We're a country that is weaker because we have not had to persevere through those same crises you mention. And our society has evolved into one that is not conducive to long-term survival.
Most of our incentive systems hard-wired into our society are myopically short-term in nature. Look at the problems our nation currently faces, and our startling lack of ability (despite our supposed 'strength') to recognize and pursue truly long-term solutions. People expect immediate results from any investment, which belies making truly fruitful long-term investments.
As a society, we are going down a path to inferiority to those who can suffer through the short-term to their long-term benefit.
This is why actors/producers/writers should demand percentages of gross sales, not profits. You see the sales numbers publicly released, while profits aren't. The sales numbers are verifiable.
You make a great argument for limiting the expensing of the options to the highest execs within the company, which is what businesses and Congress are trying to do, and with which I concur. The execs are the ones that have enough power to single-handedly (or at least through the actions of a few) significantly change the direction, and thus the stock price, of the company. And they have the power to influence stock price through cooking the books, the ugly effects of which have been shown of late. Plus they seem to get more favorable terms (lower strike prices) so they are more likely to get paid.
My sister had options when she worked at Borders, and did actually make some money on them, but not much. Companies should get an incentive to help employees become shareholders, which they get through the tax laws, but expensing rank-and-file employees' options would seem to cancel that incentive.
You raise a good point. Recording option value as expense is based on a weighted-average probability-based calculation on what may happen in the future. The option formulas are supposed to take into account the probability that the options may not make money for employees into account, but it's all based on estimation. Who knows what the stock market will do in a year, let alone certain individual stocks?
On the other hand, didn't you accept your options as part of your compensation package, in exchange for your services rendered? Or is it a lottery ticket you're getting, which has a payoff strictly based on luck and not effort? (No offense.)
Except that a stock option is not really a "cost"; it does not deplete the company's assets to issue them. If any dilution occurs, it is when shares are issued and/or set aside for the purpose of issuing stock options...
First of all, many companies buy back their shares (at market prices) to then reissue when employees use the options. This costs the company real money. Second, the company loses out on taking in cash by accepting a discounted purchase price instead of market value when employees use the options. Cash is most definitely "depleted" here.
Not quite. An expense is something that has or will cost money, either based on a past action or an action you take now that impacts cash in the future. It's not a liability because it deals with a company's own stock, which is an equity transaction and not a liability. (Imagine if companies could play with their balance sheets just by trading in their own stock...accounting rules don't let them do this, in the main.)
Options are an expense - the company's taken an action that comes with a (likely) future cash sacrifice, but a sacrifice of future cash financing.
Options are a hedge only if you are exposed to a pre-existing risk to rises in the stock price. It's hard to argue that any employee is exposed to a risk based on the stock price *rising*.
Stock options without the pre-existing risk are speculative securities, just like stock or any other financial instrument. Employees earn income from stock options; hence, the company should record expense.
While it's true that options may not be cashed out, the accounting standard allows for companies to adjust the expense based on changes in expected redemption rates due to the factors you list (employee attrition or stock price behavior).
Accounting records anything with cash implications to companies. Options have such implications, and the presentation in income underscores this.
On the contrary, I am now compelled to join the organization, and encourage more reasonable people to do the same.
If we are to effect change in how the entrenched, narrow-minded management of the organization define and practice civil rights, it must be virally from within instead of pitching stones from without. Our words have much more power and poignancy when our own asses are most on the line.
What most everyone in this long thread seems to be overlooking is that when you are drunk, you lose the capacity to think clearly.
People don't go out and plan to drive drunk; they make a bad decision when they are incapable of good judgment.
Voluntary measures, like designated drivers and calling a cab, work only when you 'plan' to get drunk ahead of time. Most folks I know don't plan on it, so they don't have any designated drivers. But with more drinks come more boldness and worse judgment.
Making bar servers monitor patrons is ineffective by design. Here you're asking those who make money by serving drinks not to serve drinks. It can't work.
Harsh jail and driver's privileges penalties don't work either, because of the 'not planning on getting drunk' argument above, and because the defense always states that the driver's judgment was impaired (which it was).
Medical reality doesn't help either. Drunk drivers rarely kill or hurt themselves; they're usually unharmed when they hit someone or something. It's other people who are hurt or killed, in their car or another.
Disagree with me as you like, but, in the same spirit as putting safety locks on guns, technology should help where it can when people are incapable of using their cars wisely.
As a teacher, this really pisses me off, on oh so many levels.
We're supposed to be trying to teach ethics in the wake of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, &c. Teaching ethics like this, with financial incentives attached (the prizes awarded to students for writing essays), is counterproductive crap. Financial incentives were instrumental in what all the corporate crooks did. Let's go ahead and perpetuate that kind of reward system, promoting the blind reach for slanted objectives.
Who the hell lets their classrooms be seized for this purpose anyway? Teachers and admins can't just reach for $$$ without considering how their guests affect their pedagogy. JA always was given a fair audience in school because they helped students see what it's like to make something and see it through. But here, they've overstepped their bounds. JA wasn't in the 'big business' business before; if they've sold out, they don't belong in schools trying to hype themselves.
