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From what I gather (from the first few minutes of reading), The 'Fool On The Hill' column contains mostly opinion, and the other columns are intended for more factual data, never mind the gaffe that Rob Landley pulled by substituting Chaplain for Kaplan. (Bad press! Bad, bad press! No biscuit!)

Yes, I know the crux of this particular newsposting wasn't a 'Fool On The Hill' column. But this one was. Go on, look at it... it also happens to be the article pointed at in the first paragraph of the featured article...

Consider also that in the course of his checking around, he actually went to the EFF's web site.

He may be primarily concerned with economics and market forces and many of those other things that bore the average geek to sleep, but in times of crisis, accept any help from all quarters. He seems to be fully dead-set against The Old Men of the Recording Industry, and anything he does to highlight their hypocrisy and outdated attitudes is a blessing to our cause.

see here or here for extra details, including the fact that this will be for American Express consumer and small business cardholders in the United States.

so it's a step, but not a huge one. of course, bill murray said it best in What About Bob - Baby Steps!

I realize this is late, but I had posted this question to the Ask the Headhunter board at the Motley Fool site. (Here's the thread). I also noticed today that it made the front page of his primary WWW site. Basically, he agreed with a number of other people - be careful. I thought others here might be interested in knowing what a headhunter thought about this.

Yep. I just can't work out why these people are so stupid as to think they can shut it down. Are they so arrogant that they believe they can shove the genie back into the bottle? Did they learn nothing from the prohibition? Haven't they ever seen Star Wars? The more they try to stamp this sort of thing out the more people will object and rebel. The Motley fool article mentioned here a while back had it right - the music publishers are obsolete (in fact at this point they're leeches).

Very interesting post. I especially liked this part:

The only questions left deal with volume.
1) Will more works be created (beneficial) if copyrights exist than would be created and improved upon (beneficial) if copyrights did not.
2) If works are copyrightable, what copyright laws will encourage the optimal ratio of creation (benefical) to harm caused to society by the inability to freely redistribute and modify those works (harmful)

You've really done a great job here of distilling all the relevant tradeoffs into two short sentences. All I was doing with this thread was pointing out the second half of your second sentence, which seemed to have gone unmentioned in most of the Napster good/bad discussions on /. That is, I was pointing out that not only has our society traditionally put a very high value on the ability to freely redistribute and share copyrighted works, but that it allows a service very similar to Napster to operate when the traded material is books. Not only allows it to operate, but if fact operates it itself, subsidizes it, and lauds it as the epitome of what's good about the world and such.

Of course, this is without even considering whether technology, by changing the act of copying from something expensive, available only to a select few--something that would only be undertaken for commercial reasons--to something essentially free, available to all and worth undertaking for noncommercial and even selfless reasons, has raised the potential benefits of allowing free redistribution such that the balance copyright seeks to strike must be shifted to once again reflect the best interests of society. Interesting article at Motley Fool on this subject; this was posted elsewhere in this discussion, but I'd be interested to see what you might have to say about it.

Just thought I'd point this out.
--
Ski-U-Mah!

Remember when Red Hat went public and all sorts of people got "the letter"? As I recall, a large number of them found out they couldn't actually act on it. Who among us might qualify for "the letter" with Transmeta, and more importantly, will they be able to take advantage of it?

-TBHiX-
I may be motley, I may be a fool, but am I a Motley Fool?

I hardly think that thier stock price alone shows what kind of position a company is in.

Yeah--it usually does. Stock prices frequently don't accurately assess the value of a company when the price is soaring. But when the price is crashing, it's generally because the market has the company figured out.

Corel just announced their results for the most recent quarter. It isn't pretty: here's a link to a couple of articles on The Motley Fool, quoting Canadian papers.

I'm sorry to see them in this shape, and I hope they survive. But things do not look good for Dr. Mike and friends.

As someone posted on TMF's message board:

Another one bites the dust

Another one bites the dust

And another one's gone
And another one's gone
Another one bites the dust

Hey, I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust

Just look at all the companies that have either gone under, left the graphics ring, or were bought out...

