This has GOT to be a subset of all employers out there. While there IS a group of employers that abuses the fuck out of their people (required 70-80hr weeks, etc. see above posts. ..), there's the other side, these people who are complaining because there's nothing to do in their job. The reason is - politics. When a Manager pads-out his or her team with personnel, they do so as a power-play. Bigger group, bigger budget, more pay for the manager, less likelyhood of obsolescence (and layoff) in a time of prosperity. There's no accountability, because the next level up of management is playing the same game - productivity? who cares? revenue? who cares? we're a dotcom with name recognition and marketshare!
once, many years ago, when I first started in this industry, I was an art-school dropout, who had hacked around cp/m and dos systems a bit, and my company was desperate for anyone to do tech support. They hired me, trained me, and here I am today. I think I did well. During my training, there were two other candidates that were hired. One guy, with a similar background to me (whom I helped get the job - he's doing promo work at trade shows now), and another guy, who had a PhD in computer science from University of Illinois (Champaign). The idiot couldn't even install a network card, and didn't understand SCSI termination when the trainer explained it to him, and when I showed it to him. He quit two days into the training.
until we're making as much as doctors, lawyers, automechanics, and other very highly sought-after providers of technical services, we ARE a poor downtrodden class.
and NOT releasing the reserves and allowing the price of oil to skyrocket was a direct subsidy to oil companies and rich oil barons; like GW Bush.
Why not vote Nader? Maybe he'll actually DO something to end this silly dependance on foreign oil. Instead of the current course of action, which is to suck up to the huge multinational oil companies, fight wars, destroy the environment, and deplete our natural resources until there are none left (when there are none left, don't you think that will really suck? oh yeah, don't worry about it, you wont live that long).
Tech job fairs become free-for-alls with hiring representatives using bear traps, nets and stun guns to get replacements
ever get the feeling that there are more head-hunters than programmers? Damn, three years ago when my company closed it's office, I was getting calls from headhunters two days BEFORE the closure was announced internally. Must've been some damn good tea-leaves.
I say, let them EARN their bounties.
What do you mean by that? Spending a week of evenings reading "how to program C# in 30 days" instead of sitting down to a family dinner, walking the dog, screwing his wife, reading Dr. Seuss to the kids, going rollerblading, building a patio deck, working on that '69 Camaro, peering into the night-sky with a telescope trying to locate the next planet-killer. . .
People need balanced lives to remain human. Otherwise, they become mindless corporate slaves.
Ironic that Netscape was BOUGHT by AOL, and probably could have been saved by using AOL's tactics: Mass-mailing Netscape CD's to anyone who recently bought a computer.
Yes, 99% of them would have been shitcanned, but I bet it would have saved Netscape in the long run.
The Mc Donald's comparison would work if you modified it thusly:
If there was a supplier of Beef, who bought out all the cattle ranches in the world, and used genetic engineering to gain a proprietary foothold so that nobody else could raise cattle, without violating that supplier's IP. Then, as selling beef to all the fast food restaurants, this supplier insisted that since they also produced potatoes, that only their brand of french fries would also be available - and soft-drinks too (let's say the supplier owns Coca-Cola). Since all fast-food restaurants now only offer the same exact food, they have no way of differentiating their product other than packaging logos and price, and since the costs of running a fast food chain is pretty much the same when they're all world-wide, there then is a loss of choice for the consumer, nobody can ever go out to eat and drink Pepsi, because if a fast food restaurant ever supplied Pepsi instead of Coke, they would lose their license to sell beef products from the ONLY supplier of beef in the world. What if this supplier's mass-production technique for french fries rendered them barely edible. Sure, someone else could grow good potatoes, and supply them to a fast food restaurant, who could sell them, and offer a superior product to the consumers. But that would mean they couldn't sell beef hamburgers. So if a customer wants GOOD fries with his fast-food meal, they've got to go to the specialty-shop, across the street, that sells ONLY french fries. Find parking, stand in line again, just to get the good fries with the meal. Instead of the ratty rancid spotty fries from the same place he bought the burger. This competitive disadvantage, along with the fact that the rancid fries are offered free with the burger, slowly bleeds the Fry-shak dry, until they start losing locations, they lose economy of scale, and go further down, etc.
