The American financial sector is referred to as 'Main Street' FYI. captcha: accuracy
Investopedia says:
While Wall Street often refers to the global finance and investment community, it is often compared and contrasted to Main Street. Main Street is often used as a metonym for individual investors, small businesses, employees and the overall economy.
Don't take it personal but I'll go with Investopedia on this one.
SQL Server now runs on Linux (it can even run in Docker containers!) and this is going to make a serious dent in Oracle's market share, as many organizations have been waiting to escape the Oracle life-sucking contracts for a long time.
Wow, going from Oracle to MS SQL?
Thus demonstrating that people who make bad decisions make bad decisions, I guess.......
Ok Microsoft bashing aside, please provide information to support your comment.
Because here's the real picture:
1) SQL Server offers the same or better performance than Oracle on similar hardware 2) SQL Server does not require expert-level tuning to work 3) Oracle just recently released an exciting new feature (multiple databases per server, which requires a special license) that has been available in any other RDBMS since forever 4) Oracle somewhat recently started supporting case-insensivite compare, which has also been available in other RDBMS since forever 5) Oracle forces you to license all CPUs of all hypervisors sharing storage even if only 1 out of your 20 hypervisors actually runs Oracle software 6) Oracle SQL optimizer is not safe; it is absolutely possible to run the same SELECT query twice on a fixed data set and get two different results, something that will never happen with SQL Server where a poorly written query will at worst run slowly 7) Detaching and attaching databases has been supported in SQL Server for more than a decade and is yet another "innovation" from recent versions of Oracle 8) With SQL Server (or any other decent RDBMS) you don't have to use a dummy table (dual) when you want to run a query that doesn't target actual tables (for instance if you have to join on a clause made up entirely of parameters) 9) Oracle schemas are still linked to database users, which is beyond retarded
I could go on for hours because I've worked with SQL Server, Postgresql, Oracle and MySql for almost two decades and Oracle is the worst of them all. It's a clunky, slow, capricious, unreliable overpriced piece of shit that totally doesn't live up to the corporate hype it's been enjoying for 20 years, and every single person I've met that said Oracle was better than the competition either didn't have to deal with it directly or had never any exposure to anything else.
In a nutshell: - SQL Server is a pleasure to work with and is very forgiving for people who write suboptimal queries; the key issue was that you needed Windows Server and it's no longer the case - Postgresql is the most advanced database with awesome features like table inheritance or array data types - MySQL is unreliable but until the rise of NoSQL it was the fastest thing one could get on insanely high-volume servers - Oracle sucks and Oracle employees, from sales reps up to the CEO, are common thieves
The likes of Microsoft, IBM, Google, and more publish amazing research every week. Apple rolls in with one fucking paper and the tech blogs are all covering it like breathless teenagers. Sometimes I really hate my industry.
True that. On IBM Bluemix you can get face detection and train Watson for image classification, and it's free for up to 250 images per day (after that it's about $0.01 per 5 images).
IBM is not only years ahead of Apple on this, they already commoditized visual recognition and they're making money with it.
And if Apple did the same thing, you'd be the first to call them Greedy.
Why exactly would this discriminator be more authoritative than the original neural net?
The goal is not image detection but rather improving the way computers can generate fake images that could be used to train other computers to recognize objects in images. Basically they want to generate images on-the-fly that are convincing enough to be used in machine learning, that way they can crank up the volume and velocity of training sets without having to deal with the constant issue of managing a gigantic image inventory.
That's why they use two neural nets: one provides images and the other one tries to guess if they're fake or not, that way they can adjust algorithms and whatnot until the second neural net can't tell real from fake images.
The likes of Microsoft, IBM, Google, and more publish amazing research every week. Apple rolls in with one fucking paper and the tech blogs are all covering it like breathless teenagers. Sometimes I really hate my industry.
True that. On IBM Bluemix you can get face detection and train Watson for image classification, and it's free for up to 250 images per day (after that it's about $0.01 per 5 images).
IBM is not only years ahead of Apple on this, they already commoditized visual recognition and they're making money with it.
Microsoft's high market valuation is solely the result of having issued billions of shares of stock.
That's not how it works. If anything, the more stock you sell the lower the price goes. That's why investors love when a company has a good buyback program.
This said, as a normal investor there are two typical ways to make money in the stock market.
