tatsuke95

>"This went on like this for several minutes. Dude never said a single word to me, and finally wandered off, confused."

You consider this "borderline sexism"? Interesting. As is your use of the word "dude" to describe the guy. Does that mean you don't mind when people refer to you as a "chick"?

>"and then stared at me, the only woman nearby, to gauge my reaction...[r]ight now it's been a week and I'm still working out the best course of action."

How about not associating with the person anymore? Done. He made a joke you didn't like, about a person you don't even know, and might possibly be an asshole. There are lots of those out there. Move on; you'll be a better person for it.

>"and in her case, multiple times a day"

Sorry, but I'm skeptical.

>"And can't Richards' supporters launch a DDoS as well?"

The sentiment around places where "DDOSers" might hang out is pretty heavily against her. Remember, a programmer got fired for a harmless joke, at a programming conference, thanks to an over-zealous "evangelist".

This whole situation is ludicrous.

I don't.

But this is analogous to TV advertisers complaining about TiVO and the ability to skip commercials. Can't stop it!

Do you just wait around for people to mention Germany so you can talk about this stuff? Godwin's Law is about Hitler. So, in essence, you have invoked Godwin's Law.

Can I not talk about Germany in the historical context of WWI?

The parent comment said that these countries have resources in the ground, we can take those resources, hence these countries will always be able to pay their bills. I said that didn't work very well when we tried to force Germans to "pay the bill" after WWI; they simply inflated the currency away.

But thanks for your arrogance and lesson on intellectual honesty.

>"I think you have an incorrect view here."

The majority of shares are owned by American citizens and the executive and board are mostly Americans.

>"Siegler is a talented writer, and has a lot of interesting technology insights."

You and I are worlds apart on what a "talented writer" is. Case-in-point: John Gruber is what I would consider a talented tech writer.

No information? There are people around this world and on this site who haven personal experience dealing with Mr. Arrington and/or have followed his antics for years. He's stirred up a bunch of unecessary drama, some much like has been brought against him. Remember his backroom VC deals series? Or accusing Leo Laporte of giving the Pre a positive report as a favour? That's real karma. I assume that some of the people who have upvoted my comment have, like myself, determined him to be someone I refuse to be bothered with. Certainly not bothered enough to feel sorry for him when accused of impropriety. He was a pretty good tech blogger who used his influence and money to become a VC. I see no reason to respect his work in the latter, especially when it can be tied to a possible conflict of interest.

Understand the context of my comment: that we should be forbidden from "insulting" these people or companies. By suggesting there is some conflict of interest between their investment fund and companies that they cover? I whole-heartedly disagree with that. I think the way this is heading, with tech influencers, journalists and VC's intermingling, is bad. I guess that isn't as easy to agree with when you are a tech influencer, journalist or VC, or rely on one of these people. Luckily, I'm not and don't.

As far as MG, information on his talents needs be nothing more than a perusal of his Techcrunch work. Judge for yourself. If this is the baseline for "good" tech writing, then the business is in a world of hurt. Writing over and over about the same few companies with shoddy analysis doesn't cut it for me. And if you read the comments that follow nearly every one of his old Techcrunch articles, you'd see I'm not alone, by any means. I guess not being able to say he sucks goes hand-in-hand with giving everyone a trophy at sporting events.

The low of the state of the forums will be when we aren't allowed to speak our minds because we're edited out by the tech powers-that-be-- the Arringtons, the Sarah Lacey's-- and all the sites are not real journalism, but VC mouthpieces. That's where the "echo-chamber" meme comes from. Do you think that's a good end game? That's what we're talking about here.

>"But to make the argument that something is "bad" you really have to know what management had in mind for it."

What they hand in mind is irrelevant to me. All I care about is the outcome. Saying Microsoft bought aQuantive with the hopes to cure cancer in their mind doesn't justify a $6BB write down. It would still be bad.

>"Dropbox did not buy Mailbox based on a couple of Techcrunch posts, and they obviously will have done their due diligence before purchasing the company."

I like Dropbox. But recent history is filled with terrible acquisitions that have you wondering what the lawyers and accountants were doing:

Ebay buying Skype.

Microsoft buying Danger.

Microsoft buying aQuantive.

Anyone investing in Color.

AOL buying Time Warner.

Yahoo! buying Geocities.

and these were all huge deals I can think of off the top of my head. The number of small ones is, I'm sure, substantially larger.

>" in a way that is insulting to Dropbox, TechCrunch/AOL, CrunchFund, and the Mailbox/Orchestra team"

Arrington is a jerk and MG is a talentless shill. They're both "right place, right time" guys who strut around with undeserved influence. I care little about insulting Techcrunch/AOL or Crunchfund.

