To quote a true master of such things, "So, the bottom line is, if you're a guy, you cannot have enough RAM. Bill Gates currently has over 743 billion 'megs' of RAM, and he still routinely feels the need to stuff a zucchini in his underwear."
I just wonder how long it will be until that is a small amount of RAM. It's currently a large storage array, but even I can remember when computers with 1 Gig of storage were reserved for profitable purposes only.
Re:Noise. Harvard style.
on
Does IT Matter?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I think you're on to something. I think all of us could point to a successful company that owes its success to their IT implementation, Dell and Wal~Mart are both excellent examples of why IT matters. Both utilized many technologies to significantly reduce their costs and destroy their competitors. However, I doubt that on a weighted basis, K-Mart and HP (or Compaq or any of the grocery stores Wal~Mart is now beating) spent less on IT than the succesful companies did. My personal favorite is Milken, the Junk Bond king, who started by gettng buisness calculators (at the time cutting edge technology, that helped his firm price bonds faster then their competitors who relied on charts and books of charts. I'd say that implementations of IT matter a whole lot. No matter how much their competitors spent on IT they never began to approach the same level of benefits that the successful companies got from their IT. Now that would be an interesting subject for this guy to study. Too often businesses get the idea that IT spending made their competitor successful. What matters more than just IT spending is how you implement the stuff you bought. That will probably never be a commodity, and will drive business success well into the next big thing.
Trouble is that it's pretty tough to explain to the teamster why his position is no longer necessary, when his union still says you will employ so many workers. See the inefficincies at the west coast ports as Exhibit A. They pay people six figs to count crates.
It's a label that indicates that the product in question will interact with the other.NET branded products. It's all a part of MS long term strategy to move away from the PC, and bring the advantages of Windows common application platform to other areas. When MS speaks of platform they are refering to the reason Windows makes so much stinking money, it has the advantage of running all the software, so users buy it, and developers develop for the largest user base. MS wants to take this advantage to other areas, XBoxes move it toward home entertainment, their server stuff to businesses, Stinger (was the code name might just be CE now) on mobile deveces, etc. It's just label that indicates the product works or begins to work with the common interfaces that other.NET products have some of which are win32 apis and some are new. At least that was what I picked up from an entire day meeting with division heads there.
They already are the second slowest selling server CPU. Itanium is the slowest, and given this deal, and their competitive price they might give SGI's MIPS impementation (is that next or is it one of HP's many architectures) a run for its money as the third slowest selling CPU. The game is on if/when it approaches Xeon. Not bad for an architecture that has been out for less than a year.
Intel purchased all of the Alpha IP from Compaq a few months before the merger was announced. Their plan was to integrate the good stuff into Itanium. It was quite a surprise at the time, but turned out that Compaq was streamlining their operations in preparation for the merger. HP has the right to continue development for 1 or 2 more generations (actually they are obligated to a few large current customers to continue for a certain period). Mostly off the subject, I love the fact that Intel's Itanium ads have a picture of the wafer, it's pretty sad that you can count the chips on a 3" picture of the wafer.
Try to find polyester/wool blend slacks. Make sure the slacks are not dry clean only, if you intend to wear them very often. They are much more comfortable and look a whole lot nicer, they hold the crease without ironing much better. It's odd how a change in hairstyle and dress really changes how people look at you, try it sometime, you'll be amazed. Same person different look different results. Go get a good haircut and let the person experment on a hairstyle that suits you and put on a nice shirt and pants and you'll get interest from people you would have never expected would be interested. Hit the discounters (like Ross and TJ Maxx) for good deals on nice stuff, that lasts a long time.
If nothing else that would make the tyranny of the transcript a thing of the past. Most employers who care about grades (usually for first time graduates) want an offical transcrpt, which generally costs the student, a few dollars per copy. Which is a pretty nice margin since I've seen them in various files since graduation and they are generally just photo copy. Possibly with a clerks sig or seal.
You might want to read their bios or their statements if you really think these people are even relatively technically savvy. The commissioners are generally economists, lawyers, and other anti-trust types. They are bright, but not particularly technically savvy.
