Absolutely right, however I think there's a balance between the two that Jack and friends are trying to undo. Profiting the owner shouldn't exclude all use for advancement, which seems to be what Jack is saying, even if its a very small number of users.
TT: I'll tell you, because I'm an engineer, I'm an engineering student, and this year I built a high-definition television, from scratch. But because of the broadcast flag, if I wanted to do that again after July 2005, that would be illegal.
JV: How many people in the United States build their own sets?
TT: Well, I'm talking about engineers.
JV: Let's say there are a thousand. But there are 284 million people in this country. You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved. You can't do it that way.
Get's my vote for most significant, because actually, by the original intent of IP law, advancement of arts and science is (not advancement of commerce) the root justification. This also goes to the minority vs majority rule argument, but someone else already made that one.
Despite lacking the 'amazing' performance specs, for my money the Toyota Prius is by far the most advanced car on the road. It's power distribution and energy recovery seems like a much bigger innovation.
Let's see, the Veyron is cool and fast, but everything in the car is pretty common and didn't require any special innovation to achieve. The engine? Just two corporate VW DOHC V8s bolted together. And turbos are not exactly new technology, and putting 4 of them in one place doesn't get you any farther. Wow - 4 valves per cyclinder, did NASA design this monster!?! Ohhhh, dry sump lubication, fairly rare due to cost on production vehicles, but in use for plenty long. Continuously variable cam timing, I believe Honda was putting this on Civics about 20 years ago. And obviously seven gears are seven times more advanced than four gears. Dual clutch systems were invented decades ago, just never worked so well due to reliability. F1 style paddle shifting - Ferrari had it first. All wheeel drive - Jeep perhaps? Many high end cars have unique tires, all that means is they're expensive, not innovative, and have dimensions too ridiculous for the manufacturers to build in volume. Carbon fiber chasis also common on several high enders.
The Veyron is just a really expensive combination of all the top technologies available in the market at the moment, I see nothing new here. Of course, that could just be the envy talking.
That would be nice, I agree, but to my knowledge there is no requirement by the SEC that a public company disclose its clients. Only if one, or a small number of the clients represents an unusually large portion of revenue, then it would be considered sufficiently important that listing those out would be needed.
Wearable tech has come a long way in the last few years, and I attribute it largely to the success of MP3 players like iPod, and the trend toward hands free cell phone attachments. I don't think wearing music earphones everywhere you go was really all that socially acceptable for a long time - sure when you were exercising or whatever it was fine, but it was rare to see someone just walking around a store with them on. And when I got my first cell phone a few years ago, I used an early earbud/boom mic combo almost exclusively out of both convenience and early fears of EM radiation. People made fun of me all the time for this! But now as I walk around the campus of a major university, half the thousands of undergrads I see everyday have their heads plugged in to one or the other. Now that it has become socially acceptable (dare i say - cool?) to adorn yourself with electronics, the move is really on to advance this market. Ideo may have jumped the gun a few years back with one of the first showcases of wearable tech, but they had the right idea.
Please, spare me the historical condescension and stick to the issues.
Remember the 200 million American Indians that were wiped out? Our diseases killed most of them
Trying to blame the colonials for these diseases has always been a specious argument - I mean the method of disease propogation and transmission wasn't even understood at the time. Is ignorance really genocide? And the slaves on the trip over? Please. Most of the slave traders weren't even americans, not that that's even relevant. Japan is a different story - it's problematic to compare a time of war. It does look bad in some ways though.
First of all, congratulations on being the first to respond to my trolling sig, that didn't take long.
Two, I'm not going to get into yet another long drawn out flamefest with someone who isn't likely to have his mind changed no matter what is said. But you've obviously given this topic some thought so what the heck. My primary problem is that you are distorting my original statement assuming I equate capitalism with the United States (which is less true each passing year), and proceed to compare it to communism. Not that it is really related, but the US has been moving towards a more socialistic structure both economically and politically for the better part of the last century, to its detriment.
Still some counter is in order, but I'll keep it short. Perhaps you have forgotten about the day long food waiting lines common under communist russia? Not so common now under a more capitalistic state are they? True, the conversion to democracy was not well managed in russia, but it's too late to change now. Also, China is hardly a good example, similar to russia, their own people starved for lack of food production for much of their history. It has only been since the slow and carefully planned transition to a more capitalistic structure that the nation has begun to flourish. It is the old communist leaders who are being dragged kicking and screaming to capitalism, not the other way around. Who knows, someday china may be more democratic and capitalistic than the US, and that is a day to truly fear. As a final note, if you net out the hundreds of millions murdered or 'disappeared' under communism, I'd say your numbers are a little more even.