When banks do things like this, we call for heads. When it's SV personalities, we're apologists.

>"Arrington left TechCrunch because of his desire to return to investing about a year ago"

You say left, I say forced out, because there was an obvious conflict of interest.

>" Probably more important is that the Mailbox/Orchestra team is top notch at making incredible mobile products"

That's nice. I suppose we'll agree to disagree that a company that built an app that sits on gmail is worth $100MM.

>"the simple fact that the banks fucked up"

The banks are run by citizens and funded by citizens. So when the banks "fuck up", it's going to end up on those same citizens. There is no way to isolate losses to some "bank" entity.

>"They have many (natural) resources standing still on the earth. Which can be used to pay back loan."

Like the German war reparations after WWI? That worked out well for everyone.

>"Back in the day you'd at least get reasonable interest by keeping money in a bank, but nowadays it's really only the convenience of direct deposit and online bill pay that draws me."

Back in what day? You mean, like, 5 years ago? We're still amidst one of the worst recessions ever and rates are at all time lows. No, you don't get riskless real returns right now. But you can also borrow at exceptionally low rates. That will change in the future.

Hording physical gold outside of diversification is a bad idea. You have storage costs, pay a premium over spot when you buy it and eat a spread when you sell it. And, as another commenter said, look at its real returns; not spectacular.

Want to know what was a good buy? The stock market, 4 years ago. When everyone was screaming about the world imploding and it was at irrationally low levels. But that's just the thing: you have to be willing to zig when others are zagging.

Central banks are known buyers at the highs and sellers at the lows. Part of their mandate is "financial stability", and up to and including backstopping out-of-favour assets (like, say, mortgages). I see central banks buying gold as a way to stop a precipitous decline in gold as money rotates sectors.

Then again, this theory happened before this Cyrprus thing, so who knows for sure. Guess we'll see what kind of carnage happens next week.

Iceland has 300,000 people and a GDP of $12BB. Their economic "choices" and ensuing trajectory are, for practical purposes, irrelevant.

Not really. Unexpected inflation hurts. Central banks don't hide the fact that they target positive inflation figures. If you stuff your money in a mattress, you will lose PP. Not if you put it in practically ANY investment vehicle, throughout history. Though, I get your point.

Nobody guarantees the value of your dollar earned over any period of time, nor that it won't diminish in value with the production of more dollars.

Like 90% of the past 5 years, this isn't a banking problem, it's a government problem. The IMF can suggest ways to fund a bail out, but the government has to accept it. Confiscating your citizens money is a horrible precedent.

>"Surely you don't really believe that is how companies are valued"

Could you explain how some of these companies are, in fact, valued then? There are a ton with seemingly random valuations.

>"Before most computer science graduates ever walk across a stage to get their diplomas, they’re set for life."

Be careful, the market can and will sort this out. Blacksmiths used to be set for life; so did lawyers more recently, now they struggle to find jobs. Smart people are what will always be in demand, not a specific skill.

Good article. My expectations are low with TechCrunch nowadays.

>Maybe rename my daughter Susan.

Or just have another daughter...or son?

Really? The "upper-class" people who use Uber (people who are using their expensive smart phones to order the cab, people like ourselves) are averse to tipping well when the service is great? That's disgraceful.

This seems like a great concept.

Everyone needs a lawyer, at some point. And with the dearth of new Law grads out there, there is supply. Get international!

I'm with you.

Look at these cases; there's a lot of guesswork, it's not rocket science. If you have no clue what your business is worth, and are deferring completely to a third party, why are you even going public?

>"“If you think eToys got screwed, what do you think happened to the country?”

I don't think this guy has a clue what "happened to the country". He doesn't even seem to understand his own state of affairs.

I'm not sure what this solves. If I know that the stock will have less competitive bidding 4 days from now, I'm waiting.

I'm a firm believer that releasing all the shares and allowing the market to decide what they'll pay for the stock, based on their own valuation method, is the most efficient method.

>"I'm seeing "the chinese" & "hacking" used too much together without proof more often than not."

Get used to it, you're going to be seeing it for what is likely a few decades at least. We need an enemy. The Chinese are the new Red Army; something to blame Western problems on.

>"Technically now ISPs could throttle the bandwith (or even disallow net access)"

Most ISPs charge for bandwidth. Outside of governmental coercion, is there any incentive for them to do this?

The unfortunate reality is that a "threat" of war, or even a war itself, is what it might take for real changes to take place in the country.

That sucks for the people in the short run, but might change the game for their future.

Reality.

>"why not directly explain your view"

It's very simple, which I suppose is way the parent asked the question: I don't want to attach my name to anything I do on the internet, really.