> I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a society where people can work a hard, full-time job and starve.
If my full-time job doesn't offer me enough money to feed myself, why would I work at it for eight hours a day?
If it got that bad, why couldn't I move to the middle of East Buttfuck, Montana and grow my own damn food for free in a little garden outside my double-wide, and have 8 extra hours a day to do whatever the hell I wanted?
Heck, I could just play Evercrack 24/7 in order to eBay the game's ph4t l3wt for a living.
> We also don't let employers (legally) lock their employees into buildings so that they burn to death if there's a fire, or (legally) remove safety elements on industrial equipment because it marginally improves prodictivity while risking employee dismemberment or death.
And I'm actually OK with some (most) workplace safety regs. But wage and price controls are bad economics. Minimum wage laws are unnecessary because no employer offering less than a subsistence wage will get any job applicants, because nobody, however desperate, would have any reason to apply for such a job.
> Mrs. Fiorina says, "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore." > > She is implicitly recommending that we outsource the Congress and President of the United States of America.
No. God doesn't give anyone the right to be President or Congressdrone. You Brits might remember a little scuffle over that with the Yanks 200-odd years ago.
Come to think of it, you Brits even had your own little scuffle amongst yourselves over that issue about 100 years before the Yanks got into it, didn't you?
(Don't worry, you'll figure it out someday. The only American who thinks her job comes by Divine Right is Carly Fiorina. She's only correct as long as the Shareholders agree with God, mind you:)
> Most Libertarians eschew ethics and morals in business believing essentially in economic anarchy.
Au contraire. Most Libertarians are highly ethical in their business dealings.
A look at what happened to scuzzballs like those running Enron, Worldcon, and Arthur Andersen tells us that lying isn't merely wrong, it's bad for business.
We're not honest in our business dealings because we like being nice to our fellow man. We're honest in our business dealings because we have a damn good reason to be.
There are people with whom I would accept a handshake as a binding contract. I own shares in a company owned by one of those people. When I deal with those people, I treat my handshake as binding on me as anything I buy.
Motto of the London Stock Exchange for over two centuries: Dictum Meum Pactum - Literally, Word is Bond.
>... A sliding scale minimum wage based on various cost of living factors and indexed to inflation could work pretty well.
How about a sliding scale minimum wage based on... oh, wait, you are asking for "whatever the market will bear".
> resolve the regional differences in housing, food, health care, and consumables while providing for a fair balance between exploiting overseas workers and fair trade economics.
Regional differences in housing, food, healthcare, and consumables - those are all priced by an open market. I can measure them. Walk to real estate agent, farmers' market, doctors' office, and general store. Write down prices.
Buy what the hell those last couple of things and how do you propose to measure them? Who gets to define "fair"? (And why would you trust them to define "fair" the way you'd define "fair" and not some other way?)
> . It would have to be recalculated on a regular basis, say yearly.
Why not just use a free market for labor?" I don't have to "recalculate" my housing, food, health care, and consumable costs "yearly". I can look at the prices as recalculated by supply and demand in my geographical region (or any other place on Earth with a free market) 24/7, 365 days a year.
> But this is certainly better than enforcing a single minimum wage, unlivable in any major metropolitan area and much too high in the poorest rural areas of the world.
Absolutely right! (We're in violent agreement here;-) My only question to you is "if annually recalculating a sliding scale minimum wage based on variables that are priced in a free market" is a good thing, why not go the rest of the way?
Abolish minimum wage laws entirely and recalculate the minimum wage for a job daily, based on whatever the employer is willing to pay and the employee is willing to accept?
We price houses, eggs, aspirin, and clothing that way. Works pretty good. Why not jobs?
> Why does an education entitle you to anything?, let alone a good paying job. Wake up, once education became accesable to all, a degree isn't a golden ticket to success anymore. Now you
need a degree to compete for the opportunity.
