It is an interesting subject for speculation. Clearly, the audience for Internet fads/in-jokes like Mahir, All Your Base..., etc. will continue to grow larger and larger as more and more people get on the Internet.
But authoring a fad is an almost impossible task. It would seem that most cases were accidental.
It seems that certain outfits have positioned themselves rather cleverly to monetize some of the fads. Take ThinkGeek. They very recently rolled out an "All Your Base..." t-shirt. One would assume from the prominent placement of the t-shirt on their website and their recent catalog (I'm on the mailing list) that they are selling rather well.
ThinkGeek obviously didn't create the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" phenom, but they acted very quickly once it was clear it achieved a sort of critical mass. But fads of this sort (based on peculiar, specific in-jokes between net nerds) are very certain to have very short half-lives. As a result, those who author such fads (accidentally or intentionally) don't seem as likely to be positioned to benefit from their own success.
On the other hand, consider the situation of Matt Parker and Trey Stone. They created a South Park short-film, which became a "must-see" piece of entertainment on the Internet. The media began to report on it. Then Comedy Central scooped it up, made the two creators multimillionaires, and rolled out one of their highest-rated series. In this instance, it was transplated from the Internet into the old media system of cable television- then hyped, milked and heavily merchandised.
I think we can expect to see repitions of both of these types of scenarios- essentially, Internet fads that fade as quickly as they came, and Internet fads that become the foundation for a serious commercial enterprise.
The German term "Schadenfreude" has seen a lot of play in recent months. It means, "Taking joy in the suffering of others", and it perfectly encapsulates the spirit of not only the "eCompanyNow" article but of many of the new websites that have popped up to celebrate the downfall of the dotcom economy.
The eCompanyNow article was something of a cute encyclopedia of some of the greatest excesses witnessed in the midst of the tech bubble. I enjoyed reading it, and laughed out loud at seeing so many portraits of hubris and foolishness in so compact a setting. But it makes for ironic reading, considering the origins of the magazine itself.
eCompanyNow was a rag brought into existence by Time, Inc. for the express purpose of soaking up a fair share of the funnymoney dotcom advertising dollars being generated by the mania itself. But the timing was less than opportune, since they came to market in May of 2000, as the bubble had already begun its rapid deflation. The dotcom advertising budgets that had led magazines like "FastCompany" and "Business 2.0" to swell to the size of phone books were suddenly gone, and as a result, the new economy magazines have all found themselves in a perpetual state of whithering, many looking anoxeric compared to their 1999 selves.
Not all new media rags were guilty of contributing to the bubble. Some were actually attempting to do a public service by reporting on the bubble as a genuine problem that was undermining both the common sense of the investing public, and the morality as well.
"Red Herring" was somewhat lonely as tech rags go, as they constantly decried the ever-inflating bubble in 1999, even at the risk of alienating the dotcoms that were advertising in their magazine.
Consider this prescient story from October of 1999, called "Internet bubble popping American business ethics?". I admired Redherring enormously for continually bringing the bubble to the attention of their readership in the midst of the madness, when so many other tech/stock rags didn't have the stomach or brains to do the same. It takes guts to tell your readers that they are delusional and your advertisers that they are doomed, but Redherring did as much when the mania really got overwhelming.
But one has to wonder, how long can the gleeful celebration of the death of stupid dotcoms last? Like vultures surviving off of the carcasses of dead and dying animals in the midst of a sudden drought, after a while, you've picked the bones clean, and there is nothing left to eat.
Kicking the recently humbled dotcom stars I guess is to be expected, but it will itself become tiresome. And then what will fuel the existence of those sites that were created solely for the Schadenfreude? Will they fail and be mocked by a 2nd generation version of themselves? Or simply forgotten? (I suspect they'll be the last to die before a new phase begins.)
And what will become of "eCompanyNow"? Soon they have have no more companies to mock, and no more advertisers to subsidize the mockery. Consolidation is already whittling the new media magazines down to a precious few, and I believe I've heard rumors that "eCompanyNow" will be merged with "Business2.0" and renamed "Business2.0". I hardly care what happens to either, given the fact that both are predicated in their very names on the myth we now have watched vanished before our eyes. There is no "Business2.0" model- that was the lie that we were being sold in the midst of the mania. There is no "eCompanyNow" model to embrace. We're back where we started, looking to the "Fortune" and "Forbes" magazines that preexisted the latest bubble and the "RedHerrings" that decried it for wisdom about what is coming.
We all know Lord British was assassinated in 1997, at the hands of a lowly thief named Rainz, while attempting to give a speech to the denizens of the Ultima Online beta. What are you saying, he didn't really die? I SAW IT HAPPEN.
This low-level thief filched a firewall spell from a random knight, cast it, and suddenly, a wall of flame appeared out of nowhere before the real Lord British.
Then, with the hardened arrogance that several years of omnipotence might visit upon any of us , Lord British cried out, "Ah ha ha! You can't kill me!" as he wandered into the flames. Where he died instantly.
I barely escaped with my own life, since Lord Blackthorn, British's right-hand-man, completely panicked and summoned four daemons from the bowels of hell to unleash demonic slaughter on the mass of innocent bystanders. What an atrocity! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!
So who really gave that interview? Because Lord British is a dead man. Miss him. Miss him.
OH! Stupid me. I didn't realize that Thinkgeek was only kidding! Because it's April Fools! LOL! I'm off to tell all my AOL friends via IM about this! They'll die!
That's what you wanted to hear, right? Not that I aware of the fact that it was fool's day, and was playing along with it?
I want you to believe whatever makes you feel best about yourself. That is what is really important here.
Meanwhile, the fate of the employees of Inside.com remains unclear, including those with the thankless job of selling reprint services to featured companies (a retroactive advertising gimmick)...
