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For those of you who don't remember, when MSNBC first went on-air (1996?) all the screen shots they displayed on the network showed them using Netscape. (And they would cut to a shot of a computer screen very frequently.) Of course, this was at the beginning on the browser war when MS was still the minority, but my friends and I got a good laugh knowing MS had spent some huge amount of money for the channel and yet they will were not using IE. It took them a week to figure it out.

Here is a Business week artical about that:
http://www.businessweek.com/1996/39/b349417.htm

Since you seem to be about 4 years out of date, here's some good reading material. Also note that their software platform isn't just used for their products. It runs other sites such as Target and Borders. The things they come up with have a potential of affecting many different businesses. Some other significant things Amazon has come up with that come to my mind immediately include Search Inside the Book and Amazon Web Services. I encourage you to do some research and formulate your own opinion before you respond anonymously with a post lacking in substance. Next time, I'll try to dumb-down my posts so your BS-buzzword detector and your English comprehension skills won't explode.

"Hydrogen is a Boondoggle. The energy density is so low, that we might as well use batteries if we're going to power vehicles with it." -StCredZero

I'm certain that a more careful review would find many other less-than-illustrious candidates in previous versions of the top 25.

I'm certain that a more careful review would find many other less-than-illustrious candidates in previous versions of the top 25.

I'm certain that a more careful review would find many other less-than-illustrious candidates in previous versions of the top 25.

As for the question about relief, all I can say is Please! I'm not heartless! I support donation and aid as much as anyone else, even if I'm not in a financial position to offer it.

The fact is, when people have extra money, they can afford (and usually are willing) to be generous. Bill Gates, the man we all love to hate, donated his $3 Billion dividend to his foundation, and is considered the largest single donation this year, seconded by the $2.6 Billion donation made by the late Susie Buffett.

And corporations don't fare too badly, either.

In terms of monetary donations in 2003, here's what some of the soulless corporations donated:

Adobe: 3 Million. Starbucks: 6 Million. Oracle: 8 Million. Best Buy: 14 Million. IBM: 26 Million. Time Warner: 37 Million. Cisco: 38 Million. Microsoft: 40 Million. Exxon Mobil: 97 Million. Ford Motors: 120 Million. Walmart: 176 Million.

(Data is from the November 29th edition of BusinessWeek)

I'm sure they don't compare with the 3 Billion dollar donation made by Bill Gates, but the fact remains that that's a few greenbacks being bandied about by some pretty hefty corporations, don't you think?

The link where I got my data would be here. (Registration is required, but free. Anyone have a non-registration link to help me out here?)

Oh but you can!

When you add up the casualties from Gulf War I ~158,000 and the casualties from the latest conflict ~98,000 you can easily match the numbers from the typhone. The difference is that humans planned and carried these things and not mother nature.

Donate!.

1. Apple has long expressed no interest in selling such a machine.

2. A new G4 desktop system in Spring of 2005? No chance. Apple is moving away from the Motorola G4 archetecture, in favor of the IBM G5. The eMac and the current laptops will probably be the end of the line for the G4.

3. The current G4 eMac is $800, and their margin on it is thin (by Apple standards.) This rumored system is pretty much a G4 with the $100 monitor removed. No way Apple sells it for $500.

4. Everybody who says they would never buy one of the current Macs, but would buy this one for $500 out of impulse, is a damn liar. You can already buy a headless G4 Mac for under $600. Just go to eBay and buy an old G4 tower from about two years ago. Hell, for that matter, you can buy an old G3 tower which will run OS X just fine for about $300. Add a $100 CPU upgrade, and there's your G4 right there.

Again, I can find no evidence that AC21 was rushed through against the wishes of the Democrats, nor was it signed by Clinton at 6am. Sorry.

As for AC21 causing the .com crash ... huh?

No, seriously. Huh? Are you saying that an oversupply of labor, specifically foreign labor, caused a market crash? Because you'll be the only person I've ever met who's claimed that.

I'll tell you what caused the crash - a tonne of .com companies with little or no real business plan, no revenue and lots of VCs getting greedy looking for the next Amazon.com IPO. It was a typical unsustainable market bubble. wiki gives a good general overview of some of the causes, but BusinessWeek sums it up best: Millions of investors, gripped by a mass speculative mania, had driven dot-com equity valuations to ridiculous, perhaps unprecedented, heights of fancy.