Sure, customers could go to a fine restaurant and get Chicken or Pork, and have to sit down, have a waiter, tip the waiter, pay probably 10 times as much for a meal - while the fast-food shop claimed that for 1/10th the cost, their meal was just as nutritious, and done in 1/4th the time. Connisuers of fine food know the truth, and dine out, but most folks just can't afford to do that all the time. So they don't have a choice. Even when the fast food restaurant raises prices, doubles, triples. At half the price of a sit down meal, it's still a bargain, right? Even with the rancid fries. Bargain nothing, there's still no choice for those who either don't have time or enough money for the sit-down meal.
Then there are the folks who still breed their own cattle, you can get one of these cows cheap, but you have to slaughter it yourself, butcher it, cook it, etc. But it's really a damn good burger, if you've got the time, a pickup-truck and a trailer to haul it, and a really big freezer to store the excess beef. Still, since Fry-shak went out of business, and so did Pepsi and Snapple, there's only one drink in town, and that's Coke. Sorry if you don't want all that sugar, or if the caffeine keeps you up late at night, or if you get food poisoning from the rancid fries. (even though they're free with the burger, you can still buy it separately). Sometimes you can search and find one of the last remaining fry-shak restaurants, and get some fries with your home-slaughtered beef burger. At least that's a consolation.
Oh, but Compaq is, was, and always has been FREE to invest in and develop their own OS they could ship on their machines instead of Windows. They were always FREE to tell Microsoft to stuff it. So they bargained their way into a difficult situation, they slept with the devil, and that's the price you pay. They should have had a backup plan. Maybe, like buy another company that has an OS and ship that instead (like DEC? DEC Unix? Linux? VMS?) - Sure! Gateway too! (Amiga?) and IBM! (OS/2?) and Dell! (could have resurrected DR.DOS I suppose). They're just a bunch of crybabies. Whiners who wish they could eat Microsoft's lunch because Microsoft was soooo successful.
Which company owns the WinAPI? Surely not the OS company - applications will own it, because it's part of Visual Studio - therefore, the writers of the WinAPI will also still be in cahoots with the writers of MS Office for Windows.
The split only prevents bundling apps with the OS, it does NOTHING to eliminate the API and file-format strategy that Microsoft has used so well to lock-in developers to a single-platform, which will become the MS Applications for Windows, a middleware layer, the OS will become irrelevant, it will be a low-level creep, like DOS. Necessary to exist everywhere, because the PLATFORM (the applications and API) are what dominates the market, and the platform requires the underpinnings. But nobody will buy the underpinnings without the application layer that goes on top, because THAT is the part that is useful, and is required to do business and be on the internet, because that portion is still tied to the Microsoft APIs and file formats which are the dominant standards.
Toss them in jail, that's the only real punishment that will deter future illegal behavior. Let the market take care of the remainder of the problem. Once the officers stop directing the company's illegal activities, and Microsoft's business practices go legit, I firmly believe that the market will have no trouble at all returning to normal, and beating back the beast. It is only through these illegal practices that Microsoft maintains their dominance, NOT through some supposed product superiority.
I installed and ran the Mac OS X Public Beta last night, on a 300MHz G3 beige desktop, with minimal memory (196 meg), and try as I might, I could not crash that fucker for anything. This is beta. I had NO trouble at all crashing Win2k on decent hardware (800MHz PIII 256 meg RAM). Other, better OSes are out there, and can uproot Windows, as soon as Microsoft stops behaving illegally.
First; how do we know that the impartiality of the other justices isn't compromised. Just because someone was able to dig up this one goody on Reichquist doesn't mean that the others may not have more obscured bribes-er biases.
Second; Microsoft had their day in court, the judge found them guilty, they are abusing the system of due-process in order to squeeze more ill-gotten revenue out of their advantageous market position while they can, and possibly delay until the whole deal is irrelevant. Microsoft got off scott free on the previous trial in 1995, so nobody can claim that there was a rush to judgement. How many more software companies have to go under, how many more cool new REAL innovations have to be squashed, before we all agree that the existence of Microsoft overall, has been a bad thing?
If they DO impose a different punishment, however, I think that would be great. Microsoft should NOT be split up, or fined - such moves would not alter Microsoft's behavior or market dominance. It does NOTHING to the API and file-format strategy. What *should* happen is that the people who gave the orders and made the decisions that resulted in illegal behavior for the corporation, should be identified, and punished, as individuals who committed crimes. Punishing the corporation only punishes it's customers. A corporation isn't a human, does not have a will, or a rational mind, or a moral compass. Punishing individuals for bad decisions makes more sense.
Microsoft is alleged (and many of us here believe this) to have included secret back-doors in IE and Windows for the NSA.