While Powerful Media, publisher of Inside.com, is under negotiations to be purchased by Primedia and Brill Media Ventures, the Inside.com staff has decamped to a nearby bar to drink their blues away, according to one source.
According to those familiar with the company, the staff at Inside.com remains largely in the dark, having been told little about the pending acquisition, which was first reported yesterday by the Industry Standard. A morning meeting was held at Inside.com offices, but by afternoon, Inside.com staffers had gathered at Half King, the watering hole founded by journalist Sebastian Junger.
"People are mostly confused," said a source familiar with Inside.com. "They don't know what's going to happen because the founders haven't made any kind of formal announcement to employees."
On Thursday, a user named "Brooke" sent a message via Dot Com Scoop subscriber's cell phones that read: "Brill's Content to announce another merger and possibly more layoffs today."
The deal, which could be announced as early as Monday, would consolidate Brill's Content and Inside magazines, while Inside.com would become part of Media Central, the newly formed subsidiary of Primedia and Brill Media Holdings. Layoffs are expected at both Brill's Content and Powerful Media, according to the reports. Powerful Media has 100-plus employees and offices in Los Angeles and New York.
In the last two months, a number of published reports have suggested Powerful Media, financed to the tune of $30 million by Flatiron Partners, Standard Media International and Morgan Stanley, was looking for a buyer, and had been in talks with publishers Cahners, Primedia, and VNU.
The New York Post reported that VNU, owner of The Hollywood Reporter, was the lead contender. But John Babcock, CEO of VNU-owned BPi, told the Daily in a recent interview that no deal was even close to being hammered out between Powerful Media and VNU.
"To my knowledge, I don't think there has been any offer made," said Babcock. "But its true they [Inside] are out there and that they are very desperate to sell their company."
Babcock said that Inside.com would be "a cash drain under their current configurations" for any company that purchased it. Still, the CEO was honest in his assessment of Inside.com founders Michael Hirschorn and Kurt Andersen, and the way the two luminaries have handled their company.
"I've never seen two guys that are better at creating hype," said Babcock.
...writing "Sex Tips for Geeks" is made considerably easier by the fact that anything you do will be considered sexy if it is behind the wheel of an Italian or German-made exotic automobile.
"You know, you might think picking your nose while driving around in your car is about as declasse as it gets. But I've had women wave, wink and smile suggestively at me, even while in the midst of a serious nasal mining expedition. I think it's because they saw the LinuxFish on my bumper and realized, 'Hey- this guy must be a smart programmer type.'"
I have, fortunately or unfortunately, many friends who became multimillionaires in the midst of the dotcom run-up. Now even their flatulence smells to some women sweeter than "Obsession". So picking up chicks isn't really a problem for them any more. Now the problem is filtering out the ones who would've loved them when they slept in $300/mo campus housing and drove a Gremlin.
(Of course, I hope for ESR's sake that he managed to dump some of that VA Linux stock back in the day. What was once worth to him $36M would I think now be worth less than $500K... And losing over 95% of your personal wealth in less than two years is DEFINITELY not a good way to appear sexy to chicks, ESPECIALLY if you're a geek.)
(insert obligatory Monty Python reference here, cross-referenced to earlier comment about the past theocratic nation of Spain, in hopes of picking up a couple extra points to catapult my Karma into the stratosphere, where I may commune with Cowboy Neal, Karma Theocratic.)
...you would be called a racist. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
America isn't a theocracy now, but has one hiding under the surface that pokes its nasty head up repeatedly.
I really don't mean to be dismissive of your argument or seem harsh, but blanket (and self-contradicting) statements like that invite blanket repudiations.
You can't have a partial theocracy, any more than you can have a partial dictatorship, a partial decapitation or partial open-mindedness. Inherent to the definition of theocracy is absolute, complete control of all governmental authority by a religious body. (Want to read about a real theocracy, find a bible belonging to some loony Christian you know and read about Old Testament Israel, after they escaped the enslavement of the Egyptians. THAT'S a Theocracy.)
It is alarmist ignorance that would lead someone to accuse the United States (of all countries!) of having a hidden theocratic authority. What the United States has instead is something entirely different- a pluralistic, ostensibly democratic governmental system largely owned and operated by the enormous influence of multinational corporations who purchase political influence from legislators and elected officials.
What you think is a hidden theocracy is instead a mostly powerless small minority of devout and vocal Christians who are pilloried by that even more vocal part of the citizenry (which I regret to say seems to include you) and media that feigns open-mindedness while simultaneously justifying their bigotry against people who believe in God, sin and the resurrection of Christ.
"I was a Christian. I probably understand your beliefs better than you understand mine."
I was both religiously agnostic and morally relativistic earlier in my own life, so you might be surprised how well I understand what it means to embrace the comforts of believing there isn't any absolute truth, isn't such a thing as sin, and isn't a reason to be afraid of judgment by a Creator who embodies the former and despises the latter.
"And my girlfriend thinks I'm TOO tolerant of Christianity - she considers it a mental illness, and after what she's seen, I can't say I blame her."
Thanks to you and your girlfriend for making my point better than I ever could. Selective tolerance is a solipsistic form of selective prejudice. Just because your intolerance is based on religious beliefs and not skin color, why fool yourself? You are what you claim you are not- close-minded and intolerant.
How does this sentence sound?
"And my girlfriend thinks I'm TOO tolerant of blacks- she considers them mentally ill, and after what she's seen, I can't say I blame her."
Change the subject of your derision from a religious belief to a skin color and you've just gone from being 'enlightened' to a hardcore racist. And how about this?
"I had to quit a job once because the boss was handicapped and became an asshole, and I don't mean he became an asshole on issues of morality, I mean he began insulting me verbally on a daily basis and started blaming me for everything that was wrong with the company. I have my reasons for saying the things I do.
