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Windows 95 did have tcp/ip built-in. On the one hand I want to say that anyone who didn't bet on the internet early when they had the chance was kind of a dumm

Windows 95 did have tcp/ip built-in. On the one hand I want to say that anyone who didn't bet on the internet early when they had the chance was kind of a dummy. After all it was the era of exponential growth of all things related to computers. Prior to the internet video games, personal computers, and mainframes had seen exponential rises to outlandish levels of success. And with both video games and PCs there were countless stories of scrappy little startups of a handful of people beginning work out of a garage or some-such going on to become wildly successful in new business areas that had been invented only recently. On the other hand, the internet was just too different and too impenetrable for a lot of people to understand its potential at the time. In the '80s and early '90s it was primarily used by academics and scientists. It seemed very wonkish and very nerdy, not the sort of thing that would appeal to the public at large. And even as the web grew exponentially throughout the '90s it still took many, many years for that perception to shift. At the same time, people who were sufficiently clueless that they couldn't tell for themselves what was going to happen with the internet quite easily bought into all sorts of fantastical alternative narratives. At the exact same time that Amazon.com was banging out book orders in a small Seattle garage other people were fantasizing about shopping in virtual malls made possible by VRML. Or, on the other end, there were folks thinking that slapping up some PDFs and an "order form" (that you printed out and mailed in or maybe just manually typed in all the descriptions and product codes of all the stuff you wanted) was a perfectly adequate sort of online store experience in a time that was just spitting distance from the 21st century (though even today some stores like that still exist). The clueless were so clueless they couldn't tell fantasy from reality, and had no hope of making correct decisions. And then a few years later when dot-coms truly took off things got worse not better. People finally saw the business potential in the internet, but now there was so much dumb money flowing into the industry that the easiest way to get huge piles of cash investments was to have the most ridiculous idea imaginable as long as it had a small chance of becoming enormously popular. By that point the only people who were going to survive were those who had extensive first hand experience with the internet, understood what it was about, understood it's limitations as well as advantages, and were capable of being ruthlessly pragmatic in their attempts to exploit those advantages (as amazon was, as google was).

wahern 8y ago
There are two doors. The door on the left leads to certain death. The door on the right leads to something unknown. Which door would you take? Nobody can predict what the next market disruption will look like, although you can predict in broad strokes. But Sears had already been beaten by Wal-Mart by 1993. Cutting the catalog, moving to the suburbs, and several other moves were part of a de-risking and divestiture strategy intended to return money to shareholders. At best it was, in retrospect, an admission of defeat. At worst it was horribly short-sighted. Either way it was bad leadership that squandered good will (and thus real value), and executives making millions shouldn't get a pass if only to make it clear what we expect of today's leaders. If you want to cut your losses and dump all your money into Vanguard market funds, don't tell everybody you've discovered some great new investment strategy just so you can earn your bonuses over the next few quarters. That's what Sears did. If Sears wanted to unwind and die with dignity, there were much smarter ways to go about it that didn't hasten the destruction of shareholder value while raiding pensions. (And that's before Lampert.) EDIT: OTOH, perhaps lying about your divestiture strategy is what you have to do to prevent a crash in price. Are there any MBAs or finance guys here who could chime in about potential strategies? Anyhow, it's just not cool =) It was Sears!

wahern 8y ago

There are two doors. The door on the left leads to certain death. The door on the right leads to something unknown. Which door would you take? Nobody can predict what the next market disruption will look like, although you can predict in broad strokes. But Sears had already been beaten by Wal-Mart by 1993. Cutting the catalog, moving to the suburbs, and several other moves were part of a de-risking and divestiture strategy intended to return money to shareholders. At best it was, in retrospect, an admission of defeat. At worst it was horribly short-sighted. Either way it was bad leadership that squandered good will (and thus real value), and executives making millions shouldn't get a pass if only to make it clear what we expect of today's leaders. If you want to cut your losses and dump all your money into Vanguard market funds, don't tell everybody you've discovered some great new investment strategy just so you can earn your bonuses over the next few quarters. That's what Sears did. If Sears wanted to unwind and die with dignity, there were much smarter ways to go about it that didn't hasten the destruction of shareholder value while raiding pensions. (And that's before Lampert.) EDIT: OTOH, perhaps lying about your divestiture strategy is what you have to do to prevent a crash in price. Are there any MBAs or finance guys here who could chime in about potential strategies? Anyhow, it's just not cool =) It was Sears!