1) buy low, sell high 2) hold a position and reap dividends
Assuming an investment made a year ago:
For scenario 1: -> return on Apple stock: 10% -> return on Microsoft stock: 13% -> return on IBM stock: 20% -> return on JC Penney stock: 47%
For scenario 2: -> dividends on Apple stock: 2% -> dividends on Microsoft stock: 2.5% -> dividends on IBM stock: 3.2% -> dividends on JC Penney stock: 0%
Now I'm pretty sure that's not what most people would have expected. But most people don't hold on stock for a long time nowadays, they tend to speculate and over time they lose their shirt because by the time the hype/panic reaches the normal investors, it's already too late. There's nothing wrong with speculation but it's closer to gambling than investment.
Do those figures consider the enormous amount of stock Tim and Satya were gifted?
Yes. Tim Cook actual salary is around 1.7 millions. Many executive at Apple made more money than him this year but his existing stock options are worth a lot if Apple stock doesn't take a huge dive (which I predict it will within a year or two).
Amazingly at this point in time Marissa Mayer has been paid more to run Yahoo than Tim Cook has been paid to run Apple. She will also bank 100 millions from the last phase of her destruction of Yahoo while Tim Cook will only get his 300 millions in stock options if he manages to stay in charge for another year.
People who believe that the biggest crooks work on Wall Street need to think again. Marissa Mayer is making more money than the JP Morgan CEO.
IBM has converted way more American jobs into offshore ones than Apple has.
First, that comparison makes no sense because Apple doesn't have a professional service division, which is the one that for the most part got outsourced at IBM. Also Apple could hardly convert American jobs into offshore ones since the bulk of their operations is *already* handled by Chinese cheap labor.
But that's besides the point. IBM basically invented professional services and IT outsourcing; they did that at a time when it was economically viable, and now that offshore firms are eating away at this market they're moving on. From a strategic perspective it makes sense; skilled labor is dirt cheap and it's now the norm, not the exception, for a large company to use offshore IT workers via one of the big European slave runners (E&Y, Deloitte, PwC, Cap Gemini, etc). Profit margin is gone, it's now a volume game and that's usually the moment IBM walks away from a business segment.
IBM is not cool and not sexy but they're a sound business that consistently adapts to new market conditions. I'd rather drink a tall glass of bleach than work for them, but they're definitely a blue chip stock. Just in 2016 for ytd return they're over 20%, while Apple (10%) is below S&P 500 (13%).
They are trying to prove them wrong, they are not working on fixing the battery issues. Within a few days we will all learn on Slashdot that Consumer Reports was doing it wrong.
And you know this, how?
Didn't you read that part in the summary where it says "Apple's VP of Marketing has since addressed the report"?
They did not send a crack team of engineer to review the devices or to assess the issue, they had their marketing guy say that the results don't match their in-house tests.
Your number are wrong, and they are also suspicious because unless you got some amazing insider network it's not possible to have numbers for 2016 as the last quarter ends in 5 days and none of those companies have released them yet.
Also Windows 10 is just starting its money-making phase in the enterprise. Over the next year or two this will be a highly profitable segment for Microsoft. At the same time, SQL Server now runs on Linux (it can even run in Docker containers!) and this is going to make a serious dent in Oracle's market share, as many organizations have been waiting to escape the Oracle life-sucking contracts for a long time.
neither Microsoft or Apple executives are insanely paid. Last year Tim Cook made 10 millions, which is 3x less than the CEO of Discovery channel. I am not kidding.
Funny part is that the CEO of LinkedIn makes more than twice the salary of Satya Nadella. That must make for interesting lunch meetings (oh no Satya, let me get the bill...).
The whole Safeway/Haggen thing is a fantastic tale of corporate greed and dishonesty; something one would expect from Big Oil or Big Tobacco but not from the place where one buys their Corn Flakes and ground beef (extra lean).
The Haggen people though they had found a good deal, but apparently when it comes down to grocery store mergers it's just like backroom poker games - if you don't know who's the mark it means you're it.
MicroShaft is no more valuable today than it was ten years ago. I would argue that it is worth A LOT LESS.
Wrong. Microsoft has made vastly more profit in the last 10 years than before. And if you look at their revenue, they experienced an almost linear growth since 1995, going from 6 to 95 billions. They also have posted a profit every year since 1985, unlike Apple for instance who started making more money than Microsoft only in 2010.
By any standard, Microsoft is more valuable now than 10 years ago (which happens to be more or less the last period when calling them "MicroShaft" was somewhat clever).
Why are you trying to put a politically-driven spin on this?
I posted 3 sentences, none of which include anything remotely political. I understand that cognitive dissonance can lead to flawed logic but really pal you're either a lame troll or you're getting into tinfoil hat territory real fast.
Over the last 3 years, Apple has spent 87 billions on buyback and about 16 billions on R&D. During the same time, IBM has spent 28 billions on buyback and 14 billions on R&D. And Apple has twice IBM revenue.
