A very good book (that indirectly answers this question) is Customers for Life (available at your favorite online book store)
the author transformed "his Dallas Cadillac dealership into the second largest in America" but don't let this dissuade you;-)
the "gotcha" from a business standpoint is that it costs money to "develop" a customer - so keeping customers happy means they stick around for a long time and that should equal $$ (and of course knowing when to end the relationship is important as well)
all businesses make a decision on how much service they are going to provide - I don't remember the specific examples but it was something like "WalMart" or "Tiffany's"
WalMart is the low profit margin/high volume/low service option, Tiffany's is the high profit margin/low volume/high service option - neither one is the "best" option, but you have to decide which you want to be (i.e. trying to provide great service at WalMart's prices will quickly put you out of business)
to me the "pay as you go" option is going to equal the "WalMart" scenario - I honestly don't think there are many "Tiffany's" examples in the ISP sector anymore (but it is still obviously a great way to differentiate yourself - a lot of people are willing to pay extra for better service)
and it is most likely that the real problem is that Net access has become a commodity and the profit margins are tiny (which makes the question academic at best)
I'll accept the argument that "national broadband" is in the interest of interstate commerce and therefore falls under the authority of the federal government
I'll also argue that the federal government has never been good at running any commercial activity (and if you say that the Internet isn't for commerce then the federal government shouldn't be involved at all)
this is also an instance where being late to the party gives you a big relative advantage (i.e. if you are starting out with nothing you can get going much faster than if you have to deal with a bunch of old systems that people still use). the technology was in flux for a long time (and a "high speed" connection was once 128kbps) - and the acceptance of the "commercial nature" of the 'net is only 10 - 15 years old (everybody remember the "dot com bubble"?) - so we aren't doing that bad
the government is going to be involved (due to the large amount of money involved) but they are more likely to screw things up than magically fix things (which is why "government is best which governs least")
I don't think employees are more or less loyal today than they were X years ago. People (i.e. "basic human nature") haven't fundamentally changed in thousands of years - what changes are our expectations.
For example if you grew up in the middle of the great depression your expectations are much different than if you grew up in the middle of the "free love hippy culture," and if you grew up in the 80's and 90's your expectations will be much different than either of the former...
Loyalty/respect must be earned so it should be pointed out that a lot of the "loyalty" of past generations was from the top down, which of course resulted in loyalty from the employees (that reminds me of my favorite labor union bumper sticker - "Together we bargain, separately we beg" - for no particular reason)
The really scary thing is that (in times of "trouble") people are willing to give up a lot for "stability" (in all aspects of life).
I don't think "I.T." is being discriminated against in most companies
the larger issue is how does management treat employees in general. "I.T." is going to be treated pretty close to everybody else.
for example: the "bully boss" is still common in 2008. I have yet to come across a "management" book that recommends to "intimidate your employees, refuse to listen to reality, pay them as little as possible, criticize what you don't understand" - but I keep running into various forms of that management philosophy (the accepted explanation for why people/management get away with acting like assholes is because it "works" to a certain degree)
the second big issue is that technology in general has a "life cycle."
Once upon a time, if you owned an automobile (lets say 100 years ago) you probably built it yourself (or at least knew the person who built it for you), and were most likely able to perform "mechanic" functions yourself (there might have been a livery stable in every town, but no gas stations with "mechanics"). as more people acquired automobiles, "mechanic" probably became a very respected profession. Today "mechanic" may still be a respected profession, but...
information technology has followed a similar cycle. 20 years ago, "fixing" computers was more of a challenge than it is today. If you owned a personal computer 20 years ago, you probably knew how to open the case and "fix" it, and for that matter you probably wrote some of the software you used (oh, and I had to walk up hill, in 20 feet of snow, both ways to school, in the summer!).
