Andreessen Interview Discusses Post-Crash Innovation

kevcol writes "The SF Chronicle has an interview with Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, talking about innovation after the dot-bomb crash, how AOL doesn't understand its own customers, his reaction to some comments by Larry Ellison, who believes that 'innovation primarily comes from big companies like Oracle', and Andreessen's post-Netscape experience as head of OpsWare (formerly LoudCloud)."

Comments

You know he is right

[Camel Pilot]

innovation primarily comes from big companies like Oracle

Just the other day I was reading that Microsoft is readying new technology to stop web popup's in their browser - this sort of fast paced innovation is what we can expect from leaders within an industry.

Re:You know he is right

[Jacer]

Big companies like Oracle. Not like Microsoft. While I know that a lot of large companies have some bad (bad == evil on par with the antichrist) Oracle has typically made good contributions to the community. I do seem to recall them making a profoundly dumb move once or twice, but the details are hazy at best. Not like Microsoft where I can specifically call out atleast a dozen things they have done that aren't just wrong, but evil equal to that to the antichrist.

Re:You know he is right

[IWorkForMorons]

I do seem to recall them making a profoundly dumb move once or twice, but the details are hazy at best.

I think the details went along the lines of "We'll buy Peoplesoft to corner the CRM market. Then we'll drive the company into the ground and leave all their customers with no choice but to buy Oracle software." Don't know if those are the exact words, but Oracle's CEO has come out to say things pretty close to that. Sorry, but evil is evil.

As for innovation only being done by big companies, I do believe Apple started out in a garage. And wasn't eBay started in a basement. Innovation is done by people with a need, or by people who see a need and want to fill it. It's not done by corporations with a desire for more money. Innovation costs money without a guarenteed return on investment. For a business, that's a risk too big for most to take.

Re:You know he is right

[banzai75]

Not trying to be a Pro-MS guy, but... they may be slow due to other reasons. It probably has to go through 5000 lawyers first to make sure they won't get sued if they put the feature in.

Anyone recall MS trying to put a spam filter in outlook in 1999 and then getting sued because it filtered "greeting cards". Talk about a crap lawsuit...

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php /2 4451

Re:You know he is right

[rev_sanchez]

Immediate profit motive can be an unreliable impetus for real innovation. Instead of focusing on real quality and good engineering you're sometimes forced into tie-ins, FUD, and other similar schemes to get short term results. Sometimes large organizations can do a better job with this because they have recourses to invest in the long term work it takes to do it right. If there isn't any need to push quality forward because of market conditions then you just manipulate the market (advertising, FUD, differential pricing) to sell more. The key to innovation doesn't really appear to be size as much as competition and patience.

Re:You know he is right

[afidel]

The funniest thing is it isn't to corner the CRM market, it's to become the number 2 CRM vendor and make it essentiall a three horse race (SAP, Oracle, Siebel) with salesforce.com and a couple others as dark horses. That's why it's so insane the Ellison would drain all the capital out of Oracle to buy Peoplesoft, it just gains them a bit of marketshare and a customer list that will lose almost half it's value as soon as he gets it.

Re:You know he is right

[prockcore]

Big companies like Oracle. Not like Microsoft.

Yeah, like that Fulltext search feature which allows you to quickly search a database and get relevancy ratings.

Oh wait, that was Mysql.

Re:You know he is right

[Eraser_]

I think the details went along the lines of "We'll buy Peoplesoft to corner the CRM market. Then we'll drive the company into the ground and leave all their customers with no choice but to buy Oracle software." Don't know if those are the exact words, but Oracle's CEO has come out to say things pretty close to that. Sorry, but evil is evil.

Don't we always get mad at people for doing black box innovation? At least Larry Ellison knows what he wants, and takes initiative to make it happen, and tells us what he is up to. If I had a billion dollars I too would buy out the competition. Thats business, it makes the world go around. The competition doesn't have to bend over to the buyout, just as you can make a replacement for peoplesoft. Act! is a crappy version of peoplesoft when you get down to it, why can't symantec make it better and market it to peoplesoft customers who got burned? If Cisco bought out Linksys, and then replaced all the boxes on the shelves with 8 port Catalyst switches and a 500$ pricetag, and cut off all the old support contracts as they expired (pretend your 5 port dsl router had onsite tech support), you can bet some other company (dsl routers and switches inc.) would step up and produce a competing product. Sucks to be you, but you can just go purchase the competitions product.

Re:You know he is right

[Hobophile]

Cisco already bought Linksys.

Re:You know he is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Not like Microsoft where I can specifically call out atleast a dozen things they have done that aren't just wrong, but evil equal to that to the antichrist.

I bet you can't. Go ahead, do it.

Re:You know he is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone recall MS trying to put a spam filter in outlook in 1999 and then getting sued because it filtered "greeting cards"

Yes, and the "spam filter" suspiciously blocked everyone else's greeting cards, but not those from MS.

MS got sued because they were screwing with people's email, in (yet another) attempt to leverage their desktop monopoly to eliminate competition.

The lawsuit was far from "crap".

Re:You know he is right

[Greger47]

Just the other day I was reading that Microsoft is readying new technology to stop web popup's in their browser - this sort of fast paced innovation is what we can expect from leaders within an industry.

I just wish I could find the person who inovated and made those those popups possible in the fist place....

...and hang him high.

/greger

Re:You know he is right

[hawkestein]

There's a less cynical version why large organizations are not always the most innovative, what Clayton Christensen calls "the innovator's dilemma". Large, successful companies will tend to optimize towards the products that makes them the most money. The newer technologies are initially not as profitable as their older, more established counterparts, so it isn't economical for the larger companies to invest in them. However, the new technologies have a lot of room to improve, and will eventually supplant the old technology, and by the time the large company realizes this is happening, it's too late.

Christensen's book has a lot of examples of these types of disruptive technologies, from hard drives to hydraulics.

Re:You know he is right

[Trepalium]

Interesting choice of companies. The low-end networking equipment market is healthy exactly because there's a lot of competition. If I don't like Linksys, I can buy D-Link, Netgear, SMC, OvisLink, Microsoft, 3COM, or any one of a dozen other manufacturers. If I find one manufacturer's product isn't working up to my expectations, ripping out one and replacing it with something else from some other manufacturer means little downtime, and no costs to 'migrate'. These are commodity products.

The high-end CRM market is a different creature. There is competition, but not enough. If Oracle isn't treating me right, I have alternatives, but I likely already gave Oracle a lot of money, and moving to another vendor's product will be expensive. I need to move all my data from one to the other (and hope it works). I would need to retrain the entire staff on the new package. Unfortunately, this 'lock-in' means CRM packages don't work as commodities.

Re:You know he is right

[cjjjer]

Are you whacked? Microsoft has made the biggest contribution to the community, the expansion of the internet. Lets face it how many people would be using the internet it wasn't graphical? I can just see my grandmother using PINE and Lynx. And as for Linux it wouldn't be even a common word if it wasn't for the internet. So looking back at all this Linux users have MS to congratulate. I know this won't be popular with the majority of readers but hey the truth sometimes hurts.

Re:You know he is right

[Eraser_]

Well, I know the home networking commodities are a lot different from putting a ton of data into a database and then having to migrate it, but it was mainly an example. Technically someone could build a similar-enough interface onto a backend program.

Where there is demand there will be an alternative. Look at linux or the GNU project in general. People wanted an alternative to UNIX, and so one sprang forth. It has taken ~10 years (1990/91 was the first "linux" right?) for Linux to mature into something usable. There is also the more "corporate friendly" FreeBSD. (You would think Cisco/Linksys woulda used BSD instead of GPL... anyways :)

Re:You know he is right

[juuri]

Because it wasn't about buying Peoplesoft in the first place. The whole point was to make peoplesoft's ongoing merger plans look foolish and to disuade current customers from buying their software again. If Orcale made them look like that had little to stand on they could swoop in and steal many of their customers.

Re:You know he is right

[Anonymous Coward]

ISPs were recommending and supporting network stacks and GUI browsers before Microsoft included any TCP/IP support at all. They accomplished nothing more than luring away other businesses' customers, and the network would be just as large (and more reliable) if they'd stayed out.

Re:You know he is right

[radja]

not too high, and don't make the noose too tight. we have to be able to pelt him with rotten tomatoes and roadkill hedgehogs for at least a day.

Re:You know he is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Or for a more recent example, SGI. If you'd like one that is currently in progress, Sun.

"post-crash"

[Wigfield]

Does he mean the economy or the browser?

heh

Re:"post-crash"

[Frymaster]

Does he mean the economy or the browser

well, i hope he means the browser since he knows jack all about the economy. witness from the article:

Do you want to put up a tariff, do you want the price of Chinese goods to rise? You're taxing your own citizens, and you're paying more for the things you buy at Wal-Mart. Why would you do that?

apparently andreesen thinks economics stopped with david ricardo.

the reason you want to put up a trade barrier with china is because they compete on price by breaking the international rules: child labour, forced labour, unsafe working conditions, bad envirionmental track record. you name it. if "free trade" is going to work (a long shot) then there have to be baseline standards about what constitutes fair manufacturing practices - otherwise the "winner" in the global economy is the country most willing to exploit its citizens, fuck its environment and provide substandard or unsafre products.

bah!

Re:"post-crash"

[Golias]

otherwise the "winner" in the global economy is the country most willing to exploit its citizens, fuck its environment and provide substandard or unsafre products.

No, that would be the loser, because they would end up with angry citizens, poisoned resources, and a reputation for producing shoddy goods.

The winner would be the country with well-off people who saved a few bucks on each pair of jeans.

Re:"post-crash"

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for that clarification captain obvious. I think as much was implied by the use of quotes around winner.

Re:"post-crash"

[Anonymous Coward]

And your economics ended with Karl Marx (or Pat Buchanan).

the reason you want to put up a trade barrier with china is because they compete on price by breaking the international rules: child labour, forced labour, unsafe working conditions, bad envirionmental track record. you name it. if "free trade" is going to work (a long shot) then there have to be baseline standards about what constitutes fair manufacturing practices - otherwise the "winner" in the global economy is the country most willing to exploit its citizens, fuck its environment and provide substandard or unsafe products.

You just described Communist-era Poland. Top management didn't fare too well there.

Re:"post-crash"

[Qrlx]

and a reputation for producing shoddy goods.

As more and more manufacturing is done outside the USA, what's the future look like for a country that doesn't manufacture any goods, and the few that they do aren't cost-competitive with the rest of the world?

It is possible to have a completely service-based economy? Because it looks like we've pinned our tail to that particular donkey.

And must winning come at the expense of the losers, who let's say are children working in an unsafe factory breathing pollution, sewing together Levis for import by the so-called winners? Isn't the victory rather hollow when the winners goods that would never be produced under our own standards?

Re:"post-crash"

[krb]

well, there's another possible reason to tax foreign goods, which is to make domestic products sell better. even if people are spending more for the same object, less money is travelling to china so more money stays in the hands of americans, overall.

this is one major argument for letting halliburton and other us companies take contracts for rebuilding iraq, even if they do it for more money than iraqis, because if the US is gonna spend a few billion dollars, we should try and keep most of those billions inside the US economy.

i don't necessarily agree with these arguments (they both oversimplify), but i've heard them used time and again.

Re:"post-crash"

[Azghoul]

So you put up the trade barrier and instead of China moving along the development path to the point where their people are able to fight for better conditions you bury them so they cannot compete.

Where's the sense in keeping the poor nations down, even in markets where they are able to compete with rich nations? (agriculture, basic manufacturing, textiles)

Free trade is the best shot at raising the level for all people. You're not going to get every nation to comply with your dreams of baseline standards. Why should developing country X jump to some standard that makes their goods more expensive, when they know they'll lose their industries to country Y who ignores such standards?

Given true free trade, competition will win out. Your "winner" with the unsafe products will get driven out of the business by reputation, if not by litigation. Bought any eastern European cars in the U.S. lately??

Re:"post-crash"

[lpret]

I don't really think you could call your argument an economic discussion but more of a political or social argument. Also, there will always be a country begging to be whored out. Look at Mexico, as soon as their social and political system started working out better, that meant prices went higher and so companies have moved a lot of manufacturing to other countries that will open wide to American manufacturing.

The biggest problem is that our economic system demands low prices, and as such, we disregard social issues and instead focus on the price. If you opened a store that marketed itself as not being made by slave labour and it was environmentally friendly but cost 40% more, you'd lose to the lower priced companies.

This is why politics has to come in and meddle in the economic affairs -- but we all know that this can backfire. So, I think you may have some good points about social injustice, but that is not a viable argument in the face of millions of consumers.

Re:"post-crash"

[Anonymous Coward]

So? Since when do American (or European for that matter) companies hesitate to let chinese children manufacture their products? And where'nt it the Americans who did not sign the Kyoto treaty?

Re:"post-crash"

[jazman_777]

the reason you want to put up a trade barrier with china is because they compete on price by breaking the international rules: child labour, forced labour, unsafe working conditions, bad envirionmental track record. you name it. if "free trade" is going to work (a long shot) then there have to be baseline standards about what constitutes fair manufacturing practices - otherwise the "winner" in the global economy is the country most willing to exploit its citizens, fuck its environment and provide substandard or unsafre products.

So if free Americans want to make deals with Chinese businesses, explain to me why they shouldn't be allowed to. You are absolutely free not to. Is it so you can use the US Goverment for your Most Holy Moral Crusade[tm], so you can feel like The Righteous American Crusader? What your really talking about is managed trade, not free trade.

