For the purposes of public safety and emergency response, this was a local incident in a single city. There was nothing useful or actionable for anyone outside New York.
Man-made disasters. Like declaring war. Or some idiots flying a pair of jumbo-jets into the twin towers.
What, you meant disasters that you had to be notified of immediately for safety reasons and coordinating emergency responses, and not merely for propaganda?
Good points all, but maybe the point of my assertion was lost. New Zealand is smaller than the US state of Nevada. It's conceivable that a major disaster could affect much or all of the country, so a national-scale warning system makes some sense. My contention was not that improving emergency communications is a bad idea, only that the useful scale for such a thing is local or perhaps regional. In the United States, that would mostly mean at the county or state level. For perspective, if such a thing is useful, then the messages disseminated near Christchurch should also have been sent to the residents of Perth, Australia. Silly, but directly comparable.
But go ahead, prove me wrong: come up with a disaster that takes out Miami and Seattle but leaves the phones intact.
The Doritos factory explodes?
ZOMG, I didn't think of that! I'm sure the next time I'm stoned out of my mind this will seem really important, and the president's personal message of reassurance (and maybe a suggestion that I just go get a burrito instead?) will convince me that the whole thing was worthwhile after all.
Significant impact is limited to the immediate area of detonation and a limited distance downwind. This is unlikely to be important to people in more than a handful of states.
contaminated water supply
Intensely local. Most water supplies serve only a few hundred thousand people. Worst case, this is a regional disaster (like we're seeing with flooding in the Mississippi basin, actually).
biological or chemical attack
Unless I've missed something in weapons development, there's no way such a weapon could affect millions of square miles. Though a biological attack could lead to...
pandemic
...which develops slowly enough that existing warning systems are sufficient, though as I noted in a previous comment by the time a pandemic is under way it's really too late to do much about it. Highly communicable diseases saturate their host populations very quickly once critical thresholds are crossed. Note that in the 1918 flu pandemic, Gunnison, CO had more than enough warning to isolate itself entirely and avoid a single case, despite communication networks that were primitive at best. Everyone else read about it in the newspapers and then got sick a few weeks or months later anyway.
rioting
Perhaps the most localised example of them all. Even the largest riots cover only a few square miles. Even if, as has occurred a few times, there are riots in several cities at once, the vast majority of US residents are completely unaffected. Those who are affected would be much better served by local warnings than some generic nationwide one.
Yes, I read about this. The science is solid and there are plans afoot to build a similar system in California, using state funds. But that's not what I am challenging here: why would someone in Indiana care that a quake is occurring in Arkansas? This was the point I was trying to make: all useful warnings are for events that are inherently local or at most regional. Even Japan's; as I pointed out, the entire country is about the size of California, so even if the seismic detectors can't determine the affected area any more accurately than that, it's still silly for a detector in Berkeley to set off cell phones in Boston. It truly strains credulity to assert than any warning of disaster relevant to a majority of US residents will be receivable or actionable. We're talking about places separated by 1/6 of the earth's circumference. So back to my point, the "presidential" warning level should be eliminated from this system if it's kept at all; it is not useful and at best serves only to feed conspiracy theories. Local and regional agencies already have effective mechanisms for predicting and disseminating information about emergencies. Keep the federal government out of something that's already working quite well in most places. If something needs improvement here, it's in places with ineffective local disaster management agencies (New Orleans, I'm looking in your direction).
The irony of this example is that in the truly devastating 1918 outbreak, the government actually had all the communication ability it needed to prevent and contain the disease: it began at an army base in Kansas, and the government's refusal to limit troop movements despite full knowledge of the situation is what allowed a small outbreak to become a global disaster. Having special chips in every phone, or for that matter irresistible obedience implants in everyone's brain, would not have helped. In fact, it's very possible that had the national communication network been shut down, the government's orders would never have been received and the outbreak would have ended a few weeks later with a death toll in the dozens. By the time an epidemic of contagious disease becomes relevant to the entire nation it's far too late to do much about it, so your example not only supports my point, it also emphasises that if anything the federal government is actively harmful in containing such outbreaks.
Can anyone come up with an example of a "national disaster" (i.e., a disaster affecting most or all of the contiguous United States) in which any significant part of the telephone network would still be functioning? Because I can't. All sub-extinction-level disasters are inherently regional and nearly all are local. As an example, Japan just suffered a colossal earthquake and 15-meter tsunami... and yet despite the catastrophic loss of life and property, nearly all major damage is confined to a few prefectures; many parts of the country didn't even feel it. And Japan is about the size of California.
But go ahead, prove me wrong: come up with a disaster that takes out Miami and Seattle but leaves the phones intact.
It's not under their control. If they start treating their employees better, their costs will rise and they will either lose money or have to bid higher, in which case they'll lose contracts (and lose money). CM is a very competitive business, and Foxconn as a Taiwanese company is already at a disadvantage in some ways relative to mainland CMs.