And Before AC21, H1-bs were limited to 130,000 a year, under legislation passed in 1998. AC21 extended it for a further 3 years, and added portability provisions to both H visas and green cards.

Which is also a separate problem. We've got so many classes and categories, I don't think anybody has any idea which limits apply to what- or how to control the borders at all.

I assure you that a great many people know exactly what the limits are - including INS. I'm sorry that you don't know them, or the visa categories available.

If I understand you correctly, then this ruling changes the reporting for "Wealth - Value of Remaining Options" in the ninth column on this page - but only after those options are exercised.

Do I get it now?

Did those MBA's looking for work go to Wharton, Harvard, or UPenn?

Some of them, yes. But maybe the parent poster will tell us if he goes to one of the top-ranked MBA programs.

...why is this any less rational than the "greater fool" theory in the stock market? When speculators buy stock for the sole purpose of trying to sell it on an upswing to a higher bidder, they're no longer relying on the underlying fundamentals of the company, or even the 'realness' of the company. It would make no difference to the speculator if the underlying company was completely fictional.

Larry Ellison even (as a joke) created a fictional company to this effect in '99, heyidiot.com, but it was removed because people were asking where they could buy the fictional stock, knowing it was fictional. Here's a synopsis

The guy that bought this island is no more or less guilty than a speculator of stocks, or for that matter a speculator of any product (tulips come to mind).

The problems with pointcast were more than just technological. Intercast was a better push technology for the pre-broadband era, and even now with HDTV and cable/satellite. It still may be a good choice.

Both of these companies were not just major users of H-1b and outsourcing -- they were the leaders of this trend.

This isn't ironic or puzzling -- it is entirely predictable and it was predited by people who are now going to take the information industry back from the brainiacs who thought they were being very clever and cosmo and, above-all, fashionable, by throwing open the doors of the US to the world.

Ever since Scott McNealy said:

I am fighting with our government to allow H1B visas cap to be raised. I was in at the White House talking to the chief of staff to get the H1B visa cap raised. We already half way through the fiscal year, capped out on the number of really bright Israelis and Indians.

Guess what, suckers?

You lose.

Usually what you see sold in places like vitamin shops etc is a concentrated oil diluted with olive oil. Typically, you will get a 1 or 2 percent solution. And it is relatively high priced.

That said, you can order reasonable concentrations online if you google around for a while. Note that these are usually marked for aromatic use only, as the concentration is regarded as too intense for actual internal consumption.

There is enough spread that someone could find a profit margin in there someplace.

Now let me tell you a story about public school mismanagement...
Clifford B Janey was superintendent of Rochester Public schools from 1995 to 2002, until the budget was wrecked and he got the boot while the people cheered (admittedly in poor taste). Career ending event? Nope, he got $262,000 severence and, a year later, the $250,000 a year job as superintendent of DC schools!

That, my friend, is the diference between corporate mismanagement and public school mismangement. It's not just bad students bringing the public schools down.

Then again, with cable and dsl broadband as widespread as it is (yes, I know it is not ubiquitious), and fiber to the home just around the corner, maybe they could be all gathered together under one roof as a webcast.

It may be beta, but as Business Week noted when they slammed it:

"It would be one thing if a startup's beta had sputtered. Not too many folks would have noticed. But this is Microsoft, earth's largest software company. And it trumpeted this test launch with a public-relations campaign to ensure that users around the world knew the service was ready for widespread use. So when MSN Search went down, a bit of Microsoft's credibility in the search-engine business went with it."

That may be overstating the case, but it does show that some people at least, aren't going to buy-in just because it's Microsoft.

Hey, if it isn't true, why would the moderators mod me up as +3 Informative? Think about it, why wouldn't they support Linux? Everyone is switching from Windows to Linux now. More information about that here: http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_45/b39 07083_mz054.htm/

Ooops, almost forgot to mention the review of the device. There is a good comparison of how much better it works under Linux than Windoze. See the review and comparison here: http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_45/b39 07083_mz054.htm/

What about the second wealthiest person in America? What about the members of Responsible Wealth? What about Gordon Moore, who in addition to founding Intel, has been giving away huge sums of money for decades? What about these 50 philanthropists?

