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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (92190)	8/17/2005 10:37:49 PM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

An ancient order of Force-practitioners devoted to the dark side and determined to destroy the Jedi, the Sith were a menace long thought extinct. The current incarnation of the Sith is the result of a rogue Jedi dissident from the order. Two thousand years ago, this Jedi had come to the understanding that the true power of the Force lay not through contemplation and passivity. Only by tapping its dark side could its true potential be gained. The Jedi Council at the time balked at this new direction. The Dark Jedi was outcast, but he eventually gained followers to his new order. Awakening beliefs from the dark past, the new Sith cult continued to grow. With the promise of new powers attainable by tapping into the hateful energies of the dark side, it was only a matter of time before the order self-destructed. Internecine struggle by power-hungry Sith practitioners dwindled their numbers. Weakened by infighting, the Sith were easily wiped out by the Jedi. One Sith had the cunning to survive. Darth Bane restructured the cult, so that there could only be two -- no more, no less -- a master, and an apprentice. Bane adopted cunning, subterfuge, and stealth as the fundamental tenets of the Sith order. Bane took an apprentice. When that apprentice succeeded him, that new Sith Lord would take an apprentice. Thus, the Sith quietly continued for centuries, until the time of Darth Sidious. It was Sidious who was responsible for the revenge of the Sith against the Jedi. His measured and carefully engineered plot spanned decades. Sidious was apprentice to Darth Plagueis, a wise Sith Lord whose knowledge of arcane and unnatural arts was reputed to extend to manipulating the very essence of life. By Sith tradition, Sidious killed Plagueis in his ascent to Master from apprentice. This left an opening for the fearsome Darth Maul to become Sidious' Sith apprentice. In this age, the final decades of the Republic, the galaxy at large had believed the Sith to be extinct, a fabled threat from the past. Qui-Gon Jinn's report of a Sith attack on Tatooine was met by the Jedi Council with hesitation and skepticism. Surely if the Sith had returned, the Jedi would have detected it, they reasoned. The dark side, for all its power, is ultimately hard to detect if so desired. A shadowy master like Darth Sidious was able to keep his presence a secret, even though he maintained a guise as a very public figure. Sidious was a politician, a seemingly humble Senator from Naboo. Though he would eventually rise to the position of Supreme Chancellor, and worked closely with the Jedi during the Clone Wars, they failed to detect his true nature until it was too late. With the death of Darth Maul at Naboo, the Jedi Council realized that the Sith menace was true. What they hadn't puzzled was whether Maul was the master, or the apprentice. Years would pass before the Sith menace arose once more, a menace that would eventually come to engulf the entire galaxy. It began with a Separatist crisis that threatened to split the galaxy. Count Dooku, a former Jedi, became a political firebrand, fanning the flames of secession across a disillusioned Republic. Unbeknownst to the Jedi at the time, Dooku was a Sith Lord -- Sidious' next apprentice after Maul. As Darth Tyranus, Dooku engineered the vast armies that would fight on both sides of the Clone Wars: the assembled droid armies of the united Confederacy of Independent Systems, and the secretly created clone army of the Republic. The Clone Wars were an elaborate and costly sham: a massive ruse that spread the Jedi ranks thin across the galaxy, and drew more political power to Darth Sidious. When the time was right -- when Sidious had in his grasp his ideal apprentice, the powerful Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker -- he dispatched a command to the clone forces that identified their Jedi generals as traitors to the Republic. The Jedi were wiped out by their loyal clone underlings. What few survivors remained were branded as enemies of the state. With Sidious as the Galactic Emperor, and Darth Vader as his loyal apprentice, the Sith ruled the galaxy and plunged it into darkness. It remained so for years until a new hope arose to bring Darth Vader back from the dark side and extinguish the menace of the Sith once and for all.

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (92190)	8/17/2005 10:43:30 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 122087

Their leaders are known as "Sith Lords," and the most powerful as "Dark Lord of the Sith." Many members are fallen Jedi who join the dark side. Only the Ruling Lord of the Sith may call himself "Darth". The only known exception to this sacred rule is Lord Darth Vader. "Always two there are—no more, no less: a Master, and an apprentice." — Yoda

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (92190)	8/17/2005 10:51:32 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 122087

Patrick Byrnes mysterious M.M. artapprentice.net

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (92190)	8/17/2005 11:12:13 PM
From: rrufff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

