Actually, I look at it in the same light as iPhoto and the other killer Apple apps, offensive.
Apple looked at Word and said "Wow, this application sucks. They've added features for over a decade, but not once have they made it easier to use." I'm excited to try out pages and use it. I'd like to see how it works out. Granted, I'll still be stuck using.doc most of the time but for things I develop for myself I'll probably use whichever processor "just works". I don't know which one will work better, but I think the odds on Pages being more friendly are pretty good.
It was put in place to catch companies that were writing off massive amounts of tax through the issuance of options.
Ehh, sort of. You don't "write off" options. You don't pay anything for options, the shareholders end up eating the cost, so there's nothing to write off. Salary, under $2million, is tax deductible so you would write that off. This was imposed so that people could more easily view a company's true earnings, factoring in work done by employees that was compensated by the shareholders (via options). Here's a quick ridiculously simplified example.
Company A makes $10 million in revenue and has $5million in salaries, blah blah blah has a net income of $5 million this year.
Company B makes $10 million in revenue and has $2.5million in salaries, thus having a net income of $7.5million. They also granted $5million in options@$3 which were sold @$3.5, resulting in $2.5million dollars of compensation for companies paid (basically) by the shareholders via the stock price.
With the new rules, companies will be forced to estimate the value of options on the date of grant. Therefore, Company B will have a net income of somewhere around $6million to $7million depending on what the estimated value of those stock options are.
To answer the question: "Why don't they just wait to see exactly how much the options were exercised at and account for the actual cost of the options?"
Three reasons.
1) People claim it's unfair to companies who perform well, as they'll have higher stock option expenses. More importantly is point 2).
2) It's a serious pain to go back through the last 10 years of accounting statements every quarter and re-do all 10 years. How would you like it if you were following a company and every quarter you had to re-evaluate all 10 years of that. It's just not feasible.
3) When you estimate the grant of options, it's what those options were worth at the time (or their "fair market value"). If your stock was $1 and it went up to $100, it's not fair for the company to expense all $99 of that increase, because no one knew it was going to do that.
There are two drawbacks to expensing.
1) Companies whose stock drops and sees no expense from options will still have to expense their estimated value when they issued them. (Which is fair, because if their stock skyrockets they still only expense the estimated value).
2) Depending on how expensing is set up, there may be a lot of room for manipulation of the numbers. If companies have too much control over the assumptions that go into expensing formulas, the estimates may be overly optimistic and misleading. For example, on a 10 year option, if you estimate that most will exercise that option within 2 years, that seriously reduces the values of those options. There is a difference between Binomial model and the Black-Scholes model, which I won't go into here. But FASB needs to seriously address this issue.
I think a country needs to "liberate" itself. The US had numerous bloody wars to get to the point to where its at. If enough people are against a topic in a country, they need to overthrow the powers that be themselves, that's all there is to it.
That would be great. Tell me. You're a poor peasant in a country that 80% poor and 20% rich. You and your 15 friends get together and build some rudimentary weapons (swords, etc). Now those four rich guys come by and they have two HUGE FRIGGIN TANKS.
Explain to me exactly what you'd do.
This ain't the 18th century. It is no longer difficult to retain power in a country with little popular support. The thought that every country should fix itself or it doesn't really want/deserve change is naive and heartless. Wow, and I'm the republican.
I've already switched over to playing the NCAA games. Too bad sega didn't make one this year so I had to purchase the EA one. Once again, sega not making a competing product meant that there were almost zero improvements in NCAA. All they added was a "stadium pulse" meter. Whoop de friggin do.
Something about louder stadiums making it harder to audible.
Let's look at the price tag. Since Apple's current market cap is $25 billion dollars, IBM would have to pay something in that range to purchase Apple.
To put things in perspective, IBM is expected to receive $1-2 billion from the sale of its existing PC business. IBM has about $10 billion in cash in the bank.
Does IBM have the money? Only by issuing more debt (IBM has about $22 Billion in debt already) OR by purchasing Apple using IBM stock which would dilute shareholder value.
