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Try this press release on for size.

As for you not knowing much, well, Po Bronson points out that there are clear lines between who gets to know stuff about IPOs; of course, it has to do with securities laws in the end, but the practical effect is to make certain things very secret, even from the people whose lives are materially affected by the outcome.

As to how it works, "Mcafee.com" can easily be a stock-issuing subsidiary to another corporation. It happens in the other direction all the time: one corporation investing in another by buying, say, 10% of its stock. In this case, the subsidiary is in a substantially-enough different business from the main corporation that they want to give investors the ability to "track" its success separately. This can be done by a special class of stock, or as a semi-public subsidiary.
Since the prospectus isn't available yet (that I can find), it's hard to tell how much stock is being made public and how much NAI is still going to own.

SFBG is pretty funny, and their satire is quite convincing sometimes. I dunno how many people (myself included) were at first astounded by their article on THC-Enhanced Oranges. I kept seeing comments praising this "discovery", for weeks afterwards.. ;)

It's rather like that one guy who said he went on a killing spree because he'd eaten so many Twinkies that he had gone crazy (this was a looooooooong time ago; you probably will be hard-pressed to fine a Web link to it).

Try: Unsafe at any speed - The final cover-up

This was in the news again recently. There are some interesting features that get lost in the urban legend. The murderer, Dan White, was an ex-cop, and a former member of the San Francisco board of supervisors. He was beloved by conservatives at a time when the elected leadership of San Francisco had swerved decidedly to the left. He decided to resign from the board of supes over financial difficulties, which would allow the liberal mayor, George Moscone, to appoint someone else. Some conservatives offered White financial help if he stayed in office, but Moscone was going to turn him down, so White then returned with a gun, and started in on a spree of killing elected officials. He got through two of them, including George Moscone (the mayor of SF) and Harvey Milk (the first openly gay official in the US), but evidentally he had plans to hit more of them. (That's the little tidbit that brought this story back into the news).

Dan White went on trial for murder, put up the infamous "Twinkie Defense", and got off with manslaughter.

This is what you're all missing: this is not a case of those silly judges and lawyers playing silly silly games. The legal system isn't stupid, it's fucking corrupt. Dan White was connected. He was an ex-cop (the guys who arrested him were friends of his). He was backed by the local conservatives... and they probably loved the fact that he blew away the most liberal mayor in the history of the city.

Since then we've had to deal with limosene liberals like Willie Brown... but that's another story.

http://www.sfbg.com/News/31/33/Opinions

it's an opinion piece written by Tom Tomorrow, of This Modern World fame. quite insightful.

-neil