Cryptochaos

From the "You Can't Win" Dept...

2009-05-12T08:59:00.002-05:00

Vitamins Block Some Exercise Benefits: Scientific American Podcast:

"Forty men took part in a four-week training program. Half the group also received daily doses of Vitamins C and E. The researchers discovered that exercise on its own improves insulin sensitivity, which keeps diabetes at bay. But taking the vitamins erased that gain—findings that appear in the May 12th issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

You've Gotta Hand it to Larry!

2009-04-20T21:08:00.001-05:00

Ellison Moves Quickly to Push Aside IBM, Plunges Into Competitive Server Market - WSJ.com:

"One person familiar with the situation said IBM's final offer over the weekend was closer to the latter figure, making Oracle's $9.50 offer a financially better alternative in the view of Sun's board and more likely to close. Oracle has to pay Sun a $260 million breakup fee if it terminates the transaction.

Another person said IBM was pressing Sun's board to revoke change-of-control provisions that would give a large number of Sun executives two years of salary in the event of a sale. Yet another person familiar with the matter said Oracle didn't hesitate to accept those provisions, characterizing them as 'a rounding error' to the software giant."

Does Anyone Know the Real Cost of "Green"?

2009-02-13T11:06:00.003-05:00

Wouldn't it be nice to see a very clear P&L on this investment by PSE&G? I am all for the investment in "green" and renewable energy, but it's not clear to me how the investment dollars net against the chargebacks, energy revenues and various tax credits....

New Jersey Utility Plans Major Solar Project - NYTimes.com:

"The utility expects to spend $773 million on the project, which it said would generate 120 megawatts of electricity, one-third of which should come from the panels on utility poles. That amounts to barely 1 percent of the power consumed in the state, but is about 7 percent of the state’s goal of power generated from renewable energy sources by 2020."

...

"The project would add about 10 cents to each customer’s monthly bill in the first year and as much as 35 cents in subsequent years."

...

"In addition to raising money by selling the panels’ electricity, P.S.E. & G. also expects to receive a federal tax credit and income from selling the state renewable energy credits that accrue when solar energy is produced."

...

"The bulk of the money for the project, however, would come from new bonds and equity from Public Service Enterprise."

Positioning Grows Computer Science Corp. (CSC)?...

2009-01-24T15:11:00.002-05:00

Positioning Grows Computer Science Corp. (CSC) By Gregory S. Davis - Investopedia Advisor:

"Growing a global information technology consulting practice during one of the worst economic slumps in decades is an accomplishment deserving of a spotlight. The $17.3 billion firm Computer Science Corp. (NYSE:CSC) is making it happen with a mixture of domestic contract wins and strategic acquisitions unbound by the constraints of U.S. borders"

The Dark Side of Leaving the Imperative Model

2009-01-07T16:42:00.001-05:00

MF (Martin Fowler) Bliki: RulesEngine:

"Even so, there's still value in a BusinessReadableDSL, and indeed this is an area where I do see value in this computational model. But here too lie dragons. The biggest one is that while it can make sense to cast your eyes down a list of rules and see that each one makes sense, the interaction of rules can often be quite complex - particularly with chaining - where the actions of rules changes the state on which other rules' conditions are based. So I often hear that it was easy to set up a rules system, but very hard to maintain it because nobody can understand this implicit program flow. This is the dark side of leaving the imperative computational model. For all the faults of imperative code, it's relatively easy to understand how it works. With a production rule system, it seems easy to get to a point where a simple change in one place causes lots unintended consequences, which rarely work out well."

‘SOA’ Initiatives Tend to Fizzel After Year or Two

2009-01-07T09:46:00.002-05:00

‘SOA’ dead as of January 1st, analyst says | Service-Oriented Architecture
| ZDNet.com:

"One of the challenges with SOA is that a successful implementation is a multi-year process, since not only do systems and interfaces need to be changed, but development methodologies and incentives need transformation, and the business itself needs to drive the process.� Definitely not overnight stuff. As I understand from what I’ve heard about Burton Group’s own investigations, SOA initiatives show a lot of potential when they are first launched, but tend to fizzle after a year or two."

