Anybody got the growth rate for "other" job categories? IT worker? Surgeon? Baseball player?
Whats your point? That CEO's make too much money? According to whom? Certainly not to the Board of Directors, who hire each and every one of these CEO's. And who elects the Board of Directors? The owners of the company, the stockholders.
So if your bitching about what CEO's make, make sure you vote out the Board of Directors at the next shareholders meeting. Oh, you mean you don't vote at the stockholders meeting? Oh you don't even invest in the company? Then who the &^%*^% cares what you think. Its the stockholders company, not yours.
You certainly don't want to tell other people how to run their affairs do you?
EVERY company is "owned" by someone. They get to call the shots. And the more you own the more influence you get to call the shots.
Everybody complaining about what CEO's make are just envious. Carla Fiona makes a shitload of money too. And personally I think she sucks as a CEO. But then I don't own HP stock, so I don't get a say in how the company is managed. I certainly believe that HP can pay her whatever they damn well please though. Unlike the people over at ufenet.org.
you can usually get back any money that it would have cost the dealer to provide this at the negotiating table if you make clear you won't be financing.
Actually with the low interest rate loans, its typically not the car dealer who's doing the financing its the car manufacturer. They are taking a loss on the loan portion because they make money on the car itself. But your right, I Never tell a car salesman that I plan on financing, even though its one of the first questions they ask.
If I don't make virtual accounts, then every time I want a new turbo-widget, I have to get out the calculator to make sure I'm not cutting into my 'comfort cash'. Apparently, YMV.
In my case thats my wife. The daughter of immigrant parents, she has the innate knack for saying "you don't need this", so I typically do without. Your way may work better, but then she'd just think I was playing with the numbers in my "virtual" accounts, and still say no.:-)
What we need is for the computer to tell us if we can afford that new turbo-widget ("virtual wife"), by analysizing our spending habits, income, financial reports from Yahoo! ("the recession is staying longer than everybody thought, better tighten up the spending money, I'm sorry, you can't get a cash withdrawal"). Course I guess the state of computer technology isn't there just yet. Shall we put a business plan together? I'll bet we can go IPO in the first 3 months.;-)
Meanwhile, I've got a question for you. What do you put on the liability side of your balance sheet.
The only liabilities that I have listed are loans, typically for an offsetting asset. Basically things where I owe money to someone.
A good example: I have a loan on my house. I also have my house listed as an asset. Every year at around the anniversary of the purchase of the house I add an appreciation amount to the Asset account, that covers basically what I think the house has grown in value (typically conservative for my neighborhood, around 1-2%). There is a corresponding Loan account that represents the loan and payments I make to the bank for the mortgage. They are tied together because if I sell the house, I also have to pay off the mortgage. I could even use the proceeds from the sale to pay off all or part of the mortgage. They represent the same thing. Yes, I have to pay upkeep on the house, etc. But I don't put that into the asset account, and I don't put that into the liabilities account, rather I put it into the Expenses account. The Expenses account offsets my Income account (wages, salary, etc).
One liability I have that doesn't have a corresponding asset is a personal loan my wife took with her parents when going through school. Obviously the asset in this case was her education (thats why she took the loan in the first place) but I don't put an asset in for her education because its not something I can transfer, and personally I think its covered under her income. If she hadn't have gone to school she wouldn't have had the income.
Another liability: Loan on my car. In this case its 0% thanks to the sales specials after September 11th. And I have a corresponding asset covering the physical value of the car itself. Now in the case of a car, I yearly put an adjustment in for the deprecation of the car (gotten from Kelly Blue Book). This offsets the loan. Basically if I wanted to sell the car, whatever I got for the car, I would use as part of the money to pay off the loan. In the case of the car, I'd probably have to add money, since a car depreciates. In the case of the house, Id probably get money back, since a house typically appreciates.
I don't put maintenance numbers in my assets though, as those are just expenses. Yes, I wouldn't have the expenses if I didn't have the assets, but then I'd have the expenses on something else (rent in the case of the mortgage, I have to live somewhere). Taxis/Bus fare in the case of the car, etc.
As to comparing the cost of a given asset to an alternative, you're right you do need to keep in mind the maintenance fee's, e.g. If I lived in New York, I would definetely do a cost benefit analyses on whether it was truly cheaper to have a car, vs. taking the subway, considering maintenance and parking fees, etc. But that has nothing to do with the nature of the asset itself.
