This is exactly the sort of thing Steve Jobs was talking about in the quote about bean-counters taking over the company and loss of product focus.
Obviously you didn't read the thing Steve Jobs was talking about (or didn't retain the point he was making)... it wasn't bean-counters running the show that he found problematic, specifically it was salespeople running the show. More generally, it was non-product people running the show.
I know the zeitgeist on slashdot is to hate beancounters, but I think that's misplaced. Usually the beancounters take the bad rap among staff for decision by those made above them -- that's fine, we understand it's one of our roles (I'm speaking as a beancounter myself). But if you're going to analyze it from a higher perspective, you need to understand who is actually calling the shots -- it's rarely the beancounters (and I've yet to see any major company that isn't in bankruptcy (or near it) where finance runs the show -- it's almost always product or sales people).
Nothing of what I believe is based in religion, as I am Atheist. You can toss all of the data at me that you wish to toss. It won't change the fact that I believe...
You may be Athiest, but you say you won't change your beliefs even when they are contradicted by data...
Sounds like a faith-based belief system to me.
People have done nothing but convince themselves of their greatness over the centuries, and now that feeling of greatness is leading them to believe that they can change the entire planet by spewing out a bit more CO2 than is normally put out naturally.
You chalk it up to hubris. Tell me, have you ever spent a lot of time in a chemistry lab? Have you ever witnessed the exhaustion of a buffer system (this is basic high school chem I'm talking about)? Surely you must be aware that even a tiny change in some reactant in an equilibrium can have a major impact on the status of a system.
Because in order
for it to be a black market purchase, you must purchase something, that doesn't
exist on the regular market.
That's not true at all. Black market != market for illegal goods.
Black market means that the trade is being conducted outside the legally operating market, not that the item(s) are illegal.
Cigarettes are legal. Buying cigarettes, cash-only, tax-free off the back of a truck is a black market transaction.
Black markets capture economic activity that is "priced out" of the official market due to constraints on trade (like manufacturing quotas, taxes, legal price floors or caps, etc).
As the market he delved into was not an official market, and operated out of the purview of LE, taxing authorities, etc, it was the black market.
Lo, for the baking of the divine meal Let it be done that the goliath meatball[1] Be moved upon the table[2] At such distance that the woodfire oven[3] Provides a strong heat source to allow for the Maillard reaction To properly crustify the goliath meatball And then let it be moved To a sufficient distance, where it may Yet leave the inside full of tenderness Like the twin meatballs upon the bosom of a mother His Noodly Appendage shall make such adjustments Necessary to make it so.
Ramen
[1] the goliath meatball being our planet. [2] the table, sometimes mistranslated as "the firmament", is of course, the fabric of spacetime [3] there is some disagreement among scholars about this translation, but we know from context that this is the sun
Clearly, from analysis of scripture, we can determine that the Master of the Heavenly Forkful moves or planet into a lower or higher orbit to ensure that it cooks properly.
The saying is "cannot see the forest for the trees".
I'll not address your point except to say that I believe your opinion is not always applicable, it depends on the company, and in the long run poorly run companies will fail and be replaced.
Look at the breakdown of the primary results. Ron Paul has won among that age group in almost every state
With 70% in that age group?
Oh, and only among Republicans.
Oh wait, that's not even true... only among Republicans age 18-35 who voted in the primaries.
You've got a bad case of selection bias.
Ron Paul's popularity with the youth is self evident to anyone who's paid attention since December 2011.
His anti-popularity is also quite evident. I know many, many people age 18-35, from all parts of the political spectrum, who think his policies are dangerous, negligent, and/or idiotic.
Ron Paul is a polarizing figure because his views are extreme in comparison to the mainstream. Just because his supporters are particularly vocal does not mean that he hasp popularity among the general population (or even just the subset of Republicans aged 18-35) equivalent to his primary numbers. In particular, it needs to be noted that Ron Paul's supporters are much more likely to vote in primaries than his detractors or those ambivalent about him.