As for politicians, having worked in Washington, D.C., I can tell you that the vast majority of the elected and appointed people I met had very little interest in padding their fortunes. Politics is in general a much more difficult means of obtaining wealth than going into business. Sure, there are people who rotate between business and politics, taking advantage of the linkage. But there are plenty of hardworking politicians at the state and national level who really do want to do some good. You may not agree with their political leanings, their methods, or their effectiveness, but to paint them all as greedy bastards, while satisfying, is quite an exaggeration.

The US economy is already dead.
China has been hoarding money for years in US dollars. How does a nation compensate for one of the largest populations in the world holding its currency? If it's not doing it already, it's going to have to print more. So what happens to the US dollar when China decides to spend its hoard?

Mods, read the article in question. This is not even close to a troll. It is something that is on topic and people should see it. The article is quite interesting and does not takes sides. It is also not something that would ever be allowed on the front page becasue it presents an objective overview of the problems that Linux adoption has faced in Europe. If nothing else, this shoudl be a good lesson for future adoption efforts. Some of the mods just dont want people to read this becasue it is not full of glowing praise.

Mod Parent up!

Analysts figure larger companies such as Microsoft (MSFT) and IBM could simply make them part of their suites of software. - Championing a Wiki World

This is a real insight... Microsoft could easily combine Flexwiki w/ Windows SharePoint Services as an easy add-on or integrated web-part and crush some of these companies. Or, maybe one of their competitors will but the company and integrate the technology.

Not that anybody's gonna see this, buried as deeply as it is, but:

This article at least has some research behind it. It specifies that Opener isn't a worm, and has no vector to spread. It also does a good job of pointing out that the weak link in Mac OS X security is arrogant users that insist on pretending that Mac OS X is invulnerable.

The rationale of this move, according to an analysis of the merger done by Businessweek at
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct200 4/nf20041026_3765_db016.htm

"The Atlanta-based carrier has landed exclusive rights to the new Motorola Razr V3 and the Sony Ericsson se710a. Both are high-end multimedia phones expected to lure sophisticated buyers. The Motorola Razr is a design triumph. It's just a half-inch thick when closed. Open, it's as thin as a Q-Tip. Yet it manages to pack in a VGA camera with 4x zoom, 3D graphics capability, and 22 kilohertz polyphonic speaker technology."

Its merger with AT&T Wireless will give Cingular 47.6 million subscribers, catapulting it past the 41 million customers that current market leader Verizon Wireless has. But that status might not last long unless Cingular can keep subscribers from bolting to Verizon and others. Cingular is plagued by above-average customer defections. [...] its churn rate edged up from 2.7% in the second quarter to 2.8% in the third, while Verizon's is hovering around a more wholesome 1.5%.

Mergers are dangerous : you gain benefits (in this case, exclusive handhelds and a big subscriber base), but can go wrong. Only time will tell if the benefits outweighted the disadvantages in this case.

Yes, let's review:

1. Enron http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2002/tst012802.ht m and http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2001/tst121701.ht m and http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/23 /133051.shtml,
2. Global Crossing http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/2/15 /154416.shtml,
3. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ART ICLE_ID=33024,
4. Tyco (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_5 1/b3813001.htm,
5. WorldCom (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2311-20 02Jun29,
6. Adelphia Communications (http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2004-07-09-ri gas-timeline_x.htm),
7. the list goes on and on.

As you say, it was a historic economic impact. We're still feeling the consequences of it today.

The United States isn't a huge social welfare program. President's don't create jobs. If you'd quit swallowing that Leftist Damnocratic Propoganda long enough to take a look at what's really going on, you might not be so ignorant of the facts.

Fact is we're coming out of a recession which was brought about by bad Clinton Economic Policies, and then exacerbated by the attack of 9/11/01, which flushed upwards of 500 billion dollars out of our Economy.

This post is especially ignorant ...

Yes, your post is especially ignorant. Take the time to read the links and do some discovery for yourself, and quit swallowing propaganda, and even you too can learn the truth about our current Clinton Inspired economic woes.

...And how are monopolies lost? Think about it. Some very good product people invent some very good products, and the company achieves a monopoly.

But after that, the product people aren't the ones that drive the company forward anymore. It's the marketing guys or the ones who expand the business into Latin America or whatever. Because what's the point of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you can take business from is yourself?

