Microsoft pays a lot of money to demonstrate to investors that it does R&D, but the bottom line is that Office and Windows bankroll the company. I have not seen one innovation from their research dept make it to market. Please indicate if you have contrary proof.
Re:Worthless market analysis
on
The Faded Sun
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· Score: 1
No counter argument, except it;s the same song that's been sung since the '70s.
The market has changed so much since then that this is a meaningless statement. Totally meaningless. I guess you expect me to discount that you are a "grey beard" who touched a keyboard before I was born. Who cares! How many of the major players from that era are here today?
Now, to get back to the point, minicomputer players were saying the same thing to Sun in the eighties - workstations will never replace minis! Get lost and get real! Okay, now count the minicomputer players still standing. Sun was in fact at the vanguard of commoditization of high end computing. They are simply being consumed by the culmination of their strategy.
Re:Agreed, Sun cannot beat an entire economy
on
The Faded Sun
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· Score: 1
Once again someone has incorrectly cites Apple as a survival story. Their numbers stink these days. Their P/E is actually rising. They market share is at an all time low. They recently lost the educational market to MS and Dell. They are in a coma, period.
But Java is de facto public domain
on
The Faded Sun
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· Score: 1
Java can live without Sun. I can now construct a Java environment end-to-end san Sun code. Its nice that Java is popular, but it won't save Sun.
Wrong. Totally and absolutely wrong on writedowns
on
The Faded Sun
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Take a look at its accounts, it took a charge of $2.125 billion for "Impairment of goodwill and other intangable assets". Read this to mean "some accountancy stuff that doesn't mean diddly to the companies operations".
Now please finish this sentence by telling us of your profitable investments in Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing and Adelphia.
WRITEDOWNS MATTER. If you don't think so, don't invest, because you will be gutted by people smarter than you every time. Writedowns tell you that the company cannot handle capital investment. Writedowns tell you that the company is a potential debt bomb (even is Sun has none now). Writedowns tell you that management of the company is unable to make sound decisions that are central to the organization.
Earnings targets are a joke
on
The Faded Sun
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· Score: 1
Please don't tell me you get duped by this. Earnings estimates are massaged until they are met. Only morons use this metric at this point.
Believe it or not, much of IT management still subscribes to the belief that "you get what you pay for." If you work in the field and have ever suggested MySQL to an Oracle shop, PHP to an ASP or JSP shop, or Linux to a Windows/Solaris/HP-UX/AIX/SGI shop, you've heard that statement.
Believe it or not, much of IT management now subscribes to "we're not paying for anything we don't have to". IT is no longer a play pen for execs with too much money to spend. Budgets are getting gutted because no one is seeing ROI on half the crap they buy. I have watched Oracle get bumped by MySQL. Guess what, some people just want a fast way to retrieve disposable data using SQL. This scares Oracle because they have groomed customers into thinking they need an M1 tank when a shotgun will do.
As for N1, don't make me laugh. Sun is not in a position to impose an uber-architecture on anyone's data center. Even Microsoft gets static when they try to get people totally in to the fold.
Worthless market analysis
on
The Faded Sun
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· Score: 1
First, don't cite Apple as a survival story. Their P/E is off the charts, their market share shrinking, and their cash dwindling. They are in a coma.
Now back to Sun. You seem to think Sun's adoption of linux will be easy, quick, and profitable. Okay, so why don't they own the Linux workstation market yet? Has ANYONE bought one of those boxes???
You cite JAva. What are the profits derived from Java. I mean line item profits, not intangibles. You don't need Sun hardware to run Java. You don't even need the JDK. I can download gcj or any of the other umpteen Java toolkits and be on my way.
Enterprise computing is becoming a commodity. There is no counterargument.
Agreed, Sun cannot beat an entire economy
on
The Faded Sun
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· Score: 1
The forces against Sun were simply too numerous, all with one goal: commodity computing. Sure there is money to be made at the "high end", but this market is miniscule. You cannot support a company like Sun on the market for weather analysis and nuclear testing.
There once was a debate in server land tht Sun (and its ilk) lost:
Do you want a redundant array of cheap small systems or one expensive, large, well-supported, "nearly indestructable" system?
Visit your local colo to see the answer.
N1 is neat but will go nowhere
on
The Faded Sun
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· Score: 1
Its too high-level. Too confusing. Too intimidating. It sounds an awful lot like relinquishing control of your server room to Sun. That isn't goingto fly. In any case, how is this different than using a Foundry load balancer and some really good monitering software? I can get you a fault tolerant array of linux or bsd computers that is load balanced and monitered for under $50k for everything you need.
