Israel's cell phone system is engineered to this type of standard. Every time the rockets hit, everyone checks in with loved ones to see if they're alright.
It's really only the U.S. that has major overload issues when bad things happen. In places where bad things happen more often, their networks tend to be built to handle it.
Well, to be honest, I probably could survive the short trip past the TV to hit a button before using the remote. Most people could.
The box that must remain on is the DVR.
And who's TV has clock data? And why? Dumb. The TV's just the output device for the DVR.
You're right it's not going to zero, of course... but you used some really weak arguments... the remote working? Really?
You've got something better than that, right? Please say you do.
'Cause for a nation of obsese bastards, getting up and walking over to push a power button is something we could all learn to live with again, I'm sure. Sheesh.
It's a job. Too many people want to be fulfilled by the "culture" at their jobs.
People with lives outside of work, go to work, keep a PROFESSIONAL demeanor (thus, their contribution to the culture) and they go home to their real friends and their culture.
Too many people want to live at work. That's just silly. Get the job done and go home to family, friends, and get involved in the local community for "culture".
I've worked at jobs where people would probably complain about the "culture". If they PAY better because they have a bit of insanity going on, you can ride it and be entertained in the process -- if it's not your whole LIFE.
If they don't, move on. Not worth being miserable, I agree.
But posting on a message board about how bad it was or whatever, usually anonymously, is just cowardly and dumb.
YOU have control of your life, not your boss. He can yell and scream and generally act like a jerk, but the only score we're keeping at work is on the W2.
If you are looking for a job that also does good things for the community, great... lots of people looking for those, and they don't pay well.
Skills and accomplishments tend to come from the places that aren't "fun" to work at.
It's REALLY rare to find places that are hard to work at and are also fun. Those jobs are hard to find.
You're not going to find the employees of those places posting on sites like FC. They're too busy making money and doing things that are difficult.
And when the place goes under, if it does, they're out hunting for the next place that goes that hard and has that much fun doing it.
Or... they'll back off and hide out in a less interesting job, knowing that the job isn't their life... or that perhaps they're getting a little too old for that much work, or whatever.
I guess my point here to you is this... if your job is your life, it'd better be something you REALLY enjoy doing, because there will be years with good money and years with no money.
If your job is to gain you financially so you can HAVE a life, then go find the best paying job you can find for your skill level and work hard at it. And don't bother wasting time with sites like FC.
(Hell, Slashdot is a huge time-sink waste of time, but it's one of my guilty pleasures I allow myself. Is it worth it? So far...)
Those investors are wrong. All companies have periods of time where the stock price and profits need to be sacrificed in order to invest in new technology or do R&D. American companies have all but forgotten this, though. Many European companies too, but not all.
So he lived past his standard 8 month emergency fund? Or did he have one? If he was making $40K, he had the capability in just about any market in the U.S. (other than overpriced SoCal and the East Coast) to sock that much of an emergency fund away.
But then you throw in the kicker -- he's in foreclosure. Ahh, he thought he made enough money to buy a house/pay a mortgage at $40K a year? How big was the mortgage?
(I don't care if they'd give him the loan... that's not the point. The point is, what made him think he could afford say $100,000 house on $40K a year?)
Did he save up a 10% down-payment before buying that mortgage hanging around his neck? The point of the traditional 10% down wasn't to just get the 10%, it was to show that someone had enough character to save that much money. If you're able to live and save enough for 10% down, you have adjusted your budget to where paying the mortgage will be easy. Even if you lose some of your earning power (as your friend has) you're probably living safely enough above what you make to continue to pay the debt you willingly took on.
I'm not sure your point here. You're correct that he's not going to be spending money, he's already bankrupt. Have you learned anything by watching his life?
That your friend isn't going to buy things because he willingly ran himself into debt and probably needs to declare bankruptcy? I agree.
But there are PLENTY of people who haven't gone under yet who are just believing the hype that their world is going to fall apart. With personal sacrifice (Got Mac-n-Cheese?) and less chasing after the Jones'es for "happiness", you can lose your job tomorrow and know you can live for 8 months. A year if you stretch it.
If this "credit crunch" does nothing but drive some whiny middle-class folks to realizing that they need to cut spending on stupid stuff, and really think hard about what's a NEED and what's a WANT, so they can build up that savings account, fine.
That cutting back on their trips to the mall for crap they don't need -- will cause an "economic slowdown" for a while, which people reset their expectations to reality.
But again, there ARE a lot of people out there just scared for no reason. The U.S. (all of it, even the expensive parts) is still one of the best places on Earth to live. Your friend may be bankrupt, but he's eating, isn't he? Millions aren't eating tonight...
It's all about perspective. His complaints that he can't own a home, has to work in a "bad" job at a cafeteria, and that it's not enough for him to be happy, would make my Great Depression era grandfather smile a bit, and maybe even chuckle. His stories of that time prove that people can live far more frugally and still be happy.
He's 90 and no worse for the wear... still kickin', still sharp, still driving, enjoying life even in this so-called "down-turn" because he has his priorities straight.
