Yes, you are yet more example that hte socialism that the liberals want to put forth on this country has as its primary ally the "opposition" of republcians who want the same thing.
Funny how your description of sweatshops disagrees with the definition YOU provided.
After all, in these places these are HIGH wages, not low wages."
And you're idea that coroproations are a shield to defend illegal activiity is pathetically socialist. Hell, bet you've never voted republican in your life.
IF you don't know the purpose of corporations, you aren't competant to comment on the subject. But then, that puts you square in the mainstream.
Yes, two hundred years of people arguing that it doesn't say what it LITERALLY SAYS is the way you opponents of human rights try to take them away.
Course, eventually, they will be taken away from you as well.
The reason I hate liberals so much, is I used to be one. Then I discovered the fraud that was liberalism-- it is nothing more than socialism sold with the idea that "We support human rights".... in reality, they oppose them.
And thus, I joined the party that really does support human rights, the Libertarians.
You're supporting ignoring the Bill of Rights because the Bill of Rights has been ignored in the past?
I don't buy that logic.
By the way, it does have to do with liberals- all the examples you gave were implementations of the socialist agenda. If we had full implementation of the bill of rights, they would be ruled unconstitutional.
Note that fraud is not the same thing as free speech, so this idea that if "corporations have free speech, fraud is protected" is a red herring.
This is insightful? Jesus, read the fucking constitution sometime.
"Congress shall make no law..." Does NOT Distinguish between corporations and people.
Typical, a bunch of slashdot posters oppose free speech.
Fine, work to elimiante human rights.... eventually they will take away a right you actually DO care about.
This is the divide and conquer tyranny we have here-- you socialists hate corporations so much you try to eliminate free speech from them, eventually, it gets taken away from YOU because of the precedent you set!
Corporations don't exist to "serve the public good"-- that's communism. Literally.
As usual, you guys oppose the constitution at every turn. Surprise surprise.
Despite all your misrepresentation, the constitution does protect corporations-- read it sometime. "Congress shall make no law..." is very broad-- it doesn't distinguish between people and corporations, or even animals. Thus animals, and every other entity has the right because CONGRESS is BARRED from infringing on it.
It never ceases to amaze me how few liberals respect the Bill of Rights, or basic human rights.
Since "sweatshop" is a completely meaningless, derogatory term, Nike is being honest when they say they don't have any-- even if liberals say they do.
This is exactly the same situation as Nike saying "We make fine quality shoes" and liberals suing them because they insist their shoes are not fine quality and that Nike was deceptive in claiming they were.
And on the sweatshop thing-- the liberals hate sweatshops because they hate the poor. They'd ratehr that someone who makes $5 a day sewing shoes for Nike be reduced to making $1 a day scavaging rusted cans, or whatever. If these "sweatshops" are so bad, then why are they preferred by the people who work in them to the alternatives? What, because there are no alternatives? And you would rather have them, thus be removed from the freedom of the one alternative they have? You'd rather they be jobless?
Of course, liberals think that somehow Nike is responsible for there not being lots of better jobs for them to go to. Because Liberals apparently never took economics.
And when you mod me down, realize you're trying to shut me up, just like liberals always do, because you disagree with what I say. I've brought up cogent points here- but I suspect you guys would rather I be denied that speech.
I'm not so sure that they would have released the code back to the community if it was under a BSD-style license.
Well, that's a silly concern since they realeased their commercial operating system even though it wasn't under the BSD license- it was owned by them free and clear.
How soon people forget that Apple is the first, and so far, only company to open source its commercial operating system.
And not only does it help scores of open source projects around the world (as well as make use of them- after all that is the POINT of open source) but it does work to make it so that people who want to can run completely Open software on their platform more easily without paying apple any money,-- by supporting X11, and other stuff they don't ahve to that goes against their bread and butter OS sales.
Gee, I wonder why. They sure are GREEDY those bastards!
And yet all you Open source self-proclaimed advocates still hate them. could it be that you really don't care bout open source so much as you love linux? (Not bashing you, Phexro, just the broader group that irrationally hates apple becuase it "doesnt support open source.")
He is being silly, Mac users make up closer to %45 of the consumer market.
IF you were meant his number was too high-- well, its worth noting that it is a far more supported number than the claim that they only make up %5 of the market-- an out right lie, and fabrication that has no basis in reality.
