"Presiding over a memorial service commemorating the victims of the attack on the Death Star, the Emperor declared that while recent victories over the Rebel Alliance were "encouraging, the War on Terror is not over yet.""

w1ld: this is soooooooo funny!

Emperor issues statement following Death Star attacks

SAN FRANCISCO, May 14 — Uncle Sam is wearing a Santa cap this year, doling out billions in special tax rebates to select corporate citizens. Thanks to a law Congress passed this spring, Cisco is in line to get around $350 million, United Airlines $1.2 billion and CNF Inc. roughly $337 million. And those are just a few examples.
UNDER THE NEW LAW — H.R. 3090, a.k.a “the Job Creation and Worker Assistance Act of 2002” — companies that posted a net loss for fiscal year 2001, but were profitable in previous years, can dig back as far as their 1996 tax returns and apply 2001 losses against income and reduce taxes accordingly. Previously, companies could only apply losses two years back.
Individual companies’ tax records are sealed, but their published financial information shows the benefits are potentially enormous.
For example, San Jose-based Cisco posted a $874 million net loss before taxes for 2001. Under the new law, it can subtract that from its $1.46 billion net income for 1996, reducing it to $590.8 million.

New law gives firms huge tax break

After three years of haggling over the state budget and taxes, the House may vote today on whether it wants a revamped approach to the state sales tax, a 4.5% flat-rate state income tax, or none of the above.

Either tax bill would produce $1 billion-plus, the amount House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh says is necessary to adequately fund state government.

New services tax proposal proffered

Nassim Taleb offers an argument about why we lose money in his controversial book Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and Life. According to him, many traders believe they rule the roost simply because they were in the right place with the right strategy for that moment in history. Unfortunately, these so-called experts wash out as soon as times change because their foolproof strategies crash and burn.

Does Taleb's argument sound familiar to you? It zeroes in on all the bull market genius that's evaporated since the burst of the bubble. So why do you still chase stocks in the same way you did back then? The obvious answer is that you want to believe those days are returning, and you're willing to sacrifice hard-earned cash over and over again to make that happen.

This is 2002, and we are right in the middle of the worst bear market since the Great Depression.

Sun Microsystems is working hard to ensure that Linux and Solaris play well together.
The server seller is continuing its effort to integrate Linux interfaces into its Solaris operating system, a move that would make it easier to bring programs based on the Linux operating system to Solaris machines. But Sun has also begun work to bring Solaris features to Linux, said Vivek Mehra, vice president and general manager of Sun's Cobalt group.

The work indicates that Sun's push to embrace Linux is becoming more than just a publicity stunt. For years, Sun dismissed Linux as an inferior relation to Solaris, but the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company this year bowed to market forces and announced full-fledged Linux support.

Sun works to converge Linux, Solaris

NEW YORK, May 13 (Reuters) - Standard & Poor's on Monday removed WorldCom Group (NasdaqNM:WCOM - News) and US Airways Inc. (NYSE:U - News) from its benchmark S&P 500 index, saying shares in the two struggling companies were no longer representative of their industries.

The change removed the two worst-performing shares in two badly battered industries -- telecommunications and airlines -- from the closely followed S&P 500 index.

WCOM is sinking fast...next will be NASDAQ delisting

WorldCom, US Airways dropped from S&P 500 index

WASHINGTON, May 13 — The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a key part of the government’s effort to give Americans choices for local telephone service. The ruling keeps costs low for companies that want to get into a market and could eventually lead to cheaper service for consumers.

High court clears local phone plan

BERLIN, May 13 — Drinking beer could reduce the risk of cancer, strokes and heart disease, Germany’s brewers’ federation said Monday, hoping to inspire the country’s youth to head for the beer garden rather than the gym.

Beer is good for you — no, really

SAN FRANCISCO, May 12 — Two University of Cambridge computer security researchers plan to describe on Monday an ingenious and inexpensive attack that employs a $30 camera flashgun and a microscope to extract secret information contained in widely used smart cards.

The newly discovered vulnerability is reason for alarm, the researchers said, because it could make it cost-effective for a criminal to steal information from the cards.

Vulnerability Is Discovered in Security for Smart Cards

By the end of last week, investors had decided that bad news from WorldCom Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. overshadowed Cisco's cautiously optimistic view for sales growth, analysts said.

The result was a nasty reversal for the American Stock Exchange Networking Index(.NWX), which dropped back on Thursday and Friday as attention returned to the capital spending crunch that has dragged down shares of many once high-flying network gear makers, analysts said.

"We may not get back to record lows, but we still have to work our way through some quarterly reports that will be tough and where expectations will have to be scaled back," said William Becklean, a Commerce Capital Markets analyst.

"Service providers and enterprises have ended up with overcapacity and their earnings are under pressure so they're not spending unless they have to spend," Becklean said. "I don't think we'll see a pick up in capital spending until sometime next year."

Investors Skeptical of Recovery for Networkers