computers have gotten smaller, faster, and more dependable. Add in the facts that the number of people with "computer skills" has also grown, that personal computers are pretty close to "commodity" status, and supply and demand rears its head
yes, in general, management may not fully appreciate the impact I.T. can have on the profitability of an organization - but this is simply an indication of poor management (with that said, I'd love to work for Apple/Cisco/Google...lol)
my experience (SWG, WoW, Dungeon Runners, Guild Wars, City of Heroes, et al) leads me to believe that the deck is stacked against "micro-transaction" games for a number of reasons
the big drawback is the lack of guaranteed cash flow. if you have a game that people are willing to pay $x a month to play, then that is the better option. if they are willing to shell out $50 to buy a box in order to install the game, that is even better!
therefore, the only games that will choose to use a "micro-transaction" revenue stream are ones cannot compete in the "monthly fee" market space (for any number of reasons).
then the catch-22 happens - programmers, artists, and I.T. folks tend to like to get paid for their work and will naturally gravitate towards the companies with the steady income stream (and probably better salaries/benefits/tech - which are the monthly fee games) - and of course the companies with the best programmers, artists, and I.T. folks will have the best games
the U.S. (being a wealthy nation, with a sophisticated "gamer" market with plenty of discretionary income) obviously shows a preference for the higher quality products (i.e. monthly fee games).
of course, this doesn't mean that a "micro transaction" game couldn't be profitable in the U.S. - just that they will never be the dominant choice (the "drug" analogy = in general, rich people snort cocaine, poor people smoke crack - same product different markets)
the BBC talking heads (on the BBS world news this morning) were being generous when they said that there is "some discussion" about the United States' motives for the missile strike
three possibilities were given:
the US was showing that we have the ability to shoot down satellites (they described it as "shooting through the eye of a needle to hit the eye of a needle"),
we wanted to keep sensitive information out of the hands of our "opponents" (James Bond plot alert!), or
there might have actually been a health risk to letting the satellite reenter orbit (it should burn up now)
I'm going to choose all of the above! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
he must be resigning so that ...
on
Fidel Castro Resigns
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
he can spend more time on/. - searching for the "stuff that matters" perspective;-)
this is news, but not really BIG news - Fidel has been sick for a long time and his brother ("Raul") is going to "take over" (although there will be an "election")
"ah come on, we all knew this socialism thing wasn't going to work" Fidel Castro via the Simpsons
as others have pointed out - this is about corporate taxes
calling it "creative accounting" might be valid but misses the point
accountants set the "rules" through generally accepted accounting principles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAAP - which appears to be what the article is complaining about
Microsoft has a history of being big and mean, but apparently GAAP allows Microsoft to do whatever it is they are doing (or the SEC/FTC/acronym of your choice would be jumping down their throat even more)
maybe the rules should be changed, but it might simply lead to companies moving out of that state. i.e. If it is unprofitable to do business in a specific area, then companies won't do business there very long
the recent hot button examples (sure to get me called an capitalist/fascist/idiot by someone) are Michigan and Ireland. Michigan has "increased tax regulation" and also seen a lot of industry leave for more "business friendly" areas (the "1 state recession" we kept hearing about during the Michigan primary). Ireland on the other hand has "rewritten their tax codes" (read "cut taxes") and seen an economic turnaround (maybe it is unrelated...lol)
in my little part of the world it is also common practice to give corporations all kinds of tax breaks - the underlying idea being to keep/create jobs in the area (from which the local municipalities collect income tax)
Obviously I hadn't looked into it enough (another post pointed out that he has been cleared of fraud charges). With the 24 hour news cycle there have been several "experts" come out and blame the market downturn on a lot of different things (because coming out and saying "the system is complex and there is not a simple answer" wouldn't get you invited back)
normally if you lose billions of dollars doing something you weren't supposed to be doing, you are asked to seek employment elsewhere (whatever the guy did, he obviously new it wasn't the "right" thing to do - i.e. he was making the effort to cover it up) - and this even applies to the CEO's most of the time (of course they get paid millions of dollars to go away)
completely off topic by now - but Merrill Lynch has there own fraud problems...
from feb 1, 2008 - WSJ.com "NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Massachusetts state authorities on Friday charged Merrill Lynch and Co., Inc. with fraud and misrepresentation related to about $14 million worth of subprime securities it sold to the city of Springfield."
the beautiful thing about being at the top of the food chain is that you can take credit for everything that works and place the blame for the stuff that doesn't work on somebody else (BTW I'm just a lowly employee not MANAGEMENT - I fix things when they break so the Dilbert principle probably applies, although I'm getting rapidly less valuable...lol)
"But officer I was going to return the car, honest!";-)
I don't think whether the money left the bank or not matters.
