I've been blessed with the chance to have seen the rise and sometimes falls of products/memes in the software industry. I downloaded Linux in 1997, over a 14.4 Kbps connection and installed it on a 386 33 Mhz computer, with 200 MB hard drive, and 4MB of ram (I think, its been a long time). That was when I was in high school back in my home country of Pakistan. Friends laughed at me when they heard I was using something other than windows, thinking I was wasting my time. A large part of my career is now based on using and developing on Linux, and I dont think it was that much of a waste :)

I've been through the rise and fall of the dot com days obviously.

I also have been a part of the rise of the blogging/rss meme. It certainly does not seem like hype to me. I hope I am right. When the dust settles and the hype is gone, people who blog because they like to write or because they like keeping a log of what they love will continue to write. I assume this because I started blogging when blogging was a word used only on Dave Winers website scriptingnews.com. I started blogging because I wanted to improve my writing, and also create a website that would cater to my interests. I also liked writing about my hobby (its hacking computers! :)

What got me thinking about this stuff? Its this article. I just bought myself a Powerbook two months ago. Hope I made the right investment! My friends think I am crazy for spending this much money on a computer!

"And it cant even run Windows!"

:) Here is to hoping I have the last laugh, much like I did with Linux.