kaiyen: pepper

Articles from the Web

TiVo Wins Round 2 Against EchoStar – BusinessWeek

TiVo Wins Round 2 Against EchoStar – BusinessWeek.

Considering all that TiVo has done wrong in trying to build up its subscriber base (I mean, it’s a great service, but they never really reacted to DVR’s from Comcast and other cable providers, etc, and that market just went away…), it’s great to know that they have been successful in defending their idea.

And seriously, EchoStar should just suck it up like they did before and pay a licensing fee to TiVo.  They get all of these other perks of the TiVo service, too. You lose the original case and an appeal, along with $209 million?  Sheesh.

June 5, 2009 Articles from the Web, 0 Read more >

GM: A View from the Back Seat – BusinessWeek

GM: A View from the Back Seat – BusinessWeek.

Read the article for the real meat, but this comes from someone that has covered GM, specifically, for quite some time for Business Week.  David Welch, the author, handles the multitude of issues – from GM’s basic structure, strategy, the UAW, and for what former CEO Wagoner did and did not deserve blame in the end – quite well and very evenly.  

What I find especially interesting is the comment about GroupThink at the beginning.  The article doesn’t really return to it, but it paints a classic picture of this kind of problem.  Everyone thinks that things are okay.  Because they all tell each other things are okay and that they know what is going on (trucks are good!  We’ll outlast our workforce!), there is a reinforcing cycle of presumption and bad decisions.  No one really thinks beyond what has always been done, or those that do are ignored and/or ostracized.

June 2, 2009 Articles from the Web, , , 0 Read more >

MBAs: Public Enemy No. 1? – BusinessWeek

MBAs: Public Enemy No. 1? – BusinessWeek.

This is a really fascinating article.  Essentially, it is about how the training and education of MBA students to examine the bottom line – return on shareholder value – rather than ethics or a higher standard of management over the last few decades has led to a group of leaders that have run companies into the ground, taken too many risks, and put us into our current crisis.  The article does acknowledge that lots of those CEOs’ classmates have not done things to damage our economy to the benefit of shareholders, and lots of CEOs without MBAs have.  But the basic premise is that there is a push back against formally trained individuals because they are taught to look at dollars instead of ethics.  

This is a pretty difficult topic for me.  I’m in an evening MBA program right now, but also work in academia, which is not generally driven by the bottom line and certainly not by the pursuit of profits/return on equity to shareholders.  On the one hand, I am still generally taught that the goal of a CEO is to make money for shareholders.  Those are our clients, we find customers to buy our products, and we try to make money for people who have invested in the company.  Plain and simple.  However, at no point have I ever been taught that this is the only goal for a CEO.  It might be the primary one, but not the only one, and not more important than, say, doing business in an ethical manner or taking risks beyond what one’s organization can hold (such as being leveraged 30 to 1 or offering products that sell now but are missing the point for the future).  

At the same time, even at the Jesuit University at which I attend school, I do not have a single business ethics course as part of my requirements for graduation.  There is one elective that has not been offered in the two years I’ve been here.  

Personally, I think that anyone who is a good CEO, or a good candidate for one even coming out of biz school, should realize that there is a right way to do business, and such practices should be pursued, not ignored.  Even if one bends a rule here and there to make sure the company hits the earnings estimates for the year by delivering a product at 12:01 AM (outside of the quarter that ended at 11:59PM…), that’s a mile away from driving GM into the ground, or creating an idiotic financial monstrosity that was Lehman Brothers.

May 29, 2009 2008 Economic Crisis, Articles from the Web, Biz School 0 Read more >

Get Smart – Tips for Today’s Travel Photographers « Photofocus

Get Smart – Tips for Today’s Travel Photographers « Photofocus.

Scott Bourne (no relation to Jason) is kind of all over the place on the internet, though I knew him first from This Week in Photography, which has a useful though sometimes-remedial podcast (I couldn’t think of a word that didn’t sound derogatory in some way – it’s just not geared for tech heads like me and sometimes I am listening to stuff I already know).  

After my recent trip to Thailand, I find this article pretty useful.  Now, I wasn’t ready to be quite on a photo-trip – no photo vest for me or anything like that.  We were vacationing, and photographed a lot while we were there.  But we were not there for photography.  But this is a useful guide nonetheless.

