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Unions, already on the wane, have never gained much hold in the Tech Nation, populated by educated, mobile, skilled and independent-minded workers.

This anti-unionism fed right into the hands of employers. They buttered workers up with promises of get-rich-quick options packages, funky office toys and a sympathetic environment. Who could begrudge those eighty hour work weeks when your dotcom needed you?

Those dotcom feel-good moments were already waning when tech stocks went into freefall and layoffs loomed. Unions wouldn't save everyone from layoffs. I'll be the first to admit they have their problems. But the blatant abuse of tech employees (many often not even granted that status in the contract-labour world) should be a wake-up call. Internet Week reported on a dotcom unionization trend back in January. Maybe it is worth a second look!

Here's why:

1. The dot-com boom has pretty much evaporated, leaving the realm of "professional computer work" to geeky types with college degrees and bad hair (I'm one of them). The work that is done is now more mundane and laborious(billing, insurance, reporting, etc) than $20K-bonus-scooter-riding-dot-com-hipster-streamin g-multimedia stuff. (I'm not bitter-I'm jealous)

2. Computers are now getting bigger and more mainframe-y (See comment above). More and more enterprises are centralizing mission-critical functions, primarily for ease of management as well as power and security. Proof:. We've already got Linux/390, the Solaris E10K, there's some newbigandexciting Intel box out there I keep hearing about that has 64-way SMP and now this.

Anyone have the newest Creative Computing?

August's Netcraft survey has been released. Apache shows a smidgen of a decrease due to some hosting company finally completing conversion of a couple of sites to different software.

So who was right when last month I said that the trend wouldn't continue unless there were a couple thousand more sites left to convert? Was it me or that sold-out journalist?

What happened when an acorn fell on Chicken Little's head? She ran off to the King to tell him the sky was falling.

So an acorn fell on Apache's head. Are you going to run off to tell the CEO the sky is falling as well?

To quote Steve Gilliard, from the site...


I never said Slashdot was neutral. Neither is News Forge. They are advocates. My question was why are there no neutral sites.

According to the previous comment, merely mentioning /. is simply traffic-whoring. Well let's ban all critical analysis right now! The multiple references to PC Magazine were obviously an attempt to get listed in Google searches by clueless newbies too.

slashdot is not journalism and it never claimed to be.

News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. It might not be journalism, but it is biased Tech News. Which is the point.

In part (it is a long and thoughtful read):

In the story, a couple of consultants/network guys wound up in a shelter because they lost their jobs and couldn't pay their bills. One had a 100K a year job, the other a steady 60K consulting gig. These men caught the fear and it has swept them into the gutter. Is the idea of being young and homeless scary? Sure. But here are some factors people have to consider before embracing the fear. Why? Because the fear is a powerful thing. Once it has a hold of you, it owns you. You can't think, can't do anything but absorb the fear and let it control you. Why is the fear spreading so fast, based on ONE article? Because it could be anyone. It was as if everyone now had permission to be scared about their future and all of a sudden, all that liberterian thought they had sucked down was not working. The possibility of poverty, or a quick trip back to 1992 was not what they expected after the boom. And the fact that it's here scares people to the core. There's no work, there doesn't look like there's going to be any work, and people don't see a market for their skills. No more trips to Europe, no more unlimited futures, no more foosball in the office. No more office. But let's look at the circumstances of that article more closely: "

And it goes on.

a pretty good look at the psychology behind why the story struck a raw nerve in folks

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

In part (it is a long and thoughtful read):

In the story, a couple of consultants/network guys wound up in a shelter because they lost their jobs and couldn't pay their bills. One had a 100K a year job, the other a steady 60K consulting gig. These men caught the fear and it has swept them into the gutter. Is the idea of being young and homeless scary? Sure. But here are some factors people have to consider before embracing the fear. Why? Because the fear is a powerful thing. Once it has a hold of you, it owns you. You can't think, can't do anything but absorb the fear and let it control you. Why is the fear spreading so fast, based on ONE article? Because it could be anyone. It was as if everyone now had permission to be scared about their future and all of a sudden, all that liberterian thought they had sucked down was not working. The possibility of poverty, or a quick trip back to 1992 was not what they expected after the boom. And the fact that it's here scares people to the core. There's no work, there doesn't look like there's going to be any work, and people don't see a market for their skills. No more trips to Europe, no more unlimited futures, no more foosball in the office. No more office. But let's look at the circumstances of that article more closely: "