There are several ways this can play itself out. The employees can unionise (which on the mainland will require overthrowing or radically reforming the government) and demand better wages across the entire industry. In that case, two things will happen. First, prices of finished goods will rise. Second, these companies will begin investing in places where unions aren't allowed (race to the bottom). Third, unemployment in places with unions will rise, encouraging the creation of non-union shops where standards are lower.
Another way this can play itself out is if the people who buy these goods start demanding verifiable standards of treatment for the people who manufacture them. This would have to be backed up with a willingness to (a) not buy products that fail to meet the standards, AND (b) pay much higher than current prices for them. This is unlikely because people in most developed countries are already living beyond their means and cannot afford to pay more.
We've seen all of this before. Some combination of these things will in fact happen, as they did in today's developed countries. Ultimately, unionised manufacturing workforces are not competitive and will die out, leaving these low-value activities to be moved to whatever country does the most to ensure that labour is cheap. This is nothing more complicated than Ricardian comparative advantage. As this happens, the more developed countries will find that their unemployed union workers' children look for higher-value work to do and shift their economy from low-value manufacturing to higher-value engineering and services. Meanwhile, those in the third phase (debt collapse) will be forced to rejuvenate their own "old economy" sectors and become more competitive with the rising economies. This will mean a diminution of lifestyle as they pay down debt and accept lower-paying jobs in which their products are competitive.
This is best viewed as a wave moving around the planet from east to west. Where the United States was in the 19th century, China is today. Where the United States is today, China will be in the 22nd century. None of this is new. None of it is surprising. It's just basic economics. While it may seem reprehensible to those of us with a recent cultural history of moral outrage with this sort of behaviour, the "robber barons" of 19th century America were no different. In time the Chinese will develop their own moral outrage for it, and put a stop to it. But doing so externally is all but impossible, because it requires fighting economics. Simply put, people will stop being treated this way when they start refusing to be treated this way even if it means not having a job. Happened before, will happen again.
The "sour economy" is not putting any pressure on cable companies. None. Most people today consider TV as essential as a cell phone or natural gas. And given the escapism angle, I'd guess most Americans would pay the cable bill with their last $50.
If they had the higher reasoning skills of humans, they would recognise that meat and sex are both perishable. The correct trade is to exchange unneeded meat for gold, which can later be exchanged for meat when your hunt comes up short. Sex? Who needs that? The survival of the species is irrelevant to the individual.
He was a qualified write-in candidate in San Francisco. My vote was duly cast and counted. That he had "terminated his campaign" does not mean he could not have been lawfully elected or would have declined to take office.
You didn't believe me when I told you Obama is just another politician like any other, no better and no worse. You've probably forgotten Bush's attourneys general already, but Eric Holder is definitely stamped from the same mold and you're really going to enjoy his antics for the next several years. You're also going to love the new old FCC, and of course Turbotax Timmy is busy destroying or giving away your wealth at the same time. Clinton's kept a low profile, but she's bound to bungle it soon and make you wish for Condi back (yes, really - she was the best of the Bush lot by a wide margin). Bottom line, this might be the worst administration since Grant's, and the guys at the top are not fundamentally better or smarter than the ones they replaced.
If you can manage to remember anything for as long as three years, please do. Then you can join me in voting for Ron Paul again. Or, you know, just vote for more of the same. Again.
It *is* their fault, for believing it. The idea that you can indefinitely consume more than you produce is obviously and demonstrably false; even a dullard knows so with a moment's thought. The only people who believe it are those who deliberately refuse to recognise reality. We oughtn't be their enablers.
The problem with Fry's isn't that they don't carry the thing you want; they probably do. The more obscure it is, the better - I've had good luck finding Molex connectors and solder, stuff that's hard to get locally. But when it comes to computer equipment, they're usually out of whatever you want. Worse yet, you may find that they have 3 of the thing you want, and all 3 are open box returns. Or perhaps they'll have 2 of them with three different prices marked - one on each of the items and one on the shelf (and perhaps a fourth when you ring it up). All of this combines to make it very difficult to obtain the item you want.
Fry's is a good place to find commercial supplies on short notice, like your spool of cable or a 23-inch 2-post rack. They may not have the model you want but they probably have something close, and it's hard for these things to be broken in non-obvious ways. But far too much of their stock of more complex parts consists of open box returns, and my experience matches anecdotal evidence from around the web: these items were returned for a reason.
Anyway, Fry's has some redeeming qualities, like carrying the kind of components and tools that Radio Shack used to be good for but isn't any longer. But as a computer shop it's pretty awful. And it doesn't help that they tend not to be conveniently located (as you note) - the closest one is 28 miles away in Concord, more than half a mile from the BART station - removing one of the prime advantages of B&Ms. I must confess that I don't really understand the Fry's business model. It's the chaos of a third-world bazaar, the prices of a typical B&M, the convenience of an online dealer, and unreliable selection. I don't think they make enough money from the few things they do well to stay in business, but somehow they seem to be sticking around. Lack of competition seems to be their main pillar of strength.
