Be Gear Up For Auction

Well, if you live near the Menlo Park, CA area you should join what's evidently a number of slashdot readers at the Be, Co. auction. With the merger and dissolution of Be, all of their remaining hardware/furniture will be up for auction.

Slashdotted already?

[Chagrin]

Perhaps these arpagan.com people should consider bidding on a better web server.

What, no Aeron chairs?

[sulli]

Not much of a dot com auction then.

Auction

[Kreeblah]

Gee, thanks for posting this on Slashdot. There goes any chance of getting something at a reasonable price.

Ebonics?

[crotherm]

When I first read the subject, my first thought was a badly phased title written in ebonics.

Re:All the cool stuff will probably be gone by now

[Unknown Poltroon]

"Who's job is it to make sure the remaining assets of the company make it to the auction? "

Mine. Please bring all your servers by my house before the auction. ANy unsuitable ones will be discarded.

Re:What about the domain name?

[sab39]

The merger announcement should have been put at...

http://let.it.be.com/

Re:Not Stealing... just Backpay

[BrianH]

This is NOT something I'd be recommending. I worked at a dotcom that folded in late '99, and since there was a big question about our final paychecks, a number of employees decided to walk out with hardware in lieu of cash. Since management didn't seem to care, and since nobody was going to be employed later on anyway, then nobody gets hurt, right? Wrong!

What happened? Well, the liquidation company (employed by the court) realized that there was missing equipment right away. They rewound the security videotape for the building and ID'd the employees who'd walked out with equipment. The next day they called the police and had most of them arrested. IIRC, eleven of them were charged with felony grand theft, and quite a few more were charged with simple theft and burglary (a couple IT guys with keys came back the next day). Without fail, ALL of them offered to return the equipment, but they liquidator refused to drop the charges and everyone eventually plead no contest. Most of the employees were given fines and restitution FAR larger than the value of the equipment they took, a handful of the employees were put on probation, and two of the employees who re-entered the building were actually given brief jail stays (14 days IIRC).

All of the employees learned an unfortunate lesson about property rights and bankruptcy. You see, the moment the judge OK'd the bankruptcy and liquidation, the equipment became the legal property of the COURT with controllership assigned to the liquidator. The employees had an honest grievance with Company X, but they avenged that grievance by stealing from an entity that wasn't involved in it. Legally, it's the equivalent to stealing your neighbors TV because the guy down the street took $500 from your living room. There are legal ways to deal with the guy down the street, but you have no right to steal from someone else in return.

The ironic thing was that we were all paid within two weeks anyway, with a two month severance bonus to boot!