And the coup de grace:
"The problem is, it's kinda hard to find a Christian whose religion hasn't dulled their intellect. (Note about that last statement: if I'm not talking about you, you shouldn't be offended by it.)"
I'm trying to be comforted by this insult that you kindly gift-wrapped with your parenthetical disclaimer, "Christian makes people stupid- but if you aren't one of those it has made idiotic, don't take offense."
You know what I think? You aren't looking for intellectual Christians- in fact, you've reason to be afraid them. You are looking to find people who call themselves Christians yet live clearly unchristian lives so that you can call Christianity itself a religion for the weak-minded hypocrites of the world and thereby reinforce your own prejudices. Racists do the same thing by focusing their attentions not on the accomplishments of the best and brightest African-Americans (who would undermine their own prejudices) but only the most egregious failures the black people have to offer. That way, they can keep telling their friends and peers, "Man, blacks are reprobates. Did you know that 1/3 of the males are in prisons? Hey, don't call me racist man, my boss is black. I know blacks."
I'm not trying to be inflammatory and I'm not trying to insult you. I do think it is important though to show you, using your own words, how you may be deluding yourself as relates to your openmindedness (not evident from your postings) and how you may be unfairly representing Christianity (incorrectly represented in your postings). I hope that in saying all of this you won't think my intentions were to try and be a jerk. I just hope that maybe the next the subject of Christianity comes up between you and a girlfriend, or maybe other friends, that you don't fall into the same ingrained habit of bashing and dismissing that you seem accustomed to. I hope my entreaties in this reply are at least substantive enough to convince you that there are thinking Christians out in the world, right now, who aren't buffoons simply because they believe in Christ.
No disrespect intended, but I am surprised that this treatise has been moderated to a 3. I guess that reflects the reality that many with moderator points are agnostic relativists happy to rubber-stamp something the reinforces their own muddled worldview while perpetuating stereotypes about worldviews you've already repudiated. Why do I say this?
"Actually, that's not entirely true. A theocracy COULD possibly work if it's not the kind of fundamentalist regime we see in most Christian and Muslim countries - the real problem isn't the religion, or the link to politics, it's that for FAR too many people in the countries I've mentioned, religion amounts to little more than a desire to see everyone else become exactly like you, and for some, it's a means of gaining power. "
Can you name ONE"fundamentalist Christian theocracy" on the planet at this time? No, because there are no significant Christian theocracies in this era.
There are, however, many Islamic countries which we would classify as having a theocratic system. The laws of government are derived from the Koran and Islamic religious tradition- it has nothing to do with, as you state, "a desire to see everyone else become exactly like you, and for some, it's a means of gaining power". Do you really believe this, or are you just saying it because it seems like it must be true because the alternative is to imagine a large body of people sharing an absolute religious worldview- a concept that, in our post-Christian agnostic consumerist society is too alien to fathom?
Visit one. I was in Jordan last year. The Islamic citizens there aren't pod-people with a hive mentality looking to homogenize themselves- they're human beings with beliefs that they value above their own lives. Also contrary to your statement, they have less power as citizens than you could possibly imagine, and belief in Islam will ensure that they remain without power or freedom as we know it. Yet they still believe..
As a Christian, I disagree stongly with their religious worldview. But try to have a little more respect for people with differing beliefs, and allow for the possibility that the fact of someone else's differing opinion may not be indication of their inferiority as individuals or thinkers.
If Bezos steps up to the plate for a rassling match with you, Sumo-suited or no, tape it. I would pay money to see a Bezos bodyslam. (I don't have anything against the man personally, but it isn't every day you get a chance to see a billionaire get squashed by a disgruntled ex-employee of his own company.)
On a side note:
Depressing and unfortunate to see so many/. people making comments about weight/appearance. I guess that's the downside of/. having a readership that so closely resembles the denizens of the J. Crew Catalog.
This claim would be inadmissable in a court of law. - Thank goodness the court of public opinion has a lot lower standards.
Moderate this one up someone! I'd do it myself but I squandered all my last points moderating Jon Katz down on his dribbling New Jerusalem Open Source heresy.
1) The last book of the Bible is "Revelation" not "Revelations".
2) In the necessary endeavor of speculation into matters concern the Divine, there is a fine line between the profound and profane . Congratulations for positing a theory that manages to be neither while pretending to be both.
3) If you believed that the Bible is absolute, living breathing word of God, the idea of trivializing it in the manner that you have would cause you great personal distress. If you don't believe that the Bible is the absolute, living breathing word of God, what is the point of co-opting its false revelatory promises for explaining the Open Source movement? Oh- I know! You're just contributing your postmodern part to the Great Symbol Drain that Neil Postman warned about....(do a find on "great symbol drain" at the link above for more info...)
4) For those with a genuine interest in understanding the importance of the promise of the New Jerusalem to Christians, do yourself the favor of reading the following substantive study...
5) Jon, the Katz bashing is so de rigueur on slashdot that it saddens me. If ThinkGeek rolled out a "Reduce Internet Pollution- Banish Jon Katz from it" t-shirt, they'd probably make a fortune. I don't believe people always give you a fair shake and believe it is morally wrong to bash you. But sometimes, it seems like you're just begging people to do it. Help those of us who want to see the bashing reduced by not reinforcing the stereotype bandied about here. In short, don't post tripe!
I'm neither a computer scientist nor an engineer, but I must at least take issue with part of the complaint. The criticism that "Wall Street rewards needless complexity and shuns those who build the most simple, human-centric devices" seems simply ill-informed. The bulk of VC money in the late nineties didn't get tied up in companies developing "needlessly complex" technologies. Consider:
1) theman.com received $20,000,000. Rather than suffering from needless complexity, it suffered from needless simplicity. (A website that advised Gen-X age men on good gift ideas for moms, or free pickup lines for cheap chicks?)