And it goes on.

a pretty good look at the psychology behind why the story struck a raw nerve in folks

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

As a general site, I recommend Netslaves. They have a large number of articles by a number of talented writers, and so it is hard to recommend just one.

There is The Last Time I Ate Neuchatel By Heedless Housman; and many other similar observational pieces.

But the one I actually recommend is the "How To read a 10q" series of articles kicking apart the hard core financials of places like Juno, Salon, Razorfish, Yahoo, and many others. The explanation The Media, Money, and You by Steve Gilliard also should be included with it, as it explains what the series is about. The whole package is really worth looking at.

There is a menu box on the right side devoted just to this series, complete with the intro, etc. Definitely worth putting in for something.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

As a general site, I recommend Netslaves. They have a large number of articles by a number of talented writers, and so it is hard to recommend just one.

There is The Last Time I Ate Neuchatel By Heedless Housman; and many other similar observational pieces.

But the one I actually recommend is the "How To read a 10q" series of articles kicking apart the hard core financials of places like Juno, Salon, Razorfish, Yahoo, and many others. The explanation The Media, Money, and You by Steve Gilliard also should be included with it, as it explains what the series is about. The whole package is really worth looking at.

There is a menu box on the right side devoted just to this series, complete with the intro, etc. Definitely worth putting in for something.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

As a general site, I recommend Netslaves. They have a large number of articles by a number of talented writers, and so it is hard to recommend just one.

There is The Last Time I Ate Neuchatel By Heedless Housman; and many other similar observational pieces.

But the one I actually recommend is the "How To read a 10q" series of articles kicking apart the hard core financials of places like Juno, Salon, Razorfish, Yahoo, and many others. The explanation The Media, Money, and You by Steve Gilliard also should be included with it, as it explains what the series is about. The whole package is really worth looking at.

There is a menu box on the right side devoted just to this series, complete with the intro, etc. Definitely worth putting in for something.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

As a general site, I recommend Netslaves. They have a large number of articles by a number of talented writers, and so it is hard to recommend just one.

There is The Last Time I Ate Neuchatel By Heedless Housman; and many other similar observational pieces.

But the one I actually recommend is the "How To read a 10q" series of articles kicking apart the hard core financials of places like Juno, Salon, Razorfish, Yahoo, and many others. The explanation The Media, Money, and You by Steve Gilliard also should be included with it, as it explains what the series is about. The whole package is really worth looking at.

There is a menu box on the right side devoted just to this series, complete with the intro, etc. Definitely worth putting in for something.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

As a general site, I recommend Netslaves. They have a large number of articles by a number of talented writers, and so it is hard to recommend just one.

There is The Last Time I Ate Neuchatel By Heedless Housman; and many other similar observational pieces.

But the one I actually recommend is the "How To read a 10q" series of articles kicking apart the hard core financials of places like Juno, Salon, Razorfish, Yahoo, and many others. The explanation The Media, Money, and You by Steve Gilliard also should be included with it, as it explains what the series is about. The whole package is really worth looking at.

There is a menu box on the right side devoted just to this series, complete with the intro, etc. Definitely worth putting in for something.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

As a general site, I recommend Netslaves. They have a large number of articles by a number of talented writers, and so it is hard to recommend just one.

There is The Last Time I Ate Neuchatel By Heedless Housman; and many other similar observational pieces.

But the one I actually recommend is the "How To read a 10q" series of articles kicking apart the hard core financials of places like Juno, Salon, Razorfish, Yahoo, and many others. The explanation The Media, Money, and You by Steve Gilliard also should be included with it, as it explains what the series is about. The whole package is really worth looking at.