Oh and one last thing, I don't want to get in to the complex legal vagaries of why George Bush is not a felon (ie, he's never been convicted of a felony), but I'm sure the DNC would be interested.
And wow, people are still surprised a company would make the rational choice to use cheaper labor that is readily available? Shocking!
I don't see any video game companies making unusually high (above market) profits, this is just competition. If anything, it means more money available to develop more games, which is (more shock coming) good for the consumer.
Oh, but they did break the three laws of robotics in the most obvious way in one of his stories, a number of robots were manufactured without the first law (never harm a human being...).
Technically, that doesn't really sound like breaking the laws. If the law was not present in the robot, it couldn't be broken.
DishNetwork subscribers, please call DishNetwork and tie up their support lines with furious indignance while we spread disinformation!
Ha, that's probably what they intended. But as an unintended consequence, the poor cable operators probably got just as many calls from angry customers who misunderstood.
I know my knee-jerk reaction was to grab the phone as soon as I saw Comedy Central on the list. Then after seeing it a second time I calmed down.
CRN News has the story, and SCO has officially confirmed the email is legit. However they claim it is a misunderstanding by the original author. Read on to see for yourself.
I took a database class with Dr. William McCarthy last semester. He was on the standard's setting comittee and actually spent some time in class relaying this whole story to us. Needless to say he confirmed pretty much everything I'm reading here.
His take seemed to be that this standard was complete in name only, just to have something to show for their efforts. But most of the specialists stopped contributing to it after the MS mess became known.
He understood Microsoft's desire to influence the standards, but most lobbying is done explicitly. I think they reacted so negatively because they were obviously trying to hide their influence, yet pretend to be having an open and impartial standards setting group.
Most of the technology people involved were primarily concerned with making the standard open to even the smallest and poorest businesses and countries worldwide, and when they found out about this they just weren't happy at all.
Very true. Particularly with the introduction of 'pro forma' earnings, the income figure now borders on useless. I'm am currently in several advanced financial analysis classes, and the only use the income statement really has is to provide some insight into the firms expense ratios, and those are usually error adjusted for forecasting anyway. Many people incorrectly believe stock value is based on future earnings, but this is incorrect. It is actually the present value of future cash flows.
Another good piece of advice one of my favorite professors gave "it's not in the numbers, it's in the notes" meaning you need to read the notes to the financial statements - otherwise you shouldn't even be thinking about investing in equities.
Well, comparing personal borrowing to corporate borrowing is a bad idea, and I probably shouldn't have even started down that road. Since your average person doesn't borrow to invest, only to spend, its tough to compare. Although since homes do appreciate in value, as long as your annual gain outpaces or at least equals your interest, you've made out. Saving up for a house? Nice idea, but not bloody likely. You can't just think about the interest you'll save, you do have to live somewhere - and that probably means rent, and lots of it.
Another important point - 200k (est) in interst is a nominal figure. You have to do a present value adjustment, which would make it quite small in todays (real) dollars. Given the competiveness of the mortgage industry, the relatively low risk of houses as assets, and the current interest situation, buying a home on debt is a pretty good deal.
Anyway, back to the business side of things, Apple seems to be in line with the industry - Dell, MS, all have virtually no debt. HP is the exception, which is probably merger related. So this looks like the expectation for this indsutry, and therefore a good thing. But in other industries it is completely different, and a debt heavy capital structure is quite common.
That's a great point. In fact, the quick settlement of the early suits not only emboldened the RIAA, but in the eyes of the general population it probably seemed like a signal that the RIAA was right all along and those nasty song swappers settled quick because they knew they were wrong. Legally a settlement is neutral, but in the eyes of the public, it says guilty for someone. With someone fighting back, suddenly it starts to turn the other way, with lone individuals taking a stand against a big record industry - people love that!
Depends on the particular flavor of religion, some think all debt is evil, some merely believe charging interest is a sin.
I'm not sure what mean by 'on paper', there has never been an instance where debt did not exist in the real world. The fact that it is recorded by people and companies is just a matter of accounting.