Well, the debt level only matters if their net income is relatively low. With EBITDA at 15BN and Gross Profit at 33BN, they could easily raise enough capital through debt. As for using shares to purchase the company, that only dilutes shareholder value if it's a bad purchase. It would not be as profitable as using debt to pay for the purchase, but if it's a successful merger the shareholders would profit either way.
Does IBM have the will and/or stupidity to pursue such a deal? NO.
Heh. While you're certainly entitled to your opinion, people have thought many business decisions in the past have been stupid that have turned out to be brilliant. This is certainly a high-risk acquisition, but taking on MS is never easy.
Ehh, well it will be obvious. If this is the only reported incidence of the small company selling pirated software, MS will assume it was the user who screwed up. However, if 35% of your customers join this program, you're in deep doo-doo with an entity more powerful than the federal courts.
In the compensation field, this is the biggest topic. In the silicon valley compensation area, this is the only topic.
At the end of the day, the CEO's pay will not change. As others have alluded to, you pay the CEO enough to keep him from going to another company, as he is the most important person (generally) who has the most significant impact on earnings. If he can make you a fraction better than your competitor and your revenues are $1BN, a few million in pay is worth it. This will generally hold true for the upper executives who report to the CEO as well.
However, what about the little guy? The same holds true. They'll pay you what they think you're worth. Around the nation, it's not going to affect you that much. Pay is pay, and even if you get fewer options you should be rewarded in other ways (better stock performance due to the lower dilution, higher salaries/bonuses, etc). If you're not, there will be someone who will pay you what you were making before.
If there isn't, that means you were overpaid because the company could pay you and not expense the compensation. Sorry.
Here's the real kicker: ESPP's. Many companies allowed employees to purchase stock through ESPP's (Employee stock purchase plans). You could purchase stock at a 15% discount (so buy a $10 stock at $8.50) with usually a 6month to 2 year lookback. This was a huge source of income for many working at these companies. These practices will now be expensed, and companies will begin getting rid of ESPP Plans.
So, let's say your stock has fluctuated from $10 to $15 over the last two years. It's currently at $14. You have a 2 year lookback, so you can buy at $10 with a 15% discount which equals $8.50. Think about it! You can use 15% of your salary to do this. Let's say you make $100k per year. You buy $15,000 worth of stock at $8.50 per share, or 1,765 shares. Assuming you hold these shares for 1 year and the stock price neither drops nor increases, you can then sell it at $14 per share. That's $9,700 in extra income you're losing by this plan going away.
So basically, if people cut back your options or ESPP plans, demand a higher salary, higher target bonus, or a company car. If the company is unwilling to increase your compensation, then find someone who will.
I'm not going to go into the tax implications of Rstock vs. Options and why companies do things a certain way. If you have questions, contact me. I'll put up a yahoo addy so the spam goes there. razzak()jallow(@)yahoo.com (no parenthesis)
*Note: I'm not an advocate for or against expensing options, but I do feel it allows the non-expert investor to more easily compare performance across companies that grant options and those who do not.
Remove the tin-foil hat man. When your network usage spikes, you find out whose spiking it. When you find out whose spiking, you might call them up and ask why.
It's just that the loudest/funniest/editor people on slashdot are liberal, so you assume that slashdot is a liberal crowd. That doesn't mean techies are liberal.
You don't buy a mac for games. Even if apple wasted all that energy getting the games over to mac, people would just realize what they realize when they play quake3 or doom3 or whatever.
Performance sucks on macs. And if you consider FPS vs. $$$, it really sucks.
Apple still follows the digital hub strategy, and I tend to agree with it. Here's where I'd *like* to see the digital hub/entertainment center go, although I don't think it will.
1) The Hub A fanless computer that blends in with the home theatre system. Has 3 modes. Traditional computer mode (mac os x,in this case and functions with a mouse/kb etc), Component mode-functions like your typical VCR or A/V box, and On-screen-display mode (functions like a tivo but with an expanded Tablet-pc type system which you can control with a remote). Connects to the TV and wirelessly sync's with your laptop/clie/cell etc.
