How much subsidy is there? I'm not entirely familiar with US govt. economic policy on these things, but I believe unless a company files for chapter 11, it doesn't get many breaks from government. Losing money is part of the business. Can you provide a figure for the money the government will give them because of this "loss"? As I see it, they're just doing their responsibility to their shareholders (reporting income and current company status) not asking for government money. Simple, they write it off on their taxes. Then they don't have to pay a portion of their taxes that they should pay. So now they get to pay (just making this number up, ball park figure though) $100M less on their taxes because they deliberately lost money on the Xbox. That is $100M less the government has, which is a lot of money. That could fix every problem the schools in the bay area have with overcrowding for years. I am not, at all, saying Microsoft is in the wrong. Microsoft is doing the right thing here. It's the IRS and government that is wrong for paying for little Billy's Xbox because Microsoft didn't price it high enough to not lose money.
Re-reading my post reminded me of a half-joke that my co-workers and I tell each other when we are bitching about the pathetic fools we have to work with: "Hell, fire him and give me half his salary. My output will go up because I won't spend half my time answering his questions and/or fixing his crappy code, and he wasn't netting any output anyway. It's a win-win situation!"
I swear I've had that exact same conversation, almost verbatim. You didn't work for a company in Cupertino, California that is now out of business?
To illustrate my point, I expect to get my butt kicked in StarCraft every time I play my friend. But I'd still call the result of each encounter a loss. (Really, "a shameful embarrasment" would be more accurate, but my point stands.)
To illustrate my point, you don't get paid by the government to lose at starcraft. Microsoft will get a write-off from the Xbox, thereby allowing all the tax payers that can't afford an Xbox for their own kids to contribute to little billy's xbox his parents got him because Microsoft purposefully sold them under cost.
You hit it right on the head. This is a gamble, that they are confident will have a positive return (Gain out weighs risk.) so while they report it as a lost inside, they should not be able to use any of it as a write-off on their taxes or such nonsense. Profitable companies that have expenses incurred because they took a loss on the product deliberately should not be subsidized by the government. What's happening is that the tax payers are having to pay for little billy's Xbox. Granted, not as much as little billy's parents, but a portion of it.
Its like the original poster is crying that companies have to act the way he thinks they should.
Wrong. I'm saying the government shouldn't subsidize project losses in a profitable company. The full $177m should come out of MS's piggy banks, and I'd bet MS isn't paying much.
Its amazing what sort of accounting/economics crap will get modded up if its just MS bashing. Damn, are you really so illiterate to my saying, "This is not just MS, it's every other company too." It's not a problem with the companies, it's with taxes (IRS) and the government.
If expenses > revenue = LOSS If expenses Yes, you are right. But Microsofts revenue was greater than it's expenses, including the Xbox "loss" so they have a profit, right?
Oops, then why are they filing a loss with the SEC?
This playing stupid accounting tricks is one of the reason the stockmarket went down so much. You mean the stupid accounting tricks Microsoft does, and every other company, so they government gives them a tax break so they don't have to take the full $177m out of their piggy bank? What exactly are you saying? Maybe you misread what I was saying, go read it again, but I'll paraphrase: One projects loss, in a profitable company, should not matter.
All in all, it's not so bad making $40k as a postdoc, if you pick up all the perks. Especially in a recession, where you would not have a job anyway! That's great if you pick up all the perks. Do you have any idea how hard it is to pick up the perks? I know a lot of people that are doing post-doc research and don't get a damn thing. Worst part about it: Best they could find. These are people graduation with 3.5+ too.
We really need to redefine business loss. Microsoft didn't lose money. They knew ahead of time that they were going to be in the red on the Xbox. Not that I'm saying Microsoft is bad for following this practice, it's common practice in many markets.
I just don't think that purposefully loses should count like a standard lost. They know that this $177m they drop now, it's an expense. Not a loss. They will get it back, they are just taking credit out on their budget and getting the government to pay the interest.