Hercules, Tseng Labs, Cirrus, NeoMagic, Oak Technologies, Paradise, Chips and Technologies, Real3D, etc...

So who's next? The investor linked above suggests 3D Labs, as it's burning cash at an alarming rate. Trident hasn't been doing too well lately either.

Ummm, h ere.

--

Ohmigosh - Can this be a voice of reason in this ocean of chaos?

While I am not as experienced in the stock market as rlarson, I agree that this topic has been thorougly covered elsewhere, is not really /. material, and while worth concern and interest is NO cause for panic (unless promoting panic sells papers, ads, or click-throughs)

During the Oct 87 'crash", I distinctly remember my boss wearing his "cat AFTER it got the canary look" and chortling how he could finally pick up GE at a great price. He didn't panic and did rather well on that transaction. of course he wasn't over-extended to start with.

One one hand, there's been plenty of (mis)coverage of the market. To the point of it being beaten to death. /. cannot hope to match the coverage in depth, quality (or lack of), or quantity. If people want a /.-like discussion of the market, I suggest The Motley Fool or Silicon Investor as sites that are not too overrun by touts, day traders, and ponzi scheme promoters.

On the other hand, the stock market *is* relevant to many on /. - public companies, vc firms, and "angel" investors have been using market-based assets to fund new tech ventures and expand existing ones. They hire us, buy our employer's products and services. Some of us hope to wind up reasonably well-off (as oppossed to a Stepehnsonian "f-u wealthy") after a few years (not months!) of working for these businesses.

And on the gripping hand (to borrow from Jerry Pournelle), as publisher/editor/lord of the manor, Cmdr Taco can decide to publish/ignore whatever stories he wishes to. Just like any other media publisher.

In the US and Canada, most of us have access at best to ONE daily newspaper, six TV news outlets (that tend to have the same talking heads saying the same thing about the same stories), and similar lack of options for radio news.

On the web, we have choices (at least until AOL/TW/MS/The Illuminati/... acquire everything - oh I forgot, their stock got hammered, too, so they can't afford it either!)

There are apparently a *lot* of lemming investors out there. priceline.com (PCLN) lost 6.99/share and has a P/E ration of 0 still. They're still building their business by leveraging their ridiculous "reverse auction" patents so their not making a profit yet is not that alarming. I wonder what's going to happen when a competitor challenges their patents? That's really all they have is their "intellectual" property. Has the motley fool done a writeup on PCLN? I'd be interested in their thoughts.

Priceline.com stock quote

I'd have to agree--software industry has lots of vapor-ware--stock market has even more "vapor-share" ;-)

-core

This comment doesn't address so much on "what" to invest in but "how" to invest. One of the best investing books I've ever read was from a couple of geek brothers that started the popular fool.com website. The book I am referring to is their second book titled "You Have More Than You Think". This book quite accessible for both the experienced investor as well as the newbie. It provides excellent and more importantly sound techniques for investing the stock market.. the Foolish Four and First Bank of Coca-Cola are great chapters. I do not believe there is an online version so you might have to snag it in meatspace. Best of luck!

Work up a chart of MSFT stock price over the three year period that this DOJ case has been "haunting" investors and major stock-holders like Paul.

I did a neat little overlay for all you Andover fans (ANDN). It's been a plummeting stone since it opened. I added on RedHat (RHAT), and it looks like the path of a Scud missile. Up to dizzying heights, then a fall back to its opening neighborhood.

Some of Paul Allen's holdings, as found on this site on www.friends-partners.org:

Paul Allen ranks as the third-richest American with a fortune estimated at $7.5 billion.

Paul Allen owns a majority stake in TicketMaster

Paul Allen owns a chunk of Egghead Software (150 stores), and PetSmart retail businesses (397 stores internationally).

He has holdings in StarWave, Dreamworks SKG, and Trilobye Software.

