Simplistic. You figure out what the factory costs to run per day, how many items you can make (assumes demand) and amortize the fixed costs of the factory to each item. Then you add variable costs of production, other overhead and you necessary level of profit to get a price. Of course set the price too high demand will decrease (unless it is oil and even that seems to have reached a level where price elasticity comes into play).
Running the factory at a higher volume lowers the fixed cost component per item (allowing lower price or more margin) but the are other variable costs that may go up (labor costs, maintenance, energy costs) and offset the decreased fixed costs so it's not as simple as you make it out to be. Cost Accounting was one of my least enjoyable MBA courses. In reality all these things change constantly. But as a rule fixed costs are much lower than variable costs and thus not the driver in pricing or profit.
And you realize all the overhead this created? It's why we needed dual core 3GHz 64 bit processors. C code, properly written is very tight and fast. Too many layers complicates the issue and introduces more chances of error. If you are looking inside Unix you'll find out the OS is written in C (and some assembler). You can have a GUI/Windows and still have C code..it's called X/MOTIF and has been around a long time, works well and is very fast. I'm pretty sure the current Linux GUIs owe a lot to to Motif.
I did some work back in the early 80's where I wrote a benchmarking algorithm in C then used gcc to generate intermediate code then ran the intermediate code thru another tool to produce binaries for X86, 68K and PowerPC architectures. It all ran under VxWorks for an OS so I didn't need an emulator and it wasn't on the bare hardware either. Pretty nifty stuff at the time, we had DoD funding to look at the performance of commercial chips versus the 1750 processor and C versus Ada. IIRC, a lot of this work helped baseline the processor and language choices for the JSF avionics suite. Stuff we got now runs rings around this.
over-rated and incomplete..I'd mod you down.
Fusion is limitless energy and it's renewable as long as we have water (i.e. clouds, rain, oceans, rivers, lakes). Biofuels are renewable but not 100% as you lose some to seed. Just use all your cropland on biofuels and people starve so you have less population! Population problem solved!
PC and population growth in the USA? Abortion is legal, birth control is practiced and family size is smaller. A lot of people will disagree with expanding by immigration being the best route, and it's certainly NOT an official policy. We have more illegal immigrants than legal immigrants!
Go play the old computer game where you are the Pharoh and have limited resources to keep your nation happy and growing. That will give you some insights into how hard it is to balance everything.
If you don't have the support of the CEO and CFO you might as well quit. If they are realistic reasonable managers and give you the freedom to run the IT as it needs to be run then maybe you can be successful but you'll need to find a way to deal with the issues I outlined. If I told you exactly how to do it I would be stupid as there is more than one way. If you somehow deliver the results the bar just gets raised higher until you can't meet it. CIOs are the newest member of the C-club and IMHO don't get the respect they deserve. It's very much like the rest of IT, if you screw or don't play the politics there is always someone else out there that will, and maybe for less money.
MS isn't the ticket to punch, MBA is and I found my MBA from a top20 school to be very easy. Easier by far than my undergrad CS degree!!
The BS they have to take is from the CEO who wants them to increase profits and stock price via technology and the CFO who wants them to do it for nothing, the IT Manager who can't run a effective operation because he has either no real skills or no vision or if he has those he has no budget. Dealing with Vendors is also a big PITA, as buying equipment or signing a services contract means you have to deal with the company legal team (lawyers). And dealing with HR to write job descriptions and find good people. Some of this you can delegate but not always.
When you can't get the results the CEO wants with the budget the CFO gave you in the time they unrealitically expect you get fired. If you were smart you have a nice severance written into your contract, if not you went from 200K to Zero overnight.
Hmmm..maybe I should be buying up old landfills and then selling them to someone to dig up and recycle the crap thrown away 25 yrs ago that didn't decay. Plastics and Metal mines from Landfills may be the next "gold mine" to invest in.
