Tech Stocks Tumble

For the first time I'm posting a story that I consider completely offtopic for Slashdot: I'm sick of the insulting e-mails, the derogatory namecalling, and the all-in-all childish behavior accusing me of some sort of shadow conspiracy. I consider stories about the stock market to be CNNfn or CNBCs thing. We only bring up the market when it deals with specific companies that we're interested in, not when the story is "The Market." But here it is. Over the last week, the US Stock Market dropped like a stone through kleenex. I don't really know what to say about it: what I know, and in fact my interest in the Stock Market can fill a shotglass, but I'm sure there are many readers with opinions on the subject (including an especially huge black conspiracy perpetrated by Slashdot to hide the "Truth" about something that I simply consider offtopic and uninteresting).

Comments

Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Levine]

Anything that depreciates the value of Gates' portfolio is a Good Thing(tm) in my eyes. Of course, I say this without any investment in the stock market myself. *grin*

Levine

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[moankey]

I believe the owner of big M is behind all of this. Since the judge made his announcment about 2 weeks ago the market has been making a downward spiral. I believes that top M$ owners are flexing their muscle a little by pulling just a few of their investments resulting in this drop, which either cause a chain reaction or they have soooo much money that a little shift in their money can cause this. Either way the desired effect is occurring. Judge, I cant remember his name, is considering not making punishement as harsh as originally intended.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[s.a.m]

I have to disagree with you slightly. Although I love it when Bill loses some of his vast investments, one has to consider the implications for everyone else. What about those people, such as retirement funds investors, who lose millions of dollars when such a thing happens.

I don't know if you've been following up on the news, but MSFT isn't the only stock being affected here. There are some linux stocks being affected. And this isn't being brough on by MSFT's stock dropping, but the fact is the market is bringing down the overly high priced tech stocks. These have been inflated due to the IPO fever which occured during 1999.

Personally I feel that it's ok that the market has been going down, why? Well simply because you don't want to have such a highly inflated stock market for such a long time. It's not going to be good for the economy in the long run

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[ucblockhead]

I just wanted to mention that, if you believe "Forbes", and other groups that investigate the wealth of the ultrarich, Gate's doesn't really have a "portfolio". The vast bulk is his wealth (over 95% of it) is in MSFT. He doesn't have enough other investments to drive anything else down.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[M/U]

It may be tempting to blame bill, but he really isn't the cause of this. The stock market has been out of control for a long time, due largely to inflated dotcom and tech stocks in general. The DOJ ruling and fall of M$ stock was only a trigger - it was really a matter of any time now. Greenspan has been trying to drive the market to correction for a while with his interest rate hikes, but it hadn't been responding.

Again, it isn't just M$ or the linux stocks, it's EVERYTHING, _particularly_ tech stocks which were the root of the market trouble. (By trouble I mean inflated valuation - yes, that's trouble too.)

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[guynorton]

I am afraid the drop will benefit Mr Gates and Microsoft. The high valuations of some companies stocks has helped them to expand my giving them the funds to buy up other companies and so increase their competitive strengths. This will no longer be so easy. Microsoft, however, have so much money in the bank that they can still pick and choose the best emerging technologies and 'absorb' them into the company by buy-outs....not so good for the competitors....

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[rjreb]

It will be BG's gain when the valuation of the linux-based companies falls to pennies on the dollar and BG just picks them up with little effort.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

What about those people, such as retirement funds
investors, who lose millions of dollars when such a thing happens.

Too bad, fuck them. Maybe they should have been more careful about thier investment funds, and not put them into something that has so much potential(and probably, now realized) risk. If you take a risk and you lose, its your own damn fault.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Levine]

From the replies to this comment, one of two generalizations can be validated:

1. An outright joke, as this comment was, is no longer considered as such due to either the pseudointellectual fodder that seems to hold the minds of most repliers in a catatonic state, or the remote but distinct possibility that the aincent art of KIDDING has been lost in the sea of time.

2. Jupiter and Saturn have aligned, and for one day, the masses of Microsoft bashing /.ers have been assimilated into Microsoft advocates.

As I don't have a telescope, I'm going to go with the first, but very tenatively. Any astronomers care to stipulate on the latter?

Lev^H^H^H21523 of 42854

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

With VA/Linux stock so low, and Microsoft with so much money in the bank, things could get interesting if Microsoft decided to purchase VA/Linux. Can you imagine the knee-jerk reaction of "the Linux community" if Microsoft "ate" VA/Linux? If anything, it'd be interesting to get ESR's reaction on "how does it feel to be working for Microsoft?" a la asking Jamie Zawinski "how does it feel to be working for AOL?" when AOL bought Netscape. Why do I think that RMS would just sit in the corner and smile, as the posterchild Linux integrator is turned to dust because of greedy businessmen? What a fascinating passion play the Linux business world has become!

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

Anything that depreciates the value of Gates' portfolio is a Good Thing(tm) in my eyes

How typical. Ugh. The stock market losing value is not good. This isn't just Bill Gates losing money, it's a lot of other people losing money too. A weak US stock market == weak world-wide markets. As of Sunday night CST, the major Asian markets are down aroud 10%.

So, it that good too? Is ma and pa down the street, who bought into a mutual fund for retirement, a good thing too? Grow up.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

And I believe the black helicopters are circling over your house right now.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

Yeah, you should only put into the market what you can afford to loose, but a market downturn can equal pain for the economy as well. What if this downturn continues (which I seriously doubt it will) to the point where bigger companies are hurting bad too... layoffs ensue, a near depression... hmmm, I'd imagine you'd be singing a different tune if this goes to the point where you get laid off and can't find a job.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[the italian]

That is the dumbest thing i have ever heard. the stock market has been waiting for this to happen for a long time.. the cause of this is everyone freaking out and selling out. Don't give bill gates that much credit.. he may rule the software world (i doubt that) but he sure does not rule the financial market.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[buss_error]

The reason you should care is that you are a wage slave. If you don't have a job, you don't eat. If the companies' stock drops by a mile, then management tends to look at what jobs they can cut to save money and improve the bottom line. Many times, it's those nerds in the back that take it in the neck. Perhaps you are not old enough to have worked in the '80s, but THAT was a Bad Time(tm) for a wage slave. This promises to be worse. Much worse.

While unrestricted growth is not a Good Thing(tm), unrestricted anti-growth is not a Good Thing(tm).

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

What i'm a jerk b/c some dumbass dumped all of his retirement money into the stock market then lost it? Should i feel sorry for the cocain addict that ODs too? I think not; people are dumb, they need lessons like this to teach them.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

I do. I call them every weekend. Whats your point?

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

I'll find something. Like stealing from you. Why? Since you're probably one of the idiots that overinflated these stocks to begin with. The gov't needs to get more restrictive about letting people invest. Have we learned nothing from the 1920s? i did, and i wasn't even there..

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

I'll find something. Like stealing from you

A good, mature answer.

Why? Since you're probably one of the idiots that overinflated these stocks to begin with

My portfolio is embarssingly small (I am, after all, just a college student), and my primary holdings are in Microsoft, which is one of the few stocks that deserves its price. I was not one of the many to pump LNUX up to 320 before letting it crash back down. Fuck, I've never even sold a stock.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

I'll find something. Like stealing from you

A good, mature answer.

Hey, if its the only way i can survive, then thats what i gotta do.

which is one of the few stocks that deserves its price.

Well kudos to you for not being much part of the problem. But if you beleive that statement (about MS), i suggest you get out of the market completely. If ford built cars like MS builds software, they would've been out of buisness long ago. Its just too bad most people don't know how bad MS products really are. Not to meantion thier horrible sense of ethics (unfortunatly, most companies are guilty of this). So perhaps there's another reason to sell your stock. Silly me tho, what do ethics matter, as long as we're all makin money.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

But if you beleive that statement (about MS) [that it deserves its price], i suggest you get out of the market completely

You don't think MS has a deserving stock price? Microsoft, with a 47 P/E ratio is unjustified at its current price? And let me guess, Yahoo!, with a P/E ratio of 497 is reasonable?

If ford built cars like MS builds software, they would've been out of buisness long ago

Agreed, but software differs greatly from other business models. For example, something like 80% of software projects never finish or are so riddled by bugs/errors they are rendered useless. Imagine if a bridge-building company had that success ratio? If 80% of the bridges you saw were half-built, or too shoddy to use. I am not saying that this is right, that software should not be held up to the same standards as car making or bridge builing, but the fact is, is that it isn't. All software companies are guilty of this 80% rule, and all software companies build pretty crappy software from the standpoint of the majority of end users.

So perhaps there's another reason to sell your stock. Silly me tho, what do ethics matter, as long as we're all makin money

Ha! This from the guy who plans on stealing from me. Hypocrit.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

You don't think MS has a deserving stock price? Microsoft, with a 47 P/E ratio is unjustified at its current price? And let me guess, Yahoo!, with a P/E ratio of 497 is reasonable?

I don't think either company should even be in the stock market. To your 2nd comment, i agree 100%.

Ha! This from the guy who plans on stealing from me. Hypocrit.

Stealing to survive is one thing; supporting a big lumbering company seeking to fuck over everyone (including its shareholders) is quite another. I can forgive the poor man who steals from me to eat, but i cannot forgive the wealthy one seeking only to add to his already obscene wealth by stealing from me.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

Stealing to survive is one thing; supporting a big lumbering company seeking to fuck over everyone (including its shareholders) is quite another

How do they fuck over their shareholders? Their stock value has done nothing but steadily increase over the past ten years. If that's "fucking over" a shareholder, I want the stock market to fuck me over more often.

Granted, those at the helm of MS fuck over a their competitors with insane abandon. However, having working inside the belly of the beast myself, the people who work at Microsoft are great folks - very nice and blindly intelligent.

i cannot forgive the wealthy one seeking only to add to his already obscene wealth by stealing from me

How the fuck am I stealing from you by investing in Microsoft? Furthermore, I am far from wealthy, a lowly college student with a piddly portfolio. You need to either better define why you have such a hate of Microsoft, because your fanatical hatred for the company seems out of place. A computer geek with an identity crisis, whose resolves identity conflicts by following the Slashdot crowd - boo hiss to Microsoft! I hate Bill! Linux rulez, d00d!

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

How do they fuck over their shareholders?

Even shareholder use and are bound by license agreements. Even shareholders have Wordxx crash, right? Anticompetive behavior hurts everyone (except the business doing it).
How the fuck am I stealing from you by investing in Microsoft?

That statement had nothing to do with MS, specificaly. It was aimed companies doing anything in thier power to fuck over people, and squeeze every last dime out.

You need to either better define why you have such a hate of Microsoft, because your fanatical hatred for the company seems out of place.

OK, here is why i hate MS specifically.

• Their licensing practices, and the idea that even tho i payed for something, its not mine. Anything you pay a ONETIME fee for is (should be) yours to use as you wish.
• They stifle innovation and competition.
• They do not support open standards. Instead they take them, and change them enough so that they don't work and don't tell anyone what they did
• They've been caught in more lies then i can remember. The 'Linux Myths' which was a complete fabrication, paying someone to give them better test results then the competition, denying that they purposefully broke thier OS so that applications makers had a harder time, and vaporware.
• Thier selling of clueless MCSEs to clueless managers. I'm tired of arguing with MCSEs that think they know what the problem is, can't fix it, and getting in the way of my work. I had one try to tell me that any non-Intel brandname chip was an Alpha, probably because he thought it meant it was second rate.

So, there's a short list of why i hate MS. Don't give me the excuse 'all software companies do that'. Its not true, and i really don't care. Most people drive like asses, does that mean i should too?

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

OK, so you don't like Microsoft, fine. Why the vehemenent attack on me, though? Since I am a small time (very small time) shareholder in Microsoft, I am to blame for their practices? Your entire argument has been directed at me and I, for the life of me, can't figure out why.

That's like saying, "An employee of mine drives like an asshole," and then you being upset at me, calling me names for employing such an asshole. I won't argue with your right to be pissed off at the employee, but you have no right to be mad at me.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

Why the vehemenent attack on me, though?

Everyone that holds thier stock supports their practices. By buying thier stock you affirm that you condone thier actions. You are also part owner, and you DO have a say over how they act. I choose not to buy MS stock, even though i know it could make alot of money for me, because i disagree so strongly with their philosophy.

That's like saying, "An employee of mine drives like an asshole," and then you being upset at me, calling
me names for employing such an asshole. I won't argue with your right to be pissed off at the employee,
but you have no right to be mad at me.

Well, that depends. Is he driving your company van, or his own car? If its your company van, i damn well have the right to be pissed at you. If its his car, then you're right, he is the one i should be pissed at. Your owning stock in MS is like MS being an employee driving your company van; you do OWN part of MS, remember. So your 'employee' is misbehaving while driving that van, so yes i'm gonna get pissed at you.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

Everyone that holds thier stock supports their practicesHmmmm... I guess this is true, but I think it is a little absurd. I have money in my local bank, in a checking account. Does this mean I support and approve of the actions of the Federal Reserve Board? Does my having a checking account mean I approve of what Alan Greenspan does? I don't think so. I view my investment in Microsoft in a similar fashion. I do not own Microsoft stock because I, philosophically, am a big Microsoftie. I need to put my money somewhere, and it came down to investing in stocks, mutual funds, or a money market/CD. I obviously chose the first approach, and chose Microsoft to invest in due to their financials, not their behavior. I wanted a steadily growing stock, not one that required a lot of micromanagement, like Yahoo! or other stocks. Take a quick look at Microsoft's 5 year stock pirce chart. Pretty damn steady growth. A little rocky the past year, but, overall, steady. Anyway, I don't think my minor investment in Microsoft means that I am an ardent supporter of their business practices. Your arguement suffers from the black and white fallicy. It would be like arguing that anyone who has purchased a computer with Windows supports Microsoft and therefore wishes to stiffle innovation.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

Well the banks don't really have a choice in the matter of obeying the FRB. Now if the bank were rackeeting (sp?) then ya i'd say move your checking out. Besides, i doubt the FRB is out to fuck over the american people. Your analysis of why you chose to buy MS proves my point; as long as you are making money, who gives a damn what MS does. I'm sure there are other more reputable companies that could offer similar growth. As for your last statement; that is true now, but remember, until recently even if you told a vendor not to include any OS on your new computer, you got charged anyway. So i think your point in that time is moot b/c you really had no say in it. Continuing to buy MS products is supporting them.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

Well, I still think your argument is incredibly black and white, and that you fail to see any gray.

So, I guess this is what you want to hear:

I am a Microsoft tool. Hearing the letters MS gets me erect. I love it how Bill fucks over people and have wet dreams imagining how one day I might be able to do the same. I love Microsoft products, and refuse to use competing products, like Netscape, *Nix OSes, etc. I hope all you Linux zealots are crushed by Big Bill and that you all die a slow and tortureous death. HAHAHA! Windows rulez, you guys are all lamers.

Is that what you want to hear? A totally black and white response. Granted, I could give you the other side if you'd rather hear that from me... ("Linux is so cool, Bill is the most evil man in the universe..." and so on.) Some of us realize that there are GRAYs in the world, that everything is not black and white.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

All in all, MS has done more harm then good. I never brought linux into this arguement, i never said "drop MS, goto linux." I just said that overall MS had done alot more harm then good in this field, that its 'morals' are really screwy (and that other companies are guilty of this as well), and that by buying thier stock you are supporting thier actions. It is pretty clear cut i would think. I also think thats probably a major problem in this country (and world). It seems the whole scale is now gray, there isn't anymore right or wrong anymore, there's always an exception, even for the most evil act. I just don't buy it.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

All corporations, inherently, have screwy morals. Since profits must come before all else, it is inevitible. Pick a profitable company with scrupules, and I will consider investing in them.

Perhaps we should turn to the wise words of 2pac: "It's just the way it is. Some thing will never be the same." :)

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

As i've said before, i also believe that. I have an interesting idea tho...if a company is found to have violated a law, then the shareholders of the company are the ones punished. Then maybe we'd see the companies getting some morals. I understand where you are coming from saying thats just the way it is, but i'd like to change it personally. I think anything that places personal gain over everything is is bad...be it people, buisness, or even an ant colony. Creating destruction for ones own gain is never good, and eventually will lead to thatthings downfall.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

I have an interesting idea tho...if a company is found to have violated a law, then the shareholders of the company are the ones punished

I like that idea. A lot. Very interesting. The logistics of it would be next to impossible, but, yes, I think that would help tremendously in cleaning up the defunct morals of corporations.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

I like that idea. A lot. Very interesting. The logistics of it would be next to impossible, but, yes, I think that would help tremendously in cleaning up the defunct morals of corporations.

Hmm...can't really tell if you're being sarcastic here, but i think it would work. Perhaps your punishment would be proportinal to the amount of stock you own. Anyway if you've got a better idea i'dlike to hear it. I'm tired of companies getting away w/all this shit, b/c they are a 'big faceless company'.

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

I was not being sarcastic, it's an interesting idea. Right now corporations answer to the shareholders (or at least the few big ones), which they should, since they are owned by the shareholders. The shareholders know that if the corporation does well (makes a lot of money) then more people will buy the stock.

Being a shareholder of MS, I don't want to see them broken up. Granted, having read the findings of facts, they deserve something severe. Fuck, they stiffled technology with Intel, screwed over Netscape/IBM... not cool. (A good investment, still (although the 12 point decline today is not proof of that, eh?).)

I don't know how you would punish the shareholders. Part of that might be totally unfair. Imagine that I own a big chunk of stock in some company and some guy in the company, whom I trust, just goes off and fucks over the company somehow. Perhaps signs contracts with companies who bribe him. Now, that is immoral, shareholders are punished. Is it fair that I be punished because of this one bozo's behavior?

This is even more the case if I am less of a shareholder. As a college student and a very tiny shareholder in MS, you can't expect me to have the time or energy to follow MS internals. I can't be held responsible for their actions because I don't have the time (or vested interest) to. I don't go to shareholders meetings, I don't follow the financials closely. It's like a CD or Money Market account at a bank - I plunk my money in and let it grow. I don't worry about the day-to-day details. Is it fair to punish me for "investing?"

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[plague3106]

Hmm, you've raised some good points. As far as not having the time or vested intrest to keep up on how your company is doing morally, i do see your point. On the flip side if the idea is to get companies to act responsibly, then if you don't have time maybe you shouldn't invest, or just hope the company isn't found guilty of anything. Some would argue ignorance of the law is not an excuse. As far as your MS stock goes, well you've heard both the findings of fact and law now, so if you wanted to avoid punishment under my system you would've sold your stock by now to avoid it. As far as your example of the one guy signing a contract which screws ovre people, well i never said that the higher ups would not be held accountable, like they are now. You're right tho there are alot of interesting things to think about with that kind of system. But then its not like i thought it through, it wsa just something i wanted to toss out there :)

Re:Bill Gates' loss = everyone's gain

[Skim123]

if you don't have time maybe you shouldn't invest

So what am I suppose to do with my money? Buy expensive items (car, boat, house)? Hide it under my bed? Putting it in a bank is just giving someone who does have the time to invest free capital!

As far as your MS stock goes, well you've heard both the findings of fact and law now, so if you wanted to avoid punishment under my system you would've sold your stock by now to avoid it

Very true. I would have sold it a long time ago! :)

I don't think my actions now are deplorable. Perhaps in your utopia they would be, but we do not live in a utopia. I play by the rules and invest in a solid, financial company. Although you may see this as morally or philosophically wrong, I don't.

Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[ewanb]

That is an impressive show of being pissed off
by CmdrTaco. I guess it got to him.

Stock Market is a non-story to me as well.
I don't think it should be commented on by slashdot either!

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Edward_M]

a non-story??

The stock market takes a hit greater than it did on Black Monday in '87, lossing over a Trillion dollars in the US and a shitload everywhere else and its a "non-story"? I don't know about you people but I would definitly file this under "Stuff that matters". Mind you though, the market is only back down to the level it was 6 months (or a year?) ago.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[el_guapo]

While the black Monday point total is true, I coulda swore I heard on NPR that as a percentage, it was smaller than on Black Monday. Regardless, I still find it non-/.-news-worthy. (Not griping AT senior Taco, I'm agreeing WITH senior Taco) I find the whole DJIA/NASDQ/etc. etc. thing to be, hmmmm (looking for the right words) a combination of uninteresting and weird. I read somewhere that if you substitued something like 5 large companies for another set of 5 companies in the DJIA the crash in the 20's didn't happen. i.e. the DJIA would NOT have crashed (of course, those 5 compaines may very well have) - it seemed to hint at the whole perception drives truth thing - people saw the DJIA tanking, so they bailed, which of course made it tank worse, so it spread, yada yada yada. Don't flame if I'm wrong on specifics (you are, of course, welcome to if I am totally in left field), cuz I'm just not interested in it enough to investigate it deeper than the generalities...

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[loki7]

If the stock market is a non-story, then it should always be a non-story. Slashdot often posts articles about Taco's favourite company's IPO'ing. If it's going to carry any financial news, then then stories about the tech bubble bursting are certainly Slahsdot-worthy.

This story impacts all of us. If tech stocks don't recover it means that there will be less money for start ups to do cool things! How many exciting companies are going to sink because they've lost all their capital?

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[jellicle]

It's paper, nothing more. If I declare a piece of paper to be "worth" a zillion dollars on Tuesday, and nothing on Wednesday, then, wow, I just lost a zillion dollars. It was never there.

--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[ucblockhead]

Well, first of all, it was a greater hit in numbers, not in percentages. And in market crashes, it is percentages that matter.

Besides, the '87 market crash didn't really matter much in the end, anyway. If I recall, it recovered everything in under a year.

These things only hurt those day-traders out to make the quick buck, or those investing on margin. Anyone investing for the long term and with your own money, like all the experts tell you to do, will not be much hurt but this. And as we saw in the eighties, the market bubbles have little effect on the economy as a whole.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Pxtl]

I think somethings bothering him, a lot. I mean, I just sent an article to post referring to the recent arrest of 2 teenagers in California who were plotting a Columbine-style massacre, which, I thought, was on topic given Jon Katz's obsession with the issue. I had a link to CNN, and a link to a post I made earlier that was, coincidentally, in a similar vein. I was trying to explain why people should not belittle the power of guns, as guns scare me a lot. The whole thing seemed pretty innocuous to me. Maybe I'm just jaded though.

Still, I got the following message back from him.

Subject: You'll be glad to know

That I've got messages on my answering machine from Columbine Sheriff's about your little prank message (and others like it). I know it seems funny, but its wasting a lot of my time dealing withthis shit.--

I know its bad etiquette to repost an e-mail like this, what'd I do to piss off our lord an master so bad?

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh the bliss of youth. Nothing matters. HA!

Those of us that have been around this before know this is the end of a cycle. Most of the current stock market hype remaining is left over from y2k. People thought they would profit hugely from y2k. Some did. Anyway, the point is the computer industry just passed its largest comsumption of goods period and is about to enter a slumber period. Too much overhead has been built on in the past 12 months. We're going to a rise in hardware prices and lay offs before long.

Cheers.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[AndyL]

"Slashdot often posts articles about Taco's favourite company's IPO'ing. "

So what? This is Taco's site. The stated purpose of the site is to mention news that interests him and his small group of friends. They don't hide this. It's what the site is about.
If you don't like it you have two choices :
A: Read www.cnn.com and news.yahoo.com
B:Start your own site with news that you like.

Personaly I think /.'s stories usualy coincide with my intrests but if they didn't I'd go find some other site. I wouldn't stick around and complain about it.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[MattXVI]

Michael, if I can sell that paper for $100,000 to a real live person, then it's not just paper. Just because the value can fluctuate doen't make it worthless. (Unless it fluctuates to zero, which probably won't even happen to RHAT or LNUX).

It is disingenuous to call stock ownership "paper, nothing more." Not just disingenuous, but exactly wrong. It s like calling cash "just paper", except the value of a dollar is more stable than the value of a stock.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[kootch]

This has got to be the dumbest comment I've ever read.

No, the stock market is not just paper. It is part ownership in a company. It's part ownership in the entity that pays your bills. If that piece of paper is worth nothing, that means the company is worth nothing, which means that you won't be getting a paycheck. Now this is an over-generalization, but in effect, it's true. Stock OPTIONS are just paper. They're notes that say you have the ability to buy stock at an imaginary price, however with options you don't actually own anything yet. Yes, there you'd be a paper millionaire. However, people that actually OWN stock and are able to cash out at any given moment are more than just paper rich. They ARE rich.

Learn something about the stock market and value.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[rjreb]

I don't really know what to say about it: what I know, and in fact my interest in the Stock Market can fill a shotglass

Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. On one side you have what basically accounts the promotion of certain companies in order to drive the price up. On the other hand you plead ignorance and disinterest.

I presume that it's not your intent to drive the prices up for your own portfolio however now that you're a celebrity you need to be aware of appearances...

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[MissionControl]

So, does your reference to senior Taco imply that there's a junior Taco? I never knew!

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[kevinank]

I don't think it should be commented on by slashdot either!

The stock market is a lot more important to the future of open source software than seems obvious at first glance.

For the past four or five years small e-form companies have had a huge advantage over large corporations like IBM or HP in that the (potentially) very high stock market valuation of these companies has allowed infrastructure to spring up from nothing.

All of the midsized companies signing on to use Linux couldn't care less about free software or ideals of how information should be handled. They are interested in Linux because there is suddenly a huge amount of support for it. Hundreds of e-businesses like Linuxcare, or Redhat to name the largest, have filled in the market with software solutions customized to fit their needs.

But the viability of that market mechanism is predicated on the e-form funding model. Without that these hundreds of companies couldn't have been funded, the products wouldn't exist, the mid-level companies wouldn't see sufficient support to justify choosing Linux.

So if the market gets bad enough, then yes, I believe that everyone in the Open Source community will care. Linus and many other developers would happily continue writing their software to satisfy themselves, but there is a strong distinction between hobby-ists toolset and product.

-kls

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[acm]

How is something like John Katz's interpretation of "The Beach" a slashdot related topic, yet the fall of the stockmarket, including numerous tech stocks, remains "off-topic"?

I think this is a very on topic post, and I'm interested in what the slashdotters have to say about it.

--acm

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[helarno]

The stock market may have recovered everything within a year. The economy didn't.

Stock market crashes tend to trigger a sudden conservatism, tendency to save and unwillingness to spend further, which basically slows the economy. After black monday, the US technically remained in a recession till around 1992.

Likewise, after the crash of 29, the stock market recovered within a few years. The rest of the economy didn't until pretty much after World War II.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[ucblockhead]

The economy didn't really do anything bad when the stock market crashed in the eighties. It was mostly business as usual.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Zen]

CmdrTaco said HE was posting the first article he thought non /. worthy, not the first article ever posted that wasn't /. worthy. If you recall, there are a lot more people than just him now.

Actually, I feel a discussion of the stock market is extremely /. worthy, as long as it doesn't overtake /. A lot of nerd's have a lot of $$, which they invest somewhere. That makes the stock market worth it to talk about.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[gargle]

So what? This is Taco's site. The stated purpose of the site is to mention news that interests him and his small group of friends. They don't hide this. It's what the site is about.

You don't get it. I present to you definitions of two very apt words.

Unscrupulous: Taco saying that "I run a major tech news site, I have shares in these companies and I'm going to cover all these IPOs and help buoy their prices up, but I'm going to close my eyes and not report it when they fall."

(Flat out) Lying: Taco saying that "We don't ever cover the stock market. It's offtopic and uninteresting."

====

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Mr. Piccolo]

Hey, at least one person would be happy if the current bear market causes a lasting slowdown in the economy... *cough* Mr. Greenspan *cough*

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Rob Kaper]

Besides.. this news is no more off-topic than the IPO's were. If the dropping stocks are really CNNfn news only, then all new software releases should be on Freshmeat and Kernelnotes, all Mozilla news on MozillaZine, the Apache section to apache.org, etc etc.

I regret the immature reactions the Slashdot guys undoubtly have received, but what were they thinking? If the IPO is newsworthy, so is the progress.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Stephen Samuel]

The valuation is especially paperesque for those people who own large chunks of stock. At the risk of being moderated down for repetition: Bill Gates owns in the range of a BILLION Microsoft stock. If he were to sell it all off -- even over the space of a year, MSFT stock would bottom out (if only temporarily). He would NEVER get the 'paper' current valuation of the stock he owns. That's why it's referred to 'paper' valuation.
Once he manages to sell all of his stock, then his valuation -- although smaller -- wouldn't be paper.

Just like stock represents a percentage ownership of a company, money represents a percentage ownership of a country's currently available resources (i.e. not far from being stock in the COUNTRY). {In,de}flation occurs when people recognize that the ratio of available money to available resources is off-kilter.
--

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[loki7]

So what? This is Taco's site.

Actually, this is Andover's site. Taco is essentially an editor who's job depends on the advertising revenue generated by this site. If he starts ignoring the interests of his customers (us!) then he's going to either lose his job and/or drive /. out of business.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Stephen Samuel]

BTW: I generally agree with CmdrTaco's sentiments. I generally look to /. for news that wouldn't necessarily be easy to find elsewhere, especially technical/geek oriented stuff. This 'story' doesn't fit in that vein.

If you haven't heard about the stock market sell-off by now

• You probably don't care about it,
• You're probably living the life of a techno-hermit, and
• You probably don't read /.

That having been said, it was probably worthwhile to give those of us geeks with an investment in the stock market someplace to blow off our steam.
NAK! 3 posts in one article -- I'm going to the beach.
--

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[shandrew]

Options aren't just paper either; they're a contract. Saying they're just paper is like saying that cash is just paper. There's more risk in the option contract, but there's risk in cash as well (inflation, or the US govt being overthrown...).

This correction was completely expected. If you didn't expect it, you need to sell your stocks and learn something about economics, and not buy back in until you know more. Most tech stocks doubled in 1999...most for no good reason. There wasn't much that changed financially for most of the companies between 98 and 99, except for investor behavior.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[SEE]

Look, lots of things are "big stories" that don't belong on /.