2) The input set Contains all the crap inputs you need, optical, coaxial, ryw, RF, etc. Connects to the hub via a firewire connection. The only "smart" thing it needs to do is feed whichever input the hub asks for through the firewire. Could feed multiple inputs limited by bandwidth.
3) amp/converters firewire to the hub. used as necessary. This means your upconverter to progressive scan stuff can be used for multiple inputs seamlessly, all configured via the hub.
4) game system Simply because it's the best way for games to be distributed (no more updates, fewer buggy releases, more "seamless" than PC games) that has significantly lower piracy issues. Further, I don't mind paying $50 for a game if I actually get something that's not buggy and it allows me to get the system for a very low price. I think this is one reason the console market is so attractive to both developers and gamers, so it's here to stay. Plugs into the hub.
The problem with this is it not only requires a whole lot of software development (that I think only Apple could pull off the OS, hopefully getting some home-theatre interface tips jacked from Tivo), but it requires a whole mess of industry standards to be developed (over firewire) and a complete change of the component development process. Apple has the hub technology to do this, but not the component aspects. Sony has the component aspects, but not enough control of the windows operating system to make it seemless.
I did in the first 2 weeks FV came out. Something about sleeping the CPU while FV was recovering disk space. The update 3 days later fixed the problem for me, but it did take me a month to trust FV again.:(
I assume the chip in the router isn't the same as a cpu for desktops, but someone else can respond to that.
The consoles are sold below-cost (many), and make up for it on licensing fees. That's like saying cell phones are now free.
I suggest a "kiosk" type system to be more affordable. all you need is the mobo/processor/usb card/IDE hub/ram/ps and a cdrom. Boot off a linux cd-rom and use USB memory sticks for different users. I think in this low-end of a system with low-end parts, a cd-rom boot might be more reliable than a HD. In all of my computers, the HD is always the first thing to go.
Of course, this solution doesn't provide $$$ to MSFT, so it's not the solution ballmer is looking for. However, it would be the perfect solution for small communities that can't afford computers. Everyone buys a $20 USB card and can use the local community computers as if they are their own.
There's no substitute for having your own computer to learn on, but this isn't a bad solution until everyone has one.
Seriously, I'd like to see a movie trilogy of the Marathon universe. Marathon's story was the best video game story ever, certainly of the FPS genre (IMO at least). Halo, an extension of that universe, wasn't as good or creative, but Marathon 1/2/3 was untouchable.
He gets ripped for making things different in Ep 1-3, and gets ripped for making them the same as well?
They're movies. The first series was great because of its special effects at the time and people still like them because of their Coke-like qualities (familiarity, reminds us of childhood, etc).
The new ones are just sci-fi movies in a time where there are too many sci-fi movies. I like'em, but they're not amazing. The bar was set too high.
First of all, you're looking at 1999 data. The stock price of MSFT is a little lower now, so many of those options are worthless. Further, MSFT doesn't issue options anymore, so the risk of this is virtually gone.
If he's an accountant, he should know better than this.
First, I'm betting many of those options were granted in the 1998-2000 years when everyone was option crazy. Now that the stock is half of what it used to be, those options are now worthless.
So, you're telling me MSFT has granted 53 billion in options to it's employees? Hardly. Assuming the options were granted at FMV, and assuming MSFT's stock price increases to say, $30.30 and it's $25.00 now, that means they have issued 10,000,000,000 options to employees? Give me a break.
Not only that, but those cash reserves are coupled with zero debt. A company like MSFT and it's proven revenue stream can significantly lever up. Just glancing at MSFT they made an ebitda of 12 billion, indicating to me they could probably hold debt with an interest of 4-6 billion a year. Assuming they get a 7% interest rate (that's a random guess, it's probably much lower for MSFT) that's like, 80+ billion in debt they could easily hold with their company. So, unless these dangerous outstanding options are going to have a value in excess of 120 billion, I think MSFT is just fine.