He has six acres on the not-cheap Lake Washington coastline, 60 acres on the lake closer to Boeing for a business site, and 385 acres for a "family retreat" on the beautiful San Juan islands near Victoria Canada.

He buys and sells companies weekly. I doubt the MSFT "slump" (gee, back to the December 99 price) affected his decision to sell off holdings in a small one-product toy company.

The article URL has changed. Here is the new link

The best part of the article is how Mattel is expecting to take a HUGE loss on the company.

Put another way, former CEO Jill Barad paid about $3.5 billion for The Learning Co. (TLC), which is now reportedly expected to fetch between $500 million and $1 billion.

And, as icing on the cake, Mattel has associated their company and name brand with repressive censorship. I won't be buying anything with the "Mattel" name on it ever again.

Nice job with the lawyers, guys.

Actually, now it seems to be "sell the problem and it'll go away". See this article. Mattel is trying to sell The Learning Company, producer of CyberPatrol.

Let's hope that whoever buys The Learning Company has a better understanding of the value of opening the blocked sites list than Mattel did. Anybody know if the CPHack settlement was with Mattel or The Learning Company (or both)? I wonder if the terms of the settlement will pass to the company buying The Learning Company.

__________

__________

In a new press release (also on Yahoo!), Be has announced that they will be releasing the source code to the Tracker and the Deskbar - available at http://www.opentracker.org and http://www.opendeskbar.org respectively, and covered by "an extremely open and lenient" modified BSD license. Be is encouraging developers to further develop the two fundemental parts of the BeOS user interface in "new, exciting and unforeseen ways."

Cool!

First you have to know the company very well. Then you have to understand the influence on its stock. Then you have to believe that you know better than the market about what the stock price should be. Then you trade.

All the $10 online brokers in the world are approximately the same. Use them to place your trades. But for your own sake, learn how to read the financial statements of a company. Learn how EDGAR works and what the statements are and how to read them.

Analogy time: buying an account from an ISP with 5 megabytes of web space doesn't make your web site hot. What makes your web site hot is the knowledge and work that you put into it. Hitting the "ftp" button (or however you upload your pages to your ISP) is just the last mechanical step. Similarly, hitting the "place order" button on an online broker is just the last mechanical step.

The research you do will determine whether you make money with an online broker or not.

If you don't know where to start, let me put in a plug for The Motley Fool.

In a nutshell: (1) save up some money, $1000 or more. (If you can't save money then get a decent job when you get out of school and spend less money than you earn). (2) Take a few hours down at your local bookstore with books by Peter Lynch, the Gardner brothers, whatever you can understand. (3) Read web sites like The Motley Fool.

For certain investments, like buying an IPO stock at the sweetheart IPO price, or buying into limited partnerships, then you need special qualification. But if you want to buy common stock in the market, there is no income or asset requirement. It's like buying a computer, a stereo, or a car: if you can pay for it, you can buy it.

Well you do have to be 18 years old, if you aren't 18 yet, do some research and be ready on your 18th birthday. You don't have to be a US Resident either: lots of US brokers will open accounts for foreign nationals.

Hmmm... that's up 260% in less than 2 months... OK, so it's down from the 12/9/99 open of $300, but most investors I know wouldn't be too disappointed in +260% in 53 days. (I'd be happy. I wanted in, but E*TRADE wouldn't do it, so I'm just an outsider looking in.)

The rest isn't really a direct response to Animats' posting, but it's been building up in me as I've been reading all the other posts about the imminent demise of the editorial integrity of /.

Sigh. Why do some people assume that what's good for a business is bad for the (your name here) community? Why is anyone w/ a mortgage and the corresponding paycheck a "suit"? Why is someone who is successful instantly distrusted? I suppose Gates & Co. had a lot to do with this, but I'd like to think he's more the exception than the rule.

I program computers. I get paid for it. If I didn't, I'd be waiting tables or fixing cars or washing dishes (and getting paid for that).

You don't have to turn your bullshit detectors completely off, but a little trust and hope ain't always a bad thing.