Let me ask you a question, how would you calculate your net worth, if you didn't have corresponding assets for any of your liabilities? If you have a $100k house (round number) and an $80k mortgage, your net worth (everything else being zero) is $20K. Or are you saying your net worth would be -$180k? Or $-80k -(cost of maintenance)? Or $20k-(cost of maintenance)? If the latter, how do you calculate the cost of maintenance (1 year? 30 years?). And why factor the cost of maintenace in at all? In that if you sell the house, you don't have to maintain it anymore. In reality, your cost of maintenance is a liability drain on your INCOME, not on the asset.
I was like you at first too, back when I didn't have many assets, and didn't calculate my net worth. But as I said in a previous posting, calcultating your net worth is a worth exercise, especially if you track it over a period of time. It truly gives a picture of your financial well-being.
Probably the biggest irony is that all these programs include ways to manage your stock portfolio; I guess there are a lot of people who haven't paid off their cars or credit cards, but are so sharp in their stock picking they are ahead to take their spare cash and buy some Lucent or something.
So if I only have a car loan of 1.9% does that mean I should pay that off before investing? What if I have a house loan of 6.5%?
You shouldn't pay off all your loans before investing. Just the higher interest ones. If it costs me 1.9% for the car loan, but I can make 10% with investing, then its better for me to invest even with the cost of the car loan.
To take the other extreme, its silly to invest additional money if you've got a credit card balance at 22%. But in either case, its not cut and dried. You have to do the analysis.
As an aside, I used to do the accounting your way, but then I just realized that savings are saving. Buckets of money can be moved from one account to the other. Once I had everything in the program, I didn't need the "virtual" accounts anymore. I didn't open multiple savings accounts or checking accounts to deal with "day-to-day" expenses vs. the one-time expenses, so why track it that way?
This is the same reason I don't call a house that you live in an asset
But a house IS an asset. Just like a car.
Yes, I do call my car(s) assets in my personal finance software. Why? So I can calculate my net worth appropriately. What is my net worth? The amount of money that I would get if I could theoretically "sell everything" and go live in a tree. The real value of seeing your net worth value is with tracking it over time.
Am I spending more money than I'm making? Thats easy to tell if you only have wages as income and you only write checks to outgo. But add 401(k), stock purchases, interest, dividends, appreciation on a house, etc., and it can get complicated.
Houses, cars, etc are assets. Lets take something a little different and see if you'll agree its an asset. Lets say I buy a painting for $1000. After I spent that money, did it just go down the toilet? No, assuming the painting is worth $1000, its an asset valued at $1000. If next year, someone wants to buy the painting for $10,000, then the asset has appreciated in value, and is now a $10k valued asset. 'Course the painting could have been damaged by a two year old with some finger paints. The asset would now be worth zero. But its still an asset. Just a zero valued asset. Its "on the books" but doesnt' change the "bottom line".
Now your argument is that because you have to do maintenance on a car (i.e. it costs you something to have that asset), its not an asset. Lets take the painting example. Lets say the painting was worth $1million, instead of a measly $1k. In that case I might have to spend a monthly fee to keep it secure, either a bank vault or a security guard or something. Its still an asset of a million dollars right?
In reality, the cost you pay for maintenance on a car doesn't make it a non-asset. Thats the cost you pay to travel, or to live if its maintenance on a house. I'd have to pay money to travel if I didn't have a car (train, taxi, whatever). But if I bought a car and kept it in the garage for 5 years and then sold it, I wouldn't have spent any money on it for maintenance. So in your argument is it an asset then?
Don't confuse if something is an asset with whether it appreciates in value or depreciates. Assets can do both.
I assume from your ignorance that you have never worked with AS/400 - if you had, you'd know that it's not Unix, it can be a pain in the ass, and IBM support is damn expensive. It's basically an outdated platform - look at the article, they were backing up to a REEL of tape!
I've worked on the AS/400. I was a consultant for an IBM reseller and we sold and maintained AS/400 systems. They are rock solid. And the platform itself is NOT outdated. Theirs might have been, but I imagine that the reason they were still using reel to reel tape is that is what they had for their old archive data.
