"Can someone please tell me how shorting is legal, anyway? That's insane."

Zyyd, very entertaining post!  As far as the above, why is "longing" legal?  You think positively about a company, read up more on it, hear good things about it (sometimes on message boards!), put your money down and see what happens.  You're really not contributing much at all to the company except the scintilla of help of keeping the price supported when you buy (unless you actually buy an IPO or secondary, where your money actually goes to the issuing company).

So, if you feel for whatever reason a company will fail or will not do as well as expected and it's current share price seems overdone, then what's wrong with shorting?

As far as shorting to manipulate the price down, I don't like it, but often there is "longing" done to manipulate the price up - most longs don't notice the latter, and I like that a lot better if I'm a long!

Shorts are not a major factor with POET, the market cap is well under the potential as expressed by the majority here.  I happen to agree with that assessment, just not to the extent that most do.

We do need that new, decently high-profiled CEO.  PC is a Venture guy, he proved that to me long ago.  I know most disagree with my characterization of PC, but I believe they are the ones mistaken in that regard.  In terms of the tech, I wouldn't even hazard a wild guess about it based on my technical knowledge (zero), but I think tech is covered extremely well by the usual suspects on this board - they do a fantastic job, hope they're 100% correct.