For example, NATO goes to war in Kosovo? /. non-story.

Dow breaks 10,000? NASDAQ hits 5,000? Not a word on /.

India and Pakistan test nukes? Nope.

The possible impeachment of the U.S. President? Not covered on /., because it was, for /., a non-story. (Well, there was a story about a Microsoft Exchange bug, and Katz did a "Impeahment and the Internet" rant.

So I don't give a damn how "important" this is, it is a /. non-story.

Steven E. Ehrbar

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Zico]

Anyone else get the feeling that Greenspan is pissed that all his New York/Washington socialite pals have been making a killing on the stock market, and that deep down inside, he feels a little extra incentive to shut them up?

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[j_w_d]

The 1929 depression was real enough, but like anything else, perceptions were guided by where the percipient was embedded. In California it was slow rather than catastrophic. In the Great Lakes region and industrialized eastern US, where major factories shut their doors it was catastrophic for workers, and for Wall Street investors who were margined to their underwear it was time for bankruptcy proceedings via defenestration. On the other hand, it is also a fact that if you could hang on to your investments, you made money long term.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[rumba]

Just because we all believe this shared hallucination doesn't make it real. Or maybe we should define it this way: someone told you that this piece of paper is real and worth a zillion dollars. It's a confidence game and it only works as long as all the marks believe it. When the confidence goes away, the Bear shows up. As far as the dollar is concerned, there's a lot more voodoo behind it than you think.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[FSKilroy]

If Slashdot was the only website I got news from I would be annoyed by the lack of stock coverage, but the reason (I assume) we come back is that CmdrTaco (etc. al.) cover a small range of topics very well, rather then trying to be all things to all people.

I don't expect Slashdot to have decent stock coverage for the same reason I don't read The Wall Street Journal for Linux news.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[King Babar]

After black monday, the US technically remained in a recession till around 1992.

Likewise, after the crash of 29, the stock market recovered within a few years. The rest of the economy didn't until pretty much after World War II.

Uh, no. On both counts.

There was no recession, technical or otherwise, accompanying the 1987 crash. Which was weird, actually. What did happen was that many people and companies in the financial services industry did end up getting hosed.

As far as 1929 goes, an investor who got in at the peak of the market and bought the equivalent of the Dow index wouldn't have gotten back into the black in terms of the market price for the shares (so we're ignoring dividends) until decades later. Economic growth in the US following the crash was interesting in that the economy did again show growth during 1936, but went back into a tailspin in 1937 (some blame an insistence on budget-balancing for this). By the early 40s, things might have been getting back to normal, but the US then entered the war, and war economies are very different beasts than peacetime economies, which is why you sometimes use to hear the boilerplate "longest continuous peacetime expansion in the history of the US".

At this point, there is some real cause for concern about a recession, but how long or deep such an event (should it occur) will be is very difficult to know.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Znork]

Bottom line; The actual value of a stock is what you get if you fire everyone and sell off all assets and then split the proceedings up among the shareholders. Nothing more nothing less. Simply the liquidation worth.

Another alternative 'serious' valuation would be base interest rate plus a few percent for risk as yield off invested money. Not applicable in most tech stocks since, well, what earnings?

The rest of the 'paper worth' of the stock is just dreams and hallucinations, based on a pretend future that may or may not happen. No more real than the average albanian pyramid scheme.

What you can sell the stock for isnt even really interesting. You can sell shares in a pyramid scheme and get rich too. If you sell before it collapses. This isnt called solid wealth, this is just tricking stupid people into paying for nothing. It just isnt entirely obvious to the gullible.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[coaxial]

The stock market takes a hit greater than it did on Black Monday in '87, lossing over a Trillion dollars in the US and a shitload everywhere else and its a "non-story"? I don't know about you people but I would definitly file this under "Stuff that matters".

Sure it may matter in general, so did Kosovo; but you didn't see that on /. now did you? I read /. for a very small segment of my news, and that's tech news. If I want to know about world events (which is "Stuff that Matters") then I watch CNN or something. I don't turn to /. for it. If I want buisness news, I'll watch CNBC. I DON'T WANT /. COVERING THIS. For one it's redundant, and two /. is one of my only refuges from stupid ass stock crap.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[cian]

Well only in the very long term. As a year on year return on your investment it would have been pretty dreadful.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[goeroebil]

I don't know cmdrtaco personally (neither do you would be my guess) but he doesn't seem (to me anyway) like the chap who would try and up the tech stocks he personally invested in through slashdot. The IPO's and other stock related articles that I read , were in the general interest of the linux/gnu/nerd society (who imho form the most important reader pool of /.). So I'm just wondering who died and made you the judge of all that is right so that you can condemn Rob Malda and call him a liar to his face on his own website.... Perhaps the concept of people who (obviously unlike you) are not just out on their own personal gain is hard to grasp, but you could at least try... my 2 cents

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Matty Boy]

I agree that this is not your typical /. story but frankly it DOES matter.

If the economy tanks, how many firms do you honestly think are going to be looking to try out this "new" operating system Linux? Or will be looking to set up an online outlet for whatever they do? Answer - none. I would imagine that quite a few /. readers work for firms that are considering doing something with Linux or with the Internet or have just started one. If things get tight, those projects will be the first out the door. Therefore it effects you.

Anybody who works as a consultant or a freelance something-or-other will see their work dry up if things start to get tight. Ergo, it matters to you as well.

Hell, if things get that bad, firms will start laying people off. That certainly matters to me.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[Glytch]

Well, it's more like a lot of nerds *make* a lot of money. I don't know of any fellow geeks who actually have a large bank account, what with frequent purchases of "toys" and all. :)

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[gargle]

I don't know cmdrtaco personally (neither do you would be my guess) but he doesn't seem (to me anyway) like the chap who would try and up the tech stocks he personally invested in through slashdot

I doubt he ever made the explicit connection in his mind, but I'd expect the editor of a major news site to go to great lengths not to even be perceived as dishonorable.

The IPO's and other stock related articles that I read , were in the general interest of the linux/gnu/nerd society (who imho form the most important reader pool of /.).

And the meteoric plunge of the same stocks are not of interest to linux/gnu/nerd society?

Especially when we may be looking at the end of the era of hyperinflated internet stocks? This is not of interest to the tech industry readers of this site?

condemn Rob Malda and call him a liar to his face on his own website

Well the facts speak for themselves. He has reported extensively on IPOs and other stock market affairs in the past, and to claim now eh won't report on the tech stock crash because the stock market is "offtopic and uninteresting" is, simply, lying.

====

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[fedos]

Your thinking of the book value of the stock. Book value has nothing to do with what the stock sells for on the market. The value the stock sells for on the market is a reflection of peoples' perception of its strength/weakness.

Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off

[jellicle]

This has got to be the dumbest comment I've ever read.

You must not read at -1 very often.

No, the stock market is not just paper. It is part ownership in a company. It's part ownership in the entity that pays your bills. If that piece of paper is worth nothing, that means the company is worth nothing, which means that you won't be getting a paycheck.

Not true. A company can be perfectly healthy, have perfectly good cash-flow, pay all of its employees and have good prospects for the future, yet have a) no stock at all or b) stock that is worth nothing. People often equate stock price with some sort of generalized measure of the health of a company - if it goes to zero we're dead! - but that's not how it works.

However, people that actually OWN stock and are able to cash out at any given moment are more than just paper rich. They ARE rich.

I disagree. Can you hand a share of stock to a kid at McDonald's and get a hamburger? If not, how are you going to keep from starving to death? Stock is fundamentally non-liquid. For instance, people tally Gates' wealth by multiplying the shares he owns by the share price. But if he tried to sell even one one-hundredth of his shares, the share price would drop, drop, drop - he could never get the full "value" of them. He couldn't get a quarter of the full value. And of course, if no one is willing to buy them from him, they're worth nothing at all.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org

Commentless

[mikeylebeau]

This is one of the first Slashdot articles in a while that I've actually felt like I could have nothing to contribute if I wanted to spend the time, because it simply doesn't raise any issues.

I don't think it's a coincidence that this is "offtopic" for Slashdot and completely boring at the same time.. hehe. :)

Thus, I think Slashdot's typical range of "on-topic" subjects are just about right on and something like this shouldn't be accepted to the pool of accepted topics on Slashdot.

Just thought I'd throw that out there. :)

Re:Commentless

[gravious]

Way to not contribute Mikey :-)

Taco, Don't be Churlish

[Fleet Admiral Ackbar]

You may claim that "the market" is not a story, but it fact it has been a story in the past. There is no difference between posting about an IPO and posting about the Linux stock tumble - they are both of interest to certain Slashdotters.

I would suggest that, given that Linux's credibility in the business world is a direct function of RHAT and LNUX prices (which I don't agree with, but there you go), we need to be discussing this. This is more on-topic than any of Jon Katz's ramblings.

I'm sorry if you lost money. A lot of us lost money. That doesn't make Linux any less viable, it doesn't affect the GPL, but it is worthy of discussion.

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[Camelot]

I would suggest that, given that Linux's credibility in the business world is a direct function of RHAT and LNUX prices (which I don't agree with, but there you go), we need to be discussing this. This is more on-topic than any of Jon Katz's ramblings.

I couldn't agree more. What happens to the stock value of Linux companies has direct consequences to the feasibility of doing Linux business. Let's face it - a lot of the buzz around Linux businesses has been just that - hype. Now we can how much of it has been just hype, and how much of it is real.

Even if we forgot the Linux side of the stock diving, there are still other, very important aspects to think of. What (if any) impact will the plummeting have on the IT industry as a whole ? Will this nose-dive continue (I think it will; this is just a beginning) ?

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[MicroBerto]

Valid point. The first few IPO's were very cool, but then talking about each one got stupid.

Speaking of the Devil, many tech stocks, including iSky have cancelled their IPO's because of the downswing in the market. (The link above points to the iSky article that slashdot just did today/last night. Their site is here.)

Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[Roblimo]

I don't use Linux because of stock prices, and I doubt that anyone sane is running around saying "Oh, Linux-oriented stocks are down. I guess I'd better run out and get Win2K for my server."

The fortunes of Linux -- the operating system -- are not tied in any way to the fortunes of any single company that sells Linux software, hardware or information. That is the beauty of open source software, and why I use it almost exclusively.

Another note: the stock price of a company doesn't necessarily affect its operations in any way other than its ability to use its stock to buy other companies or raise further funds through borrowing or new offerings. A company that goes public gets the original opening day "set" price and that's all. If the stock then goes up by some huge amount, the company gets nothing out of it. If the stock later goes down, the company take no loss.

For news about the stock market, I usually turn to CNNfn or CBS MarketWatch, not to Slashdot. This is not the *only* source of online news, you know. (*g*)

- Robin

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[ucblockhead]

If all tech stocks are diving, Linux won't get the blame. If anything, the Microsoft case is what seems to be getting the blame right now.

Much better for Linux stocks to tumble in a group with everything else than for them to tumble when everything else is going gangbusters.

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[whoop]

Nope, can't use Windows. Microsoft's stock was up at 120 around January, and now it's collapsed to 74. There is no sense in using something with a stock like this. Apple's been steadily increasing though. There has ben a bit of a drop since March, but nothing big. Everyone go out and get iMacs, now.

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[MattXVI]

The Fed is raising interests rates to stave off inflationary pressures.

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[Anonymous Coward]

Also consider this. Taco is perfectly happy to post articles about the latest cool vacuum cleaner, or "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a Simpsons movie?", which can't actually get more offtopic, but grumbles about posting an article about the tech stock market? That's fucked up :)

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[joe52]

There is no difference between posting about an IPO and posting about the Linux stock tumble - they are both of interest to certain Slashdotters.

This is not a "Linux stock tumble." The entire market is dropping, and almost every tech stock out there is getting hammered. If a Linux company were having problems along the lines of Microstrategy where part of the drop is directly related to a downward correction of past revenues, then it would be a story. The fact that Linux stocks fall when tech stocks fall is not at all surprising. Now, the fact that the stock markets crashed may or may not belong on Slashdot, but this is not some sort of Linux-related event.

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[anonymous cowerd]

Also, if a commercial software company like Microsoft loses capital, it directly affects their software, since the programmers at Microsoft are working for money, and if they stop getting paid then they stop coding immediately. But the Linux developers are not working for money. Even if all the RedHats and VA Linuxes in the world go under, it still will not affect the world-wide Linux development team. And even if corporations decide they can't buy into Linux without there being other big corporations to support it, that won't affect the Linux developers either.

Keeping to my fixed policy of always looking for the silver lining in things, I conceive that the de-marketizing of Linux could be a good thing. Let's imagine some caffeine-soaked hacker hard at work past midnight, expanding the capabilities of Linux by adding some nifty new feature. In the back of his mind he's worrying about Metallica and the RIAA ("Somebody this evil hacker doesn't know, in another far-off country, might possibly use his software to listen to a recording - our property - which otherwise he wouldn't buy anyway! Sue him! Destroy him!"). He also has to worry about the FBI ("So, Congressmen, in the pursuit of upholding the all-important interests of America's burgeoning internet commerce sector, and in order to protect America against terrorists, we are asking for the right to make no-knock, no-warrant raids on any nefarious criminal hacker suspected of being in possesion of anything on this list of proscribed hacking tools: GCC, Perl, EMACS..."). He also has to worry about the American Family Association ("Yes, my brethren and sistern! These hackers, wallowing in their sinister subculture of pornography, drug abuse, body piercing and free speech, are the loathsome spawn of Satan and they must all be burned! Now! Are you with me?")

Atop all these other dismal preoccupations nowadays, it's possible, if our hacker has a gloomy disposition, that he also reflects as follows: "Here I am, it's the middle of the night, and I'm working my ass off trying to make this &^%$# code work. And when I get done and I give it away, then what? Well, some multi-billion dollar company is going to distribute the Hell out of it, for which I will get $0.00, and packs of snobby yuppie jackasses, jabbering to their brokers over their cell phones as the drive around in their BMWs and Benzes, are going to make a killing off all the hubbub. Yecch. Think I'll go play Quake instead."

Now you wouldn't want our imaginary hacker to get depressed, would you? Gee, I sure wouldn't. So let Wall Street go up in smoke, it's all good! Go away, get lost, go bankrupt, you pesky money men, and let our people hack!

Optimistically yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[QuadPro]

A company that goes public gets the original opening day "set" price and that's all. If the stock then goes up by some huge amount, the company gets nothing out of it. If the stock later goes down, the company take no loss.

It doesn't work that way. A lot of tech companies (that aren't making any profits - they suffer (large) losses) try to take over as many other companies as they can to gain marketshare to try and become profitable in the future. A lot of the takeovers are paid for with stock of the taking-over company. When the stocks of a company are rising, they can take over other companies relatively easy. When the stock price is falling, takeovers suddenly become much more difficult, so it becomes more difficult to 'create' marketshare, so it becomes more difficult to make money later, which won't be good for the stock price ......

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[ronfar]

I don't use Linux because of stock prices, and I doubt that anyone sane is running around saying "Oh, Linux-oriented stocks are down. I guess I'd better run out and get Win2K for my server."

I actually made this point in a previous story about an "official" Linux DVD player when someone was saying something about a DVD player being neccessary for Linux to be commercially viable. (In the sense of attracting investors.) The point is, I think people have to understand that if Linux were non-Copyleft software bad venture capital could ruin it. There are lot's of examples of this in history, see Game Over by David Scheff (the Atari section, yet another chapter in Time/Warners history of villainy), The Gary Gygax FAQ, Otaku No Video, or what happened to Netscape after AOL took over. I mean, if Linux were an ordinary product, Micros~1 could just buy it and kill it.

As long as the big corporations can't figure out a way to legally destroy Copyleft, useful Free Software will have a built in "immune system."

However, the stock tumble on Linux stocks will affect my boss's perception of Linux. She already doesn't like Linux (she was talked into using it by higher ups in the company) and would rather be using Windows NT. As a compromise, she'd like to move to a non-free UNIX, because she just doesn't like the concept of Copyleft software. So, when she's gathering evidence against Linux, to get funding approved to buy Solaris, she'll point to the fact, "See, all the Linux stocks tumbled. You don't want to be using this product in the company, do you?" (She's been fighting Linux since the start, she just doesn't like it.)

I suspect some management types, who don't get technology but understand the market, might fall for these arguments. For this reason, I'm hoping the Linux stocks will rally.

If I had any investing money right now (all my money is tied to a down payment on a house :( I'd probably pick up some Caldera stock now. Caldera has a lot going for it (though it isn't my favorite distribution) for example I'm pretty sure they were the first with a Windows like installation process as well as the fact they intigrate their Dr. Dos product and a lot of other commercial products well. Their stock was way cheap the last time I checked, but by the time I get to invest in it I'm sure that won't be the case...

Re:Taco, Don't be Churlish

[ronfar]

Heh, another Tampa-dweller ^_^

I noticed your page seems somewhat pessimistic, but then I'm something of a pessimist too.

I guess it must be something to do with living under the accursed reign of Reverend Bob Buckhorn, eh?

Oh, so as not to be 100% off-topic, great post BTW. It has that great "Hackers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains." vibe going.

Who Cares About The Vocal Minority?

[GeekLife.com]

The vast (90+%) majority of slashdotters don't post or email their opinions, and I'd bet they're generally happy with Mr. Taco's choices of what fits into "News for Nerds"...

I'd hate to see the site altered to fit the 3% loudest readers.

Re:Who Cares About The Vocal Minority?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux used to be on par with the vocal minority. How quickly people forget.

People still read /. Just that /. doesn't hold the special place as a website anymore of general info news. They have been slow on getting real news out, suddenly turned political in what they post, etc. BSD articles? They post them but after a HUGE delay. Bias is pretty plain when you double submit stories to BSD sites and /....BSD sites tend to get them up within the day, and they are run by one or two people, not a supposed Andover team. My favorite was when I submitted a BSD and a Linux palm story--the Linux palm story made it up 2 days after I submitted it (and by someone else) and DAYS after the BSD story.

I have friends that are utterly sick of the comments section...look at all the trolls and the totally political stance taken on moderating up posts or even checking relevant information of the facts given. I, like my friends, have started not to read /. on a daily basis, and we could frankly give a damn what happens to /. nowadays because it's easier, faster, and cleaner to simply to scan general news sites (Politech list, bugtraq itself, Reuters, Mac sites) with a script and not deal with the /. baggage.

Wake up /. You have competition now, and you are LOSING big time. You don't think the stock market matters? Bullshit. TECH stocks plummetted. You're more interested in the destruction of ONE company (MS) than the entire *.com bubble bursting? It's news, it affects a LOT of geeks because a lot of geeks have jobs in startups and tech companies, but, nah, you'd just rather ignore that.

Re:Who Cares About The Vocal Minority?

[Money__]

Re: Slashdot is a terrific creation of his but its grown into something much more than his personal . . blah blah blah

1) The net is a big place.
2) You can post and read any content you want.

I agree that /. is a wonderfull creation and has opened a lot of peoples eyes to things that would never get coverage in the mainstream press. The fact that Rob chose to post this story is testimant to how open he is to all expression, no matter how vile or discusting. In fact, /. has gone out of the way to embrace and accomidate all opinions.

One final note: If you happen to bump a bee hive and get stung, you deserve to be angry at the bee. If you continually, day after day, bash the bee hive with a stick, you not only deserve every sting you get, but you also deserve a slap from the bee keeper.
___

Re:Who Cares About The Vocal Minority?

[eshaft]

[begin rant]
I pretty much agree with you. But...
Well, Andover goes IPO and... hey look, they have to build up a customer base, and those kind of people who don't need to read this site and can and will hack together scripts to pull all the newest news that they need from their respective sites aren't consumer-oriented enough for a PUBLIC company. If Andover and Slashdot really wanted to focus on their hard-core, open-source fan base they wouldn't have needed to start selling shares to the general public. And the general public tends to be a little "Less Organized About High-Tech (tm)."

That said, this website is too small for the goals it wants to attain. Who the heck needs a list of open-source updates if anyone with half a brain can just write a script to do the same job? Slashdot is pretty damn cool, caters to a huge audience, and has some pretty good material posted on a more-than-daily basis. And I use it, and I'm not afraid to say that under my own username here.

But I totally agree about this M$ crud... tech stocks taking a dive IS news, there are PLENTY of bigger companies out there than M$ (can you say IBM? AT&T? AOL/Time Warner??)
[end rant]

Re:Who Cares About The Vocal Minority?

[RickHunter]

I know I'm generally happy with the content on Slashdot. Some of the comments that get moderated up I don't agree with (either the point of view or the fact that it should get moderated up). Especially the stuff that seems to get moderated up just because it bashes Slashdot. But the content the site owners provide, and a good percentage of the 3+ comments are generally very interesting.

-RickHunter

Re:Who Cares About The Vocal Minority?

[zzzeek]

The net is a big place blah blah blah...

Sure, we can all just leave Slashdot if we dont like it. If it continues to ignore important "geek" issues like the hypotetical loss of huge amounts of tech jobs because of a stock market crash in favor of trivial articles, making a clear impression of personally-motivated deflection of real issues, then pretty much everyone is going to leave Slashdot. The whole "just leave if you dont like it" argument is always there but dont you think for a prominent place like Slashdot there should be free and open discussions and an attempt to have all voices heard? Not this, "oh lets just ignore that vocal minority", or "i think this topic sucks [because i might lose more money] but oh ok ill post it but you people suck anyway", and "lets mark as 'troll' or 'offtopic' anything about a possible conflict of interest", thats completely against the ideals of a free-discussion community.

Re:Who Cares About The Vocal Minority?

[Money__]

i think this topic sucks [because i might lose more money] but oh ok ill post it but you people suck anyway", and "lets mark as 'troll' or 'offtopic' anything about a possible conflict of interest", thats completely against the ideals of a free-discussion community.

You're speaking as if the moderators have a plan. The moderators are you and me. Most do *not* have a vested interest in any company. Each may have his or her own agenda, but it is hardly a united front.
___

Re:Who Cares About The Vocal Minority?

[Col. Klink (retired)]

> I, like my friends, have started not to read /. on a daily basis

Yet you stil managed to post a comment to an article within two hours, and on a Sunday.

Re:Interest

[bobalu]

Well, he's not alone in being affected financially by the market. There's a story in the Washington Post about it's effect on (pre) IPO'd tech workers.

Since I religiously spend all my money on equipment and booze I have no such worries....:-)

Your site...post what YOU want

[Kris Warkentin]

Don't bow to the pressure....you guys run this site and you don't have to post anything you don't want to. If anyone has a problem with that, tough tittie because you can go to geocities and make your own site and post whatever the heck you want.

Slashdot is successful because you guys made it so. Don't listen to all those other clowns. Do they have sites getting a gazillion hits a day? I don't think so!

Stock market news not SlashWorthy(tm)

[JanneM]

I quite agree that stock market news (or sports results, or how to molest chickens for fun and profit) do not belong on slashdot; there are several thousand sites out there already with everything from quotes from markets all over the world, to commentary, to astrological market forecasts.

In general, i feel there is only a point in posting non-tech stories if there is a valid "geek angle" to it, something about the story that the slashdot crowd can appreciate. The stock market in general doesn't qualify.

JMHO,

Re:Stock market news not SlashWorthy(tm)

[MicroBerto]

Hold up! How to Molest Chickens for Fun IS worthy of slashdot!

Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto

Re:Stock market news not SlashWorthy(tm)

[fable2112]

Well, yes and no.

I actually think that Rob posting this particular story in this particular way was the right thing to do. I am sick of hearing about it probably as much as Rob himself is (then again, I also work for accountants).

There are plenty of reasons this could be seen as news for nerds, though:

1. Lots of people on /. probably either have employee stock options through this company or are otherwise invested in tech stocks, and have lost a lot of money. Of course, they'd have to be complete idiots to not be aware of that as it is. :)

2. Some folks in various little startups who had their stock crash (like a friend of mine who saw her company's stock go from $100 to $27 in the past two weeks) are worried that they are going to lose their jobs. THAT angle, IMHO, is a legit one for /. to pursue.

3. As a result of all this, some people either in the industry or studying to join the industry are taking a lot of flack from more conservative and traditional businesspeople who have used the past two weeks to say "Ha-ha, told you so!" And hostility toward geeks tends to turn a story into /. material. ;)

Re:Stock market news not SlashWorthy(tm)

[rjamestaylor]

in posting non-tech stories if there is a valid "geek angle" to it
...The stock market in general doesn't qualify

I would agree with this statement if made before the Open Source IPO Rush.

[Aside:] I predict that in 2034 a new sports team in San Francisco will be named the '99ers after the dotCom IPO Rush of that year.

But, the stock market has become a plausible topic on Slashdot because the world has changed: Nerds are valuable (less so than in December, but still valuable). Cisco is the largest company in the US now, in terms of market capitalization. What is Cisco? Most people confuse it with Crisco. Cisco is geekdom. Look at the Open Source IPOs. Geeks rule (with declining value, but more so than 5 years ago!).

Also, Slashdot is now a market participant. Slashdot's value to the market is as a venue to the nerds. The nerds are what makes Slashdot what it is (I mean, come on! Anyone can set up their own slashsite, but without the nerds all you have is trolls, grits, goat***, and first posts). Some of the top geeks are now shareholders of VALinux and RedHat. Slashdot is tied to the market. So how can anyone say that the market is not a "news" item "that matters"?

The world has changed. Deal.

Re:Stock market news not SlashWorthy(tm)

[Glowing Fish]

I am waiting for "Voices from The Henhouse" by Jojn Katz.

Downturn -- Linux Stocks?

[CmndrKrypto]

Question for discussion:
How do you think the market downturn will affect recent entrants like Linux based stocks? Some analysts have commented that the market is cooling to Linux... Thoughts?

Re:Downturn -- Linux Stocks?

[Surazal]

Personally, I feel that the Linux stocks have definitely "cooled", but I don't view that as a bad thing. Consider:

1. Unrealistic Expectations: Red Hat and VA have definitely gone down, but look at their market caps. Wow! Both are still over a billion dollors (I think RH is somewhere over 3 billion). Granted, I have every confidence they will some day make that mark in revenues or even profits, I don't see it happening for a looooong time.
2. Price range: the stocks were too expensive for me to buy. They still might be. When I see a slowing in the downward trend or an upswing, I may go for the buy.
3. Day Traders: We need to weed them out. Period.

Can anyone offer any other ideas, couterpoints?

Re:Downturn -- Linux Stocks?

[ktakki]

Day Traders: We need to weed them out. Period.

The amount of market clout day traders wield is insignificant compared to the huge institutional investors (mutuals, pension funds, etc.).

At worst, they add a miniscule amount of volatility in a market that has been historically screwed by programmed trading. I'm not sure this is a Bad Thing.

k.

Re:Downturn -- Linux Stocks?

[whovian]

This major downturn at this time makes it harder I think. Linux has definitely made an impression; the case with Microsoft helps. I think the impression is good because people have realized that they can have a choice. The Linux-based companies are left to convince businesses that linux can make/save them money. (But you all knew this already.)
The Linux-based companies should get true backing by institutional investors, as opposed to speculative, short-term investing, when they demonstrate potential for long-term profit (read: hype is not enough). I know they are trying very hard, and it can take several years.
Just did a quick check of institutional ownerships. Not in agreement with my theory, but hey--that's theory :)
(e.g., Andover.net has 46% of its shares institutionally owned and is not yet profitable --source Yahoo!)
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Andover.net.

Re:Downturn -- Linux Stocks?

[Ars-Fartsica]

How do you think the market downturn will affect recent entrants like Linux based stocks?

Simple - since none of these companies really had any business going public (with RHAT maaybe as an exception), its likely they will return to being private companies by voluntarily or by being delisted.

Consider CALD. How can they possibly continue to run a business with a stock that is likely to be punished for months to come? They would be in a far better position right now to still be closely held. Putting CALD up for offering was like throwing a pig into a tornado.

As for the market "cooling to linux", understand that ultimately, every race becomes a two horse race - in linux, this likely means RHAT and IBM. No one is really interested in Corel and Caldera, and no one really thinks that these companies will offer real value in the linux market. While Caldera has been into linux longer than IBM, IBM is doing much more interesting things with it (porting it to all of its machines). Caldera really hasn't done much at all to advance linux other than a nice install. Their value-add is essentially zero.

This is not a bubble market. A bubble market (dutch tulips) are when the market reacts in a way that is counter to the fundamentals. This correction is in line with the fundamentals. Linux companies have no one to blame but themselves and their underwriters for this current fiasco.

Re:Downturn -- Linux Stocks?

[scheme]

The amount of market clout day traders wield is insignificant compared to the huge institutional investors (mutuals, pension funds, etc.)

Day traders account for roughly 20-30 percent of the market volume on the exchanges. That's a significant chunk. Ironically, day traders do better in volatile markets since large and frequent changes in direction allow day traders to ride stocks up and down making money each way. It's the people who bought stocks on margin that are screwed.

Re:Downturn -- Linux Stocks?

[Homebrewed]

As much as I like Linux, I'd have to say that, in truth, Red Hat and VA Research are *way* overvalued. Caldera seems to be taking a much more prudent path. The real problem with the market right now is day trading and buying on margin. Buying stock in a corporation is supposed to be a long-term investment in a business the investor believes in, not a way to turn a quick buck.

Re:FIRSTPOST! -1 - Offtopic

[gee308]

Well, Does anyone know why this is happenning? It could be because the economy is pricing our web companies too high. I think there could be a huge fall in the economy soon. You can only go so high. GoHere

Stock Market Stories on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Stock Market Stories on Slashdot 'Nuff said.

Stocks affect tech

[Webmonger]

If the market keeps doing what it has been doing week, the tech industry is going to change a lot. For a while, we had a virtuous circle, in which IPOs did really well, causing people to believe that IPOs are a great way to make money, causing IPOs to do really well.