No one at this point is going to move the entire server room to an architecture they perceive as dying.
What is unstable, untested, or "untrue" about x86 servers? I don't know where this argument comes from. My employer has used x86 servers for years in highly stable, high-use, high availability commerce applications for a very high traffic website.
As to the "before the Fed" period, we had a Fed during most of the period you spoke of. The "Fed" was J.P. Morgan. He performed most of the functions of the Fed before there was a Fed. So I think your treatise that the period you speak of represents a period without a controlling force such as the Fed is incorrect.
BZZZT! Nice try. No, the economy grew more in the nineteenth century than in the twentieth, pre-Morgan (who only bailed out the govt once, and in no way acted as the "Fed" if you knew the history of his actions). Once again, not opinion, fact.
Your comments about the failure of fiat currencies are misleading. It isn't as if backed currencies were never repudiated. If you use currency issued by a government, you lose that money if the government fails, whether the currency was backed or not. At the moment the backing government fails, it becomes a fiat currency. And thus your argument is circular.
The point is that gold-backed currencies fail much more rarely, and technically you could have redeemed the currency for gold to wait through the crisis. In no way is this circular.
Re:What is BEHIND that money... that is the questi
on
The Future of Money
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· Score: 1
Tying it to a hard asset doesn't help you.
Yes, it does. It creates stability and mitigates human meddling.
In a perfect world, a change in the overall wealth of a country (as measured by the ability of the country to do work) would be instantly reflected in the price of goods relative to the price of labor. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect and there is a delay. And this is the reason for printing more money: so that the price of goods and services does not need to change significantly as the country is able to do more work
Oh man, you are soooo off course here as to why money is printed, it probably isn't worth it to go into it at this point. Suffice to say the "printing presses" of money are used as a political and fiscal tool at this point, not having anything to do with anything you have described.
Gold is not the perfect container of wealth, but it has been proven to be more durable than central management, unless you think the last ten years (absurd creation of fake wealth followed by rapid evisceration of the entire economy) is a glowing endorsement for central management. For further examples, see the Russian default, the Peso crisis, the Bhat devaluation, LTCM..etc etc. The era of fiat currencies and central meddling has created a major crisis nearly once every two years!
For five thousand years gold has been used to represent value between cultures, civilizations, and even history itself. Satisfactorily pure gold left dormant for two thousand years still has value today. How about the currency of the nation where the original owner held it? Maybe useful as a museum piece! It is because we do not/should not trust central meddling that we place value in precious metals to this day.
I'm sorry, the modern financial system is based upon trust any many levels. There is no more risk in accepting a fiat Dollar than there is in accepting a check, or delivering goods with an invoice for 90 days payment.
The economy grew more before the fiat currency than after it. The economy grew more before their was a Fed than after it. These are not opinions, they are facts.
I'm sorry, the modern financial system is based upon trust any many levels. There is no more risk in accepting a fiat Dollar than there is in accepting a check, or delivering goods with an invoice for 90 days payment.
Yes, but this risk isn't zero like you think it is. For example, Argentina. With almost no notice, depositors were prohibited from accessing accounts. Governments cannot succesfully manage currencies!! Over three hundred fiat currencies have been repudiated. By that, I mean, made worthless. Why do people think this can't happen here???
Banks trade treasury notes as the currency of the highest levels of banking. The Fed can redeem those notes by creating a cash account out of nothing. They can do this by law. This is how money is "created". The fractional reserve system of lending provides the appearance of money being created at the lower levels of the lending tree, presuming there is not a run on the bank.
WRONG! That is not how gold back currencies work
on
The Future of Money
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· Score: 1
The idea of a gold backed currency is not that people go to the bank and come home with a sliver of glod - its about value stability. Each nation backing their currency with gold is required to hold said amount securely, providing a basis for currency trade.
Since movng from the gold standard the dollar has lost, what, 75% of its value? What has followed is one crisis after another. LTCM. Russia. Peso Crisis. Thailand. Argentina. Actually the crises have been happening about every twenty four months. How many similar crises occurred under the gold standard??
The premise of a gold-backed currency is that some things have more lasting value than nation states. Gold is one of them - for five thousand years it has represented wealth and traded as such across cultures.
That's nice professor, but here in the real world the chance of the dollar bill you have in your wallet being repudiated at ANY time is about the same as a meter strike hitting your house - even if they do so, there would probably be a period where you could exchange the "repudiated" money for the new, real money.
You mean like in Argentina, where without warning people were prohibited from accessing cash accounts????? Doesn't anyone read the news anymore???
