First, your being rather presumptious in that I'm not American. But from what I understand, the 'chad' problem related to voting machines, not paper ballots.
Second, "Print out a hard copy"? Wow, that's a lot of work when a piece of paper and a pencil will achieve the same result.
Finally, I'm uncomfortable with your machine-centric approach to ensuring fair voting procedures. In Canada, we use paper ballots, and a system that involves sealed ballot boxes, a secret ballot and scrutineers from each party at each polling station to ensure a fair result. You don't need expensive technology to make it fair. It's worked for a hundred years, and with electronic reporting we still have the final results half an hour after the polling station closes. There's nothing like having eyes and ears from each party at each voting station counting ballots and scrutinizing the voting procedures on voting day. If you take that out of the equation, I think you'll have an automated labour-saving system, yes, but also one that can be corrupted at higher levels.
Sorry, I have never seen the point of these machines. Paper ballots are auditable, user friendly, and if electronics is put into the reporting system, can be counted in a few minutes and submitted.
Voting machine are a perfect example of a technology fetish at work. It would make an interesting case study to examine the economic and sociological reasones why we sometimes buy technology that we don't need, don't want and further, serves no useful purpose.
Let's get rid of it. Don't like it in the 'slashdot' header either. It's the last socially prejudicial term that you can still get away with using. Why is that?
Actually it's not the principal, but the principle. The principal is the guy who didn't like you in high school. Just remember that he is the only one that is really your "pal".
There are a significant number of new computer purchasers who don't know a Google from a Googol or a Yahoo from a Lilliputian. The point being that this is an important turf battle for search engine market share.
I don't know that MS's strategy here is any different from my new Sony CD player containing a coupon for CDs featuring Sony recording artists. On the other hand, I get pretty ticked when I browse MS's web site and am told that only IE is going to work properly. THAT is like Sony telling me that their Sony recording artist's CD will only play on a Sony CD player.
A couple of observations about lock-in at MS. It really does hurt their sales. Do I want to buy a product of theirs that is totally incompatible with other leading products? A good example has been MS Access data projects (ADPs) which only work with MS SQL Server. As a result, MS Access has had very little forward market momentum in the last 10 years. That has shifted to tools like PHP, mySQL, Python, etc.
A second observation. Lock-in isn't mandated from the top. In a large heterogeneous technological corporation lock-in will happen unless active steps are taken to prevent it. Breaking MS in a number of fairly autonomous divisions is what they need to do to prevent the kind of expansive product strategy that ultimately implodes in on itself and has done in other companies in the past. (DEC for example).
There, now I feel better. Anyone reading these posts way done here?
According to the WSJ article, eBay faces a difficult conundrum. They are spending millions on targetted search ads on Google, thus helping out one of their direct on-line auction competitors. It's called co-opetition.
Personally, I'm disaffected with Google's increasingly unreliable search results and tacky ads. Slashdot has developed a wonderful self-moderating model for it's forum. How about a self-moderating subject index for the web? Maybe as an add-on to wikipedia.
In some ways Google reminds me of those German barons of old who were able to charge exorbitant tolls to those needing access to the few bridges across the Rhine. We need more good ways into the Internet, so more power to whatever anyone can come up with, including ask, wikipedia, altavista and msn.
What do you think - who can challenge Google? What's the next flavour of the month?
On the other hand, because of your BlackBerry you could:
1. Read the paper and have an extra coffee in the morning, because if there was an emergency at the office that morning it would be on your BlackBerry.
2. Program your Blackberry so it blacks out certain hours.
3. Buffer requests (compared to the telephone) - let it ring and look at it when you finish certain tasks.
Notwithstanding all this, the article is not wrong, but the issue is more a matter of developing social norms and etiquette around Blackberry use, as around cell phone use, as around television use. For example, it's now considered improper in many social circles to have the television running while socializing - not so years ago. Some individuals have a social sensitivity and deal considerately and properly with new technology. For others, it takes social pressure to behave properly (boors and bosses, particularly). It's a learning process for society, and this has little to do with the BlackBerry technology per se. But discussion and articles of this nature are enormously valuable in establishing social etiquette.
"Additionally, they haven't been able to accept needed changes to senior management. "
A bit of a non-sequitur there but assuming you mean "sell needed changes", your statement begs the question of what you have done to help sell those needed changes to senior management. It's not the job of I/T to sell, as much as professionally advise management on the risk-cost trade-off involved in various alternatives. It may be that senior management is perfectly aware of whatever problems you're enduring, and for cash-flow or financial reasons does not see your problems with the same perspective that you do. So the blame must ultimately rest with the senior management and sometimes the ownership of the company - as long as I/T has shown a trail of advising them on what they should do.
One of the key problems is that management is typically not aware that entropy will make a given network/ hardware/ software infrastructure fail over time. This failure is not the result of mechanical/electronic parts failure, but growing incompatibilities in hardware-software layers, and hardware and software components as individual system elements are added, upgraded or changed over time. From my experience this is the key problem in maintaining system reliability over a period of time.