Re:"post-crash"

[Master Bait]

So you put up the trade barrier and instead of China moving along the development path to the point where their people are able to fight for better conditions you bury them so they cannot compete.

I don't see the cause and affect here. Why would Chinese be able to change their government because their country becomes more prosperous? I think that wealth empowers those who already have power.

Re:"post-crash"

[Azghoul]

I'm not sure how you can say that, given that the average American now make something like 20k per year (I'm too lazy to look it up)?

If you look at the history of the industrial revolution here and in the UK (among every other developed nation), they all go through periods of worker exploitation and environmental degradation, followed by spectacular recoveries of each.

So why not help developing nations make gobs of money so that it WILL filter down to the workers, and move them up to first-world status much faster?

Why do the workers in said countries flock to "sweatshops" like Nike? (Nike already pays much more than average for the area)

There is a definite progression that has to happen in these nations. They cannot, and will never be able to, jump from hunter/gatherer to diamond age in a single generation (hyperbole, of course). So why not encourage them to compete where they are able on the global stage instead of blocking their products and leaving the in the dustbin of history?

Is "the environment" in the U.S. better now than it was during the 1800's? Sure is, and the reason is that we were able to climb up from it. Everyone else has to follow the same path. Maybe there is another path, but noone's found it (or followed it successfully) yet...

Re:"post-crash"

[sdcharle]

The winner would be the country with well-off people who saved a few bucks on each pair of jeans.

Yeah, few people realize that that's the forgotten item on Hilbert's list of challenging problems for the 20th Century, 'save a few bucks on jeans'.

Thanks to the exploitative practices of Wal-Mart, et al, that problem was indeed solved in the last century.

In fact, I am wearing cheap jeans now!

Re:"post-crash"

[Imperator]

I agree with you that there are lots of good arguments against free trade. But you have to remember that there's another huge advantage to free trade that no one talks about: peace. One of the benefits of the Marshall Plan, the EEC, and all that was that [Western] European economies were integrated by trade, and this made war between them untenable--their economies would collapse the moment the shooting started, because trade would be cut off. For all their tensions, the US will not go to war with China, because our economies are increasingly interdependent. Free trade is not just about economics; it's about creating a world in which war is unthinkable. That does not automatically make free trade good; as you pointed out, it has many issues. But for all the real evils of Wal-Mart in China, consider the security both countries enjoy from each other, and the secondary savings like not spending as much money on defense.

Re:"post-crash"

[Golias]

Hey, I was just trying to post a witty comment to be a smart-ass. Is it my fault somebody medded me as "Informative" for it?

It is possible to have a completely service-based economy?

Yes, but not for the United States. Even if that was our goal, our massive export of food alone would prevent such an experiment from ever taking place. However, Hong Kong started out as an economy based on sweatshop manufacturing, but became Filthy Stinking Rich (by Asian standards, anyway) by converting to a mostly service-based economy.

People always make the dire warnings about the US "moving to a service-based economy" as if it's a bad thing. All that really means is that fewer of us are working in factories and more of us are working in offices. That's only bad news if you are a union boss, because the labor pool (and therefore your power base) is shrinking relative to the rest of the economy. Most people are happier in an office than in a factory.

Consider this, someday we might automate all manufacturing to the point that the world is a "completely service-based economy," so you might as well get used to the idea.

Re:"post-crash"

[scot4875]

Why is it that every time someone points out deplorable actions (particularly in regards to corporate/government activity) like forced/child labor, someone has to come to their defense with the "it's legal, why shouldn't they?" argument?

Honor is doing the right thing when nobody is looking. Obviously we can't trust some businessmen that don't care about honor, so somebody has to keep an eye on them. All that the whistle generally blowers get out of it is a bunch of grief from people more interested in arguing about legality than morality.

It's almost as if people didn't want to know that they're contributing to morally reprehensible actions, and are upset because they can't claim ignorance anymore.

--Jeremy

Re:"post-crash"

[Dashing Leech]

otherwise the "winner" in the global economy is the country most willing to exploit its citizens, fuck its environment and provide substandard or unsafre products.

You know, that sounds like a good reason to change the method of taxation. Right now we generally tax "good" things for the economy (income, interest, consumer purchases, etc.). Wouldn't it make more sense to tax "bad" things like energy usage, pollution, and waste? This would provide economic incentives for running clean operations rather than "cheap and dirty".

Following this principle, rich people would still pay more taxes (assuming they do now, which isn't necessarily true), because they have bigger houses that use more energy, less efficient cars (SUVs, big cars, limos), use more gas, travel more, have more electronic toys, etc. Poor people generally can't afford the things that use up all that energy or produce pollution, other than heating and lighting their homes, so won't be taxed as much.

Applying this to international trade, countries with poor environmental & labour conditions would have higher tariffs than countries that made the same products cleanly and safely.

Hmm. Probably won't work. I can't figure out why, but I'm sure somebody will point it out. I'm just rambling and wasting time right now anyway.

Re:"post-crash"

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife was involved helping a North-American company move some manufacturing to China. When she was in China she saw incredible violations of North American safety and health standards. Primarily chemicals being stored and used in very unsafe ways.

She took pictures.

When she showed them to higher-ups in the company after she got back to North America, the response was "don't worry about it, it is ok by local standards". In other words, one of the reasons they can do the work so cheap in China is that they can skip out on health and safety costs.

Re:"post-crash"

[Anonymous Coward]

Following this principle, rich people would still pay more taxes (assuming they do now, which isn't necessarily true)...

Sorry if they are out of date, but here's the first set of numbers I could find: The 1992 Statistical Abstract of the United States shows that the top 7% of people filing returns (gross income of $75,000 or more), paid 51% of total income taxes. The rich do pay more taxes.

Eric Christian Berg

Re:"post-crash"

[lateral]

this made war between them untenable--their economies would collapse the moment the shooting started, because trade would be cut off.

According to Alvin Toffler, in his book War and Anti-War, Germany and Britain were each others biggest trading partners when they went to war in 1914. Which is not to say that their economies didn't collapse, only that interdependence wasn't a barrier to war.

L.

Re:"post-crash"

[sketerpot]

What your really talking about is managed trade, not free trade.

No, it's free trade. "Free trade" and "capitalism" are, by definition, the system of the USA. If the USA changes that system, it's still free trade and capitalism. Trust me. I know what I'm joking about.

Re:"post-crash"

[Pflipp]

Personally I first thought this was about the Microsoft patent on automatic online software malfunction reporting, which has prior art in Netscape. (Full Circle, whatsitcaled. Annoying anyway.)

"Andreessen Interview Discusses Post-Crash Innovation"

Admit it, it's up for two interpretations :-)

Re:"post-crash"

[Qrlx]

D'oh, forgot about the food! And as I wrote that, I was eating microwave popcorn from ConAgra.

Some people would argue that moving away from factories means we're not really "making" anything more. Capitalism is taking raw materials, adding value, and turning a buck on the deal. I guess the raw materials now are things like the big mess in the wiring closet and the value gets added with the help of Visio. But it's difficult to see how wealth will be created in a "service based economy."

Re:"post-crash"

[kcbrown]

otherwise the "winner" in the global economy is the country most willing to exploit its citizens, fuck its environment and provide substandard or unsafre products.

No, that would be the loser, because they would end up with angry citizens, poisoned resources, and a reputation for producing shoddy goods.

Angry citizens are irrelevant in the face of modern weaponry wielded by a military that is on the side of the government and not the people. And the cheapest laborer is one who is paid barely enough to survive and who lives in the cheapest possible conditions.

Oh, and shoddy goods are the ones that seem to sell best, not worst, as long as they're the cheapest -- because price is the thing that matters most. Otherwise you'll have to explain why the PC won over the Macintosh, why the Intel processors won over Motorola's, why winmodems got as popular as they did, etc. The history of computing is replete with examples of superior products failing because they weren't the cheapest (look at the DEC Alpha for just one example).

Re:"post-crash"

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo; close trade "ties" demonstrably do not stop wars. In the case of post-WWII Europe, maintaining the peace probably had a lot more to do with the US maintaining n armored/mech divisions in Western Europe (and a common enemy with a genocidal history) than interlocking trade relations.

Peoples will go to war even when its not in their best economic interests, for all sorts of reasons (like the current ruling party losing power, e.g. Argentina invading the Falklands).

Re:"post-crash"

[tfreport]

The problem with your logic is that you have not stated what the top 7% of people filing returns made in total income that year. If it is over 51% of the nation's income than they would be paying a lower amount in percentage than someone poorer. Also, income tax is not the only type of tax, most middle class individuals see a huge raise in their percentage due to Social Security taxes. Factor those in and you would see a different percent of taxes being paid by the top 7%. The rich may pay more in taxes (dollar amount), but, of course they are rich and have more (again in real dollars) to pay. The real question becomes should they pay a higher percentage and if so what is the fair rate. That is where it gets tricky and your poor statistics are no help.

Re:"post-crash"

[Master Bait]

Wealth doesn't give us human rights -- we have built wealth because we have human rights. Free markets aren't really free unless the people are free. Current so-called free trade is skewed because unfree people's labor is exploited like an animal.

All I propose is that there be a tariff based on the UN Declaration of Human Rights. If people lack the freedom to form unions, then a tariff of a certain percentage be applied to items entering this (or any Western) country. Same thing with reasonable environmental laws -- tariffs get collected on the polluters.

Money is the only thing that business does, or should, understand. It is not the perogative of business to provide human rights. Business is a-moral. So if they treat their people like dirt, they should have a profit incentive, provided by their customers, to not do so.

Re:"post-crash"

[Azghoul]

Well, the only trouble I can see with your proposal is the "reasonable" part: What are reasonable environmental laws for the people of Nicaragua?

The trouble with tariffs is that they hurt the little people on the other end far more than their lack hurts anyone in the U.S...

In theory, your proposal is reasonable (hehe, oops, I said it too :)). In practice, I'm afraid many 3rd world nations won't listen to that sort of thing. I think it's better pragmatically to get money to the working poor.

Granted, business will try to exploit workers. However, get American companies into these countries (Nike, etc), and then harrass Nike into improving the workers conditions... that might work best of all.

Either way, interesting thought, basing a tariff on a human rights declaration...

And unrelated to the rather nice discussion we just had, I'd like to send a big "Fuck You" to the liberal jackass that marked my earlier post (the grandparent to this one) as a troll. :)

Re:"post-crash"

[pinkocommie]

Wealth -> Quality of life -> Quality of Education -> Lots of good stuff :)

Re:"post-crash"

[ykiwi]

if you are still struggling to understand basic economics after the excellent replies, just consider one case study: Japan. we don't tend to complain about their child labor these days...

Millions of dollars in after the fact.

[ender-iii]

Not to harp on this guy, but i increasingly read that he's kind of an ass, was against mozilla being open because he was too fond of his baby Netscape (which had turned to crap under his rule). I am the lone developer of an application and what i want to point out is timing. Where's my millions of dollar? I want to open my own night club too. Ahh, venture capital. Where are you now.

Re:Millions of dollars in after the fact.

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked at Netscape for 6 months back in 1994/1995. Andreessen was definitely full of himself. He's the kind of guy that thinks his shit don't stink, but it does.

Re:Millions of dollars in after the fact.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes for those 6 months he was the Chief Janitor in charge of the mop.

Way to go!

Re:Millions of dollars in after the fact.

[GlacialDecay]

The moderation of Slashdot has gotten too politicized. Expressing a negative opinion about some tech sacred cow is automatically a "troll".

I could give a shit whether people agree or not that Andreessen is a bland, sickening, corporate toad. It's an opinion. I'm not looking to start some pointless flame war. Why does my opinion have to be hidden in the basement?

There is way too much ass-kissing of anyone associated with commercial open source companies, it smacks of bad faith; economic self-interest masquerading as editorial control. If I want biased, economically-motivated coverage I'll read the Wall Street Journal thanks.

Dot-bomb

[plinius]

But does Andresson have anything useful to say about the thousands left unemployed by the dot-bomb debacle, or the devastating effect it had on silly-con valley? And do his well-respected insights acknowledge the sad fact that American computer companies gladly replaced American tech workers with foreignors in order to save literally only a few thousand dollars on taxes? Does he have anything to say about the evils of corporate greed or the neglect of human need that have long characterized the American economy?

Re:Dot-bomb

[frodo from middle ea]

Obligatory Simpsons Quote :- Blame it on the guy who can't speak English<P>
Surely you do realise that those very jobs were created by the dot-com boom. It was a bubble which was destined to burst. Don't blame the foreigners for faults in your own economic structure. You chose capitalism as your economy , and now you are seeing the ugly side of it.<P>Capitalism just like any other socio-economical structure has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Re:Dot-bomb

[poot_rootbeer]

Why not listen to what Andreesen has to say, instead of waiting for him to say what you WANT him to say?

Amazingly enough, an interview cannot cover every conceivable topic that exists.

Re:Dot-bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

This is insightful how?

If he doesn't talk about the size of my girlfriends breasts, it's probably because he wasn't asked about that topic in this artical dumb shit.

Re:Dot-bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

We're supposed to respect this comment when the author can't even select the right option to include inline html tags? And he obviously missed his mistakes on the preview page. Great way to make yourself look stupid.

Re:Dot-bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy has to be a troll. The malformed user name, the aol.com home page, the wrong choice of post type to handle inline html, the fragmented and incoherent style, and the simplistic political rant all point to a troll laughing about having another crap post at +5.

Re:Dot-bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, another /. quasi-socialist.