In a bear market, it will be tougher to get venture capital, and that will sink some companies that would have done fine a few weeks ago.

Of course, not everyone lives in Silicon Valley. Personally, I work for a small startup whose only investment has come from its two founders. I can't see it affecting me personally.

But big changes can have far-reaching effects. If this goes on, it's definitely "stuff that matters".

The Whole Market Took A Dump

[Doctor_D]

I honestly have no idea why /. cares about such a topic. Honestly I don't care too much, but considering I work at a mutual fund company and our IT budget is set according to projections on how well the market is doing, I figure I'd better go buy the equipment I need for the rest of the year before they slash the budget like they did last year (3 times).

Anyway, news about the stock market here is a bit off-topic and out of place. Yeah it has bearings on our jobs and the kewl stuff that tech companies may or may not develop. But in the long run, who cares? The market will always need some sort of correction, short term is sucks, long term it's a good thing (TM). :-) Heck, I didn't know that the market took a big dump until I walked through our customer service area and saw the customer service reps going nuts on the phones and saw the call board with a backlog of callers. Back in the IT area it was just business as usual.

Man, this place is gettin' weird....

[bobalu]

'nuff said.

Re:Not an important topic..

[SuperKendall]

That, pretty much, is my philosophy - well, apart from the legos. And I do have money invested.

Stock Market Coverage

[Blindman]

I am not one of the forces that suggested/demanded a story about the stock market, but I feel that if Commander Taco feels so strongly about it, then this discussion that I am taking part in should not occur.

I totally agree that discussions about the stock market in general do not belong on Slashdot. There are hundreds of websites that are dedicated to that. Actually, I think the IPO coverage that Slashdot has right now is extraneous.

On that note (and perhaps offtopic), I wonder if there is a formal system to moderate the topics themselves. Readers/moderators can currently state there opinions about postings (MODERATE THIS UP!), but I'm not aware of a system to moderate the topics other than posting, "THIS TOPIC SUCKS... FIRST POST"

Just something to Consider...

----
Do you believe?

Re:Stock Market Coverage

[mcrandello]

"I totally agree that discussions about the stock market in general do not belong on Slashdot."

That is true, however the topic icon for this story is the almighty buck, I'm betting that everyone who really has a problem with their blood pressure whenever they open up Slapdash and see stock/IPO news can go into their preferences and fix it so they don't. Slashdot is made up of more than one type of nerd, and a lot of them have stock options and/or can afford to buy stock or are simply concerned for no good reason. I would go as far as to say that I think a majority of the "money" articles do not deserve to make the front page, I would prefer to see more YRO stories and science, etc. But then again there are those who whinge on every YRO story that we don't need to hear about every lawsuit either...

Taco, go have a beer on us or something, and get back to your conspiracy:-) It's been boring since we all started browsing at +1 by default:^)

Chill, Taco, Chill :o)

[zpengo]

Personally, while I might be interested at times in what the stock market is doing, I'm still going to have to side with CmdrTaco on this one. The stock market has a jillion websites of its own. It doesn't need /. as well. As much as people would like this to be a one-stop news source for everything that they personally are interested in, you must all understand that this is "news for nerds," not "news for nerds and investors," or "news for nerds and political activists," or "news for nerds and everyone else."

There's plenty of information about the stock market on the Web. Too much information, in fact. More than you could cope with in a given day. Don't blame CmdrTaco for the fact that even if you set /. as your homepage, you still might have to go to one or two other urls to get all the news you're interested in.

Keep up the good work, Taco!!!

Re:Interest

[gclef]

How many thousands of shares of VA/Andover do you have?

Oh, for fsck's sake, who gives a damn? If the man says that he has no interest in the stock market, why is it so hard for you to take his word for it? For a lot of people in this industry, money is not the reason they're doing this.

Do you honestly believe that Gates is doing this for money anymore? Why bother? Most of the sucessful computer-geek types that I've seen so far have done this because they enjoy the field, they like working with computers. They honestly enjoy their jobs, and would do this for fractions of their salary.

Yes, recently the suits have moved in, but it's pretty easy to tell the difference between a stuffed suit and a true geek. Try it some time.

(flame off)

Is Robbie cracking?

[smkndrkn]

As this site becomes more popular, you are going to increase the size of flames and bad comments.
By giving the users a chance to speak their mind you are opening yourself up to this kind of abuse.
While I am not one to usually critisize this site

( because I find it a great place to hear about stories with topics that I enjoy. I also like to hear what people in my field ( and some that are not ) have to say about them).

I think that you should either ride the monster you created or get off...just don't start trying to justify the stories. If this truly is a site that was created to shed light on things that the creater thought were interesting you should be able to post about how fast cement cures...and if people don't like it then they can go somewhere else.

OK there goes my Karma hehe

Do you hope to stop the trolls/mails with this

[mr]

I guess I do not grok what you hope to have happen with this story/comments on /.

Given this is a 'public forum', where almost anything can be said, the people who have an axe to grind for whatever reason are going to just keep coming back.

The trolls goal is to have the people who want this to be a productive forum be driven away. The present system of moderation allows for this goal to be achieved.

Posting about the market/Linux stocks/Andover won't accomplish the goal of enlightment of the trolls to shut them up. Their goal is harassment, no matter the cost.

What does this have to do with Linux?

[Norge]

There's a difference between posting a story about a specific company's IPO and posting a story about the general vagaries of the stock market. I'm not sure exactly how big that difference is, but it definitely exists. I haven't taken a look at the numbers myself, but from the few snippets of news reports I have read and seen, Linux related stocks didn't fall much more or less than the rest of the market. So while this is a big story, there are really no special Linux, tech, or geek issues going on here at all.

As always, please correct me if I am wrong.

Stock markets crashing only hurts corps.

[cdlu]

The only people that lose when the stock market goes down is the corporations. I don't feel bad about watching company-states lose out. All the money that is leaving the stock market is going into people's hands and being spent outside the stock market. Its not like it hurts the economy at large, just the big wigs at top. BFD.

Re:Stock markets crashing only hurts corps.

[Thomas Charron]

You are truely living in a sheltered world. Tell me, who provides you with your food, you internet access, your gas? I'm willing to bet it's a company. I bet you even WORK for a company, don't you? Did some non profit orginization make your computer and it's components? I doubt it.

Money that leaves the stock market goes into other things, don't fool yourself. Rarely is money liquidated from the market. It's simply moved over to bonds, and lower risk factor investments, such as gold, silver, etc. Heck, much of it will also go into overseas bank acounts to sit and earn interest.

Companies getting hurt directly affects everyone. I'd like to point out that nearly every major recession woldwide has been preceeded by a dramatic loss in the stock market.

Re:Stock markets crashing only hurts corps.

[Isaac-Lew]

What about retirement funds and IRA accounts? Those directly affect the people (especially in the US, where Social Security is a joke).

Re:Stock markets crashing only hurts corps.

[Stonehand]

You obviously never opened a single economics textbook -- or had a rational thought about the matter in your entire life.

The money didn't *leave* the stock market. On paper, it vaporized. There's no fixed supply of on-paper money here, folks. Imagine, for instance, that CSCO suddenly gets nailed heavily for anti-trust. Or, say, your favorite .com goes bankrupt as its CFO realizes that at some point, you NEED positive cash flow.

The value's gone. Hold 500 shares? They're non-sellable, of no value to anyone else -- or you. You didn't take your money elsewhere. You don't have their value. It simply vaporized.

Consequences? Unemployment, as people lose jobs when the companies find it more difficult to raise cash. Consumer spending may drop, when people realize that, hey, maybe the bull market WON'T continue forever. Sales then lower, hurting bottom lines further. New companies find it more difficult to lure people, because their stock looks less intriguing. Pension funds suffer BIG TIME as much of their value tends to be invested in equities. More people suffer when the income they counted on is supposed to come from funds that are now well below what their managers anticipated.

But, oh, that doesn't matter to you. Guess you must be livin' in a cabin in the Yukon, then.

Re:Stock markets crashing only hurts corps.

[cdlu]

Glad someone finally understands what I'm getting at.

You want a story relevant to Slashdot?

[JamesKPolk]

Forget the whole market.. focus on the companies often discussed:

RHAT: Red Hat
LNUX: VA Linux Systems
CALD: Caldera
ANDN: Andover.net

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-1697624.htm l?tag=st.ne.1430735..1003-200-1697624

Title of the CNet story: "Sour market pushes Linux stocks below IPO prices"

Re:You want a story relevant to Slashdot?

[Isaac-Lew]

What about KREM? :)

Mmmmm, dounts...

Re:big deal

[smkndrkn]

OK your not smart. How can you say it will not affect you?! If the market dives the economy will start to struggle...companies that had large market caps will no longer be able to pay you insane salaries anymore and McDonalds may start looking like a fine place to work....extreme of course....and even if this does NOT affect you it surely will affect someone you know if it keeps up....

Change it into something for nerds!

[Kernel Corndog]

I know that there are people out there that perform some high level math on stock charts and make quite a hefty amount of money.

How many of you have seen Pi? Now besides going insane I sure would've liked to been able seen the pattern behind the market. To me that would be one awesome hack.

then you just write a program. Get some lines direct into Wall Street and then let the computer analyze and trade for you (of course give the computer limited funds). As far as I know that's completely legal.

i find it interesting that the results of one company (MSFT) could trigger the steep decline in totally unrelated industries. If you ask me this shows just how far MSFTs FUD tactics have gone. Hopefully investors will realize that MSFT doesn't control the tech market.

sigh. if only I had money to invest right now while the prices are cheap.

Re:Change it into something for nerds!

[Stonehand]

I think you attribute too much to MSFT. It's not just MSFT...

There's a realization that bear markets happen, and that there is NO guarantee of success.

There's a realization that many, MANY tech companies are going to go bankrupt soon, because they have neither the cash required to continue operating, nor the means to raise more from VCs tired of throwing capital down bottomless pits.

There's a realization that many of the "old economy" stocks have just as good fundamentals as they always did, while many of the newer tech companies don't.

Why should people invest in companies that don't have credible plans for profits in the forseeable future, when they can instead go for proven performers?

I'm amazed...

[TheWarlocke]

At the level of restraint the guys behind /. have shown. I'd have blown my stack a long time ago. With lameass hosers like ubertroll and his sort making a huge deal about VA stock dropping, I've begun to wish for a separate forum for them to waste bandwidth on so that I don't have to wade through their crap to find decent, well reasoned posts.

I don't mind a little back and forth now and then, but only if it's a real debate about something that matters. A company's stock price means diddly to me, and I agree with Taco that it's CNNfn's job to report those things, and not /.'s. Sometimes a good debate takes place here. I just find it difficult to justify wasting my time wading through trolls, "Naked and Petrified," Natalie Portman, "Hot Grits," and flame wars to find those few good threads.

Re:I'm amazed...

[jawad]

We're falling off-topic, but eh, whatever. Here's my 2 cents.

http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm declares the threshhold of -1 as "Uncut & Raw". What a lie. There have been many posts knocked down to -2, and quite a few (more than there should be) down to -5. Not much of an "Uncut & Raw". Theres a hack to set your threshhold lower than -1 over here, but there shouldn't *have* to be. Rob, when I say that I want my threshhold to be -1, I don't mean -1 per se: I mean that I don't want *anything* filtered out.

Even further off-topic (but hey, this entire *story* is) is the fact that DMG got knocked down to -2 on a comment he wrote that got moderated *up* to a +5. http://slashdot.org/comments .pl?sid=moderation&cid=668 details it.

Slashdot's good for the most part (which is why I'm still around, but it's things like these that need fixing.

Re:I'm amazed...

[Tassach]

ubertroll is effectively censored. [snip] If you think that they're showing restraint, I suppose you think that Very Big Company Censorware Company shows restraint too when they put critical sites under every single blocking category, a la CyberPatrol.

Stop comparing apples to oranges. Cyberpatrol & other commercial censorware is a closed system -- the decisions are made behind closed doors by people with no accountablity. On slashdot, moderation decisions are made by the users. Trolls get negative karma (and the associated penalties) because the members of the community have collectively decided that trolling is an unacceptable behavior. Moderators are held accountable for their actions thru meta-moderation, at least in theory. If ubertroll wants to contribute productively, there is nothing stopping him from creating a new login. I won't say that the /. moderation system is perfect -- it isn't; but it is far less arbitrary than censorware.

If the moderation system bothers you that much, get a copy of the slash code and fix it to your liking, then submit your changes back to the community. If you come up with a system that is substantially better, it will be adopted. That is the essense of open source.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'

Yo-Yo goes down - film at 11!

[SuperKendall]

I have to agree that most people here probably have no interest in a story about market swings, however volitile. It has been covered to death elsewhere.

I have stock invested, and I really don't care - the market will go up again, just as it has gone down.

Suddenly common sense rules...

[Ami Ganguli]

I was wondering how long the tech. stock lunacy would go on. As somebody who holds a little bit of stock in a profitable brick-and-morter retailer, this is kind of gratifying. It was getting really annoying to see these outrageous valuations for money-losing companies.

I'm even kind of glad that the Linux stocks have returned to sanity. It's pretty clear that Linux will continue to grow exponentially over the next few years. It's not at all clear where and how much money will be made in the market.

RedHat, for example, will never be the cash cow that Microsoft was in the '90s. Even if they get 90% of the OS market, they'll never have the outrageous margins that MS had/has. The Open-Source model just won't support it. I'm positive they'll turn into a strong, profitable company, but that it's anybody's guess whether they will be a profitable $20M company or a profitable $20B company.

It's entirely possible that the big bucks in the Linux market will be made by companies like IBM, SGI, and SCO. It's just too early to tell how it will turn out.

Re:Suddenly common sense rules...

[MicroBerto]

As far as the stocks are concerned though, I'm not worried. Easy come, easy go for me. However, seeing that the market is now controlled by idiots, they'll see low prices and say "OOH! ME BUY ME BUY!", the market goes back up.

Prices go up, idiots get scared and sell.

Repeat cycle.

If you wanna win, you just gotta time the idiot cycle right. I messed up, but I know that its going to come back up when the idiots see the low prices and invest in everything and their mother.

Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto

Re:Suddenly common sense rules...

[shri]

I know that its going to come back up when the idiots see the low prices and invest in everything and their mother.

Think of it as a discount sale at your favorite department store. If there is stock you've wanted all along and you have the money right now, why not pick up a few good gems at a discount?

There are a few gems out there and god knows they'll rebound back in the next few months.
By the way, this topic sucks.. best left to fool.com or another investment site. :)

Re:Suddenly common sense rules...

[TheWarlocke]

The most wretched part of this whole market situation is that the "quality" of a company from an investment standpoint usually has no relationship whatsoever to the quality of their goods/services/products. For example, IMHO, Corel has always produced far superior software compared to another company that has traded for almost 20 times the price per share and had several times more shares floating around. All the hype in the tech market, to those with some small inkling of a clue, has been obviously just that--hype. There has never been a time that a share of VA was worth $300. VA knew it. You and I knew it. But the day traders may or may not have. If they lost, it's their damned fault for not doing their homework. Sure, falling tech stocks may cut into the pocketbook of some people who went to work for a company expecting their stock options to make them wealthy. So what? If they're skilled, even if their startup isn't successful, they won't stay unemployed for long. There are jobs aplenty for those willing to work.

And now, if you'll excuse me, my steak is ready...

Re:Suddenly common sense rules...

[Giro d'Italia]

As for the Corel example, what I think factors into their valuation is the quality of management. You have a CEO who is under the cloud of an insider trading investigation, and whose flamboyant (to put it mildly) lifestyle and wife make it difficult for people to take him seriously. There are now a handful of class action lawsuits stemming from the CEO's positive statements about earnings prior to an earnings warning in December. Little credibility at the top. Coupled with the occasional tendency to pursue one holy grail after another, it's no wonder that Wall Street isn't thrilled with Corel.

Re:Suddenly common sense rules...

[Restil]

The reason they are so overvalued is because many investors missed the boat when microsoft grew from humble beginnings to an empire in a short period of time and anytime something comes along that might do the same thing, they want in on it while the prices are still good. "good" may very well mean 100x what the company is currently worth, but if these companies do take a strong foothold in the future of software development and OS placement over the next 10 years, the outrageous prices we see today might be more than justified in a few short years.

So the prices dropped. It happens. The higher the market goes, the more its likely to drop in a day. This is not unusual. There have been may 500+ point drops in the last few years, and all of them have recovered quickly. Remember another thing, almost all the activity on friday was based solely on "predicted information", and if that information does not pan out, the market will boom once again. And even if it does pan out, the market will boom again anyways. The market is a strange beast. Its almost impossible to predict. Its a huge poker game, if you got the guts, feel free to play.

-Restil

Re:Suddenly common sense rules...

[Chris Siegler]

As somebody who holds a little bit of stock in a profitable brick-and-morter retailer, this is kind of gratifying. It was getting really annoying to see these outrageous valuations for money-losing companies.

Why are you happy that other people are losing money? This is the same attitude that politicians use to demagogue rich people. People who are rich are that way because people valued what they offered more than their money, otherwise they wouldn't have parted with their cash. The difference is CREATED wealth. You don't get poor because others get rich, it's not a zero sum game. The fact that Red Hat was a hot stock didn't hurt the performance of your brick-and-morter stock. Your stock was valued at exactly where supply met demand, and it still is. The loss in market value doesn't help you, in fact it hurts you. Red Hat and others created wealth, they didn't take it away. And if some of that is now gone, it's just less wealth to be spent at your brick-and-morter store.

Not a non-issue

[HerbieTMac]

While I would not go so far as to accuse CmdrTaco of a conspiracy (at least on this issue), there may actually be a story here which could impact a large chunk of us.

No one disputes that there are many technology stocks which are over-valued for their revenue. Fund managers have been forced into adopting a scheme of investing ahead of reason in order to maintain a competitive edge. Now the bottom has dropped out of a lot of these stocks and Linux is not immune.

Think of the benefits that you personally have received from the large amounts of money invested in tech stocks. Since open-source-based companies give their products away, if they have more money for more developers (full-time) then if you use their products, you have benefited. I do not dispute that even without money, Linux development will continue and continue to accelerate. The extra cash that these companies had on hand was just glycerine on the fire. /.ers should be prepared, however, for the coming mergers and cost-cutting measures by just about every tech company out there.

Please, post it without flames...

[Trevize]

First of all, forgive my english, since It's not my mother tongue.

Certainly our brave CmdrTaco is right when he's saying that "The Market" is not a news for nerds! But then why publishing such an headline? I mean, the market went down, and I'm kind of interested in the market myself. But I've never expected such a story on Slashdot. And I believe that most of the Slashdotters didn't expect that either...

What I do not understand here is the anger of CmdrTaco. He seems to answer in a childish way to the childish insulting e-mails. Got to the same level!

So here's my bit: CmdrTaco thinks the news deserves Slashdot? Then post it without anger.
If slashdot is not the right place, then do not post it!
Many readers are asking (politely) such a topic? Well, Let's post it without flames... Otherwise it's better to ignore them...

The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[Thomas Charron]

This will determine if the commercial interests in Linux are really just a flash in the pan, or here to stay.. What worries me is that it looks more and more to be a flash in the pan..

A perfect example would be, sorry to say it, LNUX, Aka, VA Linux. Their stock will now end up having whole chapters devoted to it. It was the most spectacular rise AND fall of a stock ever.. From over 320$ opening day, to a little over 20. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's undervalued. I think, at the moment, it *IS* a 20$ stock.

This is where the pain is going to start to set in, and we shall all see if these companies will thrive, or start stabbing eachother in the back.. They have shareholders to answer to now. One could argue that releasing things publically instead of holding them as proprietary isn't in the best interest of the shareholders..

Stocks are about greed. No one ever bought a stock becouse of morals, or to better the community. They buy it becouse they believe that it will make them money..

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[MicroBerto]

Good points. However, I am certain that this downswing is bogus idiot trife because there are companies out there whoopin major ass and their stocks are still tumbling. Look at AMD. Their stock was going up as it deserved (they made more money than ANYONE expected, including themselves).. but now they're heading on down as well. You know that this company is rocking, its just the idiot control of the market. It will either recycle itself, or correct itself.

What i'm saying is that although even strong stocks are going down, they won't stay that way. I'm not scared.

Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[sylvester]

Everybody who uses linux (if you use linux) irrespective of commercial interests, raise your hand?

(presumably most of slashdot goes up)

Now everybody who's totally dependent on some corporate interest for their usage of linux, raise your hand?

hmm...I see.

I use linux because I was sick of pirating, I wanted to try something new and hopefully better. "Commercial" interests have probably only *hindered* that for me, not helped. Slashdot existed sans Andover, sans VA, everything I consider good about linux existed without corporate interests. While I think it's good that slashdot should be kept on its toes for journalistic integrity, I, personally, trust most of what I read here as having only massive personal bias, and no "market" or "corporate" bias, which is exactly what slashdot is supposed to be, IMO.

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[finkployd]

Linux cannot be a flash in the pan. The fatal flaw in your reasoning is the traditional view (that many take) that a product can only live as long as it's company. Well Linux has no company. If Andover, Redhat, Caldera, Linuxone, and all the rest vanish tomorrow, Linux will not go away. It will still be worked on, still continue to improve and people will still use it.

Finkployd

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[gatzke]

You said "Stocks are about greed. No one ever bought a stock becouse of morals, or to better the community. They buy it becouse they believe that it will make them money.."

I think there are some exceptions to this. I bought a few hundred of RedHat because I like what they do and I alway felt a little guilty not paying for my OS (I know I could buy shrinkwrap...) I realized the market was nutty and sold some when RHAT was up around 250. They are now back where they should have been all along. Even without the crazy profit, I am glad I bought into Red Hat, even if it is only a few shares.

In another case, I think the Green Bay Packers sold stock to fans so that nobody could come in and buy the team and move it. People bought the stock as symbolic more than anything.

ed

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[Thomas Charron]

That's the nature of the beast. But I also know that people still invest their time in VMS, Ultrix, Windows 3.1, etc... That's not my point.

I'm talking about the idea of Linux as a mainstream operating system. And people *WILL NOT* use and support an operating system in the mainstream without a company to fall back on. Linux is only gaining the marketshare it is BECOUSE there are companies like RedHat out there 'SELLING' it.

Linux will not go away. Neither will MSDOS, the Vic-20, or PPD-11's. That's not my point..

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[Thomas Charron]

Usage by a target audience and mainstream viability of an operating system are to seperate and distinct things. I will continue to use Linux myself, no matter what happens. But the current spotlight ON linux in a commercial environment MAY be what is the flash in the pan. It was only recently in Linux's short history that many good, quality applications became available for it. I'm not saying that others didn't come out or where there before hand, such as X Windows, but they where the exception, *NOT* the rule. You don't see any other 'Unix' flavor operating system listed on as many 'Compatible' pages as Linux is. This is becouse of the commercial base, and *NOT* becouse of the dedicated following here at Slashdot.

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[Thomas Charron]

Yet, you sold your stock, didn't you? You didn't HAVE to. You wouldn't have lost any money as long as it remained higher then what you paid for it.

And the Packers did indeed sell shares, so that they could make money locally without having to move. Stock is about buying a peice of a company. Some buy simply to own a peice of a company they believe in, but it's *BECOUSE THEY BELIEVED IN THE COMPANY*, and their ability to make money. I'd love to see what kind of trading GreenPeace would have if they sold shares. A flash at first, as everyone grammy wants to get a peice of a company that provides a service they believe in. After that, the value plummets, and trading of the stock goes to a trickle..

Hrm.. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[finkployd]

I disagree, Linux gained a massive amount of marketshare before these companies came into being (at least from the public preception, pre IPO)

If they fail, it's not anything to do with Linux pre se, it's because their business plan is flawed. Another company will spring up and take the place and perhaps have a different way to profit from Linux.
Either way Linux is not going anywhere.

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[sylvester]

While I see what you're saying, I think the "damage" is done. Obviously, what has released won't be un-released, and even with a horrid stock market crash, very few linux projects will be scrapped, I betcha.

The one lesson we should perhaps learn from this is how important it is that releases of software are as open source as possible, precisely so that companies cannot take them back, inasmuch as the current version is broken and they refuse to fix it.

I agree that they are separate and distinct things, and I would say that usage by a target audience is by far the more important than mainstream viability. Usage by a target audience is also what slashdot is about. (At least the linux aspects of the "news for nerds." after all, mainstream acceptance would be "news for the mainstream," also known as ZDnet, which is where this sort of article belongs.

I use slashdot to find and filter my news for the articles I would never find on my usual perusings of ZDnet and Salon and CNN.

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[/dev/yuckf00]

I'm talking about the idea of Linux as a mainstream operating system. And people *WILL NOT* use and support an operating system in the mainstream without a company to fall back on..."

Unfortunately, your premise is incorrect. Linux is not a "mainstream operating system." Linux is a server class operating system that competes with other server class operating systems.

Server class operating systems include:

Solaris

HP-UX

SCO

DEC UNIX

The BSD family

Windows NT (well, sorta `;^) etc...

There is only one "mainstream operating system:" Windows 9x. This will continue as long as the USDOJ allows it.

Finally, you are incorrect when you attempt to identify the source of Linux support. Linux support does not derive from "mainstream users," but rather, people like myself: IT professionals, systems and network administrators, and computer scientists and engineers.

BTW - Most Slashdot users are Windows 9x users, not Linux. Additionally, I have the Apache server logs to prove this assertion `;^)

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[LF11]

If the Internet backbones and their 1.6 Terabit routers go out of business, Linux ain't gonna advance very far for quite a while. (hmm, maybe I should check out the latest version of gnome-core).

Me? I think it's the cosmic neener. Muhahaha! The market was overbloated anyway. Still is.

Splat!

-lf

Re:The reason why it *IS* relevent to slashdot..

[jafac]

Actually, Linux is a LOT like the stock market. It's all mindshare - to use an icky marketroid word.

The more Microsoft commercials Joanie Smith sees, the more likely she is to log onto eBay on her new iMac, and buy more shares, multiply by 10000 lemmings, and the price goes up. Hooray. Same effect goes for Ricky Martin albums. And, in some regard, Linux programmers.

Give those programmers something more interesting to work on, and I guarantee you, Linux will be dropped like the hottest potato in Idaho. (proof: how many programmers work on the "sexy" stuff, and how many work on the "uninteresting" parts of Linux?) Granted, I don't see anything remotely possible coming along to steal mindshare away from all the otherwise idle hackers out there, but then again, nobody saw YHOO coming too far before March of '96 either.

Someday, some other "thing" is going to come along, with similar opportunities, with more pizzazz, and more motivation, and all those guys are going to dump Linux, and code for this other project, and the tulip bulb phenomenon will cease. There will still be Linux die-hards out there, but eventually, they'll end up like the die-hard OS/2 users of today.

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

You have an account...

[JamesKPolk]

set it to filter to score: 1, or even score:2.

The trolls get moderated down, and the offtopic stuff does, too.

Not completely, but at least some is better than nothing.

So what?

[el_mex]

Tech stocks crumble, forcing public companies (several major Linux companies) to think about how they work. This is the _biggest_ danger in companies like RadHat going public: Now they have to think along the lines of Microsoft to grow (profits become really important)... They have to please analysts who only care for profits, NOT open source. If RedHat's motivation is now the same as MS, then it is very important, no? If there is more and more pressure on RedHat (et al...) to actually show they are making a buck (without taking anything else into account), then that new goal certainly goes beyond open source alone. I agree that this is not a financial site, but certainly the factors that affect how the leading Linux companies work are good things to post here, no?

Um, mr. taco? Don't even TRY.

[mcc]

> I'm sick of the insulting emails, the deregotory namecalling, and the all in all childish behavior accusing me of some sort of shadow conspiracy.

OK.. so if i've deciphered your rant correctly, the problem is that you failed to post a story saying "the stock market is falling".. and so people got angry, assumed you had some nefarious reasons for not posting said story, and flamed you. So you, just to make these people shut up, are posting a story saying "the stock market is falling".

I find that kind of funny.
because while i obviously haven't seen your personal email and don't know what's in it, i _have_ been reading slashdot postings.. and for the last couple weeks i've actually seen a bunch of flame postings saying there is TOO MUCH coverage of stock/financial/business-related-money issues on slashdot! As in, people who see periodic announcements about commercial businesses going public or having things happen to them, and thus assume that Andover has turned slashdot into some kind of CNNfn workalike.
These people are probably going to be tearing their hair out over the story you just posted.

Taco: no matter what you do, people are going to get pissed off. There is nothing you can DO about this. People in general suck. For some reason slashdot readers in particular if they see something they don't care to read about, they seem to be unable to just not read it and move on with their lives. No, they have to post flame crap saying "this shouldn't have been written". And of course that works in reverse too, as you well know.
You can't please these people NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO. So why try?

Re:Um, mr. taco? Don't even TRY.

[Enahs]

Almost on the money, except for one thing, and I'll enlighten you here.

Take a story like this. A third of the posts will read something like, "News for nerds? This isn't news for nerds, because I don't care. I don't care if other people want to read it. And oh yeah, I already read it somewhere else, so this is redundant, too! You stupid ass, I already read it--who cares if there are other folks who haven't yet!"

Take a story about something like a software release. Here's what a third of the posts will say: "This is for Freshmeat, not Slashdot. Rob, you're an idiot!"

Oh, even better example: a commercial software release. "This isn't news for nerds; it's not GPL, do you have stock in this company or what? Oh yeah, and I read this TEN MINUTES AGO ON SOME OTHER WEB SITE! You SUCK!"

Ugh. Need I continue? The problem is that all the snot-nosed pre-teens who seem to do nothing more than check out web sites and send flames to the Slashdot crew are going to be the ruin of what I have always considered a great site.

Re:Um, mr. taco? Don't even TRY.