Price-Earnings is meaningless, when you figure where this company has to go to justify a market cap of over $100 billion, whith its current sales are only 6 billion. How did you calculate a PEG of only.8? I get a much better (i.e. lower) number based on P-E of 80 and current growth rate of 200%.
But let's look at what could easily happen to the PEG in just 2 years. Margins WILL tighten on their click ad revenue. I don't think the moat is that great. If sales growth settles down to a still torrid 20-30% based on their other endeavours and margins tighten to a still healthy 15% (effectively doubling the P-E), the PEG works out to 8.0 - 5.3. Of course, that won't actually happen because the share price is going to come down.
What I mean by this is that it takes about 10 years for a tech paradigm shift to work its way through the economy and become fully realized in terms of steady cash flow for its various inventors and contributors. The major paradigm shifts I've seen since I've worked in the industry have been: 3rd generation algorithmic languages, databases, on-line terminal processing (instead of batch), GUI interfaces, the Internet and wireless. These shifts aren't necessarily sequential - they can overlap. Everyone foresaw the impact of the Internet (more or less); but those impacts wouldn't manifest themselves in 1-2 years. It's still ongoing.
But the stock price IS inflated and the price must come down. A more cynical view is that so-called "guidance" would just support the analysts and mutual funds that have worked on pumping up this balloon. Isn't Google being MORE responsible by not buying in to the prevarication going on. Keep in mind that the share price has no direct immediate effect on the financial health of Google. Sure there is a long-term effect in terms of raising new capital. But if the company does well in the LONG TERM with the capital it has now, even that is still going to happen. The whole problem with TECH is that it just doesn't work on quarterly cycles, like Proctor and Gamble; the normal cycle is about ten years. Ten years to determine if they're winning or losing. Why is the price ticking up and down in huge percentiles based on "news"? By my very rough calculation, the proper valuation for Google right now is about $120 US with fairly optimistic growth prospects. That is, if you rely on the assumption that the value of the company is the net present value of all future earnings.
"Voice of all reason", your comment reminds me of Shakespeare's plays where there are always one or two short scenes in which ordinary commoners indicate their interpretation of what's happening with the powers that be (princes and kings in Shakespeare's case). Somehow, without any deep or personal knowledge, the commoners get it right, and boil things down to a sentence or two. Not to say that Spencer is being paid off. But the legal system does appear to be very corrupt. And if it walks like a duck...
Slashdot Mirror
First, your being rather presumptious in that I'm not American. But from what I understand, the 'chad' problem related to voting machines, not paper ballots. Second, "Print out a hard copy"? Wow, that's a lot of work when a piece of paper and a pencil will achieve the same result. Finally, I'm uncomfortable with your machine-centric approach to ensuring fair voting procedures. In Canada, we use paper ballots, and a system that involves sealed ballot boxes, a secret ballot and scrutineers from each party at each polling station to ensure a fair result. You don't need expensive technology to make it fair. It's worked for a hundred years, and with electronic reporting we still have the final results half an hour after the polling station closes. There's nothing like having eyes and ears from each party at each voting station counting ballots and scrutinizing the voting procedures on voting day. If you take that out of the equation, I think you'll have an automated labour-saving system, yes, but also one that can be corrupted at higher levels.
Sorry, I have never seen the point of these machines. Paper ballots are auditable, user friendly, and if electronics is put into the reporting system, can be counted in a few minutes and submitted. Voting machine are a perfect example of a technology fetish at work. It would make an interesting case study to examine the economic and sociological reasones why we sometimes buy technology that we don't need, don't want and further, serves no useful purpose.
Let's get rid of it. Don't like it in the 'slashdot' header either. It's the last socially prejudicial term that you can still get away with using. Why is that?
Actually it's not the principal, but the principle. The principal is the guy who didn't like you in high school. Just remember that he is the only one that is really your "pal".
I don't know that MS's strategy here is any different from my new Sony CD player containing a coupon for CDs featuring Sony recording artists. On the other hand, I get pretty ticked when I browse MS's web site and am told that only IE is going to work properly. THAT is like Sony telling me that their Sony recording artist's CD will only play on a Sony CD player.
A couple of observations about lock-in at MS. It really does hurt their sales. Do I want to buy a product of theirs that is totally incompatible with other leading products? A good example has been MS Access data projects (ADPs) which only work with MS SQL Server. As a result, MS Access has had very little forward market momentum in the last 10 years. That has shifted to tools like PHP, mySQL, Python, etc.
A second observation. Lock-in isn't mandated from the top. In a large heterogeneous technological corporation lock-in will happen unless active steps are taken to prevent it. Breaking MS in a number of fairly autonomous divisions is what they need to do to prevent the kind of expansive product strategy that ultimately implodes in on itself and has done in other companies in the past. (DEC for example).
There, now I feel better. Anyone reading these posts way done here?