This seems to be more of a commentary on the difficulty most businesses have in maintaining focus and momentum on strategic IT work...

Chubb Corporation Sees Strong Insider Buying

2008-12-30T10:32:00.001-05:00

Chubb Corporation Sees Strong Insider Buying:

"The Chubb Corporation (NYSE: CB) may not sound attractive, but many insiders are a believer in the stock. The firm repurchased some 5.9 million shares during the third quarter and said it would buyback up to 20 million shares over the next year while paying a dividend of 33 cents per share. This is a clear demonstration of financial strength and confidence in the company."

We've been Elfed!!!

2008-12-23T21:50:00.000-05:00

Jim Rogers calls most big U.S. banks bankrupt

2008-12-12T12:26:00.001-05:00

Jim Rogers calls most big U.S. banks bankrupt | Industry Summits | Reuters:

'What is outrageous economically and is outrageous morally is that normally in times like this, people who are competent and who saw it coming and who kept their powder dry go and take over the assets from the incompetent,' he said. 'What's happening this time is that the government is taking the assets from the competent people and giving them to the incompetent people and saying, now you can compete with the competent people. It is horrible economics.'

Great quote from "How do you design?" — The Designer's Review of Books

2008-12-09T13:28:00.003-05:00

How do you design? — The Designer's Review of Books:

"Harold Kerzner’s variant of a process seen on the wall of the Greater London Council Architects Department in 1978:

1. Project Initiaton
2. Wild Enthusiasm
3. Disillusionment
4. Chaos
5. Search for the Guilty
6. Punishment of the Innocent
7. Promotion of Non-Participants
8. Definition of Requirements"

"The One Best Way"

2008-11-16T23:26:00.003-05:00

Stores Count Seconds to Trim Labor Costs - WSJ.com:

"To assess his efficiency, the store's computer takes into account everything from the kinds of merchandise he's bagging to how his customers are paying. Each week, he gets scored. If he falls below 95% of the baseline score too many times, the 185-store megastore chain, based in Walker, Mich., is likely to bounce him to a lower-paying job, or fire him."

...

"The brains behind Meijer's system is a consulting and software company known for decades as H.B. Maynard & Co., which last year became the Operations Workforce Optimization unit of Accenture Ltd. Borrowing from time-motion concepts first developed for U.S. steel mills and factory floors, it breaks down tasks such as working a cash register into quantifiable units and devises standard times to complete them, called "engineered labor standards. Then it writes software to help clients keep watch over their work forces."

The title of this post was nicked from Robert Kanigels tome about Frederick Winslow Taylor which I read when it was originally published. If I remember correctly, the stress and monotony of the "Engineered Labor Standards" was offset by higher pay. Taylor was quoted in the book as asking a worker, "are you a high priced man?", meaning he would be well paid for the work if he met the standards. Didn't pickup that point in the article.

From the Perception is Reality Dept.

2008-11-15T20:37:00.003-05:00

Interesting perspective on the current economic events and the media from a friend and fellow 90's Internet boom/bust refugee (Viant Corp), Andrew Frank of Gartner Group.

The Economy and the Media:

"Whether you believe America is on the brink of another ‘30s-style Great Depression, or you quietly suspect a wave of manic exuberance could turn back the slide as quickly as it came (or, more likely, you’ll take the bell curve in the middle), you must recognize how the media’s growing use of filtered feedback from the audience has formed a trend amplifier that’s taken on a life of its own. Stories from people for whom the economy remains an ominous cloud on the horizon but have yet to miss a mortgage payment don’t make for good listening. They may provide some contrast to put the story in relief, but the story is clear, as told and retold by the audience to itself."
...
"So what, you say? This means that, even if you are carefully monitoring and analyzing social media, you may well be focusing your efforts on the wrong things. You may be focused too much on understanding the content of conversations (especially the subject and sentiment of messages), and not enough on understanding their velocity and resonance. We search for keywords that define the baseline of relevance – our brand, our competitors, our category – but how many are actively looking for fast-spreading stories in the places where they are germinating? And then, how many are defining their own roles in these stories, both through action and communication?"