ETHANOL..Alcol is made from sugar cane which Brazil has plenty of due to climate. Ethanol from Sugar Cane is much cheaper to produce than the corn-based version made in the USA. The only reason Ethanol is "popular" in the USA is the farming lobby and the enviro-radicals. Using corn for ethaonol production is driving the price of food for animals higher thus driving food prices higher. By the time you calculate the energy needed to grow the corn (which needs high nitrogen fertlizer, fungicides and pesticides made from petrochemicals) and refine it into ethanol is is enegy NEGATIVE. We'd be wiser to import it from Brazil. Also, due to demand for corn for Ethanol animal growers have switched to other grains driving those prices up and the surplus which we used to export or give away to starving countries has dissapeared. It's a very bad cycle to be in but unless we get smart and start producing more oil domestically, or start burning coal in our cars we are heading for a crash and burn energy wise in 20 yrs.
I've got 25 yrs experience, and I've been everything from a develop to manager, project manager of 50 ppl and I've gone BACK to tech as an IT Architect/Consultant for one of the three letter Big IT firms. I make close to 150K and I'm in the Southwest. I wouldn't take the crap a CIO has to take for the money they get paid if your data is accurate. I DO have an MBA but I'm pretty sure I didn't take the BS101 class.
They get fired alright, the average life span of a CIO is 18-24 months. Bonuses and parachutes are common, you got that right. It's nothing to see them come in screw it up for 2 yrs, get fired, leave with 6 or 7 figure "severance" and the next guy (and the development teams) get left cleaning up the mess for another couple years.
To sit for the PMP it takes several years of actual experience running projects and quite a bit of expensive classwork as well. The PMI publishes the requirements. IMHO, The MBA is a better idea, unless you want a Top20 school you can get one fairly cheap. In the 3 yrs you work on your MBA you can work up from an entry level job then the MBA will help getting Management work which qualifies you for taking the PMP exam. Being a Systems Architect I have seen SOOO many "Junior PMs" screw up a project so badly and so quickly by not listening to the technical team and saying YES to everything the customer wants. Play it smart, avoid the common mistakes and you can become a succesful PM and maybe move into higher management. It's not a 40 hrs/week job and it also requires good communication skills and moderate technical depth.
It was a big deal as we had a treaty with Kuwait to help, secondly they were one of the worlds top oil producers (don't get on your Haliburton, Cheny, Bush horse) and WORLDWIDE supply could have been affected by Saddam. I don't think anyone wanted to see that..recall it was a COALITION that went to liberate Kuwait and protect Saudi..it was not just the USA. Protecting Saudi was part of the plan but it wasn't the ONLY thing. I think if you re-read Schwartzkopf's book you'll see he knew that. And remember this was the guy who wanted to go all the way to deposing Saddam in the First Gulf War. Would things have worked out any different then than they did 10 yrs later?
We finance damn near everything with fake (deficeit) dollars, the War is no different than anything else. The War in Iraq (first or second) has NOTHING to do with the credit cruch, housing downturn, etc. Bush actually CUT Taxes so your ideas have no basis in fact.
Young men sent to Iraq? WTF? The US Armed Forces are 100% VOLUNTEER!! These men and women chose the military knowing they could be over in Iraq any day.
I will agree that buying it all from China is a bad thing. Blame Wal-Mart but they will say that is what the consumer wants so we only have ourselves to blame, NOT, repeat NOT George Bush.
Osama is that you? We've been looking for you, we have a packge we have been trying to deliver. Amazing that they have Internet in the caves these days.
How anyone could call the regime of Saddam peaceful is just nonsense. You young liberals don't seem to remember that he invaded Kuwait, gassed his own people, was stealing the "Oil for Food" program money, was hiding military assets in schools, was building a supergun, etc. Talk to some of the troops who were THERE and quit listening to they left wing (or right wing) media hype.