Windows is THE standard desktop OS in many, many government agencies.
In classic "who babysits the babysitters" conspiracy-theory fasion, I question the patriotism and motives of the NSA. How do we know that they are not a threat to our National Security? It's also been alleged that the NSA has used Echelon to discover proprietary competitive information from Airbus, and gave it to Boeing. How do we know that similar schenanigans have not gone on with regard to defense contracts with our government - and what else? We know Microsoft serves the NSA. Who does the NSA serve? People are still getting blown up by terrorist bombs every day, so they apparently aren't serving us.
We don't know. We assume, we call people who come up with crazy theories like this crackpots. Then we're all suprised and up in arms when someone comes forward and says that this big bugaboo everyone was theorizing about (Echelon) for decades turns out to be the real deal - how are they using this tool? How does any human being use any tool? For good or for evil?
Microsoft's actions, and the government's compliance (in turning a blind-eye for too long at the antitrust violations), have established Microsoft's position of industry dominance, and as a critical element of the WORLD'S information infrastructure; and it's full of back doors and security loopholes. Some intentional, some apparently (but not necessarily) not. Feeling vulnerable? Feeling insecure? Tell yourself you're just being paranoid, and it will all go away. Just like when you walk past those homeless panhandlers on the street and pretend not to see them.
Look, Perot got like 20% of the popular vote, did it send "the establishment" a message? Yeah, the message was: lay low for a few years, make some superficial changes, then go back to normal later when the reform party becomes a public joke.
Next thing you know, Dan Quayle will be running for president in 2004 on the Green ticket.
Now in some (IMHO) more progressive european countries, where they have more than two evil parties, they do a run-off if any candidate gets less than 50% of the vote. In that case, you don't have to be afraid to vote for the guy you want to win, because you won't end up with a minority winner.
this is why I never advocated a breakup, or a fine for Microsoft - I think such measures would be silly and ineffective, and they'd only pass them on to the consumers.
The only answer to this question is; find the people who made the decisions, gave the orders for illegal behavior, and put the fuckers behind bars. Naughty children need to be spanked. Perhaps Bill Gates can bundle license plates with crushed rocks?
. . . which is probably why we'll never see this antitrust trial go anyplace. It will get tossed out on appeal. Just like the last one, where they lost, got a consent decree, violated the consent decree, and got it nullified anyway.
the web is a popularity contest because in the "new economy", it's all about marketshare. That's it. Nothing else matters. Revenue doesn't matter. Profitability doesn't matter. A business plan doesn't matter.
The premise behind this "marketshare is everything" is that, since the internet is a "new thing", the guy who takes over the most marketshare first, is going to be the dominant player - people think this way because they saw what happened when Microsoft entered a new market, and got the most marketshare. They dominate. They're damn near owning the whole freakin world. If they had played it more laid back, and done more honest hard work up front, they probably would have avoided this whole DOJ mess, and ten years from now, *would* 0wn the whole world. But no, the execs got lazy and greedy, and when it became apparent early on that Microsoft was only interested in putting out "good enough" products and killing off competition (instead of allowing competition to exist, albiet in a weakend state), the threat was so obvious, they had to be stopped. Act like a bunch of gangsters, get treated like gangsters.
Anyway, the investment and business community is expecting SOMEONE to take over, and they want a piece of the action, of course, so that's why people are willing to risk a few investment bucks on who they perceive will be the Genghis Khan of the Internet.
That's the "new economy" in a nutshell. And frankly, AOL/TW is "it".
Gee, I guess somebody finally figured out what the third kind of lie is!
I think that if you're investing in a web company, you should IGNORE the statistics. Go to the site. If it's lame, don't give them your money. If it rocks, go for it? How hard could that be?
Slashdot Mirror
"fixed" means: no longer can have puppies.
Soylent Green is people!
You bind any two or more objects together, and you better use good rope. Elsewise they come apart.
Soylent Green is people!
This has GOT to be a subset of all employers out there. While there IS a group of employers that abuses the fuck out of their people (required 70-80hr weeks, etc. see above posts. . .), there's the other side, these people who are complaining because there's nothing to do in their job. The reason is - politics. When a Manager pads-out his or her team with personnel, they do so as a power-play. Bigger group, bigger budget, more pay for the manager, less likelyhood of obsolescence (and layoff) in a time of prosperity. There's no accountability, because the next level up of management is playing the same game - productivity? who cares? revenue? who cares? we're a dotcom with name recognition and marketshare!