2) boo.com received $130,000,000. Their website suffered from needless complexity, but one could hardly say it was the fault of computer scientists (unless you consider flash animators and guys who sorta know javascript as computer scientists).
3) DEN received $60,000,000. They made 6 minute long short films targetting demographics supposedly ignored by television programming (latino gangland culture, teenage christian dungeon & dragon players, drunken fraternity morons, etc.). Needless stupidity, to be sure. Anything but complex.
4) Eve.com wasted $29,000,000 of VC money to build an ecommerce site for cosmetics and other ephemera for females. (The pitch to the VC, Bill Gross of Idealab, took 90 minutes, and didn't involve any computer scientists)
5) iCast.com cast $90,000,000 at streaming video. They're dead, too.
The list goes on and on. There is over a quarter of a billion above thrown at companies founded not by computer scientists but by:
A poet & an ex-model, a couple of ex-hollywood honchos, previously unemployed MBAs and other non computer scientist types.
>Or how about the following? I think real
>lawyers would know the difference between a
>trademark and a patent...
>
>What is certain, however, is that it appears >that someone has finally bested patent 5443036
>for most ridiculous intellectual property filing >in history."
Well, in fairness, both patents and trademarks would fall under the umbrella of 'intellectual property'. It would be technically incorrect if
the lawyer-dude said, "the most ridiculous
patent filing in history". But frankly, I'd
say that the laser-cat-patent trumps the
emoticon trademark anyday!
I am AMAZED at how many idiots there are that don't seem to be able to realize that this story is MAKING FUN OF FRIVILOUS LAWSUITS by PRETENDING TO BE ONE.
I have to revise my opinion of the average intelligence of the readership of slashdot WAAAAAY down.
Ask yourself, outraged nimrods, if you really believe the following things are TRUE.
1) A company that sells PARODY products is actually working with the FBI to MONITOR YOUR EMAIL.
2) The PARODY company in question is SERIOUSLY planning to sue 7,000,000 people.
3) The founder of that company is SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING changing his name to:-(
4) The SAME person also is suing JEFF BEZOS for infringing on a trademark.
5) The DISCLAIMER at the bottom of the story is actually NOT TRUE.
Did you read any of the OTHER STORIES on the website?
The unadulterated greed of so many corporate behemoths is so absurd that it even can't even be parodied.
I saw an article yesterday at The Register about how Despair.com had registered a trademark on the frown emoticon- :-( and planned to sue 7,000,000 people for trademark infringement.
As absurd as the joke is, it pales compared to what is actually being legitimately discussed by CMGI.
Of course, CMGI has little alternative, given their dire stock situation. Have you seen their stock chart recently? If it were a ski slope, it'd be a triple black diamond.
Re:A Primer on History from an Erudite Source
on
100 Years of Radio
·
· Score: 1
I owe the band a debt of gratitude for planting the seeds of curiousity about the person of Nikola Tesla which ultimately prompted me to research his tragic life. How sad that my own high school education robbed me of the truth (as lamented in that very song!)
I'm glad I know.
Plus, they rocked!
A Primer on History from an Erudite Source
on
100 Years of Radio
·
· Score: 2
Yet again, we encounter the ugly spectre of the Great Radio Controversy.
Yet again, we see confusion and uncertainty over matters historical- uncertainties which should not remain yet do because of our own willing embrace of ignorant but easily repeated lies and distortions.
How is it that in this enlightened era, so many still are confused as to who deserves the credit for the invention of radio?
How have we come to this?
Tragically, it is that very few people living today were brave enough to face the ridicule of their peers and plop down $15 to buy the 1991 album "Psychotic Supper" by a group of self-educated historians with big-metal-hair. A band named after a genius. A band called Tesla.
I think that by posting the lyrics to their song "Edison's Medicine (Man Out Of Time)" here on slashdot this very day, I will once and for all clear up any confusion as to who really invented radio. I will forever end the debate. I find great comfort in the knowledge that the truth will finally be known, and that I will no longer be ashamed to name this CD amongst my collection.
Edison's Medicine (Man Out Of Time)
You're guilty of crime in the first degree,
Second and third as well.
My jury finds you'll be serving your time
When you go straight to hell.
'Cause he was Lord of the Lightning,
Though "socially fright'ning",
But never out to sell.
Their nickels and pence
Meant more than did sense,
And not the sensible thing.
Nor did the man outta time, man outta time.
Thought you was crazy. You was one of a kind.
Man outta time, man outta time.
All along, world was wrong. You was right.
All that he saw, all he conceived,
They just could not believe.
Steinmetz and Twain were friends that remained,
Along with number three.
He was electromagnetic, completely kinetic,
"New Wizard of the West."
But they swindled and whined that he wasn't our kind,
And said Edison knew best.
He was the man outta time, man outta time.
Thought you was crazy. You was one of a kind.
Man outta time, man outta time.
Said you was outta your mind!
You took a shot and it did you in.
Edison's medicine.
You played your cards, but you couldn't win.
Edison's medicine.
I spent twelve years of hard time,
More like the best years of my life.
Never heard or read a single word
About "the man" and his "wicked mind."
They'll sell you on Marconi.
Familiar, but a phony.
Story goes they sold their souls
And swore that you'd never know...
About the man outta time, man outta time.
Thought you was crazy. You was one of a kind.
Man outta time, man outta time.
Swore you was outta your mind!
You took a shot and it did you in.
Edison's medicine.
You played your cards, but you couldn't win.
Edison's medicine.
Slashdot Mirror
(...slowly weaning the world of an often butchered turn-of-phrase, one person at a time...)