Having debt does not necessarily incur negative consequences. It has precisley the consequenses you agree to when you take it on. If you can afford it, then it is positive. Quite the contrary, debt greatly expands an individuals and a companies choices. Home and auto ownership are made possible by debt. Emergency/variable funds are made quickly and easily available to anyone with a credit card. If your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and you have no cash, trust me, having the ability to take on debt greatly expands our choices.
Debt financing works whenever it is cheaper relative to the cost of equity capital. The nominal rate is irrelevant, it could be 1% or 50%.
A sharp rise in interest rates would affect profitability only if the rate was floating, or if new debt was needed. And even if these cases were true, even a modestly sophisticated company now can effectively hedge against such interest rate risk.
The bottom line is, debt properly used by a firm, will maximize its total return to the shareholder. The relative requirements of debt and equity holders are what determine its appropriateness. Qualitative beliefs such as debt averseness are irrational, and ultimately destroy shareholder value. A firm can operate just fine on no debt - in fact there are several surprisingly large firms that grew through much of their histroy debt free - UPS and Dominos come to mind. Still, they would likely have grown faster and generated greater returns through the proper use of debt.
The aim of finance is to optimize returns. The residual asset claim is effectively the same for both, so the only question for the firm is, which is cheaper.
Wow, some informed financial discussion on/. - astounding!
These are all good points. In general, a debt free or even low debt corporation is a bad sign, unless there is an industry specific reason for it to be that way. At best it means the management is far too conservative and is not creating growth opportunities, or simply has run out of growth opportunities to pursue. At worst it means the firms managment is not serving the interest of the shareholder, which is all the more suspicious in a firm that pays no dividends. In a frim like Apple with a good credit rating, this will become a value destroying position in the long term.
However I suspect that they will just as quickly take on new financing, or face the consequences from their shareholders.
Lutz currently flies a Soviet T-38, though not being a jet expert I couldn't say if this was in another league or not. He is a speed freak so he may be trading up, you never know. Actually, I'm not too sure where he keeps it. Right now he spends most of his time flying his chopper around Michigan between Ann Arbor and Detroit - a quick little commute.
Think about it, the conspiracy theorists are right - the leak was on purpose. Call it Phantom Open Sourcing: pretend to leak your buggy source code, lots of programmers look it over and find all sorts of problems for free! All their developers continue working on new products and a few are assigned to make the new updates compliments of the leak. This will be hailed as the most brilliant management cost cutting strategy in history.
Just because it was a coincidence that I read this on the same day, Ed Felten thinks it's time to retire the term 'hacker'. People may not like it, but he's probably right. It's too late to change the perception.
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely right, however I think there's a balance between the two that Jack and friends are trying to undo. Profiting the owner shouldn't exclude all use for advancement, which seems to be what Jack is saying, even if its a very small number of users.
Despite lacking the 'amazing' performance specs, for my money the Toyota Prius is by far the most advanced car on the road. It's power distribution and energy recovery seems like a much bigger innovation.
Let's see, the Veyron is cool and fast, but everything in the car is pretty common and didn't require any special innovation to achieve. The engine? Just two corporate VW DOHC V8s bolted together. And turbos are not exactly new technology, and putting 4 of them in one place doesn't get you any farther. Wow - 4 valves per cyclinder, did NASA design this monster!?! Ohhhh, dry sump lubication, fairly rare due to cost on production vehicles, but in use for plenty long. Continuously variable cam timing, I believe Honda was putting this on Civics about 20 years ago. And obviously seven gears are seven times more advanced than four gears. Dual clutch systems were invented decades ago, just never worked so well due to reliability. F1 style paddle shifting - Ferrari had it first. All wheeel drive - Jeep perhaps? Many high end cars have unique tires, all that means is they're expensive, not innovative, and have dimensions too ridiculous for the manufacturers to build in volume. Carbon fiber chasis also common on several high enders.
The Veyron is just a really expensive combination of all the top technologies available in the market at the moment, I see nothing new here. Of course, that could just be the envy talking.
Surprised no one else put this one up, but Monster Salary has pretty detailed jobs and geographic regions.
Most un-secure campus networks
That would be nice, I agree, but to my knowledge there is no requirement by the SEC that a public company disclose its clients. Only if one, or a small number of the clients represents an unusually large portion of revenue, then it would be considered sufficiently important that listing those out would be needed.
378 by my count, although Slashdot (520) doesn't seem to have much to brag about either.