[Matt Hall]

I don't think that a said posters' age really has anything to do with it. There are simply idiots. We ignore them. Life.

For shame!

[GianfrancoZola]

Despite the fact that I really can't be bothered to feel sorry for CmdrTaco for any reason, it has to be said that he doesn't deserve to be badgered with emails about this subject.

There are DOZENS of other online forums for discussing the market, and the petulant whiners who finally got their way should be ashamed of themselves for their tactics. Make better use of you time and bandwidth, people!

Now if they were calls for an article about something computer-related about the market, like an interview with the NASDAQ sysadmin, that would be different--and perhaps interesting. But let's all remember who's rightly got editorial control.

I think it's a big deal

[Pfhreakaz0id]

Are we beginning to see the (finally!) ridiculous valuation of all these $&#*(! net stocks? I mean, I think the net is a pretty big deal, too, but geez!

Why have all these companies like Amazon been valued so high? because they are building brand awareness? I think that's a bunch of crap. I just don't see brand being as important 5 years from now. The Internet is diluting brand. I don't give a crap about brand when I go to buy a book. I care about price, which is why I go to cheapbooks and let it find the best price for me.

See, how important is brand when your brand can be co-opted. All the "branding, marketing" stuff on your site can be bypassed by an index site (like cheapbooks). Or by Pricewatch. or whatever. Who gives a crap about brand when I can get good, hard data on what that thingee really does? I happen to like the Wrox press computer books, but do I seek 'em out? No. I read user reviews on Amazon/B&N/Fatbrain, find the book I want, then fire it into cheapbooks.

anyway, Rant off, but I think the tech stocks were ridiculously overvalued and them falling is good. That being said, there is SO much money pouring into the market these days as everyone pumps money into mutual funds, that the market will rebound. Because the money will keep flowing in. What are you gonna do? Buy bonds?
---

Re:I think it's a big deal

[jafac]

but brand DOES count. You're going to cheapbooks, but you're not aware of boofoobooks.com, which sells books at a level 20% under what you're paying. . .

It's all about mindshare. But that can be rather fluid, and that IS your real point.

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

Good...weeded out the idiot day traders

[HomerJ]

When you don't investigate EVERY company you want to buy stock in, it's a gamble. These gambling day traders, trying to hop on the next big IPO inflated the market so much, that a huge correction was going to happen.

I don't feel sorry for the people that lost thier shirt one bit. People that invested in "dotcom" stocks that never had any good business plan, never any proftis, never any THOUGHT of profits, just some spiffy URL, deserved what they got when the bottom fell out. And for the people that lost big on Microsoft. If you couldn't see this drop coming months ago, you also deserved to lose what you did. A fool and their money are soon parted.

What happened was, these day traders started to realize that when the ruling came out, and these companies that depended on Microsoft started to drop with Microsoft, they realized that the market isn't some sort of game anymore, where their account balance was bragged about like a high score on Galaga. Those numbers they saw on e-trade, etc. was their retirement going down the shitter, and it scared the hell out of them. So the same jabronis that inflated the market with idiot buying, took it back down with idiot selling.

So I say good for them, maybe now they will realize that trading is just not hopping on the next big thing, and gambling your money away. It's something left to people that know every little company like the back of their hand, the brokers. If brokerage fees are something you have to worry about, you shoulnd't be in the market to begin with.

Re:Good...weeded out the idiot day traders

[Nick Mitchell]

methinks you don't me to chastise day traders (who were likely out before things got bad; after all they are day traders, no?), but instead you mean foolish people investing their entire retirement stash in internet stocks (invest-and-forget investors)

Now, I agree that the latter were foolish; but really, how many of those do you know? Furthermore, even those "safe" I&F's who wisely invested in the SP500 aren't doing so well this year.

No, it is the day traders who have made off like bandits this year. THey have reaped the profits from early this year, and laughed to the bank on this downtrend.

Re:Good...weeded out the idiot day traders

[zeck]

foolish people investing their entire retirement stash in internet stocks (invest-and-forget investors)

Maybe I'm missing something here, but this situation doesn't seem so bad for "invest-and-forget" investors. Sure, they lost some imaginary value, but the companies they invested in are still around, and their stock value could (and probably will) eventually climb back up. The people who are screwed are those who bought at the top and can't afford to wait five or ten years for the stocks to go back up in value before they get their money out.

Re:Good...weeded out the idiot day traders

[whoop]

Day trading is a tough business. With $8-10 fees per transaction, someone doing modest trading, say ten per day, 300 days a year (easier math :)), that's $24-30,000 in fees alone. It's not impossible, but certainly very tough just to break even. If you have a few hundred thousand to gamble like this, just go buy yourself a nice car and go pick up chics, rather than taking your losses out with a gun on the day trading outfits (that Atlanta nutcase). Is the exhiliration of one good enough worth the depression of all the bad days?

Re:Good...weeded out the idiot day traders

[scheme]

What happened was, these day traders started to realize that when the ruling came out, and these companies that depended on Microsoft started to drop with Microsoft, they realized that the market isn't some sort of game anymore, where their account balance was bragged about like a high score on Galaga. Those numbers they saw on e-trade, etc. was their retirement going down the shitter, and it scared the hell out of them. So the same jabronis that inflated the market with idiot buying, took it back down with idiot selling.

Actually the real day traders probably made money on the correction. Day traders do well in volatile markets since they can short into the slides and then cover at lower prices. On minirallies they can go long and then sell as the rally begins to top out. If the market isn't volatile then a stock price doesn't move much and traders can't grind out enough on the price movements to cover commissions and fees.

Technical analysts and momentum players usually do a good job on making money on stocks without looking at the fundamentals. So you don't necessarily need to know much about the company in order to know what you're doing.

The people who got screwed are the people who bought on margin and decided to play the market without a coherent strategy, an understanding of the risks, or a discplined exit strategy. And no holding a stock and trying to wait out a correction/slump isn't a discplined exit strategy if you're buying on margin.

Re:Good...weeded out the idiot day traders

[hangdog]

Do you have numbers on how much capital these "day traders" have added to the market?

I bet compared to institutional investors, the nickel-and-dime day traders would have a very hard time inflating a companies stock price to the apparently ridiculous prices we've recently seen.

Re:Good...weeded out the idiot day traders

[Skim123]

I just wonder how many more big drops like this it will take before we hear of more stories where maddened traders go on a shooting spree...

Stupid people investing

[Randy Rathbun]

Well, I just typed in a great big long thing and before I submitted it I read a bunch of the comments about not commenting. All of them are right.

But, at the same time I think I can sum up the tech stock drop: Stupid people are investing in tech stocks.

It's as simple as that.

The market

[rigau]

People are making a big deal out of this whole mess but it is nowhere near as bad as '29 or '87. Someone was ranting about having lost their life savings on LNUX. To them all i have to say is that if they are that bad at picking stocks they should invest in mutual funds and let a profesional do the work. While it is true that LNUX opened at a price that was beyond any rational valuation this is their fault for becoming such mad speculators. People became so afraid of missing out on the next big thing that they forgot about being afraid of being in on the next big bust. How can one honestly give RHAT or LNUX a bigger market cap than AAPL? For a while RHAT was worth a few billion dollars more than AAPL. that was ridiculous. A correction was going to come and it wasnt going to be Apple stock going up so it had to be RHAT and LNUX stock coming down to reasonable levels. All slashdot prejudice removed Apple is a much more succesfull company ( in finantial terms) than any Linux company is right now. It has solid growth and earnings instead of a solidly growing loss. Also no one who knows what they are doing will invest their whole life savings on just one company and noe one who knows whatthey are doing will say that they lost their life savings on a company that has barely been out a year. If you still trust that Linux is what the wold will use five years from now that you will make more money sticking to the stock you bought. If LNUX is ever worth half of what MSFT is worth now (even after their drop these past two weeks) you will more than make your money back. Linux stocks fell because there was nowhere else they could go but down. As for MSFT im glad it fell. It might still have a little bit more to give until the punishments are given. They are an evil company that has abused their power in any way they can (most companies would do the same thing if they were in their position but that does not excuse the behaviour). I once held MSFT stock but one day i was listening to the news and the judge came out with the findings of fact against MSFT. I was happy that it had happened but then i realized "hey im an owner of this company this hurts me! and yet i am happy that they got screwed" and i said to myself how can i own part of a company that i want to see bust? I sold all the stock immediately. The market will probably not fall much farther. Im pretty sure that a ground will found this week. Maybe now some slow but real growth will begin and a stable healthy market will commence. If this happens people who lost a lot of money will see it back in a one or two years. There is a chance that we didnt learn anything and that the crazy valuations will return. Then they will see their money comback in a few months. my advice would be to sell the overvaluated stocks and put their money in real companies with real income and revenues. afterall somone who is investing their life's savings shouldnt take big risks.

That's it!

[www.sorehands.com]

It's a slashdot conspiracy. That explains everything. Those black helicopters over my house with the black /. painted on the sides.

And of course, the infamous area 32767, where all positive numbers slip into the negative universe.

Re:That's it!

[bamuang]

What, you never ever saw the infamous /. UFO's? Now it's too late anyway, /. is taking over the world right now. And who do you think makes the stocks fall? /. of course, so it's easier to take control over the world.

One of the reasons the markets went down

[DAldredge]

One of the reasons that the markes went down is because of the inflation report - consumer inflation was 0.7% last month. The worry is that the fed will raise interest rates by 0.50% or more to slow down the inflation rate. The markest do not like interest rate increases.

Re:One of the reasons the markets went down

[Signail11]

I think you should write a book on the interactions between short term intrabank lending interest rate target policy and equity market fluctuations. Really, I mean your thesis is soooo original that I'm sure that millions of lemmings, err, I mean investors, will buy your work and you'll make a ton of money. Sarcasm aside, the increase in the CPI is miminal and considerably below long term trend lines. In all probability, it represents the higher energy prices caused by the supply deficit in petroleum products. The Fed usually does not consider the CPI as a major precusor of real inflation; as an indicator, it is rather insensitive and tends to be lagging, rather than leading. The CPI is one of many factors that are considered, ranging from PPI to margin percentages to structural unemployment indexes. Even if the Fed were to raise interest rates, as they have done so repeatedly in the past, it is unreasonable to project causation vis a vis the fall in stock prices into what may be correlation. Not to mention that recently the market has not reacted strongly to interest rate changes (so there goes correlation as well)...

Re:One of the reasons the markets went down

[/dev/yuckf00]

One of the reasons that the markes went down is because of the inflation report - consumer inflation was 0.7% last month. The worry is that the fed will raise interest rates by 0.50% or more to slow down the inflation rate. The markest do not like interest rate increases.

Exactly! Every time the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, the value of the stock market falls in an orgy of selling.

The reason for this is twofold:

Higher interest rates raise the price of "call money" used by stock market players to purchase equities on margin.

Higher interest rates have an overall "cooling effect" on the general ecomony, which tends to lower the value of the market as a result.

I hope this clarifies the situation for those who are bewildered by recent events.

Re:One of the reasons the markets went down

[jafac]

Fed indicator of inflation:

Alan Greenspan goes to see his regular Saturday night callgirl. On the way he stops at the drugstore to pick up some condoms. He opens his wallet, only has a fiver, and the package he wants is $5.50. Hameesh, the clerk at the 7-eleven tells him, sorry, you cannot buy these condoms. Greenspan curses and swears, and thinks back, DAMN, these things were only four and a half bucks a week ago, what gives? Looks like I'm gonna have to raise interest rates again!

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

the afterglow is over

[LocalYokel]

When are people going to start blaming Netscape, like they rightfully should? I don't recall them ever making it into the black -- no wonder they went from boom to bust in about four years!

The Netscape IPO was the second (or third) California Gold Rush. There were stories of instant millionaires, and the tech-savvy who could make it there discovered it easy to find financing from people who couldn't get there themselves, but had seen and heard of this gold, and wanted a cut of it for themselves. Sure, there was gold, but most people couldn't make it profitable enough. Surprise, surprise, they went broke.

Anyway, it should come as no surprise that tech stocks are helping to drive down the market. Profitable companies like M$ are in legal trouble, while dot-coms and Linux outfits have not been making money from the get go -- sure sounds like a losing combo to me.

--

I have to agree.

[Andy Dodd]

People seem to think that if Linux companies stock performs badly, it'll reflect badly upon Linux. Yes, it will if the stocks perform worse than the rest of the market. But in this particular case, Linux stocks are doing badly, BUT SO IS EVERYONE ELSE! So the Linux stock performance (or lack thereof) means nothing.

Note that in some ways, the drop of Linux related stocks can be related to the MS ruling - While that ruling was good for Linux companies' business, its effect on the tech stock market brought everyone down, including the Linux stocks. Weird, huh? :)

Thank god I'm currently only doing small-time investing mainly for the learning experience. Percentage-wise, I got raped the past two weeks. Of course, who didn't? :(

Chill out, CmdrTaco

[babbage]

A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamt of by its author
--Stephen C. Johnson

Ok. So you're not interested in the stock market, don't know anything about it, and don't feel like reading about it. Personally, I could care less about Quake and really don't feel like reading whatever Carmack has to say this week. Someone else out there is maybe sick of some other topic or topics that run on Slashdot from time to time.

But the fact of the matter is that Slashdot has become a large and diverse community site -- bigger than I think the creators of the site intended, and certainly beyond what they can really control now. (Hello first posters, gritty pants people, and other trolls).

The fact of the matter is that the stock collapse is an important story, even if you don't feel like reading about it. The stock market of the 90s has been very bizarre, growing in value far beyond the ability of corporations to repay the investment, and it had to be obvious that something had to give eventually. If the market falls by half over the coming days and weeks, that will restore sanity and long term stability, but at the same time it will hurt a whole lot of people. The parallels between the 20s leading up to 1929's crash and the 90s leading up to this (or else, if we recover from this now, a bigger and more permanent crash that I for one think is inevitable and not too far off on the horizon) are striking and certainly at least as newsworthy as a frickin' video game console and it's possible hard drive.

I have a hard time sympathizing with you on this one, CmdrTaco. You don't think this is interesting, yeah, well, fine. But a lot of other people surely do, and if this "community site" is to remain relevant to "the community", you must be willing to run stories that interest them as well as yourself.

Re:Chill out, CmdrTaco

[dagashi]

I think you're missing an important point here.
This is not about if CmdrTaco is interested in this news or not, but whether it belongs on Slashdot or not. I dont know about you, but I dont want to see Slashdot turn into just another typical news site, not caring <i>what</i> it is reporting about as long as it's big enough. That's what the 6 o'clock news is for. Altho I can't deny that it <i>is</i> interesting to hear what 'the community' has to say about this particular story.

thankyou.

Re:Chill out, CmdrTaco

[pyxl]

Obviously, you didn't read what he said. Also, obviously you've never read the title of the root slashdot page - "Slashdot:News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."

It's downright cute that you think that Slashdot is a "large and diverse community". Even a cursory glance at Slashdot would tell the observer that Slashdot is specifically NOT diverse. It's oriented toward "geek stuff", with a heavy free software/Linux/U*ix 'community' pitch to it, with a dash of general science and technology thrown in.

This is not abcnews.com, this is Slashdot.

Now, yes, I agree - the stock market dropping like it has is rather significant news - BUT IT DOESN'T FALL ANYWHERE NEAR SLASHDOT'S FOCUS (fuzzy as it may be from time to time... :)

Lastly, you'll note that he's been getting MUCH shit from people - to the point of imbiciles emailing him accusing him of participating in some kind of conspiracy that this 'news' not be covered (even though, as he stated, it's being covered to death on thousands of sites on the 'net already).

And for you folks who are going to mewl "Well, Slashdot has covered stocks before!", you too obviously didn't read what he said. Note that he stated that Slashdot has covered the stock of particular companies as relates to some specific tech or linux/free software subject, not "the market in general", which is what people have been bitching at him about.

As punishment for your transgressions, you are to be summarily thrice LARTed with a week-old baguette.

Who cares?

[Simon Carr]

Rob probably gets the same deal other industry folks usually get, X number of shares over X number of years. Besides, how would this lead to some Slashdot coverup... IN FACT since when has Slashdot been in a position to cover something up?

Anyway, the current "plummet" is just an over due correction AFAIK. If any companies go under because of this it's because they weren't doing anything to begin with.

And I was so looking forward to the wedonothing.com IPO ;)

I agree with the "policy"

[dsplat]

CmdrTaco said:

I consider stories about the stock market to be CNNfn or CNBCs thing. We only bring up the market when it deals with specific companies that we're interested in, not when the story is "The Market".

If I want general, up-to-date news on the stock market, I have cable. I'll turn on CNBC. And allegedly some of the newsstands around here carry the Wall Street Journal. Slashdot is neither of these. That isn't central to it. To try to carry a story every day with the previous day's closing on all the stocks of interest to Slashdotters would detract from the character of Slashdot. However, running stories about the IPO behavior of Open Source companies and to track them from time to time is appropriate. It is a part of what those companies are. It can effect how they act.

For the stock market addicted, I suggest that Slashdot could offer a Slashbox that provides the latest quotes for the stocks of companies that Slashdot often runs stories about. Obviously any Open Source company would make the list. But Intel, Microsoft, Sun, Apple, and IBM get mentioned often enough to make the list. One of the greatest strengths of Slashdot is its configurability. Let the people who want the quotes get them.

As for the people who never want financial news, go customize your Slashdot homepage to exclude stories about "The Almighty Buck". And a note to Slashdot. It is a challenge to find it. I could understand alphabetizing it under "Almighty", "Buck" or even "The", but it seems to be alphabetized under "Mighty" perhaps to put it right under "Microsoft".

Re:I agree with the "policy"

[Rezand]

"The Almighty Buck" is sorted according to its actual topic name: "Money".

The real big deal

[The Pim]

What happens to these businesses over the long term is a big deal. What happened to their stocks over the last month (or whatever the period is) is immaterial to anyone but day traders.

And if you don't see the continuing importance of brands, you're blind. You're a net geek and an early adopter. What percentage of online shoppers will be like you in 5 years?

Re:The real big deal

[Pfhreakaz0id]

most will be like me, because most of the process I do manually will be automated into sites like MySimon. Those will be the powerful brands. That's why I don't think the portals like Yahoo! are overvalued. Those are the valuable brands, not individual sellers, even big ones like amazon.
---

Re:The real big deal

[The Pim]

By your reasoning, traditional retailers would kill product brands, because one can compare competing probucts on the shelf. Maybe you buy generic ketchup, but most people don't.

Granted, index sites may provide more information on the options than retail stores, but this is only a matter of degree. It won't change the fact that people are drawn to brands in choosing the products they buy.

Re:The real big deal

[Pfhreakaz0id]

We're confusing 2 things here: brand of the product and brand of WHO you buy it from. I don't think the latter will be that important in the 'net space and is being tremendously overvalued.
---

Tech stocks/signal to noise

[wanna]

Like others on /., tech stocks are only one visualization of my primary interest...Technology!

Like the article poster, my shot glass runneth over due to the last weeks ragging on our hosts!

oh well! a wise old bird once told me "the emptiest tin cans make the loudest noise". To avoid having my news for nurds drowned out, I just raised my 'noise filter' to 2.

AMD

[Isaac-Lew]

Sort of on-topic:

anyone see how AMD actually had a profit? (US$1.16/share).

Sheesh!

[Russ Nelson]

Sheesh! Don't you know how to write a conspiracy theory?? The Jewish bankers are *purposely* depressing the stock price so the Christians will sell off. Monday they start buying again, and the stupid Christians say "OHMYGOD, why did I sell".

Now *that's* a proper conspiracy theory. Oh, no, wait, you have to throw something in about CmdrTaco's hidden Jewish/Armenian ancestry, and how he hates the Turks. Oh, and he has a mole in the center of his back, which is a mark of his genetic manipulation. All of HIS people have the same mole. Irrelevent details improve the plausibility -- nobody would make these things up, y'see.
-russ

Of course it is

[Gorimek]

All the nerds I know have stock optoions, and many lost millions last week. I, sadly, had none to lose.

From where I sit this is the biggest single News For Nerds in a long time.

50-80% of the value of most internet comanies got wiped out last week. If it stays that way, it will have a huge impact on the Nerd job market, as well as Silicon Valley life.

"Linux" Stocks then.....

[crimoid]

The fact that the market is going down should be very important to a large number of "nerds". I can't tell you how many of my peers have a vested (no pun intended) interest in the strength of "The Market". Between stock option grants and such, a large number of people that have worked very hard to create a number of great products and contributions to the Internet (and Linux) community are now facing a very large change in their financial situation. Honestly, I'd imagine that aside from the religious few (who somehow decided to go into computers/technnology to work for free) the vast majority of us went into it because we could get paid (usually more than the average white collar worker) to do what we love. While we may like to give the finger to corporate america, ultimatly large corrections in the market will not help us (nerds) in any way. This shakedown can/will prevent a large number of smaller (possibly innovative) companies from getting funding. Furthermore, as companies that we like (VA, Red Hat, Caldera, Be, etc.) continue to loose market value (in massive ways), people may start to turn toward less volatile sources (Microsoft) of software and technology. Food for thought...

The Market as a reflection of our society

[ContinuousPark]

So this is probably not "News for Nerds" but it is, IMHO, "Stuff that matters", maybe not to be discussed on a daily basis but interesting still.

You see, the Market is not just one thing, it's just a name we use to refer to a large group of economical phenomenoms in which participate millions of people, whether individually or organized on companies, unions, consulting firms or whatever. So, I would dare to say that the Market is /.-worthy because tech companies participate in it, specially and more recently, Linux-related ones. And, as other posters have pointed out, there's been plenty of IPO related stories on /. So, CmdrTaco says that the Market is of no interest but the companies performing in it are, my point is that you can't separate them: simplifying, the Market is the companies is the Market.

On the other hand, this overdependence on the Market to me is interesting if not creepy. There's too much speculation which is not bad by itself but becomes dangerous when it has no real foundations. So VA Linux has a huge IPO, but is (was) the company so valuable? Of course not; there's a lot of hype affecting the investors decisions, this is not a perfect free market. Come on, there's even people saying that the Market has been behaving so irrationally lately because too many people are taking Prozac on a regular basis so they don't measure risk well. The point is that the behavior and structure of "The Market" (and the discussion about it) say a lot about our society, specially about our means of productions and development, our individual and collective goals and our ways to apply technology to get to them. This is as relevant as the Govt. policies that have been discussed here at /. And every piece that we can gather to understand our society is "stuff that matters"

DONUTS

[Isaac-Lew]

Oops

Re:DONUTS

[xmedar]

Ok, so how did a comment that is one word correction of the comment above it get a rating of 2? Next someone will tell me its informative.. arggghhhhh....

Re:big deal

[bamuang]

As long as the wall-street brokers are not jumping out of the windows, what's the problem? The market went down 10 maybe 15%. Oh my good, big deal. May I remember you, that in Thailand, for example, the stocks went down 80 to 90% one year ago, and, surprise, the common workers didn't feel the impact at all. This whole thing is only intresting to shareholders.

Re:your sig... OT

[QueenFrag]

is that because of a matter/antimatter sort of thing, or a huge DBZ-style duel-to-the-death?

Stocks *have been* and will continue to be covered

[Money__]

1 Cisco Eclipses Microsoft As 'Most Valuable Company' by timothy on 02:07 PM -- Sunday March 26 2000 CST 249
2 3Com Spinning Off US Robotics by Hemos on 08:15 AM -- Tuesday March 21 2000 CST 80
3 Net Firms Running Out Of Cash? by Hemos on 10:57 PM -- Monday March 20 2000 CST 197
4 The Implications Of Knowledge Work by timothy on 02:43 AM -- Monday March 20 2000 CST 139
5 Secrets of Software Success: Management Insights from 100 Software Firms by Hemos on 09:40 AM -- Thursday February 24 2000 CST 71
6 What are Share Options Worth? by Cliff on 06:37 AM -- Saturday January 15 2000 CST 126
7 What's the Best Online Financial Solution? by Cliff on 01:25 PM -- Wednesday January 05 2000 CST 151

___

Crash of 1929

[SpinyNorman]

The crash of '29 was absolutely real, whichever way you look at it - it was not some statistical anomaly created by choice of DJIA component stocks.

Some of the hardest hit stocks in the '29 crash were the "Nifty Fifty", which were the 50 most respected blue chip growth stocks of the day (i.e. the Home Depot and Cisco's). These stocks grew to have huge P/Es as everyone believed their growth rates deserved it. During the crash, these stocks fell 90-95% or more.

The '29 crash also marked the end of the prosperous "Roaring 20's", and gave rise to the ensuing depression.

FYI the NASDAQ drop, so far, from the 5000+ peak to fridays 3300 close is around 35%, which is more than the "Black Monday" drop. Last week's decline alone was around 25% - the same as Black Monday.

There are still many stocks selling at historicaly absurd prices, so the carnage is likely not over yet. We may get a sucker/technical rally sometime soon, but IMO we havn't seen the NASDAQ bottom yet.

Re:Crash of 1929

[god_of_the_machine]

Of course... Black Monday was only 1/2 the story -- it was just one really bad day in the midst of a market tumble. If you want to know more about it, there is a great article at Valuation Street with links at the end to all sorts of other information about the crash of 1929.

Bottom line: we aren't doing half as bad as the collapse then -- yet.

-rt-

Re:Crash of 1929

[Skim123]

Also wasn't the rest of the world pretty fucked up at the time? Europe was in a depression, Asia was at war... a pretty crazy time, globally.

Re:Crash of 1929

[Glytch]

As opposed to nowadays, when Asia's in a depression and Europe's at war. :)

Not flaming, just commenting on how much things change, and how little they change at the same time. "Plus ce change, plus ce meme choses" I think it goes. Please forgive my awful French, it's been years since I've been in school... Isn't there also a Chinese expression about "May you live in interesting times"? Nowadays, things sure are interesting.

Totally offtopic, and just me ranting, but it doesn't really matter since the topic's offtopic as well by Taco's own admission. Ah, I need sleep...

Re:Crash of 1929

[Skim123]

As opposed to nowadays, when Asia's in a depression and Europe's at war

Point taken, although I don't think it's nearly as bad as it was then, when dictators were popping up, runaway inflasion, the Rape of Nanking (although some of the Kosovo tradgedies are just as bad)...

So if the story is off topic....

[Snaller]

...any on-topic comment is really OffTopic! Wee... so what do you guys think of Dwarf throwing? It's such a noble sport, isn't it?

--

Re:Interest

[gorlim]

Maybe he means that what his shares are worth could fill a shotglass.

You misunderstand. This is CmdrTaco's sandbox

[Russ Nelson]

This is not a news site. This is CmdrTaco's sandbox. The reason slashdot is interesting is that most of the time, most of what he considers interesting, *I* consider interesting. That doesn't mean that he has to publish everything that I might consider interesting, or even publish everything that he has an interest in.
-russ

Re:You misunderstand. This is CmdrTaco's sandbox

[aphr0]

Then why is the motto "news for nerds" and not "news for cmdrtaco"?

Re:You misunderstand. This is CmdrTaco's sandbox

[Russ Nelson]

Because, CmdrTaco is basically a nerd, and he has to stay that way. No getting married, no having kids, no dryer, no washing machine. Basically he has to give up having a life, and must continue to play with computers, legos, video games, watching Star Wars, etc. :)

That's why it's news for nerds, and not just news.
-russ

Re:You misunderstand. This is CmdrTaco's sandbox

[RickHunter]

I wouldn't go as far to say that its CmdrTaco's sandbox. Surely Hemos, Katz, Roblimo, etc. also post stuff? I'd say its the "sandbox" of the Slashdot crew. They post stories about what they think is interesting or relevant to "News for Nerds." Then people comment on them. If you don't like the stories being posted, you can start your own site, or try and convince them to make you an editor, or find another reporting site.

-RickHunter

You know what I am tired of?

[Raleel]

I am so tired of people on here who insist on insulting the staff of Slashdot. For the love of all that is good and holy, they are people. I bet when Rob started this little venture he had no idea that he would become a celebrity and subject to the sorts of things we see in the national enquirer. Why does he have to be "opressed" and "following the party line" and "just saying what Andover/VA Linux says he should say"? Just because he has a financial interest in Slashdot as well as an editorial one? He knows as well as anyone what got Slashdot to where it is, and you think he is going to go mess with that?

ANd on the same subject, this goes with everyone else at Slashdot. Do we need to go bashing Hemos left and right if he reposts a story? Geez, people, how childish. Do we need to jump on JonKatz personally just because he's a windbag? ;) He's supposed to write things like he does! It's his job!

It comes down to this...despite my hoping otherwise, it appears that the alternative computing culture (heh) has just as many people who can't stand anyone doing something that is making a difference, because they themselves are not.

Try being a geek that works for a tech Co..

[kwsNI]

This is one of the first Slashdot articles in a while that I've actually felt like I could have nothing to contribute if I wanted to spend the time

And yet, for some reason, you still tried.

Thus, I think Slashdot's typical range of "on-topic" subjects are just about right on and something like this shouldn't be accepted to the pool of accepted topics on Slashdot.

This is for everyone out there that says this isn't "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." Chances are, you don't work for a public tech company. I work for a Fortune 250 tech company and I have a fair amount of stock invested in it and even more stock options for them.

If you think this isn't for nerds, what about all of the nerds out there that are working for these companies and have investments in them? If you think this doesn't matter to them, you'd be very mistaken.

CmdrTaco, it's your site. Post whatever you want.

kwsNI

Shall we stop dreaming?

[ManishJ]

If you think that the stock market is unimportant for us, do a rethink. With the Nasdaq plunging down, even the BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) of India has taken beatings. I am Indian, and am happy to see that India has been doing good in software. That's why I am here!

But India is a poor country. And most programmers don't have money to do their dream project. But with the so called 'IT Revolution' happening in India, we have the guts to go out there and announce a project. The capital comes in, and the work starts. We owe this to the stock exchange (BSE) here. And, in turn, the BSE owes it to Nasdaq.