I'm sure France has some form of the SEC, and they probably go to great lengths defining whether this was theft or fraud
does intent enter into whether someone "steals" or not? very much IANAL - but can you ever prove 100% what someone's "intent" was.
Sure the guy wasn't being malicious (or at least says he wasn't being malicious) but if I had just been the cause of my employer losing $7.2 billion I would say that too (after all there are no guilty people in prison)
For whatever it is worth one of the economic problems in France (and the EU in general) is that it is very hard to fire somebody - so companies are very slow to hire anybody (leading to high unemployment - more unintended consequences)
so you are right of course, he is effectively a non-employee...
...lol that is a semantic argument if I've ever heard one kind of the old "chicken and egg" thing
they had the "fraudulous" (maybe http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fraudulent would be better) positions because of him. some of the "talking heads" have even blamed the global market "mini crash" on his trades
What he did
Basically the guy was "gambling" on stocks and losing - then making bigger bets trying to catch up. He claimed that he was simply trying to get a big bonus and didn't have any malicious intent.
how he did it
He went largely "unsupervised" because he was considered unimportant (and hadn't taken a vacation in a long time - so he covered his own tracks until the whole thing collapsed).
Most financial institutions require mandatory "vacations" so they can check up on people (this guy would have been caught much sooner if someone else had a chance to look at his "trading desk")
the funny part
what I love is that they haven't fired him yet, he has been told to not come to work and they aren't paying him, but France's labor laws require a "sit down" before they kick him out the door.
In the short term he is being looked at as a "Robin Hood" type figure by some people (who think he just ripped off the greedy bankers, not that he committed fraud and stole) - so mark this up as an unintended consequence of ridiculously strong labor unions
the Internet is just another distribution method, the beauty of the 'net is that it is inexpensive for individuals to have their own "station" (blog, youtube channel, whatever)
The 'net has/is fundamentally changing "media" in general (Dave Winer has been writing about this for sometime) - so the question is probably moot. as others have pointed out, there is a tv/web convergence going on
the "old media" (good ol' Time magazine) had "You" as the "person of the year" last year - recognizing the "user generated content" phenomenon
just guessing again, but I imagine that the reason Sun paid $billion is because they can (imagine Sun's management saying "We've got all this cash... What can we buy!")
a large part of the $billion is going to go on the books as "goodwill" - i.e. they can't put a hard number on the value of the "MySQL" brand but it is worth something
It still looks like some form of MySQL optimized for Solaris on Sun hardware is the best hope of actually making a profit on the purchase
My guess is that Sun is going to "optimize" MySQL for their hardware - then they will be able to "bundle" MySQL software/Sun hardware
Sun will make a profit by selling more hardware - I don't know how long it will take to make 1 billion dollars (insert evil laugh) but at least it sounds like a good decision
At a basic level it is necessary to provide "intellectual protection" as an incentive to innovation.
This is easily proved by the fact that China (no "intellectual protection" at all) is a world leader in piracy but isn't a world leader in new product development (state censorship might explain a lot - but in any case there is no incentive to "think" at all). The current system may not be the best way to do it, but there needs to be some method
Software copy protection on the other hand is irritating to consumers. Anyone else remember all of those idiotic methods tried in the 90's? Match up the wheels (or search the manual), find the code, enter the code THEN play the game.
Requiring the game cd be in the drive is still common (and still irritating) - I've always been on the "if they want to steal your software, then there isn't much you can do about it" side of things
How many years have brick and mortar stores tried ways to eliminate shoplifting? Better to not irritate your paying customers than to worry about some vague idea of "lost potential profits"...