Soylent Green is people!
Damn. If I didn't need the money, I'd just surf all day long. Not the internet you moron. Ocean. Wetsuit. Board.
Soylent Green is people!
once, many years ago, when I first started in this industry, I was an art-school dropout, who had hacked around cp/m and dos systems a bit, and my company was desperate for anyone to do tech support. They hired me, trained me, and here I am today. I think I did well. During my training, there were two other candidates that were hired. One guy, with a similar background to me (whom I helped get the job - he's doing promo work at trade shows now), and another guy, who had a PhD in computer science from University of Illinois (Champaign). The idiot couldn't even install a network card, and didn't understand SCSI termination when the trainer explained it to him, and when I showed it to him. He quit two days into the training.
Soylent Green is people!
until we're making as much as doctors, lawyers, automechanics, and other very highly sought-after providers of technical services, we ARE a poor downtrodden class.
Soylent Green is people!
and NOT releasing the reserves and allowing the price of oil to skyrocket was a direct subsidy to oil companies and rich oil barons; like GW Bush.
Why not vote Nader? Maybe he'll actually DO something to end this silly dependance on foreign oil. Instead of the current course of action, which is to suck up to the huge multinational oil companies, fight wars, destroy the environment, and deplete our natural resources until there are none left (when there are none left, don't you think that will really suck? oh yeah, don't worry about it, you wont live that long).
Soylent Green is people!
Tech job fairs become free-for-alls with hiring representatives using bear traps, nets and stun guns to get replacements
ever get the feeling that there are more head-hunters than programmers? Damn, three years ago when my company closed it's office, I was getting calls from headhunters two days BEFORE the closure was announced internally. Must've been some damn good tea-leaves.
I say, let them EARN their bounties.
Soylent Green is people!
They're not doing what it takes?
What do you mean by that? Spending a week of evenings reading "how to program C# in 30 days" instead of sitting down to a family dinner, walking the dog, screwing his wife, reading Dr. Seuss to the kids, going rollerblading, building a patio deck, working on that '69 Camaro, peering into the night-sky with a telescope trying to locate the next planet-killer. . .
People need balanced lives to remain human. Otherwise, they become mindless corporate slaves.
Soylent Green is people!
Buzzword Bingo isn't the REAL reason, it's the cover-up reason, for what seems like age-discrimination, when it's really lifestyle-discrimination.
Damn these 30+-ers for getting married and having kids and refusing to put in 100+ hr weeks!
Soylent Green is people!
Ironic that Netscape was BOUGHT by AOL, and probably could have been saved by using AOL's tactics: Mass-mailing Netscape CD's to anyone who recently bought a computer.
Yes, 99% of them would have been shitcanned, but I bet it would have saved Netscape in the long run.
Soylent Green is people!
The Mc Donald's comparison would work if you modified it thusly:
If there was a supplier of Beef, who bought out all the cattle ranches in the world, and used genetic engineering to gain a proprietary foothold so that nobody else could raise cattle, without violating that supplier's IP. Then, as selling beef to all the fast food restaurants, this supplier insisted that since they also produced potatoes, that only their brand of french fries would also be available - and soft-drinks too (let's say the supplier owns Coca-Cola). Since all fast-food restaurants now only offer the same exact food, they have no way of differentiating their product other than packaging logos and price, and since the costs of running a fast food chain is pretty much the same when they're all world-wide, there then is a loss of choice for the consumer, nobody can ever go out to eat and drink Pepsi, because if a fast food restaurant ever supplied Pepsi instead of Coke, they would lose their license to sell beef products from the ONLY supplier of beef in the world. What if this supplier's mass-production technique for french fries rendered them barely edible. Sure, someone else could grow good potatoes, and supply them to a fast food restaurant, who could sell them, and offer a superior product to the consumers. But that would mean they couldn't sell beef hamburgers. So if a customer wants GOOD fries with his fast-food meal, they've got to go to the specialty-shop, across the street, that sells ONLY french fries. Find parking, stand in line again, just to get the good fries with the meal. Instead of the ratty rancid spotty fries from the same place he bought the burger. This competitive disadvantage, along with the fact that the rancid fries are offered free with the burger, slowly bleeds the Fry-shak dry, until they start losing locations, they lose economy of scale, and go further down, etc.