The Nazis found that if you repeat the same lie often enough, people start believing it-- so we have the same thing here-- Windows is "%95 of the market", taxes are not theft, social security has a "trust fund", the government helps the poor (poverty is government's greatest triumph) etc.
And all these statements sound absurd to people who believe what they are told to believe-- even when these beliefs contradict objective reality. And they do.
Three times you gave up all those stock options just before a liquidity event? Talk about selling low! Especially when the shares are so dear.
I can't see how that's a good thing.
Oh, you didn't have stock options, did you.... I see. I think that was the problem.
IF you're working for a company, and them getting bought out (not as a desperate attempt to avoid bankruptcy) isn't the best thing to happen to you all year-- you negotiated a bad deal when you got hired.
Always work for equity. Most of the time, the equity I got paid ended up being nearly worthless, but when it wasn't, it more than made up for all of them, and then some.
When you have stock optiosn you can't exercise after the merger, take some money and buy long term puts on the parent company.
If the market crashes, the puts pay off handsomly, and you have locked in the value of your now-not-so-overpriced stock options.
If the market continues to boom, you've just bought insurance and don't have to feel bad that you covered your ass.
The absolute wost thing you can do (And a lot of people did this because they didn't bother to talk to anyone who knew squat about finances) is to buy a house based on teh value of your stock options-- unless you recognize that value right then and there and buy the house for cash.
Around here, people are killing themselves by sellign their houses for far less than they paid, because they could never really afford them in the first place.
You're saddened and sickened, but you didn't seem to comprehend what I said.
I worked for a company much like the one you described. With an owner who was the first programmer, and still was programming day to day. He was a great guy, and the only bad thing about that situation is *I* left it (when they hired a bad manager, but before they realized he really was a bad manager-- it was a catch-22, me and another top flight guy leaving is what made them realize the problem.)
But he ran his business a certain way, and he was loyal to us, and thus we returned the loyalty.
There's nothing wrong with loyalty-- and I'm always loyal to someone in the company (Rarely the "Company", but often the CEO, or my boss- whomever is worthy.)
But the idea that companies are doing something wrong when they lay people off is incorrect-- it comse from the deep seated marxism in modern liberalism. Good companies never really have to lay people off- attrition takes care of it for them. Less good companies do ONE-- and only one-- layoff. When a company does a second layoff inside of a year, all bets are off.
But I've known a couple companies that did one layoff (And its not a "getting rid of the slackers layoff- they loose good people, cause they have to cut deep to make it worth the cost)-- and then didn't do any more.
This cautionary tale is probably not that rare or unique-- and it shows just how screwed up management at large companies can be.
This is why small companies have an advantage- letting geography, or other non-performance criteria decide who stays and who goes undermines the companies ability to function.
Employees should be loyal as long as the company is loyal... but if they have layoffs one quarter and then layoffs again the next quarter, its clear they don't know what they are doing. (Layoffs once a year are acceptable-- sometimes things happen. But when you do it twice-unless something serious happened, like a major earthquake or 9/11 that affected the economy- that's a sign of bad management. Always lay off enough people to make yourself profitable for the year and do it ONCE. You have two layoffs and you just shot the moral and the loyalty of every employee still at the company.)
And if you didn't get laid off in the first round, and a good job opportunity came by, take it. Unless you know your position is secure for the long term, the company has put the writing on the wall (eg, if they are the kind of company to likely have new layoffs next quarter).
Companies aren't and shouldn't be loyal to their employees when times are tough-- though good companies never let times get that tough on them. Employee loyalty is called vesting-- if you aren't vesting, you don't owe them more than 30 days notice.
That's the breaks. My company laid me off, and did such a class act job of it, that I'd be very happy to go work for them again-- they bought my happiness, essentially. Hell, I *want* to work for them again because I know I like the people there and that they are a class act (I had a choice whether to leave or not, and took the severance).
First, getting bought out is a lot better than getting laid off-- I've ridden a couple companies all the way down, and let me tell you its no fun.
My experience with having our 40 person company bought by a 40,000 person company:
1- Stock options. They paid off well. And the company handled all the unvested options by sending a separate check covering the value of those options (We were bought for cash). 2- When you get bought for stock (which is more likely) suddenly, you're an investor in this other company. You need to go out and do good research on this company to decide whether this company is a good investment. whether your share of the company getting bought is worth $1,000 or $100,000 -- you now have invested that amount in the new companies stock. If this is a bad investment, you need to start moving your money out! (And if this is a big percentage of your net worth, diversifying may be a good idea.)
