I've seen this project a few times - very impressive work! It'll be awesome to see if they can get it self-hosting (right now, I think you need to compile with a different OS).

I wonder the same thing. For the little guy investing in a big company, it seems like owning stocks isn't any different than owning baseball cards.

Most shareholders in a big company don't have any where near enough stock to vote meaningfully. And most companies don't pay dividends with and regularity (or ever, for the most part). When dividends are paid, I'd bet that they're isolated and small - not enough to justify the price of the stock.

Is there some other mechanism that actually _links_ a company's real worth with its stock prices? If I owned 1% of Google, could I just walk in and demand to exchange my stock for 1% of the company's current assets?