Consumer Reports has recommended the Macbooks for years. And until now you apparently had no worries about their testing methodology. Isn't that an interesting coincidence?
Nobody can save Apple. They have 16,000 software engineers and they keep releasing the same 3-4 buggy products with little or no innovation. What are all those people doing all day? Moving buttons around in iTunes? It's like a DMV of epic proportions. Entitlement, bureaucracy and total lack of accountability.
IBM. I'm sure they have some lurking submarine that covers what both Apple and Nokia are doing.
IBM will outlive both companies. They are not sexy, but they spend a fortune on R&D and they don't chase yesterday's trends. They reinvented themselves a few times over the decades, their problems of late is nothing they can't handle.
They are trying to prove them wrong, they are not working on fixing the battery issues. Within a few days we will all learn on Slashdot that Consumer Reports was doing it wrong.
In this quote, replace "Flynn" with "Jack Bauer" or "Carrie Mathison" and tell me it truly sounds like incompetence.
Those are _fictional_ characters. You know "fiction"? Where contrived situations and railroad plots let the viewers play out juvenile power fantasies? I mean, I like an action movie/show as much as the next person, but I also realize when I'm watching them that I'm suspending disbelief just as much as when I'm watching a fantasy movie/show like _The Lord of the Rings_ or _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. In the real world, without the contrived plot, and the superhuman powers (let's face it, pretty much all action heroes like Jack Bauer have superhuman powers such as super strength, speed, reflexes, fighting ability, deductive powers, damage resistance, ability to curve bullets around themselves so that they don't get killed by bullets, ability to torture people and actually get useful information, etc.) action heroes are just incompetent assholes who get people killed. Just picture all those action hero cops who turn in their badges to go after the bad guy, but, in the real world, they _don't_ get there in the nick of time and save the day heroically.
Making real world decisions based on fictional characters is crazy. The really sad thing is that people like you who can't tell fantasy from reality are probably a large part of why Trump is President elect right now. Too many people believed that he actually is his fictional character from TV.
Slashdot Mirror
You said:
The American financial sector is referred to as 'Main Street' FYI.
captcha: accuracy
Investopedia says:
While Wall Street often refers to the global finance and investment community, it is often compared and contrasted to Main Street. Main Street is often used as a metonym for individual investors, small businesses, employees and the overall economy.
Don't take it personal but I'll go with Investopedia on this one.
You might be surprised but most investors do hold on stock for a long time.
And you know that how? Please provide a link, I've tried to find that kind of metric for a long time.
SQL Server now runs on Linux (it can even run in Docker containers!) and this is going to make a serious dent in Oracle's market share, as many organizations have been waiting to escape the Oracle life-sucking contracts for a long time.
Wow, going from Oracle to MS SQL?
Thus demonstrating that people who make bad decisions make bad decisions, I guess.......
Ok Microsoft bashing aside, please provide information to support your comment.
Because here's the real picture:
1) SQL Server offers the same or better performance than Oracle on similar hardware
2) SQL Server does not require expert-level tuning to work
3) Oracle just recently released an exciting new feature (multiple databases per server, which requires a special license) that has been available in any other RDBMS since forever
4) Oracle somewhat recently started supporting case-insensivite compare, which has also been available in other RDBMS since forever
5) Oracle forces you to license all CPUs of all hypervisors sharing storage even if only 1 out of your 20 hypervisors actually runs Oracle software
6) Oracle SQL optimizer is not safe; it is absolutely possible to run the same SELECT query twice on a fixed data set and get two different results, something that will never happen with SQL Server where a poorly written query will at worst run slowly
7) Detaching and attaching databases has been supported in SQL Server for more than a decade and is yet another "innovation" from recent versions of Oracle
8) With SQL Server (or any other decent RDBMS) you don't have to use a dummy table (dual) when you want to run a query that doesn't target actual tables (for instance if you have to join on a clause made up entirely of parameters)
9) Oracle schemas are still linked to database users, which is beyond retarded
I could go on for hours because I've worked with SQL Server, Postgresql, Oracle and MySql for almost two decades and Oracle is the worst of them all. It's a clunky, slow, capricious, unreliable overpriced piece of shit that totally doesn't live up to the corporate hype it's been enjoying for 20 years, and every single person I've met that said Oracle was better than the competition either didn't have to deal with it directly or had never any exposure to anything else.