If you've spent a couple years investing and know how to do this analysis (and your "Analysis involves actually reading their financial reports, and determining the right price, not just momentum) then you already know what to do. If not, the only short cut is to go to quicken.com and get their one-click scorecard for the company buying you. Use the NAIC Rules or the Buffett method. If the company is not a "buy" under these criteria, and the reason is more than one thing (or the reasons are fundamental ones- and the company hasn't been a buy for awhile) then you probably should consider selling. I'm not giving you advice- I don't know squat about the company thats buying you-- but you are essentially selling your stock in the old company and buying stock in the new company at the price of the deal! IF that price is not a good one, then its a bad investment! Even if it seems like "free money".
3- You're probably going to get better benefits. big companies tend to have these worked out, with lots of little benefits, etc. The biggest benefit you risk loosing is vacation time, as bigger companies tend to be less smart about this than small companies. Ask for adjustment to your salary to cover the weeks you lose if you lose any.
4- Bigger companies do weird things. They will likely put lots of silly contracts in front of you. In my experience, they asked us to sign something that was illegal or unenforceable in our state. I balked and the HR drone didn't know what to do-- but the HR rep was cool about it, and impressed when I showed him the law in question. Generally, I've found you don't have to sign all the silly paperwork. FRankly, in reality, all the paperwork you already signed you're still bound by, and they still have an IP contract and all that, since they bought the company and your responsibility transferred with ownership-- so if they ask you to sign new noncompetes, and stuff like that, take that for the negotiation opening it is and make sure you don't get screwed.
4- Layoffs. I was laid off about a year after the company bought us. They laid half our staff off cause they realized they probably shouldn't have bought us. The severance package was good, and that was a pleasant surprise. When a startup goes under the severance is usually two weeks, this was much better. How to avoid being let go? Be a good employee. Usually they don't reorg the whole thing... but many people start bucking for positions inside the larger company. If you smell layoffs, get on the larger companies intranet and find other position there to apply for. You have an advantage by already being an employee.
5- You have warning, if you haven't already saved 6 months of living expenses, start putting away %25 of your gross income now. IT almost always takes a couple months for them to start axing people-- if that's what they're going to do-- and so the next six months will allow you to save a couple months salary.
You're right to be wary-- be conservative with money, seriously look into the new companies stock to see if its a good investment, and keep your bosses happy-- they'll probably be your new bosses and if layoffs come, they'll have to decide who gets to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, you are yet more example that hte socialism that the liberals want to put forth on this country has as its primary ally the "opposition" of republcians who want the same thing.
Funny how your description of sweatshops disagrees with the definition YOU provided.
After all, in these places these are HIGH wages, not low wages."
And you're idea that coroproations are a shield to defend illegal activiity is pathetically socialist. Hell, bet you've never voted republican in your life.
IF you don't know the purpose of corporations, you aren't competant to comment on the subject. But then, that puts you square in the mainstream.
Yes, two hundred years of people arguing that it doesn't say what it LITERALLY SAYS is the way you opponents of human rights try to take them away.
Course, eventually, they will be taken away from you as well.
The reason I hate liberals so much, is I used to be one. Then I discovered the fraud that was liberalism-- it is nothing more than socialism sold with the idea that "We support human rights".... in reality, they oppose them.
And thus, I joined the party that really does support human rights, the Libertarians.
Typical liberal liar.
Notice how you said "Forced child labor" and "slave labor".
Which is a lie.
AS to economics, the past 100 years has shown steady progtress in debunking the marxism you put forth.
Environmentalism is another thing on which science is very clear-- and it is the liberal idiots who ignore the science.
Uh, no, its not hard to read, and there's no interpretation necessary!
It is literal and explicit. you should read it sometime.
The 200 years of interpretation are 200 years of government trying to wrest itself free from the bondage the constitution put it into.
And its sad that you people hate your freedom so much that you applaud this rise in tyranny.
But don't lie about the constitution being ambiguous-- its not.
What part of "Congress shall make NO LAW" don't you understand?
Yes, typical for first ammendment "Fanatics" you really actually OPPOSE the first ammendment.
You really should try reading it sometime-- it says NOTHING about corporations, or about individuals, it talks about congress.
Is it really too much to ask you people to read the damn thing?