No no, Leo wasn't pessimistic. He was saying that he's ready to move to that world, and people like him that have multiple outlets (he's still in broadcast, syndicated with his home radio station as KFI in Los Angeles, but he also produces and records something like 10 different TARGETED AUDIENCE podcasts a week), who will do well.
He was saying that traditional "mass media" is going down, but not that he has to go with it. From my own habits, I think he's right. I have two mass media outlets I pay any attention to, one is a large ClearChannel Corp AM broadcast station that has the best local news, and the other is the local TV station that wins all the local news awards. Can you guess what my turn-on is...? Yep... local news.
Those outlets sprinkle in "big news" from outside the local area, but if I don't like it... I skip the TV stuff on the DVR, and in the car, during big shindigs with too much "national" news on the AM broadcast station, I fire up a podcast from the iPhone into the car stereo speakers.
The point he was making was that the Internet and podcasting may not be the end-all, be-all technology that can handle the new way people want their media, but it's headed that direction... no one wants the news boiled down for them into sound bites anymore.
What people want is more of the news they're interested in. They'll gladly hunt down ways to filter out the mass market commercials, and the stuff they're not interested in from the broadcasters today.
Directed podcasters who tie in advertisements aimed at their audience... I personally have found some products and services I've purchased through those. But mass market media? I don't care what they're selling.
(Hell, it's mostly pharmaceuticals these days for my penis, and/or birth control -- neither of which I'm currently shopping for...)
I think he's right -- and he left the timeline open-ended. But he was up-beat that he was also working that direction also -- he says his "traditional employers", the broadcasters, are dead -- they just don't know it yet.
Personally, I *think* the broadcasters can morph. At some point they have to come to their senses and realize that their towers and transmitters are more capable of being utilized in a digital world by sending multiple data streams, than in using old modulation types that can only carry analog voice/music.
Driving home tonight to the 'burbs, I saw a lot of people driving nice cars, going to nice houses, and generally doing all the same things they did last year.
We haven't SEEN a broke middle class. We're seeing a whiny bitchy middle-class who thinks toys and shiny new things are the key to their happiness.
When you see real sacrifice, and then beyond -- you'll also see revolution, because the middle-class masses really are dumb enough to think that "times is hard" while they're still eating, still have roofs over their heads, still have cars to drive...
Seriously. What a bunch of spoiled brats we all are.
I agree we're propped up on credit -- but that's mostly because people think they deserve "stuff" they don't. They don't save for things, they don't plan ahead, they have no savings for a "rainy day" and they believe this is how it's SUPPOSED to work.
Ask any of the few folks who lived through the entire Great Depression how they survived, and how they lived, and note that to a person, almost ALL of them are very deeply HAPPY people right now, even in our so-called "economic crisis".
They saw real economic crisis, and it was a lot worse than this.
The middle class needs to get off their asses and CREATE opportunity for themselves instead of asking companies and government to hand it to them. They also need to mix it up a bit more with the truly poor, both helping them, and also seeing them -- dare I say, CARING for them enough to look and listen -- and they won't bitch about having a "menial" job, or a roof over their heads ever again.
My experience with this was during what should have been my second semester in college. I didn't want to study what I was studying, and something compelled me to move to a very commune-like organization in Chicago and work with homeless people.
Doing that will change your life view forever. Having to "cut back" to beans and rice, or mac-n-cheese, is nothing to me... I could do it and be happy that I was WAY better off than most of the world, after spending serious time with the homeless.
(Another thing I learned is that Chicago politics is THE MOST CORRUPT anywhere in the U.S., and we just elected a President who moved from Hawaii and made his way through its ranks. Wow. Never thought I'd see that. But I guess it isn't surprising. The Ward system in Chicago breeds political sharks capable of killing without remorse, and they do.)
Good points. I guess I missed the racial and other stuff. Glad I was over it by then.
(No, I still hadn't found work that I wanted to do... please note the caveat... I could have had WORK, just not what I wanted to do... at that point, but I wasn't going to sit around posting whiny bitchfests about it all day.)
Maybe good for a week's worth of 5 minute "entertainment sessions", is all FC was worth to me. I wouldn't say it was some classic Internet thing that needs to make a come-back.
We'd all do better with a little less negativity and a little more work to make our personal situations better -- no matter how much "Hope" some political rock-star figure, or how much we think government can save us.
"The plan rarely survives the war." - General George S. Patton
Us "working slobs" were the ones funding the investments and not pulling our money out in the first place, if you track the money all the way back to the source.
Far too many people think of the stock market as non-risky. 401(k) tax benefits have motivated far too many people to "invest" in the stock market than should be.
Investment money is supposed to be money you do not need to live on. How many people above the age of 45 in most 401(k) programs are still 100% in stocks, and haven't demanded money market or other simpler/safer/less risky investments?
The greed wasn't just on Wall Street, it was the people on Main Street who saw the stock market as a get rich quick scheme.
Yes, the market does about 10% annually over TIME. But if you're 45+ years old and you know "times are good", it was time to diversify.
Those that didn't, get burnt... like they always do. History repeats. All one had to do was read any financial book's warnings at the local library (just to give a FREE information example), to know this.
The reckless stupid people in Wall Street were just doing what the reckless stupid people on main street asked them to do. Seen any shareholders suing the Boards of Directors of any companies they own through Mutual Funds lately when the CxO's were making 20x what the average worker at the company made?