The error notwithstanding, if I had to rate your posting on a 1-to-10 scale, I'd give it a 7.
I'd probably give you a 9 if you were a girl.
It is an interesting subject for speculation. Clearly, the audience for Internet fads/in-jokes like Mahir, All Your Base..., etc. will continue to grow larger and larger as more and more people get on the Internet.
But authoring a fad is an almost impossible task. It would seem that most cases were accidental.
It seems that certain outfits have positioned themselves rather cleverly to monetize some of the fads. Take ThinkGeek. They very recently rolled out an "All Your Base..." t-shirt. One would assume from the prominent placement of the t-shirt on their website and their recent catalog (I'm on the mailing list) that they are selling rather well.
ThinkGeek obviously didn't create the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" phenom, but they acted very quickly once it was clear it achieved a sort of critical mass. But fads of this sort (based on peculiar, specific in-jokes between net nerds) are very certain to have very short half-lives. As a result, those who author such fads (accidentally or intentionally) don't seem as likely to be positioned to benefit from their own success.
On the other hand, consider the situation of Matt Parker and Trey Stone. They created a South Park short-film, which became a "must-see" piece of entertainment on the Internet. The media began to report on it. Then Comedy Central scooped it up, made the two creators multimillionaires, and rolled out one of their highest-rated series. In this instance, it was transplated from the Internet into the old media system of cable television- then hyped, milked and heavily merchandised.
I think we can expect to see repitions of both of these types of scenarios- essentially, Internet fads that fade as quickly as they came, and Internet fads that become the foundation for a serious commercial enterprise.
The German term "Schadenfreude" has seen a lot of play in recent months. It means, "Taking joy in the suffering of others", and it perfectly encapsulates the spirit of not only the "eCompanyNow" article but of many of the new websites that have popped up to celebrate the downfall of the dotcom economy.
,"NetSlaves" and "failure magazine" have all become the order of the day, each basically engaging in the time-honored tradition of "kicking them while their down". It is to be expected.
The eCompanyNow article was something of a cute encyclopedia of some of the greatest excesses witnessed in the midst of the tech bubble. I enjoyed reading it, and laughed out loud at seeing so many portraits of hubris and foolishness in so compact a setting. But it makes for ironic reading, considering the origins of the magazine itself.
eCompanyNow was a rag brought into existence by Time, Inc. for the express purpose of soaking up a fair share of the funnymoney dotcom advertising dollars being generated by the mania itself. But the timing was less than opportune, since they came to market in May of 2000, as the bubble had already begun its rapid deflation. The dotcom advertising budgets that had led magazines like "FastCompany" and "Business 2.0" to swell to the size of phone books were suddenly gone, and as a result, the new economy magazines have all found themselves in a perpetual state of whithering, many looking anoxeric compared to their 1999 selves.
Not all new media rags were guilty of contributing to the bubble. Some were actually attempting to do a public service by reporting on the bubble as a genuine problem that was undermining both the common sense of the investing public, and the morality as well.
"Red Herring" was somewhat lonely as tech rags go, as they constantly decried the ever-inflating bubble in 1999, even at the risk of alienating the dotcoms that were advertising in their magazine.
Consider this prescient story from October of 1999, called "Internet bubble popping American business ethics?". I admired Redherring enormously for continually bringing the bubble to the attention of their readership in the midst of the madness, when so many other tech/stock rags didn't have the stomach or brains to do the same. It takes guts to tell your readers that they are delusional and your advertisers that they are doomed, but Redherring did as much when the mania really got overwhelming.
Now, "f-ckedcompany","downside.com"
But one has to wonder, how long can the gleeful celebration of the death of stupid dotcoms last? Like vultures surviving off of the carcasses of dead and dying animals in the midst of a sudden drought, after a while, you've picked the bones clean, and there is nothing left to eat.
Kicking the recently humbled dotcom stars I guess is to be expected, but it will itself become tiresome. And then what will fuel the existence of those sites that were created solely for the Schadenfreude? Will they fail and be mocked by a 2nd generation version of themselves? Or simply forgotten? (I suspect they'll be the last to die before a new phase begins.)
And what will become of "eCompanyNow"? Soon they have have no more companies to mock, and no more advertisers to subsidize the mockery. Consolidation is already whittling the new media magazines down to a precious few, and I believe I've heard rumors that "eCompanyNow" will be merged with "Business2.0" and renamed "Business2.0". I hardly care what happens to either, given the fact that both are predicated in their very names on the myth we now have watched vanished before our eyes. There is no "Business2.0" model- that was the lie that we were being sold in the midst of the mania. There is no "eCompanyNow" model to embrace. We're back where we started, looking to the "Fortune" and "Forbes" magazines that preexisted the latest bubble and the "RedHerrings" that decried it for wisdom about what is coming.
FIN.
We all know Lord British was assassinated in 1997, at the hands of a lowly thief named Rainz, while attempting to give a speech to the denizens of the Ultima Online beta. What are you saying, he didn't really die? I SAW IT HAPPEN.
This low-level thief filched a firewall spell from a random knight, cast it, and suddenly, a wall of flame appeared out of nowhere before the real Lord British.
Then, with the hardened arrogance that several years of omnipotence might visit upon any of us , Lord British cried out, "Ah ha ha! You can't kill me!" as he wandered into the flames. Where he died instantly.
I barely escaped with my own life, since Lord Blackthorn, British's right-hand-man, completely panicked and summoned four daemons from the bowels of hell to unleash demonic slaughter on the mass of innocent bystanders. What an atrocity! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!
So who really gave that interview? Because Lord British is a dead man. Miss him. Miss him.
OH! Stupid me. I didn't realize that Thinkgeek was only kidding! Because it's April Fools! LOL! I'm off to tell all my AOL friends via IM about this! They'll die!