So a different group of people start to move up. And who usually ends up running the show? The sales guy. John Akers at IBM (IBM ) is the consummate example. Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever reason. But by then the best product people have left, or they're no longer listened to. And so the company goes through this tumultuous time, and it either survives or it doesn't.

Q: Is this common in the industry?
A: Look at Microsoft (MSFT ) -- who's running Microsoft?

Q: Steve Ballmer.
A: Right, the sales guy. Case closed. And that's what happened at Apple, as well.

Maybe the Reality Distortion Field has been switched on full but I can help thinking 'ol Stevie P has a point here.

(See: www.businessweek.com for the full interview)

Russia wants to join Kyoto because the very essense of the Kyoto Treaty creates a "pollution credit" as a form of tradable currency. Credits were calculated based on 1990 production output. Russia has since entered an industrial decline, and thus under the Kyoto calculations would have a incredible excess of "allowed pollution" amounts. Under the treaty, they could trade away these credits for cold hard cash, possibly as high as $3 billion a year income stream...

China loves Kyoto because they managed to get themselves exempted from it under some "third world status" clause, despite the fact that they have since grown to become the world's second largest consumer of petroleum resources.

So in this case, the U.S.'s policy of doing nothing is, in fact, the best political action for them to take. "Yeah, I want to sign myself into an agreement that will cost my country billions in retrofitting factories, while exempting my philosophical rival nations from any responsibility. Oh yeah, and we're going to allow them to compete commercially with us on the open markets, such that their goods will always be the lower cost (since they don't have to follow the environmental regulations) which will only hurt my future gross domestic product." Brilliant!

A cogent summation of how Bush has mishandled the economy is available here:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct200 4/nf2004108_4276_db016.htm

First Paragraph follows:

George Bush, America's first President with an MBA, has been slapped on the knuckles by 169 concerned business-school professors. In an open letter sent on Oct. 4, the senior business and economics professors say Bush's economic policies are taking the country in the wrong direction. The academics, including two Nobel laureates, are especially critical of the budget deficit, which this year is projected to come in at more than $400 billion

George Bush, America's first President with an MBA, has been slapped on the knuckles by 169 concerned business-school professors. In an open letter sent on Oct. 4, the senior business and economics professors say Bush's economic policies are taking the country in the wrong direction. The academics, including two Nobel laureates, are especially critical of the budget deficit, which this year is projected to come in at more than $400 billion

I was smugly chuckling to myself about this also, until I read this.

Thank you for discussing this book. I will be sure to check it out.

I think that in the not-too-distant future, this kind of legal knowledge will be a bit of a prerequisite. This is especially true as awareness of the value of open source continues to spread, and more and more companies and people turn to open source as a cost effective tool. Check out "No More Stock" at this page: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep 2004/tc20040922_8372_tc024.htm With that, we can expect to see more and more proprietary software vendors who are feeling the heat of open source competition to stretch the very limits of any contract or license agreement.

Knowing the legal limits *as a court would interpret them* will be crucial for open source developers world wide.

Have some free clues:

The recession stared in March 01

The GDP most certainly did drop and recovery hasn't been as strong

Bush has lied about this in the past

earlier this year, Bush tried to manipulate the reporting of this for political purposes

While it can certainly be substantiated that the the Bush administration's policies didn't cause or contribute to the cause of the recession, he most certainly is on the hook for dealing with it. Argueing about when it began is both counterproductive and rather clueless on his part, as it does do anything to change the situation.

Jeff skilling born and raised in Texas
Ken lay was in texas since he was in 20's, but born in MO.
Richard A Causey was educated at UT-A (I believe that he is a true native)
This was a pure Texan-Style Accounting that goes for the easy marks.

Maybe we just need a few more hurricanes to finally put the spam problem to rest!

A lot of Slahdotters live in the US you insensitive clod.

Just do a search on +multitasking +productivity You'll find articles like this one: Study: Multitasking is counterproductive. (published in 2001)
Also Zen Buddhists have known this for a long time. In fact they claim that spending every day some time doing nothing (meditating) increases your productivity. See: Zen and the Art of Corporate Productivity

Evidence? Proof?

I've seen a lot of people say that as if it were accepted fact, but I don't recall ever seeing any proof.

SCO license purchases don't count.

