He seems legit to me. His comments bring to mind something I read a while back from Robert X. Cringely: "At Microsoft, you say 'yes' to everybody above you and 'no' to everybody below you."
That was a few years ago. The "compensation" you are referring to was when the Apple board decided to give him an airplane. It was a Gulfstream IV with a sticker of $49 million. Of course, the taxman must be served, so the board also covered the taxes too. And the taxes on covering the taxes. So the "compensation" actually consisted of: 1 airplane and $29 million paid to the IRS
And you know what? Apple shareholders (myself included) didn't have a problem with it!
That's exactly what you said: "It's structure instead of chaos" implying that I either buy into the whole nine yards or my alternative is development chaos.
But first a joke: A shepard is herding his flock when a car pulls up. A man jumps out and says to the shepard, "If I can tell you the number of sheep you have, can I have one?" The shepard agrees. The man pulls out a laptop and starts typing away. I short while later he says "You have exactly 231 sheep". "That's correct" the shepard says. The man grabs the nearest animal and starts putting it in the trunk of his car. The shepard says "If I can guess what you do, will you return my animal?" The man agrees. "You're a management consultant." The man says "How did you know?" The shepard explains "You show up without being invited. You tell me something I already know. And you know nothing about my business. Now can I have my dog back?"
What I said was that process should be tailored to the circumstances surrounding the work. I said that the people closest to the work should be able to decide what that process should be. I also said that any organization with half a brain should be able to figure that out without having to go to outsiders who know nothing about what goes on in an organization or the circumstances surrounding the work they do. And I said that the tendency (because it's dictated by management) is that following the process becomes more important than anything actually getting done. And I said that going with a cookie cutter approach is a poor substitute for rational thinking.
The most structured society in the world is North Korea. The most chaotic is, probably, Somalia.
If you apply your line of reasoning to political systems, there can only be two types of government possible: North Korean style totalitarianism and Somali style anarchy. What you're saying is that if I reject one system, then the only alternative I have is the other.
Okay, but what do you do about the isotope forms of platinum and iridium? Different atomic weights. If would only work if you could get them only in mono-isotopic form.
"The kilogram is the only one of the seven basic units of the international measurement system defined by a physical artifact rather than a natural phenomenon."
Not entirely true.
The metric system originally was developed in France around the time of the French Revolution. The idea was that measurements used at the time had "royalist" origins. The foot was the length of some king's foot, the yard was the length from some kings nose to his outstretched thumb, and so on. The metric system was meant to purge these and replace them with measurements derived from nature.
The meter was originally defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the north pole along the Paris meridian. The liter was defined as the volume of a cube 10 centimeters on each side (1 liter = 1000 cubic cm). Finally, the kilogram was defined as the weight of 1 liter of water.
Due to inaccuracies creeping in under various circumstances and the development of better measuring equipment, the current definitions were substituted for these original ones.
The metric clock they also came up with (10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute) obviously never caught on.
"it is very time consuming and tedious to keep track of all your changes so that you can, as in the Personal Software Process, keep accurate statistics of what changes you made, how many lines of code were modified, how many were deleted, and how many lines of code you added."
I don't mean to sound critical and I sympathize, but have you ever asked "Why do I have to do this bullshit?" If you have, I bet the answer was "Because CMM says we have to do it."
In my industry, we are legally required to post the following almost everywhere: "Past performance is no indication of future results." I would also bet that you could give a better estimate on a task than any model could.
The above should be modded as "propaganda". Chock full of subjective and/or fad terms.
I work in an organization that has adopted CMM. I feel like I'm a soldier in the trenches in World War I. I'm the one getting shot at and the generals behind the lines have no fucking clue what's going on.
The problem with the latest management fad of process models is that they are cookie cutter approaches based on the belief (by non-programmers, obviously) that software development can be reduced to an assembly line process. It is an example of what I call "round peg, round hole" management theory, that is, all jobs are round holes and all programmers are round pegs and therefore you can switch them around all you like with no impact.
When organizations adopt these models and go for certification, what happens is that following the "process" becomes more important than whether or not anything actually gets done better or faster. And don't forget, if you want to have a bureaucracy, which is what these models more or less demand, you are going to need bureaucrats to implement them. Time and money.
