I purchased a calculator after declaring my Finance major as an undergraduate. The calculator recommended at the time was the HP-10B. I realize now that an important reason for choosing the HP-10b over the HP-12c is because it uses the familiar infix notation. My professor probably thought it was hard enough teaching the time value of money, and there was no reason to dive into Reverse Polish Notation (RPN), also known as post-fix notation. Despite the shoddy build quality, I still have mine sitting on my desk at work.
I recently ordered an HP-12c off of eBay, and I ended up paying 35 dollars without the manual. Brand new, the HP-12c sells for approximately $60 on Amazon. I never thought that the resale value for a physical calculator would be so high. As you can see, the preferred calculator for business is the HP-12c. There’s even an iPhone app that emulates the function and look of the 12c.
One thing about the 12c though is that the RPN is difficult to get used to, and it isn’t just the keyboard orientation. I find myself double-checking my math on a regular basis to make sure I did not key something in incorrectly. I assume that once I get used to it I will not want to do calculations any other way.
Oracle recently sued Google for patent and copyright infringement. The full text of the complaint is available here. I agree with Miguel De Icaza in that this will most likely result in a settlement out of court.
Sun’s weaker position, and its alliance with the Open Source community, did not allow it to sue Google for patent infringement. This is all covered in depth in this CNET article. Given Sun’s massive patent portfolio, and Oracle’s need to monetize their acquisition, the lawsuit is not surprising.
Oracle’s behavior seems troll-like. It is also seems unabashedly capitalist. Big companies that act like trolls have a tendency to be countersued. Chances are, others can find a patent or two that the bigger company has run afoul of. The question is, why is a large company like Oracle going after a large company like Google, besides the money? Oracle has much to lose in this case. In addition, it is not clear that they have all that much to gain either.
As Eben Moglen pointed out at his recent Linuxcon keynote “The patent system is built for secrecy and for trouble-making — it’s not a pro-innovation system.” Patent trolls and those that sue for patent infringement usually are not creating any value. This is a reason that the Open Source community, people who create value for the common good, finds this behavior so reprehensible.
A lot of enterprise software companies are sitting on a lot of cash. Investment opportunities are not good as a few years ago. Consequently, for companies that have not donated their patents to cross-licensing organizations (such as OIN), it makes sense to extract as much value as possible out of their patent portfolio. Also, it has the benefit of helping companies to build out their cash stockpiles, suppress competition and stifle innovation.
There is a special report available via ABC which is really an in-depth post-mortem of the Sun deal.
In recent years, Sun outsourced much of its sales, counting on resellers to promote its products. That’s anathema at Oracle, which employs 22,000 salespeople and 11,000 software consultants who work directly with its largest customers. … “Astonishingly they laid off all the sales people and they laid off all the field service people. They just got rid of them all,” he said. “Guess what? Sales dropped. It’s breathtaking!”
I am not going to mention what company this reminds me of. I will mention that the quote is from Larry Ellison. I think this article is required reading for anyone in the enterprise IT market.
In the report, which announces near record results that Goldman obtained in 2009, Mr. Blankfein and Mr. Cohn defend the bank’s role of “providing liquidity to markets.”
This would be a plausible explanation if they did not know that they were dealing toxic assets. For example, you do not need to be an expert in the underlying equity to be a market maker in the equities market. In that role, buying and selling equities provides liquidity to the market.
Goldman’s actions are more equivalent to that of a drug dealer than a market maker, since they knew they were dealing with toxic assets. Goldman’s lack of exposure to their own products reminds me of a dealer who has a hard and fast rule not to try their own yayo. To push the analogy further, Goldman had the cops bought off so that when their primary client (AIG) went bust, they still collected on the cocaine debt.
We have a nice long history of prosecuting criminals and drug dealers who profit at the expense of society. It would be great to see them prosecuted for their crimes, but it is unlikely. We can only be hopeful that we have some meaningful Financial-industry reform that prevents this type of sleazy behavior in the future.