Governments can default on debts (Russia), disembowel currencies (Thailand), etc with almost no warning! In fact by default these actions are done without warning as a run on the bank would negate the action in the first place.
The reponses I am seeing (including yours) seem to be woefully ignorant of the sorry history of fiat currencies. Thats the way the government(s) like it! They don't want you to know that over three hundred fiat currencies (including some in the US!!!) have been repudiated in recent economic history. If you knew the sorry history of fiat currencies you might horde precious metals (like Warren Buffett, who owns a moutain of silver).
The cash in your pocket has no inherent value! There is no counterargument. Read some history.
I'm sorry, please read any of the established texts that describe the working of our economy and banking system. Maybe its better that you posted as an AC.
Dollar bills can be repudiated at ANY time. The US is on its fourth currency. Anyone holding bills from the previous three hold nothing.
my belief in the value of U.S. currency has less to do with faith in the U.S. goverment than with my belief that other people will be willing to exchange goods for U.S. currency in the future.
Which ultimately comes back to the supply of money - which is controlled by the government. For better or for worse, we have a "managed" currency. Sometimes the managers are insightful (Volker)...sometimes delusional (Greenspan).
You mean growth in M3, not actual price inflation
on
The Future of Money
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Inflation, or "pricing power" is nonexistant in the economy right now. In fact we are on the verge of deflation. This is due to massive misallocations of capital and oversupply.
What you are referring to is the growth in the money supply through the Fed down to the fractional reserve banks. M3 money has grown by leaps and bounds in the Greenspan era. This and only this is the source of the stock market bubble.
Slashdot Mirror
Jerry Yang's original set of links was a Sumo wrestling enthusiast's page...that for a time was valued at $120 billion dollars (!).
Microsoft pays a lot of money to demonstrate to investors that it does R&D, but the bottom line is that Office and Windows bankroll the company. I have not seen one innovation from their research dept make it to market. Please indicate if you have contrary proof.
The market has changed so much since then that this is a meaningless statement. Totally meaningless. I guess you expect me to discount that you are a "grey beard" who touched a keyboard before I was born. Who cares! How many of the major players from that era are here today?
Now, to get back to the point, minicomputer players were saying the same thing to Sun in the eighties - workstations will never replace minis! Get lost and get real! Okay, now count the minicomputer players still standing. Sun was in fact at the vanguard of commoditization of high end computing. They are simply being consumed by the culmination of their strategy.
Once again someone has incorrectly cites Apple as a survival story. Their numbers stink these days. Their P/E is actually rising. They market share is at an all time low. They recently lost the educational market to MS and Dell. They are in a coma, period.
Java can live without Sun. I can now construct a Java environment end-to-end san Sun code. Its nice that Java is popular, but it won't save Sun.
Now please finish this sentence by telling us of your profitable investments in Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing and Adelphia.
WRITEDOWNS MATTER. If you don't think so, don't invest, because you will be gutted by people smarter than you every time. Writedowns tell you that the company cannot handle capital investment. Writedowns tell you that the company is a potential debt bomb (even is Sun has none now). Writedowns tell you that management of the company is unable to make sound decisions that are central to the organization.
Believe it or not, much of IT management still subscribes to the belief that "you get what you pay for." If you work in the field and have ever suggested MySQL to an Oracle shop, PHP to an ASP or JSP shop, or Linux to a Windows/Solaris/HP-UX/AIX/SGI shop, you've heard that statement.
Believe it or not, much of IT management now subscribes to "we're not paying for anything we don't have to". IT is no longer a play pen for execs with too much money to spend. Budgets are getting gutted because no one is seeing ROI on half the crap they buy. I have watched Oracle get bumped by MySQL. Guess what, some people just want a fast way to retrieve disposable data using SQL. This scares Oracle because they have groomed customers into thinking they need an M1 tank when a shotgun will do.
As for N1, don't make me laugh. Sun is not in a position to impose an uber-architecture on anyone's data center. Even Microsoft gets static when they try to get people totally in to the fold.
Now back to Sun. You seem to think Sun's adoption of linux will be easy, quick, and profitable. Okay, so why don't they own the Linux workstation market yet? Has ANYONE bought one of those boxes???
You cite JAva. What are the profits derived from Java. I mean line item profits, not intangibles. You don't need Sun hardware to run Java. You don't even need the JDK. I can download gcj or any of the other umpteen Java toolkits and be on my way.
Enterprise computing is becoming a commodity. There is no counterargument.