I realise that Microsoft can't be unhappy about SCO's actions, but surely they have more productive things they could spend money on than funding a competitor's doomed legal adventures...

That pretty much covers all of SCO's funding in this venture. If you run down the standard checklist:

• Microsoft has the means to fund SCO's FUD
• Microsoft has the motive to fund SCO's FUD
• Microsoft has the oportunity to fund SCO's FUD
• To the extent that there is any evidence at all about the source of SCO's funding, in each case the ultimate source appears to be Microsoft.

-- MarkusQ

There likely are teenagers who know about security issues, etc. However, there are also likely teenagers who know how to use technology but who are not aware of related issues that come up. They may assume that other issues do not matter because they feel very capable. Some (not all) individuals take a while to become fully mature.

Some years ago, a teenager got into legal difficulty over a domain name. He created a Web site when he was 10 years old, and he later set up the site at its own domain. However, the domain name for his site turned out to conflict with a trademark held by a large company. The significant issue is not that there was a domain name/trademark conflict. Of more significance is the fact that an individual was very capable with technology yet not legally an adult, and he got into a situation that normally would not be expected of young people. This sort of thing does not happen often but it is worth remembering.

"I'm not that concerned about the threat of Microsoft (MSFT ) enforcing patents against Linux. I think their mode of operation isn't through the legal system. I think they hate lawyers more than most companies."

Linus Torvalds (BusinessWeek.Com - 18 Aug 2004)

Think back to 10 years ago.. that's right 1994. AOL was still popular, the world wide web & ecommerce began to explode, the imminent release Windows 95 was all over the news, a 15" computer LCD screen cost more than $3000, Clinton was a first-term president, Monicagate & 9/11 haven't happened. No integrated home living systems, electric cars, fusion power, artificial intelligence, voice recognition, or anything else that was promised to me in 'Beyond 2000' has happened.

How about learning from the past? My predictions for the next 10 years (I'm just a tech (MIT) student, not some fancy dancy science fiction writer):
++ Linux and Windows do not exist. As its desktop share plummets because of both increasing institutional adoption of Linux and persistent security issues (Longhorn looked like swiss cheese), Microsoft calls in its cards with its copyright and patent portfolio that Linux "infringes" upon. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug 2004/tc20040813_1107_tc120.htm The resulting litigation destabilizes the Linux migration. The open source community heeds the call to arms and rallies behind Torvalds and leads the development of a UNIX-, patent-, and copyright-free kernel. The new OS fills the void and all the people in the land are happy. Except when Microsoft lays off 25,000 programmers to refocus on office productivity and software development products.
++ Oil and Gas shortage because of continuing\spreading unrest in the middle east pummels global economy. Rather than investigating alternatives or renewables, vested interests ensure that countries revert to dirty methods like coal and new processes to extract vast tar oil reserves.
++ Integrated wireless-PDA, streaming audio-video iPod, VoIP cell phone are commonplace using HyperHiWiMaxExtreme4 Platinum Edition redux alpha.
++ Duke Nukem Forever and Team Fortress 2 are expected to go gold "sometime in fall." Quake 4 supports 6400x3600 resolution for the new 40" OLED Mac display.
++ James Webb Space Telescope 0w|\|3z Hubble. In conjunction with Terrestrial Planet Finder, scientists begin to resolve images of extrasolar planets.
++ Scaled Composites begins to offer weightless 30-minute, sub-orbital trips for $25,000.
++ ebooks still not popular. Something to do with people who stare at a computer screens all day don't like to relax by staring at computer screens.
++ George Lucas cashes in chips and has Wachowski brothers write Star Wars VII, VIII, and IX. Together, they cost $1 billion to produce.
++ Body odor remains an issue for programmers. Dweebs still have trouble with women.

For a less press release style suck up to TIVO, and more insightful, informative take, let's see what
Business Week has to say about TIVO.


Indeed, much of TiVo's installed base has come from its exclusive deal with DirecTV (DTV ), which has been hawking digital recorders as a differentiator from cable providers such as Comcast (CMCSA ). TiVo's agreement with DirecTV doesn't expire until 2007. But NDS (NNDS ), a sister company to DirecTV, recently revealed it has struck a deal to offer its competing digital-recording technology to new DirecTV customers. Sources say by as early as November, set-top-box makers such as Samsung and Thomson (TMS ) could begin shipping NDS digital recorders to DirecTV, which is considering offering them to new customers for free.