The real problem is that unless you are looking for a very mainstream part your local shop probably doesn't carry it or is out of stock. Sometimes this is true of even very basic stuff, and the big box stores are rarely any better than the independents (the worst of all is, of course, Frys). It's surprising that the B&Ms don't understand that the ONLY reason anyone does business with them is because we want/need something RIGHT NOW, but they clearly don't.
My canonical example is Central Computer, which has a reasonably convenient store in the City two blocks from a bus stop. They're local and I really want to like them despite their Taiwanese sketchiness, but they never have what I want. Wifi router? On the web site but not in stock. SATA disks? They have hundreds of the desktop grade one in stock but the enterprise grade are on backorder. A case? They'll have to have it shipped in from another store; maybe 2 days. The last time I was there I spent a lot of time wandering around just to see what they DO stock. What I learned is that there are plenty of USB cables, CPU fans, about 2 dozen of a single model of 24-port 100Mbit Ethernet switch, and single display case boxes of just about everything from graphics cards to parallel ATA controllers (I guess for emergency repair of those boxes you bought in 1998). It's anyone's guess how many of them are actually available for purchase, but I'm willing to bet that the one you want isn't.
This is exactly the sort of reason B&M retailers are doing so poorly. Circuit City of course had its own company-specific problems, but the problem is much bigger than any one company. The bottom line is that there are only three differences between B&Ms and Internet retailers. Two of them work for the B&Ms: in-person sales and service, and instant gratification. The third works against them: the difference in cost per square foot between a retail storefront in the City and a warehouse in Fernley, Nevada. In order to stay in business, B&Ms need to put their two advantages to work at least well enough to offset the differences in their cost structure. Circuit City clearly failed at the service side of things; I don't know how good their selection was but if they're anything like Best Buy they probably failed there too (I don't need 3000 square feet of CDs; this is a bloody electronics shop, not a record shop!). Other B&Ms will all go the same way unless they wise up and start using their differentiators to win business. Head-to-head competition by doing away with in-person sales and service and stocking only a few items in a space clearly focused more on promotion and hype than selection isn't going to win my business, and I doubt it's going to win yours either.
I really really want to like B&Ms but they are forcing me onto the Internet for just about everything but food. We are all Just In Timers now.
Figure out what you're forgoing by taking the shares. Then ask yourself whether you'd pay that much for them. This is the fundamental principle.
To help figure out what the shares are actually worth, you need to perform a discounted cash flow analysis on them. What dividends do they pay, how likely are those dividends to be maintained or increased, and how risky do you consider the investment? A DCF can assign a present value to the stream of payments you expect to receive based on your assessment of price inflation and the risk of the investment.
Specific questions to ask:
1. What's the vesting schedule? Others have touched on this. It is the single most important factor to consider. Half now and 1/120th per month for 60 months is a lot different than a bulk grant that vests in 2014.
2. Can you vote and/or receive dividends on unvested shares? Control matters, and dividends matter even more. In many states, you can be fires without cause at any time. That includes one day before your shares vest.
3. What kind of shares are they? I would not accept common shares in this situation; I would insist on preferred shares. Preferred shareholders are paid dividends first and if the company is liquidated they receive the proceeds first (though a consulting company isn't likely to have much in the way of assets).
4. What is the company's existing and potential future capital structure? If the company has a great deal of debt, you aren't likely to receive much money. If your approval is not required to issue more shares, especially more preferred shares (possibly senior to your own) then you may find your stake nearly worthless when future employees or investors are issued new shares.
5. What does the company's balance sheet look like? Most small companies have little or no assets. This means they should also have no debt. But in either case, be aware that you are buying shares that have little or no liquidation value. If the company's operating performance suffers, it is likely to go bankrupt and your shares will be worthless.
6. What do the recent income and expense reports look like? What do the current bookings look like? You need to know exactly who the customers are, how diverse they are, and what their future commitments are.
7. Do you trust management? Are they owners? Do they have control?
8. Will you get a seat on the board? If so, who else is on the board? Do you trust them? Are any of them independent?
9. Last, and deliberately least because we are considering an investment here, do you like the work? Your coworkers? Is this an environment in which you want to spend your time? This helps you figure out what you're giving up by staying; you might also earn a higher salary elsewhere or enjoy other perks that you must value against the compensation you would receive by staying.
Quite frankly, as a dotcom bust veteran, I don't value equity very highly. This is especially true of companies with little in the way of tangible assets and even more true if it's common equity. This situation would have to be almost perfect for me to even consider it; i.e., the answers to almost all of the above questions would need to be favourable.
Let's ask one more question, of ourselves, that might help lay the issue to rest:
10. Why wasn't I inquiring about buying shares in this company before the offer was made?
Worse still, your employer probably isn't getting much for all your effort. I just finished a 12-month run of pretty consistent 70-hour weeks with the occasional 80- or 90-hour marathon thrown in for fun, including a (record, for me) run of 49 consecutive days worked. I was probably getting only about 1/3 as much work done per hour as I might when properly rested and working 45-50 hours a week.