Slashdot Mirror
it wasn't a well placed bullet, and it was at the wrong place and time ...lol
it might have worked in WWII though... (when the 3 main causes were Hitler, Hitler, and Hitler)
...when you really need him?
random quote from forgotten source:
"Most wars could be prevented with 1 motivated soldier in the right place at the right time and a well placed bullet"A very good book (that indirectly answers this question) is Customers for Life (available at your favorite online book store)
the author transformed "his Dallas Cadillac dealership into the second largest in America" but don't let this dissuade you ;-)
the "gotcha" from a business standpoint is that it costs money to "develop" a customer - so keeping customers happy means they stick around for a long time and that should equal $$ (and of course knowing when to end the relationship is important as well)
all businesses make a decision on how much service they are going to provide - I don't remember the specific examples but it was something like "WalMart" or "Tiffany's"
WalMart is the low profit margin/high volume/low service option, Tiffany's is the high profit margin/low volume/high service option - neither one is the "best" option, but you have to decide which you want to be (i.e. trying to provide great service at WalMart's prices will quickly put you out of business)
to me the "pay as you go" option is going to equal the "WalMart" scenario - I honestly don't think there are many "Tiffany's" examples in the ISP sector anymore (but it is still obviously a great way to differentiate yourself - a lot of people are willing to pay extra for better service)
and it is most likely that the real problem is that Net access has become a commodity and the profit margins are tiny (which makes the question academic at best)
so the Google wetworks division isn't about water fountains?
I'll accept the argument that "national broadband" is in the interest of interstate commerce and therefore falls under the authority of the federal government
I'll also argue that the federal government has never been good at running any commercial activity (and if you say that the Internet isn't for commerce then the federal government shouldn't be involved at all)
this is also an instance where being late to the party gives you a big relative advantage (i.e. if you are starting out with nothing you can get going much faster than if you have to deal with a bunch of old systems that people still use). the technology was in flux for a long time (and a "high speed" connection was once 128kbps) - and the acceptance of the "commercial nature" of the 'net is only 10 - 15 years old (everybody remember the "dot com bubble"?) - so we aren't doing that bad
the government is going to be involved (due to the large amount of money involved) but they are more likely to screw things up than magically fix things (which is why "government is best which governs least")
... the one that will be missed is the janitor ;-)
I don't think employees are more or less loyal today than they were X years ago. People (i.e. "basic human nature") haven't fundamentally changed in thousands of years - what changes are our expectations.
For example if you grew up in the middle of the great depression your expectations are much different than if you grew up in the middle of the "free love hippy culture," and if you grew up in the 80's and 90's your expectations will be much different than either of the former...
Loyalty/respect must be earned so it should be pointed out that a lot of the "loyalty" of past generations was from the top down, which of course resulted in loyalty from the employees (that reminds me of my favorite labor union bumper sticker - "Together we bargain, separately we beg" - for no particular reason)
The really scary thing is that (in times of "trouble") people are willing to give up a lot for "stability" (in all aspects of life).
I don't think "I.T." is being discriminated against in most companies
the larger issue is how does management treat employees in general. "I.T." is going to be treated pretty close to everybody else.
for example: the "bully boss" is still common in 2008. I have yet to come across a "management" book that recommends to "intimidate your employees, refuse to listen to reality, pay them as little as possible, criticize what you don't understand" - but I keep running into various forms of that management philosophy (the accepted explanation for why people/management get away with acting like assholes is because it "works" to a certain degree)
the second big issue is that technology in general has a "life cycle."
Once upon a time, if you owned an automobile (lets say 100 years ago) you probably built it yourself (or at least knew the person who built it for you), and were most likely able to perform "mechanic" functions yourself (there might have been a livery stable in every town, but no gas stations with "mechanics"). as more people acquired automobiles, "mechanic" probably became a very respected profession. Today "mechanic" may still be a respected profession, but ...
information technology has followed a similar cycle. 20 years ago, "fixing" computers was more of a challenge than it is today. If you owned a personal computer 20 years ago, you probably knew how to open the case and "fix" it, and for that matter you probably wrote some of the software you used (oh, and I had to walk up hill, in 20 feet of snow, both ways to school, in the summer!).