Me, I'm not even an accountant (Finance and International Relations Major) and I can give a rough estimate in looking at Yahoo's analysis of MSFT in a few seconds. *Please*, don't listen to this guy, and don't listen to me. If you want reliable information on a subject matter, go to a trusted source. Not someone with a website or with a/. account.
Weird. I've used Cingular/T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, Nextel, and Verizon. Verizon is the best with Sprint close behind, waaay behind them is AT&T and waaaay behind AT&T is Cingular/T-Mobile. Nextel is hit and miss, and I haven't used them recently.
Verizon has the best quality of any service I've used.
I was offered a job at a startup company that wanted to do this exact thing about 2-3 years ago. I said I'd take on some consulting for them but wasn't ready to commit full-time. After meeting with MC/Visa and AmEx, this was exactly the problem. Not only did it completely remove every piece of security they had, but it also ruined all branding they'd established over the past billion years.
In other words they said (which I expected): "So, you want us to open ourselves up to unprecedented levels of fraud, lose all of our branding, and get exactly what in return?"
I don't even like the concept of having to futz with fingerprint recognition when it's easier to just pull the card I want. It's ok though. This isn't the future of transactions. All we need is one major banking shake-up and we'd be able to use our debit-cards as a near-costless transaction medium. Wouldn't it be grand?
Remember, the only reason programmers are paid to make software is because people want to buy it. If you can't do what you say you're going to do at the time you say you're going to do it, less people will buy it. And either your company will A) Go Bankrupt or B) Replace You.
So when marketing tells you to get Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II out at the scheduled October release date, and not two weeks before the vastly superior Champions of Norrath in FEBRUARY (After Xmas).. you should listen. And if you can't get it out then, you need to let marketing know ASAP so you can re-think your game.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I look at it in the same light as iPhoto and the other killer Apple apps, offensive.
.doc most of the time but for things I develop for myself I'll probably use whichever processor "just works". I don't know which one will work better, but I think the odds on Pages being more friendly are pretty good.
Apple looked at Word and said "Wow, this application sucks. They've added features for over a decade, but not once have they made it easier to use." I'm excited to try out pages and use it. I'd like to see how it works out. Granted, I'll still be stuck using
It was put in place to catch companies that were writing off massive amounts of tax through the issuance of options.
Ehh, sort of. You don't "write off" options. You don't pay anything for options, the shareholders end up eating the cost, so there's nothing to write off. Salary, under $2million, is tax deductible so you would write that off. This was imposed so that people could more easily view a company's true earnings, factoring in work done by employees that was compensated by the shareholders (via options). Here's a quick ridiculously simplified example.
Company A makes $10 million in revenue and has $5million in salaries, blah blah blah has a net income of $5 million this year.
Company B makes $10 million in revenue and has $2.5million in salaries, thus having a net income of $7.5million. They also granted $5million in options@$3 which were sold @$3.5, resulting in $2.5million dollars of compensation for companies paid (basically) by the shareholders via the stock price.
With the new rules, companies will be forced to estimate the value of options on the date of grant. Therefore, Company B will have a net income of somewhere around $6million to $7million depending on what the estimated value of those stock options are.
To answer the question: "Why don't they just wait to see exactly how much the options were exercised at and account for the actual cost of the options?"
Three reasons.
1) People claim it's unfair to companies who perform well, as they'll have higher stock option expenses. More importantly is point 2).
2) It's a serious pain to go back through the last 10 years of accounting statements every quarter and re-do all 10 years. How would you like it if you were following a company and every quarter you had to re-evaluate all 10 years of that. It's just not feasible.
3) When you estimate the grant of options, it's what those options were worth at the time (or their "fair market value"). If your stock was $1 and it went up to $100, it's not fair for the company to expense all $99 of that increase, because no one knew it was going to do that.
There are two drawbacks to expensing.
1) Companies whose stock drops and sees no expense from options will still have to expense their estimated value when they issued them. (Which is fair, because if their stock skyrockets they still only expense the estimated value).
