Actually, the European Parliament has drifted pretty well right of centre in the last decade or so.
Although, y'know, 1 self-declared socialist (NB, by their works shall ye know them - don't be taken in by the label) would make the EU screaming pinkos by US standards.
If some business unit only produces $500k a year in clean profit, it might still get canned if it was sitting on $5M of assets: salaries, real estate, salable equipment, etc. If the company thinks they can do better than 10% ROI somewhere else, the logical decision is to liquidate the unit and invest the cash elsewhere. It's called opportunity cost.
Yep, which is why anyone making investment decisions always always calculates RoI at Net Present Value (NPV) which includes a discount factor (Discount Cash Flow) for the opportunity cost at N years out. So 100k return in 5 years is nothing like as valuable as 100k next year.
If 13000 employees are unneeded then some high level mangagers screwed up long ago.
That's only the case if you assume a fairly static environment, which is a gross simplification. You're perhaps thinking of 50 years ago..?
Here's a simpler example: You run a network of fast food outlets. In early summer, you open a bunch of ice-cream stands at the beach with 2 FTEs each, to take advantage of the enlarged market. Come September/March (delete for applicable hemisphere), and it's cold and raining. Your ice-cream stands are each taking under 10currencyUnits/day, but are costing you several hundred Units/day in rent and wages.
Now here's your choice: Do you close the ice-cream stands and lay off the people, now there's not enough business to sustain them?
Now stretch your brain to a variable environment where peaks/troughs aren't so predicable... You take people on when business is growing beyond your present capacity to supply it (or you miss the opportunity) and you think it's going stay at that size for long enough to make it worthwhile for you to make the hires. When the market drops significantly below your capacity (or is predicted to do so to a sensible level of confidence), you shrink again. You work it so that as many as possible go through the normal processes of retirement, finding other jobs, redeployment to areas of your business that are over-capacity. But if that's not enough, you have to lay people off.
(Where 'coverage' is of exchanges. The line noise limits of distance from exchange reduces the actual geographical/population access to ADSL. Northern Ireland reckons the reduction is 1.5%, and they're working on providing wireless coverage by the end of the year for these people)
If he isn't careful Bill Gates might just Betamax him while the crowds cheer him on.
Hardly, when iTMS has between 70% and 80% (depending on whose estimates you believe - Apple's is the lower end) of legal, DRMed downloads, 90% of HDD-based players and just shy of 60% of Flash players. If there's a betamax here, it's anything requiring Windows Media Player.
And while much Microsoft software may be strong in the marketplace generally (and we can all suggest reasons why), I don't see much evidence of people cheering him on...
The current feeds are made accessible for personal use only. The difference is that the Beeb will now be OK with commercial sites using them without prior agreement/contract.
Show me one financial package equivalent to Quickbooks Premier that runs on Linux
Son, come back when you've got a real accounting application. Oracle or Peoplesoft financials also accepted - but hey, they run on Linux (or commercial Unix such as AIX) too.
In most smaller retailers, the terminals (including the keypads) are provided by the banks' merchant services division.
For the rest, they have to be certified equipment, from authorised suppliers, and be tested on site and approved before rollout by your merchant services provider. Aquirer Acceptance Testing is by no means a walk in the path - it's a rigorous process.
If you have unapproved equipment, then you don't escape the liability shift, and are now liable (in the UK anyway - different countries in Europe have different timetables for this) for every credit card fraud on your premises. Have a nice day.
IIRC, merchant services providers do ongoing testing/verification. I wouldn't like to be you if you're found to have tampered with equipment.
No no no - all he'd have to do is deposit one penny in a savings account in his own era, and when he arrives at the End of Time the operation of compound interest means that the fabulous cost of his meal has been paid for. This, many claim, is not merely impossible but clearly insane.
Oh, sorry... I got a little confused there. All this reviving and updating Sci Fi from my youth is getting to me.
If the service is this easy to implement it should only be a matter of time before railway equipment manufacturers like Alsthom offer trains with wifi preinstalled. That should break T-mobiles extortionate charges.
Where are they going to get the network service from, them? One of the wireless operators, right?
Genographic project site, rather than BBC reporting of it. Like I put in my submission of this story, earlier than this one. Winge moan. And this one should have an IBM tag.
I just think that marketers have gone overboard in the past 10 to 15 years. You see, marketing can only do so much. If a product sucks or if quality control is low service, or anything negative in the long haul, no marketing can save that. Marketing has not created phrases like "No one gets fired for choosing IBM" or similar that I know you all have heard before.
You think this is all marketing is? This, my friend, is one very small subfield of marketing called 'advertising'.