Uh, I don't think eToys's stock is low because of the etoy.com thing. Rather, eToys reported a high loss for Q4 of 99. (Losing 38 cents per share) (see http://q uote.fool.com/Snapshot/financials.asp?symbols=ETYS &currticker=ETYS)

From the Fool.com article:- 'Each applicant gets their own secret key with which to unscramble the DVD so it can be played. And if one of those keys were to fall into the "wrong hands," then future DVD disks could be made so that key wouldn't work on them anymore.' Does this mean that if the MPAA decides that e.g. Panasonic had broken their licensing agreement, then newly released DVDs would simply stop working on their players? Surely this level of market controll is ridiculous. Sorry if this has already been discussed...

Fool.com has a good story about LinuxOne that really gives the lie to their whole IPO scam.

Maaan I read slashdot way too much.
Here goes this has already been talked about in previous LinuxOne stories. The website that claims to have bought $500,000 of software looks like a gaudy high school kid's site and is run by a webmaster with a hotmail account. A slashdot reader has called the number on the website before and woken the website's owner out of bed (it's his home #).
That doesn't sound like someone who has $500,000 to pay for software, now does it?

Motley Fool ran a story debunking them a while ago that was posted on slashdot...the references to waking up the owner of the powersource site appeared in a slashdot post before they appeared on motley fool.

I've been using DATEK for well over 2 years now and am greatly pleased with their services. Even though I use the Foolish Four Strategy and only trade once a year, I couldn't be more pleased with the low prices ($9.99 per trade), high-availability web site, and reasonable service.

The only trouble I've had with them was when I forgot my password. I had to call 3 times and they finally ended up FedEx'ing me the new password at their expense.

Like the question what is best (computer, OS, editor,etc.), the answer depends on what you want to use it for. One of the best places to find out what questions you need to ask is the Motley Fool, which has a whole mini-course on discount brokers, which are virtually all online. It has links to other ratings sites, as well as lively discussion groups.

Look at their Disco unt Broker Center and the Discount Broker FAQ (requires registration). Sites in the FAQ include Donald J's Really Great Site and Gomez's rankings

Like the question what is best (computer, OS, editor,etc.), the answer depends on what you want to use it for. One of the best places to find out what questions you need to ask is the Motley Fool, which has a whole mini-course on discount brokers, which are virtually all online. It has links to other ratings sites, as well as lively discussion groups.

Look at their Disco unt Broker Center and the Discount Broker FAQ (requires registration). Sites in the FAQ include Donald J's Really Great Site and Gomez's rankings

Like the question what is best (computer, OS, editor,etc.), the answer depends on what you want to use it for. One of the best places to find out what questions you need to ask is the Motley Fool, which has a whole mini-course on discount brokers, which are virtually all online. It has links to other ratings sites, as well as lively discussion groups.

Look at their Disco unt Broker Center and the Discount Broker FAQ (requires registration). Sites in the FAQ include Donald J's Really Great Site and Gomez's rankings

I just ran the IPO_sanity_checker to find out
whether Caldera qualifies for an IPO.
Here goes the output:

C:\> IPO_sanity_checker --verbose "Caldera Systems"
IPO_sanity_checker V.1.03 ©1999,y2k fool.com
...checking financial status... (OK)
...checking SEC filing... (OK)
...checking News rags... (OK)
Summary:
Caldera Systems posted a net loss of $9.4 million in the year ended Oct. 31,
compared with a net loss of $8 million in the same period one year earlier.
Revenue rose to $3.1 million from $1.1 million. (source)

Recommendation: strong buy!
C:\>

PS: I loved those Penguin Caffeinated Peppermints very much,
which they distributed at LinuxWorld.
So if there still were any doubts, count me in :)

Why not click here then? ;-)

• Forget the online stuff for a minute.
  Make a financial plan first.
  
  
• Read some books. "A Random Walk Down Wall
  Street" by Malkiel is excellent. One of
  the last chapters is a how-to-invest guide
  based on your age and current plans.
  