It should be no problem for any group to come up with a development process that makes sense for them and the circumstances of their work. If you are trying to herd fifty programmers, there is a need for rules to be set down. But for a small group, they can spend as much time following the process model as they do getting some actual work done. By going outside for a process model, management really wants to avoid having to rely on the grunts to decide on what they need and how to do it.
Here is what's really needs to be done for any project:
Get the right people to work the job. This is probably the biggest factor in determining whether a project is a success or a fiasco. Get people who have good reps among their peers. Avoid brown-nosers and ego-a-go-go types.
Start simple. Start with the basic required functionality and add complexity later. It's easier to add complexity when needed than it is to design complexity into your systems that never gets used and gums up the works for all the stuff that goes in later
Go forward knowing that you cannot know everything. Every time I've done a project, it seems I always venture into unknown territory. In other words, design flexibility into your system. Always have a Plan B if you run into a brick wall with Plan A. Managers hate this.
Accept that your clients will change requirements on you. There is nothing in any of these process models that stops that from happening.
Don't take it the wrong way. I could cry me a river over profits I've missed out on.
One example: Back in 1983 or 1984, I bought Hitachi (HIT) at 28. After about year, the stock was floating in the 50's. I sold at 54. Not bad, almost a two-bagger. Two weeks later it was at 70. It finally topped out at 120.
It's easy to know when to buy. The hard part is to know when to sell.
You are confusing "authorized shares" with "outstanding shares". I'll explain the difference.
In the corporation charter, there is a statement that the the company is authorized to issue x number of shares. The company is allowed to sell to the market any number of shares up to that number. Essentially, it is a license for the company to print its own money. The currency in this case is shares. And just like any currency, if you print too much the value of each share will go down. That's why shareholders have to approve any increase in authorized shares.
"Outstanding shares" are the subset of "authorized shares" that have already been sold to investors. Usually companies never issue anything close to the number of shares they are allowed to. (Red flag if they do.)
Market Cap = Outstanding Shares x Share Price
The way to think of stock is that it's like a currency with the price as the exchange rate.
Anyways, it sort of confirms what I always thought about stock markets: those fucking "analysts" are on crack all the time.
I started playing the market decades ago. I realized early on that analysts are good at picking stocks after the stock moves. Do you own research. My tip for you: Buy companies that have no debt.
Two years ago, at AAPL's low of $14.25, here's why it was screaming buy:
1) Cash per share at around $11. That means you get the rest of company for $3 a share. 2) No debt (see above). 3) Not selling a commodity product. 4) Not dependant on other people's technology. Unlike HP, Gateway, etc. 5) Better brand loyalty than any other product except for cigarettes. 6) Been down so long, everything looked like up.
All the analysts, at the time, had hold (i.e.sell it when you can) or sell (i.e. dump this sucker now!) ratings on the stock.
That Warren Buffet may be right on some things but it doesn't mean he is right on everything.
Stock splits are actually an anachronism going back to the 60's when stocks were traded as either even lots (multiples of 100 shares) or odd lots (anything else). Even lots had the advantage of lower commisions. Companies would split their stock in order to bring the price of an even lot down to an affordable level thereby boosting demand. Individuals made up the bulk of trading back then.
Take BH, for example. Not many people will shell out $90,000 to one share. But a people lot would be willing to put down, say, $90 a share. Increased demand would then boost the share price.
I think he refuses to split the stock to keep the riff-raff out of the shareholder meetings.
Today the Department of Defense released a tape reported to be of Saddam Hussein. Translated from Arabic, Saddam Hussein remarked:
"Macintosh users are loathesome degenerates and deserve to be treated like the animals they are. Everyone knows that Bill Gates invented the GUI. He is the true visionary, not this charlatan Steve Jobs. This Apple just copies everything that the great Microsoft develops. Their pathetic company will be crushed. They will be blown away like dust and be forgotten. That Macintosh is condemned and will roast in hell under the whip of Satan."
For more info, please contact your local U.S. Army recruiter.
It's not a bug, it's a contractual thing. Each company has a business unit that has the right to distribute within their home country's borders. To get it in Europe, they would have to cut deals with each company's local subsidiary. Right now, they only have agreements with the U.S. units. Give it time.
Slashdot Mirror
He seems legit to me. His comments bring to mind something I read a while back from Robert X. Cringely:
"At Microsoft, you say 'yes' to everybody above you and 'no' to everybody below you."
