2009 summer reading list: belated erudite edition

[setzeroni]

Last month, I finished Scott Rosenberg's excellent Dreaming in Code, a book I'd heard about while idly looking through Salon, a chance excerpt catching my eye. "Dreaming in code," after all, is the three-word autobiography of my current employ.

Comments

[clever_title]

Naked short selling is hard to ethically reason out. It seems pretty fraudulent, like selling a house someone asked you to watch while they're away on vacation. On the other hand, it's rarely mentioned that there's someone buying those shares as well, so it helps determine the true price. Of course, it's not really any different than a bank loaning out depositor's money and still showing it as available funds on the customer statements.

I doubt we'll ever see that much action either way. Loaning shares to short sellers is a huge money maker for brokerages.

[setzeroni]

I meant Byrne's accusations in particular, that naked short selling was used as a tactic to drum up huge losses for plaintiffs in suits against other public companies (he names Milberg Weiss as the plaintiff attorneys and Rocker Partners as the main accomplice).

I guess accusations of bear raids are inevitable in gloomy financial times, but I was curious if you thought this one had any traction or if Byrne is just way too paranoid.

[gilt]

Your book selections are awesome. I've read a few of the ones you picked out (GEB, Elephant), and now I have more for my list too!

A friend recommended Peopleware as a slightly more up-to-date and applied description of things introduced in Mythical Man-Month, and it turned out to be exactly the kind of book I should have read before starting a software company.

[setzeroni]

Peopleware - added to reading list for future PHBy-type consideration. :)