A degree in something useful gives you a 10-15 year timeframe in which to sell your skills and raise capital.
The capital you raise will fund your next degree (if you want to try again). Or it'll fund investments in the Next Big Thing if you don't.
I enjoyed fiddling with computers in high school. My university degree got me into the computing field as a full-time job. It's been a good career. Already, half my skills are obsolete. I give myself another 10 years, tops, before I'm unemployable in this field.
Right now, if you enjoy reverse-engineering and assembly-language work, and you're still in high school, you should probably be looking at biology. DNA and proteins are to life what microcode and assembly language are to computers.
I'm of the belief that computational biology may very well be the Next Big Thing, whether in terms of producing life-enhancing medications, reducing pesticide use, or possibly advancing nanotech by using engineered lifeforms as nanoassemblers. Hacking genes is no different in principle (and no less intrinsically fun) than reverse-engineering object code to bypass some bogus copy protection or DRM scheme.
I'm too old (and too lazy) to go back to college and do a 4-year life sciences degree. But I'm keeping a very close eye on developments in the sector, and on what companies are building the most interesting technology, with an eye to investing in some of them.
There are six billion people on this planet. They can all do labor. The vast majority of those six billion people are utterly worthless - they will contribute no new ideas, nor will they create any net value in their lifetimes. They're worthless food tubes, consuming food and excreting a thousand more food tubes for every worthwhile human they create.
There are a few hundred million people who are somewhat worth keeping around. I'm one of those. I'll contribute no new ideas to science, philosophy or the arts, but I've been able to turn brainpower into capital for my employers for long enough I have some capital to invest during my leisure years.
Finally, there are a few hundred thousand people with new and exciting ideas. They're worthy of my capital. And they shall receive it. Because I get a great return on my investment - both in absolute dollar terms, and because I get a kick out of seeing cash turned into new and exciting technologies (or even just pretty pictures and good music).
Send the jobs overseas and let the food tubes starve. I'll invest in the companies that are doing the outsourcing. And in the new industries my capital creates for the few hundred thousand people on the planet who are doing something worthwhile. Bring on the triumph of capital over labor!
> So I did a 'cat naked.au >/dev/audio'. [... ] 'Please note that you are logged into my machine so your sound file is coming through my speakers. > >So what was this sound file that I had inadvertently played for my advisor?
> > Butthead: "Whoa! Naked chicks!" > Beavis (excitedly): "Yeah! Naked chicks! Naked chicks!"
Geez... kids these days.
sally.au
You old-schoolers know what I'm talkin' about.
Dumbest Tech Mistake: Air conditioner fails in a server room full of machines running SunOS 4.1. We've got the doors open, we've got fans blowing, we've got people talking about getting dry ice from a nearby hospital.
To help keep the room cool, we turned off all the CRTs in the server room. One by one, we turned off the big 19" monochrome monitors hooked into the video ports of the smaller Sun boxen we were using to offload some application stuff from the big servers.
Then we turned off the 12" monochrome monitors on the 9600-baud dumb terminals attached to ttya on the bigger Sun boxen that were acting as the big servers.
And then we remembered that a BREAK gets sent upon shutdown of a dumb terminal. And we didn't have to worry about cooling the server room anymore.
> > I launched SkyNet, right before my daughter and future husband rushed in to warn me. Boy was my face red! > >I'll bet you were surprised you had a future husband, what with already having a daughter and all.
"I would like dedicate this book to my parents, God and Ayn Rand."
> By the same reasoning, unless the FBI is doing something illegal, what do they have to hide from judicial oversight?
Your point is moot. The law doesn't require judicial oversight, and therefore, when the FBI inspects your records without judicial oversight, it isn't doing anything illegal.
> The question isn't, "Do I have something to hide?" The question is, "Why should I allow you to go on a fishing expedition through my private life when you have no admissable cause to suggest that I'm doing anything illegal?"