Luxury!
According to the WSJ article, eBay faces a difficult conundrum. They are spending millions on targetted search ads on Google, thus helping out one of their direct on-line auction competitors. It's called co-opetition. Personally, I'm disaffected with Google's increasingly unreliable search results and tacky ads. Slashdot has developed a wonderful self-moderating model for it's forum. How about a self-moderating subject index for the web? Maybe as an add-on to wikipedia. In some ways Google reminds me of those German barons of old who were able to charge exorbitant tolls to those needing access to the few bridges across the Rhine. We need more good ways into the Internet, so more power to whatever anyone can come up with, including ask, wikipedia, altavista and msn. What do you think - who can challenge Google? What's the next flavour of the month?
"Salt in the wounds". Whose wounds? Competition is a good thing for most of us.
On the other hand, because of your BlackBerry you could: 1. Read the paper and have an extra coffee in the morning, because if there was an emergency at the office that morning it would be on your BlackBerry. 2. Program your Blackberry so it blacks out certain hours. 3. Buffer requests (compared to the telephone) - let it ring and look at it when you finish certain tasks. Notwithstanding all this, the article is not wrong, but the issue is more a matter of developing social norms and etiquette around Blackberry use, as around cell phone use, as around television use. For example, it's now considered improper in many social circles to have the television running while socializing - not so years ago. Some individuals have a social sensitivity and deal considerately and properly with new technology. For others, it takes social pressure to behave properly (boors and bosses, particularly). It's a learning process for society, and this has little to do with the BlackBerry technology per se. But discussion and articles of this nature are enormously valuable in establishing social etiquette.
"Additionally, they haven't been able to accept needed changes to senior management. " A bit of a non-sequitur there but assuming you mean "sell needed changes", your statement begs the question of what you have done to help sell those needed changes to senior management. It's not the job of I/T to sell, as much as professionally advise management on the risk-cost trade-off involved in various alternatives. It may be that senior management is perfectly aware of whatever problems you're enduring, and for cash-flow or financial reasons does not see your problems with the same perspective that you do. So the blame must ultimately rest with the senior management and sometimes the ownership of the company - as long as I/T has shown a trail of advising them on what they should do. One of the key problems is that management is typically not aware that entropy will make a given network/ hardware/ software infrastructure fail over time. This failure is not the result of mechanical/electronic parts failure, but growing incompatibilities in hardware-software layers, and hardware and software components as individual system elements are added, upgraded or changed over time. From my experience this is the key problem in maintaining system reliability over a period of time.
Price-Earnings is meaningless, when you figure where this company has to go to justify a market cap of over $100 billion, whith its current sales are only 6 billion. How did you calculate a PEG of only .8? I get a much better (i.e. lower) number based on P-E of 80 and current growth rate of 200%.
But let's look at what could easily happen to the PEG in just 2 years. Margins WILL tighten on their click ad revenue. I don't think the moat is that great. If sales growth settles down to a still torrid 20-30% based on their other endeavours and margins tighten to a still healthy 15% (effectively doubling the P-E), the PEG works out to 8.0 - 5.3. Of course, that won't actually happen because the share price is going to come down.
What I mean by this is that it takes about 10 years for a tech paradigm shift to work its way through the economy and become fully realized in terms of steady cash flow for its various inventors and contributors. The major paradigm shifts I've seen since I've worked in the industry have been: 3rd generation algorithmic languages, databases, on-line terminal processing (instead of batch), GUI interfaces, the Internet and wireless. These shifts aren't necessarily sequential - they can overlap. Everyone foresaw the impact of the Internet (more or less); but those impacts wouldn't manifest themselves in 1-2 years. It's still ongoing.
But the stock price IS inflated and the price must come down. A more cynical view is that so-called "guidance" would just support the analysts and mutual funds that have worked on pumping up this balloon. Isn't Google being MORE responsible by not buying in to the prevarication going on. Keep in mind that the share price has no direct immediate effect on the financial health of Google. Sure there is a long-term effect in terms of raising new capital. But if the company does well in the LONG TERM with the capital it has now, even that is still going to happen. The whole problem with TECH is that it just doesn't work on quarterly cycles, like Proctor and Gamble; the normal cycle is about ten years. Ten years to determine if they're winning or losing. Why is the price ticking up and down in huge percentiles based on "news"? By my very rough calculation, the proper valuation for Google right now is about $120 US with fairly optimistic growth prospects. That is, if you rely on the assumption that the value of the company is the net present value of all future earnings.
"Voice of all reason", your comment reminds me of Shakespeare's plays where there are always one or two short scenes in which ordinary commoners indicate their interpretation of what's happening with the powers that be (princes and kings in Shakespeare's case). Somehow, without any deep or personal knowledge, the commoners get it right, and boil things down to a sentence or two. Not to say that Spencer is being paid off. But the legal system does appear to be very corrupt. And if it walks like a duck ...
And this is relevant because?