This is much easier said than done. Have you ever had to interview people to fill a position? I have on several occasions. In one case, it got to the point where "management" was leaning on me to "just hire someone, goddamnit!" I had enough clout at the time to refuse to just hire some jackass, but we had plenty of jackasses coming in to interview.
Yes, actually this is the first position where I don't have hiring authority. Even at my first job, I ascending quickly enough to be the interviewer for programming positions. I've made people cry in interviews. I don't waste time. In 5 minutes, if you have not impressed me, you walk out the door. It's easier to find better programmers now, than a few years ago.
Once you've worked in the industry a while, you'll realize that 90-95% of the people in it are not worth their salary (or the other 5-10% are way underpaid). I don't think anyone in the IT field is worth their salary. What's the average pay now? $70K? Go look at how much post-doctorate researchers make, and you tell me how a $70K salary is justified. Not that I'm complaining, just disagreeing. I've been in the industry before the.com bubble, when a $55K position was really good.
I just hope that the 5-10% of people that are actually worth a shit are the ones keeping their jobs. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. The 5-10% of the people should be able to get better jobs because of networking. If I were to ever choose to go back to the bay area, I could find a job. Up in Portland it's much more difficult because I don't know enough people, but if I were to ever lose this job I have a couple places setup from people that I've worked with here that would set me up.
Finding a job in a bad economy means you know the right people who know your skills. Resumes mean less when you are fighting amidst a flood of others who are just as qualified on paper but can't code their way out of a wet paper bag.
There is too much bloat in the IT world, and that's why the current recession is a good thing. We need to weed out the massive amount of dead wood in the industry. All this people who came into being programmers in 98, 99 or whenever just because it was "Good Money" I look skeptical on anyone who has no development experience (whether educational, or hobby, doesn't matter) prior to 1995.
I wish I had more to do today.. meetings cancelled, small application fixes, slooow day, too much slashdot.
I work in an intelligent company that didn't hire 15 people to do 3 peoples job. I'm part of the IS group, even though I'm an application and server developer (New to this whole application development thing, releasing my first windows product soon.. thank you, QT) I have a pretty decent workload most of the time. There are 3 programmers here, and we're all kept pretty busy. The entire IS team is probably about 15 people, for thousands of computers, custom applications and servers.
I remember the last company I worked at had redundancy even in it's employees. It seemed every position was filled at least twice. Strangest thing. Each person did slightly different things, but if someone actually works the majority of an 8 hour day they can accomplish a lot of stuff.
Don't over-hire. Hire smart people. Hire people that work. 3 people can do what would otherwise take 15. The 3 of us do more than a development group of around 20 people at my old company.. but they aren't a good comparison, and that's why they are out of business now.
NASA is darned if they do and darned if they dont where those conspiracies are concerned. If people *want* to believe something, nothing they say or do can prove otherwise.
You are exactly right. I worked at a NASA base 5 years ago, it was nothing spooky or mysterious. They have some cool technology, but that's all it is.
Yet it doesn't stop conversations like this, that I had with some strange fellow in a small town in southern California:
Me: Well, actually NASA is just like any other organization. You go to work, work on a project that is usually pretty cool and exciting, and go home to a normal house.. It's not like you work for NASA and suddenly they relocate you to some secret underground housing project. Him: NASA hides all of it's findings! You never know the result of their research because it would disrupt humanity! Me: What research? Most of NASA research is funded in part by public companies, and you can easily find out what they are doing. Most projects have their own website. Him: They hide a lot of stuff. Art Bell deserves to know the truth and tell the American people what's going on!
Art fucking Bell. That what these people listen to. At that point, I just walked off. They want there to be some secret meaning, because it gives their life more significant and importance in their mind. They're part of the elite conspiracy busting consortium without having to lift a finger just open their mouths.
As long as Art Bell is around to tell them the "secrets" NASA is holding out, NASA will have to deal with the nutjobs. It's unfortunate.
Don't worry, Someone (Michael, is that you?) is mod-bombing me over here in this thread.