However, this has to be, by definition, a moving average (or median, or both), across generations that take the tests. The frame of reference is other peoples' performance, a relative evaluation, and not a constant standard, or absolute evaluation.
As a teacher, I often have to grapple with what we euphemistically call "intergenerational consistency" issues in grading and teaching. Lots of folks in education either think that:
Classes across time are, on average, of equal intelligence and performance, and therefore should have equal distributions of grades across time; or
We should treat them as such, regardless of what we think is reality, because it's relative performance that matters.
I'm a lot more concerned with absolute performance, and absolute intelligence/skills/wherewithal. In key areas where users' lack of such affects us all (and one can argue about whether spam is a worthy area), we have to intervene earlier and more forcefully.
As a teacher, I can state that, at least in my corner of academia, there is no significant increase in quality of texts. The most expensive texts are not larger, and do not contain any more information, intuition, learning aids, or other educational value than they had before. The only big change is that the formatting of the books is a lot prettier than it was years ago.
As an example, I currently teach a class using the 11th edition of a textbook, which costs around $130. When I took this same class some many years ago [I won't say how long ago:)], the book was in its 2nd edition, and cost around $40. The 11th edition has 3 more chapters than the 2nd, and the 20 other chapters haven't changed much in all those years.
Friends of mine who are textbook coauthors attest to how publishers hound them to crank out a new edition every 2-3 years, regardless of the rate of change of the subject matter covered. Publishers make $0 in the used book market. They're just now waking up to the prospect of e-textbooks; surprisingly, students as a group are the bigger barrier to e-texts than publishers, for various reasons.
More generally, there's a huge, thriving open-source-like environment in education, at least at the college level. We experiment with stuff in classrooms, and openly share 'best practices' and related tools within our community. Texts are a logical extension of this, but we should expect publishers to fight them tooth and nail, in the same spirit as Microsoft et al. fight open-source software.
Re:Science is open to everyone
on
Who Owns Science?
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· Score: 2, Informative
In fact, for most reputable journals, researchers have to pay a fee to the journal just to submit a research study for consideration of it being published. Researchers receive no discounts on subscription or money from journals for publishing (it's not like they're submitting jokes to reader's digest...)
As a former student and current teacher in a technical major (not CS):
Your undergrad degree is meant to build only basic skills, the foundation of what you'll need to do well. (Aside from the many teachers who teach undergrad classes badly and bore folks out of their skulls,) We have to make sure you've got the basics down, so we have to give you a bit more mundane tasks, at least at first.
Most of the stuff that makes a career fun you'll not learn in class; you'll learn it from experience, either your own or someone else's. The "real job" working environment is incredibly richer than that in class/school, and that's what will probably bring back your enthusiasm:
Talk to CS graduates who have jobs about what they do and what they enjoy about their work.
Check out the internship program at your school to get a taste of what the jobs are like.
Check out the "trade" mags for your field and see what kinds of interesting problems are getting a lot of play. Chances are you'll have a lot of opportunities to help deal with them or similar ones.
Slashdot Mirror
You can get $20 from taking Chase Bank's online survey - haven't you been getting their emails?
We're a country that is weaker because we have not had to persevere through those same crises you mention. And our society has evolved into one that is not conducive to long-term survival.
Most of our incentive systems hard-wired into our society are myopically short-term in nature. Look at the problems our nation currently faces, and our startling lack of ability (despite our supposed 'strength') to recognize and pursue truly long-term solutions. People expect immediate results from any investment, which belies making truly fruitful long-term investments.
As a society, we are going down a path to inferiority to those who can suffer through the short-term to their long-term benefit.
This is why actors/producers/writers should demand percentages of gross sales, not profits. You see the sales numbers publicly released, while profits aren't. The sales numbers are verifiable.
You make a great argument for limiting the expensing of the options to the highest execs within the company, which is what businesses and Congress are trying to do, and with which I concur. The execs are the ones that have enough power to single-handedly (or at least through the actions of a few) significantly change the direction, and thus the stock price, of the company. And they have the power to influence stock price through cooking the books, the ugly effects of which have been shown of late. Plus they seem to get more favorable terms (lower strike prices) so they are more likely to get paid.
My sister had options when she worked at Borders, and did actually make some money on them, but not much. Companies should get an incentive to help employees become shareholders, which they get through the tax laws, but expensing rank-and-file employees' options would seem to cancel that incentive.
You raise a good point. Recording option value as expense is based on a weighted-average probability-based calculation on what may happen in the future. The option formulas are supposed to take into account the probability that the options may not make money for employees into account, but it's all based on estimation. Who knows what the stock market will do in a year, let alone certain individual stocks?
On the other hand, didn't you accept your options as part of your compensation package, in exchange for your services rendered? Or is it a lottery ticket you're getting, which has a payoff strictly based on luck and not effort? (No offense.)