Unless you want to have a full-time AS/400 admin sitting around (just a little more expensive than an MCP), you're also locked into an IBM contract or per-incident support. Not cheap.
Actually the beauty of AS/400 systems is that you don't need someone sitting around. At all. The only times we were called out for maintenance issues was when hardware failed, and that was rarely. And for those that think you have to know "mainframe" type commands any more, thats no longer the case. The new AS/400's have a window GUI that gives them point and click managebility, add users, re-route printers, etc, etc.
Not without AOL's permission, which would not be granted.
I was trying to make a joke on the Perl part. I know AOL could host any software they choose.
I agree that it would require AOL's permission.. But why wouldn't they? Slashdot generates eyeballs, or page views, or whatever you want to call it. Same as Time Magazine online, and they host that. Sure we probably wouldn't have many anti-AOL stories (do we have many now?) but I'll bet we'd have more anti-Microsoft ones....
I also agree that the exact kind of network we got was mostly luck (you could say that about a lot of things... The United States for example), but I still think that even a "corporate" controlled network, would have had a "diversity" of opinion. And a site like slashdot. It didn't take government funding the ARPANET to guarantee diversity of opinion. Now it might not have had as much diversity as the Internet does (alt.sex.goatsex) but it would have had diversity of the kind that slashdot dishes up every day.
I guess my point is that the only way it could have grown to be a global network is if its NOT a network of passive consumers. I believe France had a similar network (pre-WWW), and it sucked* (Government controlled as I remember, part of the phone system). The thing that makes the internet work is that people can contribute. If people can't contribute, then the network doesn't grow, and alternative networks where people can contribute do.
Maybe im wrong, maybe the only way for this wonderful network to have existed was for some government somewhere in the world to have funded it. But in my view, the government is probably wanting to limit the "diversity" of opinion on the internet more than anyone.
*I could be wrong on the France part. Was doing too much LISP and Ada coding back then....rots the brain.
Do you think that a network that was not designed for the public benefit would have the diversity of content sources that produced slashdot?
The internet was designed for the public benefit? Hmm. So all those stories about it being developed for the defense departement so that it could outlast a Nuclear war just just bullshit? (might be), I suppose thats for the public 'benefit' in a way, but im sure the ARPANET founders weren't considering the ability to comment on News for Nerds to be a major design goal. The internet evolved into its current state, it wasn't some government mandate, for a place with free expression of ideas.
Slashdot could replicate its community onto AOL in a heartbeat (well assuming that AOL can run perl....), after all its not like the government is footing the bill for slashdot right now.
Yeah we might have moderators (oh wait, we have those), and story approvers (oh wait, have those too), and it might not be run by AOL per se, just connected to the AOL network... hmmm sounds familiar..
The Internet came about, because it was the next step in the evolution of computing. Networking computers together for communication. The more that connect, the larger the value for all. The so-called network effect. That network effect was going to happen no matter who planted the seed. Whether it had been Wang, IBM, or Al Gore.
Like I said, government involvement (or interference) may have hastened or slowed the progress of the network, but the network would have come about in any case. And yes it would have been a place where you could exchange diversity of content sources. Why? Because thats what people want. It might be a huge Yahoo chat room, but it still would have been there.
It might have looked different and surely the protocols would be totally different, but we would have had a network. And I believe that
once the network got to a certain size, the diversity of content would have happened.
Newspaper publishing has (had?) diversity of content, and the government didn't fund a single printing press. Transforming even that model to electronic digital form doesn't require a government either.
...but do you think you'd be reading/. right now if ARPA had never existed...
Yes I most certainly do.
The whole idea that it takes a government to fund a global network is stupid. Granted, it might not have been based on TCP/IP, and it certainly wouldn't have been called the Internet, but a global network would have come into being.
It might have been called Fidonet, or UUCPnet or hell, AOL, but it would have been there. You can argue that the Government sped up the process (or also that it slowed it down) but the network would have been here by now in any case.
Gerster undoubtably saved the IBM company. The old IBM wouldn't last long in today's market conditions.
IBM sold the IBM network to AT&T as well. IBM still does network services though. They just don't own the copper anymore. Why? My guess is because it didn't make sense for the business plan. It had become a commodity. The real profit is in the services related to networking.