Sure, customers could go to a fine restaurant and get Chicken or Pork, and have to sit down, have a waiter, tip the waiter, pay probably 10 times as much for a meal - while the fast-food shop claimed that for 1/10th the cost, their meal was just as nutritious, and done in 1/4th the time. Connisuers of fine food know the truth, and dine out, but most folks just can't afford to do that all the time. So they don't have a choice. Even when the fast food restaurant raises prices, doubles, triples. At half the price of a sit down meal, it's still a bargain, right? Even with the rancid fries. Bargain nothing, there's still no choice for those who either don't have time or enough money for the sit-down meal.
Then there are the folks who still breed their own cattle, you can get one of these cows cheap, but you have to slaughter it yourself, butcher it, cook it, etc. But it's really a damn good burger, if you've got the time, a pickup-truck and a trailer to haul it, and a really big freezer to store the excess beef. Still, since Fry-shak went out of business, and so did Pepsi and Snapple, there's only one drink in town, and that's Coke. Sorry if you don't want all that sugar, or if the caffeine keeps you up late at night, or if you get food poisoning from the rancid fries. (even though they're free with the burger, you can still buy it separately). Sometimes you can search and find one of the last remaining fry-shak restaurants, and get some fries with your home-slaughtered beef burger. At least that's a consolation.
Soylent Green is people!
Oh, but Compaq is, was, and always has been FREE to invest in and develop their own OS they could ship on their machines instead of Windows. They were always FREE to tell Microsoft to stuff it. So they bargained their way into a difficult situation, they slept with the devil, and that's the price you pay. They should have had a backup plan. Maybe, like buy another company that has an OS and ship that instead (like DEC? DEC Unix? Linux? VMS?) - Sure! Gateway too! (Amiga?) and IBM! (OS/2?) and Dell! (could have resurrected DR.DOS I suppose). They're just a bunch of crybabies. Whiners who wish they could eat Microsoft's lunch because Microsoft was soooo successful.
/sarcasm
Soylent Green is people!
Which company owns the WinAPI? Surely not the OS company - applications will own it, because it's part of Visual Studio - therefore, the writers of the WinAPI will also still be in cahoots with the writers of MS Office for Windows.
The split only prevents bundling apps with the OS, it does NOTHING to eliminate the API and file-format strategy that Microsoft has used so well to lock-in developers to a single-platform, which will become the MS Applications for Windows, a middleware layer, the OS will become irrelevant, it will be a low-level creep, like DOS. Necessary to exist everywhere, because the PLATFORM (the applications and API) are what dominates the market, and the platform requires the underpinnings. But nobody will buy the underpinnings without the application layer that goes on top, because THAT is the part that is useful, and is required to do business and be on the internet, because that portion is still tied to the Microsoft APIs and file formats which are the dominant standards.
Toss them in jail, that's the only real punishment that will deter future illegal behavior. Let the market take care of the remainder of the problem. Once the officers stop directing the company's illegal activities, and Microsoft's business practices go legit, I firmly believe that the market will have no trouble at all returning to normal, and beating back the beast. It is only through these illegal practices that Microsoft maintains their dominance, NOT through some supposed product superiority.
I installed and ran the Mac OS X Public Beta last night, on a 300MHz G3 beige desktop, with minimal memory (196 meg), and try as I might, I could not crash that fucker for anything. This is beta. I had NO trouble at all crashing Win2k on decent hardware (800MHz PIII 256 meg RAM). Other, better OSes are out there, and can uproot Windows, as soon as Microsoft stops behaving illegally.
Soylent Green is people!
he was a buddy of Nixon's.
You don't get there UNLESS you do have poor ethics.
Soylent Green is people!
First; how do we know that the impartiality of the other justices isn't compromised. Just because someone was able to dig up this one goody on Reichquist doesn't mean that the others may not have more obscured bribes-er biases.
Second; Microsoft had their day in court, the judge found them guilty, they are abusing the system of due-process in order to squeeze more ill-gotten revenue out of their advantageous market position while they can, and possibly delay until the whole deal is irrelevant. Microsoft got off scott free on the previous trial in 1995, so nobody can claim that there was a rush to judgement. How many more software companies have to go under, how many more cool new REAL innovations have to be squashed, before we all agree that the existence of Microsoft overall, has been a bad thing?
If they DO impose a different punishment, however, I think that would be great. Microsoft should NOT be split up, or fined - such moves would not alter Microsoft's behavior or market dominance. It does NOTHING to the API and file-format strategy. What *should* happen is that the people who gave the orders and made the decisions that resulted in illegal behavior for the corporation, should be identified, and punished, as individuals who committed crimes. Punishing the corporation only punishes it's customers. A corporation isn't a human, does not have a will, or a rational mind, or a moral compass. Punishing individuals for bad decisions makes more sense.