computers have gotten smaller, faster, and more dependable. Add in the facts that the number of people with "computer skills" has also grown, that personal computers are pretty close to "commodity" status, and supply and demand rears its head
yes, in general, management may not fully appreciate the impact I.T. can have on the profitability of an organization - but this is simply an indication of poor management (with that said, I'd love to work for Apple/Cisco/Google ...lol)
porn is never the issue "free speech" is the issue
and of course there is no "right" to not be offended ;-)
my experience (SWG, WoW, Dungeon Runners, Guild Wars, City of Heroes, et al) leads me to believe that the deck is stacked against "micro-transaction" games for a number of reasons
the big drawback is the lack of guaranteed cash flow. if you have a game that people are willing to pay $x a month to play, then that is the better option. if they are willing to shell out $50 to buy a box in order to install the game, that is even better!
therefore, the only games that will choose to use a "micro-transaction" revenue stream are ones cannot compete in the "monthly fee" market space (for any number of reasons).
then the catch-22 happens - programmers, artists, and I.T. folks tend to like to get paid for their work and will naturally gravitate towards the companies with the steady income stream (and probably better salaries/benefits/tech - which are the monthly fee games) - and of course the companies with the best programmers, artists, and I.T. folks will have the best games
the U.S. (being a wealthy nation, with a sophisticated "gamer" market with plenty of discretionary income) obviously shows a preference for the higher quality products (i.e. monthly fee games).
of course, this doesn't mean that a "micro transaction" game couldn't be profitable in the U.S. - just that they will never be the dominant choice (the "drug" analogy = in general, rich people snort cocaine, poor people smoke crack - same product different markets)
...but will it run Linux
imagine a Beowulf of those!
the BBC talking heads (on the BBS world news this morning) were being generous when they said that there is "some discussion" about the United States' motives for the missile strike
three possibilities were given:
I'm going to choose all of the above! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
he can spend more time on /. - searching for the "stuff that matters" perspective ;-)
this is news, but not really BIG news - Fidel has been sick for a long time and his brother ("Raul") is going to "take over" (although there will be an "election")
"ah come on, we all knew this socialism thing wasn't going to work"
Fidel Castro via the Simpsons
they could get by very well without students - their HUGE endowment allows them to do a lot of things that "normal" schools couldn't get away with
maybe in 50 or 60 years without students they might have a problem (when they no longer have rich alumni leaving them money)...
until then, eduction is a perfectly cromulent spelling because as Jebediah Springfield once said, "A noble spirit enbiggens the smallest man."
as others have pointed out - this is about corporate taxes
calling it "creative accounting" might be valid but misses the point
accountants set the "rules" through generally accepted accounting principles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAAP - which appears to be what the article is complaining about
Microsoft has a history of being big and mean, but apparently GAAP allows Microsoft to do whatever it is they are doing (or the SEC/FTC/acronym of your choice would be jumping down their throat even more)
maybe the rules should be changed, but it might simply lead to companies moving out of that state. i.e. If it is unprofitable to do business in a specific area, then companies won't do business there very long
the recent hot button examples (sure to get me called an capitalist/fascist/idiot by someone) are Michigan and Ireland. Michigan has "increased tax regulation" and also seen a lot of industry leave for more "business friendly" areas (the "1 state recession" we kept hearing about during the Michigan primary). Ireland on the other hand has "rewritten their tax codes" (read "cut taxes") and seen an economic turnaround (maybe it is unrelated ...lol)
in my little part of the world it is also common practice to give corporations all kinds of tax breaks - the underlying idea being to keep/create jobs in the area (from which the local municipalities collect income tax)
Obviously I hadn't looked into it enough (another post pointed out that he has been cleared of fraud charges). With the 24 hour news cycle there have been several "experts" come out and blame the market downturn on a lot of different things (because coming out and saying "the system is complex and there is not a simple answer" wouldn't get you invited back)
normally if you lose billions of dollars doing something you weren't supposed to be doing, you are asked to seek employment elsewhere (whatever the guy did, he obviously new it wasn't the "right" thing to do - i.e. he was making the effort to cover it up) - and this even applies to the CEO's most of the time (of course they get paid millions of dollars to go away)
completely off topic by now - but Merrill Lynch has there own fraud problems ...
