But let’s not go crazy and dream up every elaborate way to police this thing.  That’s not the solution.  You have to feel for the people who acted on the news by selling their shares, but they also have to accept some of the blame.  There’s no excuse for an itchy finger when it comes to the stock market.  Any investor will tell you that.  Buy stocks for the long haul; it’s a rule of the game.  Playing the day-to-day system is a highway to getting burned.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, and you have to chalk up each, more or less, to luck.  Or bad luck, in the case of yesterday’s news.

A bigger question for a publisher like ourselves is whether or not we’ll follow Engadget’s breaking news in the future.  But again, let’s not go nuts and discredit the whole organization.  Shit happens.

On the brighter side, the legitimacy of the “blogosphere,” as it’s unfortunately called, seems as strong as ever.  Some will want to beat that statement to death, but in your hearts you know it’s true.  Information moves at the speed of light today, and the amount of time it took for the prank to go from conception to a 5% drop in Apple shares is remarkable to consider.  Because of that speed the filters are less effective.  And because they’re less effective, our bullshit meters need to be cranked up a degree or two. 

 
Scott Goldberg