Don't be so hot on Powell, get some balance, he doesn't walk on water. Go read what others who served with him in the Gulf War and elsewhere have said. He has flaws. If we had left it to Powell we'd still be waiting for sanctions on Saddam to work and Kuwait would be Iraqs' 13th province. We also know very little of his politics, he's not been really outspoken with his views. It is odd that while he served in a Republican administration he would have been a top choice of Al Gore if Gore has won. I makes me wonder is he puts aside his real views in order to support which ever party offered him the best deal? I need to know more about a man "a heartbeat from the Presidency" than what I know about Colin Powell. If Colin Powell is an ideal candidate why isn't Condelezza Rice? She is just as bright, is a minority (and female), and we don't know a lot of her personal views either. If we like war heroes why not Gen. Swartxkopf? T
Your NFCG is about 10 times more competent with a PC or PC laptop than with an Apple. Most of them would be lost if you asked them to upgrade your MacBook. You can pay the NFCG now and pay extra to fix their mistakes later or you can pay Apple service now.
More like a cartel (think OPEC but with patents instead of oil). It's probably against the law as it really is anti-competitive and an attempt to control the market via collusion of several firms. IIRC, RICO applies to a criminal enterprise and anti-trust is a civil charge. However, the creative evil geniuses in their employ (aka lawyers) may have found a way around the legal issues by setting this up as a seperate company that has "investors" and for thier investments the "investors" get first and cheap rights to any intellectual property the firm owns. Now that WSJ has outed them we may see some interesting blowback, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are other attempts made to implment this idea in other industries. For example what if GM +Ford + Chyrsler bought all the new patents for things automotive and held other car makers "hostage", would that be OK?
You made my point. Obama gives Iran all of Iraq so they won't a) spike to price of oil b) get into something with Israel or c) consider stopping the Uranium enrichment and bomb making or d) quit sponoring Al Queda. After all he has no "preconditions" about the Iranians.
Obama owes his political existance to the lobbies and power brokers in Chicago and of the Democratic Party. He may SAY he'll get rid of them if he thinks it'll win your vote but he won't, he can't, they own him. As for housecleaning, the Democrats should get rid of the Socialists, Envrio-Radicals, and Hollywood liberals if they want to clean up their party. Sad fact of politics is that NEITHER party is really in touch with the general populace.
PEOPLE hold office not political parties. If you are concerned that McCain is "too Republican" you are wrong, if anything he is a more Independant than commited to the party line but you can't win a General Election as an Independant.
Foreign Policy would be a disaster under Obama and his people, Israel would be gone, Iran would over-run Iraq and we'd have an Islamic-Fascist Middle East. You cannot negotiate with people like the President of Iran. History tells us that, go look up Neville Chamberlain and his deal with Nazi Germany. And that would drive oil prices incredibly higher. So, Obama is NOT the savior people think he is. Plus he stands for higher taxes, MORE Government, less free-trade, more social programs and is also anti-defense. So we'll be poorer from higher taxes, high energy prices and less secure but the Government will give us something to make it up to us. When people really understand what he is (Hillary was soft on him as she is really a lot like him) they'll either not vote or vote or the other party.
Not if you retain a buyers agent and set it up right. In that case the buyer pays the agent a fee on his side (which raises buyer closing costs) and the seller pays on thier side (which lower thier net). Like with lawyers the only winners are the listing agency (and maybe the agents).
You are splitting hairs, the seller gets cash minus X% commission. If the seller wants a higher net they add X% commission to the price they want and ask that new number, THEN the buyer really is funding it without knowing it. But the buyer can always offer less. It's all about what you negotiate not what the standard practice is. Having actually had the traning to be an Agent I'd never agree to a standard contract, it's never in the favor of anyone but the agency.
Didn't know that. Good for them! Having just had my CC# stolen twice in the last six months from sites I thought were secure I'd love to see someone crack the whip on those who have lax security.
I didn't say he was anything. I was reacting to those who said he should have no trouble finding an IT Security job. I didn't question the premise of the employee's Job Title or not only the conclusion derived from it. I suggest your work on your LOGIC skills a little harder, your English seems fine.
You must also be new here, it's common on/. to react without reading the full story. Get used to it. RTFA is not common.
This country where I live (USA) is in pretty good shape considering the shape other countries are in. It's not perfect but it's better than most.