Of course, I knew this at the time, too - the problem was that the alternative was taking a couple days off, which would mean that instead of getting (1/3) * (14/9) * 2 days' worth of work done in that time, I'd get nothing done. That would of course mean that when I got back I'd still have all the work that needed doing before, plus two more days' worth, and an extra 2 days' worth of schedule pressure added as well. While the first day back might be ok, I'd need to work extra hours to start catching up, and after another 12-14 hour day or two I'd be right back where I started: unproductive and working way too much, but even farther behind. It's really a Hobson's choice at that point.
Anyone can work extra time to get past a crisis or a single near-term deadline. But the constantly intensifying pressure of a looming but obviously unachievable deadline really makes scheduling your work a vicious circle. No matter how hard you work, the deadline will just keep getting pushed farther out, and there is no work schedule that would allow you to meet it. But you have to try, so you work more but get less done, and the pressure ratchets up another notch! Ugh. All you can really do is make whatever progress you can, try to stay sane, and look for any possible opportunity to dump work on others (who btw are probably just as loaded down as you are).
If you're in this spot, you have to really want to do whatever you're doing. If you don't, you should be looking for a new job and/or trying to get yourself onto the next RIF list. It doesn't really matter that "you have a family to feed" or whatever else you're telling yourself. As the parent said, you don't have any quality of life. You're just going to have to learn to get by on whatever pay is available to someone with your skills and experience willing to work hard 40-50 hours a week. That might mean less "stuff" in your life. So be it. Of course, the problem is that there are very few jobs available at all that don't require long hours; I blame the high fixed costs of hiring and compensating most developed-world workers. At many companies, these fixed costs are over 50% of total compensation cost. If employers stopped offering these large fixed-cost benefit packages, they could afford to hire enough workers to get the job done (and as a side benefit, their employees would be free to choose how to spend their money). Instead, they have an incentive to understaff and get more hours out of existing workers, amortizing all those fixed costs over a larger amount of work. And with a generally weak labour market - though frankly not nearly as bad as in 2001-2003 - they can really put the screws to you right now. A job that offers at least somewhat interesting work and mostly requires 40-50 hours a week is an absolute treasure, whatever it pays.
Since they didn't test Solaris, the test is meaningless. It's the only OS in existence right now with caching and data management features designed specifically to take advantage of flash to improve real-world performance. The submitter's assertion to the contrary is a deliberate lie, an assumption that until Microsoft does something it hasn't been done, or at best sheer ignorance.
Read up on the ZFS L2ARC and the use of supercap/DRAM/flash subsystems for separate intent logs that make up the hybrid storage pool. There are plenty of white papers and other material out there, and of course you can also read the source code.
More likely it's that if they say they don't like it, everyone will see that they are acknowledging that "speed enforcement" is mostly about generating revenue. Since they can't be seen to acknowledge that fact, they have to pretend it's about safety, in which case these tools probably do help even if only in a few spots (and speed traps are sited more often than not in places where excessive speed really might be unsafe).
Bottom line: when cops stop saying stuff like this, it's time to get outta Dodge. Then they're no longer even pretending to be accountable to their nominal employers.
One's religious beliefs are a state of mind. It is not possible to observe this state unless you are the observer. Unless you are Barack Obama, you cannot possibly know whether Barack Obama is a Muslim, a Protestant Christian, a Zoroastrian, or an atheist. What he claims or outwardly practices is irrelevant, as is what anyone in Texas thinks of him. You don't know. I don't know. Only he knows. And the exact same thing can be said for every other human being alive, including John McCain.
This is why religious beliefs are irrelevant when choosing leaders. You just can't know.
Ratings on securities are paid for by their issuers. The ratings agencies therefore had, and still have, clear incentives to over-rate securities to gather as much business as possible. I contend that the models worked exactly as they were intended to work. They spit out top ratings on paper that was paying hundreds of basis points above Treasuries of comparable duration, and by doing so allowed banks to gear up 20x or more on that paper. Instant profits for everyone! This wasn't a mistake. People were simply responding to the incentives they were given: money was cheap (free, really), everyone knew the government would backstop you if you stumbled, and in the worst case you could take home a few seven-figure bonuses before it all went to shit. You'd have done the same thing, and so would I. Each of us has his own native degree of integrity, so for some it would be more conscious than others, but the incentives are what they are and everyone responds to them.
The Taiwanese insurance regulator, however, has just stated that for regulatory capital purposes it will no longer recognise most ratings on mortgaged-backed securities, particulary US agency-insured paper. People are getting wise to the ratings game: all paper can go to zero, and leverage must be employed lightly and judiciously to manage risk, regardless of the assets being purchased. Worse, ratings paid for by the sell side are inherently dubious. If you want confidence in a rating, you'll have to pay for it yourself; better still, get familiar with the instruments and their issuers and come up with your own models. Trust no one and lever lightly, and you'll be profitable forever.
Slashdot Mirror
9/11
For the purposes of public safety and emergency response, this was a local incident in a single city. There was nothing useful or actionable for anyone outside New York.
Obviously a coordinated, country-wide Zombie attack.