Client is all windows, MS says as much. Server has a ton of Windows server editions profit, if you figure windows server is 1/3 of enterprise revenues, and has similar margins to client windows that's almost all of that division's profit. Also how much of the success is directly related to the fact that they sold something with Windows. How many copies of SQL or Office or Project or BizTalk would they sell if it weren't the Windows company selling it. I assume the same thing about office, so the way I look at it, all of MS success rides on their decision to provide the OS for those off the shelf microcomputers IBM was dreaming up, and derivative products or applications that run on that system. I'll grant you that applications could easily be viewed as a successful stand alone business at this point, so they could be a two trick pony. Unfortunatly, they don't give a lot of detail about successful product lines, so they could have a successful server line. Money, Encarta, and other consumer stuff is lumped in that stunningly unprofitable Home and Entertainment division, and there isn't much to be made in consumer finance software, Intuit is mostly a tax prep firm. Now this is just speculation, but I'd be willing to wager that if you pull Windows and Office out of MS, the rest of the company would barely break even. They keep trying these businesses, because everyonce in a while you hit on a successful product, or to protect the profitable Windows businesses. Almost everything internet related is only there to kill Netscape/Java, which MS viewed as a threat to their application platform dominance.
Take Jerry Rice, certainly one of the best, but there are doubtless a few younger, but less well known, players who are close to their peak, who are as good physically as Jerry is at 40 something. If Jerry is playing he is going to pack in many more attendees than the less well known player. Part of the mystique is having a good team, was Jerry really that much better than Steve Largent or other contemporaries or was it the difference between Joe Montana and Dave Kreig. Another example is Magic Johnson, who filled up a stadium with the globetrotters, he certainly isn't as good as many shooting guards in the league today, but I doubt they could fill a big stadium just because they were coming back. You also have some local heros who wouldn't see nearly as much playing time with other teams, but because their good relative to their teammates they fill seats. Denver's old three amigo recievers were all cut repeatedly from every other team they tried to play for, but they did ok at Denver.
Steve Ballmer and John Connors told you in their own sworn to be true report to their owners. Bill doesn't have to sign them since he is just the Chairman of the Board. They were checked by an audit firm as well. In this link the product segments are described (you might have to page down once to see the segment report it's in Item I), home and entertainment is the division they classify the XBox. It also has things like Encarta, those MS branded consumer device hardware, and the bit of game software they've done for some time like Flight Sim. This segment slightly more then doubled in revenues following the release of the XBox. On the second link (you will have to read down a little to get to the table) you can see the comapny's fiscal (year ends in June) 2002 and 2003 results, XBox was released in fiscal 2002. As you can see the segment recorded operating losses of $800 million and $900 million. Notice that the loss amount increased even though they would have sold a better mix of software in 2003. They used to lose about that much when the division included MSN and several of the other money losing businesses that are now separate, they just began reporting this many segments in 2003, sorry. Also note that only Client (Windows and CALs), Information Worker (Office, Project, Etc) and Server and Tools (Exchange, SQL, Windows Server, and Visual Studio) are the only three groups that make money. This is an extremely successful one hit pony, they have never made money at anything else. The only reason I can come up with for them to operate in the Video game business is that they want to make a future version of the XBox the platform that you will use to access nearly everything online. Its the same dream everyone has had (Ellison's NICs IBM's PC junior, there were lots of others in the bubble) get people to buy a cheap system that is slightly propretary and then charge for access and get a cut of the business transacted on them. Expect a future version of office to be delivered to an XBox system, in addition to being sold for PCs. To al users: Finsys could possibly be the most unreliable web server in existance, please go easy on it.
One dollar, plus bonus, plus options (this is where the real money is, read the note from a 10-K that contains the words Black-Scholes sometime) plus the use of a frikking Gulfstream V ($90 million corporate jet) for his own personal gallivanting about. Steve Jobs is definitly not underpaid. Note that he is also the CEO of Pixar, I think technically he's just moonlighting at Apple.