The thousands left unemployed never suffered, this isn't the industrial revolution anymore -have you heard? All of my friends found better jobs here in the Valley, and I'm left in a cash-poor company. What devastating impact pray tell!? Did you know that recessions are an economic cleaning house to get rid of bad business?

(Did you know that communism failed?)

All of the jobs that are getting shipped overseas are helping to boom India's economy. Do they not count? Again, show me the suffering, where is it? What, some low-level developer has to sink into temporary sys-admin work contractually at 30 bucks an hour? Oh the horror!

Taxes are legalized theft, saving money on them is a moral good, How do you rationalize indentured sevantitude considering how much work you do just for the gov't to exist? Your a indentured servant for over 6 months a year in Europe (it's obvious you're not an american, here it's 4 months)

Get out of the 19th century there big guy.

You're in dire need of Hayeks "The Road To Serfdom"

Re:Dot-bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm ok... that is called Market Forces... if we had it your way we would be still paying swith board operators to move phono plugs from one port to another when ever we had to make a phone call.. was that evil corporate greed????

Re:Dot-bomb

[plinius]

You make a foolish claim when you say that I "chose" capitalism. I did not. Nor did I choose its ugly side. You might as well tell someone suffering from pneumonia that they chose it. And capitalism in its American form, which so many other countries think is so perfect that they fill out business schools with their foreign students, is indeed like a disease. Corporations of all nationalities infect our democracy like some fungal rot and have taken over its thinking capacity to serve itself. And most likely they infect your system too.

Re:Dot-bomb

[Billly Gates]

Read the article.

He speaks as a CEO/CIO. He feels sorry and bad for those losing their jobs but he supports free trade and thinks cheaper prices will equal more jobs farther down the road. I guess he views coding as more unskilled vs actual managment.

He went on mentioning American manufactoring is almost non existant now but companies like Wallmart who outsource everything from China could not bring in such low prices and a change from that would be a tax for everyone!

In other words he is pro outsourcing, falsly believing taht more profit margins equal more jobs.

Re:Dot-bomb

[plinius]

falsly believing taht more profit margins equal more jobs

He's not justifying himself. He's excusing himself, letting himself off the hook. Big difference.

former co-founder?

[trentblase]

is he no longer a co-founder?

Re:former co-founder?

[tuffy]

is he no longer a co-founder?

Perhaps the article was written by revisionist historians.

Remember, Mr. Ellison...

[Scoria]

'innovation primarily comes from big companies like Oracle'

Even your company was once an "innovative startup."

Re:Remember, Mr. Ellison...

[the morgawr]

I was under the impression that Oracle started as a cheep competitor to IBM's RDBMS. That would make IBM the innovator.

Re:Remember, Mr. Ellison...

[ben_white]

Read the article, he acknoldges that.

Re:Remember, Mr. Ellison...

[jandrese]

If you read the article, you'd notice the point where Oracle just implemented something developed by IBM, a funny thing called a relational database. Turns out it was something of a hit.

Re:Remember, Mr. Ellison...

[canfirman]

Reminds me of the joke...

What's the difference between Larry Ellison and God?

And the answer...

...God doesn't think He's Larry.

...lame, I know.

Re:Remember, Mr. Ellison...

[Anonymous Coward]

Larry Ellision exists.

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

[Animats]

He's selling a tool to install Microsoft security patches. This is innovation?

Actually building a secure server - now that would be innovation.

Re:Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

[Eraser_]

/me puts on cynacle hat

It would be innovation if the product actually does as it's told. If it doesn't fail for unknown reasons, or succeed in not installing the patch, but report everything is installed properly? Why do some IE patches not take but others do? Why can't we find out why?

Oh sorry.

Here's

[Pingular]

his biography.

Larry is correct...

[Stone316]

When it comes to RDBMS's... Personally I love working with Oracle because they are always pushing the envelope and innovating. All the other DB Vendors are playing catchup.

The same can't be said for other area's of software.

Re:Larry is correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm,yeah whatever. What was the last innovation Oracle made? Maybe the crap java installer, bribing California legislators or digging through competitor's trash? Oracle is being squeezed by DB2 and MS SQL Server and Larry will be pushed out shortly. Bye Bye Oracle.

Re:Larry is correct...

[Stone316]

No ones saying Oracle doesn't have to watch their backs but I don't hear of any other database companies pushing the envelope...

I'm a DBA.... Primarily Oracle but have experience with SQL Server and postgresql... IMO alot of the applications out there could get away with using flat files... I know, a bit of an over exageration but realistically opensource databases like postgresql could easily eat up a chunk of the 'big boys' market.

Actually...

[IntelliTubbie]

He's still Netscape's co-founder. I mean, you wouldn't call Michelangelo the former sculptor of David just because he's not still chiseling away. He didn't go back in time and un-found it or anything. :)

Cheers,
IT

Re:Actually...

[paul248]

...or did he?
Cue back to the future theme

Imposter Boy?

[Performer Guy]

Whe should anyone care what Andreesen says after the truth is out, read about it here:

http://www.chrispy.net/marca/gqarticle.html

or is he really the great Entrepreneur:

http://www.fortunecity.com/campus/alfred/290/andre esen.htm

Re:Imposter Boy?

[corbettw]

Interesting article on the first link, but it's kinda hard to take it seriously considering the plethora of spelling and grammar mistakes throughout. I mean, if the guy can't take the time to run his article through a spell checker, why should we think he took the time to do basic fact checking?

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Performer Guy]

Form your own opinion, but he seems to have interviewed the people, spell checking is entirely unrelated issue to fact checking. You may think it cute to equate the two, I don't see the point.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my interview with God and the Easter Bunny, I was told that you should not believe everything you see on the web. In fact, God added "no matter how well written or legit it may seem. word"

The Easter Bunny then added "yes, many websites are very biased, and although may contain some true data, they may also have false or made up information mixed within."

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Performer Guy]

In the interest of balance I included two links, feel free to read them both before shooting your mouth off.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[corbettw]

The two are intimately related. If someone can't take the time to spell check a document, it means they are sloppy. And if you're sloppy in one area, you're probably sloppy in several. Also, spelling and grammar mistakes indicate a severe lack of professionalism. Again, this leads one to believe that there was no effective fact checking.

Face it: if you want to be taken seriously, you have to conduct yourself as a professional. Any nucklehead can throw up his opinions on a Web page, a real journalist takes the time to present his opinions and reports in a more intelligent manner.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Performer Guy]

As I said in another response, we disagree, you have no basis to shoot this down besides your spelling obsession. I could quote Churchill or the U.S. Constitution w.r.t. spelling, but why bother, your type obsesses over lint like this.

Poor spelling on a document does not mean they are sloppy on the facts. *YOU* are sloppy, where's your evidence to support that satement? You don't have any, you just bade it up. It's pure conjecture with nothing to back it up.

You're making the common mistake of equating spelling with intelligence. Whatever floats your boat.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[robslimo]

Research, literacy and proofreading/editing are all prerequisites to professional journalism. If you feel obliged to point out the the first link was not the work of a professional journalist (and I see no reason to think it was), then I will agree and reduce the credibility of the article accordingly.

Actually, I suspect much of the 'facts' cited may be true, but the overall tone of the article is highly sensational... what we call 'yellow journalism' akin to the tabloids like The National Enquirer. To paraphrase one of my journalism instructors, "If it looks like yellow journalism, it is and don't believe any of it."

Re:Imposter Boy?

[ViolentGreen]

I tend to agree with the grandparent. The Internet is full of misinformation. I am very skeptical on most things I read on the Internet especially if I am unfamiliar with the domain. Anything you can do to add to your credibility helps.

So the first article is riddled with spelling and grammar errors and the second site is hosted on fortunecity, meaning any Joe Blow could have thrown it together and put it up.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[ViolentGreen]

And another thing... I think anyone who does take the time to check the facts, probably has either a general interest in the subject or feels strongly one way or the other. Either way, I think if he did check the facts, he would have a little more pride in his work then the first article seems to indicate.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[corbettw]

First, I never said the author was stupid. I said he was unprofessional. I'm not equating spelling with intelligence, I'm equating the ability to spell check (not even the ability to spell, but the ability to hit 'F7' in Word) with being a professional journalist.

Second, I didn't say his facts were wrong, I said they're questionable (if he can't check his spelling, why should we believe he checks his facts?).

Lastly, it's not "bade up" conjecture that the author is sloppy, his writing is there for the world to see. He has countless spelling and grammar errors, of the type that a fourth grader would not make; by definition, his writing is sloppy.

Any time someone wishes to advance their opinion, it is incumbent upon them to present their argument in such a way that others find it compelling. The author wishes to challenge long held beliefs about the creation of Mosaic and Andreesen's part in that. Find, that's all well and good. But if you want to change someone's mind, *all* of the burden of proof is at your feet. I'm under no burden to believe for a second anything some random joe with a Web site wishes to purport. Reference a linked article to the Hollow World theory in a recent Slashdot article, should I automatically assume there's validity to their theory just because they published it on a Web page? Similarly, the author of this article wants me to believe Andreesen did not, in fact, invent Mosaic from whole clothe. I really don't care if he did or didn't, it won't change my life either way. So if he wants me to read his entire text and come away thinking "hmm, maybe he's got something here" he needs to spend a little more time writing up his piece in an intelligent and professional manner, and a little less time attacking people who criticize him on a blog (oops, did I give away your little secret?).

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as AC because this is sort of personal.

I worked with Marc at another place at which he did a work-study, when he was a sophomore at UIUC. Even then he was fooling around with writing X11 interfaces for data viewing, before the timeframe the article mentions. This was 1991, and it looked to me like he was already moving sort of in the web browser direction. Like he had some ideas, looking for an application. Of course, chugging down massive quantities of caffeinated beverages and pulling all nighters all the while.

I also used to see him sitting in the dorm dining room off by himself, poring over the WSJ. Nobody else (we haggard engineering students, anyway) had time for such things... I used to marvel at how he must've had dollar signs on the brain to be spending his time that way vs. studying to pass the next weed-out exam. :-)

Not at all an easy guy to get along with IMHO. The Imposter Boy article pretty much nails his character. I have no axe to grind with Marc - just thought I'd validate at least some of what Deutschman's article says, having been there, albeit before the NCSA Mosaic days.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, why would anyone take anything president Bush says seriously then ?

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

The article was copied from GQ. Your complaint is with the transcriber, not the author.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Aron S-T]

The details of the story don't matter and boil down to he said-she said. However, these facts are on the public record:

1. Marc Andreesen did not invent either the Web or the browser. Mosaic was based on the idea and codes of others. Nor was he a programmer. Nor did he have a significant management role at Netscape.
2. Despite Andreesen's admiration of the Google founders creating something of value and long-lasting, he and Jim Clark did not do the same. Netscape was one big air-bubble, the beginning of the madness which left a few people very rich and many others quite poor. Nothing of Netscape remains, and if it is remembered at all, it will be as an icon of greed, stupidity and arrogance (the three main characteristics of the dot-com entrepeneurs).
3. Ironically, and most gratifyingly, Mozilla, which arose from the ashes of Netscape was a project that returned to the original roots of the Web - the idea of sharing as a mechanism to expand human knowledge. Precisely because it is based on these positive values, Mozilla will be around for a long, long time and create long term value and real innovation.

So I agree with the poster. Why should we care about Andreesen's opinions? He was at the right place at the right time - but that doesn't make him wise, not has he learned from his experiences. Read what he has to say about browsersand innovation:

"There's nothing emerging right now. Creativity stopped in 1997. Before that, there were huge numbers of changes: dynamic HTML, JavaScript, Java mail, plug-ins for security and other functions. And these were created by Netscape and many others."

Just because he's rich doesn't make him any less of a pompous fool. Jim Clark was the business brains of Netscape, by the way, so don't give Andreesen any credit for that.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[hkmwbz]

I skimmed the article but couldn't find any serious errors. Could you point out some real bad ones to me?

If the article was indeed printed in a magazine, maybe this guy just did a sloppy job transferring it to his PC?

And maybe someone can confirm if the original article was as sloppy.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Performer Guy]

Your theory of correlation is *fabricated*.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[metamatic]

The article says he was brilliant at taking credit for the work of others. That sounds like the behavior of every world-famous entrepreneur to me. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Marconi... Dennis Hayes, as mentioned on /. a few days ago...

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Performer Guy]

That's not yellow journalism. Yellow implies cowardice and takes many forms, I wouldn't call the article yellow.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla will be around for a long, long time and create long term value and real innovation.

Maybe it would have if the code were any good.

I'll shed no tears at all for Netscape, the only company that ever got beaten on QUALITY by MICROSOFT.

If you want a decent browser, do what Apple did, and start with the KHTML engine.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should probably look up what the term "yellow journalism" means.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Performer Guy]

My bad, thanks for the guidance. Interesting history, I always assumed this implied the more literal interpretation. That's what I get for not being an American and missing the cultural reference.

Re:Imposter Boy?

[Simon Garlick]

The article is obviously transcribed from a printed magazine, either by hand or by OCR. What you're getting all upset about are TRANSCRIPTION errors.

It's true, for the most part

[ObviousGuy]

Large corporations are really the only places where you'd find enough capital to experiment with cutting edge technology. Some examples of these are Microsoft with MS Research, HP with HP Research, AT&T with Bell Labs, Xerox with PARC. These guys are doing what you want to be doing, driving the technology into the future.

While there have been significant gains in innovation that have come out of OSS, the movement largely remains a follower rather than leader of technology, choosing to re-implement already-existing technology for the sake of software freedom.