That's what you wanted to hear, right? Not that I aware of the fact that it was fool's day, and was playing along with it?
I want you to believe whatever makes you feel best about yourself. That is what is really important here.
Beets.
Meanwhile, the fate of the employees of Inside.com remains unclear, including those with the thankless job of selling reprint services to featured companies (a retroactive advertising gimmick) ...
t ml#Headline8110
http://www.siliconalleydaily.com/issues/default.h
Powerful Media Reportedly Selling Out next
by Dakota Smith
While Powerful Media, publisher of Inside.com, is under negotiations to be purchased by Primedia and Brill Media Ventures, the Inside.com staff has decamped to a nearby bar to drink their blues away, according to one source.
According to those familiar with the company, the staff at Inside.com remains largely in the dark, having been told little about the pending acquisition, which was first reported yesterday by the Industry Standard. A morning meeting was held at Inside.com offices, but by afternoon, Inside.com staffers had gathered at Half King, the watering hole founded by journalist Sebastian Junger.
"People are mostly confused," said a source familiar with Inside.com. "They don't know what's going to happen because the founders haven't made any kind of formal announcement to employees."
On Thursday, a user named "Brooke" sent a message via Dot Com Scoop subscriber's cell phones that read: "Brill's Content to announce another merger and possibly more layoffs today."
The deal, which could be announced as early as Monday, would consolidate Brill's Content and Inside magazines, while Inside.com would become part of Media Central, the newly formed subsidiary of Primedia and Brill Media Holdings. Layoffs are expected at both Brill's Content and Powerful Media, according to the reports. Powerful Media has 100-plus employees and offices in Los Angeles and New York.
In the last two months, a number of published reports have suggested Powerful Media, financed to the tune of $30 million by Flatiron Partners, Standard Media International and Morgan Stanley, was looking for a buyer, and had been in talks with publishers Cahners, Primedia, and VNU.
The New York Post reported that VNU, owner of The Hollywood Reporter, was the lead contender. But John Babcock, CEO of VNU-owned BPi, told the Daily in a recent interview that no deal was even close to being hammered out between Powerful Media and VNU.
"To my knowledge, I don't think there has been any offer made," said Babcock. "But its true they [Inside] are out there and that they are very desperate to sell their company."
Babcock said that Inside.com would be "a cash drain under their current configurations" for any company that purchased it. Still, the CEO was honest in his assessment of Inside.com founders Michael Hirschorn and Kurt Andersen, and the way the two luminaries have handled their company.
"I've never seen two guys that are better at creating hype," said Babcock.
..it was a joke. Everything on Thinkgeek today seems to be bogus. (but funny, very funny)
See for yourself, it ain't no April Fool's Joke. They are selling them on ThinkGeek.
I'm going to pick up a pair, along with that new Caffeinated meatloaf they are selling. It is about time they sold some REAL food!
...writing "Sex Tips for Geeks" is made considerably easier by the fact that anything you do will be considered sexy if it is behind the wheel of an Italian or German-made exotic automobile.
I have, fortunately or unfortunately, many friends who became multimillionaires in the midst of the dotcom run-up. Now even their flatulence smells to some women sweeter than "Obsession". So picking up chicks isn't really a problem for them any more. Now the problem is filtering out the ones who would've loved them when they slept in $300/mo campus housing and drove a Gremlin.
(Of course, I hope for ESR's sake that he managed to dump some of that VA Linux stock back in the day. What was once worth to him $36M would I think now be worth less than $500K... And losing over 95% of your personal wealth in less than two years is DEFINITELY not a good way to appear sexy to chicks, ESPECIALLY if you're a geek.)
Sorry. Just because nations have higher percentages of Catholics doesn't make them a theocracy. They aren't even close!
(insert obligatory Monty Python reference here, cross-referenced to earlier comment about the past theocratic nation of Spain, in hopes of picking up a couple extra points to catapult my Karma into the stratosphere, where I may commune with Cowboy Neal, Karma Theocratic.)
I really don't mean to be dismissive of your argument or seem harsh, but blanket (and self-contradicting) statements like that invite blanket repudiations.
You can't have a partial theocracy, any more than you can have a partial dictatorship, a partial decapitation or partial open-mindedness. Inherent to the definition of theocracy is absolute, complete control of all governmental authority by a religious body. (Want to read about a real theocracy, find a bible belonging to some loony Christian you know and read about Old Testament Israel, after they escaped the enslavement of the Egyptians. THAT'S a Theocracy.)
It is alarmist ignorance that would lead someone to accuse the United States (of all countries!) of having a hidden theocratic authority. What the United States has instead is something entirely different- a pluralistic, ostensibly democratic governmental system largely owned and operated by the enormous influence of multinational corporations who purchase political influence from legislators and elected officials.
What you think is a hidden theocracy is instead a mostly powerless small minority of devout and vocal Christians who are pilloried by that even more vocal part of the citizenry (which I regret to say seems to include you) and media that feigns open-mindedness while simultaneously justifying their bigotry against people who believe in God, sin and the resurrection of Christ.
I was both religiously agnostic and morally relativistic earlier in my own life, so you might be surprised how well I understand what it means to embrace the comforts of believing there isn't any absolute truth, isn't such a thing as sin, and isn't a reason to be afraid of judgment by a Creator who embodies the former and despises the latter.
Thanks to you and your girlfriend for making my point better than I ever could. Selective tolerance is a solipsistic form of selective prejudice. Just because your intolerance is based on religious beliefs and not skin color, why fool yourself? You are what you claim you are not- close-minded and intolerant.
How does this sentence sound?
Change the subject of your derision from a religious belief to a skin color and you've just gone from being 'enlightened' to a hardcore racist. And how about this?