Nope... people were too busy enjoying their "neverending wealth" on paper. But the reality is... it's not wealth until it's sold, and in your hand as cash.
And even then, cash inflates and deflates. Once it's cash, it must be managed to try to match or beat inflation as governments continue to print paper that's literally worth nothing...
1 Trillion in debt later, they're still printing. The so-called "bailouts" (there's no such thing as a free lunch -- it's not a bailout, it's a distribution of poverty) are going to be a bigger destroyer of wealth than all the fiascos of Wall Street combined.
Very astute. I think that's a sign that there's too many "broadcast" outlets fighting to push information to you, and that many of them are about to die, or be absorbed into larger entities with smaller staffs.
The larger entities that figure out that "mainstream news" isn't what 50% or more of their customer base wants to read/view, and sends their newly-acquired staff out to report on the niche markets, and creates ways to stream only the information people want to individuals, not to the masses... will win, over time.
I'm not sure what your point is. But I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Factual texts are worth something only in areas that don't change rapidly, is all I was saying.
If you're making fun of things that make life worth living, i.e. real skills and learning to do things that are difficult to do, that's kinda sad.
What's wrong with playing a piano, or flying a plane? Books are excellent references to learn such things.
Computers and programming languages change too quickly to make most books on the topic worth the paper they're printed on, until a language has become at least a few years old and is still in use in business. Easier to read online documentation for new languages and syntax, if they'll be replaced tomorrow by "Version 2.0 - the version to fix all problems forever!".
Fiscal conservatism includes at least 8 months of living expenses stashed away as CASH prior to buying ANYTHING not essential to live on. Minimum.
Most of the time any average worker can find work somewhere (hint: maybe not where you live today, maybe not what you're doing today) in 8 months.
More conservative would be: 12 months in cash.
Anyone who thinks they "can't do that" who's working at any reasonable middle-class job, is lying to themselves, and not buying only essentials.
Then... leading on to your employer/employee questions, ask yourself: Does my company sell things that are ESSENTIAL to someone (they'll ALWAYS buy it until they go out of business trying to buy it), or do we sell things that aren't necessary.
That will give you a good idea on whether or not you'll have a job in a severe economic downturn wherein *everyone* has to sacrifice. (We haven't even gotten close to that point yet. Not buying name brands and buying generic isn't sacrifice. That's just inconvenience.)
I agree with you, but that doesn't negate my point.
People who hadn't SOLD anything who are trusting that their house is "worth something" are idiots. You don't make money until the sale is inked.
People wondering if they'll have jobs next week -- are they doing better than average work, and are they working for the most profitable portion of the company? If so -- they have little to worry about. The others, okay -- I get it.
We have to buck up, think hard, and build things worth buying again. It can be done...
To use a popular political catch phrase... Hope and Change.
The problem I have with that is: I don't want my Hope and Change to come from the GOVERNMENT.
I want it to come from ME and the people I work with for our own gain, which we'll happily share with our vendors/suppliers, the community, and if the world likes it... the world, via our goods and/or services.
And I know the people I work with, and they CAN do it... if only the red-tape and procedures are moved out of their way... which is the never-ending struggle at good companies.
Bad ones work on creating new/different procedures.
The cash they were burning was never theirs, for one thing. (Burning other people's cash is a great way to end up a wage-slave for the rest of your life. If you like the work they give you to do at the end, fine... but if it's not exactly your life's ambition of a job -- you're headed for revolution at some point. Not everyone can be an Astronaut when they grow up.)
Salaries took a hit? Most IT workers haven't had a raise that was more than inflation in a decade. Now mix that knowledge with, "Honey, let's take out a big loan against the place we need to LIVE IN!" Pretty stupid, eh? Not here!
States and Unions and all of that... yeah, lovely stuff our voted politicians did with their surpluses, eh? How few people were voting for fiscally conservative politicians during the good years in the normal 7-10 year business cycle? Do those who voted for non-conservatives take any blame for their local government being out of cash? Are they willing to pay up NOW to cover who they voted for?
Unions: They'll eventually be busted, one way or another. It's not like sending billions to Detroit is going to suddenly teach GM how to make a car that lasts as long as a Honda. Guess what people are going to buy when times are tight? You buying a GM product, or a Honda/Toyota/Acura? I know which one I want if my car budget is tight.
Stock Market: If those people were truly INVESTING (by definition investing is using money you DO NOT NEED TO LIVE ON FOR SOME TIME YET), they aren't in trouble. They knew if they needed to live on it in the next five years, they were already out of stocks and into less risky assets. The real issue with the stock market right now is there are people dorking around in it pretending they know what they're doing, and who are being ripped off by mutual fund managers and the whole market is being gamed by hedge funds, etc. The reality is, the market's rigged to make big money, big money. The little guy has to be very intensely engaged to follow big money's moves and continually make money. The fallacy of the mutual fund is that it removes the RISK. It doesn't. It means we all go up and down together. The market is packed to the gills with Baby Boomer 401(K) money that should have already started to have been diversified out of the stock market. Oh well, it's out now... poof. Bye-bye. 40% losses on a true INVESTMENT sucks, but it's not supposed to change your LIFESTYLE, if you did it right.