Meanwhile, TiVo has been stymied in its efforts to sign a major cable provider. Comcast, Time Warner (TWX ), and other cable companies have asked for better deals than TiVo is willing to accept, people with knowledge of the negotiations say.

Still, Ramsay remains confident that in a few years TiVo can boast as many as 10 million subscribers. It can reach profitability with 3 million standalone customers if its plan to diversify its business model with licensing and advertising revenue also takes shape, analysts predict.

In the interim, the losses continue. For the current quarter, analysts estimate TiVo will report a loss of 24 cents a share on revenue of $25.8 million. For the fiscal year ending January, 2005, they're expecting a loss of 95 cents a share, on revenue of $115.8 million. If TiVo keeps losing money and consumer mindshare, it could become takeover bait. Worse, it could become another forgotten pioneer of the new digital age.

There's a BusinessWeek article today advising the Linux community and those in product development to drop GPL and release under BSDesque licenses in order to stay more business-friendly.

... is NOT from solar radiation, it comes from within the Earth. I forget the exact source, and there may be several (nuclear fission of raw radioactive materials, tidal forces of the Moon and Sun (and again to be pedantic, tidal forces have only to do with the masses and distanced involved, not that the Sun is sending fusion-powered radiation to the Earth).

Otherwise, point well taken for many reasons, furthermore, there may be a much stonger emphasis on "clean" (non-burning/non-CO2-producing) energy in the future: http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_33/b38 96001_mz001.htm
Even if global warming is eventualy proven not to exist, or it ends up that man-mande emissions don't contrubute to it, I think a form of Pascal's Wager applies: It's better to do something about it and find out we didn't need to, than to not do anything then find out we should have done something.

But this is still a short-term solution: the Sun's energy is constant, our ability to convert and use it on Earth is limited, and the energy consumption of Humanity is growing exponentially.

To provide more energy than the Sun give the Earth, there's the idea of the Solar Power Satellite, that I recall was widely discussed 25 years ago (one fear was that the Soviet Union would shoot it down!).

Point 1: Apple's support lists the highest in the Consumer Report Index. Below are more example from PC Magazine survey

Desktop survey

Laptop survey

Please note PC Magazine Reader's choice

Point 2: Many companies are looking to Apple Xserve as a competive equivalent. Just as other goverments are looking at Linux as an alternative to Windows.

Apple sells supercomputer sequel
Scientists: The Latest Mac Converts
The "Big Mac" Supercomputer Biz

Your evaluation of Apple is clearly uninformed.

The number of outsourced jobs is not high enough to make a dent.

You're right, what's 10% of the current US labor force whose jobs are at risk of being outsourced relative to the 500,000 jobs a year being outsourced. Besides, isn't our economy creating 30,000 jobs a month? Subtract from that the 150,000 people entering the work force each month and ... ummm ... no no wait WalMart, McDs, Disney are always hiring! Anyhow, I don't care if you're for or against outsourcing, but you're underinformed if you think that outsourcing "is not high enouth to make a dent" while we're not even creating enough jobs to meet the growth in our local labor pool.

About Linus and how he made his millions:

Inside Frank Quattrone's Money Machine

Linus is a genius, but he made his millions on an overvalued IPO and using the same Wall Street bankers that are being criticized for having a vested interest against the google IPO.

Inside Frank Quattrone's Money Machine

Nobody knew it at the time, but the apex of the Internet rocket ride came on the morning of Dec. 9, 1999. Executives of computer maker VA Linux Systems Inc. gathered at 6 a.m. in the trading offices of Credit Suisse First Boston (CSR ) on the 17th floor of a San Francisco skyscraper for the company's initial public offering. Among those assembled were Larry M. Augustin, the chief executive, and his friend Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux operating system, who was dressed in his customary T-shirt and sandals. Their three toddlers scampered around underfoot while the adults watched in stunned silence as the stock price jumped from 30 a share to more than 200 within minutes. Augustin nudged Torvalds and whispered: "Did you ever think we'd be here?" At the end of trading, the company's shares were worth 239.25 apiece, up 697.5%, making it the best-ever first-day IPO performance.

That was then. This is now.