The answer is "Because only those who have something to hide need fear the results. Because it is not your life, it's our life, and we permit you to live it only as long as you continue to be worth more to us alive - whether as a vote or as a source of tax revenue - than dead.
Perhaps that's not the bargain you signed in civics class. We have altered that bargain. Pray that we do not alter it further."
The only reason you are still alive is because someone has decided to let you live.
> I've never heard of someone getting stripped searched without a high degree of suspiscion and they have laws saying that only females may do that sort of thing to females and same for males.
Yeah, how come the liberals so up in arms about the new security provisions anyways? I mean, you'd after having so thorougly advanced the gay rights agenda to the point that they've manipulated a President into setting up an entire Homeland Security apparatus just so they can feel up random passers-by... you'd think the liberals would be doing cartwheels of joy!:)
> And once you start forming it at anything over 2 degrees Kelvin, all the universe is your heat sink, so it's a stable state.
"Dude! What's with the case mod? It's huge!" "Oh, that's just what I use to liquify the helium." "So why are you adding extra condensers and another bank of vacuum pumps? Isn't a cooling system the size of your house big enough?" "Well, if I can get the helium just two more degrees cooler, I can have the Best! Heatsink! Evah!"
> The period where the official name of the country was "Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brasil" the only simmilarity was the name. > >The name was changed to Republica Federativa do Brasil in the late 60s.
> > My position on the behavior of The SCO Group is that they're a bunch of lying fuckweasels who deserve nothing less than a forcible sodomization with a diamond-grit-encrusted Louisville Slugger wielded by SEC Chairman Bill Donaldson himself. > > You are being a little vague, could you draw me a picture?
No, but I know a website where there's this guy with about half of the picture... Fark Photoshop, anyone?
> The question is; do you want to feel good about yourself or worship at the alter of Mammon. If the soul purpose of ones life is to die with as much money as possible then perhaps one may regret not buying SCO stock. But consider all the honest companies that may be lacking investment due to this anomaly.
(You don't have make it your sole purpose in life, but could you at least sacrifice a rubber chicken upon the altar of literacy?)
Spelling flame aside, I pay frequent homage and occasional tribute to Mammon. He's a lesser god, but his temple is always a hive of excitement. And it's from that perspective that I'm speaking.
I don't regret not buying SCO. The investment premise is that there's a one-in-ten chance that they'll be able to slip this scam past a judge, and sock IBM to the tune of ONE... BILLION... DOLLARS. (Or that IBM will simply buy the entire company for $500M to prevent the scam from working.)
That's it. If you buy SCOX, you're buying a lottery ticket. A hedge against fraud and stupidity, as it were -- if these dirtballs manage to make their scam work, it's the end of Linux and a very bad omen for the rest of the technology industry. If you're heavily invested in RHAT and NOVL, for instance, you might want to own some SCOX on the off chance that the judge falls for the scam and lets Darl wipe Linux off the face of the earth.
Had SCOX been optionable, I'd have bought put options, several months ago, and every one of those options would have expired worthless, because the scam has lasted a lot longer than I thought it would. But of course, going net short SCOX is just as much a speculation on a judge's ruling as going long SCOX.
The reason I didn't buy or attempt to short SCOX has nothing to do with a hedge against stupidity or speculating that the scam will eventually be unwound and Darl will finally get his much-deserved perp walk.
It's because I don't play the lottery. Either way. There are good and bad companies out there that are undervalued. Buy those. There are good and crappy companies out there that are wildly overvalued. Don't buy those.
SCOX is a crappy company for which there's no way to know whether it's undervalued or overvalued. The risk of going long or short do not justify the rewards.
My position on the behavior of The SCO Group is that they're a bunch of lying fuckweasels who deserve nothing less than a forcible sodomization with a diamond-grit-encrusted Louisville Slugger wielded by SEC Chairman Bill Donaldson himself. But so long as the stock's valuation is dependent upon the presence or absence of Clue Receptors in the neural pathways of a single human being, I have (and will take) no position in SCOX stock.