Re:Salesmen are only motivated by money?
on
Managing Einsteins
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· Score: 1
My favorite sales quote:
Never let the needs of the customer interfere with the commision plan.
How can it be cheaper for you to to hire the staff than it is for me to hire the staff?... but for a large company, where the need is large enough for economies of scale to kick in, I don't see how it is possible for you do do it cheaper and at a proffit.
Simple, the hosting company has a larger economy of scale, because the hosting company has more than just you as a customer.
Slashdot Mirror
Whats your point? That CEO's make too much money? According to whom? Certainly not to the Board of Directors, who hire each and every one of these CEO's. And who elects the Board of Directors? The owners of the company, the stockholders.
So if your bitching about what CEO's make, make sure you vote out the Board of Directors at the next shareholders meeting. Oh, you mean you don't vote at the stockholders meeting? Oh you don't even invest in the company? Then who the &^%*^% cares what you think. Its the stockholders company, not yours.
You certainly don't want to tell other people how to run their affairs do you?
EVERY company is "owned" by someone. They get to call the shots. And the more you own the more influence you get to call the shots.
Everybody complaining about what CEO's make are just envious. Carla Fiona makes a shitload of money too. And personally I think she sucks as a CEO. But then I don't own HP stock, so I don't get a say in how the company is managed. I certainly believe that HP can pay her whatever they damn well please though. Unlike the people over at ufenet.org.
Actually with the low interest rate loans, its typically not the car dealer who's doing the financing its the car manufacturer. They are taking a loss on the loan portion because they make money on the car itself. But your right, I Never tell a car salesman that I plan on financing, even though its one of the first questions they ask.
If I don't make virtual accounts, then every time I want a new turbo-widget, I have to get out the calculator to make sure I'm not cutting into my 'comfort cash'. Apparently, YMV.
In my case thats my wife. The daughter of immigrant parents, she has the innate knack for saying "you don't need this", so I typically do without. Your way may work better, but then she'd just think I was playing with the numbers in my "virtual" accounts, and still say no. :-)
What we need is for the computer to tell us if we can afford that new turbo-widget ("virtual wife"), by analysizing our spending habits, income, financial reports from Yahoo! ("the recession is staying longer than everybody thought, better tighten up the spending money, I'm sorry, you can't get a cash withdrawal"). Course I guess the state of computer technology isn't there just yet. Shall we put a business plan together? I'll bet we can go IPO in the first 3 months. ;-)
The only liabilities that I have listed are loans, typically for an offsetting asset. Basically things where I owe money to someone.
A good example: I have a loan on my house. I also have my house listed as an asset. Every year at around the anniversary of the purchase of the house I add an appreciation amount to the Asset account, that covers basically what I think the house has grown in value (typically conservative for my neighborhood, around 1-2%). There is a corresponding Loan account that represents the loan and payments I make to the bank for the mortgage. They are tied together because if I sell the house, I also have to pay off the mortgage. I could even use the proceeds from the sale to pay off all or part of the mortgage. They represent the same thing. Yes, I have to pay upkeep on the house, etc. But I don't put that into the asset account, and I don't put that into the liabilities account, rather I put it into the Expenses account. The Expenses account offsets my Income account (wages, salary, etc).
One liability I have that doesn't have a corresponding asset is a personal loan my wife took with her parents when going through school. Obviously the asset in this case was her education (thats why she took the loan in the first place) but I don't put an asset in for her education because its not something I can transfer, and personally I think its covered under her income. If she hadn't have gone to school she wouldn't have had the income.
Another liability: Loan on my car. In this case its 0% thanks to the sales specials after September 11th. And I have a corresponding asset covering the physical value of the car itself. Now in the case of a car, I yearly put an adjustment in for the deprecation of the car (gotten from Kelly Blue Book). This offsets the loan. Basically if I wanted to sell the car, whatever I got for the car, I would use as part of the money to pay off the loan. In the case of the car, I'd probably have to add money, since a car depreciates. In the case of the house, Id probably get money back, since a house typically appreciates.
I don't put maintenance numbers in my assets though, as those are just expenses. Yes, I wouldn't have the expenses if I didn't have the assets, but then I'd have the expenses on something else (rent in the case of the mortgage, I have to live somewhere). Taxis/Bus fare in the case of the car, etc.