Exactly, the pilot is there for those rare situations where AI designers can't program in all the variables. The guy earns his pay as more of an insurance agent, hopefully only earning it in a 5 minute span once in his career, but you never know when that curcial time will occur. Also he serves as a face the airline's passengers can associate with, they have trouble beleving that the little black box in the corner is flying the plane.
The same reason we spend $399 on the latest video card* when it ships, because it's fun, it gives us status with our peers, and we feel the deal offers us value in excess of cash spent. I recently returned from a Mariners game, and while the tickets, travel costs, and stay in seattle were certainly not cheap, I did have a fun time with several good friends, and made a few memories. If life isn't about some of that stuff, then you need to put some thought what you are working toward.
*I don't know if you actually have ever spent that much on a video card, but surely you've splurged on something.
I think the biggest difference is that the game industry is still in its infancy, unlike books or movies which are either refining a craft that is ancient, or building on a legacy of past success into new areas. The reviews that focus on technical aspects are there becuase many games have terrible post production. Imagine the reviews if a movie had several scenes with production cast visible, obvious edit marks, and other pretty uncommon errors. It would be soundly blasted, except of course if it were by a director of such high regard that it was seen as the deconstruction of the artform or something similar to what the art world is experiencing. Many games are released with flaws that in twenty or so years will be unthinkable, just as technical flaws would be in a movie today. At that time, game reviews will be more about the experence.
Yes but AMD has made money selling processors in the past, and has the expectation of making money on processors in the future, assuming things pick up a little for them. If apple were to sell 6 billion songs, they still wouldn't make money on iTMS. Its all about contribution margin.
My favorite Windows message story was back in college, we all had laptops, and in a late Math class one kid screwed up the send and sent to all the campus computers, "This class is sure boring." His last name was uncommon and user ID was attached, so we knew which class it was. The prof happened to be explaining a point using his computer from the projector, adding to the hilarity of the moment.
Economics is the study of a very complex system, and the explination of that study through simplistic models that are used to predict the outcomes of the system. In this way it is like physics, but at a much earlier stage of understanding. Think chemistry during the days of the alchemists, they were making progress, but were going about it in a very slow fashion. If the models don't assume perfect information, they don't work correctly, even though it doesn't take a very observant economist to see that perfect information is a pretty poor assumption. So just as the current model for gravity doesn't explain everything down at quantum level (or even for Voyager I, apparently), it is close enough for many purposes, and
useful. Economic models are close enough for many useful purposes, although they are under much more gross refinement. There are many sharp economists wondering why there is so much ad spending, given that the assumption of perfect knowledge works so well.
I'd have to expand your advice to two newspapers or at a minimum a newspaper and a good newsmagazine (I'm thinking of the economist here but there must be others, Time does not count). Two newspapers, if selected properly, NT Times, and the WSJ or Financial Times, will give a reader an excellent understanding of most of the facets of an issue that is affecting the modern world. I'd also advise that one source be based outside the US. However, following this advice is best left to those with a bunch of time on their hands.
More like McD pays apple $0.75 and Apple pays the record company $0.70 while apple and McD split the cost of advertising the promotion. Also note that the whole thing might be done with McD paying the record company a lower fee, while Apple gets the added promotion, or they might even lose something on the deal.
They sold (at a minimum a majority stake in) Miller to South African Brewery (SAB), they import Pilsner Urquell from the Chezck republic, it's pretty good, and makes a great black and tan. They're not really well known in the US, Heinekin beat them in the import race, but they are one of the bigger international breweries. In general beer is a natural monopoly, where the biggest player is highly unlikely to be knock out of the way, and each has a home turf that they own and export to the others areas where they make a small profit.
While I agree with you today, at launch I think backwards compatability and DVD player features, sold more consoles than the game stable at the time, and really accellerated this cycle. MS would be foolish not to adopt this since they aren't starting from a very strong competitive position in the next cycle.