Dammit!
First Post?
That was a few years ago. The "compensation" you are referring to was when the Apple board decided to give him an airplane. It was a Gulfstream IV with a sticker of $49 million. Of course, the taxman must be served, so the board also covered the taxes too. And the taxes on covering the taxes. So the "compensation" actually consisted of: 1 airplane and $29 million paid to the IRS
And you know what? Apple shareholders (myself included) didn't have a problem with it!
Exactly my point.
That's exactly what you said: "It's structure instead of chaos" implying that I either buy into the whole nine yards or my alternative is development chaos.
But first a joke: A shepard is herding his flock when a car pulls up. A man jumps out and says to the shepard, "If I can tell you the number of sheep you have, can I have one?" The shepard agrees. The man pulls out a laptop and starts typing away. I short while later he says "You have exactly 231 sheep". "That's correct" the shepard says. The man grabs the nearest animal and starts putting it in the trunk of his car. The shepard says "If I can guess what you do, will you return my animal?" The man agrees. "You're a management consultant." The man says "How did you know?" The shepard explains "You show up without being invited. You tell me something I already know. And you know nothing about my business. Now can I have my dog back?"
What I said was that process should be tailored to the circumstances surrounding the work. I said that the people closest to the work should be able to decide what that process should be. I also said that any organization with half a brain should be able to figure that out without having to go to outsiders who know nothing about what goes on in an organization or the circumstances surrounding the work they do. And I said that the tendency (because it's dictated by management) is that following the process becomes more important than anything actually getting done. And I said that going with a cookie cutter approach is a poor substitute for rational thinking.
The most structured society in the world is North Korea. The most chaotic is, probably, Somalia.
If you apply your line of reasoning to political systems, there can only be two types of government possible: North Korean style totalitarianism and Somali style anarchy. What you're saying is that if I reject one system, then the only alternative I have is the other.
You must be new. You're supposed to say: First post!!!
So how come if you go to Europe and step on a scale, it tells you you weight in kilograms. Why not in newtons?
"You people are in dire need of a life."
Or someplace to go on a Saturday night.
Okay, but what do you do about the isotope forms of platinum and iridium? Different atomic weights. If would only work if you could get them only in mono-isotopic form.
"The kilogram is the only one of the seven basic units of the international measurement system defined by a physical artifact rather than a natural phenomenon."
Not entirely true.
The metric system originally was developed in France around the time of the French Revolution. The idea was that measurements used at the time had "royalist" origins. The foot was the length of some king's foot, the yard was the length from some kings nose to his outstretched thumb, and so on. The metric system was meant to purge these and replace them with measurements derived from nature.
The meter was originally defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the north pole along the Paris meridian. The liter was defined as the volume of a cube 10 centimeters on each side (1 liter = 1000 cubic cm). Finally, the kilogram was defined as the weight of 1 liter of water.
Due to inaccuracies creeping in under various circumstances and the development of better measuring equipment, the current definitions were substituted for these original ones.
The metric clock they also came up with (10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute) obviously never caught on.
"it is very time consuming and tedious to keep track of all your changes so that you can, as in the Personal Software Process, keep accurate statistics of what changes you made, how many lines of code were modified, how many were deleted, and how many lines of code you added."
I don't mean to sound critical and I sympathize, but have you ever asked "Why do I have to do this bullshit?" If you have, I bet the answer was "Because CMM says we have to do it."
In my industry, we are legally required to post the following almost everywhere: "Past performance is no indication of future results." I would also bet that you could give a better estimate on a task than any model could.
All in all, very well said.
I work in an organization that has adopted CMM. I feel like I'm a soldier in the trenches in World War I. I'm the one getting shot at and the generals behind the lines have no fucking clue what's going on.
The problem with the latest management fad of process models is that they are cookie cutter approaches based on the belief (by non-programmers, obviously) that software development can be reduced to an assembly line process. It is an example of what I call "round peg, round hole" management theory, that is, all jobs are round holes and all programmers are round pegs and therefore you can switch them around all you like with no impact.
When organizations adopt these models and go for certification, what happens is that following the "process" becomes more important than whether or not anything actually gets done better or faster. And don't forget, if you want to have a bureaucracy, which is what these models more or less demand, you are going to need bureaucrats to implement them. Time and money.