Yes, this was the obvious answer I overlooked. It's also the best answer I've seen in this thread so far. Winner!
Man-made disasters. Like declaring war. Or some idiots flying a pair of jumbo-jets into the twin towers.
What, you meant disasters that you had to be notified of immediately for safety reasons and coordinating emergency responses, and not merely for propaganda?
This, exactly.
Good points all, but maybe the point of my assertion was lost. New Zealand is smaller than the US state of Nevada. It's conceivable that a major disaster could affect much or all of the country, so a national-scale warning system makes some sense. My contention was not that improving emergency communications is a bad idea, only that the useful scale for such a thing is local or perhaps regional. In the United States, that would mostly mean at the county or state level. For perspective, if such a thing is useful, then the messages disseminated near Christchurch should also have been sent to the residents of Perth, Australia. Silly, but directly comparable.
But go ahead, prove me wrong: come up with a disaster that takes out Miami and Seattle but leaves the phones intact.
The Doritos factory explodes?
ZOMG, I didn't think of that! I'm sure the next time I'm stoned out of my mind this will seem really important, and the president's personal message of reassurance (and maybe a suggestion that I just go get a burrito instead?) will convince me that the whole thing was worthwhile after all.
Radiological "Dirty Bomb"
Significant impact is limited to the immediate area of detonation and a limited distance downwind. This is unlikely to be important to people in more than a handful of states.
contaminated water supply
Intensely local. Most water supplies serve only a few hundred thousand people. Worst case, this is a regional disaster (like we're seeing with flooding in the Mississippi basin, actually).
biological or chemical attack
Unless I've missed something in weapons development, there's no way such a weapon could affect millions of square miles. Though a biological attack could lead to...
pandemic
...which develops slowly enough that existing warning systems are sufficient, though as I noted in a previous comment by the time a pandemic is under way it's really too late to do much about it. Highly communicable diseases saturate their host populations very quickly once critical thresholds are crossed. Note that in the 1918 flu pandemic, Gunnison, CO had more than enough warning to isolate itself entirely and avoid a single case, despite communication networks that were primitive at best. Everyone else read about it in the newspapers and then got sick a few weeks or months later anyway.
rioting
Perhaps the most localised example of them all. Even the largest riots cover only a few square miles. Even if, as has occurred a few times, there are riots in several cities at once, the vast majority of US residents are completely unaffected. Those who are affected would be much better served by local warnings than some generic nationwide one.
Not sold, sorry.
Yes, I read about this. The science is solid and there are plans afoot to build a similar system in California, using state funds. But that's not what I am challenging here: why would someone in Indiana care that a quake is occurring in Arkansas? This was the point I was trying to make: all useful warnings are for events that are inherently local or at most regional. Even Japan's; as I pointed out, the entire country is about the size of California, so even if the seismic detectors can't determine the affected area any more accurately than that, it's still silly for a detector in Berkeley to set off cell phones in Boston. It truly strains credulity to assert than any warning of disaster relevant to a majority of US residents will be receivable or actionable. We're talking about places separated by 1/6 of the earth's circumference. So back to my point, the "presidential" warning level should be eliminated from this system if it's kept at all; it is not useful and at best serves only to feed conspiracy theories. Local and regional agencies already have effective mechanisms for predicting and disseminating information about emergencies. Keep the federal government out of something that's already working quite well in most places. If something needs improvement here, it's in places with ineffective local disaster management agencies (New Orleans, I'm looking in your direction).
The irony of this example is that in the truly devastating 1918 outbreak, the government actually had all the communication ability it needed to prevent and contain the disease: it began at an army base in Kansas, and the government's refusal to limit troop movements despite full knowledge of the situation is what allowed a small outbreak to become a global disaster. Having special chips in every phone, or for that matter irresistible obedience implants in everyone's brain, would not have helped. In fact, it's very possible that had the national communication network been shut down, the government's orders would never have been received and the outbreak would have ended a few weeks later with a death toll in the dozens. By the time an epidemic of contagious disease becomes relevant to the entire nation it's far too late to do much about it, so your example not only supports my point, it also emphasises that if anything the federal government is actively harmful in containing such outbreaks.
Can anyone come up with an example of a "national disaster" (i.e., a disaster affecting most or all of the contiguous United States) in which any significant part of the telephone network would still be functioning? Because I can't. All sub-extinction-level disasters are inherently regional and nearly all are local. As an example, Japan just suffered a colossal earthquake and 15-meter tsunami... and yet despite the catastrophic loss of life and property, nearly all major damage is confined to a few prefectures; many parts of the country didn't even feel it. And Japan is about the size of California.
But go ahead, prove me wrong: come up with a disaster that takes out Miami and Seattle but leaves the phones intact.
Way to avoid addressing the underlying problem.
It's not under their control. If they start treating their employees better, their costs will rise and they will either lose money or have to bid higher, in which case they'll lose contracts (and lose money). CM is a very competitive business, and Foxconn as a Taiwanese company is already at a disadvantage in some ways relative to mainland CMs.