  Any book by Andrew Tobias is good. Consumer
  Reports has an ok, eat-your-broccoli sort of
  book. Suze Ortman (sp?) kind of gives me
  the creeps, but her advice is good.
  
  
• Pay off all credit as soon as possible.
  You're paying 15% to 25% in credit payments?
  It would be more fun to burn the money in
  your own home. Pay down all credit ASAP,
  and don't worry about investments or anything
  until you do.
  
  
• Fully fund every tax-free investment vehicle
  available to you. This would mean 401(k)
  for most people, but if you're paid by the
  university, it will be a 403(b) plan. Put
  every dollar you can spare in those plans.
  Since you sound like you're in your twenties,
  this will turn out to be one of the best
  decisions you will have made by the time
  you retire.
  
  More typically, people reach their late 30s
  and start to think about funding their
  retirement in just two decades. Not
  going to happen -- fund it right now and
  let compounded interest work for you. Your
  youth is an advantage. Also, use Roth IRAs
  as much as you can, even if you've put 401(k)
  money away.
  
  
• Don't start an online stock trading account.
  (Btw, I work for MSDW Online). They're fine
  for people who know what they're doing, but you
  don't. Stay away until you can afford them,
  and you have a clue about stocks. Instead,
  buy mutual funds that specialize in indices,
  such as the Scudder and Vanguard families of
  funds.
  
  
• You're going to ignore me on the stock thing,
  aren't you? Ok, read the books above, but
  also check out the Motley Fool web sites and books.
  They get it.
  

"Speaking of doom and gloom, I'd like to let everyone know of the widespread scorn and derision the geek community has expressed towards the initial public offering (IPO) of LinuxOne Inc., future stock symbol LINX. Despite the name, this company is NOT one of the veteran Linux companies, which have been having multi-billion dollar IPOs recently. It doesn't appear to be a veteran anything, and I have yet to find anyone who knows what they actually DO, other than issue stock. As I've written before, investing in an area you know nothing about just because it's hot is an easy way to lose money. I'm not telling you NOT to invest in LinuxOne, but I'm not telling you never to suck on a loaded gun, either. To help you do your own research (which will remain a good idea even after Y2K), ..."

I'll consider that when it happens. Probably, by then, I'll be pretty unpopular, but anyway...

My first acts of power:

1. Taxes. Dismantle the IRS and replace it with a flat tax (unless we're lucky and Forbes does it for us in 2000). Taxes on things (property taxes, aka You Own It, Therefore You Should Give Us Money) should be outlawed. Not enough money for the gov't? Gov't needs to prioritize.
2. Education. Dismantle the Dept. of Education. They're obviously not getting the job done. Basic schooling for our kids will be limited to reading, writing, mathmatics up to algebra, geography; world, usa, state, and local history. There should not be this crazy a-la-carte choice of things that are best handled in college or trade schools. K12 schooling isn't about getting you ready to work, its about getting you ready to learn a career.
3. Social Security. Social what? It's just not going to be there, so you'd better bone up on your finances at a place like The Motley Fool. You think I'm kidding?
4. Campaign Finance. No spending on any kind of broadcast-advertising. Candiates will have to detail their plans on the Internet where they can be noted by people actually curious about their standings-- not subtley influed by negative attack ad campaigns. The Internet routes around Propaganda. Candidates can advertise their URL's. Remember, already there are more peope on the Internet than not on the Internet in 1999.
5. Cryptofinancialprivacy. Every human has a basic human right to protect their finances and privacy through the use of strong unescrowed encryption technology. (You heard it here first.)
6. Voting. It will be a misdemeanor to fail to vote in an election if you are registered to vote. If you have a public key pair signed by your state election board, you can vote over the Internet.

Look at how much IBM droped when they announced they were dropping PC sales.

The simple fact is that most of the people on the market do not [have time to] understand the comptuer buisness. They understand management, and all those little numbers, but not the buisness. When an announcement is made they don't know how it affects the bottom line so they guess. Even those who do understand something can only understand (at most) 30 companyes (10 is normal).