There is a menu box on the right side devoted just to this series, complete with the intro, etc. Definitely worth putting in for something.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

As a general site, I recommend Netslaves. They have a large number of articles by a number of talented writers, and so it is hard to recommend just one.

There is The Last Time I Ate Neuchatel By Heedless Housman; and many other similar observational pieces.

But the one I actually recommend is the "How To read a 10q" series of articles kicking apart the hard core financials of places like Juno, Salon, Razorfish, Yahoo, and many others. The explanation The Media, Money, and You by Steve Gilliard also should be included with it, as it explains what the series is about. The whole package is really worth looking at.

There is a menu box on the right side devoted just to this series, complete with the intro, etc. Definitely worth putting in for something.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

As a general site, I recommend Netslaves. They have a large number of articles by a number of talented writers, and so it is hard to recommend just one.

There is The Last Time I Ate Neuchatel By Heedless Housman; and many other similar observational pieces.

But the one I actually recommend is the "How To read a 10q" series of articles kicking apart the hard core financials of places like Juno, Salon, Razorfish, Yahoo, and many others. The explanation The Media, Money, and You by Steve Gilliard also should be included with it, as it explains what the series is about. The whole package is really worth looking at.

There is a menu box on the right side devoted just to this series, complete with the intro, etc. Definitely worth putting in for something.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

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.

[ . . . ] when Jim Allchin attacks Linux, he's not going after Linus and the kernel people. He's trying to reach about a hundred CIO/CTO's who can force their company to use Win2K servers on their boxes. All of MS's anti-Linux speeches are designed to get a very small audience to hold the line on Linux growth within the corporation. Of course it pisses you off, but that isn't the point

There is a lot more to it as well in the following paragraphs.

Point Being, the attack and response should not be against each others egos, but for the hearts and minds of the people who really count, who make the high power decisions. I note that

Late Tuesday, Microsoft responded to the open letter. "We appreciate the dialog on this issue--it's exactly the type of discussion Craig was hoping to foster," the company said in a statement.

Somehow it feels like MS is trying to try to trip up the evangistas into being too brash, by seeming to be so reasonable.

And utterly un-repentant.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

[ . . . ] when Jim Allchin attacks Linux, he's not going after Linus and the kernel people. He's trying to reach about a hundred CIO/CTO's who can force their company to use Win2K servers on their boxes. All of MS's anti-Linux speeches are designed to get a very small audience to hold the line on Linux growth within the corporation. Of course it pisses you off, but that isn't the point

There is a lot more to it as well in the following paragraphs.

Point Being, the attack and response should not be against each others egos, but for the hearts and minds of the people who really count, who make the high power decisions. I note that

Late Tuesday, Microsoft responded to the open letter. "We appreciate the dialog on this issue--it's exactly the type of discussion Craig was hoping to foster," the company said in a statement.

Somehow it feels like MS is trying to try to trip up the evangistas into being too brash, by seeming to be so reasonable.

And utterly un-repentant.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

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.

Closed Peer Reviews can lead to group think and political agendas

Open peer reviews opens the process to people who are not peers, which is fine by itself, opens up the speculations and discussions of experts among themselves to criticism buy others with other political agendas.

This is not restricted to the easily cited religious groups.

For example, there is always the competition for research dollars. In support of this idea there is this article over at Netslaves, not particularly a geek site, but certainly devoted to the run of the mill technology worker. To quote one snippet:

Got a problem? Well, if you have you can be sure that a politician will tell you that "there is no evidence that..." that the problem exists. Of course, not - they don't put research money into exploring the really serious problems anyway. (Depleted uranium weapons for example). "Science" - it's what people with money decide they want measured up with numbers.