Notice I am not posting anonymously because I want an answer it is worth my karma which Michael has burned off plenty of times in the past to find out why no one does anything about this.
I'll get my karma back in a week, I don't care. I'd rather find out if an editor is moderating. Oh wait, we can't because editors are users too.
I'm going to take this moment to just say one thing:
Stop cheerleading for michael. I mean, all of your posts on this thread are saying how great/. is doing, and how great michael is by posting a substanceless link summary.
Maybe you need to go learn what journalism is, I'll give you a hint, it's not sending out a few links to a few hundred thousand people. It's, get ready for this, reporting. Reporting the events of history pertinent to your viewer base, which/. is not doing. They are reporting links to events.
So please, and I mean this as nice as possible, but stop mindlessly cheerleading and learn what journalism and reporting means.
Wal-Mart hold shit just as well as "a grand cherry-wood conference table".
Every few months Office Depot sells the cherry-wood conference tables at a really good price. You can get 6' tables for around $30. I've yet to see anywhere that beats that price.
Those are work tables. When you are starting up, you move and rearrange a lot. Getting heavy furniture that isn't portable fucks you. End of story.
Wood desks? Leather chairs? What the fuck for? I went to an Ivy League business school, and I currently run my own business, and I've *never* heard that in order to run a company, you have to have the best equipment. If anything, it's teaching these kids to fail. Anyone who spends this much just to *start* a business on unnecessary shit doesn't know how to cut corners on luxuries to make a new business succeed. It's impossible.
I hear this shit all the time in my start (I'm starting right now) and I have to agree, it's annoying. Our most expensive piece of furniture is a $50 chair I bought with my own cash at a clearance sale. Our newest computer is a cel 1ghz laptop, followed by an 800Mhz PIII. It gets the job done.
This fluff and luxory setups are just going enforce bad habits through the years. Furniture is expensive. We have a partnership thing (strange arrangement) with a furniture company and it still is an expensive resource that you don't need.
The reason I butted in suggesting J2EE was the easy clustering, database pooling, and data caching that goes above and beyond what mod_php can do. Damn good point with that. PHPs peristent/shared memory is a mess. mod_php works a bit better, but I never thought I'd see something as large as Yahoo! switching to PHP.
I love PHP, don't get me wrong, but I would really love to see how their handling some of the persistence issues necessary for a large scale web application.
But, contrary to popular opinion, Superman's not just dumb muscle. He's pretty damn smart himself. And he knows that Batman has the kryptonite, and can plan for that. It's not a simple case of brains vs brawn, since Superman has both.
Purely from an intellectual stand-point, Superman has absolutely nothing on Batman. Superman isn't dumb muscle, but in no way is he even close to Batman's level. From the very beginning this has been well documented, and that is why Batman is such a great hero.
Since I'm arguing about a fictional flying man, I'd better not respond to that one.:) When DKR/DKR2 came out, I was so relieved as my playground arguments were valid. Batman really does win. If you haven't read this I would recommend it. Wonderful story ^_^
All that proves is that a smart writer can give Bats the victory. The Bat COULD win, but he's still the underdog in this fight. Even WITH kryptonite.
It's a well known facet of the entire DC world. Superman gave Batman kryptonite because Batman is the only person who could possibly defeat Supes. With kryptonite Batman would whoop ass. Bruce Wayne is a genius. Superman is not. Brains win, anything Superman can do with his strength Batman can counter with strategy.
Obviously, unless Batman has some kryptonite stashed in his utility belt, he's thoroughly F'd if he messes with the Man of Steel.
Have the/. editors ever read any comic books? Batman is a normal guy. He just has a fancy suit and a lot of gadgets and training. It's no contest.
Does it hurt to be this ignorant?
Batman has already won, it was in comic books. You seem to be underestimating the fact he's a few orders of magnitude smarter than Superman and has unlimited funding. Let me reiterate this for you, Batman has already beat Supes. DKR, DKR, Frank Miller; they are your friends.