> I should also point out that everyone, save for a few persons, have an internal clock outside the standard 24 hour day that approaches 25 hours. If you were to sleep/wake/sleep/wake for about a week, without interruptions, you'd slowly move about until you hit around a 25 hour day.
Solution obvious: move to Mars, where the day is 24 hours and 37 minutes long.
> Exactly. Dying of a heart attack renders you immune to any further diseases. In fact studies shows that dead people are 100% less likely to contract cancer, aids and diabetes.
Given the choice between dying of the four things, I'll take the heart attack. 5 seconds of "WTF", 10 seconds of "Yep, I'm boned", 30 seconds of "Oh, man, this sucks", but then the lights go out and the words "GAME OVER" flash on the big screen. Beats the hell out of a slow lingering painful death, especially in states that don't permit euthanasia.
Speaking of cancer, the following public service announcement is directed towards the male geeks in the Slashdot crowd: "Whenever you do your part to protect yourself against prostate cancer, God kills a baby kitten! So think about how you're going to kill a kitten tonight!"
> Anyone have any idea about the validity of the earlier rumor about the IPO taking place with an online auction-type offering? This is what had always intrigued me about this potential IPO - it would seem to open up the possibility of early investment to the average Joe and I bet it would guarantee a pretty penny for Google...
I've heard nothing either way.
Note that if it's done traditionally, there'll likely be a huge opening pop. GS and MS will price the shares high, but there'll be enough retail investor demand (read: "sucke^H^H^H^H^Hpeople like you") to push the price to stratospheric levels at the opening bell. That's good if you've done enough business with the underwriter that you're allocated shares. It kinda sucks if you're the retail investor, and it really sucks if you're Google, because you didn't get all the cash you could have. You got $12B, but the market (however irrationally) priced your 33% stake at $20B. That's $8B you left on the table.
The auction is the other way to play it - there's no opening pop (ideally), and Google gets every penny of the (irrational) price the bagholder^Wretail investor's willing to pay for part of a 33% stake in the company. That could mean more underwriting fees (7% of $20B versus 7% of $12B) for GS and MS too. It's fantastic for Google, but it really sucks to be the bagholder.
Rule of thumb: If every average Joe can get a piece of a "hot IPO", it's not a hot IPO. Google may be an exception to this. If the IPO is done traditionally, and I had an opportunity to buy shares at the issue price, I'd give my left nut for the opportunity to piss off my broker by flipping my shares in the first few minutes of trade. As a retail investor, however, I would not choose to participate in an auction process.
As always, this ain't investment advice. Do your own due diligence. Whatever your decision, good luck, and good trading to you.
> Google will cease to be of any use once they have to satisfy a bunch of share-holder's demands.
Only a third of the company is being sold. The principals who made Google what it is will retain a controlling interest.
And since they'll have enough money to buy anything they could ever want for the rest of their lives, up to and including sending a probe to Mars, so long as they retain a controlling interest, it's highly unlikely that any price will cause them to fuck up the wonderful thing that is Google.
The management of Google is responsible for seeing to the best interests of Google's shareholders. So long as that team holds 51% of the shares, the interests of Google's geeky management are the interests of the shareholders.
It's called shareholder democracy. You vote what you own. If the thousands of fund managers and people who buy stock in the market (who will, collectively, own 33% of the company) try to change the direction of Google against the wishes of the few dozen founders and managers (who own the remaining 66% of the company), the owners of the company can tell the fund managers to go straight to hell, and there ain't a damn thing the fund managers can do about it.
It's strongly rumored that Microsoft made a buyout offer to Google, and was turned down. The founders of Google aren't in it for the $12B because there's not much that Google does that requires $12B of paid-in capital. They're going IPO to make sure they, and those who helped build the company with them, get a good payday out of it. They built something wonderful, and they're now being rewarded for their efforts, and they're doing so without compromising a damn thing. To all three of those things, I say more power to 'em.