Small companies these days do not find it so easy to get financial backing for their ideas (which are usually cutting edge stuff), so the days of Yahoo!, Amazon, and other current mainstream companies who were once just gleams in their creators' eyes but grew to enormous proportions are long gone.

Re:It's true, for the most part

[Lumpy]

Are you crazy?

In the software world, a 13 year old in his basement with a old P-III 500 and linux has the same tools available to him as the entire microsfot corperation does.

The Basement/garage Electronics inventor Also has the abilities/tools available.. I can solder BGA chips to the home made 4 layer circuit boards I can make (have a board house do it for you for $100.00 is much easier though) A large number of chip makers gladly dole out single or a 3 pack of samples to small companies or hobbiests.

Right now the single person has the same capabilities available to them that the largest companies in the world do. Hell we have the "rock-star programmer" building a fricking rocket to launch himself into space.

you will see this trend accelerate as technology is advanced. I can print and bind a book in my home, I can manufacture my own electronic devices, i can write my own software and I can publish/sell it to millions of people easily.

Re:It's true, for the most part

[afidel]

You forgot the largest currently run private R&D facility, IBM! You know, the guys who churn out more than a patent a day. MS research has done little with their money, HP unfortunatly is no longer really in the R&D game, Bell Labs is gone, and PARC too is a memory.

Re:It's true, for the most part

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah IBM, that scrappy startup full of wide-eyed 19 year olds.

Re:It's true, for the most part

[herrvinny]

AT&T spun off Bell Labs as part of Lucent Technologies. I'm not sure if AT&T still has a research lab, but the Bell Labs name went to Lucent, along with most of their stuff.

Re:It's true, for the most part

[JanusFury]

I believe you mean he is building a frickin' rocket.

Re:It's true, for the most part

[prockcore]

The Basement/garage Electronics inventor Also has the abilities/tools available..

Yup, and it has always been this way. Gateway, Dell, and HP all got their start as a couple of guys building computers in barns/garages/sheds.

Re:It's true, for the most part

[jallen02]

I agree that individuals have tremendous amounts of knowledge and equipment available to them at a very low cost, yet the one man show still doesn't have every resource a larger development/research team would. The one man show is missing one key resource: time.

One person can't possible explore as much as a 5 man R&D team can. A well equipped R&D team researching the same idea a one man show is researching is bound to do better due to the amount of collaboration etc (Assuming the five people are equally skilled as individuals when compared to the one person). There ARE diminishing returns on development projects when you add more developers. There is a sweet spot, and anything more than that gets you less and less. However, that five man team has more raw man hours than the lone hobbiest, which can make a huge difference in the net results.

I do feel there is significant room for innovation from one guy with a great idea and the grit to see it through to the end, but it is always important to remember that the big company has money/time that one individual may not possess. Hopefully technology can equalize this gap, but it will take time for technology to do this.

Jeremy

Re:It's true, for the most part

[westlake]

In the software world, a 13 year old in his basement with a old P-III 500 and linux has the same tools available to him as the entire microsfot corperation does.

Dream on.

Re:It's true, for the most part

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me but a C++ compiler, and I will build the world. -- Archimedes

Re:It's true, for the most part

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok bill.

we'll believe you... just like you still think your company "innovates"

I'll take a 13 year old linux programmer over any programmer employed at microsoft any day.

the kid will at least write tight cleam and SECURE code instead of trying to write an OS in visual basic .net

Re:It's true, for the most part

[Master Bait]

Big companies rarely compensate their salaried employees adequately for their inventions. That's why so many leave to do a start-up when they come up with something good. Then the big company buys the startup for their IP and the former employee gets his compensation.

Re:It's true, for the most part

[fucksl4shd0t]

In the software world, a 13 year old in his basement with a old P-III 500 and linux has the same tools available to him as the entire microsfot corperation does.

Erm, not exactly. Microsoft has huge resources available in terms of testing and coding and stuff. A 13-year-old with linux doesn't have those things. He does have a lot of great tools, and he's certainly in a good position to "innovate", but he still can't match Microsoft or any other large corporation for resources. One important thing he's missing is the ability to determine if his "innovation" is going to make money. Large corporations have millions (billions?) of dollars to spend on market research to determine if their innovation will sell.

The Basement/garage Electronics inventor Also has the abilities/tools available.. I can solder BGA chips to the home made 4 layer circuit boards I can make (have a board house do it for you for $100.00 is much easier though) A large number of chip makers gladly dole out single or a 3 pack of samples to small companies or hobbiests.

Can you make a processor? More importantly, can you make one that will be "innovative" compared to current bleeding-edge processor technology? For any other electronics project, the issues will be the same. How much do your failures cost you in time and money? How much time and money do you have to spend? For every Jobs and the others that existed in the '80s (the Amiga was designed by a team in their garage as well) there were hundreds of failed garage computers. Even after you've built your innovative piece of electronics, whatever it is, it takes money to manufacture it, and even more to market it. Jobs and Gates and all those guys had a HUGE advantage in their market that we don't have now: there were no PCs. Home computers didn't really exist. As much as I hate to admit it, Jobs and Gates (and Commodore, but they're not around anymore for anybody to remember their significant contributions) made computers available for home users.

Right now the single person has the same capabilities available to them that the largest companies in the world do. Hell we have the "rock-star programmer" building a fricking rocket to launch himself into space.

The first statement is just plain wrong. :) Total up your net worth and then compare it to IBMs net worth and then tell me a single person has the same capabilities as the "largest companies in the world". Your "rock-star programmer" building his X-prize contender just happens also to have a significant personal fortune to put into the project. Can you build a rocket that costs a million dollars? Do you have the resources to do all the R&D required to build a rocket? Check out the Armadillo pages to see the failures they have. Can you even afford to have one of their failures?

Yes, individuals can and will innovate. They will also continue to get rich doing so. But that's not the same as having the same resources available that a large corporation has. It's still David and Goliath no matter how you slice it.

Re:It's true, for the most part

[DynamiteNeon]

I think you're missing the impact that college students play in all this.

Just as many new ideas come from young college students or grad students, who later go on to build startups or who publish papers that are capitalized on by larger companies.

I do agree that some large companies do alot, but to rule out the impact of other smaller groups is just insulting and plain wrong.

Re:It's true, for the most part

[jschrod]

In the software world, a 13 year old in his basement with a old P-III 500 and linux has the same tools available to him as the entire microsfot[sic] corperation does.

And why do I not find any research papers from 13 year olds in one of the high-level software-related conferences?

But I do find papers from MS Research. And they are not just some hodge-podge - currently their work is clearly at the edge of research. Look at any POPL conference proceedings, or similar.

The importance of available tools is vastly overrated; in particular among the technophile /. readers.

Of course...

[musingmelpomene]

The real innovation happens at companies populated with nineteen year olds. At nineteen years old, you don't have the kind of doubts you'd have at thirty. You don't have a hundred people in middle management telling you what you can't do. You don't have people trying to tell you that you're crazy for having a brand new idea, and you don't have a marketing department that swears up and down that the focus groups thought your product was crap. That's why true innovation starts in people's garages, with leaps of faith that can't be made in a big company. It's true that big companies are best at improving already existing technology, but the newest, most revolutionary concepts come from the brain of ostracized teenagers who just don't know when to quit.

Re:Of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, if you're like most /.ers when you're 19 you can't find a girl so you have lots of time on your hands :)

Re:Of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez...
I feel kinda pathetic. When I was 19 I could have been innovating, but instead I was downloading mp3s and porn all night, putting them on cds and selling them to friends... ( this was in 1998 )

Re:Of course...

[saddino]

The real innovation happens at companies populated with nineteen year olds. At nineteen years old, you don't have the kind of doubts you'd have at thirty.

Well, from my over thirty perspective I'll tell you this: at nineteen I thought I was a pretty hotshot programmer, but I didn't have anywhere near the focus or discipline that I have now: qualities that have allowed me to work independently from home making a decent living without worrying about a commute, "vacation" time or having a boss.

Being nineteen, talented and full of energy may lead to success (e.g. see Microsoft, Apple and id Software), but don't kid yourself: the majority of successes in business (including the tech world) are made by us "older" folks.

Re:Of course...

[Kombat]

That's why true innovation starts in people's garages

Uhm, 99% of all "garage" businesses fail miserably. The only reason why you've actually heard of a few "garage" success-stories is because they're so fantastically rare.

with leaps of faith that can't be made in a big company.

"Big company" meaning "An organization with a proven, successful track record at recognizing good ideas and turning them into marketable, profit-generating products."

When the bubble burst, I saw a lot of energetic young people branching out and starting their own startup companies (heck, that's a big part of how the bubble started). Inevitably, within a couple of years, the money started to run out, and they faced the undeniable fact that their ideas weren't so great after all, and that there wasn't this huge, untapped market that they'd envisioned, ready to shell out big bucks for whatever it was they were trying (and failing) to create.

I'm sorry it sounds so bleak, but it's true. The reason big companies are "big" is because they're good at what they do. They're not a bunch of brilliant teenagers; they're experienced, educated professionals who are good at what they do.

Re:Of course...

[ViolentGreen]

Well, from my over thirty perspective I'll tell you this: at nineteen I thought I was a pretty hotshot programmer, but I didn't have anywhere near the focus or discipline that I have now: qualities that have allowed me to work independently from home making a decent living without worrying about a commute, "vacation" time or having a boss.

Being nineteen, talented and full of energy may lead to success (e.g. see Microsoft, Apple and id Software), but don't kid yourself: the majority of successes in business (including the tech world) are made by us "older" folks.


That may be true but the younger generation has a different advantage. They have the advantage of NOT knowing all the standard algorithms and methods of doing things. Their minds are not already set on the paradigm of knowing what is the best algorithm to accomplish such-and-such task. They take their own approach and sometimes end up with a less efficient solution or perhaps a more efficient solution that revolutionizes the way we tackle similar problems.

Re:Of course...

[Waffle Iron]

Uhm, 99% of all "garage" businesses fail miserably.

Probably close to 99% of raw R&D projects started within big businesses ultimately fail (or are simply canceled) as well. (I'm talking about blue-sky projects, not incremental follow-ons.) You just don't hear about them because they aren't made public unless they progress to the production stage. I've experienced this myself, being involved with more canceled projects than I care to remember.

The main difference is that most big businesses have enough resources from their few big successes to absorb the costs of their failed projects.

Re:Of course...

[kcbrown]

The real innovation happens at companies populated with nineteen year olds. At nineteen years old, you don't have the kind of doubts you'd have at thirty. You don't have a hundred people in middle management telling you what you can't do.

While some may reply (and indeed some have) that most endeavors started by people at that age fail, such a reply in no way reduces the validity of your statement.

The bottom line is that while most such endeavors fail, there is always some chance of success, even spectacular success. When a force such as middle management stops something in its tracks, it basically reduces that chance to zero. There was a chance that the endeavor in question could succeed, but that chance was reduced to zero once it was decided to not even try.

Re:Of course...

[jschrod]

They have the advantage of NOT knowing all the standard algorithms and methods of doing things.

So true, so true.

Just like all these 19-year old hotshots who don't even know what an FSA is and who churn out this sh*t code that we have to review.

Ever heard proverbs about "standing on the shoulder of giants", "not knowing the past and condemned to redo it", etc. Kid, you wanna learn something? They're true.

It's all in a capitalist context!

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

The entire, long interview only mentions the word Linux once, and none of it takes place in the context of open source -- it's like something out of a 1999 BusinessWeek, when Linux/OSS was considered a joke and a non-factor.

It seems as if he's just pitting small businesses -- 19 year old wonder kid startups that often fail and caused the dot-com crash-- against brick and mortar computer companies, and COMPLETELY giving the cold shoulder to the open source and free software movement that's currently making all the difference and leading the way in innovation in the computing world.

Either this guy feels threatened by the free software revolution of the 21st century, or is still stuck in the past.

Re:It's all in a capitalist context!

[mellon]

What caused the .com crash was rampant speculation that funded businesses with no business plan, not 19-year-olds. I.e., greed, not inexperience. This is not to say that 19-year-olds always come up with the goods, but at the time of the bubble it was just *stunning* how many dumb business plans got funded.

Re:It's all in a capitalist context!

[musingmelpomene]

The only real reason those wonder-kid startups failed is that they were given too much money too soon without enough real research.

Those startups can revolutionize an industry - or the world. And they HAVE. The key difference being, when that has happened, money wasn't being dispensed as easily as candy.

Re:It's all in a capitalist context!

[Anonymous Coward]

free software movement that's currently making all the difference and leading the way in innovation

Would that "innovation" be the thirty-year-old kernel design, the 20-year-old command line tools, the 10-year old graphical snails, or the applications that simply ape popular apps developed for other platforms like Photoshop or MS Office, only with an awkward user interface?

Heck, even the distribution method and license isn't all that innovative. GNU has been around since 1984, and Linux has been around since the mid 90s, even if it is now becoming a little more popular. Berkeley was giving away Unix kernels when Linus was a tot, and even more "free" than the GPL.

Nothing really new here, just same thing, different OS. Great if you like to play with your system software, but it's still just re-inventing the wheel rather than making any true progress.

Re:It's all in a capitalist context!

[24-bit Voxel]

That was my experience exactly. Amen brother.

I'd have to admit....

[tekiegreg]

Marc Andreessen is a person that makes me think. Was he one of the losers of the .com revolution (Netscape died a cruel death at the hands of AOL) or was he one of the winners (his browser returning to its roots as an Open Source Mozilla and slowly but very surely starting an open source revolution). View it how you will...