Google's Cache
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Wearable tech has come a long way in the last few years, and I attribute it largely to the success of MP3 players like iPod, and the trend toward hands free cell phone attachments. I don't think wearing music earphones everywhere you go was really all that socially acceptable for a long time - sure when you were exercising or whatever it was fine, but it was rare to see someone just walking around a store with them on. And when I got my first cell phone a few years ago, I used an early earbud/boom mic combo almost exclusively out of both convenience and early fears of EM radiation. People made fun of me all the time for this! But now as I walk around the campus of a major university, half the thousands of undergrads I see everyday have their heads plugged in to one or the other. Now that it has become socially acceptable (dare i say - cool?) to adorn yourself with electronics, the move is really on to advance this market. Ideo may have jumped the gun a few years back with one of the first showcases of wearable tech, but they had the right idea.
Remember the 200 million American Indians that were wiped out? Our diseases killed most of them
Trying to blame the colonials for these diseases has always been a specious argument - I mean the method of disease propogation and transmission wasn't even understood at the time. Is ignorance really genocide? And the slaves on the trip over? Please. Most of the slave traders weren't even americans, not that that's even relevant. Japan is a different story - it's problematic to compare a time of war. It does look bad in some ways though.
Two, I'm not going to get into yet another long drawn out flamefest with someone who isn't likely to have his mind changed no matter what is said. But you've obviously given this topic some thought so what the heck. My primary problem is that you are distorting my original statement assuming I equate capitalism with the United States (which is less true each passing year), and proceed to compare it to communism. Not that it is really related, but the US has been moving towards a more socialistic structure both economically and politically for the better part of the last century, to its detriment.
Still some counter is in order, but I'll keep it short. Perhaps you have forgotten about the day long food waiting lines common under communist russia? Not so common now under a more capitalistic state are they? True, the conversion to democracy was not well managed in russia, but it's too late to change now. Also, China is hardly a good example, similar to russia, their own people starved for lack of food production for much of their history. It has only been since the slow and carefully planned transition to a more capitalistic structure that the nation has begun to flourish. It is the old communist leaders who are being dragged kicking and screaming to capitalism, not the other way around. Who knows, someday china may be more democratic and capitalistic than the US, and that is a day to truly fear. As a final note, if you net out the hundreds of millions murdered or 'disappeared' under communism, I'd say your numbers are a little more even.
Oh and one last thing, I don't want to get in to the complex legal vagaries of why George Bush is not a felon (ie, he's never been convicted of a felony), but I'm sure the DNC would be interested.
Actually that would be the supply curve.
And wow, people are still surprised a company would make the rational choice to use cheaper labor that is readily available? Shocking!
I don't see any video game companies making unusually high (above market) profits, this is just competition. If anything, it means more money available to develop more games, which is (more shock coming) good for the consumer.
Technically, that doesn't really sound like breaking the laws. If the law was not present in the robot, it couldn't be broken.
DishNetwork subscribers, please call DishNetwork and tie up their support lines with furious indignance while we spread disinformation!
Ha, that's probably what they intended. But as an unintended consequence, the poor cable operators probably got just as many calls from angry customers who misunderstood.
I know my knee-jerk reaction was to grab the phone as soon as I saw Comedy Central on the list. Then after seeing it a second time I calmed down.
CRN News has the story, and SCO has officially confirmed the email is legit. However they claim it is a misunderstanding by the original author. Read on to see for yourself.
His take seemed to be that this standard was complete in name only, just to have something to show for their efforts. But most of the specialists stopped contributing to it after the MS mess became known.
He understood Microsoft's desire to influence the standards, but most lobbying is done explicitly. I think they reacted so negatively because they were obviously trying to hide their influence, yet pretend to be having an open and impartial standards setting group.
Most of the technology people involved were primarily concerned with making the standard open to even the smallest and poorest businesses and countries worldwide, and when they found out about this they just weren't happy at all.
these no longer work?
Very true. Particularly with the introduction of 'pro forma' earnings, the income figure now borders on useless. I'm am currently in several advanced financial analysis classes, and the only use the income statement really has is to provide some insight into the firms expense ratios, and those are usually error adjusted for forecasting anyway. Many people incorrectly believe stock value is based on future earnings, but this is incorrect. It is actually the present value of future cash flows.