Then again, if offered a chance to buy some, and assuming it's not being done by auction, sure, I'll take some. And I'll flip it the first day. Without shame. Bring it on!
> > Which do you think is better, support over the phone or support another way? > >Definitely "another way". > > However, I'm not telling you what other way I would choose. You'll have to submit a new Ask Slashdot to find the answer.
Incorrect. The correct answer was:
"Hello! This is Tackhead in answer to your Ask Slashdot posting. I understand that you are having a problem about which do you think is better, whether to choose support over the phone or support another way.
Please examine your Ask Slashdot configuration before choosing which is better, whether to choose support over the phone or support another way. If this does not solve your problem, please reply to this post.
Thank you for doing business with Ask Slashdot. Is there anything else I can help you with?"
Slashdot Mirror
If my full-time job doesn't offer me enough money to feed myself, why would I work at it for eight hours a day?
If it got that bad, why couldn't I move to the middle of East Buttfuck, Montana and grow my own damn food for free in a little garden outside my double-wide, and have 8 extra hours a day to do whatever the hell I wanted?
Heck, I could just play Evercrack 24/7 in order to eBay the game's ph4t l3wt for a living.
> We also don't let employers (legally) lock their employees into buildings so that they burn to death if there's a fire, or (legally) remove safety elements on industrial equipment because it marginally improves prodictivity while risking employee dismemberment or death.
And I'm actually OK with some (most) workplace safety regs. But wage and price controls are bad economics. Minimum wage laws are unnecessary because no employer offering less than a subsistence wage will get any job applicants, because nobody, however desperate, would have any reason to apply for such a job.
She's cute, though. Despite all the shareholder value she's destroyed, I'd still hit it.
>
> She is implicitly recommending that we outsource the Congress and President of the United States of America.
No. God doesn't give anyone the right to be President or Congressdrone. You Brits might remember a little scuffle over that with the Yanks 200-odd years ago.
Come to think of it, you Brits even had your own little scuffle amongst yourselves over that issue about 100 years before the Yanks got into it, didn't you?
(Don't worry, you'll figure it out someday. The only American who thinks her job comes by Divine Right is Carly Fiorina. She's only correct as long as the Shareholders agree with God, mind you :)
Au contraire. Most Libertarians are highly ethical in their business dealings.
A look at what happened to scuzzballs like those running Enron, Worldcon, and Arthur Andersen tells us that lying isn't merely wrong, it's bad for business.
We're not honest in our business dealings because we like being nice to our fellow man. We're honest in our business dealings because we have a damn good reason to be.
There are people with whom I would accept a handshake as a binding contract. I own shares in a company owned by one of those people. When I deal with those people, I treat my handshake as binding on me as anything I buy.
Motto of the London Stock Exchange for over two centuries: Dictum Meum Pactum - Literally, Word is Bond.
How about a sliding scale minimum wage based on... oh, wait, you are asking for "whatever the market will bear".
> resolve the regional differences in housing, food, health care, and consumables while providing for a fair balance between exploiting overseas workers and fair trade economics.
Regional differences in housing, food, healthcare, and consumables - those are all priced by an open market. I can measure them. Walk to real estate agent, farmers' market, doctors' office, and general store. Write down prices.
Buy what the hell those last couple of things and how do you propose to measure them? Who gets to define "fair"? (And why would you trust them to define "fair" the way you'd define "fair" and not some other way?)
> . It would have to be recalculated on a regular basis, say yearly.
Why not just use a free market for labor?" I don't have to "recalculate" my housing, food, health care, and consumable costs "yearly". I can look at the prices as recalculated by supply and demand in my geographical region (or any other place on Earth with a free market) 24/7, 365 days a year.