As to comparing the cost of a given asset to an alternative, you're right you do need to keep in mind the maintenance fee's, e.g. If I lived in New York, I would definetely do a cost benefit analyses on whether it was truly cheaper to have a car, vs. taking the subway, considering maintenance and parking fees, etc. But that has nothing to do with the nature of the asset itself.
Let me ask you a question, how would you calculate your net worth, if you didn't have corresponding assets for any of your liabilities? If you have a $100k house (round number) and an $80k mortgage, your net worth (everything else being zero) is $20K. Or are you saying your net worth would be -$180k? Or $-80k -(cost of maintenance)? Or $20k-(cost of maintenance)? If the latter, how do you calculate the cost of maintenance (1 year? 30 years?). And why factor the cost of maintenace in at all? In that if you sell the house, you don't have to maintain it anymore. In reality, your cost of maintenance is a liability drain on your INCOME, not on the asset.
I was like you at first too, back when I didn't have many assets, and didn't calculate my net worth. But as I said in a previous posting, calcultating your net worth is a worth exercise, especially if you track it over a period of time. It truly gives a picture of your financial well-being.
So if I only have a car loan of 1.9% does that mean I should pay that off before investing? What if I have a house loan of 6.5%?
You shouldn't pay off all your loans before investing. Just the higher interest ones. If it costs me 1.9% for the car loan, but I can make 10% with investing, then its better for me to invest even with the cost of the car loan.
To take the other extreme, its silly to invest additional money if you've got a credit card balance at 22%. But in either case, its not cut and dried. You have to do the analysis.
As an aside, I used to do the accounting your way, but then I just realized that savings are saving. Buckets of money can be moved from one account to the other. Once I had everything in the program, I didn't need the "virtual" accounts anymore. I didn't open multiple savings accounts or checking accounts to deal with "day-to-day" expenses vs. the one-time expenses, so why track it that way?
But a house IS an asset. Just like a car.
Yes, I do call my car(s) assets in my personal finance software. Why? So I can calculate my net worth appropriately. What is my net worth? The amount of money that I would get if I could theoretically "sell everything" and go live in a tree. The real value of seeing your net worth value is with tracking it over time.
Am I spending more money than I'm making? Thats easy to tell if you only have wages as income and you only write checks to outgo. But add 401(k), stock purchases, interest, dividends, appreciation on a house, etc., and it can get complicated.
Houses, cars, etc are assets. Lets take something a little different and see if you'll agree its an asset. Lets say I buy a painting for $1000. After I spent that money, did it just go down the toilet? No, assuming the painting is worth $1000, its an asset valued at $1000. If next year, someone wants to buy the painting for $10,000, then the asset has appreciated in value, and is now a $10k valued asset. 'Course the painting could have been damaged by a two year old with some finger paints. The asset would now be worth zero. But its still an asset. Just a zero valued asset. Its "on the books" but doesnt' change the "bottom line".
Now your argument is that because you have to do maintenance on a car (i.e. it costs you something to have that asset), its not an asset. Lets take the painting example. Lets say the painting was worth $1million, instead of a measly $1k. In that case I might have to spend a monthly fee to keep it secure, either a bank vault or a security guard or something. Its still an asset of a million dollars right?
In reality, the cost you pay for maintenance on a car doesn't make it a non-asset. Thats the cost you pay to travel, or to live if its maintenance on a house. I'd have to pay money to travel if I didn't have a car (train, taxi, whatever). But if I bought a car and kept it in the garage for 5 years and then sold it, I wouldn't have spent any money on it for maintenance. So in your argument is it an asset then?
Don't confuse if something is an asset with whether it appreciates in value or depreciates. Assets can do both.
Um... I can SELL my car, therefore its an asset. Granted a person's car may be a piece of sh*t, with an asset value of zero, but its still an asset.
In personal finance packages you usually group assets against the corresponding loan for that asset.
I've worked on the AS/400. I was a consultant for an IBM reseller and we sold and maintained AS/400 systems. They are rock solid. And the platform itself is NOT outdated. Theirs might have been, but I imagine that the reason they were still using reel to reel tape is that is what they had for their old archive data.