2) Depending on how expensing is set up, there may be a lot of room for manipulation of the numbers. If companies have too much control over the assumptions that go into expensing formulas, the estimates may be overly optimistic and misleading. For example, on a 10 year option, if you estimate that most will exercise that option within 2 years, that seriously reduces the values of those options. There is a difference between Binomial model and the Black-Scholes model, which I won't go into here. But FASB needs to seriously address this issue.
razzakjallow@yahoo.com
I think a country needs to "liberate" itself. The US had numerous bloody wars to get to the point to where its at. If enough people are against a topic in a country, they need to overthrow the powers that be themselves, that's all there is to it.
That would be great. Tell me. You're a poor peasant in a country that 80% poor and 20% rich. You and your 15 friends get together and build some rudimentary weapons (swords, etc). Now those four rich guys come by and they have two HUGE FRIGGIN TANKS.
Explain to me exactly what you'd do.
This ain't the 18th century. It is no longer difficult to retain power in a country with little popular support. The thought that every country should fix itself or it doesn't really want/deserve change is naive and heartless. Wow, and I'm the republican.
Have you tried running osx on 256ram? It really, really sucks.
I've already switched over to playing the NCAA games. Too bad sega didn't make one this year so I had to purchase the EA one. Once again, sega not making a competing product meant that there were almost zero improvements in NCAA. All they added was a "stadium pulse" meter. Whoop de friggin do.
Something about louder stadiums making it harder to audible.
Well, the debt level only matters if their net income is relatively low. With EBITDA at 15BN and Gross Profit at 33BN, they could easily raise enough capital through debt. As for using shares to purchase the company, that only dilutes shareholder value if it's a bad purchase. It would not be as profitable as using debt to pay for the purchase, but if it's a successful merger the shareholders would profit either way.
Heh. While you're certainly entitled to your opinion, people have thought many business decisions in the past have been stupid that have turned out to be brilliant. This is certainly a high-risk acquisition, but taking on MS is never easy.
...a lot of it is about the lense.
For example, my 1 megapixel v710 looks like complete ass. Its photos are dark and worst of all very, VERY grainy.
DigiCams still have another 3-5 years left in'em.
Ehh, well it will be obvious. If this is the only reported incidence of the small company selling pirated software, MS will assume it was the user who screwed up. However, if 35% of your customers join this program, you're in deep doo-doo with an entity more powerful than the federal courts.
In the compensation field, this is the biggest topic. In the silicon valley compensation area, this is the only topic.
At the end of the day, the CEO's pay will not change. As others have alluded to, you pay the CEO enough to keep him from going to another company, as he is the most important person (generally) who has the most significant impact on earnings. If he can make you a fraction better than your competitor and your revenues are $1BN, a few million in pay is worth it. This will generally hold true for the upper executives who report to the CEO as well.
However, what about the little guy? The same holds true. They'll pay you what they think you're worth. Around the nation, it's not going to affect you that much. Pay is pay, and even if you get fewer options you should be rewarded in other ways (better stock performance due to the lower dilution, higher salaries/bonuses, etc). If you're not, there will be someone who will pay you what you were making before.
If there isn't, that means you were overpaid because the company could pay you and not expense the compensation. Sorry.
Here's the real kicker: ESPP's. Many companies allowed employees to purchase stock through ESPP's (Employee stock purchase plans). You could purchase stock at a 15% discount (so buy a $10 stock at $8.50) with usually a 6month to 2 year lookback. This was a huge source of income for many working at these companies. These practices will now be expensed, and companies will begin getting rid of ESPP Plans.
So, let's say your stock has fluctuated from $10 to $15 over the last two years. It's currently at $14. You have a 2 year lookback, so you can buy at $10 with a 15% discount which equals $8.50. Think about it! You can use 15% of your salary to do this. Let's say you make $100k per year. You buy $15,000 worth of stock at $8.50 per share, or 1,765 shares. Assuming you hold these shares for 1 year and the stock price neither drops nor increases, you can then sell it at $14 per share. That's $9,700 in extra income you're losing by this plan going away.