Now, the specific idea of bribing people to do business with you is certainly in effect strongly in the US today. What do you think a coupon is, anyway? How about the offer of "buy $5000 in furniture and get a free TV."
Those aren't bribes. Bribery is when you are paying a decision-maker for another entity.
Buyer "A" approaches Seller "B". In your examples, "B" gives a little extra to "A" to close the deal. There is no ethical issue here.
With bribery, you have Agent "A" for Buyer "C" approaching Seller "B". "B" gives something to "A" to close the deal. This is bribery -- the actual buyer doesn't benefit from the something extra.
While I agree with you to a great extent, I think this statement is a little bit off:
I did point out that they meet every single criterion of fascism
Most of the criteria are not boolean; the US meets all the criteria to a certain degree. In my mind, the US falls short of being a fascist state because the degree to which they meet certain criteria is not strong enough. The media, while not as free as we'd like, is not completely controlled. Labor is suppressed, but not enough to make us fascist. Religion and government are not completely intertwined, etc.
The lesson here, which I'm sure you'll agree with, is that we're not that far from slipping into fascism, if we don't remain vigilant of the possibility and actively work to prevent it.
Start with the price, subtract your expected profit, and that determines the maximum cost you can afford
Not how it works from what I've seen and studied.
The optimal price point is a function of the demand curve, your unit cost, and your fixed cost. If you price in the manner you've suggested, you're ignoring your fixed costs.
Really, this is microeconomics 101 (and pricing 101).
You never start with a cost, add some profit figure, and set the price according to that.
Right. And that's not what I wrote. I wrote that price is equal to that at which the seller's maximized profit based on the demand curve (usually at or near one of the ideal price points). You say to start with the price -- but how are you arriving at the price? Pulling it out of thin air?
If the Chinese government indeed only wanted to make renewable energy more affordable for the average Chinese person, as many say is the sole motivation, it could very well have implemented a tax rebate policy with low-income allowances for Chinese consumers (as it's typically done in the US, at least the rebate part) -- and if fearing the money drain to imported panels, they could even have made "for use on domestically made panels only" a condition for such rebates/allowances.
As an aside -- China doesn't do tax rebates for individuals, AFAIK. That kind of policy is simply alien to how they operate their tax policy, and how they implement economic policy. It's a market-based approach that makes sense to us, but doesn't fit in with Chinese policy.
That's not the real formula. camperdave had a correct formula: price = cost + profit.
You formula describes something else, and is incorrect anyway (since different people will value the good differently). If you want to correctly state your formula, you'd need a bunch of qualifiers, and it would be much wordier. I'll paraphrase is as Price = the seller's valuation of the optimal price to induce maximum profits based on the demand curve.
but the series was exceptional and certainly not drivel.
I disagree; the series was derivative and while maybe not drivel, was far from exceptional. It was lowest-common-denominator coming-of-age fantasy. The only thing exceptional about it was its wide appeal due to its far-from-novel mechanics and themes.
Sure, but that doesn't stop others from hopping on that train:
Matthew Eggers, a senior director at the Chamber, said the group "is urging policy makers to change the 'status quo' by rallying our efforts around a targeted and effective information-sharing bill that would get the support of multiple stakeholders and come equipped with ample protections for the business community."
Message: Further blur the lines between various enforcement agencies, possibly including military, for the benefit of corporations.
Somehow, I doubt we'll be able to do the same with the new Sim City -- and many other new games -- seventeen years after their release. It's a sad future for old games.
Let me adjust my tinfoil hat here... maybe that's a bonus for them.
Seriously... plenty of older games offer just-as-good, if not better, gameplay than modern reincarnations. For some subset of gamers, they're finee playing the old games, and unwilling to spend money on new games (myself included). DRM like this allows game publishers to force obsolescence.
Sure, there will be cracked versions available. But I, and others I'm sure, either eschew cracked games or have some fear or ignorance of them.
Long story short: forced obsolescence might be a motivation here for requiring always-on DRM.
There are only two reasons to hire people: they bring in more money than they cost, or they save more money than they cost.