So yeah... people were imagining they were creating wealth, and it bit them in the ass. Now the key to recovery is to GET TO WORK and really create some wealth. Do we have any companies that can make things of a quality level seen back in the 1950-1969 era? Can we do it?
I think we can.
Oh, and in most cases... sorry Slashdotters... SOFTWARE is not the answer. INTEGRATION and really thinking HARD about the big picture of what a company is accomplishing long-term with their products... is the answer.
No one wants to look like they against the new leadership in any way though, so I can see why they'd avoid that one.
They might still have a chance that our elected officials could literally print money to throw at them, if they don't mention what really just happened in D.C.!
It's an interesting point Bruce. The Internet continues to be the big thing shaking up business, worldwide.
Leo Laporte's keynote at MacWorld was along a similar vein for broadcasters, just a short few days ago. Broadcasting will be similarly dead eventually. People want a customized continuous stream of only the information they want. They don't want "mass media" anymore.
I look at my little sister's generation -- she hardly ever watches "the news". She's still well informed about general news from the overwhelming flood of information about the same topics over and over spewing from the broadcasters -- it works it's way to her somehow, but she's better informed and dare I say, "more competitive than her older peers" on the topics that interest HER.
This is happening to books, broadcast, anything that can't change rapidly.
Sure, there are things that are good on paper -- things that don't change. Stuff like "How to learn to fly a plane", and "Physics 101".
But trying to put down anything on paper like software languages or computing techniques, is a short-lived proposition -- unless you're talking core technologies like IP basics (and not how to program the latest router du-jour to do what you want with IP), etc.
I think the point I'm getting to here in this rambling fashion (hey, I'm tired.. hah...), is that static information -- is good in print. Stuff that changes, even slowly, has to be priced higher in print than anyone's willing to pay... to make it worthwhile to publish it in the first place.
Broadcast companies on the other hand have a small leg up, if they morph and morph quickly... having a 50,000W AM station at 850 KHz shouldn't be about putting out AM modulation of voice and news anymore -- it's a wide-area low-speed data transmitter... that can then be sliced up into packets.
I don't think the FCC nor the broadcasters quite "get it" yet, though.
He who dies with the most erlangs wins! -- Is our local joke in our little techie group. (We're telco-heads, and telco gets it... everything's rapidly sliding over to VoIP, and the struggles against QoS and actual voice quality have already begun long ago.
Not only that, we're just going straight to video and so-called "HD" video, and that 1960's world's fair dream of the videophone is here... easy to do on any laptop... *With enough bandwidth* to the laptop.
And print "media" like newspapers? The businesspeople already KNOW that model is dead. It's just being propped up. (I will miss my daily paper copy of the Wall Street Journal someday, but I can print it if I want to waste the toner... eventually.)
It's interesting times, but the Internet and packet-switched networks are still shaking things up... it's not done yet.
The movement to these new things is why I'm still upbeat about this so-called "bad" economy. There are still jobs (perhaps boring ones, but IT was always the "plumbing" of the business anyway -- the booming 90's just made us all feel more important than we are -- we're overhead, unless we make or save the company real MONEY), converting these old technologies to new ones.
The business world isn't dead... it's just leaning back on its heels and thinking. The first companies to lean forward and grab on to the fast-moving rope of time, and maybe getting some burns in the process, are going to do just fine.
Why "presume" all of this? This is my point. Yes, I was purposefully blunt to get some discussion going and a reaction... not a troll, just enough to get people to engage brains.
But here's the thing... if you're having to guess what and why they did it, then he really was mealy-mouthed. Why don't the shareholders demand truthfulness of the executives in words a high-schooler can understand?
The words they use when they're giving bad news sound like the types of statements that come out of academia, and the words used when times are good sound like used car salesmen.
(Is O'R public? I'll admit that I don't know and don't care to look because I never thought they produced that great of a product until "The Missing Manual" series. The last useful Unix book with real meat was "DNS & BIND". I can print the README's myself, thanks...)
What we really need are some down-to-earth people running some of these companies. Tim's CLOSE. I'll give him that. Very close. But he retreats into MBA-speak, in this particular moment, because some lawyers somewhere told him to do so.
You manage things. You lead people. This isn't leadership in these statements, he's using terms that sound like he's managing THINGS.
Amen to all of the above, Bruce. My house luckily just held steady. (I'm in the center of the country.) We're all kinda looking toward the shores (L.A., N.Y., Florida) and even a little toward the midwest and wondering, "What the HELL were you all THINKING?"
But then again, out here -- we're used to huge boom/bust cycles in business, and used to people moving here, then moving away, in droves... again and again. Those of us who actually want to live here, don't count the booms as gain, nor the busts as a huge loss. We just wait...
Slashdot Mirror
Israel's cell phone system is engineered to this type of standard. Every time the rockets hit, everyone checks in with loved ones to see if they're alright.
It's really only the U.S. that has major overload issues when bad things happen. In places where bad things happen more often, their networks tend to be built to handle it.
Can y'all hear me now?
Good lord man, hang up and live a little.