I say this as an evil Microsoft developer who just loaded the latest Debian package on his system. To quote Magneto in XMen2 "It has begun...."

Re:I'd have to admit....

[voss]

Um he made millions...and Netscape still went open source. Id say he was a winner.

Re:I'd have to admit....

[musingmelpomene]

Well, whether he's a winner or a loser depends on your priorities.

I mean, sure, he's a pioneer.

But on the other hand, there's other people who are also pioneers, who now have vast wealth and can have any woman they want.

Just sayin'.

Re:I'd have to admit....

[tekiegreg]

Millions yes, Billions (ala Bill Gates) no, it boils down to the question of how much money does your product have to make to be successful I suppose...

Or another good measure of success, my mom could tell me who Bill Gates is, but Andreesen? Probably not....

Re:I'd have to admit....

[Anonymous Coward]

[I say this as an evil Microsoft developer who just loaded the latest Debian package on his system. To quote Magneto in XMen2 "It has begun...." ]

Give it up, "evil Microsoft developer"! I, The Indomitable Super-Humanite, and the Super Justice Friends, will put an end to your nefarious schemes!

Re:I'd have to admit....

[tekiegreg]

hmmmm....Troll??? Tho it is rather funny :-p Besides I'm in the process of giving it up, just let me give up my WMD's one at a time (weapons of Microsoft Destruction) hehehe....not even Iraq disarmed in a day...

Re:I'd have to admit....

[jcr]

I mean, sure, he's a pioneer.

What's he done to earn that epithet?

-jcr

Re:I'd have to admit....

[jschrod]

Writing Mosaic?

I still remember the flamewars why he and Eric Bina have used Motif (requiring proprietary libraries to start with), being non-free, and where the Athena version is. Heck, I thought to remember that Eric ported it to Athena someday, but I cannot find that posting anymore. Maybe my memory isn't correct any more, after all these years. Yeah, the early days...

Exactly

[Stone316]

They've made contributions to opensource as well as to the Linux platform. If it wasn't for Oracle, linux wouldn't even be a consideration for us at the moment.

While they are a 'big' company and some people distrust them based on that fact. Generally they adopt industry standards. Aren't they in our good books today? Or is that Wednesdays?

Re:Exactly

[mark_lybarger]

what contributions do you see Oracle making to opensource and specifically the linux platform?

having their software running on linux doesn't directly contribute to opensource software.

IMO, oracle is more of an open source whore as sun and co. is. they're ridding the bandwagon like the everybody else. "sure, we can compile this thing to run on linux, you think someone will buy?". oracle, because of your reputation with some PHB's and your overinflated/underused support contracts, you're going to sell some enterprise RDBMS systems. how about open sourcing the admin tools? how about giving generic admin tools? how about open source gui type plugins for eclipse/netbeans? how about open source oci libraries? no can do? whore.

Re:Exactly

[MindStalker]

Because if they opensourced their tools it would make it easier for someone to swap out a oracle backend with a free database backend while allowing people to continue to use the same tools.

Re:Exactly

[GoofyBoy]

>having their software running on linux doesn't directly contribute to opensource software.

Its a huge thing. One of the biggest complaints of Linux is that it can't run stuff Windows does.

>how about open sourcing the admin tools?

At the heart of OpenSource is that you are not forced to do anything that you don't want to. Its "as is".

And who are you to say what Oracle should and shouldn't do? Who named you "King of OpenSource"?

Re:Exactly

[Stone316]

Theres more to supporting opensource than providing free software. A part of it is also helping guide open standards and supporting them. They could have taken the same route as MS but they didn't. They had the forsight to see that open standards are a good thing.

Supporting their software on Linux also benefits the OS community. Oracle is a 1 point of contact for any problems on the support linux platforms. Thats a HUGE deal for companies considering moving to Linux. No matter what the problem is on a linux server Oracle will support you.

As for actual code here's a quote from an article:

Officials at the OracleWorld conference here last week said Oracle will continue to contribute development work and code in areas such as management, clustering and enterprise database to the open-source and Linux community in association with companies such as Red Hat and SuSE Linux A.G.

Full article here.

Re:Exactly

[mark_lybarger]

Its a huge thing. One of the biggest complaints of Linux is that it can't run stuff Windows does.

i'd really like to see the sales figures of oracle on microsoft platform. the point being that oracle knows that microsoft isn't stable and robust enough for mission critical stuff. they'll steer you hard twords a solaris box.

i'm not King of OpenSource (tm), i'm just saying that oracle is riding the linux bandwagon like all the other companies out there. they're not opensource. for opensource rdbms, there's firebird. if they want to be viewed as an opensource company, they need to give an opensource product to the community. how can a company be call opensource and not give source to the community?

at the heard of opensource, is that the source is available for inspection by all. if apple didn't give back it's kernel, would they be contributing to opensource? they hold their window system, and that's ok, they're still giving _something_ concrete back.

Re:Exactly

[mark_lybarger]

what do they care. their customers aren't the type of customers that give a shit about $50k for an oracle production install. their customers do buy the name and the support. so someone else can take a tool and extend it so that postgresql has a nicer admin tool. i don't see that eating much away from oracles cash register. they're in a different league.

maybe someone could take that oracle tool and make it usefull by .. sybase or MS Sql Server. i guess those are other "large" players. who cares. it's giving to opensource. and giving has to be a give with no strings attached.

look at the eclipse platform from IBM. they give it away. sure, they sell some derivitive of it as WSAD, but they give away the base model. other companies (myeclipseide.com) also sell derivitives of it. that's supporting the opensource community. (IBM anyway. maybe myeclipseide gives something in terms of opensource, who knows).

Re:Exactly

[marktoml]

...and they DO contribute to the Open Source community.

http://oss.oracle.com/

Re:Exactly

[Pieroxy]

microsoft isn't stable and robust enough for mission critical stuff

AFAIK, Win2k and WinXP are excellent server platforms. It's just that you have to run one firewall for every one of your Win servers to avoid worms and exploits. Other than that, performance and stability wise, I don't think Windows plaform are a lot worse than the competitors.

Of course, don't try to install ANYTHING except you mission critical stuff on your servers, but that is a wise admin decision not matter what OS you run.

Re:Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, Oracle's internal IT is rolling out Linux (based on RH AS 3.0) as a supported Desktop option to all its employees worldwide -- everyone from secretaries to salespeople to the hardcode RDBMS programmers.
They're including OpenOffice 1.1 in the mix (as well as Moz 1.5, etc)

Re:Exactly

[Plugh]

Blockquoth marktoml:

...and they DO contribute to the Open Source community.
http://oss.oracle.com/

That's Extremely Relevant.
Please, somebody mod the parent UP!

Re:Exactly

[smallfeet]

Oracle may have a nice product but the company is every bit as bad as Microsoft (this is MHO based on dealings with them). The only reason they are not considered the anti-christ is because they don't have the same size/power as MS.

"When you have then by the balls thier hearts and minds will soon follow" - John Dean

Re:Exactly

[robertjw]

Let's not forget one thing. Oracle has one motivation - profits. If it wasn't profitable to support Linux they wouldn't do it. The same thing goes for IBM, HP, Sun and any other company out there that has a Linux offering. Personally I think we should all be gloating. These huge companies finally discovered what so many of us have known for years. Linux is a robust, stable, cost effective server solution - so why not use it. Let's not idealize any of these companies just because they made a business decision that coincides with our ideals. Any of them could drop their Linux support tomorrow if it became unprofitable.

Pot Calling Kettle

[Davak]

how AOL doesn't understand its own customers

I don't think most users wanted netscape to develop into the most buggy, bloated browser in the market!

I remember way back when netscape was actually great alternative to IE... all the geeks used it. Then they started trying to build the great palace of netscape on top of it... and it crumbled.

If they would have listened to their users, they would have stayed small... and probably done a lot better moneywise.

Now they are having to build a small browser from the beginnings up--after the money is gone.

Davak

Re:Pot Calling Kettle

[mark_lybarger]

what 90's did you grow up in?

Netscape was THE browser, until IE 4.0 was out for a while. that's when the tides really started to turn. People actually installed browsers on their system. they knew a little how it worked. IE (3.0) was some pre-installed browser that didn't work on 1/2 the sites, and crashed often.

and today... today, moz (and its variants) is a great browser that all the geeks use. those that don't, they're not hard core.

Re:Pot Calling Kettle

[HeghmoH]

Done a lot better moneywise? They sold their teetering company for twenty billion dollars! Imagine that number, try to hold it in your head: twenty billion dollars. It's hard to see any way a browser company could have done any better than that.

Re:Pot Calling Kettle

[fucksl4shd0t]

and today... today, moz (and its variants) is a great browser that all the geeks use. those that don't, they're not hard core.

Nononono. The soft core geeks use Mozilla. The hard core geeks use Konqueror, Safari, Epiphany, Galeon, Firebird, blahblahblah. (Yes, I realize 3 of those I listed are moz variants) In fact, I don't even know if a hard core geek uses Firebird, since it's just Mozilla again, but the others require Linux, and Mozilla does *not* require Linux. Since hard core geeks use Linux, they use Linux browsers as well. :)

I can't wait 'till I get a Konqueror with Apple's additions merged in. Konqueror is shaping up to be a fine browser, and I screwed with Safari in a computer store. I think it might just finally become possible for me to discard Mozilla in favor of Konqueror, and that makes me happy. :)

Re:Pot Calling Kettle

[arose]

Today there is way more than gecko browsers for geeks to use -- khtml, dillo, links, w3m...

Re:Pot Calling Kettle

[JCholewa]

> today, moz (and its variants) is a great
> browser that all the geeks use. those
> that don't, they're not hard core.

I dunno. I think Opera is pretty darned hard core. But then again, I also use Mozilla. Heck, usually, I have windows open for Opera, Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird, all simultaneously, and I usually fit some time in to pop up a terminal window with links. ;)

--
-JC
Novice Game Boy Advance Coder
http://www.jc-news.com/coding/gbadev/

Re:Pot Calling Kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh 'puhleaze', since when are GUI browsers hard core? The only hardcore browser on UNIX is lynx.

Innovation Shminnovation

[wondafucka]

If you define innovation as successful technology solutions that make a lot of money by being accepted by large amounts of people because the ideas came from a large company with lots of cash, then yes, innovation only comes from large companies Larry. (I protect this run-on fragment from all grammatical criticism. Just sit on your hands and silently tsk tsk)

Someone had to point it out..

[k98sven]

This is the same guy who gave movie advice
here??

Right?

A-freaking-men

[stoolpigeon]

Got that right.

Mosaic = first easy-to-use Web browser?

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

Was Mosaic actually the first "easy-to-use" browser (as the article claims), or was it just the first popular one? Anyone here ever use WorldWideWeb on a NeXT or any other pre-Mosaic browser and care to comment?

Re:Mosaic = first easy-to-use Web browser?

[saddino]

I thought its claim-to-fame was the first stable support for image rendering (GIF and whatever the X Window native format is).

Re:Mosaic = first easy-to-use Web browser?

[drinkypoo]

The real feature of Mosaic is that it was the first cross-platform browser. You could run it on X/Motif, Windows, or Mac. Now THAT is a feature. Today, we expect that, take it for granted.

The only guy I even knew with a NeXT (Turbo Slab) ran Mosaic on it for a web browser. I don't know if that helps you any, but it is a nice anecdotal data point.

Re:Mosaic = first easy-to-use Web browser?

[jcr]

I did.

Mosaic was a rather pallid runner-up to WorldWideWeb, OmniWeb, NetSurfer, and Spider Woman.

That's right, there were *four* browsers on NeXTSTEP, and they were all much better than Mosaic.

It would be very interesting if the guys at OmniGroup wrote up a list of their inventions that were copied by NetScape, and were copied in turn by IE.

-jcr

Re:Mosaic = first easy-to-use Web browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

take it for granted? The three versions of IE are all entirely different codebases.

News Buyout?

[-Grover]

I found this particularly interesting
When AOL's market cap was at $170 billion, the executives added up the parent companies of the five major newspapers in the country -- the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post and USA Today.

They could have bought all five for about 10 percent of their outstanding equity at the time. And they almost did it, except for the fact that they didn't think they could get antitrust clearance. But they thought that would be a good thing to do.

Nothing like unbiased news sources owned by a gigantic conglomorate of everything evil in the world.

Tv News reporter
Today in news CEO/CTO of AOLTimeWarnerNetscapeNewYorkLATimes...commerical.. .WSJWashingtionPostUsaToday said that apparently "All your base belong to us".

AOL doesn't understand its own customers

[ENOENT]

Heh. NOBODY understands AOLers.

Re:AOL doesn't understand its own customers

[mark_lybarger]

one word Wal-Mart"

Re:AOL doesn't understand its own customers

[prockcore]

3y3 c4n und3rs74nd d3m.

and who's better positioned to discuss innovation

[adham]

...than Andreessen, a guy that we saw a LOT of innovation coming from his way since Netscape. Oops I forogt, OpsWare is supposed to change computing as we know it...

Big companies and innovation

[rm007]

One of the problems big companies tend to have with innovation is not that they don't have ideas. It's just they're so big that the next innovative idea -- if it's not equally huge -- isn't going to move the needle on their financials.

And if it is a truly revolutionary innovation, it will destroy the business of the units of the company the currently make all of the company's money ... and therefore the careers of decision-makers in those business units, who tend have a lot of say into the direction of the company and so are likely to fight resource allocation to such threats being developed from within the company. They may have to buy them in later, but that's how most big companies innovate these days, they buy up small companies.