The Net has created a revolution of freedom. Even the poor programmer can do big stuff. That's why I love these times. But in this freedom, we need not forget that we still need money to buy a computer. Alright the software might be free. But lunch is not free! Money is IMPORTANT, and hence is the stock market.

If the stocks are over-valued, take a breath. It is people's ambitions that are over-valued. We have dreams, and we have high regard for them. With the stocks plunging, we have realised the reality that goes with our dreams. But does that mean we stop dreaming? NO! Just as /necessity is the mother of invention/, /the dream is the mother of achievement/!.

Money plays a vital role in our existense, and just as everything else, even software comes from money. Stock Market discussions are NOT off-topic here! Don't you think so?

PS: 1 US dollar = 43 Indian rupees (approx.). Look at it from my point-of-view too guys! A PC costs approx. Rs. 50,000 here. That is an average Indian's 20 months' income (everything approx.). But the stock market boom is a great leveller. Even /I/ can do a mega project now, because there are venture capitalists out there, ready to invest in my idea! Would that be possible without the Nasdaq boom?

--

The way it works

[ajs]

A lot of people here are talking about how Linux was overvalued or how Techs were overvalued. I hate to break it to you, but that's a very nearsighted point-of-view. The reality is that the Market was overvalued and the Market corrected.

The good news is that technology stocks weren't strong because it was a fad. Technology stocks were strong because there was a ton of money coming into the market trying to take advantage of what is obviously a major shift in the way humans interact with eachother and in the infrastructure required to do it. That sort of upheval is what leads to frontier markets like the international trade situation after WWII or the gold-rush (which was not so much about gold as it was about settling half of a continent, in terms of investment and return).

This period of history will have its winners and its loosers, but I don't think that this correction will signal the last run-up or the last drop. We're in for a wild and bumpy ride for at least the next five years.

Note to Taco: you should be interested. The stock market is perhaps the single capitolist endevor that most resembles open-source, and as such it tends to demonstrate a lot of the pit-falls that we have to look forward to. How so? Well, can you think of another example where total disclosure is made, value is assessed simply on results, and each new endevor is free to use the same tactics demonstrated by earlier projects? The businesses themselves are nothing like Open Source, but if you think of each stock as a project on its own....

Re:The way it works

[MattXVI]

Go to a financial site and plot Linux stocks versus NASDAQ. The plots don't at all match. Linux stocks have been rolling downhill all year (long before the NASDAQ) and have dropped much, much more. NASDAQ is down 35% from peak. LNUX is down 85%. The others are similar.

Re:The way it works

[Fizgig]

On a related note, something similar has happened every single time some new paradigm-changing industry has come into existence. Financial markets, cars, airplanes, biotech, and now internet. But very few people come out of it ok. Take airplanes for instance. I think it was in The Economist that I read that there was once a bubble in the airplane industry and that it was only in the early 90s that the entire grand total of all airlines in history broke even. Sooooo many of them failed in the early years that it took decades to make up the total loss. So, as with all paradigm shifts like this, people will probably be better off after all is said and done, but the people who will be better off are not necessarily those working at or owning the companies involved since so many of the will fail. True, it takes a lot less capital to run an Internet company than an airline, but you can't tell me you don't see ads for e-commerce places and think "Wow. They're so goin bankrupt."

Re:The way it works

[ajs]

Yes, but if you plot Linux stocks vs tech IPOs for the last year, you will find a very strong corelation. LNUX was a supply/demand phenomenon. Now that the "players" are out, you will see it stabelize a bit and likely even go up as the market eases back into the frontier-driven climb.

Re:The way it works

[ajs]

Yes and no. I agree with you that a lot of companies will go under, but perhaps not nearly as many as with a hard good such as airlines. Remember, the cost of production is low, so the value is in the code, processes and markets. This makes every company that does ok into an attractive buyout target for a traditional business looking to get in on the action.... Look for lots more consolidation later this year.

A shotglass full!

[Byteme]

Obviously... get a clue poobah.

Have you ever had a job?.

[Gorimek]

What the hell is a company-state? If you mean really big scary companies, be aware that the tech crash mostly affected pretty small startups. The big guys fared better.

And you need to realise that companies are 100% made up of people. This hit a lot of people realy hard, including all employees of these companies. I haven't heard of a tech company that doesn't give all it's employees stock options, and often those give much more money than their wage. And now most of that os gone to money heaven.

And finally, it did hit Linux companies worse than Micro$oft.

Well, and then there's the snowball effect

[el_guapo]

I've seen folks mention/gripe about good companies that are generating better than expected profits STILL having their stock price plummet. One reason why is margin calls. Person A has crappy stock X and awesome stock Y, on margin (he borrowed the money). Crappy stock X starts to tank for good reason, he has to get out, but at below what he borrowed, so he HAS to sell awesome stock Y to cover the loss on crappy stock X. This is just one way that the bad investments can bring down the good ones. Again, I may have some specifics wrong, but I only buy stock through my 401(k) plan and therefore I'm not interested enough to delve any deeper....

[yeah!] Re:Good...weeded out the idiot day traders

[willis]

I couldn't agree more.

The way things were going, any fool could put their money in the market and they'd come out quite well. You'd have to be trying to lose money.... This series of successes made all the people at my college think that actually knew what was going on -- way to overconfident and cocky...

Maybe I'm a freak, but I think you shouldn't invest what you're not prepared to lose, or at least should view risk as risk...

willis/

Rob talks about Diesel engines...

[taskiss]

and then you bitch about having to address the stock market and how off-topic it is? Get a grip!

What I Wanted

[Jim Tyre]

Personally, I was looking forward to a 10,000 word essay from CmdrTaco concerning the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the protests in D.C., what started them, how to solve them, what sorts of basic monetary reform are needed, how, if at all, to make a better international monetary system, and of course, CmdrTaco's top ten recommendations to Alan Greenspan.

Or at least pix of CmdrTaco touring the riot area in Roblimo's limo.

Not true - look at RHAT

[SpinyNorman]

Last week RedHat fell around 35%, which is more than the 25% NASDAQ drop. In fact, the whole NASDAQ decline (so far) from the 5000+ peak to friday's 3300 is only(!) 35%.

Also, remember all the slashdot stories about the RedHat IPO, and about the crazy climb of the stock price? Well, RHAT is so far down 84% (!!!) from its 151 peak, and closed on friday at 24 - well below it's IPO price.

VA Linux (LNUX) has plummeted also.

Perhaps a story on RHAT would be more topical than one on the market/NASDAQ as a whole, but either way IMO it does deserve coverage since the initial IPO and stock rise did.

Re:Not true - look at RHAT

[Alex Belits]

and closed on friday at 24 - well below it's IPO price.

Huh? IIRC IPO price was 14, and there was a split after that, so it should get below 7 to be below IPO price.

Re:Not true - look at RHAT

[SpinyNorman]

Oops, you're right!

I meant the price it started trading at (45 or so), not the IPO price itself.

I don't remember what the split was, but if you look at RHAT's long term chart, it is now below the split-adjusted initial trading price.

Re:Not true - look at RHAT

[rrhal]

Many IPO's return to the price they start out at aaafter taking off for a few months.

RHAT will very likely find a bottom in the mid to low 20's. It will also probably grow slowly back to the highs it saw in the next 18 months or so.

Stocks aren't offtopic!!!

[Kinthelt]

The market as a whole is definitely NOT offtopic. Where would be geeks be if we didn't have jobs? Okay, I know the answer to that... We'd all be in school. But other than school? We'd all be in deep doo-doo.

The markets, specifically the Nasdaq, have increased a phenomenal amount in the past year (over 50%). Anybody with first-year economics can tell you this is not a good thing. That means, there's either going to be a 40% correction (crash) or there's going to be 40% inflation (eep!). A growth rate of 10% is deemed to be more or less "normal".

The federal reserve noticed that inflation is starting to increase. That means the economy is doing a little too well, so they raised their interest rates. You might be thinking "so what?" But that means people would be able to get more of their money's worth 10 years from now than today (calculate it out, and see for yourself). This makes people spend less, and slows the economy down. All to prevent inflation rates from going out of control.

So before, we were in a boom, and now we're going into a recession. Recessions tend to be marked by bearish markets, and high unemployment.

After all the high-tech stocks get beaten into pulp by (rightly-so) nervous investors who haven't seen a dime come from their investments, high-tech companies are going to be the first companies sold off. Their stocks plumet (already been seeing this), and they'll have to start making cutbacks.

So, it looks like sometime in the next ten years, there's not going to be a shortage of IT staff. There's going to be a surplus.

Off Topic?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is off topic, but JenniCam turns 4 years old is 'News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.'? Jeezus Christ, 2/3s of the shit posted on here now is off topic, and this one is almost close to being on topic.

Get a grip on reality

[Understudy]

Now now cmdrtaco let's deal with some reality here not the fanatsy world you live in. Althou your interest in the stock market could fill a shot glass the stock market affects you and what you do in this industry. The stock market is more than nasdaq and M$ and the new linux stocks. The market involves all the pieces parts that go into the very computer you are working on right down to the petrolum by product that makes the boards that all those chips, resistors and other gizmos get soldered to. And that can have a dramitic effect on price, supply and demand at it's finest. The program code for linux may be free but the parts for your motherboard are not. Not only that the perphials for linux aren't free either I belive that Corel office price will be about $199 dollars. Guess what it had better sell or Corel will have problems. And althou you may not pay attention to it a lot of people do their pay is directly affected by it. It is true that \ . is not a stock market news service, but to completly diss on it is just shows a true lack of judgement in the real world. \ . is under no obligation to report what it doesn't want to there are plenty of other web sites out there to inform ppl. But don't your advertisers want to know what kind of traffic hits \ . so they can see if their product will get an audience or maybe this is all completly free and nobody charges you for the bandwidth your using.

Someone moderate this up....

[Kris Warkentin]

Trevize, in spite of not being a native english speaker, has probably spoken with more eloquence than anyone else on this matter. I could not agree more.

what is relavent?

[gedanken]

It pains me to see a topic posted the way it was. I constantly see people posting about not wanting the word geek be some all encompassing thing that results in the stereo-typing of /. readers. Us geeks come from all walks of life - from bio-chem geeks to anime otaku. So why must all the topics that are deemed "relavent" be limited strictly to what tech geeks and those who think linux is the answer to all of life's mystries (the real answer is 42)?

I am not saying that i hate linux (i use it). What i am saying is that the editors should give more thought into what the readers are interested and not just what linux-geeks are interested. I am afraid to think of what has Not made it to slashdot because of the discriminatory attitude such editors as cmdrtaco seem to display as evidant in his posting.

The stock market in all its forms should be relavent. It forms the very basis of the economy and therefore are lives. Tech stocks or not!

What about RedHat

[SpinyNorman]

Perhaps a story about the market as a whole is a little off topic, although seeing as this was primarily a tech stock crash, it does seem to fall under the "stuff that matters" category.

However, if you want to remain more on topic, then a story about the decline of the Linux related stocks would make sense.

RedHat is so far down 85% (!!!) from its 151 peak, and closed at 24 on friday. While this was inevitable and only a matter of time (I sold at 45 on the way up, and posted here how it was already overvalued at that price), it is nonetheless significant for Linux.

Without an inflated stock price to use for aquisitions, companies like RedHat and VA Linux are going to have a much harder time growing - having to rely on revenues instead, and this leaves much more of an opportunity for companies like IBM to step in and take much more control and more of the Linux opportunities.

it's called a CORRECTION

[M/U]

This has been expected for a while. The stock market has gone _way_ out of proportion, and the economy is in danger of burning up. The US economy in particular has been approaching capacity - the current rate of growth is unsustainable and could lead to inflation, which the Fed doesn't like. Thus the interest rate hikes.

People, this is exactly what is supposed to happen in a healthy economy. The stock market can't deviate so far for so long - this was just a long overdue correction. Yes, it is a bit severe, but it will recover.

How does this silly stuff affect us, the techies and the geeks? On the topic of approaching capacity and INFLATION. Well, remember those INFLATED salaries that many of us are getting, because the demand is so high and the supply low? Well that's one of the things being attacked. Monetary policy makers hate INFLATION, that's why they go out of their way to fight it. That's why interest rates go up, and Greenspan makes strong pronouncements. With the US economy straining, INFLATION is inevitable - so a cooldown is necessary.

There's an old saying (french?) that goes along the lines of 'those who do not do politics will be done in by politics'. Well, the same can be said for economics. The fact is, we're all affected by the economy, and having some clue how it works can be very helpful. We are most definately going to be affected by this, but the stock market is only one piece of the puzzle.

YEA!!!

[schnogg]

I thought I was the only one who thought that the stock market was unintersting.
I'm glad I'm not alone there.

Not the first time

[arasinen]

IIRC, Win2000 release wasn't announced here either. I don't think anyone complained, since MS knows marketing in and out. You couldn't miss it.

We've heard about NASDAQ dropping like a dead bird even here in Finland. I can't imagine anyone in the States missing the news. And if so happens, how about the next-door-software-engineer who vanished without a trace after buying a gun, or seen people in IRC moaning after their millions went down the drain.

You couldn't have missed this. This isn't news anymore.

I would hope...

[god_of_the_machine]

That there was more to the story than that. Or, he thought you were someone else who was harassing him for some time. It might have been the way you phrased the post... but I suppose that we'll never know for sure.

-rt-

Re:Stocks *have been* and will continue to be cove

[randombit]

Almost every one of those dealt with a specific tech company (Cisco, MS, 3Com, USR, etc). The last 2 are Ask Slashdots, and IMO hardly count as being on slashdot proper. This is just "the market" in general, and hardly counts as being /. news in any way shape or form.

Stocks and Slashdot

[the eric conspiracy]

I am an experienced investor who has been in the stock market for over 30 years. The current correction that has much of the newsmedia running around shouting 'the sky is falling' is in fact about as big a surprise as any other market fluctuation - be it the price of oil, wheat or DRAMs. The fact is that the current price correction was inevitable. Last year the NASDAQ index increased in value by over 80%. Did the US economy grow at that rate? Of course not. Nor did the US economy shrink by 30% in the past week.

People who invest money in markets without being aware of market dynamics are likely to be shocked when exposed to these realities. Some may even panic and sell during market downturns, and thus lose some of their investment. Others may have invested on margin accounts, and be forced out, losing their entire investment. These actions exacerbate the depth of the market decline, which is fine by me because I am the one that is waiting for these fluctuations to do my buying.

Look at the market today - look at the prices of Microsoft, Lucent, and other great corporations. These are not the skanky dot coms that have no income or potential for profits - these are the companies that are growing at 30% per year with excellent profits. I am licking my chops thinking about the opportunity that the current market dip is offering. It may be years, IF EVER that you will see prices like this again.

Slashdot readers - go buy your Yupi's ($180,000 revenue and $18 million in losses) and similar tulips please. When they crash the panic will drag down the likes of Cisco, Sun and Oracle with them. And I will be waiting.

I agree with CmdrTaco. Stocks should be offtopic for slashdot. Very few slashdot readers have clue one as to economics and the workings of markets. Instead of posting market related stories here that lead to all sorts of misinformation posted in response, he should encourage readers to go to sites that offer useful common sense information on the markets.

Re:Stocks and Slashdot

[brassrat77]

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!)

wrong - the stock market pays most of our salaries

[zzzeek]

The biggest deal in the world these days has been the insane amounts of cash being generated by tech stocks, funding tens of thousands of startups, internet divisions of large corporations, everything to do with the internet, including the new success of our beloved Linux and BSD OSes and the long awaited stumbling of Microsoft. If the condition of the stock market changes then the nature of the entire technology profession as a whole will change as well. Its certainly a much more pertinent story to all our lives than things like this.

The obvious conflict of interest is the significant monetary connection that exists between the editors and writers of Slashdot.org and their corporate owners, VA Linux. And CmdrTaco's rant right on the front page is the greatest example I have ever seen of abusing a prominent and important public platform to whine about a personal situation that is his own fault anyway, and it can only further tarnish the image of Slashdot in the eyes of the greater technical and financial communities and hasten its journey towards complete irrelevance.

Stock market DOES MATTER!

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I think anybody who sent Mr. Taco any nasty email accusing him of some stupid conspiracy is a MORON.

But either way, IMHO, the stock market is "stuff that matters". It would be better if he said it matters, but slashdot isn't going to be any sort of stockmarket ticker machine.

Mind you, the US economy plays a global roll. It didn't in 1929, but does now. Allthough the market drop wasn't significant enough, it is important. The world felt it in '87, and when Ronald Reagan fucked around with shit the world felt it as well (especially germany, and other euro countries).

What have we learned from this? A company that doesn't expect to produce any profit for the next 3 years might not be worth $300/share. IMHO I'm a bit glad it happend since it got rid of the big .com hype.

As for my investments, my Lucent stock has been hurting, my AT&T is somewhat stable, My Sun stock is doing A LOT WORSE THEN IT SHOULD BE! God damn, sun turns out above everyones expectations and STILL loses points. Oh well, thank GOD I don't have a retirement fund or something tied up in it. And i'm sure they'll rebound in a few months anyway.

Well, cheers.

It IS important

[Bilestoad]

>I don't really know what to say about it: what I know, and in fact my interest in the Stock Market can fill a shotglass

At the end of the day it's your site. As evidenced by the presence of JonKatz. But if you ignore this you may want to change the "stuff that matters" part under your headline. (Especially if you keep JonKatz.) It's relevant to all of us - for a start, in the next few months there will be much less money available for startups. Not just the IPO level but the first million that lets you get the prototype half done. Cash reserves of many companies may reach dangerous levels. We might see advertising withdrawn (fancy that, a bus without a dotcom poster on the side). Some projects could be cancelled and some could even close. I would imagine there are lots of readers working in high tech who could be affected by this kind of thing.

Of course it's mostly a complete fantasy. The real worth of any of those rollercoaster stocks is the same. The effect on individuals may be dramatic - there will be lots of people who have gone from being wealthy enough to retire, to just OK, about on par with what they would have if they had chosen the insurance business. The lesson is never put all your eggs in one basket. People with half their savings in money market accounts instead of all in the market didn't suffer as much.

Everyone knows how it works, right? Valuations go up because people put more money into the pool. When they take it out, valuations go down. Of course there has to be a buyer and a seller at all times, but the pool is so big that there almost always is. At the end of the day it will go up again because people WANT it to go up. They will buy, expecting a rise, and that act CAUSES a rise. Just as a sell, expecting a fall, causes the fall. But people LIKE rises, so they tend to buy more than they sell, until the panic takes them and they lose sense of what they like for a week or two. Then they feel all silly and start cautiously buying again, and up we go.

What could the Fed do to help avoid this kind of thing? Stop people borrowing money to buy stock. Or lenders could use common sense, and restrict lending to purposes which involve concrete assets. Apart from the panic, a lot of this was caused by people having to sell their stocks to pay loans taken out for other stocks. Just as the cycle is all sweetness and light on the way up, it is an ever-narrowing circle towards bankruptcy on the way down. There's not much to be done about the herd mentality.

For anyone curious about the market and money in general I enjoyed the book "You Have More Than You Think" by the people at fool.com. My favorite part - where they talk about the "great crashes" of 1931 and 1987, making the point that the market crashed to a level about where it was the previous year, and that it recovered to the same heights very quickly.

Personally I've been waiting for this. Was wanting to invest, wanted my money in things I understand, but didn't want to buy overvalued stocks. To all the sheep who panicked and sold - thanks! I'll sell your stock back to you when it has tripled in price.

Breathlessly awaiting JonKatz' next article, "How does the stock market crash affect the sad, lonely, but non-violent geek who is victimized by WAVE and oppressed by the World Bank? Mmmkay?"

A glimps into the garbage

[Felinoid]

CmdrTaco occasionally mentions the garbage he gets in his inbox. Spam and general insanity.
Both into the submitions inbox and to his e-mail inbox.
Slashdot is big....
I guess CmdrTaco gets a bunch of BS from people who also send e-mail to the FBI asking about the X Files.

From the trolls I have read I believe what is happening is some people live in a fantacy world where advertising (such as banner ads) can not pay for an on-line service (like Slashdot). Somehow in the same world TV dosn't have TV ads paying for TV shows and free newspapers (paid for by ads) don't exist.
They see Andover stock dropping and proclame Slashdot dead.. Forgetting Slashdot is a hobby and would stay around no matter what happend to Andover.

I also know a person who thinks the United states is in truble if Microsoft stock drops below $20 a share.

Stock prices are based on the preceved value.
That value is usually based on the companys reported income and the companys dividens.
Andover is currently operating at a loss and has no dividens.

Stocks are also based on what people THINK the companys future will look like.

There is also the "Lesser fool" stocks where people buy based only on what they think SOMEONE ELSE will pay for them and not based on the company at all.

A lot of people would like to cast Linux stock in general and Andover stock directly as being "Lesser fool" driven.
However the reality is the stock market accually believes Linux has a very strong future and is willing to invest in it.

I think Cmdr Taco is correct.. This sort of thing isn't "News for nerds"....

It reminds me of when a political commintator said the judge in the Microsoft case dosn't understand the market. The problem with that comment is HE dosn't understand the tech market and really has no busness commenting on it.

I go to Slashdot for tech news to political strife and to finnantual news sources for stock market information.
I don't want stock market assements from Slashdot, tech reports from a political pundent or socal comminary from stock market reports.
Not any more than I'd want legal advice from my doctor.

CmdrTaco is dead on when he says this isn't stuff for Slashdot... I totally agree...

On my own forum any topic is allowed.. that is any RANT.. No news for nerds.. no stuff that matters.. just "Anything that bugs you"... Thats what it is there for...

A place for everything and everything in it's place :)
Admittedly there is some crossover :)

Slashdot CANNOT house a conspiracy.

[zCyl]

It is physically impossible for any website that offers free posting of ideas and comments, even to AC's, to host a shadow conspiracy on any topic. Slashdot by design is inherently immune to conspiracy provided they never start deleting posts. (And if they did, the outcry would be so large that this is inherently impossible for them to do.)

I've seen the trolls crying foul over this tech stock issue, and all I can say is that I support you, CmdrTaco, this might be of interest to some, but if the editors don't think it's important, then it really doesn't need to get posted. It's up to the editors of a site to determine what direction the content of the site should take.

If you trolls want to whine about what's not on Slashdot, then kindly unstuff linux from your ass, take the Slash source that is freely available, ask mommy for your $70 registration fee, register stockdot.org, and put up your own damn site. Then you can tell all your little troll friends about all the Wall Street conspiracies and VA Linux plots to storm Redmond with assault rifles and whatever else you can come up with.

Re:Slashdot CANNOT house a conspiracy.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is physically impossible for any website that offers free posting of ideas and comments, even to AC's, to host a shadow conspiracy on any topic. Slashdot by design is inherently immune to conspiracy provided they never start deleting posts. (And if they did, the outcry would be so large that this is inherently impossible for them to do.)

Okay, that's just not true. First of all, I'm sure you're unaware of this, but the slashdot admins have started to have some posters' posts start at (-2) and have made it impossible for their posts to score any higher! One recent post from DMG was moderated up to (+5), yet the score of the post remained at (-2). If this isn't censorship, I don't know what is. Additionally, the fact that their posts start at (-2), a threshold never even mentioned anywhere on the slashdot FAQ/help, and a threshold that one can't get to without knowing how to edit a URL manually (something never mentioned on any FAQ/help file) has to constitute censorship.
Additionally, don't you see that the editors could greatly influence what topics we discuss? If they never post stories that discuss the negative side of issues (even of issues where the positive side has been discussed--the tech stock issue comes to mind), then any post on the topic is going to be moderated down to -1 in a jiffy. As I'm sure this one will be, just because I'm expressing an opinion that isn't completely kissing up to the administrators.

Note to overzealous moderators: Since one of the topics brought up by CmdrTaco in his story was the fact that he felt that the story was off-topic, discussing whether or not it is off-topic does not make this post off-topic. It is not a troll, since nothing in this post is a falsification of any fact. It is not flamebait because I am not attacking anyone personally--the is, I'm not making any attacks ad hominem (of the man), I am making attacks of their actions, something that is in no way flamebait. I am attacking a certain action on the part of a group, but that is just the same thing as expressing any opinion. Thank you.

Re:Slashdot CANNOT house a conspiracy.

[medicthree]

sorry, forgot to log in. I posted the above.

Re:Slashdot CANNOT house a conspiracy.

[zCyl]

Actually, -2 is mentioned, although I don't recall reading anything about users who start at -2 (so I assume this is new). Regardless, I am certain it is only a result of extremely negative karma, which quite frankly one has to work pretty hard to earn, since a single post is almost never moderated down more than 2 points. It would be kind of them to add a feature to the threshold drop-down list after -1 to simply read all posts regardless of threshhold.

As for off-topic moderation, posting a direct counter-point to a story that's posted isn't generally considered off-topic. Of course there are a few moderators that would misrate a post as such, but that's why there are a lot of moderators.

The best way to minimize subjectivity is to get a large mass of people (moderators) with differing opinions and give them the ability to counterbalance each other. If you have a better suggestion I know I'd love to hear it.

Re:big deal

[MattXVI]

Well, stock value makes it possible for companies to acquire other companies and combine them together into something more efficient and productive, for one. Like RHat and cygnus are supposed to be.

"insightful"??! Down with opinions, up with Taco?

[zzzeek]

Why dont we just disable all story posting of any kind and just get a direct plug-in to CmdrTaco's brain? Is he your messiah or something? Slashdot is a terrific creation of his but its grown into something much more than his personal whining/deflecting-the-masses-from-real-issues-int o-mental-bubble-gum-topics platform, dont you think?

Sorry, dude, it wasn't the day traders...

[HardCase]

I do spend time studying the market, and I've been out of it for a while because it's horrendously overpriced. And other people do to. CNBC, WSJ, CNN and others took a good look at what happened and the story of the crash only peripherally involves day trading.

The market crashed because large institutional traders, the guys at Fidelity and Merrill Lynch and the people who manage huge retirement plans and such all decided that the market was just unreasonably priced. So they bailed.

I don't have any heartache about day traders. If they want to risk their money, then have at it! But what you describe isn't what happened...

The "jarbonis" inflated the market, but the slow and steady long-term investment people really took advantage of the day traders. So I guess that this ought to be a feather in the cap of the anti day trading crowd.

The only truth...

[Tekmage]

...about this current situation, IMHO, is that it's a good time to buy.

Everything else is pure speculation... But then again so is the fact that it's a good time to buy. It's a better time to buy than it was last week, that's certain.

How About The Hackers Who Got The Letter?

[Carnage4Life]

Fine, your post is all well and good if the people who lost their money were only day traders and MSFT shareholders but this unfortunately is not the case. The biggest losers in the stock market have been Linux pure plays. I know this because I have virtual portfolios and track the shares of Corel, VA linux, Red Hat and Caldera several times a day. It is clear from reading their charts that Linux companies have been dropping like rocks since mid-January while the entire Tech industry has been soaring up until the beginning of this month.

Several of these companies sent out the letter to several hackers who borrowed money or said they did here and here. Now how does it feel laughing in the face of poor students and hackers because they decided to invest in Linux based companies (which you obviously didn't because you'd be b*tching if you had shares in a company that was trading lower than it's IPO value like Andover and VA Linux instead of saying crap about doing research). I personally believe that gloating over the misfortune of others is evil especially since it affects us all. Firstly this will probably result in more mergers and aquisitions thereby consolidating power in fewer companies, also the fact that $2 trillion dollars was lost last week in the market correction thereby erasing the last year's $1.7 trillion gain in household income from stocks is not something to gloat over.

The fact that the post I am responding to has been moderated to a 5 makes me wonder about the character of the typical slashdot reader(i.e. moderator).

Re:How About The Hackers Who Got The Letter?

[daviddennis]

I certainly wouldn't gloat over the suffering of anyone, let alone Linux users or people believing in the Linux market.

"The Letter" is an offer to take a risk, not an offer to get a sure-fire gain. It's well known in the investment world - and has even been mentioned prominently in Slashdot - that the normal fate of a stock post-IPO is to rise to hefty heights and then fall gradually to its "natural level". If a Linux-oriented investor followed the advice of getting in and out fast, s/he would have made a bundle.

The reason that post got moderated up is that it unfortunately explains the truth about Linux investing. I don't think anyone is seriously happy about fellow Slashdotters losing money - but it should be recognized that losing money is as much a part of the investment world as making it.

I said yesterday in response to this topic that I deliberately stayed out of the recent Linux market simply because it didn't look like there were any opportunities that would not fall to earth quickly. I have a friend who offered to place $50,000 in an etrade account for me to play with, and I've been dodging his offer because I feared that this would happen.

Nothing in life is perfect, not even opportunities given in good faith by other companies.

By the way, those server statistics were pretty interesting. I wonder why Compaq did so well in the Linux server market; when I checked a Compaq price quote, the price of memory was so inflated I walked away. 1GB of Compaq memory cost almost exactly 2/3 of what my whole VA server with 1GB RAM, 50GB RAID and dual 700mhz PIII processors cost! So watch out for that RAM, folks.

Incidentally, I really like my VA server. A lot. Maybe I should invest in the company now that its price has fallen down to an almost reasonable level.

D

----

Re:How About The Hackers Who Got The Letter?

[nanotech]

Welcome to the real world. Did you really think the market, and your precious RHAT were going to keep going up indefinitely, that they'd really be worth what they were trading at forever?

First year economics tells you that these sort of valuations are unsustainable. If you didn't do your research, and you didn't understand how the market works, then it's your own stupidity that cost you money. I don't want to gloat about it, but I don't want to hear people whining about their own ignorance either. Greed has a flip side, welcome to it. If you borrowed money to invest in a company with an unproven business model, you should not be surprised when it appears to be failing.

