People may not remember what it was that popped the NASDAQ tech bubble. I was there – I remember.
Attorney General Janet Reno announced that she was going to initiate antitrust action against the evil Microsoft in November 1999 following a victory in court. I warned my boss that we needed to expect extremely high trading volume the next day. My boss ignored ,,the advice – we had a tested fix all ready to put into production to deal with an unexpected surge in volume, but the powers-that-be decided not to install it.
I just happened to be scheduled to go to a rare meeting in New York City the next day, along with a man named Tim Vincent, who was two levels higher than me in NASDAQ management. I’m sitting there with Mr. Vincent in New York helpless, knowing that our most important trading system (SelectNet) IS going to crash. There is no way around it.
The only alternative was to warn the entire stock market that NASDAQ is going to have to shut down in the middle of the day, while we implement a completely untested workaround. By taking this system offline for perhaps half an hour, we will at least be able to limp through to the closing at 4 p.m. the NASDAQ bubble cratered starting on that day. The big drop would occur on April 3, 2000 when Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson concluded the case against Microsoft.
For reasons that I don’t totally understand, the Democrats are playing right into President Trump’s hand. The US House is moving forward with proposing antitrust actions against the big players in the internet today – Google, Facebook, Amazon, et al. Democrats have a long history of using government power to dismember the rich. Things could get ugly very fast. It will be curious to see how the Washington Post (owned by Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos) covers this.
I am mystified as to why Dems keep attacking the heart of American success. The same moment Bernie says “free healthcare for all” the details on the page say “raise taxes on the rich”. Why do they insist on slaying the Golden Goose?
I remember Reno – what a piece of work she was. Thanks Bill Clinton.
Why do Dems want to build only toll roads? The answer is the same, they want your money so they can spend it rather than you. What will they spend it on? Buying votes. BTW- The Dem’s didn’t invent this money model, but their focus on it to line their own pockets and ruin the country is a treasonous act, IMHO.
Facebook, are you listening? CC1s121LrBGT just said treasonous in reference to Dems.
Back in the day, the motivation was you had a whole bunch of patronage workers who earned very generous pensions – but increasingly systems like E-ZPass are getting rid of the bulk of those kinds of jobs.
Our new toll Lanes on i-77 are not yet finished. Another toll road which was built running parallel to a US highway down near the state line is open, and doing their best to exaggerate how many people are actually using it.
In the 1970’s, North Carolina was extremely anti toll road. Once you have a toll road, anytime you drive on the toll road there’s a record. However, now pervasive license plate readers essentially perform the same function. Many of the police chases in Charlotte are because a car tripped a license plate reader and they send the police car out to pursue it.
I have the sense we may also have this airborne system, or maybe on top of a skyscraper, it records everything going on on the ground, and has the ability to rewind. That way, let’s say there’s a bank robbery, you can track the car used in the robbery backwards to see where it came from. That is very valuable information in solving crimes, but is that really the kind of world we want to live in?
Coming to a town near you:
respected financial new source
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-surveillance/
local rag response
https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-secret-surveillance-20160824-story.html
liberal rock rag
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/eyes-over-baltimore-how-police-use-military-technology-to-secretly-track-you-126885/