Sure, any decision should be viewed through a cost-benefit lens. But IT isn't targeted because of managers don't understand thier business -- IT is targeted because over the past twenty years, IT costs have gotten very high for the benefit gained.
The marginal benefit from the last 10% of the IT budget is typically very small in companies that have been around for a while. Do you really need four nines on email uptime? Or just on your critical client-facing servers? Do you even need it on your client-facing servers?
It's been really rare for me to see an IT Manager who really understands that their utility to the company comes from how cheaply they can fulfill their mission.
That's the problem I have with bean counters - the inability to see the bigger integral picture.
I'm a professional bean counter. I think you're not only wrong about failing to see the bigger picture, I think you're way off on the value of IT.
IT doesn't drive product. It doesn't drive sales. It supports those functions, just as HR or Finance does. IT is not an asset... it is a cost center than maintains an asset.
Regardless of the role and scope of a team (such as IT), you set your targets for what you need and what you want, and then you try to get those things done with maximum bang for your buck. Sometimes that means reducing costs, sometimes that means increasing value -- it is management's call on how to maximize cost-benefit (which is what us bean counters help management do).
What some "big picture" guys (such as you make yourself out to be) miss is that the "big picture" is made up of little pieces, and if you want to affect the big picture, you need to affect the little pieces. The devil is in the details, and if you don't understand that, I don't think I'd want you in my org.
That's rather different than your previous contention that the problem was that "Bonch has successfully diverted the discussion at the top of the comments for regular viewers into a discussion of whether it's appropriate to editorialize when presenting news items." But keeping moving those goalposts, maybe you'll find a defensible position somewhere.
I've moved no goalposts. You're either deliberately missing my point, or you're obtuse. There is no conflict between those two statements; the second is a clarification of the first.
Insofar as it was ever a discussion of those other things, it still is -- as plenty of subthreads show. So, no, neither your first contention about how he diverted the discussion nor your second is correct.
On the first item, prima facie, the subject of discussion is the article and the content of the article. On the escond point, that was not the case at the time of my posting, especially considering the default display options for readers of Slashdot.
to the extent that action you complain about is an inappropriate diversion, so is your discussion of it.
Agreed. But once we're in navel-gazing mode, might as well sort out what's really in there.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 1
The idea of being taxed on options offends me greatly. I was given a bunch of options when I went to work at a big company in early 2000. Guess what happened to those options? They were worthless in a year.
You accepted a form of compensation with a significant level of risk attached to it. Your choice.
Stock options do have value, as evidenced by the willingness of banks to accept them as collateral. While future value of the options is uncertain, there is a present value.
By taking a loan against the options, you are exchanging some amount of cash for some of that negative risk, while preserving any positive appreciation of your options for yourself.
In a poster further down, you state that a solution would be to outlaw using stock options as collateral. That's a horrible micromanagement style of regulating the economy, and for someone with your politicoeconomic bent, I'm very surprised you would suggest it.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 1
US Currency is valid for all debts, public and private.
The loophole is that payment for goods or services does not create debt, so US Currency doesn't need to be accepted for sale of an item -- this is why merchants don't need to accept cash.
Unless you're dead. Then the capital gain is only from the date of your death to the realized gain,and there is no income tax on the shares taken in lieu of salary.
His lender(s) would call in the loan long before the stock hits zero. They'll also lend less than the value of the collateral in order to reduce their risk.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 1
The only way out is to save or invest, and well, you won't save forever. All money is spent at some point.
False. Plenty of people who are very wealthy live purely off investment income, their principal would never get taxed in your scenario. And an aggressive sales tax on consumer spending would simply drive wealthy peoples' spending offshore outside the tax jurisdiction. The wealth flight under such a scenario would be terrible.
Furthermore, such systems have other major flaws -- one being the progressive nature of such a system, which would serve to reduce systemic demand for goods. Another major flaw is that it would reduce capital flowing through the economy by subjecting the same money to tax every time it changes hands; a VAT gets rid of this particular problem, but the tax rate necessary to support our federal government with a VAT would be around 40% (6T 2012 spending vs 15T GDP) , assuming there are no economic class (food, housing, etc) exemptions to the VAT, and that the tax is fully regressive (no exemption for first $X of income, etc). This kind of high-percentage extremely regressive tax would slaughter the consumer demand that drives our economy.
