Rattled chairman denies market swing is to blame; Ned Hat shares down 99.89%

One of the year's most eagerly awaited public offerings was scrapped today, in the wake of recent volatility in the tech-heavy Nasdaq market system.  Nedwork Solutions, Inc., which holds the exclusive rights to market the coveted .ned Internet domain names, said it would put its IPO plans on hold indefinitely.  Ned Hat Software, a sister company, has plummeted 99.89% since its moonshot IPO last year (see related story below).

Ned Hat / Nedwork Solutions chairman Ned Lilly, reached via digital pager on a ledge outside his window, denied that the stock swing was to blame:  "We decided to focus on our core business of providing excellent service to the .ned community."

Company detractors say that service has not been a hallmark of NedSI to date.  A typical .ned domain registration takes 5-7 weeks to process, although the company realizes the first ten years of revenue in its books immediately.  Nonetheless, the company's outside accountants warned in its SEC registration filing that, "the company is in serious debt already, and has no prospects of ever, ever, ever making money.  We don't know what they do with the revenue, if it even exists."

Attorney General Janet Reno today charged that Microsoft Corp. and its shareholders should be held liable for the fiery 1993 tragedy at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.

In a motion filed before Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, known for his keen grasp of the nuances of software development, the U.S. Justice Department claimed that technicians within the FBI command center in Washington D.C., which was coordinating the action against the Davidians, were denied access to key Internet technologies inside Windows for Workgroups 3.11, the federal standard operating system at the time.