If you want to know how the market works, study it. Take classes in ecconomices, but take them many places. Make sure you get a professor who teachs "Reganomics" and one who doesn't belive in it. Make sure you get cummunists and libratarians. Then use that only to help you understand how some people behave. Little changes in one area can have drastic changes in anouther. Microsoft seems most obviously affected, but redhat stock seems to have changed the most, yet BE probably has the most to gain... (guessing on the last part, to make a point)

I recomend you head over to The fool website and read up, then pick some stocks, read the 10Ks and all the other reports you can find, and then watch to see what happens. You can use real money if you want, but becareful as you can lose it.

The point: nobodu really understands the markets because it is controlled by people. People sometimes work on emotion, and emotions are not understood intilectually. (Or alternativly, some poeple in the market work on logic, and most people don't understand logic. Most /. readers need to remember the former statement, but there are those putting money into the market that need to remember the latter)

Next you'll be buying the telephone companies and cable companies.

hate to break it to you but... You remember a guy called Paul Allen? Do a quick search on the name and see how much cable he has bought in the last two years. It's a big part of his company portfolio now.

from here:
Just a year after entering the business, Allen has spent $19 billion in cash and assumed debt to turn Charter Communications into the fourth-largest U.S. cable operator, with 5.5 million subscribers.

I'd like to make some points:
*) Sun's SCSL license is not open source, nor trying to be.

*) Not all the source code will be made available straight away. Like with their other stuff released under the SCSL, you'll only have to pay Sun money if you plan to make a profit on it yourself. Sun also require you to fully publish the specs for any new APIs you add, and are very hard on compatability - ie they don't want it corrupted/code forked. btw, you will need Sun's compilers to compile it, and they haven't (yet) made the compilers SCSL.

*) I don't think this is really aimed at the general public (of coders) - it's mostly aimed at commercial compains who currently want to liscence Solaris to make their own products, and there are a few, and also at developers who already use Solaris.

*) I think the two main advantages they hope to gain from this is more developer interest, and better quality software - by getting better feedback. The reliability of Solaris is very important to Sun - there are managers whose salary and bonus are tied to it's reliability.

*) This is part of Sun's relatively new, general attitude towards development - first with Java last year, some of their microprocessor designs, some high end software (Sun Cluster Tools 3), Star Office, new software (Jini and Jiro) and now Solaris. I've heard it said that Sun plan to make all their software available under the community source unless there is a good reason not to.

*) Sun have very good reasons to worry about protecting their software - Microsoft would love to damage Sun, like it did Netscape.

*) The descision to go with their "community source" lisence would not be new. Sun have very long lead times on development for Solaris, and because Solaris contains quite a lot of other people's IP (which they'd have to get a new lisence for, or do their own version) as well as tidy up the source for public release, they would have to make the descision very early in the product cycle. Solaris 8 (which will be the first to have some source code freed) went into alpha about 1 year ago, and has probably been in code freeze for about 3-6 months, and it'll be released in about 4-6 months. And Sun aren't even adding that many new features with Solaris 8. Co-incidentally (probably not), when Solaris first went into alpha, was about the time I first head Sun execs talking about making Solaris open source.

*) Some people have said that Sun might be worried about Linux, or Project Montetery wiping them out or something. Currently, as with the past few years, Sun has been having very stable and reliable growth (20-25% per year) and I haven't seen the slightest indication that they're "hurting" from Linux (the opposite in fact) and Monterey isn't even finished yet, and even at best won't take off for another 2 years.

Btw, what's new in Solaris 8 you might ask? Well, they're putting in their cluster tools software as standard (currently a seperate product), doing IPv6, including perl (perl 5.0005_03 to be precise) as well as some modules to access parts of Solaris, some bits for Java, new diagnostics tools and such. btw, Sun will support everything that comes with Solaris for 5 years after they stop selling it.

Seriously, investing in the stock market is not that hard, and is an excellent long-term risk ... emphasis on long-term.

