Slashdot Mirror

Enron

Looks like it's still worth something

As the article notes, it will cost more in brokerage fees to issue the shares than the trading value of the shares on the pink sheets.

Hell, my dad still holds** Enron shares in a brokerage account and even the *trading* fees are larger than the trading value of the stock (if he were to actually able sell the shares, his net would be negative).

**Fortunately, an IRS rule change about 10 years ago generously allows you to write off the loss w/o having to actually sell the shares in the case of illiquid stock losses that trade on the pink sheets. Of course if the stock is ever worth anything in the future, and you sell them, you have to use a zero basis, not your purchase basis in determining the gain.

Enron

Looks like it's still worth something

Graphics people have to be kidding me. In the internet age, we have billions of colors to display, and this is all they could come up with? I'm sorry, but whatever happened to art that you would actually want to look at for more than a microsecond?

http://scripophily.net/clevdiscom.html

(Yes, I'm sufficiently knowledgeable about computer graphics to know that engraving does not reproduce well on computers. But dang people! No company logo produced in the last 20 years looks like anything but CRAP!!)

The "Klondike Big Inch" was a promotional campaign by Quaker Harvest Oats in the 1950's. The deeds, for one square inch of Yukon land, were included in cereal boxes. Although it was a very successful marketing enterprise, the deeds were strictly promotional and never entitled holders to any actual land.

Were I a betting man, I would bet this is an elaborate scheme to separate the investor from his money, rather like the "Holman Locomotive Speeding Truck Company".

The Holman Horror

Interestingly enough, their stock (at least the certificates for same) is worth more today than it ever was when the company existed!

Ol' C. Everett just didn't know what he was getting into.

I remember an "Illinois Bell" before "Ameritech" came along, but I don't know whether Illinois Bell was ever a totally separate company or if it was always federated with its Ameritech peers. Here is some interesting information on the old Bell system and where they went after the break-up.

That'll never fly.

You're paying BT to complete a phone call for you, not act as an ISP. When I dial a modem, I want to talk to the fucking modem that I dialed, not some reasonable-facsimile-thereof. Maybe I intend to whistle a Bell 212a carrier as part of an art project and record it with my nifty voice modem, maybe I want to yell at a housemate through the modem speaker, maybe I want my credit card transaction to happen as fast as possible rather than waiting for two handshakes to complete instead of just one. Whatever the case, I want to make a phone call, not just transfer some data. And, besides, BT has no business keeping track of which numbers have modems answering, let alone treating them differently.

No, sir. A more general solution, as I've outlined above, is in order. There's nothing to track or configure on an ongoing basis. No weird latency or flow control issues due to mismatched connection speeds. No new problems popping up from old customer equipment.

It's simple. Switch encounters a modem carrier (or, more likely, highly-noncompressible information) and changes codecs, while nobody is the wiser.

'Sides, the whole idea of extraneous modems died in the 90s, at BT's own hand, when they stopped offering Tymnet's outdial capability.

From this webpage:

"Prior to its acquisition by #1 PC maker Compaq in 1998, the company was a top supplier of networked computer systems and components, software, and services. Digital developed the speedy 64-bit Alpha microprocessor; Alpha-based products included workstations and servers. Digital also sold UNIX-based computers, network components (such as adapters and hubs), PCs, and peripherals. Digital (formerly known as DEC) also offered services such as network design and support, systems integration, and project management. Formerly based in Maynard, Massachusetts, the company's last reported sales were more than $13 billion in fiscal 1997."

DEC died despite having good sales and top flight technology.

Sun could die quickly despite its cash reserves. The cost to run a company the size of Sun could drain that reserve fast if their sales continued to drop and the equity market dried up for Sun.

See for yourself in this article. (You'll have to search for "Steve" or something...) In the famous words of Johnny Carson: "I did not know that!" ;-p