In a nutshell:
- SQL Server is a pleasure to work with and is very forgiving for people who write suboptimal queries; the key issue was that you needed Windows Server and it's no longer the case
- Postgresql is the most advanced database with awesome features like table inheritance or array data types
- MySQL is unreliable but until the rise of NoSQL it was the fastest thing one could get on insanely high-volume servers
- Oracle sucks and Oracle employees, from sales reps up to the CEO, are common thieves
Your username is the equivalent of a teenage girl putting posters of a boys band on her wall, except you're stuck with it
The likes of Microsoft, IBM, Google, and more publish amazing research every week. Apple rolls in with one fucking paper and the tech blogs are all covering it like breathless teenagers. Sometimes I really hate my industry.
True that. On IBM Bluemix you can get face detection and train Watson for image classification, and it's free for up to 250 images per day (after that it's about $0.01 per 5 images).
IBM is not only years ahead of Apple on this, they already commoditized visual recognition and they're making money with it.
And if Apple did the same thing, you'd be the first to call them Greedy.
No.
Why exactly would this discriminator be more authoritative than the original neural net?
The goal is not image detection but rather improving the way computers can generate fake images that could be used to train other computers to recognize objects in images. Basically they want to generate images on-the-fly that are convincing enough to be used in machine learning, that way they can crank up the volume and velocity of training sets without having to deal with the constant issue of managing a gigantic image inventory.
That's why they use two neural nets: one provides images and the other one tries to guess if they're fake or not, that way they can adjust algorithms and whatnot until the second neural net can't tell real from fake images.
The likes of Microsoft, IBM, Google, and more publish amazing research every week. Apple rolls in with one fucking paper and the tech blogs are all covering it like breathless teenagers. Sometimes I really hate my industry.
True that. On IBM Bluemix you can get face detection and train Watson for image classification, and it's free for up to 250 images per day (after that it's about $0.01 per 5 images).
IBM is not only years ahead of Apple on this, they already commoditized visual recognition and they're making money with it.
Microsoft's high market valuation is solely the result of having issued billions of shares of stock.
That's not how it works. If anything, the more stock you sell the lower the price goes. That's why investors love when a company has a good buyback program.
This said, as a normal investor there are two typical ways to make money in the stock market.
1) buy low, sell high
2) hold a position and reap dividends
Assuming an investment made a year ago:
For scenario 1:
-> return on Apple stock: 10%
-> return on Microsoft stock: 13%
-> return on IBM stock: 20%
-> return on JC Penney stock: 47%
For scenario 2:
-> dividends on Apple stock: 2%
-> dividends on Microsoft stock: 2.5%
-> dividends on IBM stock: 3.2%
-> dividends on JC Penney stock: 0%
Now I'm pretty sure that's not what most people would have expected. But most people don't hold on stock for a long time nowadays, they tend to speculate and over time they lose their shirt because by the time the hype/panic reaches the normal investors, it's already too late. There's nothing wrong with speculation but it's closer to gambling than investment.
Do those figures consider the enormous amount of stock Tim and Satya were gifted?
Yes. Tim Cook actual salary is around 1.7 millions. Many executive at Apple made more money than him this year but his existing stock options are worth a lot if Apple stock doesn't take a huge dive (which I predict it will within a year or two).
Amazingly at this point in time Marissa Mayer has been paid more to run Yahoo than Tim Cook has been paid to run Apple. She will also bank 100 millions from the last phase of her destruction of Yahoo while Tim Cook will only get his 300 millions in stock options if he manages to stay in charge for another year.
People who believe that the biggest crooks work on Wall Street need to think again. Marissa Mayer is making more money than the JP Morgan CEO.
IBM has converted way more American jobs into offshore ones than Apple has.
First, that comparison makes no sense because Apple doesn't have a professional service division, which is the one that for the most part got outsourced at IBM. Also Apple could hardly convert American jobs into offshore ones since the bulk of their operations is *already* handled by Chinese cheap labor.
But that's besides the point. IBM basically invented professional services and IT outsourcing; they did that at a time when it was economically viable, and now that offshore firms are eating away at this market they're moving on. From a strategic perspective it makes sense; skilled labor is dirt cheap and it's now the norm, not the exception, for a large company to use offshore IT workers via one of the big European slave runners (E&Y, Deloitte, PwC, Cap Gemini, etc). Profit margin is gone, it's now a volume game and that's usually the moment IBM walks away from a business segment.
IBM is not cool and not sexy but they're a sound business that consistently adapts to new market conditions. I'd rather drink a tall glass of bleach than work for them, but they're definitely a blue chip stock. Just in 2016 for ytd return they're over 20%, while Apple (10%) is below S&P 500 (13%).
They are trying to prove them wrong, they are not working on fixing the battery issues. Within a few days we will all learn on Slashdot that Consumer Reports was doing it wrong.
And you know this, how?