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To quote a true master of such things, "So, the bottom line is, if you're a guy, you cannot have enough RAM. Bill Gates currently has over 743 billion 'megs' of RAM, and he still routinely feels the need to stuff a zucchini in his underwear."
I just wonder how long it will be until that is a small amount of RAM. It's currently a large storage array, but even I can remember when computers with 1 Gig of storage were reserved for profitable purposes only.
I think you're on to something. I think all of us could point to a successful company that owes its success to their IT implementation, Dell and Wal~Mart are both excellent examples of why IT matters. Both utilized many technologies to significantly reduce their costs and destroy their competitors. However, I doubt that on a weighted basis, K-Mart and HP (or Compaq or any of the grocery stores Wal~Mart is now beating) spent less on IT than the succesful companies did. My personal favorite is Milken, the Junk Bond king, who started by gettng buisness calculators (at the time cutting edge technology, that helped his firm price bonds faster then their competitors who relied on charts and books of charts. I'd say that implementations of IT matter a whole lot. No matter how much their competitors spent on IT they never began to approach the same level of benefits that the successful companies got from their IT. Now that would be an interesting subject for this guy to study. Too often businesses get the idea that IT spending made their competitor successful. What matters more than just IT spending is how you implement the stuff you bought. That will probably never be a commodity, and will drive business success well into the next big thing.
Trouble is that it's pretty tough to explain to the teamster why his position is no longer necessary, when his union still says you will employ so many workers. See the inefficincies at the west coast ports as Exhibit A. They pay people six figs to count crates.
It's a label that indicates that the product in question will interact with the other .NET branded products. It's all a part of MS long term strategy to move away from the PC, and bring the advantages of Windows common application platform to other areas. When MS speaks of platform they are refering to the reason Windows makes so much stinking money, it has the advantage of running all the software, so users buy it, and developers develop for the largest user base. MS wants to take this advantage to other areas, XBoxes move it toward home entertainment, their server stuff to businesses, Stinger (was the code name might just be CE now) on mobile deveces, etc. It's just label that indicates the product works or begins to work with the common interfaces that other .NET products have some of which are win32 apis and some are new. At least that was what I picked up from an entire day meeting with division heads there.
They already are the second slowest selling server CPU. Itanium is the slowest, and given this deal, and their competitive price they might give SGI's MIPS impementation (is that next or is it one of HP's many architectures) a run for its money as the third slowest selling CPU. The game is on if/when it approaches Xeon. Not bad for an architecture that has been out for less than a year.
Intel purchased all of the Alpha IP from Compaq a few months before the merger was announced. Their plan was to integrate the good stuff into Itanium. It was quite a surprise at the time, but turned out that Compaq was streamlining their operations in preparation for the merger. HP has the right to continue development for 1 or 2 more generations (actually they are obligated to a few large current customers to continue for a certain period). Mostly off the subject, I love the fact that Intel's Itanium ads have a picture of the wafer, it's pretty sad that you can count the chips on a 3" picture of the wafer.
Try to find polyester/wool blend slacks. Make sure the slacks are not dry clean only, if you intend to wear them very often. They are much more comfortable and look a whole lot nicer, they hold the crease without ironing much better. It's odd how a change in hairstyle and dress really changes how people look at you, try it sometime, you'll be amazed. Same person different look different results. Go get a good haircut and let the person experment on a hairstyle that suits you and put on a nice shirt and pants and you'll get interest from people you would have never expected would be interested. Hit the discounters (like Ross and TJ Maxx) for good deals on nice stuff, that lasts a long time.
If nothing else that would make the tyranny of the transcript a thing of the past. Most employers who care about grades (usually for first time graduates) want an offical transcrpt, which generally costs the student, a few dollars per copy. Which is a pretty nice margin since I've seen them in various files since graduation and they are generally just photo copy. Possibly with a clerks sig or seal.
You might want to read their bios or their statements if you really think these people are even relatively technically savvy. The commissioners are generally economists, lawyers, and other anti-trust types. They are bright, but not particularly technically savvy.