There once was a debate in server land tht Sun (and its ilk) lost:
Do you want a redundant array of cheap small systems or one expensive, large, well-supported, "nearly indestructable" system?
Visit your local colo to see the answer.
No one at this point is going to move the entire server room to an architecture they perceive as dying.
hi!
What is unstable, untested, or "untrue" about x86 servers? I don't know where this argument comes from. My employer has used x86 servers for years in highly stable, high-use, high availability commerce applications for a very high traffic website.
My initial prediction still stands - within twenty four months of release, these units will be cancelled.
BZZZT! Nice try. No, the economy grew more in the nineteenth century than in the twentieth, pre-Morgan (who only bailed out the govt once, and in no way acted as the "Fed" if you knew the history of his actions). Once again, not opinion, fact.
Your comments about the failure of fiat currencies are misleading. It isn't as if backed currencies were never repudiated. If you use currency issued by a government, you lose that money if the government fails, whether the currency was backed or not. At the moment the backing government fails, it becomes a fiat currency. And thus your argument is circular.
The point is that gold-backed currencies fail much more rarely, and technically you could have redeemed the currency for gold to wait through the crisis. In no way is this circular.
Yes, it does. It creates stability and mitigates human meddling.
In a perfect world, a change in the overall wealth of a country (as measured by the ability of the country to do work) would be instantly reflected in the price of goods relative to the price of labor. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect and there is a delay. And this is the reason for printing more money: so that the price of goods and services does not need to change significantly as the country is able to do more work
Oh man, you are soooo off course here as to why money is printed, it probably isn't worth it to go into it at this point. Suffice to say the "printing presses" of money are used as a political and fiscal tool at this point, not having anything to do with anything you have described.
Yeah, I think I only mention that about thirty times in different postings.
For five thousand years gold has been used to represent value between cultures, civilizations, and even history itself. Satisfactorily pure gold left dormant for two thousand years still has value today. How about the currency of the nation where the original owner held it? Maybe useful as a museum piece! It is because we do not/should not trust central meddling that we place value in precious metals to this day.
The economy grew more before the fiat currency than after it. The economy grew more before their was a Fed than after it. These are not opinions, they are facts.
I'm sorry, the modern financial system is based upon trust any many levels. There is no more risk in accepting a fiat Dollar than there is in accepting a check, or delivering goods with an invoice for 90 days payment.
Yes, but this risk isn't zero like you think it is. For example, Argentina. With almost no notice, depositors were prohibited from accessing accounts. Governments cannot succesfully manage currencies!! Over three hundred fiat currencies have been repudiated. By that, I mean, made worthless. Why do people think this can't happen here???
Banks trade treasury notes as the currency of the highest levels of banking. The Fed can redeem those notes by creating a cash account out of nothing. They can do this by law. This is how money is "created". The fractional reserve system of lending provides the appearance of money being created at the lower levels of the lending tree, presuming there is not a run on the bank.
Since movng from the gold standard the dollar has lost, what, 75% of its value? What has followed is one crisis after another. LTCM. Russia. Peso Crisis. Thailand. Argentina. Actually the crises have been happening about every twenty four months. How many similar crises occurred under the gold standard??
The premise of a gold-backed currency is that some things have more lasting value than nation states. Gold is one of them - for five thousand years it has represented wealth and traded as such across cultures.
You appear to be the only other poster here who has even a vague understanding of what a fiat currency is.
You mean like in Argentina, where without warning people were prohibited from accessing cash accounts????? Doesn't anyone read the news anymore???
Governments can default on debts (Russia), disembowel currencies (Thailand), etc with almost no warning! In fact by default these actions are done without warning as a run on the bank would negate the action in the first place.
The reponses I am seeing (including yours) seem to be woefully ignorant of the sorry history of fiat currencies. Thats the way the government(s) like it! They don't want you to know that over three hundred fiat currencies (including some in the US!!!) have been repudiated in recent economic history. If you knew the sorry history of fiat currencies you might horde precious metals (like Warren Buffett, who owns a moutain of silver).
The cash in your pocket has no inherent value! There is no counterargument. Read some history.
Dollar bills can be repudiated at ANY time. The US is on its fourth currency. Anyone holding bills from the previous three hold nothing.
Which ultimately comes back to the supply of money - which is controlled by the government. For better or for worse, we have a "managed" currency. Sometimes the managers are insightful (Volker)...sometimes delusional (Greenspan).
What you are referring to is the growth in the money supply through the Fed down to the fractional reserve banks. M3 money has grown by leaps and bounds in the Greenspan era. This and only this is the source of the stock market bubble.