Good marketing starts, not from the basis of "We have this crap, now let's find some idiots to sell it to" but:
We're thinking about investing a lot of money in a new product. Given what we generically do, who's the most likely person/company to buy it at a price where we can recoup our investment and make a bit on top? (Note that this doesn't have to be the largest group of potential customers).
Given this, what do we build that makes it most likely that they will buy it at a price that gives us the best return on the money we're spending on all this? This is the "products that don't suck" bit - and missing it was the basis of the New Coke screwup.
How do we make sure that when we make them, we get enough quality to make sure that it maintains enough of a reputation to keep selling at the price (etc)? Doesn't have to be perfect, but good enough is, well, good enough, when compared with the customer expectation.
So we have a product, and we know who (what kind of person) we think's going to buy it. How best do we get people to know about our product? PR, sampling and so on are as much part of this as advertising. If you're caring about your Return on Investment (and every good marketeer is), then you'd rather find a way to tell smaller number of people who are most likely to buy the product in the most effective way. Example - the UK RangeRover launch that had a 95+% response rate to the mailing that invited people to the launch event, and sold a thousand GBP50k cars 3 months before anyone saw physical metal. Only possible by *aggressively* detargeting everyone but the *most* likely buyers. Which was done with information about individuals. Without knowing so much, they'd have had to shot-gun a less effective communication (as they'd have less budget per recipient to spend).
Each of these steps takes customer information - either aggregated (many consumer goods companies use panel data) or individualised. Without it, companies are back to "produce random shit, find suckers to sell it to."
I've seen marketing systems designed to analyse banking behaviour, and spot when customers are unhappy and on the point of leaving - the customer having a need that the bank wasn't filling (as well as ANOther bank down the road, say). And either suggest "If we did X rather than Y, we'd be more likely to meet their needs" or alternatively "We need to be able to do X to meet their needs". Isn't this a good thing? A company that recognises that it's not helping you the way you'd like, and comes back with the most useful thing for you?
Good marketing is near invisible - the adverts you see are just the tip of the iceberg, designed to give people that last wee push or reminder. And 99% of superbowl ads are wasted money anyway.
Not every marketeer is a good one, but the ones who do best are, and know this inside out.
Actually, Figleaves (UK Underwear online merchant) have had a service like this for a while.
At checkout, there's an option to say "This is a late gift" and FL will put in a "Oops - we screwed up. The purchaser ordered this in time for $significant_date and we weren't organised to dispatch it early enough. We're very, very sorry" type card.
I'm not sure if it even costs anything, but sure as hell gains loyalty from their customers (defined as "the people who spend the money").
Poor spelling, grammer and an uncanny nack for re-posting stuff other peoples' work
As I don't currently have mods, so can't moderate you as '-1 Troll', I'm presuming you meant grammar, knack and people's. And I'm sure I've seen this comment before.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the European Parliament has drifted pretty well right of centre in the last decade or so.
Although, y'know, 1 self-declared socialist (NB, by their works shall ye know them - don't be taken in by the label) would make the EU screaming pinkos by US standards.
Yep, which is why anyone making investment decisions always always calculates RoI at Net Present Value (NPV) which includes a discount factor (Discount Cash Flow) for the opportunity cost at N years out. So 100k return in 5 years is nothing like as valuable as 100k next year.
That's only the case if you assume a fairly static environment, which is a gross simplification. You're perhaps thinking of 50 years ago..?
Here's a simpler example: You run a network of fast food outlets. In early summer, you open a bunch of ice-cream stands at the beach with 2 FTEs each, to take advantage of the enlarged market. Come September/March (delete for applicable hemisphere), and it's cold and raining. Your ice-cream stands are each taking under 10currencyUnits/day, but are costing you several hundred Units/day in rent and wages.
Now here's your choice: Do you close the ice-cream stands and lay off the people, now there's not enough business to sustain them?
Now stretch your brain to a variable environment where peaks/troughs aren't so predicable... You take people on when business is growing beyond your present capacity to supply it (or you miss the opportunity) and you think it's going stay at that size for long enough to make it worthwhile for you to make the hires. When the market drops significantly below your capacity (or is predicted to do so to a sensible level of confidence), you shrink again. You work it so that as many as possible go through the normal processes of retirement, finding other jobs, redeployment to areas of your business that are over-capacity. But if that's not enough, you have to lay people off.
Not doing so is screwing up, my friend.
And plenty of democracy and freedom in the world despite American intervention. And even more that didn't survive 'the advancement of democracy and freedom' via Military Advisor. Chile, 1973, for example? Or Nicaragua, 1984?