Didn't you read that part in the summary where it says "Apple's VP of Marketing has since addressed the report"?
They did not send a crack team of engineer to review the devices or to assess the issue, they had their marketing guy say that the results don't match their in-house tests.
Your number are wrong, and they are also suspicious because unless you got some amazing insider network it's not possible to have numbers for 2016 as the last quarter ends in 5 days and none of those companies have released them yet.
Also Windows 10 is just starting its money-making phase in the enterprise. Over the next year or two this will be a highly profitable segment for Microsoft. At the same time, SQL Server now runs on Linux (it can even run in Docker containers!) and this is going to make a serious dent in Oracle's market share, as many organizations have been waiting to escape the Oracle life-sucking contracts for a long time.
Or stock market shill.
Yeah, what a total stock market shill, he comes here and promotes stocks as opposed to bonds or other forms of financial instruments. Shame on him!
Also: I don't think you know what shill means.
neither Microsoft or Apple executives are insanely paid. Last year Tim Cook made 10 millions, which is 3x less than the CEO of Discovery channel. I am not kidding.
Funny part is that the CEO of LinkedIn makes more than twice the salary of Satya Nadella. That must make for interesting lunch meetings (oh no Satya, let me get the bill...).
The whole Safeway/Haggen thing is a fantastic tale of corporate greed and dishonesty; something one would expect from Big Oil or Big Tobacco but not from the place where one buys their Corn Flakes and ground beef (extra lean).
The Haggen people though they had found a good deal, but apparently when it comes down to grocery store mergers it's just like backroom poker games - if you don't know who's the mark it means you're it.
MicroShaft is no more valuable today than it was ten years ago. I would argue that it is worth A LOT LESS.
Wrong. Microsoft has made vastly more profit in the last 10 years than before. And if you look at their revenue, they experienced an almost linear growth since 1995, going from 6 to 95 billions. They also have posted a profit every year since 1985, unlike Apple for instance who started making more money than Microsoft only in 2010.
By any standard, Microsoft is more valuable now than 10 years ago (which happens to be more or less the last period when calling them "MicroShaft" was somewhat clever).
Why are you trying to put a politically-driven spin on this?
I posted 3 sentences, none of which include anything remotely political. I understand that cognitive dissonance can lead to flawed logic but really pal you're either a lame troll or you're getting into tinfoil hat territory real fast.
Over the last 3 years, Apple has spent 87 billions on buyback and about 16 billions on R&D. During the same time, IBM has spent 28 billions on buyback and 14 billions on R&D. And Apple has twice IBM revenue.
Consumer Reports has recommended the Macbooks for years. And until now you apparently had no worries about their testing methodology. Isn't that an interesting coincidence?
Nobody can save Apple. They have 16,000 software engineers and they keep releasing the same 3-4 buggy products with little or no innovation. What are all those people doing all day? Moving buttons around in iTunes? It's like a DMV of epic proportions. Entitlement, bureaucracy and total lack of accountability.
Are you trying to be smug by association?
IBM. I'm sure they have some lurking submarine that covers what both Apple and Nokia are doing.
IBM will outlive both companies. They are not sexy, but they spend a fortune on R&D and they don't chase yesterday's trends. They reinvented themselves a few times over the decades, their problems of late is nothing they can't handle.
They are trying to prove them wrong, they are not working on fixing the battery issues. Within a few days we will all learn on Slashdot that Consumer Reports was doing it wrong.
In this quote, replace "Flynn" with "Jack Bauer" or "Carrie Mathison" and tell me it truly sounds like incompetence.
Those are _fictional_ characters. You know "fiction"? Where contrived situations and railroad plots let the viewers play out juvenile power fantasies? I mean, I like an action movie/show as much as the next person, but I also realize when I'm watching them that I'm suspending disbelief just as much as when I'm watching a fantasy movie/show like _The Lord of the Rings_ or _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. In the real world, without the contrived plot, and the superhuman powers (let's face it, pretty much all action heroes like Jack Bauer have superhuman powers such as super strength, speed, reflexes, fighting ability, deductive powers, damage resistance, ability to curve bullets around themselves so that they don't get killed by bullets, ability to torture people and actually get useful information, etc.) action heroes are just incompetent assholes who get people killed. Just picture all those action hero cops who turn in their badges to go after the bad guy, but, in the real world, they _don't_ get there in the nick of time and save the day heroically.
Making real world decisions based on fictional characters is crazy. The really sad thing is that people like you who can't tell fantasy from reality are probably a large part of why Trump is President elect right now. Too many people believed that he actually is his fictional character from TV.
Ah man, I'm getting tired of aspies.