Linked by Howard Fosdick on Mon 19th Nov 2012 09:15 UTC
Levi Asher offers his free memoir of his rise and fall in the dot-com boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The autobiography covers Asher's twenty-five years in programming: his founding of the oldest ongoing literature website Literary Kicks in 1994, his success with the dot-com website iVillage in 1999 (and its subsequent collapse), and how all this insanity affected his personal life. It's a quick, entertaining read.
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RE: Comment by deathshadow
by Alfman on Tue 20th Nov 2012 14:50
in reply to "Comment by deathshadow"
Member since:2011-01-28
deathshadow,
"Of course what really went wrong is the same thing that continues to trash the economy to this day: Credit and debt..."
Your right, and the worst part about it is that the transition away from cash towards debt & mortgages have raised prices substantially such that those of us who would have been able to afford a house with cash can no longer afford the mortgage inflated prices. Houses are so expensive these days that for most of us the decision is between taking a mortgage that spans our entire life, or not having a house at all. It's become a tax on the working class, one which the wealthy collect and don't have to pay themselves.
RE[2]: Comment by deathshadow
by zima on Thu 22nd Nov 2012 18:25
in reply to "RE: Comment by deathshadow"
Member since:2005-07-06
Maybe, maybe not?... http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ratrace.html
Either way, possibly an important factor is what kind of houses people want and/or expect - and they're a bit different than in the past.
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.More Features »
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Member since:
2005-07-12
This part sums up wall street predation of any industry quite well:
The really the big thing people miss about trading -- be it stocks, bonds, or commodities -- is that it's not just the rich trying to use and abuse you to get richer and to hell with the consequences of what happens to the company -- it's also nothing more than gambling... Wall Street is the house, and the house always wins. People think the risk is just on the investor side, when to be frank it can be a bigger risk to the property itself.
You take your company public for a quick infuse of 'growth cash' you get what's coming to you in the long run. Investors will use, abuse, and leave you hanging the moment the wind changes direction. As he mentions everyone and their brother went public, blew all the money on advertising and hype, and as always happens when you build all flash and no substance it falls apart quite spectacularly.
... and it also illustrated the effect that fly-by-nights can have on a industry as a whole. Your sleazeball 'make a buck then run for the hills' types can ruin an entire industries reputation -- and when it comes to stocks, that's ALL you really have to keep your fictional 'worth'.
Also why I laugh my tuchas off seeing many small companies from young entrepreneurs repeatedly making the same mistake, then not getting why the "gray matter" in the industry won't give them the time of day.
Of course what really went wrong is the same thing that continues to trash the economy to this day: Credit and debt... and going public is just another way of fast cash for long term pain. If you can't afford something, don't buy it on credit -- be it a multi-billion dollar expansion to your company or that new 50" LCD at Walmart, the notion of "we'll just operate in debt for a while" is the fastest road to financial failure there is. President Odumba actually once called Credit the lifeblood of the economy; I'm with Peter Schiff on this one -- it's not the lifeblood, it's cancer.
Be it going public for fast cash, property mortgages, right down to that little card in your wallet... Congratulations, you want to know who ruined the economy and caused things like the dotcom burst, realty burst, etc, etc? Look in the mirror.
Edited 2012-11-20 03:57 UTC