See also:
Advancing democracy and freedom is great rhetoric. Shame it's more a less a lie from this administration as with previous ones.
Well that's a matter of editing, surely. ISTR them introducing the "Best Editor" Oscar a few years ago with the comment
You mean MinLove, don't you?
That's her feelings, you insensitive clod! Look, now you've made her cry.
There is already 100% ADSL coverage in Northern Ireland, and will be 100% ADSL coverage in Scotland by the end of 2005.
(Where 'coverage' is of exchanges. The line noise limits of distance from exchange reduces the actual geographical/population access to ADSL. Northern Ireland reckons the reduction is 1.5%, and they're working on providing wireless coverage by the end of the year for these people)
From TFA:
Hardly, when iTMS has between 70% and 80% (depending on whose estimates you believe - Apple's is the lower end) of legal, DRMed downloads, 90% of HDD-based players and just shy of 60% of Flash players. If there's a betamax here, it's anything requiring Windows Media Player.
And while much Microsoft software may be strong in the marketplace generally (and we can all suggest reasons why), I don't see much evidence of people cheering him on...
The current feeds are made accessible for personal use only. The difference is that the Beeb will now be OK with commercial sites using them without prior agreement/contract.
SAP on Linux?
Siebel on Linux?
ePiphany on Linux?
Oracle on Linux?
Websphere on Linux?
Weblogic on Linux?
Linux on bladeservers, Power architecture and mainframes?
Mi amo, you have indeed a very limited view of Linux, enterprise servers and business applications, or possibly both.
In most smaller retailers, the terminals (including the keypads) are provided by the banks' merchant services division.
For the rest, they have to be certified equipment, from authorised suppliers, and be tested on site and approved before rollout by your merchant services provider. Aquirer Acceptance Testing is by no means a walk in the path - it's a rigorous process.
If you have unapproved equipment, then you don't escape the liability shift, and are now liable (in the UK anyway - different countries in Europe have different timetables for this) for every credit card fraud on your premises. Have a nice day.
IIRC, merchant services providers do ongoing testing/verification. I wouldn't like to be you if you're found to have tampered with equipment.
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind; the answer is blowing in the wind.
No no no - all he'd have to do is deposit one penny in a savings account in his own era, and when he arrives at the End of Time the operation of compound interest means that the fabulous cost of his meal has been paid for. This, many claim, is not merely impossible but clearly insane. Oh, sorry... I got a little confused there. All this reviving and updating Sci Fi from my youth is getting to me.
Um didn't Jakob/Tog/someone already show that that was pretty piss poor usability wise?
Where are they going to get the network service from, them? One of the wireless operators, right?
Genographic project site, rather than BBC reporting of it. Like I put in my submission of this story, earlier than this one. Winge moan. And this one should have an IBM tag.
How to Participate
You think this is all marketing is? This, my friend, is one very small subfield of marketing called 'advertising'.
Good marketing starts, not from the basis of "We have this crap, now let's find some idiots to sell it to" but:
Each of these steps takes customer information - either aggregated (many consumer goods companies use panel data) or individualised. Without it, companies are back to "produce random shit, find suckers to sell it to."
I've seen marketing systems designed to analyse banking behaviour, and spot when customers are unhappy and on the point of leaving - the customer having a need that the bank wasn't filling (as well as ANOther bank down the road, say). And either suggest "If we did X rather than Y, we'd be more likely to meet their needs" or alternatively "We need to be able to do X to meet their needs". Isn't this a good thing? A company that recognises that it's not helping you the way you'd like, and comes back with the most useful thing for you?
Good marketing is near invisible - the adverts you see are just the tip of the iceberg, designed to give people that last wee push or reminder. And 99% of superbowl ads are wasted money anyway.
Not every marketeer is a good one, but the ones who do best are, and know this inside out.
Except that the new Top Gear is a very, very different beast from the old one. 5th Gear is how TG used to be.
Actually, Figleaves (UK Underwear online merchant) have had a service like this for a while.
At checkout, there's an option to say "This is a late gift" and FL will put in a "Oops - we screwed up. The purchaser ordered this in time for $significant_date and we weren't organised to dispatch it early enough. We're very, very sorry" type card.
I'm not sure if it even costs anything, but sure as hell gains loyalty from their customers (defined as "the people who spend the money").
Ah, I've just given the game away, haven't I...
Actually, Apple already did that over 3 years ago: Mouse having a rotary dial patent application. Date: February 7, 2002.
Test subjects reported to be cows let loose in the city.
As I don't currently have mods, so can't moderate you as '-1 Troll', I'm presuming you meant grammar, knack and people's . And I'm sure I've seen this comment before.