Slashdot Mirror
How much subsidy is there? I'm not entirely familiar with US govt. economic policy on these things, but I believe unless a company files for chapter 11, it doesn't get many breaks from government. Losing money is part of the business. Can you provide a figure for the money the government will give them because of this "loss"? As I see it, they're just doing their responsibility to their shareholders (reporting income and current company status) not asking for government money.
Simple, they write it off on their taxes. Then they don't have to pay a portion of their taxes that they should pay. So now they get to pay (just making this number up, ball park figure though) $100M less on their taxes because they deliberately lost money on the Xbox. That is $100M less the government has, which is a lot of money. That could fix every problem the schools in the bay area have with overcrowding for years. I am not, at all, saying Microsoft is in the wrong. Microsoft is doing the right thing here. It's the IRS and government that is wrong for paying for little Billy's Xbox because Microsoft didn't price it high enough to not lose money.
Re-reading my post reminded me of a half-joke that my co-workers and I tell each other when we are bitching about the pathetic fools we have to work with: "Hell, fire him and give me half his salary. My output will go up because I won't spend half my time answering his questions and/or fixing his crappy code, and he wasn't netting any output anyway. It's a win-win situation!"
I swear I've had that exact same conversation, almost verbatim. You didn't work for a company in Cupertino, California that is now out of business?
To illustrate my point, I expect to get my butt kicked in StarCraft every time I play my friend. But I'd still call the result of each encounter a loss. (Really, "a shameful embarrasment" would be more accurate, but my point stands.)
To illustrate my point, you don't get paid by the government to lose at starcraft. Microsoft will get a write-off from the Xbox, thereby allowing all the tax payers that can't afford an Xbox for their own kids to contribute to little billy's xbox his parents got him because Microsoft purposefully sold them under cost.
You hit it right on the head. This is a gamble, that they are confident will have a positive return (Gain out weighs risk.) so while they report it as a lost inside, they should not be able to use any of it as a write-off on their taxes or such nonsense. Profitable companies that have expenses incurred because they took a loss on the product deliberately should not be subsidized by the government. What's happening is that the tax payers are having to pay for little billy's Xbox. Granted, not as much as little billy's parents, but a portion of it.
Its like the original poster is crying that companies have to act the way he thinks they should.
Wrong. I'm saying the government shouldn't subsidize project losses in a profitable company. The full $177m should come out of MS's piggy banks, and I'd bet MS isn't paying much.
Its amazing what sort of accounting/economics crap will get modded up if its just MS bashing.
Damn, are you really so illiterate to my saying, "This is not just MS, it's every other company too." It's not a problem with the companies, it's with taxes (IRS) and the government.
If expenses > revenue = LOSS
If expenses
Yes, you are right. But Microsofts revenue was greater than it's expenses, including the Xbox "loss" so they have a profit, right?
Oops, then why are they filing a loss with the SEC?
This playing stupid accounting tricks is one of the reason the stockmarket went down so much.
You mean the stupid accounting tricks Microsoft does, and every other company, so they government gives them a tax break so they don't have to take the full $177m out of their piggy bank? What exactly are you saying? Maybe you misread what I was saying, go read it again, but I'll paraphrase: One projects loss, in a profitable company, should not matter.
All in all, it's not so bad making $40k as a postdoc, if you pick up all the perks. Especially in a recession, where you would not have a job anyway!
That's great if you pick up all the perks. Do you have any idea how hard it is to pick up the perks? I know a lot of people that are doing post-doc research and don't get a damn thing. Worst part about it: Best they could find. These are people graduation with 3.5+ too.
Gabe still owns you. Sorry buddy.
We really need to redefine business loss. Microsoft didn't lose money. They knew ahead of time that they were going to be in the red on the Xbox. Not that I'm saying Microsoft is bad for following this practice, it's common practice in many markets.
I just don't think that purposefully loses should count like a standard lost. They know that this $177m they drop now, it's an expense. Not a loss. They will get it back, they are just taking credit out on their budget and getting the government to pay the interest.