Another good piece of advice one of my favorite professors gave "it's not in the numbers, it's in the notes" meaning you need to read the notes to the financial statements - otherwise you shouldn't even be thinking about investing in equities.
Well, comparing personal borrowing to corporate borrowing is a bad idea, and I probably shouldn't have even started down that road. Since your average person doesn't borrow to invest, only to spend, its tough to compare. Although since homes do appreciate in value, as long as your annual gain outpaces or at least equals your interest, you've made out. Saving up for a house? Nice idea, but not bloody likely. You can't just think about the interest you'll save, you do have to live somewhere - and that probably means rent, and lots of it.
Another important point - 200k (est) in interst is a nominal figure. You have to do a present value adjustment, which would make it quite small in todays (real) dollars. Given the competiveness of the mortgage industry, the relatively low risk of houses as assets, and the current interest situation, buying a home on debt is a pretty good deal.
Anyway, back to the business side of things, Apple seems to be in line with the industry - Dell, MS, all have virtually no debt. HP is the exception, which is probably merger related. So this looks like the expectation for this indsutry, and therefore a good thing. But in other industries it is completely different, and a debt heavy capital structure is quite common.
That's a great point. In fact, the quick settlement of the early suits not only emboldened the RIAA, but in the eyes of the general population it probably seemed like a signal that the RIAA was right all along and those nasty song swappers settled quick because they knew they were wrong. Legally a settlement is neutral, but in the eyes of the public, it says guilty for someone. With someone fighting back, suddenly it starts to turn the other way, with lone individuals taking a stand against a big record industry - people love that!
Depends on the particular flavor of religion, some think all debt is evil, some merely believe charging interest is a sin.
I'm not sure what mean by 'on paper', there has never been an instance where debt did not exist in the real world. The fact that it is recorded by people and companies is just a matter of accounting.
Having debt does not necessarily incur negative consequences. It has precisley the consequenses you agree to when you take it on. If you can afford it, then it is positive. Quite the contrary, debt greatly expands an individuals and a companies choices. Home and auto ownership are made possible by debt. Emergency/variable funds are made quickly and easily available to anyone with a credit card. If your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and you have no cash, trust me, having the ability to take on debt greatly expands our choices.
Debt financing works whenever it is cheaper relative to the cost of equity capital. The nominal rate is irrelevant, it could be 1% or 50%.
A sharp rise in interest rates would affect profitability only if the rate was floating, or if new debt was needed. And even if these cases were true, even a modestly sophisticated company now can effectively hedge against such interest rate risk.
The bottom line is, debt properly used by a firm, will maximize its total return to the shareholder. The relative requirements of debt and equity holders are what determine its appropriateness. Qualitative beliefs such as debt averseness are irrational, and ultimately destroy shareholder value. A firm can operate just fine on no debt - in fact there are several surprisingly large firms that grew through much of their histroy debt free - UPS and Dominos come to mind. Still, they would likely have grown faster and generated greater returns through the proper use of debt.
The aim of finance is to optimize returns. The residual asset claim is effectively the same for both, so the only question for the firm is, which is cheaper.
Wow, some informed financial discussion on /. - astounding!
These are all good points. In general, a debt free or even low debt corporation is a bad sign, unless there is an industry specific reason for it to be that way. At best it means the management is far too conservative and is not creating growth opportunities, or simply has run out of growth opportunities to pursue. At worst it means the firms managment is not serving the interest of the shareholder, which is all the more suspicious in a firm that pays no dividends. In a frim like Apple with a good credit rating, this will become a value destroying position in the long term.
However I suspect that they will just as quickly take on new financing, or face the consequences from their shareholders.
Lutz currently flies a Soviet T-38, though not being a jet expert I couldn't say if this was in another league or not. He is a speed freak so he may be trading up, you never know. Actually, I'm not too sure where he keeps it. Right now he spends most of his time flying his chopper around Michigan between Ann Arbor and Detroit - a quick little commute.
Think about it, the conspiracy theorists are right - the leak was on purpose. Call it Phantom Open Sourcing: pretend to leak your buggy source code, lots of programmers look it over and find all sorts of problems for free! All their developers continue working on new products and a few are assigned to make the new updates compliments of the leak. This will be hailed as the most brilliant management cost cutting strategy in history.
Just because it was a coincidence that I read this on the same day, Ed Felten thinks it's time to retire the term 'hacker'. People may not like it, but he's probably right. It's too late to change the perception.