And the example of such innovations would be...?

[melted]

Are you a 18-years old dreaming of geek stardom?

Why is this guy so important?

[teetam]

He started two companies, both of which are down in the dump. Why are people still concerned about his opinion?

I guess management is the only place where successive failures enhance your fame. If he were an ordinary "worker", with that record, he would be out on the streets.

Re:Why is this guy so important?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you are correct....

The CEO's that crashed companies and robbed coffers are working at other companies as CEO's. watch the Enron leftovers, those scumbags will show up steering another unsuspecting company into a tree.

Re:Why is this guy so important?

[Chris Parrinello]

I think it is a Silicon Valley thing. During my stint out there, I worked with a few management types out there that had a string of companies that failed or were bought out before they filed for bankruptcy. None of these people seemed to want to take responsibility for their failures. It was usually the market's fault for not understanding their products or services (cf: General Magic, in both of its iterations) never the fact that they really didn't understand the market in the first place and had no idea how to execute their business plan.

How they get away with making sure the business world has a cloudy memory of their lack of accomplishments is that they usually leave when there isn't any money to milk out of the company in the form of bonuses or stock options. By that point, they've left the company using their flimsy resume of psuedo accomplishments to start another company and con a VC firm to give them the start-up money so the cycle can begin again. They never have to preside over the actual failure of the company.

Re:Why is this guy so important?

[IronicCheese]

Pretty arrogant attitude, dude. Did you even RTFA? Here's a guess: Marc's done more in this space than *you* have. Quit sniping from the sidelines.

Re:Why is this guy so important?

[teetam]

I did read the article, but my point was not about the content of the article (you can get that if you RTFPosting). The other replies seem to have gotten what I was trying to ask.

I never claimed to be better than him (or anyone for that matter), so I don't understand your point about me. Again, RTFP.

In this society, we seem to be enamored by CEOs. It all started with Iacocca, I think. Even if they successively ran companies into the ground, wasted opportunities and hurt emnployees and shareholders due to mismanagement, we still consider them to be larger than life. If you employed someone who failed (by all metrics) in the tasks that you gave him, is this how you would approach him?

I see no real insight in his interview, nor is he currently in the news for doing something "innovative". The magazine simply knew his name recognition among geeks and interviewed him.

Re:Why is this guy so important?

[aftk2]

I guess management is the only place where successive failures enhance your fame.

Well...not quite the only place...

Re:Why is this guy so important?

[holstein]

they've left the company [...] so the cycle can begin again.

What's funny with that, is something Andreesen say in the interview :

I like the whole process of growth, the whole cycle of building a company.

Re:Why is this guy so important?

[Billly Gates]

Actually his company formerly called cloudscape actually made a profit! Many are still being shut down in Silcon Valley today.

Marc Anderson had nothing to do whatsoever with Netscape failing. You can thank Microsoft for illegally oversupplying the market to the point where demand became lower then it cost to produce it.

I would like to see you take on Microsoft and still survive as a company?

Unless your very big like IBM or Oracle YOU CAN"T! Hell Oracle is going downtubes thanks to MS-SQL Server and Mysql.

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[musingmelpomene]

no, I'm a nineteen year old geek girl who wishes to god she'd started sooner. A lot of the real innovations in personal computing in the 80's came out of garages. I don't see how people can just discount that. The great inventors of the early 20th century and the great enterpreneurs of the 19th started from very little - they certainly had no huge, multi-department companies weighing them down when they had their initial Big Idea.

...waiting for the dot-com coredump.

[strredwolf]

Come on! It crashed! Where's the core dump so we can run it through GDB and find out what went wrong?!?

Didn't he die in 9/11?

[Qrlx]

I seriously thought Marc Andreesen was in one of the planes that hit the WTC. I guess it was some other Netscape founder?

Re:Didn't he die in 9/11?

[Paladine97]

That was one of the Akamai cofounders:

Akamai Technologies, the Cambridge Internet company whose 31-year-old cofounder Daniel Lewin died when Los Angeles-bound American Airlines Flight 11 became the first hijacked jet to slam into a World Trade Center tower, held a private service but also remembered Lewin with a tribute at its Web page.

Story

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Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[Lumpy]

then get your butt in wearable computing.

This is the next direction for the real innovations in computing. The UI needs to be designed, more research needs to be made, and new designs need to be investigated.

university of Toronto, MIT, U of Georgia. these are the three hotbeds of wearable computing right now.

Netcraft confirms: Andreessen STILL irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and looking in the crystal ball, this reporter sees nothing changing on the Marc-Used-to-Matter front. Hey, Andreessen: if a one-hit-wonder becomes yesterday's news but refuses to fade away with dignity, does anyone care, besides IT journalists desperate for a story during the holiday season?

uhh

[bearclaw]

"We're doing about $8 million or so in business every quarter, so we're not very big."

I wish my employer wasn't "very big" too.

18-year olds don't own garages.

[melted]

Moreover, they have no experience or education (there are rare exceptions). I suggest you getting your degree first. Basic education is important.

Re:18-year olds don't own garages.

[musingmelpomene]

Thanks, I've been to college, it wasn't for me. I do have four years of professional experience in a single field, though - which seems to get me far enough. However, it won't be enough to make billions. I suppose I will have to marry rich.

Re:18-year olds don't own garages.

[metalligoth]

Sure they do. A couple I am friends with are engaged, and they own both a house in Metro Detroit, and a large farm that they manage in Canada. A different couple I know bought their house a couple years ago at 21 and 18 years of age. They both bought it with money they saved from their own jobs, making $50,000 a year, and with zero college.

I also rent my own house (I could buy if I wanted to, but I plan on moving soon anyways), I'm 21, I make good money, and I do not have a degree. College is not for everyone.

Ever hear of Bill Gates?
Steve Jobs?

For each guy like them there are plenty more making a slightly above average salary that through their own ingenuity and self-education didn't go through college. You'll never hear about them on the news, because it's not a huge deal.

Think about it.

Re:18-year olds don't own garages.

[leifm]

Bill Gates started college, although I don't know exactly how long he took to drop out. So he probably has *some* college education, just not a degree.

Re:18-year olds don't own garages.

[melted]

If you're in this (software development) for money, then I'm really sorry for your future. Software is becoming a commodity pretty quickly, and nobody is ready to throw out insane piles of cash on wild ideas anymore. You can't run a business on enthusiasm alone (even in your garage).

10 years down the road you will REALLY regret you hadn't gone through the college, but it will be too late to change anything.

FYI, I'm 26 and I have M.Sc. in CS.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Hilarious!

Andreessen and Innovation

[pipingguy]

He's still going on about innovation?

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[orthogonal]

no, I'm a nineteen year old geek girl who wishes to god she'd started sooner

<Voice='Austin Powers'>Yeahh, baaby, let's get stahrted!</voice>

Re:Don't turn on Central Air

[bigjnsa500]

What the heck does this have to do with Marc Anderssen?

Why does anyone listen to Mark Andreessen?

[NickDoulas]

I mean, don't get me wrong - he seems like a nice enough guy and I wish him well and all that. He had an undeniably good contribution with Mosaic. However, after that, he has always struck me as someone who was in way over his head. I remember reading somewhere while he was VP of Engineering at either Netscape or Loudcloud, that the main advice he gave other entrepreneurs was to "never compete with Microsoft". What kind of advice is that? I never saw how his programming contributions ever qualified him to be VP of Engineering at any company, and I've never heard him say anything particularly insightful in countless interviews he seems to keep getting to this day.

Re:Why does anyone listen to Mark Andreessen?

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems to be my take on him as well, and not sure if this is creditable or not, but you can read dirt on the guy here.

He seems like a manager that tried to get invoved as much as possible, but didn't have the expertise to do or understand it all himself, but since the product was made by his employees and not one main person, he gets credit.

Re:Why does anyone listen to Mark Andreessen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and the code for their browser was so godawful that the Mozilla team ended up junking the entire heap of shit and starting over from scratch.

So, yeah...

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[Ophidian P. Jones]

no, I'm a nineteen year old geek girl who wishes to god she'd started sooner

Sorry, you are not a "geek girl". If you were, you wouldn't be whining about how you're poor and drive 90 minutes to your job (here's a clue: nobody cares) on your lamo LiveJournal site. Instead, you would have coded your own CMS, shared the source with everyone, and talked about how you designed it.

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Ellison is correct!

[Anonymous Coward]

"innovation" is corp-speak and indeed does come primarily from large stolid entities. True invention -"going a little beynd the realm of the 'possible'.." to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke is cecessarily the province of individuals or at most very small groups (even if those individuals or small groups happen to be associated with large organizations!)

In summary: the necessary (if not sufficient) condition for true progress beyond the 'known' is the existance of gifted Individuals.

Innovation is heralded by big companies.

[UnknowingFool]

innovation primarily comes from big companies like Oracle.

Innovation is heralded by big companies. Sometimes they come from smaller companies. Sometimes they come from large companies. Xerox PARC has many examples of innovation from a large company. The internet browser came from a small company, Netscape. Of course, there's those many small companies that MS absorbs to acquire their technology. Then MS displays the technology as their own creations.

Some innovation is led by a big company. Take the PC, for example. Before IBM decided to offer the PC, the market was dominated by smaller, niche players. Many companies ran mainframes at the time. When IBM began to sell the PC, it was a signal to companies that it was okay to use a PC in the business world.

In some examples, an innovation is ignored by one company and used by another. RCA sold the patent to Sony for the VCR and the rest is history. USB was developed by Intel but was not really implemented until Apple replaced their proprietary APC connections with USB.

Re:Innovation is heralded by big companies.

[Life2Short]

USB was developed by Intel but was not really implemented until Apple replaced their proprietary APC connections with USB. Weren't they ADB - apple desktop bus?

Innovation

[t_allardyce]

Innovation comes mosty from geeks who have time and equipment to play with. In computing, equipment generally means just a computer so you can have lots of innovation from anywhere. With other things it means labs and expensive toys and some time and freedom to play - usually at universities or corporate labs.

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[Anonymous Coward]

then get your butt in wearable computing.

Wearable computing is another in a fine series of solutions in search of problems. Once a suitable problem is found for wearable computing to solve, I'm sure it'll be a big hit.

UIUC nailed

[RealProgrammer]

Q: Now where were you exactly?

A: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And if you've been there, you know what that's like. Cornfields on three sides and a pig farm on the fourth side.

Q: A pig farm?

A: Yeah, so you wake up most mornings hoping the wind is blowing in the right direction, because if it's not, you're going to have an issue.

Oh come on, Marc: it's really only like that in the summer, when the wind's out of the south! In the winter the wind comes howling off the prairie bringing the odiferous delights of burnt soybean oil from the Kraft plant.

He's also right about the brainpower around this place. Awesome.

Loren Heal, lheal at uiuc

Your name is ObviousGuy for a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

say something we don't know - it makes reaing Slashdot so much more entertaining.

You forgot the corp environment

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

Let's have a pre meeting to discuss the meeting to go over the format for the covers for the TPS report we will prepare to justify the expenses of planning the research necessary to prepare to study the effects... etc...

The corporate research world (in which I have had the dubious pleasure of working) spends 4 weeks planning and meeting for every one spent actually working... the 5:1 ratio of the team to the individual is quickly lost there... and then the passionate inventor will willingly work 18 hour days. Try getting a researcher to do that... or the company to allow it.

Re:You forgot the corp environment

[jallen02]

There is always going to be communications overhead when you have more than one developer, it is inevitable. That is why I included the little statement of diminishing returns. I still believe, even in a corporate setting, you can create a team of individuals that can outperform one, single person in a good variety of (most) environments.

Most inventors tend to have day jobs as well, so they can't spend 18 hours/day working on their dream. Ok, they can pretty easily manage 40 hours / week in their spare time with enough passion (I know I have many times in the past w/school, writing a book, and just researching ideas), but that is less than 18 hrs/day.

My opinion: given a corporate structure, a budget that far outreaches the lone inventor's, and an appropriate sized team you can put in more productive man hours than the lone inventor and do more productive work.

I am an Application Architect, and I have seen that doing my job well and combining my work with knowledgeable management and clear, concise goals I can set a team of developers on task and they can quite easily accomplish a great deal of work (even with regular work hours). With proper management you can reduce the communications overhead significantly.

I really believe that highly motivated teams can accomplish more than the lone inventor. In your average corporate setting, maybe not, but in a truly well managed environment no questions asked a team can do more work than a lone gunman.

And to be perfectly honest the situations vary enough for our discussion topic that it is really kind of difficult to do much more than generalize things as we see them and make statements based upon those generlizations: most situations differ enough that the generalizations aren't even all that fair :)

Jeremy

Re:You forgot the corp environment

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

Quite true... each goal and each team are different. Please, though, send me some of this 'informed management'

Where I work the management just likes pretty reports with numbers that match the website and have no statistical bearing on actual performance. And it's not a case of me missing the big picture when the boss just says 'well, fudge this number, we need to look good'

But you are right, some inventions require a team, some are best solo effort. But it's so much fun to discuss anyway, us armchair inventors :)

Editing indicates editorial activity

[ianscot]

You may think it cute to equate the two, I don't see the point.

Cute? Like it or not, when written material botches spellings and includes blatant grammatical mistakes, its credibility takes a serious hit. Any kind of active editorial process will catch that stuff. If an author's work hasn't been reviewed by anyone, it's just that much less credible.