Note: I'm not saying that the Linux stocks deserve to be zero-valued, but rather that there's no justification for the prices they were previously achieving.

The fact that this post was moderated up to even 3 worries me. I guess there's a lot of the greater fools reading slashdot.

Damn trolls

[whoop]

Let's face it, Anonymous Cowards have only proved how innessential they are over the last week. Every post gets at least thirty "ESR isn't rich anymore," and "Use VA stock to wipe your ass" posts. All these posts are saying how Linux is going down, blah blah blah.

So let's look at other markets besides Linux.

Intel, January 3, it was $87, now it's $110.50. Intel is struggling. They can't get their stock very high. They might as well be out of business.

AMD, January 3 it was $31, now it's $66. That's more than double. You had better using Athlons, K6s. Anyone who doesn't is diluting themselves. (Ok, so that remark is true. :))

UPS, January 3, $67+, now it's $55. Federal Express, $42.93+ to $37.25. Shipping packages is obviously a dead market. Anyone who is still shipping packages is a dolt.

Eastman Kodak, January 3, $64.56+, now $61.50. Taking pictures is mildly waning. Take them if you want, but I'm using my eyes still.

It's all pointless. Things go down, they go up (the side which none of the trolls mention). If you are investing for the short term (four months), you are much more likely to get hurt. If you go for the long run (invested the day after the '87 hiccup), you're still way ahead of the game. Personally, I'll blame Clinton for all of this. If the marvelous economy is his doing, so is this downfall of our entire economy (for the weekend at least).

Anyway, time to bump the threshold up to 1 or 2. That takes care of the idiots. There really are fewer and fewer relevant posts in the 0 or -1 arena.

Re:Damn trolls

[GC]

I browse at 2, unless I'm moderating.

I'd recommend that to anyone.

Slightly offtopic:

But if every one got more moderation points, and the moderation point ceiling was raised accordingly everyone coulde browse at 2 and we wouldn't find any troll posts at all.

Rants do not make for good headlines

[jjohn]

Please find another way to express your frustration. Headlines should express the flavor of a news item succinctly. Complainly childishly that others are complaining childishly to you doesn't help your case.

Maybe you, CmdrTaco, can write an OpEd piece instead explaining your editorial decisions. Lord knows I did for my site. That would be more effective, more fitting and better received than being cranking. Remember, you've got *a lot* of eyeballs looking at the front page. You can use this medium much more effectively.

I know that I would love to see more about how a site like slashdot works. What sort of tools did you use to create slashdot? Would you use them again? How are you going to handle scaling? What features would you like to add?

LNUX may be delisted in protracted bear market

[Ars-Fartsica]

I don't think anyone here really understands the dilemma with LNUX.

You see, this stock tumbled even as NASDAQ showed small recoveries. LNUX and CALD were never acting in concert with the greater NASDAQ - the market average had many positive days and even weeks while theese stocks continued to tumble. So please, don't pin this to the NASDAQ as a whole.

LNUX and CALD had no business going public. Neither have companies like TheGlobe.com and scores of other .coms. This bear market is going to wash them out - and I don't mean just to low prices - I mean to the point of being delisted.

The fun time has come and gone folks - you're not going to see public offerings for unproven companies after this bear has passed - its going to back to fundamentals - you build a succesful business, then you open it to the public.

I see H&Q losing a great deal of value as advising brokers if they continue to put a "buy" rating on LNUX. Its time to concede the obvious - this stock is likely on its way to being delisted within eighteen months.

This is a lesson to all of you - a lesson I have learned in the past and is worth putting in bold:

When you trade stock, have a rigid sell discipline. Don't go by rumours, press releases, or analysts advice - when a stock loses a certain percentage of its value, you SELL NO MATTER WHAT. If you would have used this rule on LNUX and CALD you could have escaped without a total write-off.

THE BEST INVESTORS USE RIGID SELL RULES. BE DISCIPLINED ABOUT SELLING AND YOU CAN PROTECT YOUR ASSets.

Re:LNUX may be delisted in protracted bear market

[Ars-Fartsica]

All discussion aside, the reason "sell disciplines" are used is because gut feelings and hunches typically leave you in a worse position.

If you have a sell discipline, you may get burned now and then on a bouncing stock, but on average, you will have astutely and predictably restricted losses. In the case of LNUX, your sell discipline would have served you well.

What is SlashWorthy(tm)....

[jspaleta]

I quite agree that stock market news (or sports results, or how to molest chickens for fun and profit) do not belong on slashdot

give me a definition of slashdot worthy...
and I'll point you to the topic list and show you about half a dozen topics that wont fit into yer neat little definition of what should be slashdottable.

Take a look at previous articles under the all-mighty-buck topic heading...

an article bemoaning the devaluation of tech stocks and the stock options working geeks are banking to retire on doesnt seem too out of place....
an article comment on whether or not there will be any more "IPO magic" in the future that some slashdotters have commented on expecting to happen when company X goes public is also not out of place under the topic heading.

You can gripe all you want about whether or not slash should cover money issues....all i ask is for consistancy...if you are going to cover most valuable company news then i think slash should make atleast a passing note when the whole tech sector's total worth is less than the value of my uncle's one man hot dog cart business....and NO he's not taking his business public this year, maybe next year.

I humble suggest that the slashdot editors review the topic list and their guidelines for each list...if you are going to cover a topic then I think it should be covered at a consistant level.

-jef"I wonder what the icon for the molest chickens for fun and profit topic would look like"spaleta

Relevant

[Devil_Dog]

To me personally this is relevant, and I happen to like the few stock market/ipo posts we get here. But if CmdrTaco felt this story was offtopic/irrelevant, I really don't believe he should have posted it, you've got to stick to your guns there CT, it's your site after all.

Someday I'll make devildog.org into something.

Why so bitter?

[/]

If you didn't own any vapor stocks, then you'll come out unscathed from this nonsense. If your own stocks plunged in sympathy with the rest of the market, then take this opportunity to invest more (if they're truly good companies). Otherwise, you're just gratifying yourself at the expense of others who, while stupid, have committed no other evil (if stupidity can be said to be evil).

It's about time.

[Animats]

I've been expecting this crash for a long time. I've activated my financial bad-news site, Downside.com, which I've had on standby waiting for this. There's an army of analysts cranking out good news, much of it paid hype, but bad news is hard to find. (Only about 1% of analyst recommendations are "sell".) Watch for future commentary.

This is not the end of the world, but it's the end of those "lose money on every sale and make it up on volume" Internet companies. As the Red Herring pointed out, there are around 200 Internet companies that have to outperform Microsoft to justify their stock values. No way could that happen.

As for LNUX, its decline is only vaguely related to the overall market. Look at the chart.. It's been in a screaming dive since the IPO, down over 90% now. Regardless of market conditions or VA Linux press releases, the dive remains steady. It's a very pretty chart. I pointed this out a month ago, when LNUX dropped through 100. Now it's at 29. Enough said.

Stock Market, the new Economy and Speculation

[tenchiken]

The Stock Market has fallen? Really? I hadn't noticed.

This is actually interesting stuff, since it touches politics (a very big reason that investors have had the capital to invest in start-ups (which is what has run the economy) was because of Regan's supply side economics), Technology (almost all of the start ups were tech companies (either CS or biotech), society in general (who knows how much impact all of these comapnies giving out options has had, it certainly has changed the classic business model).

Is the stock market still hideously over-valued? Yes. Anyone who says anything different either a) has not learned from history b) is a speculator or c) Bought LNUX at $320.

I do think that we are seeing the formation of a American Empire (which would account for the fact that everyone else's economic systems are in the tank, while we panic about a stock market that is _still_ above 10k.). This is IMHO, worthy news for Slashdot to cover.

(Offtopic) Moderation is only half the problem..

[TheWarlocke]

I think it's total BS that some people are now posting at -2 by default. I don't enjoy reading posts by losers like ubertroll... I can't imagine anyone that would. But it should be his right to speak his mind. This whole negative moderation seems stupid to me. Moderation should emphasize bringing attention to intelligent posts, not censor stupid ones. The fault for this lays more with moderators and the actual moderations system. I don't see the need for anything lower than a zero, though. Flames, trolls, and ACs who didn't really have anything to say, no matter how much I hate reading their posts, shouldn't need anything lower than 0. By filtering at +1, a great many good discusions that fell _under_ a 0 or -1 get missed.

On the other hand, if this were my personal soapbox instead of Taco's, I'd probably have foregone the whole moderation ordeal and started visiting trolls in person with a machete and a vat of acid a long time ago. He's tolerated the heat of this site for years without cracking. I don't know many of us that could do that. So, I _DO_ think Taco and Co. have shown considerable restraint. But I don't think that outright censorship is working, and I don't think that giving in and "giving the squeaky wheel the grease" with stories like this one is the answer, either. They're in a tough spot. If anyone can do better, or offer constructive criticism or helpful suggestions I'm sure they'd listen.

Ignorance

[JayBonci]

The market impact of the MS decision is undeniable, and to say that everything isnt impacted by this is naive ignorant. Microsoft, Cisco, and GE are the top of the food chain down on the street. If you mess with them, then you are looking at a large loss of faith in tech stocks. People have been dumping the hot techs to go to old blue chip standbies ever since people got word that something bad MIGHT happen to MS. Even RDHT and LNUX (the business "champions" of most of this site's patrons) are not doing so hot.

Point is... lets take market value a little more seriously, and please, leave the conspiracy at the door. Whether or not the software is free is one thing... but a business has to make money and be valued for things to be a success.

--jay

Re:Ignorance

[VAXman]

Ignorance? You're the ignorant one.

CSCO and MSFT are NOT of the top of the food chain. INTC is ahead of both, and second only to GE.

Even RDHT and LNUX (the business "champions" of most of this site's patrons) are not doing so hot.

LNUX has tumbled MUCH more than almost any other stock. MUCH, MUCH more than Microsoft has or practically any other stock in the market (only a couple of the dot-com's have tumbled more). It's not a matter of "Even LNUX" but "Especially LNUX". LNUX made several financial headlines because it fell so much. It is one the most embarrassing stock performances ever, and I really sorry for all the people who lost so much money over and were blinded by the Linux hype.

Re:Ignorance

[JayBonci]

When i say top of the food chain, we are talking markey value. There are stocks in the hundreds of dollars. Doenst mean they are worth more than MSFT, and CSCO have a highter market value than Intel.

It has nothing to do with current stock price, you should know that.

--jay

Don't bag on all tech stocks

[Ars-Fartsica]

Sorry, but people who have held YHOO, INTC, CSCO and other blue-chippers for over a year are still in the black, considerably. These stocks will recover.

It's about time

[ParisPrague]

Finally! I've been tired of this get-rich-quick stock bubble for a while now. I don't feel sorry for anyone who will be hit. (And that's almost everyone!) The writing's been on the wall for years. This coming week will make last week seem like nothing. BTW, I think this topic does belong in /. given that it will affect 99% of tech companies and workers. I have most of the capital for my start-up in gold. I'm crossing my fingers. Hopefully I won't need any more investors after next week!

Market Saturation

[JayBonci]

I do some with stocks right now, and the reason for all the money in the market right now is the baby boomers. All of the people in that age bracket are putting money into 401ks, which in turn invest in the "stability of a market" These 401k plan managers have millions upon millions to make money with. The volume in the markey has been crazy recently, because of all of it.

What does this come down to for news for nerds... be careful of the market... be careful of the players, and keep your money some place safe for right now...
My confidence in tech is slightly low right now..

--jay

Re:big deal

[rjreb]

the common workers didn't feel the impact at all

When large amounts of money were withdrawn from economies such as Thailand, that money could no longer roll through those Asian economies.

Instead the money found its way into USA stock markets for the acquisition of corporate stocks, creating an unusual and unprecedented demand for shares traded through US stock exchanges (the prices of which are not truly reflective of the fundamental businesses or investments of those corporations). So, no, the common worker didn't feel the impact as long as they were American.

Gerstner on e-business

[gregbaker]

"I believe in making money the old fashioned way--generating earnings and cash" -- Lou Gerstner, CEO of IBM

I cut that quote out of the paper a while ago. I try to remember it whenever I think about jumping on the bandwagon and buying the latest tech stock. Gerstner's philosophy doesn't seem to have had any effect on IBM's stock, though--they've slid this week too.

Greg

One of the nonvocal majority speak up

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is my second post in two years. Frankly, I think this site covers too many things that are absolutely not important (Remember the posts about someone running a computer outside of it's case?), then skimp on the actual important information (Such as what the impact of a 30% correction in tech stocks is to the great many tech workers who receive stock options in lieu of higher pay). I have absolutely no doubt that it's more important to many than beer cooled processors. I honestly feel that the impact of slashdot on the free software community is a bad one, as it promotes the same sort of vigilante style attacks that I remember back in my OS/2 days. I still read slashdot, however, it's strictly due to the number of people that are influenced by this site. I feel a need to know where a sizable portion of the free software community is obsessing over at any given time. I honestly think that the motto should be changed from "stuff that matters" to "stuff that matters to Cdr Taco and those who follow his lead".

Re:One of the nonvocal majority speak up

[Paladin]

Oh please. This is a website that covers information from a wide variety of sources that are of interest to geeks. Yes the stock market is probably of interest to people who work in tech companies, but frankly if you want to follow the stock market then cough up some money and get a subscription to the Interactive Edition of the Wall Street Journal. I also follow several mountain bike and skating web sites and I don't expect them to cover the stock market either.

I fully support not covering the stock market in this forum. As for technical people with stock options who just saw the bottom drop out, grow up. The market is about risk and reward...that means winners and losers. Suck it up losers.

Re:One of the nonvocal majority speak up

[Cuthalion]

"stuff that matters" is so obviously a subjective term, just like "greatest show on earth". It's a catchphrase, not a guarantee.

Re:Stocks *have been* and will continue to be cove

[BlueCalx-]

Note further that Senor Taco didn't post a single one of those.

How ironic :P

Re:(Offtopic) Moderation is only half the problem.

[Stonehand]

Maybe both good and bad karma should decay towards 0 over time. That's what's triggering the negative-rating default, right?

That would

a) let somebody who trolls for a while *chill*, start being a rational poster, and if he's not moderated down more, return to a default of 0

b) mean that just because somebody amasses a karma stockpile, doesn't mean that they can post in perpetuity at, say, 2 (given that moderators only have 5 pts per session, and don't seem to often use 'overrated') -- if they STOP posting things that are interesting / insightful / informative, they return to a more normal status.

Re:Stocks *have been* and will continue to be cove

[gargle]

Agreed. Va Linux, Caldera, LinuxCare, LinuxOne, Red Hat ,etc. IPOs are considered Slashdot worthy (just do a search of the IPOs previously reported on /.). Not to mention ESR boasting about his newly found wealth. But the plunge of the same stocks are considered not Slashdot worthy? At the least, the fortunes of the free software contributors offered stock options in VA Linux and Red Hat would be of great interest.

I think we've a serious case of denial here. Maybe Taco thinks that as long as it isn't posted on Slashdot, it ain't true. Well, reality goes on.

====

about time

[criticalrealist]

It's about time this was posted. Slashdot is always covering the latest IPO. Now, with VA/Andover (Slashdot's parent company) falling from a high of about $350/share to $28/share, and other such stocks tumbling as well, it looks like the Linux/Internet/high tech bubble has burst. There's no need to act like a sore loser. That's the nature of capitalism. Risk.

Tired of Slashdot? Try Kuro5hin.

The Wealth of Nerds

[Baldrson]

We only bring up the market when it deals with specific companies that we're interested in, not when the story is "The Market."

Since wealth is a big deal in civilization, and since nerds become wealthy via their stock options that typically vest after an IPO, the precipitous drop in the NASDAQ -- the primary market for technology IPOs -- is "News for nerds -- stuff that matters" as the motto for Slashdot says.

I'm glad he's pissed.

[small_dick]

Go, Taco.

After all the grotesque things the posters say about you, your friends and even your mother, there's nothing wrong with a little anger.

Now throw in the questions about ESR and Taco's financial interests, and it's getting pretty dirty.

Finally, the sig:noise ratio is probably approaching parity, if it hasn't been exceeded.

So, I'm glad he's pissed. I hope the /. folks consider making some kind of "Dog Pound" where -1 posts gets transitioned to and deleted after. say 24 hrs.(unless they get moderated back up).

The grossly offtopic remarks (Taco's mom, VA Linux/financial issues, Natalie's Hot Grits, etc) have nothing to do with free speech. This issue has been wrangled since ancient times.

You're free to go onstage and fart at the audience, but don't be suprised if security chucks you out the side door. It's not censorship, it's choice. Most forums delete grossly off topic messages. Go to usenet if you need that kind of outlet. You can even post pictures there.

Fundamental misunderstanding

[Russ Nelson]

Sorry, but your opinion shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how markets work. Ultimately, we, the slashdot readers, have to be kept happy, otherwise we won't read the adverts that pay the money that the stockholders expect to get in return for withholding their consumption of the capital they loaned to Mr. Taco.

So yeah, it's still Mr. Taco's sandbox, and if he wants to succeed, he has to keep having interesting opinions. :)
-russ

Prices dropping - is it that bad ?

[terminal.dk]

First a disclaimer, I have some money invested in US stocks, and my workplace has just been bought to become part of a large worldwide Internet consulting company. I have been promised stock options, and therefore has some interest in price developments.

What has happened on the stock market is, that people has put money into the stock market, and then agreed with other people that their $1 bill is worth say $100. With stocks like Microsoft, you pay $45 for every $ they make (price/earning ratio), which is clearly an unrealistic high price), and $11 for each $1 of book value.

Right now, stocks are dropping because people are starting to realize how overvalued the stocks are, and that some of the companies with hype will never make any money, and at the same time they use old fashioned common sense to re-evaluate the other tech stocks

Just like a chain letter, as long as people keep their money in the system, nothing is bad, and things can keep going up as especially thech stock prices often has no realistic valuation. As people start pulling money out of the market, demand is lower, and prices starts falling.

Even in a down market, there will be lots of winners. Daytraders going short have had their days of their life. Those who pays is most probably private investors who recently got into the market at inflated prices. Those who bought their Apple shares for $35 a year ago has still made a healthy profit with current price of $110. That is still 214% profits in a year.

WHat will happen is, that private investors will realise that the stock market is a high risk game, and they will pull out some of their savings, and put at least part of it into safer investments. The market will adjust, and we might end up with a much slower growing market. And we will probably see company stocks not being so overrated before they start making money

Our new mother company has seen this, and all the companies they are buying has one thing in common. They are all making a profit today. So I still see some very good potential for my stock options. But they will not make me a millionaire. I see them as stocks in a healthy company that will survive, contrary to a lot of the companies that has specialised in shouting growth just because they can spend 10 times more money than they can get in sales.

Rob Malda - a dirty liar?

[interrupt11]

Look at some of these Slashdot stories!

"What are Share Options Worth?"
"Hacker Stockholders Unite!"
"The Stock Market, Armageddon, the Net & OSS"
"Ask Slashdot:Linux and Stocks"
"Buy MS stock now! Cheap!"
"Red Hat Stock Splitting"
"Caldera Publically Trading"
"Red Hat Files For Followup Stock Offering"
"VA Reprices Again"
"How to Approach Venture Capital Firms?"
"Red Hat Announces IPO"

Mr. Malda, how exactly is the stock market 'offtopic' on Slashdot?

facts can be trolls ?

[iKev]

How is this a troll ? The coward is speaking the truth. If it's such an off-topic, then why the hell was /. so gung-ho about posting IPO news on linux companies (read: redhat, read valinux, read cobalt, read caldera) ? Why did the VA/Linux merger get a beanie award ?? Stop being so hypocritical

I think your facts are off

[sumana]

The market dropped about 5 % on Friday.

Many people own stocks indirectly through their retirement funds. They are "ordinary people" who do not choose which stocks to buy, but they will feel the hit.

If firms lose money, even money that only exists "on paper" (horrible phrase), they lose investment potential and may lay off workers, etc. Big events percolate down.

Ramblings about the market

[mindstrm]

Here are a few thigns it's good to remember.

1) The reason redhat, va, and others lost so much value is because, according to the way stocks are traditionally valued, they were absolutely NOT worth the incredible amounts of money people were paying for them.

2) Also realize that, just because va goes from 300 to 30, this does not mean that VA is going 'broke' or is somehow 'losing money'. It simply means that the world sees it as not as valuable.

3) JDS Uniphase (everyone's heard of it, right?) at it's peak, had a market cap that was worth more than the market caps of Ford & GM combined. Does this seem realistic? Ford & GM employ many many thousands of people, and compbined, turn over a BILLION DOLLARS A MONTH in sales. JDS, though they have profits, good technology, and are certainly a good company, are nowhere near this size, so why were they worth more? Ford & GM going broke would change the entire economy of the country. So many people would be out of work. JDS going out of business would be a small, localized burp.

3) As for people losing money.. well.. I lost some money too... but one must realize, you don't put all your eggs in one basket. Many have said for quite a while that lots of tech stocks were severely overvalued.. everyone had fair warning.

4) People who invested in strong companies will find that their companies will continue to grow, and continue to grow.. (JDS will grow. Cisco will grow. IBM will grow. Hell..even MSFT will grow, even with the trial and all).

5) Many of the worthless b2b and .com companeis will DIE, as they will be unable to properly raise capital due to extrememly low stock valuations. This is GOOD. People must start viewing companies in a proper light, valuating them properly.... yes, a good idea for a .com startup is worth something, but how much? Why is an 'e-mall' that some guy created suddenly worth 50 million dollars? Where are the profits?

6) Invest long, invest smart, don't daytrade. Actually read all about the companies you are investing in. Find out how much stock is out there, who holds it, who's running the company, what experience they have doing so.

7) Cash is king baby!

Re:Ramblings about the market

[viking_kiwi]

Lets take an example a little closer to home...

Silicon Graphics employs hundreds of engineers, makes a wide range of workstations and high powered number cruncher, and has in general a staggering breadth and depth of knowledge in hardware and software

Their present market cap is 1.427 billion.
(http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=sgi&d=t)

Red Hat have... some linux stuff. No profits, a lot of competitors.
The market values them at 3.659 billion
(http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=rhat&d=t)

Even VA systems, in spite of their drop, are still worth over a billion dollars.

Lets keep things in perspective. It'd be my guess that SGI could marshall a lot more talent than the rest of the linux upstarts put together. I'll believe that santity has returned when the Red Hats and VA's drop to maybe 10% of SGI. (Or SGI rises appropriately).

Theres a long way to go yet.

Re:Ramblings about the market

[cian]

Sillicon Graphics isn't the best example though. All the best tech in the world is worth nothing if noone wants to buy what you sell.

Red Hat are ludicrously over priced though

More like the panic of 1857

[argoff]

I wouldn't say it's like 1929 yet. The information age is still making a measurable impact on productivity, commerce, and efficiency. I would say it's more like the panic of 1857, where people didn't understand what the industrial revolution was all about and invested in all sorts of strange factories with strange busisness models that could not hold up profit. No doubt, there alot of dot.com companies out there who have unfloatable busisness models today that are going to be under the heat with the threat of higher interest rates and inflation.

It might not be all that bad. Temporary cycles are good, mild inflation keeps people from hoarding money, and mild recessions discourage excessive debt. Of course I've never trusted central federal authorities like the fed to make free market decisions, but this fed-reserve is seasoned with the fear of inflation and the fear of depressions, so I think they'll do OK - at least to the extent of preventing major disasters. So much ability to screw up in one centralized place is sort of scary though, and foolish monitary policy IMHO.

Nonsense

[interrupt11]

You must be new around here. Slashdot was much more interesting and readable before the moderation system was put in place. Moderation has attracted all kinds of shady people who thrive on the attention they get from moderators.

Here is my suggestion to Rob: every post should start at the same default score, and initially ONLY ALLOW POSTS TO BE MODERATED UP. Dump the -1 rating. At the same time dramatically increase the number of moderators. Everyone on Slashdot should get a voice in moderation! THIS IS WHAT FREE SPEECH IS ALL ABOUT.

Heh

[Greyfox]

Had I got "The Letter" I'd have sold at the end of the first day and made a tidy little sum. I never expected them to go above $50 and I thought they'd drop again from there. Well they went considerably above $50 but they're about where I expected them to be now.

Recent tumble probably *should* be Slashdot fodder

[Babbster]

Considering that one of the biggest factors contributing to the recent fall in stock prices is related to technology stocks, there's some merit to the idea that there should be some information here on Slashdot. The facts that Internet stocks have become the "in" place for people to invest and that the majority of these companies have yet to make dollar one should be of concern to techies as well as to the computer illiterates. This is particularly true of businesses that are currently posting large sales because of heavy discounting (loss-leader) that they are not going to be able to maintain indefinitely. At some point, either the market as a whole is going to realize that these stocks are overvalued or Internet companies are going to start going bankrupt. Either occurrence is going to precipitate falls in stock prices that are going to make the crashes of 1929 and 1989 look like amusing jokes. Oddly enough, this DOES worry be a bit.

The real problem?

[yuggoth]

IANASB, but quite a lot of the "real share value" you are talking about is more or less fake and not backed by real worth.

One problem with the past hi-tech IPOs is that the number of shares on the free market is quite low (compared to the number of shares still in the hands of the companies' founders).

If Bill Gates would decide to sell all his MS stock to finance a private space station, MS price would suffer quite a drop - simply because there wouldn't be a demand for such a large number of shares. The price would drop even Bill sold his stock for entirely personal reasons which hadn't anything to do with Microsoft's economical situation. The same goes for quite some small hi-tech firms and even the larger ones.

E.g. in these days T-Online (the online service of the German Telekom) is having its IPO. The shares are oversubscribed 20-fold and a high share value is expected. But the majority of shares is owned by the German state - if these would also be on the free market, the share value would drop, because the relative demand wouldn't be as strong.

With the "classical" financial, automotive or chemical industry shares this problem isn't as strong because
a) the shares are spread wider (in most cases) and
b) with most firms, the stock value is backed by real worth (e.g. high profits on the products they sell).
Most of the new hi-tech firms have a much too high share value/profit ratio.

Re:The real problem?

[MattXVI]

That's certainly true! And it's a good point. For the majority holder of stock, somebody like Gates or Michael Dell, or countless others, a major sale of stock would deflate the price. So they announce it well in advance, do it over several days, and give a reason for it like "I want to buy Bolivia in cash". But for most investors, the sale of a their stock has almost no effect on the price, and they do indeed receive real currency for it. It's not fake or "just paper". It's money.

Re:The real problem?

[scheme]

f Bill Gates would decide to sell all his MS stock to finance a private space station, MS price would suffer quite a drop - simply because there wouldn't be a demand for such a large number of shares.

Actually Gates has only about 10% of the MSFT stock according to microsoft's 10Q so its share price wouldn't drop that much. However in the current climate it would proabably plummet since investors would think that MSFT was in trouble and would then dump it

Re:The real problem?

[john_boy]

Uhm. You're right on the latter -- investors would see blood, and sell. But selling 10%, regardless of who's doing it, is a big deal. You might not even be able to make the sale -- and it _certainly_ would have a significant effect on the share price; it would drop 'much'. 10% is a lot!

John

Linux stocks falling independently of market

[VAXman]

It is easy to write off the tumbling Linux stocks as just part of the market free-fall, but Linux stocks have fallen completely independently of the rest of the market. LNUX has been falling almost every day since its peak, and has been sub-$100 since before the Microsoft decision. It has all fallen much MORE than the other stocks. MSFT is well over half of its 52-week high, but LNUX is well under 10% of its 52-week high. The drop in Linux stocks has less to do with the market free-fall, than the public's realization that all of the Linux stuff was absolutely nothing besides hype, with no possibility to succeed technically or financially.

Re:Linux stocks falling independently of market

[Stephen Samuel]

LNUX was HORRIDLY over-valued in any case. Looking at it objectively, I didn't consider it much of a investment (for either financial or political reasons!) once the price jumped. While it's rise wasn't that much of a mystery to me (given general linux fever, and the (un)fortunate designation of LNUX), I can easily understand it being hot-potatoed once people got a good look at what they'd paid hundreds of dollars for.
--

Re:Linux stocks falling independently of market

[KagatoLNX]

Have you ever actually run Linux in a production environment? Have you ever had to make, say Exchange Server be half as functional of sendmail on the same box? For that matter, has the "VAXman" ever run a good UNIX (still bitter that VAX didn't do better or something)?

Linux is, hands down, a better server environment for most things. Make a benchmark sometime. Try it under huge load. Unless you blow tens of thousands of dollars on NT Enterprise Edition, you can't come close to the performance or the reliability.

So don't tell me it's technically inadequate, it works for more small to enterprise businesses than you would imagine. And don't tell me it's financially inadequate, because I make a living with it.

The important thing to realize is that, unlike other software, it is difficult to exploit Linux. You can't just "sell linux" and expect to build a business on it. This is good for the economy. It stops people from making money doing nothing. Perhaps any falling Linux stocks are just the value of the companies reflecting the value that a company has, rather than artificially inflating it using preferential business tactics and expensive licensing.

Stock value is not a measure of technical superiority. And the financial value of Linux isn't just selling IT, but rather doing things with it.

Asymmetry=bias, intentional or not

[ralphclark]

FWIW, I think Rob should just grit his teeth and accept that for the sake of balance and journalistic integrity there are some stories that need to be reported even if they aren't intrinsically interesting.

Specifically, if he is going to allow stories about how XYZ Corp's IPO went through the roof then he should report it when the same stock falls through the floor. Surely this is self-evident?

We are mostly tech workers here, and a sudden withdrawal of finance from the industry is bound to affect us eventually in some way. Most of us aren't motivated to go and read the dry pronouncements of the Wall Street Journal. In fact there must be more than a few of us who don't get to hear about it if it doesn't get reported on Slashdot! So if we don't get to read about it here, then where?