In short, compared to the status quo, such a system would greatly inhibit our economy, would benefit the wealthy at the expense of the rest of the country (both by lowering their effective tax rate since they spend far less than they earn and by driving their spending offshore).
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 1
Don't these loans need to be paid back at some point? They're going to have to either sell their shares, or earn money from somewhere else, to pay that loan. When that happens, they have to pay tax.
After you die, your estate can pay back the loans. And guess what? The estate doesn't pay that income tax, it only has to pay the capital gains from the FMV on the date of your death to the realized value from selling the stock.
The risk for the lender is that the value of the stock will plummet before your death, which is why (1) they lend only a fractional amount of the shares used as collateral and (2) if the share price drops dramatically, they may call in the loan (a la Ellison's situation a few years back).
My father has been advised by his financial planner to make use of this technique to maximize his estate when he dies (he's working for start-ups in his retirement and supports himself off of retirement fund withdrawals, which because of the amount he withdraws, are taxed at a lower rate than his income would be if he took salary instead of stock).
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously you didn't read the thing Steve Jobs was talking about (or didn't retain the point he was making)... it wasn't bean-counters running the show that he found problematic, specifically it was salespeople running the show. More generally, it was non-product people running the show.
I know the zeitgeist on slashdot is to hate beancounters, but I think that's misplaced. Usually the beancounters take the bad rap among staff for decision by those made above them -- that's fine, we understand it's one of our roles (I'm speaking as a beancounter myself). But if you're going to analyze it from a higher perspective, you need to understand who is actually calling the shots -- it's rarely the beancounters (and I've yet to see any major company that isn't in bankruptcy (or near it) where finance runs the show -- it's almost always product or sales people).
You may be Athiest, but you say you won't change your beliefs even when they are contradicted by data...
Sounds like a faith-based belief system to me.
You chalk it up to hubris. Tell me, have you ever spent a lot of time in a chemistry lab? Have you ever witnessed the exhaustion of a buffer system (this is basic high school chem I'm talking about)? Surely you must be aware that even a tiny change in some reactant in an equilibrium can have a major impact on the status of a system.
That's not true at all. Black market != market for illegal goods.
Black market means that the trade is being conducted outside the legally operating market, not that the item(s) are illegal.
Cigarettes are legal. Buying cigarettes, cash-only, tax-free off the back of a truck is a black market transaction.
Black markets capture economic activity that is "priced out" of the official market due to constraints on trade (like manufacturing quotas, taxes, legal price floors or caps, etc).
As the market he delved into was not an official market, and operated out of the purview of LE, taxing authorities, etc, it was the black market.
Perhaps you should re-read the canon.
Book Secondi 3:12
Lo, for the baking of the divine meal
Let it be done that the goliath meatball[1]
Be moved upon the table[2]
At such distance that the woodfire oven[3]
Provides a strong heat source to allow for the Maillard reaction
To properly crustify the goliath meatball
And then let it be moved
To a sufficient distance, where it may
Yet leave the inside full of tenderness
Like the twin meatballs upon the bosom of a mother
His Noodly Appendage shall make such adjustments
Necessary to make it so.
Ramen
[1] the goliath meatball being our planet.
[2] the table, sometimes mistranslated as "the firmament", is of course, the fabric of spacetime
[3] there is some disagreement among scholars about this translation, but we know from context that this is the sun
Clearly, from analysis of scripture, we can determine that the Master of the Heavenly Forkful moves or planet into a lower or higher orbit to ensure that it cooks properly.
The saying is "cannot see the forest for the trees".
I'll not address your point except to say that I believe your opinion is not always applicable, it depends on the company, and in the long run poorly run companies will fail and be replaced.
With 70% in that age group?
Oh, and only among Republicans.
Oh wait, that's not even true... only among Republicans age 18-35 who voted in the primaries.