Byrne kicked the weasely hedgie suck up's posterior. "Smarmy innuendo backed up with nothing," as just an example of how bashers work. Grown from 2 million to 5 billion dollar company. Long history of stock manipulators from 1900's. Why so hard to believe that there aren't such conspiracies today. Even Insana said Jeff was dancing around. Byrne's references to Jeff's "Smarmy innuendo," came off very well. Byrne: Vickery ?? and possibly Greenberg? Supplied research to Rocker before handed to public. Greenberg is linked. (Everyone talking at once so hard to really hear.) Rocker requested that Vickery researcher hold off so that they could take position according to affidavit. Ditto Greenberg. Byrne pointed out that Jeff worked for Rocker and with Street.com. Jeff - Hemmed and hawed after that was pointed out. "he's an empty suit." another great line. "Jeff is backpedaling. Says he is 'just trying to make money' as a hedgie." Been on Reg Sho for 180 days. High failure to deliver. Why no enforcement? LOLOLOLOLISSIMO: Jeff knows nobody who can naked short. He doesn't know how to naked short. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't. He'd have to be a "bad guy." Jeff says go after whoever is naked shorting. Byrne says he is. Byrne finishes off saying Carol and Herb afraid to come on. Herb gave "a statement."

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (92190)	8/18/2005 1:12:44 AM
From: Kevin Podsiadlik	Respond to of 122087

Sounds to me like a simple case of "How-Can-Anybody-Be-Taking-This-Seriously" on Matthews's part. Easy enough to fall into if you're not prepared -- it's not every day that you run into someone who will look you straight in the eye and tell you with complete sincerity that the sky is green.

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (92190)	8/18/2005 9:44:55 AM
From: scion	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

BYRNE'S HOT MAIL By RODDY BOYD August 18, 2005 -- The controversial chief executive of Overstock.com has routinely fired off profane and belligerent e-mails to analysts and reporters with whom he disagrees, according to documents obtained by The Post. The executive, Patrick Byrne, last week launched an unusual legal offensive against hedge fund Rocker Partners and the research firm Gradient Analytics that accused them of working together to illegally drive down the price of the company's stock. More spectacularly, Byrne took to the Internet and in a rambling, tangent-filled monologue, sketched out a conspiracy against his company that involved 1980s-era financiers, much of the American financial media and a shadowy mastermind he called "the Sith Lord." Attempts by The Post to discover the identity of the Sith Lord have so far been unsuccessful. In early October last year, a very unhappy Byrne questioned Bethany McLean, a senior writer for Fortune magazine, about her 1995 decision to leave the analyst-training program at Goldman Sachs to become a reporter. In the bizarre e-mail rant, he preposterously asked whether she tired of performing sex acts for Goldman traders. McLean declined to comment on the e-mail for the article and denied any knowledge of a Sith Lord. A statement from Overstock.com confirmed the e-mails, but said they lacked context. The statement said McLean angered Byrne by discussing his high-profile battle with cancer in her article. Last year, McLean, a 2002 Gerald Loeb Award finalist, released "The Smartest Guys In The Room" on the Enron fraud, co-authored with Peter Elkin. Attacking McLean made little sense, according to people familiar with her work on Overstock last year. In doing the interviewing for her 530-word story, Byrne warmly praised her as "The only reporter who understands what we're doing here." When the story came out, he sent her an e-mail complimenting the work, said a person with knowledge of the situation. The article itself was skeptical of Overstock's accounting and also said that compared with Amazon.com, the company's gross margins were then slimmer. McLean wasn't the only person to be "flamed" by Byrne that month. On Oct. 22, Donn Vickrey, chief executive of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based research provider Camelback Research Alliance — now known as Gradient Analytics — received a Byrne broadside. The occasion for Byrne's ire was Vickrey's research into the corporate governance of Overstock, specifically the role played by company board member Gordon Macklin. Vickrey was skeptical of Macklin's ability to be independent given his long-standing connection to Overstock's underwriter, W.R. Hambrecht. Vickrey's firm suggested that Macklin lacked auditing and accounting-related expertise, according to research obtained by The Post. Vickrey sent Byrne an e-mail correcting what he alleged were misrepresentations about Camelback's research and business model after Byrne had bashed the research outfit in remarks earlier that month. Byrne dismissed Vickrey's argument out of hand. "DONN, YOU MAKE A LIVING TOADYING TO BULLY HEDGE FUNDS. IN THIS ROLE YOU INSULTED MR. MACKLIN, A FRIEND, A LIFELONG MENTOR . . . YOU DESERVE TO BE WHIPPED, F——ED, AND DRIVEN FROM THE LAND," was Byrne's summary of Vickrey's work. Vickrey declined to comment, citing his company's role in the litigation. He said he had no knowledge of the identity of the Sith Lord. Overstock said Byrne's comments were a result of the "needless insult" to Macklin. nypost.com