My articles appears without my persmission on the ComputerWorld.com
Website. ComputerWorld says that I should be honoured to be published by them and
that they don't have to pay me a cent. They eventually removed the article, but
refused to pay me. I uncovered they did the same with at least a dozen other authors.
Worse day of my life as I had to layoff most of my team
at Opencola. The venture capitalist, Battery pulled the plug and we
had to reduce staff to preserve the little cash we had left.
1X launched their SportMarkets exchange. The exchange
allowed online sportbooks to layoff every bet on the exchange, eliminating
risk. The exchange traded thousands of positions across about a dozen
Websites.
This was the second time I was given the MVP award. Microsoft
offered the award again, but I refused it on the grounds that they refused
to ship a JVM with XP.
1X launched their professional trading exchange. The exchange
allowed professional traders to hedge their positions against each other
and limit risk. The exchange was dismantled after one trade was executed
in the first month.
SportMarkets later became 1X Inc. I was hired as the Lead Architect
and was later retitled Chief Architect. We opened our offices at 19 Duncan a month later.
"If you [Randy] do not do so [abide], then 724 will pursue its full
legal remedies against you and against any employer [MobileQ] or other person
that may become involved."
They claimed that since I was responsible for the design and implementation of most
of their servers and intimately familiar the rest of their servers, that I could
replicate their entire product offering at MobileQ. MobileQ didn't appear on
724's internal Competitive Landscape document. A few weeks later, another 724
employee is allowed to join MobileQ.
724 gave me a six-week fully paid leave of absense starting the
next day. I was going to quit and enjoy a trip around North America. Instead,
724 gave me six-weeks paid leave. I returned on Octover 6th, 2000.
724 (SVNX) traded as high as $345 the TSX and $240 on NASDAQ.
Because of the 10-1 reverse split that's actually $3450 post split
or 1000 times higher than it traded three year later.
I joined 724 as a Software Developer. My first day was
Monday, August 17th. I left RPMTec, 724's sister company, to join 724.
I later become a development manager and was official named a key
employee of the company.
The original ABO was written by somebody else, but was deployed
in only a handful of theatres, as it was quite awful. I rewrote it and it is
now installed in close to half of the movie theatres in North America.