You've got a bad case of selection bias.
His anti-popularity is also quite evident. I know many, many people age 18-35, from all parts of the political spectrum, who think his policies are dangerous, negligent, and/or idiotic.
Ron Paul is a polarizing figure because his views are extreme in comparison to the mainstream. Just because his supporters are particularly vocal does not mean that he hasp popularity among the general population (or even just the subset of Republicans aged 18-35) equivalent to his primary numbers. In particular, it needs to be noted that Ron Paul's supporters are much more likely to vote in primaries than his detractors or those ambivalent about him.
It wasn't APK. The post wasn't disjointed and poorly worded, and it didn't have any boldface or italics.
It didn't link to any previous posts by the parent, and it didn't trumpet the benefits of DNS blacklisting.
No, my friend, I think the post we're discussing was written by someone at least mostly sane.
Those aren't bribes. Bribery is when you are paying a decision-maker for another entity.
Buyer "A" approaches Seller "B". In your examples, "B" gives a little extra to "A" to close the deal. There is no ethical issue here.
With bribery, you have Agent "A" for Buyer "C" approaching Seller "B". "B" gives something to "A" to close the deal. This is bribery -- the actual buyer doesn't benefit from the something extra.
Most of the criteria are not boolean; the US meets all the criteria to a certain degree. In my mind, the US falls short of being a fascist state because the degree to which they meet certain criteria is not strong enough. The media, while not as free as we'd like, is not completely controlled. Labor is suppressed, but not enough to make us fascist. Religion and government are not completely intertwined, etc.
The lesson here, which I'm sure you'll agree with, is that we're not that far from slipping into fascism, if we don't remain vigilant of the possibility and actively work to prevent it.
Not how it works from what I've seen and studied.
The optimal price point is a function of the demand curve, your unit cost, and your fixed cost. If you price in the manner you've suggested, you're ignoring your fixed costs.
Really, this is microeconomics 101 (and pricing 101).
Right. And that's not what I wrote. I wrote that price is equal to that at which the seller's maximized profit based on the demand curve (usually at or near one of the ideal price points). You say to start with the price -- but how are you arriving at the price? Pulling it out of thin air?
As an aside -- China doesn't do tax rebates for individuals, AFAIK. That kind of policy is simply alien to how they operate their tax policy, and how they implement economic policy. It's a market-based approach that makes sense to us, but doesn't fit in with Chinese policy.
That's not the real formula. camperdave had a correct formula: price = cost + profit.
You formula describes something else, and is incorrect anyway (since different people will value the good differently). If you want to correctly state your formula, you'd need a bunch of qualifiers, and it would be much wordier. I'll paraphrase is as Price = the seller's valuation of the optimal price to induce maximum profits based on the demand curve.
I disagree; the series was derivative and while maybe not drivel, was far from exceptional. It was lowest-common-denominator coming-of-age fantasy. The only thing exceptional about it was its wide appeal due to its far-from-novel mechanics and themes.
Except it may become problematic for assigning that copy to someone else. I'm done with it -- here, have a copy and I'll delete all my copies.
Seems like publishers have a method of getting one of the tinhgs they want -- no "used" ebook market.
Message: Further blur the lines between various enforcement agencies, possibly including military, for the benefit of corporations.
Let me adjust my tinfoil hat here... maybe that's a bonus for them.
Seriously... plenty of older games offer just-as-good, if not better, gameplay than modern reincarnations. For some subset of gamers, they're finee playing the old games, and unwilling to spend money on new games (myself included). DRM like this allows game publishers to force obsolescence.
Sure, there will be cracked versions available. But I, and others I'm sure, either eschew cracked games or have some fear or ignorance of them.
Long story short: forced obsolescence might be a motivation here for requiring always-on DRM.
Sure, any decision should be viewed through a cost-benefit lens. But IT isn't targeted because of managers don't understand thier business -- IT is targeted because over the past twenty years, IT costs have gotten very high for the benefit gained.
The marginal benefit from the last 10% of the IT budget is typically very small in companies that have been around for a while. Do you really need four nines on email uptime? Or just on your critical client-facing servers? Do you even need it on your client-facing servers?