It applies to gorillas, corporations, coops, cabals, clubs, individuals, and sentient computers. There is no distinctio nin there.
Oh, and this idea that the founding fathers wanted corporations to serve the prublic good is bullshit-- more liberal lies about the past.
You probably think the second ammendment only applies ot the national guard (which came into being 109 years AFTER it was written) don't you?
This position of yours has a name-- its called "Anti human rights".
And its not surprising to see americans who oppose the first ammendment, such as yourself.
Gee, you can't distinguish between free speech and fraud ? That's sad.
Nike, saying it doesn't have sweatshops is neither libel, fraud, nor a falsehood.
You're supporting ignoring the Bill of Rights because the Bill of Rights has been ignored in the past?
I don't buy that logic.
By the way, it does have to do with liberals- all the examples you gave were implementations of the socialist agenda. If we had full implementation of the bill of rights, they would be ruled unconstitutional.
Note that fraud is not the same thing as free speech, so this idea that if "corporations have free speech, fraud is protected" is a red herring.
First off, I'm not a conservative.
Secondly, liberals sure do goose step down the roads in sync, so it doesn't need to be a conspiracy, just consistency.
Thirdly, are you aware of california politics over the last 30 years?
Yes, you'd rather those people starved to death, than be "Exploited" by Nike.
You probably don't; even realize you're a socialist, do you?
Sorry, I jsut got to say it, you're a fucking idiot.
What's the legal definition of "sweatshop"?
Cause its a slur, its meaningless, and saying they don't havge htem is not a lie-- after all, what they have are factories.
Fucking anti-american, anti-bill of rights socialists. You guys make me sick.
You'd rather those poor people starved to death than make products for nike, and that's just sick.
That website should be titled "Reclaiming socialism"... cause that's what the ideological agenda is.
This is insightful? Jesus, read the fucking constitution sometime.
"Congress shall make no law..." Does NOT Distinguish between corporations and people.
Typical, a bunch of slashdot posters oppose free speech.
Fine, work to elimiante human rights.... eventually they will take away a right you actually DO care about.
This is the divide and conquer tyranny we have here-- you socialists hate corporations so much you try to eliminate free speech from them, eventually, it gets taken away from YOU because of the precedent you set!
You got proof they lied?
Since "sweatshop" is a meaningless slur, claiming they don't have them is not a lie.
They have factories.
This is another bit of the liberal socialist agenda-- you must speek PC talk, if you don't, we take you to court.
IF you try to make some money, we take you to court.
If you pay poor people to make your shoes, we hate that, cause we want poor people to always be poor.
Jesus. Go read the first ammednment sometime before you comment on it.
Notice it doesn't say "People and not corporations have the right..." No. It says "Congress shall make no law respecting..."
Thus free speech applies to corporations as well as individuals.
Yes, Liberals hate free speech, we know it. Just stop trying to make a distinction to pretend you don't.
After all, those who support liberty have actually READ The Bill of Rights and know very well what it says.
Read the first amendment sometime, why don't you!
IT doesn't make any distinction between opinions or whether someone makes commerical goods or not.
It says "Congress shall make NO LAW restricting..." No qualifications. No quibbles.
Fraud, is a completely different matter- fraud isn't speach, its deception.
There is no allegation that Nike committed fraud here.
Corporations don't exist to "serve the public good"-- that's communism. Literally.
As usual, you guys oppose the constitution at every turn. Surprise surprise.
Despite all your misrepresentation, the constitution does protect corporations-- read it sometime. "Congress shall make no law..." is very broad-- it doesn't distinguish between people and corporations, or even animals. Thus animals, and every other entity has the right because CONGRESS is BARRED from infringing on it.
NO qualifications.
It never ceases to amaze me how few liberals respect the Bill of Rights, or basic human rights.
Since "sweatshop" is a completely meaningless, derogatory term, Nike is being honest when they say they don't have any-- even if liberals say they do.
This is exactly the same situation as Nike saying "We make fine quality shoes" and liberals suing them because they insist their shoes are not fine quality and that Nike was deceptive in claiming they were.
And on the sweatshop thing-- the liberals hate sweatshops because they hate the poor. They'd ratehr that someone who makes $5 a day sewing shoes for Nike be reduced to making $1 a day scavaging rusted cans, or whatever. If these "sweatshops" are so bad, then why are they preferred by the people who work in them to the alternatives? What, because there are no alternatives? And you would rather have them, thus be removed from the freedom of the one alternative they have? You'd rather they be jobless?