So basically, if people cut back your options or ESPP plans, demand a higher salary, higher target bonus, or a company car. If the company is unwilling to increase your compensation, then find someone who will.
I'm not going to go into the tax implications of Rstock vs. Options and why companies do things a certain way. If you have questions, contact me. I'll put up a yahoo addy so the spam goes there. razzak()jallow(@)yahoo.com (no parenthesis)
*Note: I'm not an advocate for or against expensing options, but I do feel it allows the non-expert investor to more easily compare performance across companies that grant options and those who do not.
Remove the tin-foil hat man. When your network usage spikes, you find out whose spiking it. When you find out whose spiking, you might call them up and ask why.
Just a thought.
It's just that the loudest/funniest/editor people on slashdot are liberal, so you assume that slashdot is a liberal crowd. That doesn't mean techies are liberal.
You don't buy a mac for games. Even if apple wasted all that energy getting the games over to mac, people would just realize what they realize when they play quake3 or doom3 or whatever.
Performance sucks on macs. And if you consider FPS vs. $$$, it really sucks.
Apple still follows the digital hub strategy, and I tend to agree with it. Here's where I'd *like* to see the digital hub/entertainment center go, although I don't think it will.
1) The Hub
A fanless computer that blends in with the home theatre system. Has 3 modes. Traditional computer mode (mac os x,in this case and functions with a mouse/kb etc), Component mode-functions like your typical VCR or A/V box, and On-screen-display mode (functions like a tivo but with an expanded Tablet-pc type system which you can control with a remote). Connects to the TV and wirelessly sync's with your laptop/clie/cell etc.
2) The input set
Contains all the crap inputs you need, optical, coaxial, ryw, RF, etc. Connects to the hub via a firewire connection. The only "smart" thing it needs to do is feed whichever input the hub asks for through the firewire. Could feed multiple inputs limited by bandwidth.
3) amp/converters
firewire to the hub. used as necessary. This means your upconverter to progressive scan stuff can be used for multiple inputs seamlessly, all configured via the hub.
4) game system
Simply because it's the best way for games to be distributed (no more updates, fewer buggy releases, more "seamless" than PC games) that has significantly lower piracy issues. Further, I don't mind paying $50 for a game if I actually get something that's not buggy and it allows me to get the system for a very low price. I think this is one reason the console market is so attractive to both developers and gamers, so it's here to stay. Plugs into the hub.
The problem with this is it not only requires a whole lot of software development (that I think only Apple could pull off the OS, hopefully getting some home-theatre interface tips jacked from Tivo), but it requires a whole mess of industry standards to be developed (over firewire) and a complete change of the component development process. Apple has the hub technology to do this, but not the component aspects. Sony has the component aspects, but not enough control of the windows operating system to make it seemless.
Apple/Sony, please make me happy.
Ah well, pipe dreams are nice.
I did in the first 2 weeks FV came out. Something about sleeping the CPU while FV was recovering disk space. The update 3 days later fixed the problem for me, but it did take me a month to trust FV again. :(
I assume the chip in the router isn't the same as a cpu for desktops, but someone else can respond to that.
The consoles are sold below-cost (many), and make up for it on licensing fees. That's like saying cell phones are now free.
I suggest a "kiosk" type system to be more affordable. all you need is the mobo/processor/usb card/IDE hub/ram/ps and a cdrom. Boot off a linux cd-rom and use USB memory sticks for different users. I think in this low-end of a system with low-end parts, a cd-rom boot might be more reliable than a HD. In all of my computers, the HD is always the first thing to go.
Of course, this solution doesn't provide $$$ to MSFT, so it's not the solution ballmer is looking for. However, it would be the perfect solution for small communities that can't afford computers. Everyone buys a $20 USB card and can use the local community computers as if they are their own.
There's no substitute for having your own computer to learn on, but this isn't a bad solution until everyone has one.
Seriously, I'd like to see a movie trilogy of the Marathon universe. Marathon's story was the best video game story ever, certainly of the FPS genre (IMO at least). Halo, an extension of that universe, wasn't as good or creative, but Marathon 1/2/3 was untouchable.