Although I have been giving presentations for years, I am constantly improving my own presentation skills. Similar to stand-up comedy, presentations tend to get better the more times you rehearse the material. Getting constructive feedback is critical. Sponsor feedback is essential for presenting a good final consulting deck.
My boss (and mentor) Ed Murphy had a great tip for me about the titles of presentations. It might be common sense, but I thought it was good advice and worth sharing. Ed thought that the title of the slide should really tell the story on the slide, since the deck has to tell a story. For example, if you have a slide titled “Sales Results”, then it might be better to title it “Sales declined dramatically in Q4″, or whatever the real story is.
If you’re going to take the story metaphor further, then the plot should also include a reflection point to make it a complete story. You can sequence a bunch of facts together, but there needs to be a “so what does this all mean?” moment in the deck.
I finally made it, safely, to Bracknell. I had a 4 hour delay from Boston due to a volcano eruption in Iceland. When I finally got to Reykjavik, the mechanics union went on strike. After 9 hours of waiting, they finally let us board. The story I heard is that the parliament stepped in to resolve the situation. I finally made it to Heathrow, where it was a zoo trying to get through immigration. Once I was through immigration, I had a great limo driver who took me to the Hilton St. Anne’s Manor. (I am a Marriott Platinum member, but I decided to try the Hilton Gold status that was conferred upon me. And besides, it is close to our office and a co-worker recommended it.) I learned my lesson though, because they bumped me for someone more important.
They put me in a cab to the other Hilton here, Hilton Bracknell. They gave me a choice of a free room upgrade or wireless, so I picked the wireless. Oh, I ordered in a pepperoni pizza, and they sent over a pepperoni, tuna, ham, olive, green and yellow pepper pizza. The diet coke I ordered turned out to be a regular coke and I’m too tired to complain.
To anyone who is considering a career in IT Consulting, I say forget it. It is better to be an I-banker. Or a hotelier. Or a CPG manager. You’ll have a better commute.
The WSJ posted a story yesterday that explores a similar topic. I had not read that story when I posted mine yesterday morning. But the theory is the same: small-businesses will benefit from reduced capital costs.
The real beneficiaries of the trend towards Cloud Computing (if there is such a thing) are the small to medium size businesses (SMBs). I suppose I should start by defining Cloud Computing as IAAS, PAAS, or SAAS with a measure of Utility Computing.
Several decades ago, before the emergence of computing, if you wanted to start a new business and you had to set up an office to accommodate your employees. The office would have staplers, desks, lamps, etc. You might have wanted to get a mimeograph machine as well. These were all things that could be leased or purchased.
Over the last two decades, there have been rapid changes in the amount of computing resources needed to perform office duties. If you wanted to set up an office, you needed to purchase or lease computers. In addition, you needed to purchase licenses of software, hire expensive technicians, etc. The capital costs of opening an office skyrocketed. And you still needed to purchase a mimeograph machine, which they were calling a “photocopy” machine.
Out of this shuffle, there is now a general consensus about core hardware and software that is needed to successfully open a new office. For example, we know that each employee will have a computer with monitor, email, internet access, a word processor, a spread-sheeting program, etc. If you didn’t have the latest version of these software programs, you couldn’t do business with suppliers, partners, and customers.
So now the technology and bandwidth is available to host these office applications securely at a central site, and to provide employees with on-demand access to it. If you want to think about it another way, you can have someone else lease the package as a service. In addition, you can lease thin clients, and get the same services at lower monthly cost. This dramatically lowers the capital investment needed to open a physical office. You’ll probably still have to purchase staplers and lease a scanner or photocopier.
The true effect of Cloud Computing is to lower the cost of business for SMBs. Why SMBs? Because newer, smaller organizations will be better positioned to embrace this shift. They have the most to benefit, since capital costs for computing would have previously consumed a far greater percentage of their resources. Because of the complexity, older and larger companies will find it much harder to embrace this Cloud Model. Also, larger companies already have established IT budgets and it consumes far less as a percentage of their resources. Lastly, there is a false consensus that control over IT resources results in security or advantage.