And the coup de grace:
I'm trying to be comforted by this insult that you kindly gift-wrapped with your parenthetical disclaimer, "Christian makes people stupid- but if you aren't one of those it has made idiotic, don't take offense."
You know what I think? You aren't looking for intellectual Christians- in fact, you've reason to be afraid them. You are looking to find people who call themselves Christians yet live clearly unchristian lives so that you can call Christianity itself a religion for the weak-minded hypocrites of the world and thereby reinforce your own prejudices. Racists do the same thing by focusing their attentions not on the accomplishments of the best and brightest African-Americans (who would undermine their own prejudices) but only the most egregious failures the black people have to offer. That way, they can keep telling their friends and peers, "Man, blacks are reprobates. Did you know that 1/3 of the males are in prisons? Hey, don't call me racist man, my boss is black. I know blacks."
I'm not trying to be inflammatory and I'm not trying to insult you. I do think it is important though to show you, using your own words, how you may be deluding yourself as relates to your openmindedness (not evident from your postings) and how you may be unfairly representing Christianity (incorrectly represented in your postings). I hope that in saying all of this you won't think my intentions were to try and be a jerk. I just hope that maybe the next the subject of Christianity comes up between you and a girlfriend, or maybe other friends, that you don't fall into the same ingrained habit of bashing and dismissing that you seem accustomed to. I hope my entreaties in this reply are at least substantive enough to convince you that there are thinking Christians out in the world, right now, who aren't buffoons simply because they believe in Christ.
How sad is that?
I'm assuming I'm not only illiterate dork here with a disdain for articles, right?
Can you name ONE "fundamentalist Christian theocracy" on the planet at this time? No, because there are no significant Christian theocracies in this era.
There are, however, many Islamic countries which we would classify as having a theocratic system. The laws of government are derived from the Koran and Islamic religious tradition- it has nothing to do with, as you state, "a desire to see everyone else become exactly like you, and for some, it's a means of gaining power". Do you really believe this, or are you just saying it because it seems like it must be true because the alternative is to imagine a large body of people sharing an absolute religious worldview- a concept that, in our post-Christian agnostic consumerist society is too alien to fathom?
Visit one. I was in Jordan last year. The Islamic citizens there aren't pod-people with a hive mentality looking to homogenize themselves- they're human beings with beliefs that they value above their own lives. Also contrary to your statement, they have less power as citizens than you could possibly imagine, and belief in Islam will ensure that they remain without power or freedom as we know it. Yet they still believe..
As a Christian, I disagree stongly with their religious worldview. But try to have a little more respect for people with differing beliefs, and allow for the possibility that the fact of someone else's differing opinion may not be indication of their inferiority as individuals or thinkers.
If Bezos steps up to the plate for a rassling match with you, Sumo-suited or no, tape it. I would pay money to see a Bezos bodyslam. (I don't have anything against the man personally, but it isn't every day you get a chance to see a billionaire get squashed by a disgruntled ex-employee of his own company.)
/. people making comments about weight/appearance. I guess that's the downside of /. having a readership that so closely resembles the denizens of the J. Crew Catalog.
On a side note:
Depressing and unfortunate to see so many
I'm assuming I'm not only supermodel here, right?
This claim would be inadmissable in a court of law. - Thank goodness the court of public opinion has a lot lower standards.
Moderate this one up someone! I'd do it myself but I squandered all my last points moderating Jon Katz down on his dribbling New Jerusalem Open Source heresy.
Fight the power! Fight the powers that be!
1) The last book of the Bible is "Revelation" not "Revelations".
2) In the necessary endeavor of speculation into matters concern the Divine, there is a fine line between the profound and profane . Congratulations for positing a theory that manages to be neither while pretending to be both.
3) If you believed that the Bible is absolute, living breathing word of God, the idea of trivializing it in the manner that you have would cause you great personal distress. If you don't believe that the Bible is the absolute, living breathing word of God, what is the point of co-opting its false revelatory promises for explaining the Open Source movement? Oh- I know! You're just contributing your postmodern part to the Great Symbol Drain that Neil Postman warned about....(do a find on "great symbol drain" at the link above for more info...)
4) For those with a genuine interest in understanding the importance of the promise of the New Jerusalem to Christians, do yourself the favor of reading the following substantive study...
5) Jon, the Katz bashing is so de rigueur on slashdot that it saddens me. If ThinkGeek rolled out a "Reduce Internet Pollution- Banish Jon Katz from it" t-shirt, they'd probably make a fortune. I don't believe people always give you a fair shake and believe it is morally wrong to bash you. But sometimes, it seems like you're just begging people to do it. Help those of us who want to see the bashing reduced by not reinforcing the stereotype bandied about here. In short, don't post tripe!
I'm Audi 5000. Peace.
I'm neither a computer scientist nor an engineer, but I must at least take issue with part of the complaint. The criticism that "Wall Street rewards needless complexity and shuns those who build the most simple, human-centric devices" seems simply ill-informed. The bulk of VC money in the late nineties didn't get tied up in companies developing "needlessly complex" technologies. Consider:
1) theman.com received $20,000,000. Rather than suffering from needless complexity, it suffered from needless simplicity. (A website that advised Gen-X age men on good gift ideas for moms, or free pickup lines for cheap chicks?)
2) boo.com received $130,000,000. Their website suffered from needless complexity, but one could hardly say it was the fault of computer scientists (unless you consider flash animators and guys who sorta know javascript as computer scientists).
3) DEN received $60,000,000. They made 6 minute long short films targetting demographics supposedly ignored by television programming (latino gangland culture, teenage christian dungeon & dragon players, drunken fraternity morons, etc.). Needless stupidity, to be sure. Anything but complex.