People going for short-term profits, like the infamous day-traders, or who obtusely put all their life savings into penny stocks or something else inadviseable, are the people really taking risks. But as for the average person, it's really pretty easy to earn money in stocks.

The key is being willing to wait 20 or 30 years for your money to appreciate. Historically, stocks give an excellent rate of return -- upwards of 12 to 15%. (Try getting THAT from your bank.) The problem is that not every single stock appreciates like that, and frequently stocks do decline in price for a period of time.

For my money, and I mean that literally, the best place to learn is the Motley Fool. Start by browsing the Fool's School, and you'll hopefully have a better appreciation of how it all works ... and how you can actually earn money in the market. Best of all, it's free! No, really!

As for investing in risky things like the high-tech market, well, first of all: invest only in companies that you understand. And even then, invest only money that you can lose -- because you just might. And meanwhile, invest money you CAN'T lose (like your retirement fund) in tax shelters like 401(k) plans, IRAs, and so on -- and with proven techniques, mostly involving buying stocks and holding onto them for a Very Long Time, as opposed to trying to outguess the highs and lows of the market.

Seriously, investing in the stock market is not that hard, and is an excellent long-term risk ... emphasis on long-term.

People going for short-term profits, like the infamous day-traders, or who obtusely put all their life savings into penny stocks or something else inadviseable, are the people really taking risks. But as for the average person, it's really pretty easy to earn money in stocks.

The key is being willing to wait 20 or 30 years for your money to appreciate. Historically, stocks give an excellent rate of return -- upwards of 12 to 15%. (Try getting THAT from your bank.) The problem is that not every single stock appreciates like that, and frequently stocks do decline in price for a period of time.

For my money, and I mean that literally, the best place to learn is the Motley Fool. Start by browsing the Fool's School, and you'll hopefully have a better appreciation of how it all works ... and how you can actually earn money in the market. Best of all, it's free! No, really!

As for investing in risky things like the high-tech market, well, first of all: invest only in companies that you understand. And even then, invest only money that you can lose -- because you just might. And meanwhile, invest money you CAN'T lose (like your retirement fund) in tax shelters like 401(k) plans, IRAs, and so on -- and with proven techniques, mostly involving buying stocks and holding onto them for a Very Long Time, as opposed to trying to outguess the highs and lows of the market.

(First a note about MPPP: their IPO price was $28, and they have not broken that price level.)

I've got one of The Letters and I'm in a position to use it. If it goes well, I'm going to take the money and live on it while I write some more open-source software.

I've been active in the stock market for several years. Before e*trade, there was no public access to IPO's. Companies like Netscape would go public, the underwriters would deal out the shares to elite customers at $20, the stock would open at $65, the elite customers would score $45, and the offering company would get $20. A lot of companies leave a lot of money "on the table" that way. That money goes into the pockets of well-connected Wall Street suits.

e*trade is busting that system open so that anybody can offer $20, or $25, or whatever they think is a good price -- so that $45-per-share gap will close up. The company will get more of the money (and I personally like to see a well-funded Red Hat), and the people who want to buy the stock get to put in bids for it, rather than being forced into the secondary market to pay that $65.

Some poor guy at e*trade must have gotten a hell of a slashdotting this week. Just in case they are monitoring this debate, I recommend: e*trade, forget the net-worth questionnaires, and really get to know your customer:

* We aren't just fans and well-wishers; like Scott Ananian said, we actually wrote the intellectual property that Red Hat sells.

* A lot of us don't fit the usual income and net worth parameters of our society. Be flexible here. If some guy wants to buy 100 shares, that's different from the usual customer buying 10,000 shares. Your mission is to offer service to the 100-share guy too, right?

* A lot of us don't fit the "blame somebody else" mentality of this society, either. If I get my shares, and RHAT trades below the print price, I am not going to blame e*trade. You do your job when the shares arrive in my account; you are not responsible for my decision to buy them or the market's decision about where the price goes, and I know this, deep down, through and through. We are willing to take responsibility for our decisions.

