In search of stupidity

Last night I finished reading a book called "in search of stupidity" by Merrill R. Chapman. This is a book about the software industry after the PC. It documents a number of bad decisions made by companies you have never heard of (if you are fairly young) that let microsoft essentially take over. What I found depressing was the almost total incomptence of management in so many firms. Also some of the events I should have known about. I was writing code while netscape was screwing up the fight against mircosoft. I read about all the events and think what was I actually doing in the mid 90s. How come I am reading about this ten yeras later. Now that I regularly read slashdot, at least when the web2.0 stuff comes crumbling down, I will be able to tell "youngsters" about these hellish times. Perhaps the strangest thing is that various people tried web based calenders and spreadsheets then. This was totally impractical before cheap broadband. Now many of those ideas are reborn from google et al. and are starting to make more sense.