It should be no problem for any group to come up with a development process that makes sense for them and the circumstances of their work. If you are trying to herd fifty programmers, there is a need for rules to be set down. But for a small group, they can spend as much time following the process model as they do getting some actual work done. By going outside for a process model, management really wants to avoid having to rely on the grunts to decide on what they need and how to do it.
Here is what's really needs to be done for any project:
That was a good venting.
Fund managers listen to analysts.
Remember the "Greater Fool Theory": You can always find someone stupider that you are to will buy something from you.
Eventually you hit the end of the chain. There is nobody stupider than you.
Don't take it the wrong way. I could cry me a river over profits I've missed out on.
One example: Back in 1983 or 1984, I bought Hitachi (HIT) at 28. After about year, the stock was floating in the 50's. I sold at 54. Not bad, almost a two-bagger. Two weeks later it was at 70. It finally topped out at 120.
It's easy to know when to buy. The hard part is to know when to sell.
Take some advice from an old timer:
Be happy with the profits you made and don't cry over profits you missed.
You are confusing "authorized shares" with "outstanding shares". I'll explain the difference.
In the corporation charter, there is a statement that the the company is authorized to issue x number of shares. The company is allowed to sell to the market any number of shares up to that number. Essentially, it is a license for the company to print its own money. The currency in this case is shares. And just like any currency, if you print too much the value of each share will go down. That's why shareholders have to approve any increase in authorized shares.
"Outstanding shares" are the subset of "authorized shares" that have already been sold to investors. Usually companies never issue anything close to the number of shares they are allowed to. (Red flag if they do.)
Market Cap = Outstanding Shares x Share Price
The way to think of stock is that it's like a currency with the price as the exchange rate.
Anyways, it sort of confirms what I always thought about stock markets: those fucking "analysts" are on crack all the time.
I started playing the market decades ago. I realized early on that analysts are good at picking stocks after the stock moves. Do you own research. My tip for you: Buy companies that have no debt.
Two years ago, at AAPL's low of $14.25, here's why it was screaming buy:
1) Cash per share at around $11. That means you get the rest of company for $3 a share.
2) No debt (see above).
3) Not selling a commodity product.
4) Not dependant on other people's technology. Unlike HP, Gateway, etc.
5) Better brand loyalty than any other product except for cigarettes.
6) Been down so long, everything looked like up.
All the analysts, at the time, had hold (i.e.sell it when you can) or sell (i.e. dump this sucker now!) ratings on the stock.
That Warren Buffet may be right on some things but it doesn't mean he is right on everything.
Stock splits are actually an anachronism going back to the 60's when stocks were traded as either even lots (multiples of 100 shares) or odd lots (anything else). Even lots had the advantage of lower commisions. Companies would split their stock in order to bring the price of an even lot down to an affordable level thereby boosting demand. Individuals made up the bulk of trading back then.
Take BH, for example. Not many people will shell out $90,000 to one share. But a people lot would be willing to put down, say, $90 a share. Increased demand would then boost the share price.
I think he refuses to split the stock to keep the riff-raff out of the shareholder meetings.
Today the Department of Defense released a tape reported to be of Saddam Hussein. Translated from Arabic, Saddam Hussein remarked:
"Macintosh users are loathesome degenerates and deserve to be treated like the animals they are. Everyone knows that Bill Gates invented the GUI. He is the true visionary, not this charlatan Steve Jobs. This Apple just copies everything that the great Microsoft develops. Their pathetic company will be crushed. They will be blown away like dust and be forgotten. That Macintosh is condemned and will roast in hell under the whip of Satan."
For more info, please contact your local U.S. Army recruiter.
Mod this to funny. He is obviously being sarcastic. I least I hope he is.
It's not a bug, it's a contractual thing. Each company has a business unit that has the right to distribute within their home country's borders. To get it in Europe, they would have to cut deals with each company's local subsidiary. Right now, they only have agreements with the U.S. units. Give it time.
That's Hubbard (L. Ron), not Herbert (Frank).
Better yet, compare the Kurosawa versions with their American remakes:
Seven Samurai vs. The Magnificant Seven
Yojimbo vs. A Fist Full Of Dollars
Hidden Fortress vs. Star Wars
I guess Lucas' ego grows in proportion to the profits from this franchise. Hey, anybody notice how much Episode I crap is still stuck in toy stores?