The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

Losing Your Memory A deal that really bytes

Wait a second. 688 bytes of memory? Why, that's in the neighborhood of, say, 688 characters. OK, maybe 1,376. Or even 2,752. That makes it the equivalent of 550 words, max. About enough space to store an article about chief knowledge officers. Or 17 names and phone numbers. But not both.

QPB never got back to us to explain whether 688 bytes was a real selling point or just a typo. Or maybe our contact information got lost in a sea of 16 other names.

What Is NTAP's Plan?

You'll recall that last month we came down hard against corporate-sponsored poetry, specifically a variation on a verse from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings -- a version promulgated by Network Appliance (NTAP).

We thought we'd leave it at that. Until, that is, we received some correspondence from librarian Melinda Kent. She chimed in with an additional insight into NetApp's poetry, which substitutes "one unified storage platform" for the "one ring" that's the subject of Tolkien's original.

"Has anyone pointed out to NTAP," writes Kent, "that the 'One ring to rule them all' rhyme was written by Sauron, the lord of evil, as he was gloating about his dominion over the entire earth? Or is this, in fact, NTAP's plan?"

Now, we couldn't quite verify that Sauron, according to Tolkien's saga of Middle-earth, wrote the whole verse. Maybe it was just a few key lines.

But we get the idea. And all we can say is, no, we didn't ask NetApp if dominion over the entire earth was the focus of its plan. What's the point? If world domination were the goal, would NetApp really tell us?

5. I'm Not a Qualified Investor, but I Play One on TV

On Tuesday, investors in a hedge fund run by Kenneth Lipper went to court to fight over what money is left in the hedge fund he's liquidating.

Well, so much for our surefire investing strategy.

See, we've always thought that the best place to put our money is where the celebrities are. Like Planet Hollywood. Debbie Reynolds Hotel & Casino.

But now that Lipper Convertibles is closing down, amid accusations of mispriced assets and other mishegoss, we're forced to rethink our investment approach.

After all, Lipper's investors included Today host Matt Lauer, movie stars Julia Roberts and Liam Neeson, film producer Jerry Bruckheimer and artist Frank Stella. Not to mention -- whoa, get this -- Hard Rock Cafe founder Peter Morton. (Go figure.)

Yes, time to start investing in Beanie Babies.

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