Client is all windows, MS says as much. Server has a ton of Windows server editions profit, if you figure windows server is 1/3 of enterprise revenues, and has similar margins to client windows that's almost all of that division's profit. Also how much of the success is directly related to the fact that they sold something with Windows. How many copies of SQL or Office or Project or BizTalk would they sell if it weren't the Windows company selling it. I assume the same thing about office, so the way I look at it, all of MS success rides on their decision to provide the OS for those off the shelf microcomputers IBM was dreaming up, and derivative products or applications that run on that system. I'll grant you that applications could easily be viewed as a successful stand alone business at this point, so they could be a two trick pony.
Unfortunatly, they don't give a lot of detail about successful product lines, so they could have a successful server line.
Money, Encarta, and other consumer stuff is lumped in that stunningly unprofitable Home and Entertainment division, and there isn't much to be made in consumer finance software, Intuit is mostly a tax prep firm.
Now this is just speculation, but I'd be willing to wager that if you pull Windows and Office out of MS, the rest of the company would barely break even. They keep trying these businesses, because everyonce in a while you hit on a successful product, or to protect the profitable Windows businesses. Almost everything internet related is only there to kill Netscape/Java, which MS viewed as a threat to their application platform dominance.
Take Jerry Rice, certainly one of the best, but there are doubtless a few younger, but less well known, players who are close to their peak, who are as good physically as Jerry is at 40 something. If Jerry is playing he is going to pack in many more attendees than the less well known player. Part of the mystique is having a good team, was Jerry really that much better than Steve Largent or other contemporaries or was it the difference between Joe Montana and Dave Kreig. Another example is Magic Johnson, who filled up a stadium with the globetrotters, he certainly isn't as good as many shooting guards in the league today, but I doubt they could fill a big stadium just because they were coming back. You also have some local heros who wouldn't see nearly as much playing time with other teams, but because their good relative to their teammates they fill seats. Denver's old three amigo recievers were all cut repeatedly from every other team they tried to play for, but they did ok at Denver.
Steve Ballmer and John Connors told you in their own sworn to be true report to their owners. Bill doesn't have to sign them since he is just the Chairman of the Board. They were checked by an audit firm as well. In this link the product segments are described (you might have to page down once to see the segment report it's in Item I), home and entertainment is the division they classify the XBox. It also has things like Encarta, those MS branded consumer device hardware, and the bit of game software they've done for some time like Flight Sim. This segment slightly more then doubled in revenues following the release of the XBox. On the second link (you will have to read down a little to get to the table) you can see the comapny's fiscal (year ends in June) 2002 and 2003 results, XBox was released in fiscal 2002. As you can see the segment recorded operating losses of $800 million and $900 million. Notice that the loss amount increased even though they would have sold a better mix of software in 2003. They used to lose about that much when the division included MSN and several of the other money losing businesses that are now separate, they just began reporting this many segments in 2003, sorry.
Also note that only Client (Windows and CALs), Information Worker (Office, Project, Etc) and Server and Tools (Exchange, SQL, Windows Server, and Visual Studio) are the only three groups that make money. This is an extremely successful one hit pony, they have never made money at anything else.
The only reason I can come up with for them to operate in the Video game business is that they want to make a future version of the XBox the platform that you will use to access nearly everything online. Its the same dream everyone has had (Ellison's NICs IBM's PC junior, there were lots of others in the bubble) get people to buy a cheap system that is slightly propretary and then charge for access and get a cut of the business transacted on them. Expect a future version of office to be delivered to an XBox system, in addition to being sold for PCs. To al users: Finsys could possibly be the most unreliable web server in existance, please go easy on it.
One dollar, plus bonus, plus options (this is where the real money is, read the note from a 10-K that contains the words Black-Scholes sometime) plus the use of a frikking Gulfstream V ($90 million corporate jet) for his own personal gallivanting about. Steve Jobs is definitly not underpaid. Note that he is also the CEO of Pixar, I think technically he's just moonlighting at Apple.