Unless you want to have a full-time AS/400 admin sitting around (just a little more expensive than an MCP), you're also locked into an IBM contract or per-incident support. Not cheap.
Actually the beauty of AS/400 systems is that you don't need someone sitting around. At all. The only times we were called out for maintenance issues was when hardware failed, and that was rarely. And for those that think you have to know "mainframe" type commands any more, thats no longer the case. The new AS/400's have a window GUI that gives them point and click managebility, add users, re-route printers, etc, etc.
I was trying to make a joke on the Perl part. I know AOL could host any software they choose.
I agree that it would require AOL's permission.. But why wouldn't they? Slashdot generates eyeballs, or page views, or whatever you want to call it. Same as Time Magazine online, and they host that. Sure we probably wouldn't have many anti-AOL stories (do we have many now?) but I'll bet we'd have more anti-Microsoft ones....
I also agree that the exact kind of network we got was mostly luck (you could say that about a lot of things... The United States for example), but I still think that even a "corporate" controlled network, would have had a "diversity" of opinion. And a site like slashdot. It didn't take government funding the ARPANET to guarantee diversity of opinion. Now it might not have had as much diversity as the Internet does (alt.sex.goatsex) but it would have had diversity of the kind that slashdot dishes up every day.
I guess my point is that the only way it could have grown to be a global network is if its NOT a network of passive consumers. I believe France had a similar network (pre-WWW), and it sucked* (Government controlled as I remember, part of the phone system). The thing that makes the internet work is that people can contribute. If people can't contribute, then the network doesn't grow, and alternative networks where people can contribute do.
Maybe im wrong, maybe the only way for this wonderful network to have existed was for some government somewhere in the world to have funded it. But in my view, the government is probably wanting to limit the "diversity" of opinion on the internet more than anyone.
*I could be wrong on the France part. Was doing too much LISP and Ada coding back then....rots the brain.
The internet was designed for the public benefit? Hmm. So all those stories about it being developed for the defense departement so that it could outlast a Nuclear war just just bullshit? (might be), I suppose thats for the public 'benefit' in a way, but im sure the ARPANET founders weren't considering the ability to comment on News for Nerds to be a major design goal. The internet evolved into its current state, it wasn't some government mandate, for a place with free expression of ideas.
Slashdot could replicate its community onto AOL in a heartbeat (well assuming that AOL can run perl....), after all its not like the government is footing the bill for slashdot right now.
Yeah we might have moderators (oh wait, we have those), and story approvers (oh wait, have those too), and it might not be run by AOL per se, just connected to the AOL network... hmmm sounds familiar..
The Internet came about, because it was the next step in the evolution of computing. Networking computers together for communication. The more that connect, the larger the value for all. The so-called network effect. That network effect was going to happen no matter who planted the seed. Whether it had been Wang, IBM, or Al Gore.
Like I said, government involvement (or interference) may have hastened or slowed the progress of the network, but the network would have come about in any case. And yes it would have been a place where you could exchange diversity of content sources. Why? Because thats what people want. It might be a huge Yahoo chat room, but it still would have been there.
It might have looked different and surely the protocols would be totally different, but we would have had a network. And I believe that once the network got to a certain size, the diversity of content would have happened.
Newspaper publishing has (had?) diversity of content, and the government didn't fund a single printing press. Transforming even that model to electronic digital form doesn't require a government either.
Yes I most certainly do.
The whole idea that it takes a government to fund a global network is stupid. Granted, it might not have been based on TCP/IP, and it certainly wouldn't have been called the Internet, but a global network would have come into being.
It might have been called Fidonet, or UUCPnet or hell, AOL, but it would have been there. You can argue that the Government sped up the process (or also that it slowed it down) but the network would have been here by now in any case.
Gerster undoubtably saved the IBM company. The old IBM wouldn't last long in today's market conditions.
IBM sold the IBM network to AT&T as well. IBM still does network services though. They just don't own the copper anymore. Why? My guess is because it didn't make sense for the business plan. It had become a commodity. The real profit is in the services related to networking.
Never let the needs of the customer interfere with the commision plan.
And at a law firm my wife used to work at, they called their time and billing system: "AS/400".
Simple, the hosting company has a larger economy of scale, because the hosting company has more than just you as a customer.