<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nMy column this week is about how the legal system is often used as a weapon<\/a>. If you’re curious about the stuff I saw in the dot-com era that I alluded to in the article, then I have a bit more about that right after the colon at the end of this sentence:<\/p>\n It’s true that I was a paper millionaire back in 1999-2001 or so. It’s not as big a deal as it sounds. There were a lot of us at the time. Mostly tech types who knew lots about HTML, Java, C++, SQL, and very little about business. <\/p>\n For you young folks: How it worked was that every investor out there knew<\/em> the internet was the Next Big Thing. They pictured how profitable it would have been to invest in automobiles just before the Model T started rolling out. Or how great it would have been to buy a slice of IBM in 1950. Or Microsoft in the early 80’s. And they were basically right. The internet WAS the next big thing. But so many people had come to that same conclusion at the same time that there was a lot more money than opportunity. The net wasn’t quite ready for what people wanted to do and (more importantly) the public wasn’t ready to start shopping online. Traditional companies weren’t ready to advertise online. It was just too soon. The market didn’t exist yet.<\/p>\n The reaction to the glut of investment money was that a lot of shady companies cropped up. Some were run by white collar con-men. Some were run by idiots who believed the hype. Some were run by genuinely smart and honest people who just happened to try to go into business when all of this was going on. <\/p>\n “Hey, it’s too late to get in on Cisco<\/a> (the next AT&T!) but you can invest in our company, www.buy-unrefrigerated-milk-online.com! Our business plan is right in the domain name!”<\/p>\n