Of course, liberals think that somehow Nike is responsible for there not being lots of better jobs for them to go to. Because Liberals apparently never took economics.
And when you mod me down, realize you're trying to shut me up, just like liberals always do, because you disagree with what I say. I've brought up cogent points here- but I suspect you guys would rather I be denied that speech.
Sue me for false advertising, why don't you?
I noticed this too. This seems to be a change after upgrading to 10.2.3.
It seems to just drop down to singled user and bounce back up-- apparently a full reboot isn't necessary.
I'm not so sure that they would have released the code back to the community if it was under a BSD-style license.
Well, that's a silly concern since they realeased their commercial operating system even though it wasn't under the BSD license- it was owned by them free and clear.
How soon people forget that Apple is the first, and so far, only company to open source its commercial operating system.
And not only does it help scores of open source projects around the world (as well as make use of them- after all that is the POINT of open source) but it does work to make it so that people who want to can run completely Open software on their platform more easily without paying apple any money,-- by supporting X11, and other stuff they don't ahve to that goes against their bread and butter OS sales.
Gee, I wonder why. They sure are GREEDY those bastards!
And yet all you Open source self-proclaimed advocates still hate them. could it be that you really don't care bout open source so much as you love linux? (Not bashing you, Phexro, just the broader group that irrationally hates apple becuase it "doesnt support open source.")
He is being silly, Mac users make up closer to %45 of the consumer market.
IF you were meant his number was too high-- well, its worth noting that it is a far more supported number than the claim that they only make up %5 of the market-- an out right lie, and fabrication that has no basis in reality.
The Nazis found that if you repeat the same lie often enough, people start believing it-- so we have the same thing here-- Windows is "%95 of the market", taxes are not theft, social security has a "trust fund", the government helps the poor (poverty is government's greatest triumph) etc.
And all these statements sound absurd to people who believe what they are told to believe-- even when these beliefs contradict objective reality. And they do.
Its amazing how well that works, though.
Three times you gave up all those stock options just before a liquidity event? Talk about selling low! Especially when the shares are so dear.
I can't see how that's a good thing.
Oh, you didn't have stock options, did you.... I see. I think that was the problem.
IF you're working for a company, and them getting bought out (not as a desperate attempt to avoid bankruptcy) isn't the best thing to happen to you all year-- you negotiated a bad deal when you got hired.
Always work for equity. Most of the time, the equity I got paid ended up being nearly worthless, but when it wasn't, it more than made up for all of them, and then some.
When you have stock optiosn you can't exercise after the merger, take some money and buy long term puts on the parent company.
If the market crashes, the puts pay off handsomly, and you have locked in the value of your now-not-so-overpriced stock options.
If the market continues to boom, you've just bought insurance and don't have to feel bad that you covered your ass.
The absolute wost thing you can do (And a lot of people did this because they didn't bother to talk to anyone who knew squat about finances) is to buy a house based on teh value of your stock options-- unless you recognize that value right then and there and buy the house for cash.
Around here, people are killing themselves by sellign their houses for far less than they paid, because they could never really afford them in the first place.
You're saddened and sickened, but you didn't seem to comprehend what I said.
I worked for a company much like the one you described. With an owner who was the first programmer, and still was programming day to day. He was a great guy, and the only bad thing about that situation is *I* left it (when they hired a bad manager, but before they realized he really was a bad manager-- it was a catch-22, me and another top flight guy leaving is what made them realize the problem.)
But he ran his business a certain way, and he was loyal to us, and thus we returned the loyalty.
There's nothing wrong with loyalty-- and I'm always loyal to someone in the company (Rarely the "Company", but often the CEO, or my boss- whomever is worthy.)
But the idea that companies are doing something wrong when they lay people off is incorrect-- it comse from the deep seated marxism in modern liberalism. Good companies never really have to lay people off- attrition takes care of it for them. Less good companies do ONE-- and only one-- layoff. When a company does a second layoff inside of a year, all bets are off.
But I've known a couple companies that did one layoff (And its not a "getting rid of the slackers layoff- they loose good people, cause they have to cut deep to make it worth the cost)-- and then didn't do any more.
Yep, didn't think so. Video is 720x480 at 29.97 fps.
Not 320x240 @ 5 fps.
This cautionary tale is probably not that rare or unique-- and it shows just how screwed up management at large companies can be.