> But this is certainly better than enforcing a single minimum wage, unlivable in any major metropolitan area and much too high in the poorest rural areas of the world.
Absolutely right! (We're in violent agreement here ;-) My only question to you is "if annually recalculating a sliding scale minimum wage based on variables that are priced in a free market" is a good thing, why not go the rest of the way?
Abolish minimum wage laws entirely and recalculate the minimum wage for a job daily, based on whatever the employer is willing to pay and the employee is willing to accept?
We price houses, eggs, aspirin, and clothing that way. Works pretty good. Why not jobs?
A degree in something useful gives you a 10-15 year timeframe in which to sell your skills and raise capital.
The capital you raise will fund your next degree (if you want to try again). Or it'll fund investments in the Next Big Thing if you don't.
I enjoyed fiddling with computers in high school. My university degree got me into the computing field as a full-time job. It's been a good career. Already, half my skills are obsolete. I give myself another 10 years, tops, before I'm unemployable in this field.
Right now, if you enjoy reverse-engineering and assembly-language work, and you're still in high school, you should probably be looking at biology. DNA and proteins are to life what microcode and assembly language are to computers.
I'm of the belief that computational biology may very well be the Next Big Thing, whether in terms of producing life-enhancing medications, reducing pesticide use, or possibly advancing nanotech by using engineered lifeforms as nanoassemblers. Hacking genes is no different in principle (and no less intrinsically fun) than reverse-engineering object code to bypass some bogus copy protection or DRM scheme.
I'm too old (and too lazy) to go back to college and do a 4-year life sciences degree. But I'm keeping a very close eye on developments in the sector, and on what companies are building the most interesting technology, with an eye to investing in some of them.
There are six billion people on this planet. They can all do labor. The vast majority of those six billion people are utterly worthless - they will contribute no new ideas, nor will they create any net value in their lifetimes. They're worthless food tubes, consuming food and excreting a thousand more food tubes for every worthwhile human they create.
There are a few hundred million people who are somewhat worth keeping around. I'm one of those. I'll contribute no new ideas to science, philosophy or the arts, but I've been able to turn brainpower into capital for my employers for long enough I have some capital to invest during my leisure years.
Finally, there are a few hundred thousand people with new and exciting ideas. They're worthy of my capital. And they shall receive it. Because I get a great return on my investment - both in absolute dollar terms, and because I get a kick out of seeing cash turned into new and exciting technologies (or even just pretty pictures and good music).
Send the jobs overseas and let the food tubes starve. I'll invest in the companies that are doing the outsourcing. And in the new industries my capital creates for the few hundred thousand people on the planet who are doing something worthwhile. Bring on the triumph of capital over labor!
>
>So what was this sound file that I had inadvertently played for my advisor?
>
> Butthead: "Whoa! Naked chicks!"
> Beavis (excitedly): "Yeah! Naked chicks! Naked chicks!"
Geez... kids these days.
sally.au
You old-schoolers know what I'm talkin' about.
Dumbest Tech Mistake: Air conditioner fails in a server room full of machines running SunOS 4.1. We've got the doors open, we've got fans blowing, we've got people talking about getting dry ice from a nearby hospital.
To help keep the room cool, we turned off all the CRTs in the server room. One by one, we turned off the big 19" monochrome monitors hooked into the video ports of the smaller Sun boxen we were using to offload some application stuff from the big servers.
Then we turned off the 12" monochrome monitors on the 9600-baud dumb terminals attached to ttya on the bigger Sun boxen that were acting as the big servers.
And then we remembered that a BREAK gets sent upon shutdown of a dumb terminal. And we didn't have to worry about cooling the server room anymore.
>
>I'll bet you were surprised you had a future husband, what with already having a daughter and all.
"I would like dedicate this book to my parents, God and Ayn Rand."
Best argument for the serial comma ever.
>
> nerds don't have orgasms they have epiphanies.
Holy SHIT! I just figured out what you meant by that!