Ah. Missed that one.
Two words: TV Guide.
Whippersnappers... sheesh.
Well, to be honest, I probably could survive the short trip past the TV to hit a button before using the remote. Most people could.
The box that must remain on is the DVR.
And who's TV has clock data? And why? Dumb. The TV's just the output device for the DVR.
You're right it's not going to zero, of course... but you used some really weak arguments... the remote working? Really?
You've got something better than that, right? Please say you do.
'Cause for a nation of obsese bastards, getting up and walking over to push a power button is something we could all learn to live with again, I'm sure. Sheesh.
It's a job. Too many people want to be fulfilled by the "culture" at their jobs.
People with lives outside of work, go to work, keep a PROFESSIONAL demeanor (thus, their contribution to the culture) and they go home to their real friends and their culture.
Too many people want to live at work. That's just silly. Get the job done and go home to family, friends, and get involved in the local community for "culture".
I've worked at jobs where people would probably complain about the "culture". If they PAY better because they have a bit of insanity going on, you can ride it and be entertained in the process -- if it's not your whole LIFE.
If they don't, move on. Not worth being miserable, I agree.
But posting on a message board about how bad it was or whatever, usually anonymously, is just cowardly and dumb.
YOU have control of your life, not your boss. He can yell and scream and generally act like a jerk, but the only score we're keeping at work is on the W2.
If you are looking for a job that also does good things for the community, great... lots of people looking for those, and they don't pay well.
Skills and accomplishments tend to come from the places that aren't "fun" to work at.
It's REALLY rare to find places that are hard to work at and are also fun. Those jobs are hard to find.
You're not going to find the employees of those places posting on sites like FC. They're too busy making money and doing things that are difficult.
And when the place goes under, if it does, they're out hunting for the next place that goes that hard and has that much fun doing it.
Or... they'll back off and hide out in a less interesting job, knowing that the job isn't their life... or that perhaps they're getting a little too old for that much work, or whatever.
I guess my point here to you is this... if your job is your life, it'd better be something you REALLY enjoy doing, because there will be years with good money and years with no money.
If your job is to gain you financially so you can HAVE a life, then go find the best paying job you can find for your skill level and work hard at it. And don't bother wasting time with sites like FC.
(Hell, Slashdot is a huge time-sink waste of time, but it's one of my guilty pleasures I allow myself. Is it worth it? So far...)
Those investors are wrong. All companies have periods of time where the stock price and profits need to be sacrificed in order to invest in new technology or do R&D. American companies have all but forgotten this, though. Many European companies too, but not all.
So he lived past his standard 8 month emergency fund? Or did he have one? If he was making $40K, he had the capability in just about any market in the U.S. (other than overpriced SoCal and the East Coast) to sock that much of an emergency fund away.
But then you throw in the kicker -- he's in foreclosure. Ahh, he thought he made enough money to buy a house/pay a mortgage at $40K a year? How big was the mortgage?
(I don't care if they'd give him the loan... that's not the point. The point is, what made him think he could afford say $100,000 house on $40K a year?)
Did he save up a 10% down-payment before buying that mortgage hanging around his neck? The point of the traditional 10% down wasn't to just get the 10%, it was to show that someone had enough character to save that much money. If you're able to live and save enough for 10% down, you have adjusted your budget to where paying the mortgage will be easy. Even if you lose some of your earning power (as your friend has) you're probably living safely enough above what you make to continue to pay the debt you willingly took on.
I'm not sure your point here. You're correct that he's not going to be spending money, he's already bankrupt. Have you learned anything by watching his life?
That your friend isn't going to buy things because he willingly ran himself into debt and probably needs to declare bankruptcy? I agree.
But there are PLENTY of people who haven't gone under yet who are just believing the hype that their world is going to fall apart. With personal sacrifice (Got Mac-n-Cheese?) and less chasing after the Jones'es for "happiness", you can lose your job tomorrow and know you can live for 8 months. A year if you stretch it.
If this "credit crunch" does nothing but drive some whiny middle-class folks to realizing that they need to cut spending on stupid stuff, and really think hard about what's a NEED and what's a WANT, so they can build up that savings account, fine.
That cutting back on their trips to the mall for crap they don't need -- will cause an "economic slowdown" for a while, which people reset their expectations to reality.
But again, there ARE a lot of people out there just scared for no reason. The U.S. (all of it, even the expensive parts) is still one of the best places on Earth to live. Your friend may be bankrupt, but he's eating, isn't he? Millions aren't eating tonight...
It's all about perspective. His complaints that he can't own a home, has to work in a "bad" job at a cafeteria, and that it's not enough for him to be happy, would make my Great Depression era grandfather smile a bit, and maybe even chuckle. His stories of that time prove that people can live far more frugally and still be happy.
He's 90 and no worse for the wear... still kickin', still sharp, still driving, enjoying life even in this so-called "down-turn" because he has his priorities straight.
No no, Leo wasn't pessimistic. He was saying that he's ready to move to that world, and people like him that have multiple outlets (he's still in broadcast, syndicated with his home radio station as KFI in Los Angeles, but he also produces and records something like 10 different TARGETED AUDIENCE podcasts a week), who will do well.