There are several ways this can play itself out. The employees can unionise (which on the mainland will require overthrowing or radically reforming the government) and demand better wages across the entire industry. In that case, two things will happen. First, prices of finished goods will rise. Second, these companies will begin investing in places where unions aren't allowed (race to the bottom). Third, unemployment in places with unions will rise, encouraging the creation of non-union shops where standards are lower.
Another way this can play itself out is if the people who buy these goods start demanding verifiable standards of treatment for the people who manufacture them. This would have to be backed up with a willingness to (a) not buy products that fail to meet the standards, AND (b) pay much higher than current prices for them. This is unlikely because people in most developed countries are already living beyond their means and cannot afford to pay more.
We've seen all of this before. Some combination of these things will in fact happen, as they did in today's developed countries. Ultimately, unionised manufacturing workforces are not competitive and will die out, leaving these low-value activities to be moved to whatever country does the most to ensure that labour is cheap. This is nothing more complicated than Ricardian comparative advantage. As this happens, the more developed countries will find that their unemployed union workers' children look for higher-value work to do and shift their economy from low-value manufacturing to higher-value engineering and services. Meanwhile, those in the third phase (debt collapse) will be forced to rejuvenate their own "old economy" sectors and become more competitive with the rising economies. This will mean a diminution of lifestyle as they pay down debt and accept lower-paying jobs in which their products are competitive.
This is best viewed as a wave moving around the planet from east to west. Where the United States was in the 19th century, China is today. Where the United States is today, China will be in the 22nd century. None of this is new. None of it is surprising. It's just basic economics. While it may seem reprehensible to those of us with a recent cultural history of moral outrage with this sort of behaviour, the "robber barons" of 19th century America were no different. In time the Chinese will develop their own moral outrage for it, and put a stop to it. But doing so externally is all but impossible, because it requires fighting economics. Simply put, people will stop being treated this way when they start refusing to be treated this way even if it means not having a job. Happened before, will happen again.
The "sour economy" is not putting any pressure on cable companies. None. Most people today consider TV as essential as a cell phone or natural gas. And given the escapism angle, I'd guess most Americans would pay the cable bill with their last $50.
If they had the higher reasoning skills of humans, they would recognise that meat and sex are both perishable. The correct trade is to exchange unneeded meat for gold, which can later be exchanged for meat when your hunt comes up short. Sex? Who needs that? The survival of the species is irrelevant to the individual.
He was a qualified write-in candidate in San Francisco. My vote was duly cast and counted. That he had "terminated his campaign" does not mean he could not have been lawfully elected or would have declined to take office.
Don't blame me; I voted for Ron Paul.
You didn't believe me when I told you Obama is just another politician like any other, no better and no worse. You've probably forgotten Bush's attourneys general already, but Eric Holder is definitely stamped from the same mold and you're really going to enjoy his antics for the next several years. You're also going to love the new old FCC, and of course Turbotax Timmy is busy destroying or giving away your wealth at the same time. Clinton's kept a low profile, but she's bound to bungle it soon and make you wish for Condi back (yes, really - she was the best of the Bush lot by a wide margin). Bottom line, this might be the worst administration since Grant's, and the guys at the top are not fundamentally better or smarter than the ones they replaced.
If you can manage to remember anything for as long as three years, please do. Then you can join me in voting for Ron Paul again. Or, you know, just vote for more of the same. Again.
It *is* their fault, for believing it. The idea that you can indefinitely consume more than you produce is obviously and demonstrably false; even a dullard knows so with a moment's thought. The only people who believe it are those who deliberately refuse to recognise reality. We oughtn't be their enablers.
The problem with Fry's isn't that they don't carry the thing you want; they probably do. The more obscure it is, the better - I've had good luck finding Molex connectors and solder, stuff that's hard to get locally. But when it comes to computer equipment, they're usually out of whatever you want. Worse yet, you may find that they have 3 of the thing you want, and all 3 are open box returns. Or perhaps they'll have 2 of them with three different prices marked - one on each of the items and one on the shelf (and perhaps a fourth when you ring it up). All of this combines to make it very difficult to obtain the item you want.
Fry's is a good place to find commercial supplies on short notice, like your spool of cable or a 23-inch 2-post rack. They may not have the model you want but they probably have something close, and it's hard for these things to be broken in non-obvious ways. But far too much of their stock of more complex parts consists of open box returns, and my experience matches anecdotal evidence from around the web: these items were returned for a reason.
Anyway, Fry's has some redeeming qualities, like carrying the kind of components and tools that Radio Shack used to be good for but isn't any longer. But as a computer shop it's pretty awful. And it doesn't help that they tend not to be conveniently located (as you note) - the closest one is 28 miles away in Concord, more than half a mile from the BART station - removing one of the prime advantages of B&Ms. I must confess that I don't really understand the Fry's business model. It's the chaos of a third-world bazaar, the prices of a typical B&M, the convenience of an online dealer, and unreliable selection. I don't think they make enough money from the few things they do well to stay in business, but somehow they seem to be sticking around. Lack of competition seems to be their main pillar of strength.
