The Web is still in its infancy.  It sounds like an absurd claim, except that the person making it is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the Web in the first place.  I happen to agree with him.

The first incarnation of the Web changed the world, and what we call "Web 2.0" was only an incremental improvement on that.  It made the baby-Web usable for normal people.

I've had the pleasure of speaking with Tim on a few occasions and he is patiently waiting for everyone to get over the love-fest with what they currently know as the Web so we can focus on moving things forward and innovating again.

The end-game here, and what Tim has had in mind from the beginning, amounts to a completely new paradigm in software.  It's about creating an Internet-wide mesh of data which a given software application can use as easily as its own database. 

Fortunately, the Web is hurtling towards adolescence.  SPARQL is the glue that makes this global data mesh usable, and it was just ratified this year.  The Web's voice just cracked.

While advances like service-oriented architecture were steps in the right direction, they were still just an incremental improvement over client-server based architectures.  And as useful as that is, I think an unfortunate side-effect is that an entire generation of programmers was raised with their thinking firmly locked in the old paradigm.  I've tried to evangelize the new paradigm myself, and I can attest that it's like trying to convince people that man can actually fly using airplanes while they turn around and go back to work on pimping out their horse and buggy.

Tim's vision of the Web is the ultimate logical evolution of Web technology.  Fortunately there are some recent developments that indicate that the Web has hit a growth spurt and we may soon see another explosion of innovation based on the Next-Generation Web.

I wondered about this deal a while back when Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) first announced their intention to acquire Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO).  I thought it was an absurd thing to do for Microsoft.  Now, rumors are starting to circulate that Microsoft might pull out.  And the other interested parties have left the building.

If this happens, Yahoo is pretty much toast.  Most of their top talent has already bolted when this was first floated, and they weren't the most innovative company in the world to begin with.  The only thing they've done recently that I've really liked is Yahoo Pipes (which is one of those geeky tech toys that I have NO idea how they would generate revenue from).  I've used Yahoo Messenger for instant messaging for years, but aside from that I really don't care about the company.  They are, for the most part, irrelevant in this day and age.  On top of that, their best talent left, management bungled the potential acquisition, morale is non-existant, and it generally sounds like a depressing place to be right now.

The ONLY thing they have going for them is that they have a lot of home page eyeballs.  Their My Yahoo! site is pretty popular, and yahoo.com still gets an insane amount of traffic.  They're basically a content producer at this point, and Microsoft wants to own that space badly.  And Microsoft has now managed to severely cripple its biggest competitor in this market.  Now, I obviously don't know if this was the plan all along or not, but I do know that blowing billions of dollars on Yahoo right now would be an absurd waste of money in the current economic environment.  They will never make that money back on the deal if it happens.  If Microsoft was really willing to give up that kind of money they will be extraordinarily fortunate if the deal DOES fall thru, because they were just saved from their own stupidity.

If Microsoft's first offer was serious, Jerry Yang is playing some dangerous poker here.  If I were a shareholder I would seriously consider slapping him upside the head and asking him what he was thinking.  In my opinion he looked a gift horse in the mouth.  Stared it down, in fact.

Was thinking about buying some YHOO puts for just this event the other day, now it looks like I may be too late.  We'll see what happens over the weekend, if the price opens at a decent level I may just have to play in this one.

This was a sad day for America.  The United States Treasury today confirmed that it allowed the Federal Reserve to STEAL $29 billion of OUR money and give it to JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) as a BRIBE to absorb Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC).  That's $300 per American.  They announced, in broad daylight, that they are breaking the law and picking your pocket.  Did you get a $600 tax refund?  You're now paying half of it to JP Morgan.

I know this whole Bear Stearns thing is not the most straightforward thing for the average person to follow, especially if you haven't been paying attention to it along the way.  But here's what happened in very simple terms:

1. Bear Stearns made very stupid investments and went bankrupt
2. The Fed forced a Bear Stearns merger with JP Morgan
3. Bear Stearns investment losses still had to be taken by someone--their stupid investments didn't go away.
4. They figured out how to let JP Morgan keep the profits and stick YOU AND I with the  $29 BILLION in losses

I don't think people quite GET this.  JP Morgan keeps the profits, YOU keep the losses.  You like that deal?  I don't.  If I want JP Morgan to have $300 of my money I will go deposit it there, or slip it under the door in an envelope.  An UNELECTED group of people have dipped into the public purse and have taken $300 OUT OF YOUR POCKET.

A coworker recently sent me an article from John Mauldin explaining why this Bear Stearns bailout needed to happen.  BS.  *B.  S.*  This is BLATANTLY picking the pockets of Americans for the benefit of a few.  It is also violating the LAW.  ACCORDING TO THE CONSTITUTION, EVERY SINGLE SPENDING BILL MUST BE APPROPRIATED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.  BY ORDER OF THE CONSTITUTION.  If John Mauldin or anyone else doesn't like that he can go move to China where they can do whatever they want.  Get out now, and take your communist views with you.  Don't let the door hit you on the way out.  Last I checked we still had laws around here and an investment bank going under does NOT constitute legal grounds for breaking them. Especially, ESPECIALLY, laws that are explicitly outlined in the Constitution.

You know what would happen if Bear Stearns didn't get bailed out?  A lot of banks would fail.  Yes, the derivatives market would blow up.  Do you know who that would hurt?  THE BANKS THAT MADE THE STUPID INVESTMENTS IN THE FIRST PLACE.  Boo hoo, cry me a river.  Would it make you sad to see hedge fund managers have to downgrade their Bentleys or sell their yachts?  How about being sad that YOUR KIDS AND MINE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY FOR THIS so that they can keep them??

If the people of this country don't stand up RIGHT NOW and scream LOUDLY, WE are going to eat TRILLIONS in derivative losses that rightfully belong to the banks.  You want a trillion dollar tax increase?  It's either you or the banks, you had better decide whom you care about more.  The way we respond to this particular situation will let them know how much they can get away with and therefore how each subsequent blowup is handled.  People need to go to JAIL for this, specifically the people who signed off on this crime:  George Bush and Hank Paulson.

Now, I WISH I could expect all the people out there to go picket in the streets about this, but I know that people just aren't going to care enough about maintaining a Republic to miss American Idol.  So here are a couple of things you can do from your chair:  first, call the Senate Banking Committee at (202)224-7391 and let them know you want your $300 back.  Then, go sign the petition to impeach Bush over his sign-off on giving away YOUR money without YOUR (and Congressional) approval.  If you care about this country and your standard of living it's the LEAST you can do.