Come on Rob, it seems like you're not facing up to your responsibilities. You're a media mogul now and the public is depending on you for the full story.

Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction

Re:Asymmetry=bias, intentional or not

[Black Parrot]

> for the sake of balance and journalistic integrity there are some stories that need to be reported even if they aren't intrinsically interesting.

I disagree. This is not a general purpose news site, or even a tech news site in the conventional sense. It's actually more like a fan site.

If people don't find the stories they want on /., there are about a million other sites out there eager to count their hits.

If /. isn't meeting someone's needs, why do they keep coming back? I don't rage against C|NET because their site is hard to read and usually boring when you do read it. No, I just quit visiting them.

--

Re:Asymmetry=bias, intentional or not

[ralphclark]

don't rage against C|NET because their
site is hard to read and usually boring when you do read it. No, I just quit visiting them.

Well, that puts you squarely in a tiny minority of Slahdot readers. Whenever C|Net or any other mainstream or mainstream tech new site publishes a piece which is anti-hacking, anti-open-source, anti-privacy or anti-freedom, Slashdot almost explodes with resentment and the offending site gets bombarded. It seems that balance *is* expected of other news sites. It would be hypocritical in the extreme to suggest that Slashdot should be exempt from this requirement.

Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction

Isn't a Correction, It's a Mistake

[kevin805]

The justice department has set off a panic. I mean, Sun stock collapses the same day they announce increased earnings?

My theory: investors are willing to gamble on the unpredictability of tech companies, because these average out to be good gambles. But the unpredicatability of tech companies, and the unpredicatabiltiy of the justice department is too much, because all high tech companies are in violation of dozens of anti-trust laws.

Giving away software for free to gain market share? Preditory pricing. Only licensing your patents to people who don't directly compete against you? Sounds very monopolistic. Making proprietary modifications to standards to make sure that people using your products can't switch? ditto.

While all the CEOs are testifying before congress that Microsoft is the only one doing this sort of stuff, the market knows better. No one wants to invest in a regulated industry. Anything you do that makes a lot of money will bring a plague of justice department lawyers trying to prove you're a monopoly. Every time your competitors get mad, they'll complain to the government. Are we supposed to believe that government bureaucrats understand the dynamics of a market that companies can't even predict more than 6 months down the line?

On the bright side, maybe when the economy collapses, and we go back to high inflation, high unemployment, no stock options, and a higher budget deficit, they'll remember what caused it, and the politicians will finally notice that regulation does more harm than good.

--Kevin

Re:Isn't a Correction, It's a Mistake

[Black Parrot]

> The justice department has set off a panic.

You conveniently neglect to notice that the stock market had already been behaving irrationally for about two months before the DoJ decision came down. One day the Dow was up and the NASDAQ was down, the next day the opposite, and occasionally both moved up and down together, just to keep investors guessing.

You also neglect to notice that even the most clueless of pundits have been saying for about a year that all tech stocks have been vastly overvalued, and that a correction was long overdue. Even Steve Balmer stated publicly last year that MSFT - and everyone else - was greatly overpriced.

Your attempt to blame the DoJ suit is without grounds. You're like a 17th Century peasant accusing the grouchy old woman next door of being a witch because your cow's udder went dry. Convenient to have someone to blame, convenient to blame someone you didn't like anyway, but cause and effect is nowhere to be seen.

--

Re:Isn't a Correction, It's a Mistake

[kevin805]

Yes, but if I have hard evidence that she is a witch that's too complicated to explain quickly, then I might just have to tell everyone is a witch because the cows udder dried up. It's unsupported, but I'm convinced on economic grounds that I know well enough to be convinced by, but not well enough to convey to someone else, that the DOJ is bad for the economy.

And I think that it's pretty clear (but not provably so) that the ruling did in fact trigger this current downturn, even if there were other reasons contributing. I disagree that all tech stocks are vastly overvalued. I think that there is value in tech stocks that is poorly accounted for by standard stock valuation methods.

--Kevin

Opinion poll suggestion

[PollMastah]

What do you think will happen to tech stocks in the stock market?

1. The stocks will continue to go down, because people will begin to realize that tech stocks nowadays are waaaay overvalued.
2. It will stabilize after a reasonable value is reached
3. It will skyrocket again when the Next Big Thing hits, just like it did when Linux first became the Next Hot Thing.
4. Man, we better convince all those clueless business people that their investment in tech stocks is worthwhile! 'cos although it's way overvalued, I *ahem* *cough* I live on stocks and I need to feed my kids!
5. Who cares about the stock market?! I live in a cave^H^H^H^Hcomputer lab!
6. This is off-topic! Stop posting such garbage to slashdot!
7. Everything else on Slashdot is off-topic! Post more articles like this!

Have a look at this...

[Evro]

click here to see how badly the Linux stocks are doing, even in comparison with the NASDAQ. (one thing I don't understand about the graph is how Caldera didn't start at 100%, but the graph still shows you the problem)

__________________________________________________ ___

When is a topic Slashdot fodder? Some ideas:

[orpheus]

I like the idea of 'Topic moderation', but primarily because I think it's a more objective methoid of giving feedback to the editors about what actually interests us. Subjective appraisals are fraught with error. Still, it should only be part of the decision when choosing future topics.

If we are going to do this, I'd suggest discrete guidelines. Though I often quibble with the categories in the /. "posting moderation", I think it was overall, a brilliant stroke

Here are a few guidelines off the top of my head

1) If the Slashdot readership might have some unique insight of viewpoint.

In my fields of expertise (like medicine), I often seen discussions of limited values (or potentially harmful) in various Internet fora. I also see some sites where the discussion is far from what I may have learned in medical school, but which are of some significant value nonetheless (e.g. patient support groups, which may massacre the science or circulate dubious treatments are nonetheless often invaluable resources to many patients)

On the other hand, I think most slashdotters have little to add to the subject of a market-wide drop (except for anecdotes and insights into *their* companies, and I see very little of that) It would be difficult for our readers to be unaware of the market decline, and those ho care will go where the level of coverage/discussion is probably higher.

C'mon, we're geeks. We're not tied helplessly to some AOL (or i-Open) keyboard hotbutton. we have choices.

2) If a topic bears directly on a subject that has been of great interest to the Slashdot readership in the past

Privacy, Crypto, closed source fubars (even if they are merely listed under "It's funny, laugh"), cool gadgets, and many other topics fall into this category. If you didn't like most of them, tou wouldn't spend much time at /.

On the other hand, I wonder a little about people who post at length about a topic being "off-topic" If I'm not interested in an article, I may glance at the source material site, but I won't enter into the discussion. Then again, I believe that the guy who walks up to a conversation at a party, just to say it's boring is himself a boor (and bore). I'd rather find an interesting conversation or leave the party.

3) if Slashdot decides editorially to bring a subject to the attention of the readers

This isn't abuse or conspiracy. It's the function of an editor. Yes, /. is a bully pulpit, but that is part of why we like it.

However, it is true that there can be abuses, but most of the genuine abuses under this type of system involve *misrepresentation*, not just the choice of topic. Why? Because /. is just one (relatively modest and specialized) media outlet. Every one of us knows dozens more. We even have a home page customization that gives us one-click access to many other sites.

4) if an item in a core topic is noteworthy and/or interesting

Not everything that fits into one of /.'s core areas is necessarily a good article. I don't come here for Linux config tips, or primary science coverage, or many other subjects that may legitimately occur in some posts or articles

The editor's choices are what made /. interesting (even if the reader responses are what make it valuable)

5) I sure hope you all are a lot more polite when one of your friends raises an item s/he finds interesting, but you don't

__________

Re:Stocks *have been* and will continue to be cove

[heinzkeinz]

Ok, first, none of the stories you listed were posted by CmdrTaco. Second, as he said in his intro to the article, he "only brings up the market when it deals with specific companies that we're interested in, not when the story is "The Market."

This does not mean that the stock market is never mentioned. It means that Slashdot is a niche news site and mainstream news is covered only when it relates directly to Slashdot's niche, ie. News for Nerds.

B

Dude

[dragonfly_blue]

No offense, but learn how to use the paragraph tag please.

irrelevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but compared to some of the childish things that get posted here, a drop like this in the markets is the pinnacle of relevance. For one, there's all the people working for startups who get paid through stock options. If those options become worthless overnight I would think it would be absolutely the most relevant thing in the world to them, since they would not have enough money to pay the rent or buy food, etc. Morale would drop instantly since they would be working for no "pay."

Secondly, if this is a sign of an oncoming recession, many tech workers will likely simply be laid off because down-sizing will again become the corporate buzzword of the month.

I really cannot possibly conceive how you could consider this irrelevant. However, maybe the slogan should be altered so that it says, "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters to Rob Malda." Don't get me wrong, CmdrTaco usually does a bang-up job. But to not post something that is so hugely important to so many Slashdot readers (remember, these are the tech stocks that are dragging everything down) seems irresponsible to me, and outweighs any possible cries of "irrelevant" you may hear from the gallery. I'm sure the people crying "this is irrelevant" will change their tune when they get laid off, or try to get a job and find nobody's hiring.

The future of the entire tech industry may be in question, but yet-another-Carmack-interview and ICANN'T leaving a mailing list open are more relevant than discussing it? At times I wonder how the Slashdot administration's thought process works.

PS: The future viability of the Linux Corporations may also be in question if their stock prices keep sliding. Here is a graphical representation. If RHAT ends up with a stock price of $1, what's going to keep MS from acquiring them? They could probably do a hostile takeover now if they wanted.

Of course it's not off topic..

[Punto]

They have an icon practically for that.

And look at this search result (I was going to post links to the stories, but this is easier)

--

Inflexibility.

[Inoshiro]

Slashdot targets "News for nerds" and other "Stuff that matters." Unfortunately, as in cases like this, we get a bit of a conflict when the story poster doesn't see the relevance.

Rather than harrrasing Mr. Malda, why don't you move to a site that has story moderation so you can see if the general populace wants to read and discuss such a story? Kuro5hin.org is the place. It's oriented towards technology and culture -- not just news about nerdy things or things that matter. We've even had stock stories before.

I agree with Mr. Malda that this story doesn't really fit with Slashdot, it could fit on other sites. So why not use them?
---

Why you should care

[Frizzle Fry]

Since the "who cares?" philosophy seems to be a popular philosophy I'll respond.

I think we should all care because what's bad for the stock market is good for free software. The companies selling proprietary software are all tied strongly to the stock market while Linux, KDE, AbiWord, etc. aren't. There are obviously companies who try to make money off open source software (LNUX, etc.) and I am glad for that. By making Linux more acceptable for use by businesses, government, etc. they help it spread. But, ultimately, we can survive just fine without them. And free sotfware is totally undependant on the market economy. Whether the stock market crashes or reaches its highest point ever, people continue writing code.

The only effect market fluctuations have is to make things more unpredictable and difficult for companies trying to sell proprietary software. And this can only be good for free software.

The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land

CmdrTaco's opinion of a non story

[inah]

let's call for the next /. poll to ask: should the stock market's plummet have an article on /.?

/. doesn't like to post negative net/linux news. more often than not, even good news about linux ends up as some type of flame fodder.

let's be honest, i'm sure several dozen, if not hundreds, of people have posted about the stock crash. i'm not sure what kind of justification anyone can have against considering this a non story.

Yeargh...

[PretzelAvenger]

I think CmdrTaco's point was more that it's been done to death by CNN and stuff, and hence doesn't really need to be covered by Slashdot. Slashdot seems to try to get news stories other outlets don't really focus on. Just my 2 cents (Canadian, so it's like 1.3333333 cents American)

One looses, another one wins

[daWulf]

Ok, stocks are falling.

But we have to see the good side of it. Now those who are just interested in the fast money jumped off and people *interested* in taking part in the technology sector may buy the shares,
people like /. readers.

-- just a thought, no claim to be the one and only reality

Rob Isn't Kidding..Grab a clue here.

[Bowie J. Poag]

Here's an excerpt from an email conversation between Rob and I which took place in April of 1999. It echoes the same sort of sentiments that this (today's) post does. He isn't kidding.

( Me: )

> (or yours) for granted. We were just looking for a creative way to drum up a
> little support, and have some fun in the process. :) The "Beer For Rob Malda"
> poll turned out to be one of the most popular user polls we've ever had. :)

( Rob: )

*laugh*. No problems. I just get annoyed occasionally. You should see the
submissions box. Not posting a story usually == Conspiracy on my part
according to some people. Its annoying ;)


And here's an excerpt out of a different email, two weeks later in early May of '99..

( Me: )

> Yeah, sometimes. The fun isn`t so much in painting the stuff, as it is in
> actually delivering it, and seeing people use and enjoy it. Much of it is
> just plain hard work..Prop for E alone took me well over a month to
> produce. Making it was an ordeal--but delivering it, and seeing people's
> chins drop was a joy. :)

( Rob: )

*laugh*

Its a little different for me. So much of my feedback is typically
negative that I just ignore most of it. I do what I like- I always
have, but that 'jaw dropping' doesn't work to well here-- I've posted
3500+ stories, and 3400 were fine, but once a week I post one that
someone disagrees with and WHAM ;)


Maybe that gives you a little window on what it might be like to be on Rob's side of the table. The rest of you can give the guy a fucking break and sit on your hands if you have nothing better to do than bitch. If you think about the combined effect of thousands of people whining a similar whine, you wouldn't want to be on the recieving end either. If you appreciate Slashdot, great, show your appreciation by not adding to the noise. Consider using your brain and doing something useful with it.


Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)

Re:Good...

[EINSmith]

Yes...bow down to the moderators. They are ALWAYS right. So are you a Signal11 suckhole too?

Offtopic and Not News

[BitGeek]

I agree with the editorial tendency not to report the stock market on slashdot. Its off topic because its not news and because its not news nerds need. Its not news because the market is down. The market goes up or down every day. Thats what the market does. Cisco isn't even down to where it was in December-- a short time ago. This is a short term market fluctuation-- like the market fluctuates every day-- and therefore its not news. Now a major change in the tech industry would be news and it would affect the market- but the news is the change in the industry, not a short term market swing.

Moderate this up

[gargle]

WTF is this a troll? The truth is being said, plainly and directly.

P.S. How many moderator points does Rob Malda get?

====

Re:The REAL reason for the market plummetting

[IanCarlson]

Welcome to Slashdot.

The man was trying to create a "conspiracy theory", like the one Malda was talking about in the summary of this story. He was parodying the post he was repling to. It was not a serious post. He will not go out and try to over-turn their evil plot. It was a joke. Jokes are little pieces of humor that are sometimes mistaken by total, humorless morons as a political agenda.

If I were him, I would be taken offended by your slinging of the word "nazi". But, if he was serious about his post, then he wouldn't even be a nazi. Hell, he wouldn't even be a clan member. He would just barely make it into the category of "redneck". But, the real point is that he isn't. He was making a joke. So, you and your "anti-fascist"-ism is misplaced and ignorant.

You claim to be "anti-fascist", then say "These guys (Nazis) should be censored!". You're talking out of both sides of your ass.

And, I don't see the point of blathering about your agenda on Slashdot, anyway. You can go protest fascism in world, were it happens everyday, over and over, not on Slashdot. You psuedo-anti-fascists are the ones who have created needlessly stringent sexual harassment laws in the workplace and an endless number of papers on "political correctness". I can't even say "fireman", "policeman", "mailman", "waitress", or "bag-lady" without being scorned by the appropriate committee.

So, on behalf on every sane person left in the free world I say, "Go Away." We never wanted you here in the first place.

CmdrTaco deems this article offtopic.

[Banjonardo]

He says its offtopic. He ADMITS it is offtopic. Its his site, and he can post any offtopic article he wants. When he does, he usually gets JonKatz sized amounts of flame. When he does and ADMITS it, (aka today) everyone just has to go and tell him that is IS on topic. (see top of page.) The slashdot courtesy rule: Do not post corrections to the article. At all. Period. If you think it is actually interesting, ask 10 people first. if they all agree, and none are imaginary friends, THEN post to correct the article. (expect to be moderated down by ME)

READ THE POSTS MARKED AS TROLLS!!

[gargle]

Something very wrong and smelly is going on here. Looks at the posts by ACs marked as trolls in this article:

AC posts link to Stock Market stories on /.

AC asks: if stock market stories are offtopic, why do all the Linx IPO stories appear on /.

This one here

And many more. Go read them. Don't let Slashdot hide them.

2 conclusions:
1. Slashdot moderators are idiots.
2. Rob Malda has a lot of moderator points

====

Don't negotiate with terrorists.

[Booker]

I don't think this is a smart move, Rob. What's next, stories about hot grits and natalie portman? As soon as you give in to these demands, you're out of control of your site. I've been pissed off lately about all this stuff too, but I don't think this is a good precedent.

---

Stock market crash should interest slashdotters

[waveman]

Why?

1. The stock market is the best, most forward looking, leading indicator of where the ecionomy is going. If the market crashes, it is fairly likely that the economy will be in the dirt in 12-24 months. That affects everyone, because the economy drives the job market.

2. High stock prices lower the cost of funds to companies. Thus you get companies like Redhat raising large sums of money and they are using a lot of that money to improve Linux, GCC etc. If that money dries up - which is likely after a major crash - life will be tougher for Linux. Some of those who work for those companies may be looking for work again.

All in all, definitely of interest I would think.

Re:big deal

[jigmasterj]

>>companies that had large market caps will no longer be able to pay you insane salaries anymore

Actually, you mean the CEOs will be unwilling to cut their salaries, some of them 800 times that of a typical worker, so they will fire you and take a bonus. Michael Eisner of Disney got a $1 Billion salary last year, half of which would be enough to give every working joe at disney a $4200 bonus at the end of the year. The middle class will get hurt, but only because the upper management struggles to maintain their high salaries.

ahh April 15th?

[Anonymous Coward]

one possible reason for the drop: April 15th everybody who was making a killing over the past year now has to pay the piper. (in this case the uncle)
Where do you get the money? from the market. (aka many people having to pay capital gains sold shares)
Hopefully everybody realizes this and tries to buy at the low but it may go down further. If people do not realize this then things can get really nasty. This could be like Oct 87 where people (myself included) saw that the market was dropping.
I personally believe that many of the heavily over valued securities will continute to take a beating but the securities properly valued may do ok. Look at P/E ratings. Remember a P/E rating of 20-30 has been a historical norm for various securities.

These views do not necessarly reflect my current/past/or any future employers position.
- JAFO - Street Walker

A proposal

[schuster]

Well, fwiw, I am Jewish and I find those Jewish Conspiracy theroies to be quite entertaining. That said, I think you're correct, there are some people who post here who simply shouldn't be allowed to post.

Now the quesion becomes, what is the criteria for determining if a post should be censored. You and I would probably say common sense execpt that common sense means different things to different people. I would suggest that there's a difference between the tasteful/funny trolls (ie. porman/grits trolls) and the people who post stuff that is offensive, gross, etc. The later group should be moderated down to (-2). The following is just one example of a (-2) quality post:

J0hN K47Z 5uCk5 b1G H41rY B4115

I think there needs to be a -2 because some of this stuff just doesn't need to be seen and just wastes bandwidth. Maybe if the kiddies that post that post this stuff got moderated all the way down to hell, they'd stop coming here.

I would also suggest that they make a requirement that people have an account in order to post. People can still post anonymously if they want, but since you now have their account behind it, you can still assign them karma ratings. We'll have to assume that the moderators will be able to distinguish -1 quality posts from -2 quality posts (I'd like to think they can) but maybe, just maybe, if things work out, all the trolls will just go away. Sorry for the off-topic post, btw.

The whole valuation thing is ESR's trip

[Chris Johnson]

You know, there's a whole side of the 'Open Source Movement' for whom all this really is irrelevant, no matter what anyone might say. The 'gnuuuu-linux' folks, Stallmanites, RMS. Not everybody ran out and madly started buying stock and waving their tails at IBM in a seductive manner. It's easy to forget that after the days of massive IPOs and stuff- it looked at first glance like those people were right in some way, like they were really onto something.

Well... do you know why my GPLed code still has the same value it had back when linux/gpl/opensource was IPO heaven? I'll tell you why- because I'm perhaps a bit strange and that concept, that the stuff I _shared_ had a speculative value, never even 'computed' for me. It's a big nil pointer for me, because to me the value of the stuff I share _is_ that sharing, is the RELATIONSHIPS I create by doing so. _that_ is where the value is and that is where Linux started and why it will always have a core value that can't be swept away...

I've built a recording studio (obHype: mp3.com/ChrisJ) and several times now, I've offered to help out CmdrTaco and the whole Geeks In Space crowd, which would be fun and not too hard for me to do. And you know, from the viewpoint of a linux-stock millionare, I can see how the help of some dude in Vermont building equipment with a soldering iron and wirestrippers might seem nice but pointless- more fun to buy your own! Bigger mixers, more tracks, etc etc etc since money flows like water!

Well- he ain't a linux stock millionare anymore. I'm not sure how many of the Slashdot people's plans are still feasible- but _I'm_ still there, offering to help. What I offered never had anything to do with money and demands nothing from Taco and company but sharing- let me help out, let's play, let's see what we can do.

Look around- there are a _lot_ of Linux things that are utterly unaffected by the crash. People trying to 'rub it in' about the obliteration of those wild valuations? It's like they're speaking a different language- and they always were. ESR may be shocked or hurt by all this, because it hits him where he lives- he always bought heavily into wanting Linux legitimised by business and valuation. Some of us always resisted this pressure to redefine the value in money and profit terms. Now maybe it'll be easier to make the point that Linux is not a phenomenon based on money.

*g* anybody considered the idea that if there _is_ another Great Depression and everybody's reduced to living off pentium IIs and such ( ;) ), they won't be able to afford The Microsoft Tax, and will _have_ to turn to Linux and proliferate it, not because it is a lottery ticket to wealth, but because it is free?

Yes, it *is* a "Linux stock tumble"

[Zico]

Linux stocks have been dropping all year, even when NASDAQ was going up. Since April 3, when all the tech stocks started getting hammered, Linux stocks in particular have been tremendous losers. Some numbers, in increasing order of losses:

• Compaq: -10%
• Dell: -10%
• Intel: -15%
• Microsoft: -18%
• NASDAQ itself: -21%

• RedHat: -42%
• Andover.net: -52%
• Caldera: -52%
• VA Linux: -54%

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

Re:Yes, it *is* a "Linux stock tumble"

[Zico]

Okay, you'd like to use March 10 as your date, but did you do the comparisons? The tank-job of Linux stocks looks even worse. A la my original post, here are the losses:

• Dell: -8%
• Intel: -9%
• Compaq: -14%
• Microsoft: -26%
• NASDAQ itself: -34%

• RedHat: -65%
• Caldera: -67%
• VA Linux: -73%
• Andover.net: -74%

Heh, no offense, but could you have picked a worse example? :)

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

A hopefully informative ICQ transcript

[spikesahead]

Hello slashdotters. I apologise for the size of this posting, but in it I described the stock market to someone who didn't understand it. I hope there is someone else out there I can likewise enlighten, and perhaps whore up some karma points for myself :)

4/15/00 2:57 AM Rommel Ooooh, the stock market makes me wish I had nippels the size of toledo so I could rent them out to survive the coming great depression!

Lemur *points out you have created a terribly confunsed fox with that statement*

Rommel it's badnasty

Lemur rEAL BAD? HOW COME i HAVEN'T EVEN HEARD ABOUT IT? (oops, caps lock) I watch the news every day.

Rommel they're trying to downplay the hell out of it, but the dow was down 744 points on friday, it creeped back up to 612 down, but that's still down

Lemur What does it mean?

Rommel it means the investors are running scared, the stock market was melting like a candle in a quasar

Lemur *a clueless face greets you...

Rommel http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/2000 0414/aonline210441_000.htm

Lemur That looks not-fun to read..

Rommel well that's what it's all about. if you want to know, go there. someone has censored the press of the rest of the country

Rommel the worst stock market drop EVER and no news about it in america? that's bullshit, I watched the mother f'er happen

Lemur Stock fox?

Rommel tell everyone you know, biggest market drop ever and they're trying to sweep it under the rug

Rommel I woke up, I joined a couple channels on undernet, someone mentioned the stock market was disolving. I understand the stock market rather well, so that filled me with an odd mixture of glee and fear. I hit my favorite news sources and they're all pissing in their pants. then the market closed and all the news articles were quietly swept under the rug. that's bullshit

Lemur Who/what does it effect?

Rommel everybody, the last time the stock market crashed was 1920. ever heard of a little thing called the great depression?

Lemur yeah but I don't know what that means... The stock market went down and suddenly everyone is poor... There was no money to back up the numbers... Where does it go?

Rommel it never existed to begin with, that's the secret. the idea of the stock market is that I have some money, and I give it to you in the form of stock, but everyone looks at me as if I still have it. you go spend it and give me some of what you make off of it, and whoever you give it to gives it away again as stock, but everyone looks at him as if he still had it. it just goes around and around until someone figures it out and wants their money back

Lemur When someone ends up with stock they can't use?

Lemur use/sell

Rommel yeah. the only reason people SHOULD by stock is that you get back a pretty good return on what you give out, based on what the company you gave it to is earning. but if the company suddenly doesn't make money anymore nobody wants it's stock and they all want their money back. the company won't give it, they spent it all, and nobody will buy it from them because it's worthless. so they just flushed their money down the toilet

Rommel they they think, "oh shit, maybe I should get rid of the rest of this stock before the same thing happens." something is only valuable if more people want it than has it, if nobody wants it it isn't worth anything, and the only reason managers and CEOs bust their asses for the company is that they have lots of stock and they want to keep it valuable. if they're stock isn't worth shit anymore they tend to shoot themselves and then all us workers don't have jobs anymore

Rommel the dow and nasdaq were pushed up by people saying 'hey! these dot.com stocks may make me a good return someday! I want to buy them NOW so I can make a lot of money later. these companies are never going to make money, and when the stock holders figure that out they find out all the money they spent would have been better utilized to kindle a fire to keep them warm when the next depression hits because of the morons and their dot.com stocks

Lemur oh..

Rommel see why I'm nervous yet?

Lemur yeah

Rommel AND NOT ONLY THAT, but everybody and their sister has been working for years and years to put money into a 401k plan, which is a way to put your money into the stock market. if the market crashes it's just bilked most of america out of their retirement plans. and people won't be happy with that

Lemur yikes

Rommel idiots, all of them. I have no money put into a 401k, because I would rather have that money now than watch it disolve later. like any jar, it only gets fuller as long as people put more into it than they take out. if everyone puts it in at once it looks like it's filling really fast, so people put more in. when people get old and start to take it back out, it turns into the social security system that there won't be a dime left in when I get old

Rommel the difference is that this time instead of a government program run bankrupt it will be the stock market, which is tied to our frigging jobs. IDIOTS. I want to move to the asteroid belt

Rommel the reason you don't hear about this is that nobody wants to hear it. it's making money right now, so screw the future. the ones putting it up will be living in barbados off the cash they milked off the market by the time push comes to shove

Everything in Slashdot is uninteresting these days

[heroine]

3 years ago I read more Slashdot. Today I read more Wired and EE Times. Ever since Columbine, Slashdot comments have consisted of mainly high school students ranting about how life sucks. The shift toward politics and cryptography is so boring it might just be the reason everyone would rather talk about Natalie Portman at senior prom than what new crypto export regulation came out yesterday. Even CNN doesn't focus as much on politics as Slashdot does because it's too boring.

Fun Money Doesn't Last Forever

[Municipa]

For some reason, whenever people tell me about the hit they've taken on the stock market, I'm not too sympathetic. And immediatly, a scene plays in my head from the Simpsons. The one where Homer buys an obscene amount of Disney Land-Type Money from a worker and she says the different between this money and real money is that it's 'Fun' when actually it's a load of crap.

Jon Katz? Is he still around?

[Zach Baker]

In all likelihood, I imagine Jon Katz's articles have improved greatly, but the primary reason I got a Slashdot account was to excise his frivolous articles from my headline page. The only time I hear about these kind of things (like the Voices from the Hellmuth thing) is when other people mention them. Haven't read a JonKatz post in over a year now, and don't miss them. Gentle readers, Slashdot preferences are your friend.

Now then, as far as the stock market in general, I pretty much agree it's off-topic except for the fact that stock investing is probably a serious hobby for more nerdfolk than Quake, amateur radio, or customizing their cars.

M$+tumble=Wall Street Tumble

[dvdave]

If what this guy says is true, a stock tumble by Bill and the boys, could have a large impact on the market. An interesting read even if 1/2 of it is true.

The crew

[oog_rocks]

cmdrtaco and hemos run the site, the rest of the people are allowed in by them. personally i think they do a much worse job of things because they *aren't* nerds(think katz), but hemos and malda are interesting. and roblimo is an idiot, and i don't find that neccessary to back up. what i would love to know is how robin was selected as a /. editor.

Iraq bombing

[Trojan]

The Iraq bombing of a while ago got a story. It broke all /. records and posting was disabled and re-enabled several times.

Isn't Slashdot about stories which may be buried?

[orichter]

I don't presume to speak for the Slashdot community, but I've always found that the reason that slashdot is so useful to me is that it has stories which, while I could find them somewhere else, I would have to wade through a massive amount of noise, just to get to the "News for Me. Stuff that matters." Now I don't have any problem with a story about how the market has crashed, but you'd have to have been living in a cave not to already have heard this, and in this sense, it is not particularly valuable to me.

Several months ago, in the course of my work, Jack Simth of ABC news was filming a segment for ABC Nightly News. During the course of the shoot, they informed us that there was some breaking hot story at HP. When he told me what it was about, I told him that I had read about it on Slashdot almost a week before. This is the real value of Slashdot to me. I hate to say it Cmdr. Taco, but on the story about the stock market slideing, you got scooped.

Please don't take this a criticism, I think slashdot is one of the greatest sites on the net. And for those who think it has been slipping lately, to paraphrase Linus Torvalds:
If you think you can do it better, by all means do it.