Except that a stock option is not really a "cost"; it does not deplete the company's assets to issue them. If any dilution occurs, it is when shares are issued and/or set aside for the purpose of issuing stock options... First of all, many companies buy back their shares (at market prices) to then reissue when employees use the options. This costs the company real money. Second, the company loses out on taking in cash by accepting a discounted purchase price instead of market value when employees use the options. Cash is most definitely "depleted" here.
Not quite. An expense is something that has or will cost money, either based on a past action or an action you take now that impacts cash in the future. It's not a liability because it deals with a company's own stock, which is an equity transaction and not a liability. (Imagine if companies could play with their balance sheets just by trading in their own stock...accounting rules don't let them do this, in the main.)
Options are an expense - the company's taken an action that comes with a (likely) future cash sacrifice, but a sacrifice of future cash financing.
Options are a hedge only if you are exposed to a pre-existing risk to rises in the stock price. It's hard to argue that any employee is exposed to a risk based on the stock price *rising*.
Stock options without the pre-existing risk are speculative securities, just like stock or any other financial instrument. Employees earn income from stock options; hence, the company should record expense.
While it's true that options may not be cashed out, the accounting standard allows for companies to adjust the expense based on changes in expected redemption rates due to the factors you list (employee attrition or stock price behavior).
Accounting records anything with cash implications to companies. Options have such implications, and the presentation in income underscores this.
On the contrary, I am now compelled to join the organization, and encourage more reasonable people to do the same.
If we are to effect change in how the entrenched, narrow-minded management of the organization define and practice civil rights, it must be virally from within instead of pitching stones from without. Our words have much more power and poignancy when our own asses are most on the line.
What most everyone in this long thread seems to be overlooking is that when you are drunk, you lose the capacity to think clearly.
People don't go out and plan to drive drunk; they make a bad decision when they are incapable of good judgment.
Voluntary measures, like designated drivers and calling a cab, work only when you 'plan' to get drunk ahead of time. Most folks I know don't plan on it, so they don't have any designated drivers. But with more drinks come more boldness and worse judgment.
Making bar servers monitor patrons is ineffective by design. Here you're asking those who make money by serving drinks not to serve drinks. It can't work.
Harsh jail and driver's privileges penalties don't work either, because of the 'not planning on getting drunk' argument above, and because the defense always states that the driver's judgment was impaired (which it was).
Medical reality doesn't help either. Drunk drivers rarely kill or hurt themselves; they're usually unharmed when they hit someone or something. It's other people who are hurt or killed, in their car or another.
Disagree with me as you like, but, in the same spirit as putting safety locks on guns, technology should help where it can when people are incapable of using their cars wisely.
With a name like Sircam(eron)...
As a teacher, this really pisses me off, on oh so many levels.
We're supposed to be trying to teach ethics in the wake of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, &c. Teaching ethics like this, with financial incentives attached (the prizes awarded to students for writing essays), is counterproductive crap. Financial incentives were instrumental in what all the corporate crooks did. Let's go ahead and perpetuate that kind of reward system, promoting the blind reach for slanted objectives.
Who the hell lets their classrooms be seized for this purpose anyway? Teachers and admins can't just reach for $$$ without considering how their guests affect their pedagogy. JA always was given a fair audience in school because they helped students see what it's like to make something and see it through. But here, they've overstepped their bounds. JA wasn't in the 'big business' business before; if they've sold out, they don't belong in schools trying to hype themselves.
- Classes across time are, on average, of equal intelligence and performance, and therefore should have equal distributions of grades across time; or
- We should treat them as such, regardless of what we think is reality, because it's relative performance that matters.
I'm a lot more concerned with absolute performance, and absolute intelligence/skills/wherewithal. In key areas where users' lack of such affects us all (and one can argue about whether spam is a worthy area), we have to intervene earlier and more forcefully.As a teacher, I can state that, at least in my corner of academia, there is no significant increase in quality of texts. The most expensive texts are not larger, and do not contain any more information, intuition, learning aids, or other educational value than they had before. The only big change is that the formatting of the books is a lot prettier than it was years ago.
:)], the book was in its 2nd edition, and cost around $40. The 11th edition has 3 more chapters than the 2nd, and the 20 other chapters haven't changed much in all those years.
As an example, I currently teach a class using the 11th edition of a textbook, which costs around $130. When I took this same class some many years ago [I won't say how long ago
Friends of mine who are textbook coauthors attest to how publishers hound them to crank out a new edition every 2-3 years, regardless of the rate of change of the subject matter covered. Publishers make $0 in the used book market. They're just now waking up to the prospect of e-textbooks; surprisingly, students as a group are the bigger barrier to e-texts than publishers, for various reasons.
More generally, there's a huge, thriving open-source-like environment in education, at least at the college level. We experiment with stuff in classrooms, and openly share 'best practices' and related tools within our community. Texts are a logical extension of this, but we should expect publishers to fight them tooth and nail, in the same spirit as Microsoft et al. fight open-source software.
In fact, for most reputable journals, researchers have to pay a fee to the journal just to submit a research study for consideration of it being published. Researchers receive no discounts on subscription or money from journals for publishing (it's not like they're submitting jokes to reader's digest...)
they take cnn.com to AOL only. There's no way they'll take their truly popular sites private.