"Seems to have" was the telling phrase from your post. You have no idea whether this is credible stuff, and you're going on instinct. My instincts tell me that sloppy work is suspect.

Re:Editing indicates editorial activity

[corbettw]

I could quote Churchill or the U.S> Constitution w.r.t. spelling...

Yes, please do. Please point out spelling mistakes made by Sir Winston or the Framers. Of course, I'm sure someone else will gladly point out that American standard and British standard English have different spelling conventions, so what you think are spelling mistakes are probably actually correct. Also remember that American standard English wasn't formalized until after the Revolution, so presumed spelling mistakes in the Constitution are probably also correct.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I didn't bother reading the second linked article because the first was so bad, I assumed the second would just be more of the same. That's what happens when you post something with no credibility, it directly impacts totally unrelated items just because they happen to be referenced together. This is why professional editors are so careful about fact checking and spelling errors: one bad article can tarnish an entire organization (witness the recent problems the NY Times has had because of one bad journalist faking datelines).

Re:Editing indicates editorial activity

[Performer Guy]

Actually there are errors, but of course standards were more lax, something to bear in mind today. There are also errors in the Declaration of Independence. I'm not referring to Churchill's spelling rather his famous quote on spelling which fits very nicely in this context, so since you insist:

"Poor spelling does not prove poor knowledge,
but is fatal to the argument by intimidation." ~Winston Churchill

But at least he could laugh about grammar:

"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put." ~Winston Churchill

But Michaelangelo ACTUALLY was the artist

[Anonymous Coward]

Andreesen, as has been pointed out again and again, was not the "creator" of the browser. There were numerous other coders involved at the early stages, many of which made significant contributions, if not for which, the Netscape browser would not have existed.

And this is a charitable description of his contributions. I have heard much more scathing indictments of his level of contribution.

Its also worth noting that his company was completely crushed in every incarnation (browser firm, server firm, suite enabler, services) that it entered. The man is no Jack Welch. He is very loud though, and somewhat arrogant...interestingly though he would not even rate on a Silicon Valley top 100 wealth list....or 200, or maybe even 300.

He likes to brag about the stocks he has shorted - but fails to mention Yahoo as one of them (at exactly the wrong time).

Re:But Michaelangelo ACTUALLY was the artist

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting to look at NeXTSTEP versions of OmniWeb 1.0 and 2.0, and see how many of their inventions were copied (poorly) by NetScape.

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

Interesting that all the responses thus far seem to support the idea of conservatism setting in. With all due respect, 'Get a dregree' and 'Get into what the colleges are doing' are exactly the problem she is espousing. The young pre college crowd has not been trained (some might say brainwashed) to accept marketing and outside ideas as gospel truths.

Infamous young gentleman, Thomas Alva Edison, was inventing without a degree, or a marketing/college firm guidance. Many many open source programmers are doing similarly. The degree of creativity displayed by the mostly young no worries no inhibitions crowd is where I place my bet. They have historically been the ones with the greatest inventions, and the most spectacular failures.

Perhaps Ellison was misquoted

[sharkey]

'innovation primarily comes from big companies like Oracle'

Innovation can come from anywhere, but it takes a big company like Oracle to make an Unbreakable product, right?

Thank JWZ, Not MA for open source netscape

[Anonymous Coward]

Was Marc even remotely involved in browser development when Mozilla was announced? From what I have heard, no. At that point Barksdale had already shoo'd him away to an office where he could pretend to be Gordon Gecko or Steve Jobs or whatever. My understanding from what other early Netscapers have told me is that MA was understood to be an overrated windbag from early on and was compartmentalized as such by management.

Andreessen: Smug, Phony Toad BARF

[GlacialDecay]

Why is it that every time this guys opens his mouth he takes a giant shit in my ear? Really, my gorge rises whenever I read a word he says.

He comes across as such a smug, egotistical phony. I can only surmise that's exactly what he is.

He's the perfect face of Silicon Valley 2003: a pudgy corporate management toad with a deluded sense of his own talent and importance musing impassively in the midst of the economic and toxic wreckage that surrounds him. Somebody GeT mE a buckET!!!

WHOOOOOAAAAARRGGGGGHHHHHH.... WHOOOOOOARGGGGHHHHHH!!...*COUGH*....WHOAAAAARRRGGG HHHHH.....

Microsoft alone did not kill Netscape

[Anonymous Coward]

I know aht the /. crowd will respond with - its all MS's fault. Partially but not completely. Netscape could not compete with Apache on servers, Homesite/Dreamweaver in editing tools, or really even with IE as a browser. Many versions of Netscape simply sucked (remember the early v4 releases?).

As for MA, he appears to be all talk. Opsware is neat but not a new idea nor the only player in the ASP market (Opsware is really just as ASP rehashed for webserving). In fact many tier 1 hosting firms provide an Opsware-like experience through their own software/services.

You mean...

[appleLaserWriter]

The real innovation happens at companies populated with nineteen year olds.

Dominoes has a R&D department?

Re:You mean...

[Fjord]

I've got it!

Pepperoni made out of chicken!

No, $8 million a quarter is chump change

[Ars-Fartsica]

Consider the massive overhead involved in making a large business in the Valley work. $8 million is definitely what I would call a smallish return for the VCs, if they are even seeing anything yet after the cost of running and growing the business.

There has probably been $100-200 million (minimum) gone into starting up any moderate size firm in the Valley. Remember that you could pull down nearly $5 million a year alone on T-Bills for this investment with NO RISK. So for a VC, they are probably looking for 10%++ return, which they would definitely not be seeing here.

Re:No, $8 million a quarter is chump change

[odin53]

So for a VC, they are probably looking for 10%++ return, which they would definitely not be seeing here.

The VCs aren't getting any return. OpsWare is public (it used to be called Loudcloud, which went public in 2001), and the VCs (naturally) cashed out at the IPO.

Even if OpsWare were private, though, the VCs wouldn't get any return. VCs get their investment return upon an IPO or acquisition (or liquidation, although that is almost always a negative return), not on their portfolio companies' operating profits.

tangent

[BigBir3d]

One thing he mentions that I had not heard about; p2p telephony over at Skype.com. Seems like a pretty cool idea. Hopefully the "stigma" in the general press asscoiated with KaZaa will not harm Skype.

As to "innovation" other than being a highly overused word (especially in the Mac community), I thing it is truly achieved more often by small groups. Bouncing lots of ideas around, quickly, and little thought about what can be done. Your average newcomer doesn't know what s/he can't do, only what s/he wants to do.

How do you know poster is not (NAME_HERE)??

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay so if David Filo wrote the above post you would be okay with it???

The put him in a room and locked the door

[Anonymous Coward]

Its well known that very early on at Netscape they put him in a room where he could not damage anything and let him count his stock options and cruise the web. He tried being a "big idea" guy but he's no Steve Jobs.

And the final score...

[sbeitzel]

...why bother, your type obsesses over lint like this.

...and with the ad hominem attack, Performer Guy concedes. He failed to mention the Nazis or Hitler, although he gets partial credit for bringing up Churchill. Introducing sources which have no bearing on the original debate (Churchill, the U.S. Constitution) got a few extra B.T.U.s, but this was still only medium heat at best.

Resolved: spelling and grammar errors in a news story reduce that story's credibility, since they cast suspicion on the care and attention to detail of the author.

Re:And the final score...

[Performer Guy]

Your post is a sad attempt to start your own counter meme with no justification.

The U.S. Constitution has numerous spelling errors, it's a fact not some abuse of an idea, similarly I refer to Churchill's famous quote on spelling nothing else, again not the abuse of a meme. Web posts are replete with folks pointing out spelling issues and typos with nothing substantive to say other that impugn the related content. It's a fact that this spelling obsession is a relatively modern phenomenon.

It is not inappropriate to point out how ludicrous this spelling lint picking is by citing well known evidence that shows how clearly false any theory equating inteligence and rigor to perfect spelling.

Moreover, you're the one appealing to ad hominem in implying my post was on par with citing Nazis & Hitler, neither of which I did. Of course you couldn't resist.

Re:And the final score...

[kevcol]

The U.S. Constitution has numerous spelling errors

I am faddened to fee the defcendantf of the thirteen Colonief ufe fpuriouf examplef of fpelling by the freamerf of the Conftitution in order to juftify argumentf. It if not fare to make a contemporary point ufing hiftorical documentf. Alaf! I afke thee to look at the writingf of John Locke and fee if he too, waf fo floppy in hif profe.

Mr Andreessen

[OpCode42]

Mr Andreessen, welcome back. We missed you.

(I'm so sorry)

How you define "innovation"

[mabu]

I think this issue depends upon who is defining "innovation." If you define it as coming up with new ideas, history has demonstrated that almost all great innovations have been the brainchild of a single person. If you define innovation as taking someone else's early work and slapping your name on it and calling it your innovation, then yes, corporations lead the way with that brand of "innovation."

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[Anonymous Coward]

If u are 19 year old girl, what are u doing here on slashdot? Go join a sorority, get drunk, have sex ...

Big companies produce patents, not innovation

[Fefe]

Actually, if you use "innovation" in the new-age business lingo of those hipster PR suit bearers, then it may actually be correct. These days it apparently counts as innovation if your software puts the menu choices in a different order than the previous version.

Innovation used to actually mean something a few years ago. *sigh*

manna ends all labor arguments

[*weasel]

the robotic revolution in manufacturing will obsolete this labor argument long before a global solution is sorted out.

there will simply be warehouses of automatons producing perfect product for the mere cost of materials time and electricity.

no safety inspections, no overtime, no coerced employment. no mistakes, no tired employees, no lunch breaks, no shift-changes.

silent, ceaseless, and dependable, with linear growth projections and no wasted overhead on middle-management or hr.

it isn't too far off now. it's already starting.

witness the chip business loss of TMSC to the end-to-end automated IBM plant in New England. (AMD & Nvidia switched several lines)

Re:manna ends all labor arguments

[vingt]

So first you ship the jobs out, so you're no longer hostage to the demands of Big Labor. Then you automate and mechanise, bringing the productivity back but still keeping Labor out. Interesting.

Re:manna ends all labor arguments

[*weasel]

precisely. you wind up with local production handling local demand (relatively local in the global sense) - and absolutely 0 untrained labor.

part of the holdup of fully automating in more traditional big-machine production has been the Unions. They aren't so big on entire manufacturing lines disappearing, and routinely strike to keep away layoffs from automation. thing is, the big producers aren't hiring at the rate they're retiring (adjusting for production growth).

compile all this with the growing seperation of wealth, and the most likely downfall of the current world order is to be over economic reasons - rather than military or religious ones.

of course, democracy is flexible, and likely can weather changes, but a social clash is all but inevitable.

And Andreesen's post-crash contributions ....

[popo]

...have been what exactly?

True...but culture is where great ideas come from

[whittrash]

It wasn't an accident that the transistor was invented at Bell Labs. The power drop off and unreliability of vacuum tubes meant an alternative was needed for long distance transmission. Phone use was skyrocketing back in the 1920's, 30's and 40's and the idea of coast to coast clear calls was the new dream. Ma Bell had the resources to put together a team to deal with this problem. They found the solution in 1947 and dubbed it the transistor. The technology spread around and was licensed to little startup companies such as Sony and the basis for the modern computer era was set. Companies like HP soon started to take advantage of the technology and push it forward. The rest is history.

The really big ideas need a culture of support, as the internet did from the military and scientific community, where at opportune moments, great minds come together by the necessity of invention. I think Linux and the GPL is the next big thing. It has all kinds of really smart people working on it, it is supported by many top notch companies and has real economic incentives. It is an awesome way of leveraging technology and aggregating all the far flung contributions from the whole world making it the first modern operating system to be developed on a distributed basis (the power of distributed computing should be obvious to anyone by now). Who knows where this will take us.

Yeah, okay John Galt.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fag.

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[crawling_chaos]

Yeah, those pointy headed college educated researchers at Bell Labs and Xerox PARC have sure never come up with anything useful. Not to mention the utter morons at IBM's research facilities. Please...

Most inventions are the result of chance discoveries. Chance favors the prepared mind.

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[Westacular]

Isn't that the point of UI and HCI research? The underlying theme is always, "we've got the technology, and it has some cool advantages, but we need to figure out how to make it useful to people"...

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

Chance only favours the lucky... and anyone can be lucky.

But I agree, I was merely disputing that the labs do not always have a better chance of invention (not discovery, mind you) due to time. In fact, time is their enemy.

do-it-youself BGA soldering?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your method?

Understandin customers

[Unregistered]

...how AOL doesn't understand its own customers,

That's ok. I don't unerstand AOL customers either.

Re:Innovations are made by people, not companies

[Billly Gates]

Software and innovations are made by people not corporations.

I am not saying people inside a corporation can not innovate or change the world. I am saying people with great idea's are not constrained by company inertia.

Look at Mosiac and Linux as examples. Both started with little financial resources. If you read the article Anderson mentions this. Lets say for example a highly profitable company like IBM came out with the next big thing. It would hardly be a blip on their radar profit wise. Big companies are too conservative.

People have great idea's. Yes getting money is hard but alot of startups started that way.

I dissagree on the next Yahoo and Amazon being dead before arrival. Look at Google? True, the next big will probably not be publically traded like in the 1990's but this is a good thing. Wall street like short minded quarter to quarter earnings and check everything to single percentage points when evaluating a company's worth. They do not like seeing R&D in their and view as only a means to stay competitive and tread water. Otherwise its a cost center.

Innovation can suceed today and not have 30 like minded competitors who are also being funded pop-up at anything related to the latest hype during the .com bubble.

