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Sun chief's top ten tips for spotting dodgy dotcoms

Dotcom boom? Sun's gagging for it...

Quipmeister and occasional CEO of Sun Microsystems Scott McNealy has sunk his fangs into inflated tech stocks with a top ten list of "Signs a Company's Market Cap Is Inflated." Considering how much Sun shouts about 'putting the dot in dotcom,' and the shedloads of servers Sun sells to, er, dotcoms, the list is more than a little brazen - but hey, Scott has a reputation as a humorist to maintain. One also wonders to what extent the Sun left hand and the right are co-operating these days. Earlier this week Sun "announced a global marketing campaign featuring customers and strategic partners on the "front lines" of the dot-com revolution. Sun's new iForce[tm] Heroes..." Yes folks, we play both sides of the street here. But here's the Great Man's top ten, from the bottom up: 10 - They have an e or an i or a dotcom as part of their name. 9 - Employees' pagers can only receive stock prices. 8 - The initial vesting period closed yesterday, and today the office is empty. 7 - There are more dogs and cats in their offices than employees. 6 - Employees are heard saying, "Profits are so yesterday." 5 - The accounts receivable sign hangs over a toilet. 4 - The value of cars in the parking lot exceed the company's revenue by a factor of four. 3 - The investor relations department reports to marketing. 2 - Zero revenues but enough cash to purchase Iceland. 1 - Employees ask, "Hey dude, what does the P in P&L stand for?" McNealy, who was speaking at a Merril Lynch conference in New York, also seems to have taken the statutory pokes at rivals IBM, HP and Microsoft, and significantly, said "which Microsoft?" when asked about the company. He must be looking forward to being able to crack jokes about two of them.

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