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Simplistic. You figure out what the factory costs to run per day, how many items you can make (assumes demand) and amortize the fixed costs of the factory to each item. Then you add variable costs of production, other overhead and you necessary level of profit to get a price. Of course set the price too high demand will decrease (unless it is oil and even that seems to have reached a level where price elasticity comes into play). Running the factory at a higher volume lowers the fixed cost component per item (allowing lower price or more margin) but the are other variable costs that may go up (labor costs, maintenance, energy costs) and offset the decreased fixed costs so it's not as simple as you make it out to be. Cost Accounting was one of my least enjoyable MBA courses. In reality all these things change constantly. But as a rule fixed costs are much lower than variable costs and thus not the driver in pricing or profit.
And you realize all the overhead this created? It's why we needed dual core 3GHz 64 bit processors. C code, properly written is very tight and fast. Too many layers complicates the issue and introduces more chances of error. If you are looking inside Unix you'll find out the OS is written in C (and some assembler). You can have a GUI/Windows and still have C code..it's called X/MOTIF and has been around a long time, works well and is very fast. I'm pretty sure the current Linux GUIs owe a lot to to Motif.
I did some work back in the early 80's where I wrote a benchmarking algorithm in C then used gcc to generate intermediate code then ran the intermediate code thru another tool to produce binaries for X86, 68K and PowerPC architectures. It all ran under VxWorks for an OS so I didn't need an emulator and it wasn't on the bare hardware either. Pretty nifty stuff at the time, we had DoD funding to look at the performance of commercial chips versus the 1750 processor and C versus Ada. IIRC, a lot of this work helped baseline the processor and language choices for the JSF avionics suite. Stuff we got now runs rings around this.
over-rated and incomplete..I'd mod you down. Fusion is limitless energy and it's renewable as long as we have water (i.e. clouds, rain, oceans, rivers, lakes). Biofuels are renewable but not 100% as you lose some to seed. Just use all your cropland on biofuels and people starve so you have less population! Population problem solved! PC and population growth in the USA? Abortion is legal, birth control is practiced and family size is smaller. A lot of people will disagree with expanding by immigration being the best route, and it's certainly NOT an official policy. We have more illegal immigrants than legal immigrants! Go play the old computer game where you are the Pharoh and have limited resources to keep your nation happy and growing. That will give you some insights into how hard it is to balance everything.
If you don't have the support of the CEO and CFO you might as well quit. If they are realistic reasonable managers and give you the freedom to run the IT as it needs to be run then maybe you can be successful but you'll need to find a way to deal with the issues I outlined. If I told you exactly how to do it I would be stupid as there is more than one way. If you somehow deliver the results the bar just gets raised higher until you can't meet it. CIOs are the newest member of the C-club and IMHO don't get the respect they deserve. It's very much like the rest of IT, if you screw or don't play the politics there is always someone else out there that will, and maybe for less money.
MS isn't the ticket to punch, MBA is and I found my MBA from a top20 school to be very easy. Easier by far than my undergrad CS degree!! The BS they have to take is from the CEO who wants them to increase profits and stock price via technology and the CFO who wants them to do it for nothing, the IT Manager who can't run a effective operation because he has either no real skills or no vision or if he has those he has no budget. Dealing with Vendors is also a big PITA, as buying equipment or signing a services contract means you have to deal with the company legal team (lawyers). And dealing with HR to write job descriptions and find good people. Some of this you can delegate but not always. When you can't get the results the CEO wants with the budget the CFO gave you in the time they unrealitically expect you get fired. If you were smart you have a nice severance written into your contract, if not you went from 200K to Zero overnight.
Hmmm..maybe I should be buying up old landfills and then selling them to someone to dig up and recycle the crap thrown away 25 yrs ago that didn't decay. Plastics and Metal mines from Landfills may be the next "gold mine" to invest in.