from feb 1, 2008 - WSJ.com "NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Massachusetts state authorities on Friday charged Merrill Lynch and Co., Inc. with fraud and misrepresentation related to about $14 million worth of subprime securities it sold to the city of Springfield."
the beautiful thing about being at the top of the food chain is that you can take credit for everything that works and place the blame for the stuff that doesn't work on somebody else (BTW I'm just a lowly employee not MANAGEMENT - I fix things when they break so the Dilbert principle probably applies, although I'm getting rapidly less valuable ...lol)
"But officer I was going to return the car, honest!" ;-)
I don't think whether the money left the bank or not matters. I'm sure France has some form of the SEC, and they probably go to great lengths defining whether this was theft or fraud
does intent enter into whether someone "steals" or not? very much IANAL - but can you ever prove 100% what someone's "intent" was.
Sure the guy wasn't being malicious (or at least says he wasn't being malicious) but if I had just been the cause of my employer losing $7.2 billion I would say that too (after all there are no guilty people in prison)
For whatever it is worth one of the economic problems in France (and the EU in general) is that it is very hard to fire somebody - so companies are very slow to hire anybody (leading to high unemployment - more unintended consequences)
so you are right of course, he is effectively a non-employee...
they had the "fraudulous" (maybe http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fraudulent would be better) positions because of him. some of the "talking heads" have even blamed the global market "mini crash" on his trades
interesting logic though
What he did
Basically the guy was "gambling" on stocks and losing - then making bigger bets trying to catch up. He claimed that he was simply trying to get a big bonus and didn't have any malicious intent.
how he did it
He went largely "unsupervised" because he was considered unimportant (and hadn't taken a vacation in a long time - so he covered his own tracks until the whole thing collapsed).
Most financial institutions require mandatory "vacations" so they can check up on people (this guy would have been caught much sooner if someone else had a chance to look at his "trading desk")
the funny part
what I love is that they haven't fired him yet, he has been told to not come to work and they aren't paying him, but France's labor laws require a "sit down" before they kick him out the door.
In the short term he is being looked at as a "Robin Hood" type figure by some people (who think he just ripped off the greedy bankers, not that he committed fraud and stole) - so mark this up as an unintended consequence of ridiculously strong labor unions
the Internet is just another distribution method, the beauty of the 'net is that it is inexpensive for individuals to have their own "station" (blog, youtube channel, whatever)
The 'net has/is fundamentally changing "media" in general (Dave Winer has been writing about this for sometime) - so the question is probably moot. as others have pointed out, there is a tv/web convergence going on
the "old media" (good ol' Time magazine) had "You" as the "person of the year" last year - recognizing the "user generated content" phenomenon
anyway, I still think ytmnd is funny
just guessing again, but I imagine that the reason Sun paid $billion is because they can (imagine Sun's management saying "We've got all this cash... What can we buy!")
a large part of the $billion is going to go on the books as "goodwill" - i.e. they can't put a hard number on the value of the "MySQL" brand but it is worth something
It still looks like some form of MySQL optimized for Solaris on Sun hardware is the best hope of actually making a profit on the purchase
but I'm wrong a lot
Sun will make a profit by selling more hardware - I don't know how long it will take to make 1 billion dollars (insert evil laugh) but at least it sounds like a good decision
This is easily proved by the fact that China (no "intellectual protection" at all) is a world leader in piracy but isn't a world leader in new product development (state censorship might explain a lot - but in any case there is no incentive to "think" at all). The current system may not be the best way to do it, but there needs to be some method
Software copy protection on the other hand is irritating to consumers. Anyone else remember all of those idiotic methods tried in the 90's? Match up the wheels (or search the manual), find the code, enter the code THEN play the game.
Requiring the game cd be in the drive is still common (and still irritating) - I've always been on the "if they want to steal your software, then there isn't much you can do about it" side of things
How many years have brick and mortar stores tried ways to eliminate shoplifting? Better to not irritate your paying customers than to worry about some vague idea of "lost potential profits"...
It is possible to http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/539013/how_can_you_make_money_giving_something.html make money giving stuff away, but that is another subject ;-)