* In a situation like this, it would help if e*trade put up some more in-depth educational pages about the stock market and the IPO process. Make the Slashdot Effect work in your favor -- if you put up a good informative page, tens of thousands of people will read it. That's good for everybody.

* Learn what the news sources in our community are: Slashdot, Linux Weekly News, Wired, Salon, Slate. And learn that they publish on an hourly, not daily, schedule.

And now my two cents for all of us trying to get into the IPO ...

* Educate yourself. Motley Fool is a good place to start. I also like TheStreet.com and Yahoo Finance. Also check out the SEC EDGAR database, which is where they keep the raw data for Wall Street -- on the Internet, where anyone can read it (sound vaguely similar to anything you know?)

* I'm not planning to flip my shares. I hope you aren't planning to flip yours, either. If you ploughed your rent money into the IPO and you need it back right way ... I admire your guts, but you need to think about the risk, too.

* Know who your friends are. Yes, the IPO market is currently organized for the benefit of the Gnomes of Zurich. Yes, e*trade is probably your first contact with the IPO market (maybe even the stock market). That doesn't mean Red Hat and e*trade helped organize the current ripoff scheme. In fact they are both fighting it.

I don't work for e*trade, although it looks like I do, eh? Ok, bring on the flames.

Check out The Motley Fool for the whole story

Yes, there is a better way. It's been around for at least 25 years and talked about in books like "What Color is Your Parachute?" A great current resource is Ask the Headhunter web site.

Here's the first paragraph from the welcome page:

Forget luck. Forget what "human resources experts" have taught you. It's all bureaucratic bunk. No one wins (or fills) a job by following "the steps" dictated by America's defunct Employment System. Rather, they succeed by beating the System: by knowing the best way to handle a few make-or-break situations, thereby setting themselves above their competition.

His approach is then outlined in five steps. The method takes some work. But it has worked for me -- how else do you go from a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts Photograpy to a network engineering position?

This is an advertisement or anything, but I love the Motley Fool ( www.fool.com). It's an especially kind place for new investors. They have plenty of FAQs, analysis, and active message boards for every stock.

They also have a site called www.foolu.com targeted at students with questions about finances and investing.

Yo! Taco! Check out what happened when the Motley Fool ran an April Fool last year. Some of the flamage they got (and posted) was just priceless...

Yo! Taco! Check out what happened when the Motley Fool ran an April Fool last year. Some of the flamage they got (and posted) was just priceless...

Wade Cook ... Dishonest ... ha ha ha ha ... you're killing me. That's about the tamest thing you could say about the guy. A friend of mine really got taken by his stuff.

check out these links for more info. Personally, I think that the lawsuit is just a publicity stunt. I mean he mentions Yahoo and all of a sudden he gets tons of press coverage. They guy is a clasic flim flam artist.

http://invest-faq.com/articles/warn-c ook.html
http://invest-faq.com/articles/adv-p aying.html
http://www.fool.com/Featur es/1997/sp971006WadeCook97.htm

- Anonymous Coward

Decide for yourself. Follow the criteria given for evaluating investments, in the Motley Fool's 13 Steps to Investing Foolishly. Apply them to Yahoo and see how well it stands for yourself.

Umm, no.

It's a bad idea. Why? Because if you're getting exploited ($30,000 for a 60 hour week? If you're getting $30K, you're a total newbie to the field and it's not worth making you work overtime, you
don't have enough to contribute yet), leave. Don't ask a union to do the job for you, vote with your feet and get another job. If you can't at least get a 5% raise after 6 months of looking around (read "Ask The HeadHunter" for tips on how to look), then maybe you're in the best situation you can find for now.

Still, 30K for 60 hours? Not worth it. At the very least, you should be getting overtime pay for that (making your real salary something more like $35K, which I wouldn't consider too bad to make in the first 1-2 years of an IT career).

My take on unions is that I prefer a system where my skills determine what I make, not the amount of whining me and 50 of my buddies do. I'm just not a union fan, and never will be.