ETHANOL..Alcol is made from sugar cane which Brazil has plenty of due to climate. Ethanol from Sugar Cane is much cheaper to produce than the corn-based version made in the USA. The only reason Ethanol is "popular" in the USA is the farming lobby and the enviro-radicals. Using corn for ethaonol production is driving the price of food for animals higher thus driving food prices higher. By the time you calculate the energy needed to grow the corn (which needs high nitrogen fertlizer, fungicides and pesticides made from petrochemicals) and refine it into ethanol is is enegy NEGATIVE. We'd be wiser to import it from Brazil. Also, due to demand for corn for Ethanol animal growers have switched to other grains driving those prices up and the surplus which we used to export or give away to starving countries has dissapeared. It's a very bad cycle to be in but unless we get smart and start producing more oil domestically, or start burning coal in our cars we are heading for a crash and burn energy wise in 20 yrs.
I've got 25 yrs experience, and I've been everything from a develop to manager, project manager of 50 ppl and I've gone BACK to tech as an IT Architect/Consultant for one of the three letter Big IT firms. I make close to 150K and I'm in the Southwest. I wouldn't take the crap a CIO has to take for the money they get paid if your data is accurate. I DO have an MBA but I'm pretty sure I didn't take the BS101 class.
They get fired alright, the average life span of a CIO is 18-24 months. Bonuses and parachutes are common, you got that right. It's nothing to see them come in screw it up for 2 yrs, get fired, leave with 6 or 7 figure "severance" and the next guy (and the development teams) get left cleaning up the mess for another couple years.
To sit for the PMP it takes several years of actual experience running projects and quite a bit of expensive classwork as well. The PMI publishes the requirements. IMHO, The MBA is a better idea, unless you want a Top20 school you can get one fairly cheap. In the 3 yrs you work on your MBA you can work up from an entry level job then the MBA will help getting Management work which qualifies you for taking the PMP exam. Being a Systems Architect I have seen SOOO many "Junior PMs" screw up a project so badly and so quickly by not listening to the technical team and saying YES to everything the customer wants. Play it smart, avoid the common mistakes and you can become a succesful PM and maybe move into higher management. It's not a 40 hrs/week job and it also requires good communication skills and moderate technical depth.
It was a big deal as we had a treaty with Kuwait to help, secondly they were one of the worlds top oil producers (don't get on your Haliburton, Cheny, Bush horse) and WORLDWIDE supply could have been affected by Saddam. I don't think anyone wanted to see that..recall it was a COALITION that went to liberate Kuwait and protect Saudi..it was not just the USA. Protecting Saudi was part of the plan but it wasn't the ONLY thing. I think if you re-read Schwartzkopf's book you'll see he knew that. And remember this was the guy who wanted to go all the way to deposing Saddam in the First Gulf War. Would things have worked out any different then than they did 10 yrs later?
We finance damn near everything with fake (deficeit) dollars, the War is no different than anything else. The War in Iraq (first or second) has NOTHING to do with the credit cruch, housing downturn, etc. Bush actually CUT Taxes so your ideas have no basis in fact. Young men sent to Iraq? WTF? The US Armed Forces are 100% VOLUNTEER!! These men and women chose the military knowing they could be over in Iraq any day. I will agree that buying it all from China is a bad thing. Blame Wal-Mart but they will say that is what the consumer wants so we only have ourselves to blame, NOT, repeat NOT George Bush.
Osama is that you? We've been looking for you, we have a packge we have been trying to deliver. Amazing that they have Internet in the caves these days. How anyone could call the regime of Saddam peaceful is just nonsense. You young liberals don't seem to remember that he invaded Kuwait, gassed his own people, was stealing the "Oil for Food" program money, was hiding military assets in schools, was building a supergun, etc. Talk to some of the troops who were THERE and quit listening to they left wing (or right wing) media hype.