It's been really rare for me to see an IT Manager who really understands that their utility to the company comes from how cheaply they can fulfill their mission.
I'm a professional bean counter. I think you're not only wrong about failing to see the bigger picture, I think you're way off on the value of IT.
IT doesn't drive product. It doesn't drive sales. It supports those functions, just as HR or Finance does. IT is not an asset... it is a cost center than maintains an asset.
Regardless of the role and scope of a team (such as IT), you set your targets for what you need and what you want, and then you try to get those things done with maximum bang for your buck. Sometimes that means reducing costs, sometimes that means increasing value -- it is management's call on how to maximize cost-benefit (which is what us bean counters help management do).
What some "big picture" guys (such as you make yourself out to be) miss is that the "big picture" is made up of little pieces, and if you want to affect the big picture, you need to affect the little pieces. The devil is in the details, and if you don't understand that, I don't think I'd want you in my org.
I've moved no goalposts. You're either deliberately missing my point, or you're obtuse. There is no conflict between those two statements; the second is a clarification of the first.
On the first item, prima facie, the subject of discussion is the article and the content of the article. On the escond point, that was not the case at the time of my posting, especially considering the default display options for readers of Slashdot.
Agreed. But once we're in navel-gazing mode, might as well sort out what's really in there.
You accepted a form of compensation with a significant level of risk attached to it. Your choice.
Stock options do have value, as evidenced by the willingness of banks to accept them as collateral. While future value of the options is uncertain, there is a present value.
By taking a loan against the options, you are exchanging some amount of cash for some of that negative risk, while preserving any positive appreciation of your options for yourself.
In a poster further down, you state that a solution would be to outlaw using stock options as collateral. That's a horrible micromanagement style of regulating the economy, and for someone with your politicoeconomic bent, I'm very surprised you would suggest it.
US Currency is valid for all debts, public and private.
The loophole is that payment for goods or services does not create debt, so US Currency doesn't need to be accepted for sale of an item -- this is why merchants don't need to accept cash.
Unless you're dead. Then the capital gain is only from the date of your death to the realized gain,and there is no income tax on the shares taken in lieu of salary.
His lender(s) would call in the loan long before the stock hits zero. They'll also lend less than the value of the collateral in order to reduce their risk.
False. Plenty of people who are very wealthy live purely off investment income, their principal would never get taxed in your scenario. And an aggressive sales tax on consumer spending would simply drive wealthy peoples' spending offshore outside the tax jurisdiction. The wealth flight under such a scenario would be terrible.
Furthermore, such systems have other major flaws -- one being the progressive nature of such a system, which would serve to reduce systemic demand for goods. Another major flaw is that it would reduce capital flowing through the economy by subjecting the same money to tax every time it changes hands; a VAT gets rid of this particular problem, but the tax rate necessary to support our federal government with a VAT would be around 40% (6T 2012 spending vs 15T GDP) , assuming there are no economic class (food, housing, etc) exemptions to the VAT, and that the tax is fully regressive (no exemption for first $X of income, etc). This kind of high-percentage extremely regressive tax would slaughter the consumer demand that drives our economy.
In short, compared to the status quo, such a system would greatly inhibit our economy, would benefit the wealthy at the expense of the rest of the country (both by lowering their effective tax rate since they spend far less than they earn and by driving their spending offshore).
After you die, your estate can pay back the loans. And guess what? The estate doesn't pay that income tax, it only has to pay the capital gains from the FMV on the date of your death to the realized value from selling the stock.
The risk for the lender is that the value of the stock will plummet before your death, which is why (1) they lend only a fractional amount of the shares used as collateral and (2) if the share price drops dramatically, they may call in the loan (a la Ellison's situation a few years back).
My father has been advised by his financial planner to make use of this technique to maximize his estate when he dies (he's working for start-ups in his retirement and supports himself off of retirement fund withdrawals, which because of the amount he withdraws, are taxed at a lower rate than his income would be if he took salary instead of stock).