This is much easier said than done. Have you ever had to interview people to fill a position? I have on several occasions. In one case, it got to the point where "management" was leaning on me to "just hire someone, goddamnit!" I had enough clout at the time to refuse to just hire some jackass, but we had plenty of jackasses coming in to interview.
.com bubble, when a $55K position was really good.
Yes, actually this is the first position where I don't have hiring authority. Even at my first job, I ascending quickly enough to be the interviewer for programming positions. I've made people cry in interviews. I don't waste time. In 5 minutes, if you have not impressed me, you walk out the door. It's easier to find better programmers now, than a few years ago.
Once you've worked in the industry a while, you'll realize that 90-95% of the people in it are not worth their salary (or the other 5-10% are way underpaid).
I don't think anyone in the IT field is worth their salary. What's the average pay now? $70K? Go look at how much post-doctorate researchers make, and you tell me how a $70K salary is justified. Not that I'm complaining, just disagreeing. I've been in the industry before the
I just hope that the 5-10% of people that are actually worth a shit are the ones keeping their jobs.
Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. The 5-10% of the people should be able to get better jobs because of networking. If I were to ever choose to go back to the bay area, I could find a job. Up in Portland it's much more difficult because I don't know enough people, but if I were to ever lose this job I have a couple places setup from people that I've worked with here that would set me up.
Finding a job in a bad economy means you know the right people who know your skills. Resumes mean less when you are fighting amidst a flood of others who are just as qualified on paper but can't code their way out of a wet paper bag.
There is too much bloat in the IT world, and that's why the current recession is a good thing. We need to weed out the massive amount of dead wood in the industry. All this people who came into being programmers in 98, 99 or whenever just because it was "Good Money" I look skeptical on anyone who has no development experience (whether educational, or hobby, doesn't matter) prior to 1995.
I wish I had more to do today.. meetings cancelled, small application fixes, slooow day, too much slashdot.
I work in an intelligent company that didn't hire 15 people to do 3 peoples job. I'm part of the IS group, even though I'm an application and server developer (New to this whole application development thing, releasing my first windows product soon.. thank you, QT) I have a pretty decent workload most of the time. There are 3 programmers here, and we're all kept pretty busy. The entire IS team is probably about 15 people, for thousands of computers, custom applications and servers.
I remember the last company I worked at had redundancy even in it's employees. It seemed every position was filled at least twice. Strangest thing. Each person did slightly different things, but if someone actually works the majority of an 8 hour day they can accomplish a lot of stuff.
Don't over-hire. Hire smart people. Hire people that work. 3 people can do what would otherwise take 15. The 3 of us do more than a development group of around 20 people at my old company.. but they aren't a good comparison, and that's why they are out of business now.
Weird. So the fact that nobody believes those penis enlargement advertisements makes them legal?
Yeah, no shit. I tried it. It works, but not like they say. I'm now a foot in diameter but still only 3" long.
As a satanic organization, they only do evil things to make money.
Welcome to Slashdot. Where black is black and white is black, too.
You are exactly right. I worked at a NASA base 5 years ago, it was nothing spooky or mysterious. They have some cool technology, but that's all it is.
Yet it doesn't stop conversations like this, that I had with some strange fellow in a small town in southern California:
Art fucking Bell. That what these people listen to. At that point, I just walked off. They want there to be some secret meaning, because it gives their life more significant and importance in their mind. They're part of the elite conspiracy busting consortium without having to lift a finger just open their mouths.
As long as Art Bell is around to tell them the "secrets" NASA is holding out, NASA will have to deal with the nutjobs. It's unfortunate.
Notice I am not posting anonymously because I want an answer it is worth my karma which Michael has burned off plenty of times in the past to find out why no one does anything about this.
I'll get my karma back in a week, I don't care. I'd rather find out if an editor is moderating. Oh wait, we can't because editors are users too.
I'm going to take this moment to just say one thing:
Thanks, I got Karma to burn.
This is not OFFTOPIC. It is directly related to it's parent: Here.
Which is at +5. I got 3 mods in the same minute. All -1, Offtopic. You want to tell me how that works?