If you read the article, Anderson mentioned this as well as how healhy it is that the Investors who can not take down's went back to Wall Street where they belong. Wall Street gives CEO's tremendous bonus's for cutting costs for so called "cost centers" like IT and R&D. Bell Labs now Lucent recently cut 90% of its R&D budget. They have done nothing innovative in years besides some limited sucess with nano technology organic counpounds for logic gates.

Name one innovative thing Oracle has done? One? Larry Elison is quite desperate. He ripped the RDMS from IBM. They tried the network computer but that failed. They are good at milking their cows which is their database. Eg. Toad, Oracle development tools, etc. But besides some trashy CRM software they have nothing. They are losing marketshare too thanks to Mysql, MS-SQL, and postgreSQL. Not everyone needs a mammothly complex RDBMS for a tiny department server or website.

The innovations I see in computing right now are blogging with sites such as livejournal.com, and audio sharing with things like Napster and Itunes. Notice like the web browser, they are not very profitable. At least not as profitable as Oracles database products, which would give the big companies little incentive to invest in R&D for these types of things.

Another reason why people, not corporations have all the good idea's.

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a nineteen year old geek girl who wishes to god she'd started sooner

And if that's really your picture on LJ, god damn, but you're the hottest geek girl I've ever seen.

Nitpick

[susano_otter]

Angry citizens are extremely relevant even (especially) in an age of highly efficient government killing machines. If your citizens are so angry about the sweatshop conditions that you have to kill them all, your economy is just as fucked as if they were so angry that they stopped work, rioted, and forcibly removed you from office--probably more fucked than that, now that I think about it. Disgruntled citizens can easily rebuild an economy after installing a more human government, but dead citizens aren't really ever going to be useful again.

Re:Nitpick

[10am-bedtime]

but a government need not kill all its citizens to retain power, just those it can't corrupt and co-opt. and even then, there are large buildings with bars in the windows where these people can easily be placed (at great expense to the other people), one at a time, peaceably and w/o argument from the others (the ones who are paying), so that killing is not necessary. in fact, the industry for keeping people alive and quiet is more profitable than dead and quiet.

and should some hot-heads start noticing disquieting trends in their government, it is no big deal to redirect their anger towards each other. mal-educated for years to be pliant (but "individualistically" so) and unskeptical, the conjuring of a bogeyman to hate is not only easy, it is expected. the "social advancement" of illiterate gradeschool children w/o understanding of basic civics and basic science produces a superstitious people willing to elect a goofy smile (or in the case of CA, abs of steel) because their identity has already been assigned: servants to the machine, polishers but never turners of the power knob, ready to complain but mostly unaccustomed to taking action.

and w/o action, it is all words, just like this spew here.

Re:Nitpick

[kcbrown]

Angry citizens are extremely relevant even (especially) in an age of highly efficient government killing machines. If your citizens are so angry about the sweatshop conditions that you have to kill them all, your economy is just as fucked as if they were so angry that they stopped work, rioted, and forcibly removed you from office--probably more fucked than that, now that I think about it.

True -- if you have to kill them all.

But you probably won't have to. Not even close. You just have to kill enough of them to make it clear to the rest that their choice is either work or death. Most people will choose to work.

And if you're really good at the police state thing, you'll identify troublemakers relatively early in the process and "disappear" them before they can make any real trouble.

The vast majority of people are sheep and will do whatever their masters tell them to do. That's why brutal dictatorships manage to stay in power despite their brutality.

Re:Nitpick

[susano_otter]

The argument I was originally replying to was the argument that modern regimes can get away with sweatshops because modern regimes can efficiently kill angry citizens before they become a major threat to the regime.

My counter-argument is that efficiently killing lots of people makes your economy--and therefore the overall value of your sweatshops--decline, not improve. Therefore, being able to kill lots of workers quickly is actually counter-productive. I'd be quick to question the sanity of any leader who thought machinegunning workers was a good way to improve industrial output.

Sure, you can terrify the remaining workers into working a little harder, but that's not very sustainable. And every time you use the machinegun option, your workforce diminishes even further, forcing you to pressure your remaining workers even more, causing those workers to become even more disgruntled or else die in droves from overwork. Either way, efficient killing is not a practical long-term solution to worker unrest. The parent poster seems to think it is, and I have hopefully explained why I disagree.

Re:Nitpick

[susano_otter]

This is a slightly different issue.

Here, you're talking about the efficacy of killing/incarcerating/intimidating limited numbers of people, in order to keep worker unrest at a manageable level.

In your parent post, you were talking about how unruly workers weren't a problem because modern regimes have the tools to kill lots of unruly workers very quickly.

The scenario you're describing now is just as effective if the government thugs are using revolvers, or clubs, or fists, or two-by-fours with a nail in them. After all, the Mob doesn't usually require much in the way of high-tech industrial firepower in order to collect their "protection" fees.

I totally agree that total annihilation of all the workers is usually unnecessary, and that a much more limited approach is probably quite effective.

But earlier you seemed to be arguing that large mobs of angry workers weren't a problem because the government could just bomb or shoot them all with modern weaponry.

My counter-argument is that modern mass-killing devices (or "weapons of mass-destruction") are not actually a good solution to the "angry mob" problem. Killing a large number of workers may seem like a good idea in the short term, but it's pretty damn stupid in the long term--especially because as your workforce shrinks drastically, you'll have to push the surviving workers even harder. This will make them even more angry, and you'll have to kill a lot of them, too. Or else they'll start dying from overwork. Either way, efficient mass killings aren't really a good solution, economically speaking.

If that's not what you meant by "angry citizens are irrelevant in the face of modern weaponry wielded by a military that is on the side of the government and not the people", then I apologize for wasting your time.

Re:Nitpick

[kcbrown]

But earlier you seemed to be arguing that large mobs of angry workers weren't a problem because the government could just bomb or shoot them all with modern weaponry.

[...]

My counter-argument is that modern mass-killing devices (or "weapons of mass-destruction") are not actually a good solution to the "angry mob" problem.

Ah, I think I understand why you're having trouble interpreting my statements.

You're equating a large imbalance in firepower between the average worker and the average soldier to "weapons of mass destruction". While WMD certainly do contribute to that imbalance, they're not strictly required for the imbalance to be sufficient to make an angry mob of civilians effectively powerless.

No, modern conventional weapons in the hands of a government are sufficient for that. With such weapons, a government soldier has a firepower advantage of thousands to one against an average civilian, thanks to things like artillery, armor, and air support.

WMD just increases that to a millions to one advantage.

The firepower advantage manifests itself in two ways: the first is that the average soldier can take out a large number of civilians easily. The second is that the average soldier is very hard for the average civilian to take out. Ultimately, it means that in a fight between the military and civilians, the civilians will (on average) suffer thousands of deaths for every soldier killed.

This disparity in firepower is what enables the government in question to get away with killing civilians that get out of line without having to worry about the civilians forming a mob and getting out of hand. Any civilian with any brains knows that the government possesses a thousands to one advantage in firepower, and that therefore to revolt en mass without support from the military would be futile. Said civilian also knows that the government would rather kill the majority of the civilians than lose power, and therefore challenging the power of the government is a monumentally stupid thing to do.

The days of popular revolution against a well-armed government are over, which is why I believe the slide of the U.S. and other "free" countries towards corporate police statehood is inevitable and unstoppable.

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[Billly Gates]

Degrees are essential. You need them for anything today. It does force you to concentrate and actually learn responsibility. Something I thought I had in my early 20's and late teens. Appearently I did not. I look back at myself as someone fairly selfish and highly irresponsible and niave.

College erases all of this with humility and gives you a chance to better yourself.

I think what she was saying more is conservatism and interia of big corporations create creativity and innovativeness down. I happen to agree.

I like the academic community and small to medium sized businesses for that reason. But college degrees have nothing to do with this.

Also people who only work for the money "so called whores" prefer to work for big corps and do not mind puting up with redtape and BS. After all its just a paycheck right?

great quotes... innovation retrospective

[goon]

this articles a good read so take the time to go through it as it summarises innovation from the early internet years to date.

innovation. The trick is finding that one crazy idea. The problem with crazy ideas, though, is that for every one good crazy idea, there's a thousand bad crazy ideas

the eternal quest for an idea. you better start with a good idea. if you don't, no matter how hard you try it wont pan out.

the Internet community back then, the key technical people, didn't want the Internet to become easy to use or graphical, ... Only smart people could use the Internet ...so we needed to keep it hard to use

what other examples can you think of right now?... only smart people can use [insert you own example]

Mosaic started with 12 users in February 1993. It had 1,000 users within three or four weeks. About 10,000 users by spring. It was up to 1 million by early 1994

Posters who question why Andreessen has such prominence should reflect on this. No Mosaic (mozilla), no Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE Based on NCSA Mosaic code base licensed from Spyglass), no World Wide Web in the early to mid 90's. No doubt someone else may have invented the browser but how much longer would it have taken?

At first that makes you like a little bunny rabbit ... Everybody wants to play with you ....within a year ... fearsome competitors shooting at your head with high-powered ammunition

Larry, Sergi do you feel the hot breath of the MS juggernaut as you approach your IPO. Will google will be a repeat of Netscape/MS tussle?

Oracle database was a huge success ... Larry's spent the last 25 years trying to come up with the next product

it sure helps when the government (CIA) is your preferred backer. Why does oracle feel the need to keep trying to re-innovate or create the next best idea?

innovation comes from companies that are 2 years old, populated by 19-year-olds ... preposterous that Marc should think that innovation is .. the province of little entrepreneurial companies.

In fact it's both. The technical revolution was spurred on the back of the transistor. This was the combined effort of Bardeen, Brattain and shockley at Bell Labs - no small comany there ... but look at Intel, though a big company now, it was started with the (not so young) Noyce, Moore and Grove. What about the Linux kernel, third person shooters and that other search engine, Yahoo?

Wunderkinds?

[bckrispi]

In the mid-1990s, Marc Andreessen was one of the wunderkinds of Silicon Valley.

Shouldn't that be wunderkinder?

Know why there was a dot.crash?

[pyrrho]

because of Netscape. It was the high profile IPO that started the craze. When they failed, the whole idea seemed to fail.

Andreesen is the most overrated guy in the techosphere.

Both Larry and Marc are right

[hacksoncode]

Large companies excel at generating a large quantity of innovation. They are the only ones that have the resources to do this. So Larry is right, "most" innovation comes from large companies.

However, the quality of innovation, in the sense of how revolutionary it is, seems to have historically much higher at small young companies. So Marc is right, "most" of the really spectacular innovations have come from small companies.

genius

[geekoid]

" can't predict what the next big thing is going to be. But there's going to be growth in a whole bunch of digital industries"

Genius I say, Genius!

sheesh.

Why the "AOL doesn't understand its customers"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Marc hasn't worked for AOL in over 3 years, getting his input on what AOL's doing now is about as useful as asking him how to run a company.

Well, more to the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Since his molecules have likely been completely replaced since the time of Netscape's founding this may be closer to the truth than we realize. I mean, okay, we have this convention of referring to ourselves and one another as permanent entities, but the fact is that despite this attempt ate creating permanence through language we are not fundamentally endowed with this thing called identity. It's simply a convention by which we conduct our thinking and our relations.

Sincerely,
the former poster of this message that is dissolving as we speak....

has-been?

[Doc Ruby]

Andreesen's last innovation was the tag he hacked from an icon-display to show arbitrary images. The apocryphal story has his Mosaic programmer way back at UIUC/NCSA balking, saying "that would destroy the Internet!", but agreeing to code a tag for icons. Then Andreesen hacked that code into arbitrary image sizes, destroyed the Internet and revolutionized pornography. Even during the bubble, I don't recall any innovation from him except hype, and since the crash, what novelties has he spawned? Netscape's innovation came from Jim Clark, the 3000 Sand Hill Road venture capitalists, and a team of sleepless visionaries (many cherry-picked from Apple) with Andreesen as their figurehead. Give a guy a hundred million dollars, and he starts to think he deserves another.

Because...

[jotaeleemeese]

... they are two different skills.

You can be a great reporter or writer and still have dismall spelling (or be lazy or clueless enough not to use a spell checker).

Even Gabrile Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize literature winner and respected journalist admits he is ashamed of his spelling.

Re:And the example of such innovations would be...

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

I do not think that either degrees are essential or people without degrees are 'so called whores'

Having gone the college route, and having seen the uselessness of most of what I spent my ears on, obviously there are other less resource wastful ways to learn discipline. Two years spent on "English I/II, Calculus I/II, and other basically filler classes I was not permitted to test out of meant two years of good solid sleep between test days.

Now perhaps I am an exception to the generalization, however, that in itself is proof that a degree is far from essential. You yourself might also be an exception, someone who buckled down and worked for the degree instead of buying one.

Many of us, myself included, work for the paycheck because even with the degree our work is being outsourced. We realize the difference between survival and comfort, and choose to maintain the former while striving for the latter. Others do not have the requisite ability to make it through college, or the requisite funds. So they work at the best they can, and try to better themselves. It is the few, not the many, that work the low end job to 'whore' as you put it.

I do agree that for those with the funding, time, and focus to go the college route it can be a great benifit. So can the military, or just a more disciplined upbringing by the parents. But it is not essential.

And as a side note, where I work our Human Resources department would rather see one year experience over a four year degree with no experience, and we are one of the top companies in the world. Your mileage may vary.

FAGGOT ANUS SUCKING FAG BITCH BOYWHORE FAGGOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

YUO = FAG!!1