4) Eve.com wasted $29,000,000 of VC money to build an ecommerce site for cosmetics and other ephemera for females. (The pitch to the VC, Bill Gross of Idealab, took 90 minutes, and didn't involve any computer scientists)
5) iCast.com cast $90,000,000 at streaming video. They're dead, too.
The list goes on and on. There is over a quarter of a billion above thrown at companies founded not by computer scientists but by:
A poet & an ex-model, a couple of ex-hollywood honchos, previously unemployed MBAs and other non computer scientist types.
FWIWIA.
"Electronic Gift Certificate System" (Thinkgeek, are you violating this one?)
"Internet-based customer referral system"
"Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network"
"System and method for refining search"
"Identifying the items most relevant to a current query based on items selected in connection with similar queries"
"Uh, a spellchecker"
"Hypocritical and inherently contradictory process for the written and/or verbal justification of ridiculous patents by an exploiter (and beneficiary) of an easily-abused Patent Registration Office"
>Or how about the following? I think real >lawyers would know the difference between a >trademark and a patent... > >What is certain, however, is that it appears >that someone has finally bested patent 5443036 >for most ridiculous intellectual property filing >in history." Well, in fairness, both patents and trademarks would fall under the umbrella of 'intellectual property'. It would be technically incorrect if the lawyer-dude said, "the most ridiculous patent filing in history". But frankly, I'd say that the laser-cat-patent trumps the emoticon trademark anyday!
See for your selves.
:-(
On a separate note...
I am AMAZED at how many idiots there are that don't seem to be able to realize that this story is MAKING FUN OF FRIVILOUS LAWSUITS by PRETENDING TO BE ONE.
I have to revise my opinion of the average intelligence of the readership of slashdot WAAAAAY down.
Ask yourself, outraged nimrods, if you really believe the following things are TRUE.
1) A company that sells PARODY products is actually working with the FBI to MONITOR YOUR EMAIL.
2) The PARODY company in question is SERIOUSLY planning to sue 7,000,000 people.
3) The founder of that company is SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING changing his name to
4) The SAME person also is suing JEFF BEZOS for infringing on a trademark.
5) The DISCLAIMER at the bottom of the story is actually NOT TRUE.
Did you read any of the OTHER STORIES on the website?
Do you REALLY believe they are partnering with Yahoo to create BOOHOO.COM- a portal for miserable people?
Do you REALLY believe Noah Wylie is the interim CEO of FUTURE POWER
The only story on their entire site that I might ACTUALLY believe is the one about selling 5000 Apathy posters to Fry's. That I believe.
Incredible.
:-( and planned to sue 7,000,000 people for trademark infringement.
The unadulterated greed of so many corporate behemoths is so absurd that it even can't even be parodied.
I saw an article yesterday at The Register about how Despair.com had registered a trademark on the frown emoticon-
As absurd as the joke is, it pales compared to what is actually being legitimately discussed by CMGI.
Of course, CMGI has little alternative, given their dire stock situation. Have you seen their stock chart recently? If it were a ski slope, it'd be a triple black diamond.
Because when it is, I'm telling Lars.
And then you're gonna be in BIG trouble.
I owe the band a debt of gratitude for planting the seeds of curiousity about the person of Nikola Tesla which ultimately prompted me to research his tragic life. How sad that my own high school education robbed me of the truth (as lamented in that very song!)
I'm glad I know.
Plus, they rocked!
Yet again, we encounter the ugly spectre of the Great Radio Controversy.
Yet again, we see confusion and uncertainty over matters historical- uncertainties which should not remain yet do because of our own willing embrace of ignorant but easily repeated lies and distortions.
How is it that in this enlightened era, so many still are confused as to who deserves the credit for the invention of radio?
How have we come to this?
Tragically, it is that very few people living today were brave enough to face the ridicule of their peers and plop down $15 to buy the 1991 album "Psychotic Supper" by a group of self-educated historians with big-metal-hair. A band named after a genius. A band called Tesla.
I think that by posting the lyrics to their song "Edison's Medicine (Man Out Of Time)" here on slashdot this very day, I will once and for all clear up any confusion as to who really invented radio. I will forever end the debate. I find great comfort in the knowledge that the truth will finally be known, and that I will no longer be ashamed to name this CD amongst my collection.
Edison's Medicine (Man Out Of Time)
You're guilty of crime in the first degree,
Second and third as well.
My jury finds you'll be serving your time
When you go straight to hell.
'Cause he was Lord of the Lightning,
Though "socially fright'ning",
But never out to sell.
Their nickels and pence
Meant more than did sense,
And not the sensible thing.
Nor did the man outta time, man outta time.
Thought you was crazy. You was one of a kind.
Man outta time, man outta time.
All along, world was wrong. You was right.
All that he saw, all he conceived,
They just could not believe.
Steinmetz and Twain were friends that remained,
Along with number three.
He was electromagnetic, completely kinetic,
"New Wizard of the West."
But they swindled and whined that he wasn't our kind,
And said Edison knew best.
He was the man outta time, man outta time.
Thought you was crazy. You was one of a kind.
Man outta time, man outta time.
Said you was outta your mind!
You took a shot and it did you in.
Edison's medicine.
You played your cards, but you couldn't win.
Edison's medicine.
I spent twelve years of hard time,
More like the best years of my life.
Never heard or read a single word
About "the man" and his "wicked mind."
They'll sell you on Marconi.
Familiar, but a phony.
Story goes they sold their souls
And swore that you'd never know...
About the man outta time, man outta time.
Thought you was crazy. You was one of a kind.
Man outta time, man outta time.
Swore you was outta your mind!
You took a shot and it did you in.
Edison's medicine.
You played your cards, but you couldn't win.
Edison's medicine.