Slashdot Mirror

"By Friday afternoon [today], state officials had laid varying plans to present their opinions. Attorney General Tom Miller of Iowa, who has spoken throughout the case on behalf of several states and who advocates breaking up the company, scheduled a 5:15 p.m. EDT news conference. Meanwhile, Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. of Maryland, who has publicly expressed doubts about breaking up the company, planned to discuss a separate opinion around 5 p.m. EDT."

Shoot: the preview didn't work right. The SGI thestreet.com page is at:
http://quote.thestreet.com/cgi-bin/texis/StockQu otes?tkr=SGI

or:

SGI

OK, it may be I am impressed with SGI, but I think if red hat is going to chunker out a bunch of cash, they should buy SGI.

And they can do it:

SGI

Red Hat

SCO

Red hat is values at some 5 billion (most likely a large chunk of which is 'liquid') while SGI is around 2 billion. Imagine if all of SGIs technologies and manufacturing and research and ... and.... and .... etc were all at red hat's disposal.

Screw SCO (although for the price it may not be a bad idea), but SGI would rock. Oh yeah, and I do agree that QT, APLIX and otehrs would be a good buy, too. Maybe better than SGI considering what is really wrong with linux is not the OS (it is great) but the fact that there isn't a "Killer App" for people to choose OVER microsoft. Until Linux gets an app that MS can't do, no one "will be fired for buying MS."

OK, it may be I am impressed with SGI, but I think if red hat is going to chunker out a bunch of cash, they should buy SGI.

And they can do it:

SGI

Red Hat

SCO

Red hat is values at some 5 billion (most likely a large chunk of which is 'liquid') while SGI is around 2 billion. Imagine if all of SGIs technologies and manufacturing and research and ... and.... and .... etc were all at red hat's disposal.

Screw SCO (although for the price it may not be a bad idea), but SGI would rock. Oh yeah, and I do agree that QT, APLIX and otehrs would be a good buy, too. Maybe better than SGI considering what is really wrong with linux is not the OS (it is great) but the fact that there isn't a "Killer App" for people to choose OVER microsoft. Until Linux gets an app that MS can't do, no one "will be fired for buying MS."

(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.