Note: Updates will resume …

Note: Updates will resume in a few days. I am incredibly busy this week. Thanks.

Hmmm, this is interesting. More news on this soon. Yes, really.

Just got in from JFK (ahem, the all-time worst crappy airport) following what has to be the worst airline experience I have ever had. Five hours of non-stop, drunken, New York-accented, obnoxious, wish-they-would-just-shut-up-already, pack of vacationing middle-class specimens of this fine city and its boroughs, obviously loud and obnoxious because they blew all their cash at the slots in Vegas. Damn, it almost makes me want to start flying first class. Sigh…

It’s official. CollabNet has acquired Alphanumerica, my employer. Observant readers will not be surprised given the recent focus on open source software development and news on CamWorld over the past three months. The coolest thing about this is that I get to work such cool people as Leonard, Brian, Frank, Ryan, and Josh.

For some reason, I find it very fitting that Lance Arthur owns the personthing.com domain.

Red Herring: The Fantasy World of Jeff Bezos. OK, it’s time to tell some secrets. Many people who have followed my career know that I spent a two-year stint at Borders.com, where we watched as Amazon rode the dot-com rollercoaster. Many people saw through the facade that is Amazon. Many people were absolutely correct when they predicted that Amazon would never survive unless they started to turn a profit. What many people don’t know is that Jeff Bezos was a hedge fund manager on Wall Street before founding Amazon. Anyone familiar with hedge funds knows that they are very risky and usually managed by hotshot brokers who care only about the stock — not necessarily the companies behind the stock — that make up their hedge fund. So, it makes sense to see these same tactics as one of the core components of Amazon’s meteoric stock price during the dot-com bubble expansion. So, if you take that into consideration it makes complete sense when you learn that Amazon actually approached Borders Books and Music sometime in 1996, long before Internet stocks went gold, seeking an acquisition. Yes, it’s true. Amazon wanted Borders to buy them out — all as simply a way to make Jeff Bezos as much money as possible, which when viewed with some perspective, is all that Amazon has ever been about.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at August 21, 2000 08:28 PM

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