If my post was offtopic, take your fanboy above down to -1 too, because it's just as offtopic as his.
Stop cheerleading for michael. I mean, all of your posts on this thread are saying how great /. is doing, and how great michael is by posting a substanceless link summary.
/. is not doing. They are reporting links to events.
Maybe you need to go learn what journalism is, I'll give you a hint, it's not sending out a few links to a few hundred thousand people. It's, get ready for this, reporting. Reporting the events of history pertinent to your viewer base, which
So please, and I mean this as nice as possible, but stop mindlessly cheerleading and learn what journalism and reporting means.
Straight form the story: ... most Slasdot readers ...
*chuckle*
Wal-Mart hold shit just as well as "a grand cherry-wood conference table".
Every few months Office Depot sells the cherry-wood conference tables at a really good price. You can get 6' tables for around $30. I've yet to see anywhere that beats that price.
Those are work tables. When you are starting up, you move and rearrange a lot. Getting heavy furniture that isn't portable fucks you. End of story.
Wood desks? Leather chairs? What the fuck for? I went to an Ivy League business school, and I currently run my own business, and I've *never* heard that in order to run a company, you have to have the best equipment. If anything, it's teaching these kids to fail. Anyone who spends this much just to *start* a business on unnecessary shit doesn't know how to cut corners on luxuries to make a new business succeed. It's impossible.
I hear this shit all the time in my start (I'm starting right now) and I have to agree, it's annoying. Our most expensive piece of furniture is a $50 chair I bought with my own cash at a clearance sale. Our newest computer is a cel 1ghz laptop, followed by an 800Mhz PIII. It gets the job done.
This fluff and luxory setups are just going enforce bad habits through the years. Furniture is expensive. We have a partnership thing (strange arrangement) with a furniture company and it still is an expensive resource that you don't need.
The reason I butted in suggesting J2EE was the easy clustering, database pooling, and data caching that goes above and beyond what mod_php can do.
Damn good point with that. PHPs peristent/shared memory is a mess. mod_php works a bit better, but I never thought I'd see something as large as Yahoo! switching to PHP.
I love PHP, don't get me wrong, but I would really love to see how their handling some of the persistence issues necessary for a large scale web application.
But, contrary to popular opinion, Superman's not just dumb muscle. He's pretty damn smart himself. And he knows that Batman has the kryptonite, and can plan for that. It's not a simple case of brains vs brawn, since Superman has both.
:)
Purely from an intellectual stand-point, Superman has absolutely nothing on Batman. Superman isn't dumb muscle, but in no way is he even close to Batman's level. From the very beginning this has been well documented, and that is why Batman is such a great hero.
Since I'm arguing about a fictional flying man, I'd better not respond to that one.
When DKR/DKR2 came out, I was so relieved as my playground arguments were valid. Batman really does win. If you haven't read this I would recommend it. Wonderful story ^_^
All that proves is that a smart writer can give Bats the victory. The Bat COULD win, but he's still the underdog in this fight. Even WITH kryptonite.
It's a well known facet of the entire DC world. Superman gave Batman kryptonite because Batman is the only person who could possibly defeat Supes. With kryptonite Batman would whoop ass. Bruce Wayne is a genius. Superman is not. Brains win, anything Superman can do with his strength Batman can counter with strategy.
Oh damnit.. I feel like I'm 12 again.
Oh damn this is great:
http://www.intentia.com/useless.
Most return 404, this one however..
Obviously, unless Batman has some kryptonite stashed in his utility belt, he's thoroughly F'd if he messes with the Man of Steel.
/. editors ever read any comic books? Batman is a normal guy. He just has a fancy suit and a lot of gadgets and training. It's no contest.
Have the
Does it hurt to be this ignorant?
Batman has already won, it was in comic books. You seem to be underestimating the fact he's a few orders of magnitude smarter than Superman and has unlimited funding. Let me reiterate this for you, Batman has already beat Supes. DKR, DKR, Frank Miller; they are your friends.