“Few companies fit the role of poster boys for the stock market roller coaster of the last six months better than Linux start-ups Red Hat and VA Linux. Acclaimed as Wall Street’s darlings after their stunning 1999 public offerings, both companies have of late been plagued with an unremitting stream of bad press as their share prices have declined. VA Linux is currently trading at $39, down from a high of $320. Red Hat is at $26 — call it $52 to account for a split, but that’s still down significantly from a pre-split high of $151.

Both companies also lumber under the additional burden of being treated as canaries in the Linux gold mine. Red Hat’s IPO was widely considered a validation of the commercial potential of Linux. But its stock price slide is now hailed as proof that there is no money to be made in the entire Linux sector.

One might expect the load of responsibility to get a bit tiresome. The day VA Linux went public was a day of great celebration at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. But it can’t be a whole lot of fun these days to check into Slashdot — the “news for nerds” Web site that VA Linux owns — and read another couple of hundred slams against the company every time the share price drops another notch.”

“I used Andover myself long before the site hit most investors’ radar screens, and I was floored by the bloated price tag. It’s a great resource, but somehow I couldn’t shake the feeling that VA Linux got hoodwinked by the hoopla. After all, fair’s fair. But, this one looked like highway robbery.

Well, in a curious turn of events Wednesday, VA Linux announced plans to amend the terms of its deal with Andover. In addition to the lucrative stock swap, the original courtship called for $60 million in cold hard cash to be hand-delivered to the blushing bride-to-be. But, faster than a New York minute, all the
leaves have fallen off the money tree; and in this latest market downturn, it’s time for VA Linux to circle the wagons.

The company lopped off the cash payment, and not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Andover graciously accepted. ”

“The good news is that Linux players are finding a bottom, and there’s probably never been a better time to buy the leaders. Big fish will continue to gobble up the guppies, and the open source OS has a future so bright, it’s got to wear shades. Pundits are already penning Linux’ last chapter, but I’m betting its best days are ahead. Just a bit more grounded in cyber-reality.”

“Imagine how the Internet would be different if there were no anonymity — if access providers knew every user’s name, address, and telephone number. There would most certainly be a drag on free speech. But credit card thieves, child pornographers, and other Web criminals would think twice before embarking on illegal activities. That Internet just might be a place you could let your kids play without supervision.”

“Andrew Everett, a 31-year-old physical therapist in Los Angeles, wears a full-wrap Yahoo ad with pride on his Jeep Cherokee, one of the premium $400 per month winners. He now washes and drives his SUV all the more carefully, feeling almost like he’s working for Yahoo.

“I love it. It doesn’t bother me at all, really. I definitely wash my car more than I used to in the past, and not just because they want you to keep (your) car clean.””

“The most substantial portion of the PEAR program examines anomalies arising in human/machine interactions. In these experiments human operators attempt to influence the behavior of a variety of mechanical, electronic, optical, acoustical, and fluid devices to conform to pre-stated intentions, without
recourse to any known physical processes. In unattended calibrations these sophisticated machines all produce strictly random outputs, yet the experimental results display increases in information content that can only be attributed to the influence of the consciousness of the human operator. ”

“A method and apparatus of generating values and detecting whether the values fall outside chance probabilities. In one embodiment, a random-noise source provides a signal that is amplified, conditioned, and sampled to provide a series of random numbers. In one embodiment, conditioning includes inverting some of the values according to a pseudo-random sequence mask in order to remove certain first-order bias. Another aspect of this invention is to perform a statistical analysis of the values generated, and to control an output based in whether or not a chance expectation has been exceeded, or by the probability of a certain result obtained. Yet another aspect is to control a toy, game, appliance, or computer display
based on whether or not a chance expectation has been exceeded by a measured sequence of values.”

“But the new photos can’t make what Reno did right, just like the brutal pictures of the raid didn’t make her wrong. (If imagery was ever enough to justify federal action, the home videos of Elián defying his father would have been grounds for his removal by any means necessary.) The attorney general had the law on her side, even if the early war of images went against her. I admit I flinched Saturday morning, but I’m glad that this time Janet Reno did not. ”