May 29, 2009 Articles from the Web, photography, , 0 Read more >

Chinas Yuan: The Next Reserve Currency? – BusinessWeek

Chinas Yuan: The Next Reserve Currency? – BusinessWeek.

I’ve been reading about China’s attack, if you will, on the dollar as a reserve currency (kind of like a central currency for everyone, which can be easily converted to any other currency, and that acts as a relative “safe haven” to be kept in other countries’ central banks).  Most people say that at best the yuan is a couple of decades away from having that much clout.  The euro is way ahead of any other currency at this point and is highly convertible but is only 1/3 or so of how many transactions are done via the dollar (so currency A>dollar>currency B).  

I think part of this is simply that China is making noise about the depreciation of the dollar as the government spends like crazy.  Eventually, inflation will catch up to the stimulus (stimulus initially causes appreciation, though it’s not quite as simple as that) and all of China’s dollar-based assets will be worth less.  But it will be a few decades probably before we get out of our deficit, and at least half of one before we’re done with deficit spending (i.e. – making our deficit deeper)

As has been the case with China for decades, it remains a “paper tiger” until it puts some substance behind its words.  But when it becomes a real tiger, watch out…

May 28, 2009 Articles from the Web 0 Read more >

BBC NEWS | Business | US economic outlook ‘improving’

 BBC NEWS | Business | US economic outlook ‘improving’.

Some interesting bits here.  First, to quote:

“The Fed says it expects the economy will shrink between 1.3% and 2% this year. It had earlier said the economy could contract between 0.5% and 1.3%.”

So that’s…good news?  That we will contract more than what they said earlier?

“It also warned that US unemployment could reach 10%.”

Definitely not good news.  Especially since “real” unemployment, which would include discouraged workers and those who haven’t actively tried to find new jobs for more than 3 months (but of course are still unemployed) is always higher.  And forget about those with jobs that they are forced to take, at lower wages and worse hours, just to make ends meet.

“Participants agreed that the information received since the March meeting provided some tentative evidence that the pace of contraction in real economic activity was starting to diminish,” the minutes showed.

It is critical that this be interpreted correctly.  First, the observation is that the contraction is still going on, but is showing signs of slowing down.  That means we are still in actual recession (with negative GDP growth/GDP shrinkage) much less in an economic malaise (which will last longer than the actual recession, which is technically over after we hit bottom and start the slow climb up).  But the economy is still contracting, just not as badly as before.

Second, what this does mean is that most of the areas that have been battered lately have finished…being battered.  So the loss of construction work, for instance, is finally basically all gone and no longer contributes to negative GDP growth.  Now, that means that people don’t have jobs, but it means that they have already lost their jobs, not that they are still losing them.  

Finally, we must not take this as a sign that we can stop working hard to jump start the economy.  A second major stimulus is probably needed (the ARRA is pretty back-loaded as it is, though at 3% of GDP this year and next it’s not small, either) and we can’t lose sight of that just because our contraction is slowing down.

May 21, 2009 2008 Economic Crisis, Articles from the Web 1 Read more >

BBC NEWS | UK | Websites keeping deleted photos

BBC NEWS | UK | Websites keeping deleted photos.

This is actually not that surprising, but still upsetting.  I believe Facebook actually now claims the right to use your photos for their own promotional purposes.  Flickr’s API allows others to display photos without attribution, even if your license, set via Flickr, requires such attribution.  It’s really a mess.

I just resign myself to the fact that if I put a photo online, it’s a free for all and I consider myself lucky when people to attribute my work to me.  Sigh.

May 21, 2009 Articles from the Web, photography, , 0 Read more >

Blog title as self-fulfilling prophecy « Baking While Depressed

Blog title as self-fulfilling prophecy « Baking While Depressed.

1 – a sign of how anti-depressants are prescribed way too often

2 – acknowledging that the economy is a cause of depression is (sadly) a sign of enlightened thinking.  it’s not just that “times are tough.”  It’s that “our economy is bad.”  Now, if she had said “I’m really worried about the balance sheet accuracy of banks” then I’d get really excited.  I mean interested.

3 – Bora is freakin’ funny.  🙂

May 14, 2009 Articles from the Web 2 Read more >