He was saying that traditional "mass media" is going down, but not that he has to go with it. From my own habits, I think he's right. I have two mass media outlets I pay any attention to, one is a large ClearChannel Corp AM broadcast station that has the best local news, and the other is the local TV station that wins all the local news awards. Can you guess what my turn-on is...? Yep... local news.
Those outlets sprinkle in "big news" from outside the local area, but if I don't like it... I skip the TV stuff on the DVR, and in the car, during big shindigs with too much "national" news on the AM broadcast station, I fire up a podcast from the iPhone into the car stereo speakers.
The point he was making was that the Internet and podcasting may not be the end-all, be-all technology that can handle the new way people want their media, but it's headed that direction... no one wants the news boiled down for them into sound bites anymore.
What people want is more of the news they're interested in. They'll gladly hunt down ways to filter out the mass market commercials, and the stuff they're not interested in from the broadcasters today.
Directed podcasters who tie in advertisements aimed at their audience... I personally have found some products and services I've purchased through those. But mass market media? I don't care what they're selling.
(Hell, it's mostly pharmaceuticals these days for my penis, and/or birth control -- neither of which I'm currently shopping for...)
I think he's right -- and he left the timeline open-ended. But he was up-beat that he was also working that direction also -- he says his "traditional employers", the broadcasters, are dead -- they just don't know it yet.
Personally, I *think* the broadcasters can morph. At some point they have to come to their senses and realize that their towers and transmitters are more capable of being utilized in a digital world by sending multiple data streams, than in using old modulation types that can only carry analog voice/music.
They'll "get it", eventually.
Driving home tonight to the 'burbs, I saw a lot of people driving nice cars, going to nice houses, and generally doing all the same things they did last year.
We haven't SEEN a broke middle class. We're seeing a whiny bitchy middle-class who thinks toys and shiny new things are the key to their happiness.
When you see real sacrifice, and then beyond -- you'll also see revolution, because the middle-class masses really are dumb enough to think that "times is hard" while they're still eating, still have roofs over their heads, still have cars to drive...
Seriously. What a bunch of spoiled brats we all are.
I agree we're propped up on credit -- but that's mostly because people think they deserve "stuff" they don't. They don't save for things, they don't plan ahead, they have no savings for a "rainy day" and they believe this is how it's SUPPOSED to work.
Ask any of the few folks who lived through the entire Great Depression how they survived, and how they lived, and note that to a person, almost ALL of them are very deeply HAPPY people right now, even in our so-called "economic crisis".
They saw real economic crisis, and it was a lot worse than this.
The middle class needs to get off their asses and CREATE opportunity for themselves instead of asking companies and government to hand it to them. They also need to mix it up a bit more with the truly poor, both helping them, and also seeing them -- dare I say, CARING for them enough to look and listen -- and they won't bitch about having a "menial" job, or a roof over their heads ever again.
My experience with this was during what should have been my second semester in college. I didn't want to study what I was studying, and something compelled me to move to a very commune-like organization in Chicago and work with homeless people.
Doing that will change your life view forever. Having to "cut back" to beans and rice, or mac-n-cheese, is nothing to me... I could do it and be happy that I was WAY better off than most of the world, after spending serious time with the homeless.
(Another thing I learned is that Chicago politics is THE MOST CORRUPT anywhere in the U.S., and we just elected a President who moved from Hawaii and made his way through its ranks. Wow. Never thought I'd see that. But I guess it isn't surprising. The Ward system in Chicago breeds political sharks capable of killing without remorse, and they do.)
Good points. I guess I missed the racial and other stuff. Glad I was over it by then.
(No, I still hadn't found work that I wanted to do... please note the caveat... I could have had WORK, just not what I wanted to do... at that point, but I wasn't going to sit around posting whiny bitchfests about it all day.)
Maybe good for a week's worth of 5 minute "entertainment sessions", is all FC was worth to me. I wouldn't say it was some classic Internet thing that needs to make a come-back.
We'd all do better with a little less negativity and a little more work to make our personal situations better -- no matter how much "Hope" some political rock-star figure, or how much we think government can save us.
"The plan rarely survives the war." - General George S. Patton
Us "working slobs" were the ones funding the investments and not pulling our money out in the first place, if you track the money all the way back to the source.
Far too many people think of the stock market as non-risky. 401(k) tax benefits have motivated far too many people to "invest" in the stock market than should be.
Investment money is supposed to be money you do not need to live on. How many people above the age of 45 in most 401(k) programs are still 100% in stocks, and haven't demanded money market or other simpler/safer/less risky investments?
The greed wasn't just on Wall Street, it was the people on Main Street who saw the stock market as a get rich quick scheme.
Yes, the market does about 10% annually over TIME. But if you're 45+ years old and you know "times are good", it was time to diversify.
Those that didn't, get burnt... like they always do. History repeats. All one had to do was read any financial book's warnings at the local library (just to give a FREE information example), to know this.
The reckless stupid people in Wall Street were just doing what the reckless stupid people on main street asked them to do. Seen any shareholders suing the Boards of Directors of any companies they own through Mutual Funds lately when the CxO's were making 20x what the average worker at the company made?
