Wall Street: Software More Valuable Than Oil 223
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the rich-in-ideas dept.
from the rich-in-ideas dept.
CWmike writes "The tech industry's answer to this week's stock market roller coaster was delivered on Tuesday by the mighty Apple Inc. Apple saw its stock price rise enough — gaining more than 5% — to briefly surpass Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company in the U.S., according to an AP analysis of its market cap. (Exxon Mobile wound up the day slightly ahead of Apple.) Most of the other major tech companies — including Intel, IBM, Dell, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard — all finished in positive territory yesterday, as markets made up ground lost in the big sell-off on Monday that also hit oil prices and other commodities.Tuesday's rally may be all that's needed to shake away, at least temporarily, some of the economic concerns the IT industry still faces. By closing in on Exxon, Apple effectively affirmed that there are few limits to tech growth. CW blogger Jonny Evans posits that ideas are why Apple beats Exxon on market cap, noting, 'While Exxon drills, hammers and crushes its way to find its billions, Apple's mind-miners explore myriad complexities to develop and understand new technologies.'"
Umm... (Score:5, Informative)
Now, carry on. It's the "information age" or somesuch...
Re:Does not surprise (Score:3, Informative)
And the funny thing is, if you DO find oil in your backyard, you'll find that most urban property owners don't actually have mineral rights to their property.
Re:ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)
Exxon doesn't advance anything.
Silly little man.
Things like Autotune exist because of companies like Exxon. You have no fucking clue how much Exxon alone has advanced ground radar and sonography, the amount of science Exxon has contributed is rather impressive. Because of oil companies, we know far more about our own planet than you can possibly imagine. These guys make a living out of generating high resolution maps of what the crust of our planet above AND BELOW the surface of the ocean are made of its not even funny.
They don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts, its about money, but they most certainly do advance science in numerous ways in order to further their own business, to find oil where they couldn't find it before, which directly benefits volcanologists and archeologists for instance. They've created technology that has allowed my county to turn away a potentially extremely profitable chemical processing plant ... because tech the another oil company developed let them see into the ground well enough to predict that any leakage would go directly into our water supply ... not just because of the whole NIMBY side, but because there was actual clear evidence that it would be a problem.
Oil companies do a lot for you besides get you to where you want to go, don't be so ignorant about the world around you. I'm not telling you that you should love the oil companies because they are trying to save the world, thats simply not true. Saying they do nothing to advance anything however is 100% false in every way.