Re:The REAL reason for the market plummetting

[Anonymous Coward]

i for one will not tolerate intolerance.

How to make the conspiracy theorists shut up.

[Kris_J]

Easy. Whenever a user submits a story, a forum is made available for it via their user page regardless of whether or not it gets posted to the front page. Or perhaps every story submission goes in at 0 and the trained mammals prod the good stories to +1 or +2. Then users can decide which level of stories, or which member's submissions they want to see and no one can say they're being censored.

Re:junior Taco

[unitron]

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of alleged "junior Tacos" didn't show up out of the woodwork back when everybody thought Rob had struck it rich. :-)

Re:I don't know about that.

[Frizzle Fry]

I agree with you only in the sense that a total economic collapse would be dangerous. If there were a massive economic crash, everyone would be too worried about feeding their families to write free software. But, baring that, I don't think the fluctuations of the market have any effect.

The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land

I think...

[TheWarlocke]

You need a visit, complete with machete and vat of acid. Very simply, anyone who did their homework realized that while Linux is a good long-term investment because at some point it WILL be a dominant force in the computer industry, the sudden astronomical overvaluation of most of the Linux stocks was totally artificial. It was driven by the hype generated by the media who acted like they had discovered "the next big thing," when in fact what they discovered was something anyone even slightly in the know about the future of computing had known about for years... That the market would eventually demand more reliability and security and interoperability through open standards -- a demand that Linux (and the BSD's) meet far better than closed and proprietary solutions could ever hope to do. So what was Slashdot worth to Andover? The answer to that lies not in the current market volatilty, but in what happens to _all_ of Andover's Linux holdings over the next several years. I'd say the future is bright enough. But when all the big IPOs happened and the stocks went through the roof, everyone should have known that the overvaluations were bound to correct themselves down to a more realistic value eventually. So before you resort to things like calling someone an idiot, perhaps you should think about what THEY'RE saying, and about how small minded and insignificant you are to someone who takes time to try to understand the issue at hand rather than make kneejerk reactionary remarks.

On a personal note, I hope you're sterile... I'd hate to think people like you are capable of breeding.

NASDAQ crashes and burns

[rlp]

I must respectfully disagree with CmdrTaco. The news is certainly relevant to the technical community. If you're an employee of a start-up and suddenly need Robert Ballard to locate your stock options - that's significant. High-tech start-ups can't afford high salaries - they run on stock options. VC's expect to recoup their investments (and a whole lot more) from the IPO. The IPO also funds the start-up to go to the next stage (and perhaps even make a profit - naah!). That all came to a stop on Friday. IPO's are being cancelled, options have lost their cachet. If this is a temporary dip - no problem, otherwise ...

LNUX Going down in FLAMES

[Skim123]

LNUX's drop has been pretty steady since its incredibly high IPO. It makes Microsoft's drop look like a minor hiccup. I think LNUX is a good example of what happens when a tech stock is grossly overvalued. $320 per share? For a company selling a FREE operating system?

Tee hee, you gotta love the times we live in...

LNUX Chart: http://money.go.com/Quote ?at=0&sm=0&sf=0&ticker=lnux&si=3

Re:Linux stock low...

[CurtisLeeFulton]

Agreed. I'd say RH is a huge bargain at this point. Especially considering they own Cygnus. . .

Don't know what to say about what the average /.er thinks though. Seems like the discussions have been infested by vicious dogs howling for the death of linux companies. But yeah, I know there's some peeps such as myself who understand that RH is going to grow into a very profitable company.

Slow to Story

[Skim123]

I agree that Slashdot is slow to getting a story out... If you want to get really breaking news, you gotta go to DrudgeReport.com... granted, it's usually about politics, and has a right-wing agenda, but, shit, the stuff comes out before it happens...

A nonstory? Yeah, right!

[Mr. White]

If there's one story that impacted more geeks in the past week it's definately this one. Sure, "Carmack Speaks" was a nice little story, but it definately doesn't compare to this. There are many geeks out there that have a lot of money tied to the stock market. This is definately for them.

Also, maybe CmdrTaco is just pissed. Assuming he got lots of stock from Andover, this was not a good day for him, that's for sure. Andover.net lost a third of its value just on Friday and the ANDN stock is trading at 10, way off from its high of 90. Personally, I find it hard to believe that his interest in this can "fill a shotglass". If my money was riding on this, I sure would be interested!

Nasdaq dropped 24%

[Squeeze Truck]

In 1987, the Nasdaq lost about 11% of its total value.

Friday the Nasdaq lost 24%, or nearly a full quarter of its value. So says CNBC anyway.

Realise though that this is the Nasdaq we're talking about. These stocks aren't exactly time-tested performers. I wouldn't be suprised if LinuxOne is part of their index.

Up until about 2 weeks ago when the DJIA (whose stocks *are* time-tested) was making some long overdue corrections and the Nasdaq was still rocketing up to increasingly unsustainable numbers, the news media actually started to ignore the DJIA as an indicator and focused mainly on the happy happy Nasdaq.

At least we won't have to put up with *that* nonsense anymore.

No, it's an "Insane IPO stock tumble"

[DragonHawk]

It isn't Linux companies; it is companies that were hugely over-valued at their IPO. The latest Wall Street insanity is Linux. Before that, it was portals. Before that, it was Internet commerce companies. Before that, it was general Internet companies. This isn't so much a reflection of Linux companies as it is a reflection of Wall Street's rather short attention span.

As an example: In the past year, Yahoo!, everyone's favorite Internet company, and one of the few Wall Street darlings to make a profit, as fallen 78 percent. Far more then any Linux company you mention. Yet I don't think Yahoo is going anywhere.

Re:No, it's an "Insane IPO stock tumble"

[King Babar]

As an example: In the past year, Yahoo!, everyone's favorite Internet company, and one of the few Wall Street darlings to make a profit, as fallen 78 percent.

Uh, no. I think somebody might have missed a stocksplit or something. On an adjusted basis, the price of YHOO was $94 and change for the week of April 12, 1999. Last week, YHOO finished at $116. So over the last year, YHOO is actually up! Now, I don't know if this will be true by the time most people read this on Monday morning. The last I checked, the Nikkei was tanking *big time*, like down over 8%, while NASDAQ futures on GLOBEX had fallen as far as they were allowed to.

Re:No, it's an "Insane IPO stock tumble"

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Not only is Yahoo not down for the year, but the Linux stock are down 78%. VA Linux is down 90% from its peak, and it is falling like a stone. Red Hat is flat from its IPO, down 75% from its peak, and, likewise, falling. Caldera is now down 67% from its opening day close, 75% from its peak. and falling. Corel...well, Corel doesn't count, it really is a lousy company run by a crook. The more it falls, the better.

But even investing in the legitimate Linux companies has been an exercise in catching knives.

is it really off-topic?

[lgas]

Of course it's up to the Slashdot staff to decide what they consider off topic, but under the moniker "News for Nerds / Stuff that Matters" I would say that there are any number of valid arguments for why this is not off-topic.

Probably the most important one in my personal opinion is the fact that a vast majority of geeks and slashdot readers probably work in the tech sector and a vast majority of those probably took a hefty option plan as an alternative to a higher salary. Probably more so than the average American, the geeks reading slashdot have probably been clutching their wallets and doubling over in pain recently.

Aside from that, another obvious connection is the fact that tech stocks are all the buzz in the market these days, and many people are blaming Microsoft or at least the Microsoft ruling for the dive. Especially when you consider that all the Linux and other non-Microsofty organizations have taken big hits too, I think there is plenty for geeks to have opinions about on this topic.

Wait just a minute there, Rob

[Anonymous Coward]

CmdrTaco is right. Slashdot doesn't cover the stock market or IPOs or any of this nonsense.

I must have imagined all of these. Stupid me. I hate it when I have these hallucinations.

I guess the topic isn't relevant until Jon Katz gives us his up-to-the-minute commentary four weeks from now. I can see it already. "There's been a disturbing trend affecting a lot of technology stocks and nobody seems to have noticed. They're all going down. Did I mention I have a new book coming out, I Suck So Much Ass That My Last Name Should Be Hoover? You can read all about it in Revenge of the Escape of the Return to the More Voices from the Hellmouth.

2 The Upcoming LinuxOne IPO by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 23, @12:30PM EST 220
2 "LinuxOne" files for an IPO by CmdrTaco on Wednesday September 22, @04:53PM EST 165
2 Red Hat IPO Price Range Increase by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 10, @01:45PM EST 165
2 Red Hat IPO Story at Yahoo by CmdrTaco on Saturday August 07, @04:02PM EST 89
2 E*Trade Opening Red Hat IPO to Members by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 04, @03:34PM EST 121
2 Red Hat IPO Fiasco Worries E*Trade Stock Holders by CmdrTaco on Sunday August 01, @01:48PM EST 133
2 Salon on the Red Hat IPO Eligibility by CmdrTaco on Friday July 30, @09:51AM EST 238
2 Barred from Red Hat IPO? by CmdrTaco on Wednesday July 28, @12:41PM EST 320
2 The Anti-Linux-IPO Howto by CmdrTaco on Friday July 23, @08:45AM EST 51
2 Red Hat IPO Update by CmdrTaco on Friday July 16, @10:12AM EST 141
2 Red Hat IPO Details by CmdrTaco on Wednesday June 09, @04:02PM EST 99
2 Caldera IPO? by CmdrTaco on Wednesday June 09, @05:17AM EST 12
2 Red Hat & VA IPO Speculation by CNET by CmdrTaco on Wednesday June 02, @01:15PM EST 71
2 Red Hat IPO Rumors on news.com by CmdrTaco on Saturday June 27, @09:09AM EST 6
1 LinuxOne Continued Complications by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 16, @10:08AM EST 217
1 LinuxCare Gets $32M In Funding by CmdrTaco on Tuesday December 14, @02:30PM EST 69
1 VA Linux Systems Sends "The Letter" by CmdrTaco 1 Andover.Net Files for IPO by CmdrTaco on Friday September 17, @07:31AM EST 176
1 Marc Ewing Speaks by CmdrTaco on Tuesday September 07, @03:50PM EST 66
1 Linux Mandrake Gets Major Investor by CmdrTaco on Monday August 16, @08:32AM EST 23
1 Geeks in Space, Episode 4 by CmdrTaco on Thursday July 29, @01:36PM EST 45
1 E-Trade backs down, lets Red Hat IPO folks in by CmdrTaco on Thursday July 29, @08:39AM EST 131
1 redhat.com Site Redesigned by CmdrTaco on Monday July 26, @11:02AM EST 86
1 Red Hat IPO Surprise by CmdrTaco on Tuesday July 20, @04:28PM EST 307
1 Be Inc. IPO launched by CmdrTaco on Tuesday July 20, @02:32PM EST 124
1 Slashdot Acquired by Andover.net by CmdrTaco on Tuesday June 29, @08:30AM EST 434
1 Return of the Quickies by CmdrTaco on Tuesday June 22, @08:01PM EST 109
1 The Answer to iMac Envy: NEC's Z1 by CmdrTaco on Thursday June 17, @04:46PM EST 232
1 Red Hat Commentary on ABC by CmdrTaco on Monday June 14, @10:48AM EST 113
1 Re: The Charity Case for Red Hat by CmdrTaco

love

[phwiffo]

An economy is quite literally what people are doing and how successful they are at doing it. The stock market is not the economy, it's a reflection of investors perception of the economy. So, the stock market doesn't interest me in the least as it's only the informed opinion, and in many cases only intuition, of a frappucino drinking, luxury sedan driving yuppie who has no connection to what real people are "doing and how well they are doining it". Worse off is the fact that if people are not doing well at what they are doing, there only action is to depress the economic status of these unsucessful people! Of course humanity isn't important when your life consists of finding the "next big thing" to finance your vicarious lifestyle.

That is why the stock market doesn't interest me.

User moderated stories on front page?

[Anonymous Coward]

What was that site where the user moderated the submission queue and the highest ones got posted on the front page? Why can't slashdot do that? I would just go to the other site but there weren't many comments. I think it was some php3 version like slash code called "Scoop". Seemed really good but I can't remember the url.

Re:User moderated stories on front page?

[Mike A.]

You're thinking of kuro5hin.org. I just discovered it last week, and it's okay. Fewer comments, but the story set doesn't look much worse than Slashdot's; and the gritsboys haven't found it yet, so the comments are pretty good.

--

Conspiracy theory

[Nishi-no-wan]

How's this for a conspiracy theory?

1. About 70,000 techies flood the e-mail of a large security corporation saying that they don't like what they're doing.
2. After the two sides try to convince the other of their respective validity, nothing real gets accomplished.
3. To put those techies in their place, The Good Ol' Boys Club starts dumping tech stocks.

Taco - its your choice

[cyanoacrylate]

The funny thing about this is, that everyone seems to have an opinion about what should be, or shouldn't be, on today's Slashdot.

Consider: during an average day, for an average paper, there is only room to print 5% of the news that reaches the newsroom of a (traditional) paper. This number is dated, and I suspect its more like 1% these days. Anyways, it is up to the editors to decide what should be printed, ie. what is important to the readers. Always, there is some human, with, by necessity, a bias, choosing what should be printed and what should not.

So, we come to slashdot, and this story. Taco obviously didn't want to post it, for whatever reasons he has. Obviously, everyone knows about the market correction in the past week, everyone probably knows someone that lost money in the last week, and everyone should know that keeping your life savings in the market is one of the best ways to retire penniless.

Now then - did Taco think that any of these things have anything to do with security, languages, hardware, Open Source, Free Software, social implications of technology and technology change?

No.

Its Taco's / Hemos' / Andover's site. They can run it however they want. If you don't like it, start up stockdot.org, and run live numbers and comments on VA, RedHat, etc. I'm sure you'll triple the readership of slashdot.

Cyano

PS - maybe someone should start up trolldot? That way we could send them all there...

It's News For Nerds, Isn't It?

[istartedi]

I mean, come on Taco, a *lot* of the people who read /. have an interest in this. Without modern computing, there would be no NASDAQ market. Like it or not, the market is part of the fabric of our lives.

Consider this: One of the most famous headlines *ever* was when a publication that one would think has nothing to do with Wall Street reported on the crash of '29. "Wall Street Lays an Egg" is indelibly etched on the minds of many Americans. The publication was Variety. A periodical geared towards Hollywood and its interests. What does Wall Street have to do with movies? Arguably nothing, but the editors of Variety recognized that it was important enough to warrent a huge banner headline on their front page, and that crash didn't have anything to do with the entertainment industry specificly.

Flash forward to today, and a significant market correction occurs. Many believe it's due to an overvaluation of technology stocks, so this time there is arguably a link to the interests of /.ers. You wait until two days after the event and whine that it's not important.

Re:NEWFLASH: Linux is FREE!

[b0gey]

i think the largest part of many linux company's revenue is in custom solutions and support. if a bigger company chooses to go with linux for their servers, they need support. believe it or not, a faq is not always the best way to solve a problem at 5am with 3 hrs until the business crowd comes in to work.

Dotcom Bubble

[nihilogos]

Those who don't know their history are destined to repeat it. In the 1800's a British company called South Sea Mining or something was formed to make vast fortunes by extracting gold from seawater. They offered to lend the British government a large some of money for empire concerns and soon rumours began to spread, their share prices skyrocketed and everybody wanted a piece of it. Despite the fact that the company had never extracted an ounce of gold from seawater and wouldn't have had a clue how to.

Naturally everbody lost lots of money, I think it was one of the first instances of finance markets asserting themselves as independent entities and not tolerating mass stupidity. ( I can kind of see how academics become interested.)

Tech companies like Sun, Intel and to a lessor extent RedHat that actually have some substance behind their shares won't be so badly affected, but some of the 'Dot Com' companies ... There's one floating on the Australian share market today (good luck) called bigshop.com.au that doesn't actually have a website yet, Alchemy INC would probably *be* a better investment.

Anyway, as a wannabe Marxist, I hate the stock market too.

Re:Dotcom Bubble

[Glowing Fish]

From all that I have seen, and from my own personal experience, this is probably the way it is going to be.

After all, everyone knows that the internet will be here for a while, but they don't know exactly what it will be used for.

the business types, being their usual creative selves, figured that the best use of this epoch-making technical tool was to sell online rutabegas, Viagra and Hello Kitty Lip Gloss. Now everybody realized that was a stupid idea, so that is gone. But the technical backbone of the internet isn't going away.

Although hopefully Micro$oft will.

Re:Interest

[photozz]

So what if he owns stock..I OWN stock in most of the companies that dived, but I'm not crying about it. Some of us at least have the brains to know that out stock problems are not going to get any better by sitting at home whining about it to the rest of the world.

Re:I don't know about that.

[King Babar]

If the worst possible thing happened and say we get another version of the 1930's happening again don't expect almost any new software to be produced and also further don't expect anyone to give a damn about writing free software.

Huh? Let's pretend for the moment that many people who write free software do it because it's fun. Now, why would those people suddenly lose interest in something they think is fun just because economic times are hard? I suppose you could argue that they'd have to work twice as hard to support families or some such thing, but I'd be surprised if that caused them to ditch something that gave them joy and the respect and recognition of their peers. It has only been very recently that free software developers had even the tiniest chance of becoming truly rich.

Or think about art. Art and artists might seem to flourish more when times are good and people spend money on art. But I don't think that means that the art world goes away when times are bad (sometimes the opposite).

I just want the Slashcode.

[EdlinUser]

Why's Taco hiding the Slashcode?
I want the Slashcode.
I want it now!!!!!

what?
oh, nevermind.

Market stumble only a small part of the story

[Glowing Fish]

I think a more important story, related to the market stumble, is the fact that the IMF\World bank protests show that global corporatism has over played its hand. I don't know if the protests going on in Washington DC are inside of the scope of Slashdot news, but they are certainly important, and also related to the Stock Market.

Personally, I think that global corporatism has overplayed its hand, and people are getting pissed off. Maybe 1-5% of Americans are getting rich off of invisible money and holding out the promise of a golden future where anyone can get consumer goods online whenever they want to. "The Best is yet to come", and all the workers are getting screwed and tired of getting screwed.

I remember the attitude of my fellow Baby Bell employees during the Dedication, and I think anyone with enough sense to know what was going on knew that this would impact us directly. Lower middle class tech workers have had enough.

All the money that the economy is pouring into consumer goods should have gone to the workers. Then it wouldn't be evaporating right now.

Inconsistent

[maroberts]

Normally I agree with most of Robs comments, but our opinions diverge here. I think our "Illustrious Leader" [ :-)] is being a little inconsistent here - he's happily put stories on about IPOs, stock offerings, the effects of suddenly finding oneself wealthy after IPOs, company takeover news etc....

The fact is that some stock market news is applicable to Slashdot readers and therefore should be reported. Obviously I don't think every last detail should be reported, just as I don't think that minor releases on the development branch of the linux kernel should be reported. But a hefty crash on NASDAQ, which is the home of a number of major technology stocks is most definitely of interest to some or all Slashdot readers. Stock market levels can have major effects on the employment status of us nerds and a high stock market is a Good Thing (TM) as it means people are investing in technology companies, providing employment, which pays our salaries.

Maybe Rob should add a separate topic section for financial news and have an option to put a NASDAQ ticker on our customised Slashdot page!

Good

[bytesex]

Good. I think the lesser we talk about stock, the more we can talk about tech. It's getting to be a bit endemic now, where even the nerds I work with insist on talking about stock (instead of tech) over lunch. Leave stock where it belongs (ie. on the market, not in your portfolio) and do yer tech thing and don't think you can strike it rich overnight while you're sleeping; be inventive and do the things that are worth doing please.

Re:Does Gates do it for the money??

[nlvp]

I'm certainly not a communist but I think that people with such huge sums of money hoarded all to themselves while we have people starving in shitholes on the street is absurd and criminal.

This is no doubt going to be a very unpatriotic post as far as Slashdot is concerned.

I am all for criticising Microsoft, and Gates when you believe him to have done something wrong, and you may be right when you say that he does it for the power and the fame, although I doubt you have the information or experience required to make that judgement since all you have to go on is what the press tells you, and in my experience that's pretty thin in the truth department.

But what really gets to me is the implicit assumption that Gates' millions are somehow related to the millions of starving people in the world. Have you ever read an audit of some of the worlds richest charities? Have you ever taken a close look at how little some of them (NOT all of them, some of them) manage to achieve with such vast amounts of money?

A while back, Gates and his wife made a donation to a foundation they names after themselves, . When they announced that they were going to make a donation, people did their usual "you're so rich you MUST be evil" judgement call, but when the amount was announced, most of the more rational observers concluded that the sheer size of the donation went well beyond what they needed to donate in order to just impress, and even for a man of his wealth, it demonstrated a sincere willingness to use his money to make a change, rather than a token gesture. His foundation has an asset base today of about $21.8 BILLION (which, by the way, would imply Bill Gates' net wealth is significantly above $50+ million which is where you say people's wealth becomes absurd and criminal).

In fact, he is probably one of the few individuals wealthy enough in the world to make this kind of a difference with cash alone.

Perhaps he is a money-grabbing, fame-seeking, real-life karma whore. But nobody on this forum has the faintest idea whether or not that is the case, and we should stick to making our judgements based on what we can observe. I observe this - he gave, in a single gesture, more money than I have ever seen donated direct to charity, so criticise him on any grounds you like, but on this playing field, he's got the bases covered.

Nick braces himself in anticipation of much flaming and the immediate loss of all of his karma

Slashdot responsable for stock market crash

[Dr Dick]

Try this for size.

The reason the stock market has taken a tumble
now is because of the Mircosoft case which has
sent jitters amongst the stock market pundits
who are worried about how a potential split of
microsoft will effect the industry.

The imputus for the whole Microsoft case has come
from the open source community. The govenment
has responded to the concerns of the community
(and others).

Slashdotters should be wary of a backlash against
those who are trying to bring down microsoft.
It's stopped being a game and is now hitting people where it hurts: in the pocket.

I'd say the story is relavant to slashdot.

Re:Rob Malda - a dirty liar? Nope.

[Pete]

interrupt11 wrote:

Look at some of these Slashdot stories!

"What are Share Options Worth?"
"Hacker Stockholders Unite!"
"The Stock Market, Armageddon, the Net and OSS"
"Ask Slashdot:Linux and Stocks"
"Buy MS stock now! Cheap!"
"Red Hat Stock Splitting"
"Caldera Publically Trading"
"Red Hat Files For Followup Stock Offering"
"VA Reprices Again"
"How to Approach Venture Capital Firms?"
"Red Hat Announces IPO"

Mr. Malda, how exactly is the stock market 'offtopic' on Slashdot?

CmdrTaco wrote in his story note:

I consider stories about the stock market to be CNNfn or CNBCs thing. We only bring up the market when it deals with specific companies that we're interested in (pete: my emphasis), not when the story is "The Market." But here it is.

Most of the stories you mention obviously qualify under his statement "We only bring up the market when it deals with specific companies that we're interested in..." And I'm guessing the first story you mention (title: "What are Share Options Worth?") was probably sparked by the stock market performance of a company or companies "of interest" to the slashdot crew. Similarly, the others qualify as tangentially interesting, as they involve the stock market in relation to linux/OSS/hackers.

As another note, the second last story you mention: "How to approach Venture Capital Firms?" is not directly about the stock market, although it is a related topic.

Try to be a little more careful with your responses/accusations. If you think you see a obvious lie or mistake in something someone has said, try rereading it a couple of times first to make sure you haven't misunderstood it.

I agree: slashdot reporters do fine

[bug1]

I cannot understand why so many people whine about the content reported on slashdot.

I dont see any bios... er bias.

I think slashdot does a great job in enabling users to customise what stories they see.

People should also expect that some relevent stories will be missed, and some not so relevent stories will be included. Its not as if there is some exact formula to guage the worthiness of a story.

Maybe some users expect perfection from slashdot, i guess critics wouldnt hang around to whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine if they really didnt like slashdot.

My advice to them is to try and be more productive in there criticism.

Why dont they try and direct there frustration into productive feedback, for example.
maybe stories related to a companies financial position could be filtered out in your user preferences if a user wishes.

Be nice

Glenn

Re:Does Gates do it for the money??

[wolfgang_spangler]

Ya know, I'm sick of people like you bitching and whining about people who have a lot of money. It is their money. They have no responsibility to give it to poor people. If they want to, that is great. But just because someone has cash doesn't mean that they have to give it to someone else. It's sick the way people that make a lot of money have to pay so damn much in taxes. It should be a flat tax. They usually earn that much for a reason.

I'm sure if you got a million dollars tomorrow you would give me a chunk of it right?

Bullshit, go earn the money yourself and stop expecting handouts.

Economist: Today's Fed Policy

[hawk]

Yes, I am a professor of economics as well as a lawyer. But if you manage
to construe this as legal advice, you probably need a shrink :)

>Of course I've never trusted central
>federal authorities like the fed to make free market decisions, but
>this fed-reserve is seasoned with the fear of inflation and the fear
>of depressions, so I think they'll do OK - at least to the extent of
>preventing major disasters.

Yes and no. Today the monetarists are pretty much in control of our
monetary policy. To put their views in a nutshell,

1) the government can't achieve anything by mucking around with monetary
policy, as people react to the policy and it is countered.
2) the government *can* screw up the economy with monetary policy--among
other things, it can make fluctuations more violent.
3) inflation is bad
4) deflation is worse

These lead to

5) any activist policy (an attempt to fix or better the economy) will
be defeated by choices of agents in the economyk

Therefore,

6) Have a well-known rule of monetary behavior.

Noting that

7) a growing economy with steady price levels needs more money to
handle the additional transactions,

we get the basic monetarist rule:

8) Have the money supply grow at a fixed, well known rate.
9) The rate which avoids inflation and deflation is the average rate
of growth of the economy.

They accept then that

10) You'll be high some years, and low others. But you get less fluctation
and smaller shocks than any other policy.

There are variations, and disputes as to what the actual rate in 9) is, and
whether or not it is changing. But this is will put you in the right
range for most modern monetarists.

These guys *expected* the 82 recession. However, since

11) if inflation is expected, the expected level is the *starting* point

the only way to get rid of existing inflation and establish the rules of 8 and
9 is to accept the recession to establish the credibility of these rules. It's
not that they wanted the recession, but believed that the longer it was
postponed, the worse it would be (look at countrys that actually got
hyperinflation).

While there's a couple of topics where monetarism has failed, most of its
predictions came true--notably, Milton Friedman was considered a crank
when he predicted the stagflation of the 70's--and then it happened.

We have essentially had an ongoing expansion for over 15 years. Yes,
there was a minor recession late in the Bush administration, which
barely met the definition. Overall, though, it's really the same
expansion, and *neither* party is going to muck with it. They'll try
to pressure Greenspan for short term gains, but both parties will keep
with him as long as he's willing, and he'll be replaced with someone
similar.

Hmm, I should clip those 11 points for next year's Money & Banking
class.

To summarize the monetarist summary: You can't make it any better,
so just avoid mucking it up.

hawk, as an economist today. Hmm, so should I sign it dr hawk? :)

Forget RTFA, how about RTFP?

[Evil Poot Cat]

as in, rtf post.... We only bring up the market when it deals with specific companies that we're interested in, not when the story is "The Market." What a waste of moderation points.

"Tech Stocks Tumble"

[algebraist]

I, for one, consider happenings on the market of interest, and well worthy of slashdot.org's attention. Not only have the Web and tech stocks become the darling of Wall Street, the Web and tek is refashioning the culture and business' image of itself. Thus, if, hypothetically, a fall in stocks is hung, unjustifiably, on the necks of "new business entrepeneurs", that could well affect me, and many of us.

Even now, there are important dissenting opinions as to how good it is for the culture that the Web and computing is Center Stage, with a good dose of worry dashed in that computing may get a bad name. There is, after all, a tradition of this in the computing industry: Expert systems, strong typing, and the DoD's Ada all promised lots more than they could possibly deliver and never recovered from the Public Disappointment.

OTOH, there is a really interesting analysis by Bob Cringely about how ridiculous some of the pricing of the stock market is, and how remarkably inefficient it seems to be, despite the claims of, for instance, the Chicago school and monetarists. (I might add, at risk of introducing extraneous detail and incurring the Wrath of Moderation, that one needs, uh, patience going to the latter two sites.)

Is it all just paper?

[GossG]

, the stock market is not just paper. It is part ownership in a company. It's part ownership in the entity that pays your bills.

I dissagree. When a new market segment moves into the stock market, what you are seeing is not really an evaluation of the company today, but a PREDICTION of what the company will be worth next year.

Let's calculate the profit per share value, the payback time for buying that share. Profit? What profit.

You are buying a part-ownership in an ongoing loss. The only reason you are doing this is a PREDICTION of what the future will bring. A prediction can change suddenly when new information comes in, which is why these stocks can swing so widely.

I wish I knew more about the 1857 crash that someone has cited...

Re:Is it all just paper?

[kootch]

and here you're showing exactly why so many people lost money in this correction in the tech sector. NO, you are not evaluating what the company will be worth next year, you are giving the value of the company today. People started giving tech stocks huge valuations in price because they thought they saw these companies making huge amounts of money soon, just not now. Most other companies are evaluated on what they're doing right now, what their debt is, what their gains or losses are and will be, etc. Part-ownership in an ongoing loss? Just because a company offers stock does not mean that they're losing money. A profitable company with no debt can offer stock as simply a way of converting a share of their company into capital that they can use for their own purposes. The market valuation of that %% ownership determines how much their company is worth. The prediction you are talking about is what the analysts THINK they company will do in the coming quarter, but as we all know, there aren't always correct, and actual earnings are what really count, not predictions.

Re:The REAL reason for the market plummetting

[IanCarlson]

I disagree. I find feminists to be the largest sub-section of psuedo-anti-fascists around. But, that may just be me.