf of a client w/o having changed the relevant parts of the letter.

* "The unauthorized break-in and continued distribution and dissemination of this data violates the Federal wiretapping ***statues***."

With no citation to the relevant "statues".

* "The FBI office of Orange County is currently investigating"

There is a LA and San Diego division offices of the FBI; there is no office called the "Orange County Office." See: http://losangeles.fbi.gov/contact/fo/la/territory. htm

The rest of the letter is just crap, especially: "In addition, we are requesting that you shut down the entire forum for Efront, due to the criminal investigation and the illegal actions that have been conducted with the reading and gathering of such materials."

What is that last clause supposed to mean?

How pathetic.