% fortune -ae paul murphy

AMD gets knifed - by the press

The headline in Saturday's Calgary Herald read " AMD finds itself in financial peril" and that same story, by an "AP technology writer" named Jordan Robertson also found its way into numerous other newspapers.

The full story has about 970 words, lets look at about 130 (14%) of them:

The high-flying Advanced Micro Devices

company in financial peril, saddled with debt and bleeding

rumours of a possible takeover

AMD was stealing

AMD's well running dry.

Wall Street has punished AMD's stock

Its shares have plunged more than 60 percent

Analysts say the exodus will likely continue

Investors are concerned

AMD is spending too heavily

AMD's fall has wiped out about $10 billion

AMD stole

AMD's offensive

dwindling cash reserves and high capital expenditures.

AMD's shifting fortunes

this will get worse before it gets better

analysts are not optimistic

Wall Street is worried

AMD is in dire need of cash

Intel ended 2006 in a healthier financial position: $10 billion in cash and $2 billion in total debt

Perhaps one lifeline for AMD will come from none other than Intel itself.

Cool huh? as honest and unbiased a hatchet job as you'll find this side of the nutroots divide - I particularly like subliminals like: "AMD's offensive" and the invocation of an "exodus".


Paul Murphy wrote and published The Unix Guide to Defenestration. Murphy is a 25-year veteran of the I.T. consulting industry, specializing in Unix and Unix-related management issues.