Ehhh... my cell phone can barely talk for 2+ hours. If I listened to more than 45 minutes of music on one it wouldn't be able to be a cell anymore.
He gets ripped for making things different in Ep 1-3, and gets ripped for making them the same as well?
They're movies. The first series was great because of its special effects at the time and people still like them because of their Coke-like qualities (familiarity, reminds us of childhood, etc).
The new ones are just sci-fi movies in a time where there are too many sci-fi movies. I like'em, but they're not amazing. The bar was set too high.
Several years ago I was excited about Flash usage in web sites. Now I think Flash is becoming something I won't want installed in the future.
First of all, you're looking at 1999 data. The stock price of MSFT is a little lower now, so many of those options are worthless. Further, MSFT doesn't issue options anymore, so the risk of this is virtually gone.
/. account.
If he's an accountant, he should know better than this.
First, I'm betting many of those options were granted in the 1998-2000 years when everyone was option crazy. Now that the stock is half of what it used to be, those options are now worthless.
So, you're telling me MSFT has granted 53 billion in options to it's employees? Hardly. Assuming the options were granted at FMV, and assuming MSFT's stock price increases to say, $30.30 and it's $25.00 now, that means they have issued 10,000,000,000 options to employees? Give me a break.
Not only that, but those cash reserves are coupled with zero debt. A company like MSFT and it's proven revenue stream can significantly lever up. Just glancing at MSFT they made an ebitda of 12 billion, indicating to me they could probably hold debt with an interest of 4-6 billion a year. Assuming they get a 7% interest rate (that's a random guess, it's probably much lower for MSFT) that's like, 80+ billion in debt they could easily hold with their company. So, unless these dangerous outstanding options are going to have a value in excess of 120 billion, I think MSFT is just fine.
Me, I'm not even an accountant (Finance and International Relations Major) and I can give a rough estimate in looking at Yahoo's analysis of MSFT in a few seconds. *Please*, don't listen to this guy, and don't listen to me. If you want reliable information on a subject matter, go to a trusted source. Not someone with a website or with a
I find trying to jump from a box onto a moving crane and falling into the same pit for 45 minutes anything *but* relaxing.
So what you're saying is, you can make a lot of money doing illegal things? WOAH!
Weird. I've used Cingular/T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, Nextel, and Verizon. Verizon is the best with Sprint close behind, waaay behind them is AT&T and waaaay behind AT&T is Cingular/T-Mobile. Nextel is hit and miss, and I haven't used them recently.
Verizon has the best quality of any service I've used.
I was offered a job at a startup company that wanted to do this exact thing about 2-3 years ago. I said I'd take on some consulting for them but wasn't ready to commit full-time. After meeting with MC/Visa and AmEx, this was exactly the problem. Not only did it completely remove every piece of security they had, but it also ruined all branding they'd established over the past billion years.
In other words they said (which I expected): "So, you want us to open ourselves up to unprecedented levels of fraud, lose all of our branding, and get exactly what in return?"
I don't even like the concept of having to futz with fingerprint recognition when it's easier to just pull the card I want. It's ok though. This isn't the future of transactions. All we need is one major banking shake-up and we'd be able to use our debit-cards as a near-costless transaction medium. Wouldn't it be grand?
It'd still be funny, because quite honestly if I was running a business that dealt with that company I'd think twice about dealing with them again.
Any company that's willing to treat its own employees that way probably would screw over its partners just as easily.
Being rude and thoughtless is simply not good business.
Remember, the only reason programmers are paid to make software is because people want to buy it. If you can't do what you say you're going to do at the time you say you're going to do it, less people will buy it. And either your company will A) Go Bankrupt or B) Replace You.
So when marketing tells you to get Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II out at the scheduled October release date, and not two weeks before the vastly superior Champions of Norrath in FEBRUARY (After Xmas).. you should listen. And if you can't get it out then, you need to let marketing know ASAP so you can re-think your game.