Academics often analyse, without providing real solutions, always expecting someone else to find the solutions. These other people (politicians, business leaders, etc.) often give research grants to academics, as a substitute for doing anything about the identified problems. The way it works is very clever - the officials give grants for academics to analyse problems as they say they cannot do anything about a problem until there is "evidence". The reseachers then produce research which concludes by proving the need for future research - i.e. more work for them. Sometimes, of course, the academics come up with a different way of doing things, then this is turned into a procedure which ensures that practioners in a field work in the new approved fashion. This "evidence based" method doesn't really change anything except it does provide another set of paper work so that the effected practioners tick boxes to prove they have done the things in the new way. Nothing else much changes - except that everyone becomes very highly educated.

You'll say that that is a jaundiced view - it doesn't quite match the way the world is. There is no way I can provide "scientific evidence" for it. Yet I think its "good enough" a description.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Closed Peer Reviews can lead to group think and political agendas

Open peer reviews opens the process to people who are not peers, which is fine by itself, opens up the speculations and discussions of experts among themselves to criticism buy others with other political agendas.

This is not restricted to the easily cited religious groups.

For example, there is always the competition for research dollars. In support of this idea there is this article over at Netslaves, not particularly a geek site, but certainly devoted to the run of the mill technology worker. To quote one snippet:

Got a problem? Well, if you have you can be sure that a politician will tell you that "there is no evidence that..." that the problem exists. Of course, not - they don't put research money into exploring the really serious problems anyway. (Depleted uranium weapons for example). "Science" - it's what people with money decide they want measured up with numbers.

Academics often analyse, without providing real solutions, always expecting someone else to find the solutions. These other people (politicians, business leaders, etc.) often give research grants to academics, as a substitute for doing anything about the identified problems. The way it works is very clever - the officials give grants for academics to analyse problems as they say they cannot do anything about a problem until there is "evidence". The reseachers then produce research which concludes by proving the need for future research - i.e. more work for them. Sometimes, of course, the academics come up with a different way of doing things, then this is turned into a procedure which ensures that practioners in a field work in the new approved fashion. This "evidence based" method doesn't really change anything except it does provide another set of paper work so that the effected practioners tick boxes to prove they have done the things in the new way. Nothing else much changes - except that everyone becomes very highly educated.

You'll say that that is a jaundiced view - it doesn't quite match the way the world is. There is no way I can provide "scientific evidence" for it. Yet I think its "good enough" a description.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

However, it doesn't have the pedigree of the Raymond peice. A quick sample:

This is the logic of "geekboy dating":

+ Want someone
+ Can't get them immediately (at all)
+ Declare that you don't want them after all
+ Repeat

If that reads like shampoo instructions, you're getting the picture. If you think that's normal or healthy, you're missing the point.

Definitely worth a read

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

However, it doesn't have the pedigree of the Raymond peice. A quick sample:

This is the logic of "geekboy dating":

+ Want someone
+ Can't get them immediately (at all)
+ Declare that you don't want them after all
+ Repeat

If that reads like shampoo instructions, you're getting the picture. If you think that's normal or healthy, you're missing the point.

Definitely worth a read

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

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.

In case it's not unbeleivably obvious to everyone, Slashdot is a weblog (not to mention others like NetSlaves and so on). Yeah, it's not the rantings of an angst ridden 13 year old, but who said weblogs have to be personal? I started up my weblog to post up news and pictures for family members who couldn't come to my wedding earlier this year and because Blogger makes it very easy to do so. It quickly evolved past that. The response included old college friends turning up in the discussion forum and some good technical discussions with total strangers. I've kept a website for 5 years, and never had that kind of response. Now some friends from my writing group have approached me about setting up a literary zine online through Blogger. It seems clear to me that weblogs are one of the main ways that people are going to use the web to communicate. Blog on!
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.

netslaves figures out that napster probably won't work as well as it hopes.

eudas

I cut and pasted this from netslaves.

I don't live in New York, I'm certainly not old enough to have been a frat-boy in 1984 and my IQ is in the low 150's rather than the high 130's.

I'd like to thank everyone who responded and/or moderated it up though - you made my day!

--Shoeboy