(Pardon me, gotta go clean up now.)
Your point is moot. The law doesn't require judicial oversight, and therefore, when the FBI inspects your records without judicial oversight, it isn't doing anything illegal.
The answer is "Because only those who have something to hide need fear the results. Because it is not your life, it's our life, and we permit you to live it only as long as you continue to be worth more to us alive - whether as a vote or as a source of tax revenue - than dead. Perhaps that's not the bargain you signed in civics class. We have altered that bargain. Pray that we do not alter it further."
The only reason you are still alive is because someone has decided to let you live.
Yeah, how come the liberals so up in arms about the new security provisions anyways? I mean, you'd after having so thorougly advanced the gay rights agenda to the point that they've manipulated a President into setting up an entire Homeland Security apparatus just so they can feel up random passers-by... you'd think the liberals would be doing cartwheels of joy! :)
I'll take Canadian Literature for $1000, Alex.
What are "Things I Never Want To Be In A Position To Say To Margaret Atwood?"
"Dude! What's with the case mod? It's huge!"
"Oh, that's just what I use to liquify the helium."
"So why are you adding extra condensers and another bank of vacuum pumps? Isn't a cooling system the size of your house big enough?"
"Well, if I can get the helium just two more degrees cooler, I can have the Best! Heatsink! Evah!"
>
>The name was changed to Republica Federativa do Brasil in the late 60s.
So that'd be USB 2.0?
>
> You are being a little vague, could you draw me a picture?
No, but I know a website where there's this guy with about half of the picture... Fark Photoshop, anyone?
Never said they would, only that they could.
To turn things around - the argument that people become evil when they become rich is equally ridiculous.
Goodness or evilness is orthogonal to net worth.
(You don't have make it your sole purpose in life, but could you at least sacrifice a rubber chicken upon the altar of literacy?)
Spelling flame aside, I pay frequent homage and occasional tribute to Mammon. He's a lesser god, but his temple is always a hive of excitement. And it's from that perspective that I'm speaking.
I don't regret not buying SCO. The investment premise is that there's a one-in-ten chance that they'll be able to slip this scam past a judge, and sock IBM to the tune of ONE... BILLION... DOLLARS. (Or that IBM will simply buy the entire company for $500M to prevent the scam from working.)
That's it. If you buy SCOX, you're buying a lottery ticket. A hedge against fraud and stupidity, as it were -- if these dirtballs manage to make their scam work, it's the end of Linux and a very bad omen for the rest of the technology industry. If you're heavily invested in RHAT and NOVL, for instance, you might want to own some SCOX on the off chance that the judge falls for the scam and lets Darl wipe Linux off the face of the earth.
Had SCOX been optionable, I'd have bought put options, several months ago, and every one of those options would have expired worthless, because the scam has lasted a lot longer than I thought it would. But of course, going net short SCOX is just as much a speculation on a judge's ruling as going long SCOX.
The reason I didn't buy or attempt to short SCOX has nothing to do with a hedge against stupidity or speculating that the scam will eventually be unwound and Darl will finally get his much-deserved perp walk.
It's because I don't play the lottery. Either way. There are good and bad companies out there that are undervalued. Buy those. There are good and crappy companies out there that are wildly overvalued. Don't buy those.
SCOX is a crappy company for which there's no way to know whether it's undervalued or overvalued. The risk of going long or short do not justify the rewards.
My position on the behavior of The SCO Group is that they're a bunch of lying fuckweasels who deserve nothing less than a forcible sodomization with a diamond-grit-encrusted Louisville Slugger wielded by SEC Chairman Bill Donaldson himself. But so long as the stock's valuation is dependent upon the presence or absence of Clue Receptors in the neural pathways of a single human being, I have (and will take) no position in SCOX stock.
Solution obvious: move to Mars, where the day is 24 hours and 37 minutes long.