This is why small companies have an advantage- letting geography, or other non-performance criteria decide who stays and who goes undermines the companies ability to function.
Employees should be loyal as long as the company is loyal... but if they have layoffs one quarter and then layoffs again the next quarter, its clear they don't know what they are doing. (Layoffs once a year are acceptable-- sometimes things happen. But when you do it twice-unless something serious happened, like a major earthquake or 9/11 that affected the economy- that's a sign of bad management. Always lay off enough people to make yourself profitable for the year and do it ONCE. You have two layoffs and you just shot the moral and the loyalty of every employee still at the company.)
And if you didn't get laid off in the first round, and a good job opportunity came by, take it. Unless you know your position is secure for the long term, the company has put the writing on the wall (eg, if they are the kind of company to likely have new layoffs next quarter).
Companies aren't and shouldn't be loyal to their employees when times are tough-- though good companies never let times get that tough on them. Employee loyalty is called vesting-- if you aren't vesting, you don't owe them more than 30 days notice.
That's the breaks. My company laid me off, and did such a class act job of it, that I'd be very happy to go work for them again-- they bought my happiness, essentially. Hell, I *want* to work for them again because I know I like the people there and that they are a class act (I had a choice whether to leave or not, and took the severance).
First, getting bought out is a lot better than getting laid off-- I've ridden a couple companies all the way down, and let me tell you its no fun.
My experience with having our 40 person company bought by a 40,000 person company:
1- Stock options. They paid off well. And the company handled all the unvested options by sending a separate check covering the value of those options (We were bought for cash).
2- When you get bought for stock (which is more likely) suddenly, you're an investor in this other company. You need to go out and do good research on this company to decide whether this company is a good investment. whether your share of the company getting bought is worth $1,000 or $100,000 -- you now have invested that amount in the new companies stock. If this is a bad investment, you need to start moving your money out! (And if this is a big percentage of your net worth, diversifying may be a good idea.)
If you've spent a couple years investing and know how to do this analysis (and your "Analysis involves actually reading their financial reports, and determining the right price, not just momentum) then you already know what to do. If not, the only short cut is to go to quicken.com and get their one-click scorecard for the company buying you. Use the NAIC Rules or the Buffett method. If the company is not a "buy" under these criteria, and the reason is more than one thing (or the reasons are fundamental ones- and the company hasn't been a buy for awhile) then you probably should consider selling. I'm not giving you advice- I don't know squat about the company thats buying you-- but you are essentially selling your stock in the old company and buying stock in the new company at the price of the deal! IF that price is not a good one, then its a bad investment! Even if it seems like "free money".
3- You're probably going to get better benefits. big companies tend to have these worked out, with lots of little benefits, etc. The biggest benefit you risk loosing is vacation time, as bigger companies tend to be less smart about this than small companies. Ask for adjustment to your salary to cover the weeks you lose if you lose any.
4- Bigger companies do weird things. They will likely put lots of silly contracts in front of you. In my experience, they asked us to sign something that was illegal or unenforceable in our state. I balked and the HR drone didn't know what to do-- but the HR rep was cool about it, and impressed when I showed him the law in question. Generally, I've found you don't have to sign all the silly paperwork. FRankly, in reality, all the paperwork you already signed you're still bound by, and they still have an IP contract and all that, since they bought the company and your responsibility transferred with ownership-- so if they ask you to sign new noncompetes, and stuff like that, take that for the negotiation opening it is and make sure you don't get screwed.
4- Layoffs. I was laid off about a year after the company bought us. They laid half our staff off cause they realized they probably shouldn't have bought us. The severance package was good, and that was a pleasant surprise. When a startup goes under the severance is usually two weeks, this was much better. How to avoid being let go? Be a good employee. Usually they don't reorg the whole thing... but many people start bucking for positions inside the larger company. If you smell layoffs, get on the larger companies intranet and find other position there to apply for. You have an advantage by already being an employee.
5- You have warning, if you haven't already saved 6 months of living expenses, start putting away %25 of your gross income now. IT almost always takes a couple months for them to start axing people-- if that's what they're going to do-- and so the next six months will allow you to save a couple months salary.
You're right to be wary-- be conservative with money, seriously look into the new companies stock to see if its a good investment, and keep your bosses happy-- they'll probably be your new bosses and if layoffs come, they'll have to decide who gets to go.
Good luck!