The real problem is that unless you are looking for a very mainstream part your local shop probably doesn't carry it or is out of stock. Sometimes this is true of even very basic stuff, and the big box stores are rarely any better than the independents (the worst of all is, of course, Frys). It's surprising that the B&Ms don't understand that the ONLY reason anyone does business with them is because we want/need something RIGHT NOW, but they clearly don't.
My canonical example is Central Computer, which has a reasonably convenient store in the City two blocks from a bus stop. They're local and I really want to like them despite their Taiwanese sketchiness, but they never have what I want. Wifi router? On the web site but not in stock. SATA disks? They have hundreds of the desktop grade one in stock but the enterprise grade are on backorder. A case? They'll have to have it shipped in from another store; maybe 2 days. The last time I was there I spent a lot of time wandering around just to see what they DO stock. What I learned is that there are plenty of USB cables, CPU fans, about 2 dozen of a single model of 24-port 100Mbit Ethernet switch, and single display case boxes of just about everything from graphics cards to parallel ATA controllers (I guess for emergency repair of those boxes you bought in 1998). It's anyone's guess how many of them are actually available for purchase, but I'm willing to bet that the one you want isn't.
This is exactly the sort of reason B&M retailers are doing so poorly. Circuit City of course had its own company-specific problems, but the problem is much bigger than any one company. The bottom line is that there are only three differences between B&Ms and Internet retailers. Two of them work for the B&Ms: in-person sales and service, and instant gratification. The third works against them: the difference in cost per square foot between a retail storefront in the City and a warehouse in Fernley, Nevada. In order to stay in business, B&Ms need to put their two advantages to work at least well enough to offset the differences in their cost structure. Circuit City clearly failed at the service side of things; I don't know how good their selection was but if they're anything like Best Buy they probably failed there too (I don't need 3000 square feet of CDs; this is a bloody electronics shop, not a record shop!). Other B&Ms will all go the same way unless they wise up and start using their differentiators to win business. Head-to-head competition by doing away with in-person sales and service and stocking only a few items in a space clearly focused more on promotion and hype than selection isn't going to win my business, and I doubt it's going to win yours either.
I really really want to like B&Ms but they are forcing me onto the Internet for just about everything but food. We are all Just In Timers now.
Figure out what you're forgoing by taking the shares. Then ask yourself whether you'd pay that much for them. This is the fundamental principle.
To help figure out what the shares are actually worth, you need to perform a discounted cash flow analysis on them. What dividends do they pay, how likely are those dividends to be maintained or increased, and how risky do you consider the investment? A DCF can assign a present value to the stream of payments you expect to receive based on your assessment of price inflation and the risk of the investment.
Specific questions to ask:
1. What's the vesting schedule? Others have touched on this. It is the single most important factor to consider. Half now and 1/120th per month for 60 months is a lot different than a bulk grant that vests in 2014.
2. Can you vote and/or receive dividends on unvested shares? Control matters, and dividends matter even more. In many states, you can be fires without cause at any time. That includes one day before your shares vest.
3. What kind of shares are they? I would not accept common shares in this situation; I would insist on preferred shares. Preferred shareholders are paid dividends first and if the company is liquidated they receive the proceeds first (though a consulting company isn't likely to have much in the way of assets).
4. What is the company's existing and potential future capital structure? If the company has a great deal of debt, you aren't likely to receive much money. If your approval is not required to issue more shares, especially more preferred shares (possibly senior to your own) then you may find your stake nearly worthless when future employees or investors are issued new shares.
5. What does the company's balance sheet look like? Most small companies have little or no assets. This means they should also have no debt. But in either case, be aware that you are buying shares that have little or no liquidation value. If the company's operating performance suffers, it is likely to go bankrupt and your shares will be worthless.
6. What do the recent income and expense reports look like? What do the current bookings look like? You need to know exactly who the customers are, how diverse they are, and what their future commitments are.
7. Do you trust management? Are they owners? Do they have control?
8. Will you get a seat on the board? If so, who else is on the board? Do you trust them? Are any of them independent?
9. Last, and deliberately least because we are considering an investment here, do you like the work? Your coworkers? Is this an environment in which you want to spend your time? This helps you figure out what you're giving up by staying; you might also earn a higher salary elsewhere or enjoy other perks that you must value against the compensation you would receive by staying.
Quite frankly, as a dotcom bust veteran, I don't value equity very highly. This is especially true of companies with little in the way of tangible assets and even more true if it's common equity. This situation would have to be almost perfect for me to even consider it; i.e., the answers to almost all of the above questions would need to be favourable.
Let's ask one more question, of ourselves, that might help lay the issue to rest:
10. Why wasn't I inquiring about buying shares in this company before the offer was made?
Worse still, your employer probably isn't getting much for all your effort. I just finished a 12-month run of pretty consistent 70-hour weeks with the occasional 80- or 90-hour marathon thrown in for fun, including a (record, for me) run of 49 consecutive days worked. I was probably getting only about 1/3 as much work done per hour as I might when properly rested and working 45-50 hours a week.