Nope... people were too busy enjoying their "neverending wealth" on paper. But the reality is... it's not wealth until it's sold, and in your hand as cash.
And even then, cash inflates and deflates. Once it's cash, it must be managed to try to match or beat inflation as governments continue to print paper that's literally worth nothing...
1 Trillion in debt later, they're still printing. The so-called "bailouts" (there's no such thing as a free lunch -- it's not a bailout, it's a distribution of poverty) are going to be a bigger destroyer of wealth than all the fiascos of Wall Street combined.
Very astute. I think that's a sign that there's too many "broadcast" outlets fighting to push information to you, and that many of them are about to die, or be absorbed into larger entities with smaller staffs.
The larger entities that figure out that "mainstream news" isn't what 50% or more of their customer base wants to read/view, and sends their newly-acquired staff out to report on the niche markets, and creates ways to stream only the information people want to individuals, not to the masses... will win, over time.
I'm not sure what your point is. But I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Factual texts are worth something only in areas that don't change rapidly, is all I was saying.
If you're making fun of things that make life worth living, i.e. real skills and learning to do things that are difficult to do, that's kinda sad.
What's wrong with playing a piano, or flying a plane? Books are excellent references to learn such things.
Computers and programming languages change too quickly to make most books on the topic worth the paper they're printed on, until a language has become at least a few years old and is still in use in business. Easier to read online documentation for new languages and syntax, if they'll be replaced tomorrow by "Version 2.0 - the version to fix all problems forever!".
Fiscal conservatism includes at least 8 months of living expenses stashed away as CASH prior to buying ANYTHING not essential to live on. Minimum.
Most of the time any average worker can find work somewhere (hint: maybe not where you live today, maybe not what you're doing today) in 8 months.
More conservative would be: 12 months in cash.
Anyone who thinks they "can't do that" who's working at any reasonable middle-class job, is lying to themselves, and not buying only essentials.
Then... leading on to your employer/employee questions, ask yourself: Does my company sell things that are ESSENTIAL to someone (they'll ALWAYS buy it until they go out of business trying to buy it), or do we sell things that aren't necessary.
That will give you a good idea on whether or not you'll have a job in a severe economic downturn wherein *everyone* has to sacrifice. (We haven't even gotten close to that point yet. Not buying name brands and buying generic isn't sacrifice. That's just inconvenience.)
Smart people aren't getting their news for free -- they're paying for it from sources they trust.
Never trust anything you get "for free" applies even more to information than it does to goods and services.
I agree with you, but that doesn't negate my point.
People who hadn't SOLD anything who are trusting that their house is "worth something" are idiots. You don't make money until the sale is inked.
People wondering if they'll have jobs next week -- are they doing better than average work, and are they working for the most profitable portion of the company? If so -- they have little to worry about. The others, okay -- I get it.
Or...
We have to buck up, think hard, and build things worth buying again. It can be done...
To use a popular political catch phrase... Hope and Change.
The problem I have with that is: I don't want my Hope and Change to come from the GOVERNMENT.
I want it to come from ME and the people I work with for our own gain, which we'll happily share with our vendors/suppliers, the community, and if the world likes it... the world, via our goods and/or services.
And I know the people I work with, and they CAN do it... if only the red-tape and procedures are moved out of their way... which is the never-ending struggle at good companies.
Bad ones work on creating new/different procedures.
The cash they were burning was never theirs, for one thing. (Burning other people's cash is a great way to end up a wage-slave for the rest of your life. If you like the work they give you to do at the end, fine... but if it's not exactly your life's ambition of a job -- you're headed for revolution at some point. Not everyone can be an Astronaut when they grow up.)
Salaries took a hit? Most IT workers haven't had a raise that was more than inflation in a decade. Now mix that knowledge with, "Honey, let's take out a big loan against the place we need to LIVE IN!" Pretty stupid, eh? Not here!
States and Unions and all of that... yeah, lovely stuff our voted politicians did with their surpluses, eh? How few people were voting for fiscally conservative politicians during the good years in the normal 7-10 year business cycle? Do those who voted for non-conservatives take any blame for their local government being out of cash? Are they willing to pay up NOW to cover who they voted for?
Unions: They'll eventually be busted, one way or another. It's not like sending billions to Detroit is going to suddenly teach GM how to make a car that lasts as long as a Honda. Guess what people are going to buy when times are tight? You buying a GM product, or a Honda/Toyota/Acura? I know which one I want if my car budget is tight.
Stock Market: If those people were truly INVESTING (by definition investing is using money you DO NOT NEED TO LIVE ON FOR SOME TIME YET), they aren't in trouble. They knew if they needed to live on it in the next five years, they were already out of stocks and into less risky assets. The real issue with the stock market right now is there are people dorking around in it pretending they know what they're doing, and who are being ripped off by mutual fund managers and the whole market is being gamed by hedge funds, etc. The reality is, the market's rigged to make big money, big money. The little guy has to be very intensely engaged to follow big money's moves and continually make money. The fallacy of the mutual fund is that it removes the RISK. It doesn't. It means we all go up and down together. The market is packed to the gills with Baby Boomer 401(K) money that should have already started to have been diversified out of the stock market. Oh well, it's out now... poof. Bye-bye. 40% losses on a true INVESTMENT sucks, but it's not supposed to change your LIFESTYLE, if you did it right.