Given the choice between dying of the four things, I'll take the heart attack. 5 seconds of "WTF", 10 seconds of "Yep, I'm boned", 30 seconds of "Oh, man, this sucks", but then the lights go out and the words "GAME OVER" flash on the big screen. Beats the hell out of a slow lingering painful death, especially in states that don't permit euthanasia.
Speaking of cancer, the following public service announcement is directed towards the male geeks in the Slashdot crowd: "Whenever you do your part to protect yourself against prostate cancer, God kills a baby kitten! So think about how you're going to kill a kitten tonight!"
I've heard nothing either way.
Note that if it's done traditionally, there'll likely be a huge opening pop. GS and MS will price the shares high, but there'll be enough retail investor demand (read: "sucke^H^H^H^H^Hpeople like you") to push the price to stratospheric levels at the opening bell. That's good if you've done enough business with the underwriter that you're allocated shares. It kinda sucks if you're the retail investor, and it really sucks if you're Google, because you didn't get all the cash you could have. You got $12B, but the market (however irrationally) priced your 33% stake at $20B. That's $8B you left on the table.
The auction is the other way to play it - there's no opening pop (ideally), and Google gets every penny of the (irrational) price the bagholder^Wretail investor's willing to pay for part of a 33% stake in the company. That could mean more underwriting fees (7% of $20B versus 7% of $12B) for GS and MS too. It's fantastic for Google, but it really sucks to be the bagholder.
Rule of thumb: If every average Joe can get a piece of a "hot IPO", it's not a hot IPO. Google may be an exception to this. If the IPO is done traditionally, and I had an opportunity to buy shares at the issue price, I'd give my left nut for the opportunity to piss off my broker by flipping my shares in the first few minutes of trade. As a retail investor, however, I would not choose to participate in an auction process.
As always, this ain't investment advice. Do your own due diligence. Whatever your decision, good luck, and good trading to you.
Only a third of the company is being sold. The principals who made Google what it is will retain a controlling interest.
And since they'll have enough money to buy anything they could ever want for the rest of their lives, up to and including sending a probe to Mars, so long as they retain a controlling interest, it's highly unlikely that any price will cause them to fuck up the wonderful thing that is Google.
The management of Google is responsible for seeing to the best interests of Google's shareholders. So long as that team holds 51% of the shares, the interests of Google's geeky management are the interests of the shareholders.
It's called shareholder democracy. You vote what you own. If the thousands of fund managers and people who buy stock in the market (who will, collectively, own 33% of the company) try to change the direction of Google against the wishes of the few dozen founders and managers (who own the remaining 66% of the company), the owners of the company can tell the fund managers to go straight to hell, and there ain't a damn thing the fund managers can do about it.
It's strongly rumored that Microsoft made a buyout offer to Google, and was turned down. The founders of Google aren't in it for the $12B because there's not much that Google does that requires $12B of paid-in capital. They're going IPO to make sure they, and those who helped build the company with them, get a good payday out of it. They built something wonderful, and they're now being rewarded for their efforts, and they're doing so without compromising a damn thing. To all three of those things, I say more power to 'em.
Then again, if offered a chance to buy some, and assuming it's not being done by auction, sure, I'll take some. And I'll flip it the first day. Without shame. Bring it on!
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>Definitely "another way".
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> However, I'm not telling you what other way I would choose. You'll have to submit a new Ask Slashdot to find the answer.
Incorrect. The correct answer was:
"Hello! This is Tackhead in answer to your Ask Slashdot posting. I understand that you are having a problem about which do you think is better, whether to choose support over the phone or support another way.
Please examine your Ask Slashdot configuration before choosing which is better, whether to choose support over the phone or support another way. If this does not solve your problem, please reply to this post.
Thank you for doing business with Ask Slashdot. Is there anything else I can help you with?"
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>Twice the power of ordinary bees!
Oracle, MySQL, Access?
No, that's still only two and a half DBs.