Of course, I knew this at the time, too - the problem was that the alternative was taking a couple days off, which would mean that instead of getting (1/3) * (14/9) * 2 days' worth of work done in that time, I'd get nothing done. That would of course mean that when I got back I'd still have all the work that needed doing before, plus two more days' worth, and an extra 2 days' worth of schedule pressure added as well. While the first day back might be ok, I'd need to work extra hours to start catching up, and after another 12-14 hour day or two I'd be right back where I started: unproductive and working way too much, but even farther behind. It's really a Hobson's choice at that point.
Anyone can work extra time to get past a crisis or a single near-term deadline. But the constantly intensifying pressure of a looming but obviously unachievable deadline really makes scheduling your work a vicious circle. No matter how hard you work, the deadline will just keep getting pushed farther out, and there is no work schedule that would allow you to meet it. But you have to try, so you work more but get less done, and the pressure ratchets up another notch! Ugh. All you can really do is make whatever progress you can, try to stay sane, and look for any possible opportunity to dump work on others (who btw are probably just as loaded down as you are).
If you're in this spot, you have to really want to do whatever you're doing. If you don't, you should be looking for a new job and/or trying to get yourself onto the next RIF list. It doesn't really matter that "you have a family to feed" or whatever else you're telling yourself. As the parent said, you don't have any quality of life. You're just going to have to learn to get by on whatever pay is available to someone with your skills and experience willing to work hard 40-50 hours a week. That might mean less "stuff" in your life. So be it. Of course, the problem is that there are very few jobs available at all that don't require long hours; I blame the high fixed costs of hiring and compensating most developed-world workers. At many companies, these fixed costs are over 50% of total compensation cost. If employers stopped offering these large fixed-cost benefit packages, they could afford to hire enough workers to get the job done (and as a side benefit, their employees would be free to choose how to spend their money). Instead, they have an incentive to understaff and get more hours out of existing workers, amortizing all those fixed costs over a larger amount of work. And with a generally weak labour market - though frankly not nearly as bad as in 2001-2003 - they can really put the screws to you right now. A job that offers at least somewhat interesting work and mostly requires 40-50 hours a week is an absolute treasure, whatever it pays.
Why does a music player need to know the date or time at all?
Since they didn't test Solaris, the test is meaningless. It's the only OS in existence right now with caching and data management features designed specifically to take advantage of flash to improve real-world performance. The submitter's assertion to the contrary is a deliberate lie, an assumption that until Microsoft does something it hasn't been done, or at best sheer ignorance.
Read up on the ZFS L2ARC and the use of supercap/DRAM/flash subsystems for separate intent logs that make up the hybrid storage pool. There are plenty of white papers and other material out there, and of course you can also read the source code.
More likely it's that if they say they don't like it, everyone will see that they are acknowledging that "speed enforcement" is mostly about generating revenue. Since they can't be seen to acknowledge that fact, they have to pretend it's about safety, in which case these tools probably do help even if only in a few spots (and speed traps are sited more often than not in places where excessive speed really might be unsafe).
Bottom line: when cops stop saying stuff like this, it's time to get outta Dodge. Then they're no longer even pretending to be accountable to their nominal employers.
One's religious beliefs are a state of mind. It is not possible to observe this state unless you are the observer. Unless you are Barack Obama, you cannot possibly know whether Barack Obama is a Muslim, a Protestant Christian, a Zoroastrian, or an atheist. What he claims or outwardly practices is irrelevant, as is what anyone in Texas thinks of him. You don't know. I don't know. Only he knows. And the exact same thing can be said for every other human being alive, including John McCain.
This is why religious beliefs are irrelevant when choosing leaders. You just can't know.
Ratings on securities are paid for by their issuers. The ratings agencies therefore had, and still have, clear incentives to over-rate securities to gather as much business as possible. I contend that the models worked exactly as they were intended to work. They spit out top ratings on paper that was paying hundreds of basis points above Treasuries of comparable duration, and by doing so allowed banks to gear up 20x or more on that paper. Instant profits for everyone! This wasn't a mistake. People were simply responding to the incentives they were given: money was cheap (free, really), everyone knew the government would backstop you if you stumbled, and in the worst case you could take home a few seven-figure bonuses before it all went to shit. You'd have done the same thing, and so would I. Each of us has his own native degree of integrity, so for some it would be more conscious than others, but the incentives are what they are and everyone responds to them.
The Taiwanese insurance regulator, however, has just stated that for regulatory capital purposes it will no longer recognise most ratings on mortgaged-backed securities, particulary US agency-insured paper. People are getting wise to the ratings game: all paper can go to zero, and leverage must be employed lightly and judiciously to manage risk, regardless of the assets being purchased. Worse, ratings paid for by the sell side are inherently dubious. If you want confidence in a rating, you'll have to pay for it yourself; better still, get familiar with the instruments and their issuers and come up with your own models. Trust no one and lever lightly, and you'll be profitable forever.