Don't be so hot on Powell, get some balance, he doesn't walk on water. Go read what others who served with him in the Gulf War and elsewhere have said. He has flaws. If we had left it to Powell we'd still be waiting for sanctions on Saddam to work and Kuwait would be Iraqs' 13th province. We also know very little of his politics, he's not been really outspoken with his views. It is odd that while he served in a Republican administration he would have been a top choice of Al Gore if Gore has won. I makes me wonder is he puts aside his real views in order to support which ever party offered him the best deal? I need to know more about a man "a heartbeat from the Presidency" than what I know about Colin Powell. If Colin Powell is an ideal candidate why isn't Condelezza Rice? She is just as bright, is a minority (and female), and we don't know a lot of her personal views either. If we like war heroes why not Gen. Swartxkopf? T
Your NFCG is about 10 times more competent with a PC or PC laptop than with an Apple. Most of them would be lost if you asked them to upgrade your MacBook. You can pay the NFCG now and pay extra to fix their mistakes later or you can pay Apple service now.
More like a cartel (think OPEC but with patents instead of oil). It's probably against the law as it really is anti-competitive and an attempt to control the market via collusion of several firms. IIRC, RICO applies to a criminal enterprise and anti-trust is a civil charge. However, the creative evil geniuses in their employ (aka lawyers) may have found a way around the legal issues by setting this up as a seperate company that has "investors" and for thier investments the "investors" get first and cheap rights to any intellectual property the firm owns. Now that WSJ has outed them we may see some interesting blowback, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are other attempts made to implment this idea in other industries. For example what if GM +Ford + Chyrsler bought all the new patents for things automotive and held other car makers "hostage", would that be OK?
You made my point. Obama gives Iran all of Iraq so they won't a) spike to price of oil b) get into something with Israel or c) consider stopping the Uranium enrichment and bomb making or d) quit sponoring Al Queda. After all he has no "preconditions" about the Iranians.
If you don't understand then I'm not going to explain it to you as you don't have the intellect to grasp thes situation.
Obama owes his political existance to the lobbies and power brokers in Chicago and of the Democratic Party. He may SAY he'll get rid of them if he thinks it'll win your vote but he won't, he can't, they own him. As for housecleaning, the Democrats should get rid of the Socialists, Envrio-Radicals, and Hollywood liberals if they want to clean up their party. Sad fact of politics is that NEITHER party is really in touch with the general populace.
PEOPLE hold office not political parties. If you are concerned that McCain is "too Republican" you are wrong, if anything he is a more Independant than commited to the party line but you can't win a General Election as an Independant.
Foreign Policy would be a disaster under Obama and his people, Israel would be gone, Iran would over-run Iraq and we'd have an Islamic-Fascist Middle East. You cannot negotiate with people like the President of Iran. History tells us that, go look up Neville Chamberlain and his deal with Nazi Germany. And that would drive oil prices incredibly higher. So, Obama is NOT the savior people think he is. Plus he stands for higher taxes, MORE Government, less free-trade, more social programs and is also anti-defense. So we'll be poorer from higher taxes, high energy prices and less secure but the Government will give us something to make it up to us. When people really understand what he is (Hillary was soft on him as she is really a lot like him) they'll either not vote or vote or the other party.
Not if you retain a buyers agent and set it up right. In that case the buyer pays the agent a fee on his side (which raises buyer closing costs) and the seller pays on thier side (which lower thier net). Like with lawyers the only winners are the listing agency (and maybe the agents). You are splitting hairs, the seller gets cash minus X% commission. If the seller wants a higher net they add X% commission to the price they want and ask that new number, THEN the buyer really is funding it without knowing it. But the buyer can always offer less. It's all about what you negotiate not what the standard practice is. Having actually had the traning to be an Agent I'd never agree to a standard contract, it's never in the favor of anyone but the agency.
Didn't know that. Good for them! Having just had my CC# stolen twice in the last six months from sites I thought were secure I'd love to see someone crack the whip on those who have lax security.
I didn't say he was anything. I was reacting to those who said he should have no trouble finding an IT Security job. I didn't question the premise of the employee's Job Title or not only the conclusion derived from it. I suggest your work on your LOGIC skills a little harder, your English seems fine. You must also be new here, it's common on /. to react without reading the full story. Get used to it. RTFA is not common.
This country where I live (USA) is in pretty good shape considering the shape other countries are in. It's not perfect but it's better than most.