Exactly, the pilot is there for those rare situations where AI designers can't program in all the variables. The guy earns his pay as more of an insurance agent, hopefully only earning it in a 5 minute span once in his career, but you never know when that curcial time will occur. Also he serves as a face the airline's passengers can associate with, they have trouble beleving that the little black box in the corner is flying the plane.
The same reason we spend $399 on the latest video card* when it ships, because it's fun, it gives us status with our peers, and we feel the deal offers us value in excess of cash spent. I recently returned from a Mariners game, and while the tickets, travel costs, and stay in seattle were certainly not cheap, I did have a fun time with several good friends, and made a few memories. If life isn't about some of that stuff, then you need to put some thought what you are working toward.
*I don't know if you actually have ever spent that much on a video card, but surely you've splurged on something.
I think the biggest difference is that the game industry is still in its infancy, unlike books or movies which are either refining a craft that is ancient, or building on a legacy of past success into new areas. The reviews that focus on technical aspects are there becuase many games have terrible post production. Imagine the reviews if a movie had several scenes with production cast visible, obvious edit marks, and other pretty uncommon errors. It would be soundly blasted, except of course if it were by a director of such high regard that it was seen as the deconstruction of the artform or something similar to what the art world is experiencing. Many games are released with flaws that in twenty or so years will be unthinkable, just as technical flaws would be in a movie today. At that time, game reviews will be more about the experence.
Yes but AMD has made money selling processors in the past, and has the expectation of making money on processors in the future, assuming things pick up a little for them. If apple were to sell 6 billion songs, they still wouldn't make money on iTMS. Its all about contribution margin.
My favorite Windows message story was back in college, we all had laptops, and in a late Math class one kid screwed up the send and sent to all the campus computers, "This class is sure boring." His last name was uncommon and user ID was attached, so we knew which class it was. The prof happened to be explaining a point using his computer from the projector, adding to the hilarity of the moment.
Economics is the study of a very complex system, and the explination of that study through simplistic models that are used to predict the outcomes of the system. In this way it is like physics, but at a much earlier stage of understanding. Think chemistry during the days of the alchemists, they were making progress, but were going about it in a very slow fashion. If the models don't assume perfect information, they don't work correctly, even though it doesn't take a very observant economist to see that perfect information is a pretty poor assumption. So just as the current model for gravity doesn't explain everything down at quantum level (or even for Voyager I, apparently), it is close enough for many purposes, and useful. Economic models are close enough for many useful purposes, although they are under much more gross refinement. There are many sharp economists wondering why there is so much ad spending, given that the assumption of perfect knowledge works so well.
I've heard it with the floor manager being Henry Ford, and the expert being Edison or Tesla, and the bill being several orders of magnitude larger.
I'd have to expand your advice to two newspapers or at a minimum a newspaper and a good newsmagazine (I'm thinking of the economist here but there must be others, Time does not count). Two newspapers, if selected properly, NT Times, and the WSJ or Financial Times, will give a reader an excellent understanding of most of the facets of an issue that is affecting the modern world. I'd also advise that one source be based outside the US. However, following this advice is best left to those with a bunch of time on their hands.
More like McD pays apple $0.75 and Apple pays the record company $0.70 while apple and McD split the cost of advertising the promotion. Also note that the whole thing might be done with McD paying the record company a lower fee, while Apple gets the added promotion, or they might even lose something on the deal.
I deleted all my wma files when itunes came out and started reencoding in AAC.
They sold (at a minimum a majority stake in) Miller to South African Brewery (SAB), they import Pilsner Urquell from the Chezck republic, it's pretty good, and makes a great black and tan. They're not really well known in the US, Heinekin beat them in the import race, but they are one of the bigger international breweries. In general beer is a natural monopoly, where the biggest player is highly unlikely to be knock out of the way, and each has a home turf that they own and export to the others areas where they make a small profit.
While I agree with you today, at launch I think backwards compatability and DVD player features, sold more consoles than the game stable at the time, and really accellerated this cycle. MS would be foolish not to adopt this since they aren't starting from a very strong competitive position in the next cycle.