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NEW YORK -- Last week marked five years since the stock market bubble finally began to burst. The Nasdaq hit its all-time high on March 10, 2000, and then began a steady plunge that marked the birth of a long bear market. The long bull market that preceded it was a remarkable time, but also a costly one. On the plus side, we got a technology whose transformational effects can't be overstated. On the down side, the dawn of the Internet also spawned the dot-com craze, one of the loopier periods in American business history and proof positive that so...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) -- Amid rising hopes for a high-tech turnaround, there's this sobering sign: Martin Pichinson - a man who has buried nearly 150 failed startups since 1999 - has swooped into Silicon Valley like a vulture lurking over a pack of wounded animals. Pichinson, a self-described "doctor of reality" who helps liquidate companies, says he wouldn't have moved from Los Angeles to Palo Alto a few months ago had he not smelled more high-tech trouble looming. "Sadly, it looks like 2004 is going to be another busy year...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Commerce One Inc. said it laid off 80 people, or about 40 percent of its staff, furloughed most of the rest for two weeks and hired a bank to explore the sale of its remaining assets. Commerce One, once a hot Internet company worth over $14 billion, released the gloomy news in its quarterly report to investors Thursday. Over the three-month period the Pleasanton company showed a loss of $24.4 million, or 77 cents a share. Those bottom line results were improved from the year before, when the company lost $36.3...

<p>For 19 years, the Computer Learning Center of the University of Pittsburgh has provided professional seminars to bring workers up-to-date on ever-changing computer applications and programming.</p> <p>But at the end of this month, the center, located in the Kossman Building, Downtown, will close because of changes in the marketplace.</p>

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Let's begin with one short and brutal fact. Only 20 public Silicon Valley companies have a higher stock price today than they did on March 10, 2000, the day the Nasdaq hit its maniacal crest. That's no typo: Twenty companies. Among the 307 public companies trading then and still alive today in the valley, the average stock decline was 72 percent since the Nasdaq composite index peaked. The median drop was 88 percent. And those numbers understate the havoc of the past 54 months. They don't include companies that crashed and...

<p>Running companies that became almost worthless didn't stop dozens of Silicon Valley insiders from pocketing billions of dollars by selling their stock during the tech boom and bust.</p> <p>The Mercury News examined the stock sales record of insiders at 40 companies in Silicon Valley that have lost virtually all their value since the stock market peaked in March 2000. The executives, board members and venture capitalists at these companies walked off with $3.41 billion, while their companies' total market value plunged 99.8 percent to a mere $229.5 million at the end of September.</p>

Splits: none Last TradeOct 4 · 0.01 Change-0.03 (-75.00%) Prev Cls0.04 Open0.04 Volume88,500 Day's Range0.01 - 0.04 Bid0.02 Ask2,000.00 P/EN/A Mkt Cap142K Avg Vol26,378 52-wk Range0.01 - 0.26 Bid Size4,500 Ask Size100 P/S0.16 Div/Shr0.00 Div DateN/A 1y Target EstN/A EPS (ttm)-0.26 EPS EstN/A PEGN/A YieldN/A Ex-DivN/A Financials, Historical Prices, Insider, Messages, News, Profile, Reports, SEC Filings, more... How risky is this stock? Find out with SmartMoney Select's Risk Map 1000. Add to My Portfolio - Set Alert Historical Quotes: daily | weekly | monthly Quotes delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, 20 minutes for NYSE and Amex. For delay times on other exchanges see exchange...

<p>TMP Worldwide, parent of Monster.com, the online Massachusetts job site, announced the resignation of its president and chief operating officer yesterday. The company also said it is cutting another 250 jobs worldwide to reduce costs in the wake of second-quarter losses of $504.1 million.</p>