Put Gates and Ballmer behind bars NOW!
Soylent Green is people!
Perhaps it IS a matter of National Security.
Microsoft is alleged (and many of us here believe this) to have included secret back-doors in IE and Windows for the NSA.
Windows is THE standard desktop OS in many, many government agencies.
In classic "who babysits the babysitters" conspiracy-theory fasion, I question the patriotism and motives of the NSA. How do we know that they are not a threat to our National Security? It's also been alleged that the NSA has used Echelon to discover proprietary competitive information from Airbus, and gave it to Boeing. How do we know that similar schenanigans have not gone on with regard to defense contracts with our government - and what else? We know Microsoft serves the NSA. Who does the NSA serve? People are still getting blown up by terrorist bombs every day, so they apparently aren't serving us.
We don't know. We assume, we call people who come up with crazy theories like this crackpots. Then we're all suprised and up in arms when someone comes forward and says that this big bugaboo everyone was theorizing about (Echelon) for decades turns out to be the real deal - how are they using this tool? How does any human being use any tool? For good or for evil?
Microsoft's actions, and the government's compliance (in turning a blind-eye for too long at the antitrust violations), have established Microsoft's position of industry dominance, and as a critical element of the WORLD'S information infrastructure; and it's full of back doors and security loopholes. Some intentional, some apparently (but not necessarily) not. Feeling vulnerable? Feeling insecure? Tell yourself you're just being paranoid, and it will all go away. Just like when you walk past those homeless panhandlers on the street and pretend not to see them.
Soylent Green is people!
Look, Perot got like 20% of the popular vote, did it send "the establishment" a message? Yeah, the message was: lay low for a few years, make some superficial changes, then go back to normal later when the reform party becomes a public joke.
Next thing you know, Dan Quayle will be running for president in 2004 on the Green ticket.
Now in some (IMHO) more progressive european countries, where they have more than two evil parties, they do a run-off if any candidate gets less than 50% of the vote. In that case, you don't have to be afraid to vote for the guy you want to win, because you won't end up with a minority winner.
don't forget how badly LDAP is embraced by MAD (Microsoft Active Directory)
this is why I never advocated a breakup, or a fine for Microsoft - I think such measures would be silly and ineffective, and they'd only pass them on to the consumers.
The only answer to this question is; find the people who made the decisions, gave the orders for illegal behavior, and put the fuckers behind bars. Naughty children need to be spanked. Perhaps Bill Gates can bundle license plates with crushed rocks?
okay, using "meme" would have been bad, but using the word "engram", you just totally lost all credibility with me, scientology-boy.
. . . which is probably why we'll never see this antitrust trial go anyplace. It will get tossed out on appeal. Just like the last one, where they lost, got a consent decree, violated the consent decree, and got it nullified anyway.
It's good to be the king.
Are you kidding? The punishment in this country for fraud is not public hanging. The punishment is that you have to give all your money to a lawyer.
the web is a popularity contest because in the "new economy", it's all about marketshare. That's it. Nothing else matters. Revenue doesn't matter. Profitability doesn't matter. A business plan doesn't matter.
The premise behind this "marketshare is everything" is that, since the internet is a "new thing", the guy who takes over the most marketshare first, is going to be the dominant player - people think this way because they saw what happened when Microsoft entered a new market, and got the most marketshare. They dominate. They're damn near owning the whole freakin world. If they had played it more laid back, and done more honest hard work up front, they probably would have avoided this whole DOJ mess, and ten years from now, *would* 0wn the whole world. But no, the execs got lazy and greedy, and when it became apparent early on that Microsoft was only interested in putting out "good enough" products and killing off competition (instead of allowing competition to exist, albiet in a weakend state), the threat was so obvious, they had to be stopped. Act like a bunch of gangsters, get treated like gangsters.
Anyway, the investment and business community is expecting SOMEONE to take over, and they want a piece of the action, of course, so that's why people are willing to risk a few investment bucks on who they perceive will be the Genghis Khan of the Internet.
That's the "new economy" in a nutshell. And frankly, AOL/TW is "it".
Gee, I guess somebody finally figured out what the third kind of lie is!
I think that if you're investing in a web company, you should IGNORE the statistics. Go to the site. If it's lame, don't give them your money. If it rocks, go for it? How hard could that be?