So yeah... people were imagining they were creating wealth, and it bit them in the ass. Now the key to recovery is to GET TO WORK and really create some wealth. Do we have any companies that can make things of a quality level seen back in the 1950-1969 era? Can we do it?
I think we can.
Oh, and in most cases... sorry Slashdotters... SOFTWARE is not the answer. INTEGRATION and really thinking HARD about the big picture of what a company is accomplishing long-term with their products... is the answer.
Well put. That'd be another honest announcement.
No one wants to look like they against the new leadership in any way though, so I can see why they'd avoid that one.
They might still have a chance that our elected officials could literally print money to throw at them, if they don't mention what really just happened in D.C.!
It's an interesting point Bruce. The Internet continues to be the big thing shaking up business, worldwide.
Leo Laporte's keynote at MacWorld was along a similar vein for broadcasters, just a short few days ago. Broadcasting will be similarly dead eventually. People want a customized continuous stream of only the information they want. They don't want "mass media" anymore.
I look at my little sister's generation -- she hardly ever watches "the news". She's still well informed about general news from the overwhelming flood of information about the same topics over and over spewing from the broadcasters -- it works it's way to her somehow, but she's better informed and dare I say, "more competitive than her older peers" on the topics that interest HER.
This is happening to books, broadcast, anything that can't change rapidly.
Sure, there are things that are good on paper -- things that don't change. Stuff like "How to learn to fly a plane", and "Physics 101".
But trying to put down anything on paper like software languages or computing techniques, is a short-lived proposition -- unless you're talking core technologies like IP basics (and not how to program the latest router du-jour to do what you want with IP), etc.
I think the point I'm getting to here in this rambling fashion (hey, I'm tired.. hah...), is that static information -- is good in print. Stuff that changes, even slowly, has to be priced higher in print than anyone's willing to pay... to make it worthwhile to publish it in the first place.
Broadcast companies on the other hand have a small leg up, if they morph and morph quickly... having a 50,000W AM station at 850 KHz shouldn't be about putting out AM modulation of voice and news anymore -- it's a wide-area low-speed data transmitter... that can then be sliced up into packets.
I don't think the FCC nor the broadcasters quite "get it" yet, though.
He who dies with the most erlangs wins! -- Is our local joke in our little techie group. (We're telco-heads, and telco gets it... everything's rapidly sliding over to VoIP, and the struggles against QoS and actual voice quality have already begun long ago.
Not only that, we're just going straight to video and so-called "HD" video, and that 1960's world's fair dream of the videophone is here... easy to do on any laptop... *With enough bandwidth* to the laptop.
And print "media" like newspapers? The businesspeople already KNOW that model is dead. It's just being propped up. (I will miss my daily paper copy of the Wall Street Journal someday, but I can print it if I want to waste the toner... eventually.)
It's interesting times, but the Internet and packet-switched networks are still shaking things up... it's not done yet.
The movement to these new things is why I'm still upbeat about this so-called "bad" economy. There are still jobs (perhaps boring ones, but IT was always the "plumbing" of the business anyway -- the booming 90's just made us all feel more important than we are -- we're overhead, unless we make or save the company real MONEY), converting these old technologies to new ones.
The business world isn't dead... it's just leaning back on its heels and thinking. The first companies to lean forward and grab on to the fast-moving rope of time, and maybe getting some burns in the process, are going to do just fine.
One of my points. Is he paid for the stock price, or is he paid to lead the company?
Incentives are all wrong in most public organizations these days. CxO's are paid for the wrong behavior.
Why "presume" all of this? This is my point. Yes, I was purposefully blunt to get some discussion going and a reaction... not a troll, just enough to get people to engage brains.
But here's the thing... if you're having to guess what and why they did it, then he really was mealy-mouthed. Why don't the shareholders demand truthfulness of the executives in words a high-schooler can understand?
The words they use when they're giving bad news sound like the types of statements that come out of academia, and the words used when times are good sound like used car salesmen.
(Is O'R public? I'll admit that I don't know and don't care to look because I never thought they produced that great of a product until "The Missing Manual" series. The last useful Unix book with real meat was "DNS & BIND". I can print the README's myself, thanks...)
What we really need are some down-to-earth people running some of these companies. Tim's CLOSE. I'll give him that. Very close. But he retreats into MBA-speak, in this particular moment, because some lawyers somewhere told him to do so.
You manage things. You lead people. This isn't leadership in these statements, he's using terms that sound like he's managing THINGS.
Most CxO's fall into this trap. Regularly.
Amen to all of the above, Bruce. My house luckily just held steady. (I'm in the center of the country.) We're all kinda looking toward the shores (L.A., N.Y., Florida) and even a little toward the midwest and wondering, "What the HELL were you all THINKING?"
But then again, out here -- we're used to huge boom/bust cycles in business, and used to people moving here, then moving away, in droves... again and again. Those of us who actually want to live here, don't count the booms as gain, nor the busts as a huge loss. We just wait...
Conservative fiscal policy starts at home...