[vox] SCO suing IBM over their Linux activity

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Fri 30 May 03,  3:53 PM, zeruch@damagestudios.com <zeruch@damagestudios.com> said:
> 
> No, it couldnt.  There were Pet stores online before pets.com, just not 
> doing things on its scale.

ok.  that's why i said "could be".  :)   dunno the history of pet stores
on the net.  wasn't sure if pets.com was the first or not.

but whoever the first person was, he *was* an innovator.

> That doesnt make it innovative, just a bigger 
> gamble (for the VCs stupid enough to drop the 7-8 figure sums of cash into 
> it).  Innovation (at least in my universe) is more than just the trivial 
> novelty of 'the new'.

i saw the internet grow up from being a VERY exclusive club of a handful
of colleges, massive corporations, the military, and hackers into what
it is now.  certainly a poly sci student from davis would've had no
opportunity to access the net back then.

i remember the first gophers in minnesota... the first personal web
sites...  people playing around with slip connections...

you might think that selling dog food isn't innovative, but put that
into perspective.

nobody guessed that the net would turn out the way it did.  watching
new commerce sites pop up was like watching the next installment of a
jackson, lucas or wachowski brother flick.  nobody could believe what
you could get on the web.

of course, we're all jaded now and ecommerce is extremely blase, but i
maintain that the person who first thought of selling dog food on the
net was innovative.

pete