Gas Below $3, Back to the Big Iron!

2008-11-02T21:51:00.000-05:00

Eyes on the Road - WSJ.com:

"Jim Ellis Chevrolet in Atlanta has about 120 leftover 2008 model trucks and SUVs to sell. Normally by Halloween, it would have almost none of last year's models lurking on the lot.

That's the bad news. The good news is that buyers are starting to come out of their fallout shelters and take a look at the deals, now that gas is back below $3 a gallon and desperate manufacturers are piling on discounts.

'The last two weeks, our truck activity has picked up,' says Mark Frost, the dealership's general manager. The dealership is promoting big discounts – as much $12,000 off a Chevy Tahoe sport-utility vehicle – and telling business owners that thanks to the economic-stimulus bill Congress passed earlier this year, they may qualify for big tax breaks on vehicles purchased for commercial use.
...
Even if you bought a regular Tahoe, the huge discounts on offer would offset the difference in refueling costs for about 9 years, at current gas prices."

Jazz Buff & Financial Modeler!

2008-11-02T21:17:00.002-05:00

Behind AIG's Fall, Risk Models Failed to Pass Real-World Test - WSJ.com:

"Gary Gorton, a 57-year-old finance professor and jazz buff, is emerging as an unlikely central figure in the near-collapse of American International Group Inc.

Mr. Gorton, who teaches at Yale School of Management, is best known for his influential academic papers, which have been cited in speeches by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. But he also has a lucrative part-time gig: devising computer models used by the giant insurer to gauge risk in more than $400 billion of devilishly complicated deals called credit-default swaps."

AIG relied on those models to help figure out which swap deals were safe. But AIG didn't anticipate how market forces and contract terms not weighed by the models would turn the swaps, over the short term, into huge financial liabilities. AIG didn't assign Mr. Gorton to assess those threats, and knew that his models didn't consider them. Those risks have cost AIG tens of billions of dollars and pushed the federal government to rescue the company in September.
...
The turmoil at AIG is likely to fan skepticism about the complicated, computer-driven modeling systems that many financial giants rely on to minimize risk. As chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which owns insurance companies, Warren Buffett has been sounding the alarm about the issue for years. Recently, he told PBS interviewer Charlie Rose: "All I can say is, beware of geeks...bearing formulas."

Happy Halloween

2008-10-31T21:14:00.003-05:00

IMG_3809, originally uploaded by cryptochaos.

The family that carves together stays together!;-)

From the "Who'd a Thunk It" Department

2008-10-30T22:07:00.001-05:00

Jonathan Schwartz's Blog: Understanding Sun's Business - Q1 Results:

"Wait, you make money off Java?

Yes, it's among the most profitable technology products at Sun - and improving. Java's one of the most popularly distributed pieces of Software on the internet, we distribute over a million Java runtimes a day to users across every OS and geography on PC's. That helps us reach a very broad community of users and, more importantly, developers. We have some exciting news coming up around these distribution volumes - and their value to us, and others."

Didn't See This Comming...

2008-10-29T21:45:00.001-05:00

Some Shed Their Gadgets by Turning to One: iPhone - WSJ.com:

"Lower-income households are turning in force to Apple Inc.'s iPhone and may be doing so to save the cost of a separate broadband connection and music devices, according to the media measurement firm comScore Inc.

A comScore study, set to be released Thursday, shows that the fastest growth in iPhone sales over the summer months came from households that earn less than the median income. ComScore noted sales to lower-income consumers accelerated since the July appearance of the iPhone 3G, which offers high-speed Internet access."

Yen Dead Star Theory | Gregor.us

2008-10-28T12:09:00.001-05:00

Yen Dead Star Theory | Gregor.us:

"...At this point, Japan has become a kind of dead star. It’s industrial economy has collapsed. Virtually no one is employed. The country continues to take in goods, but, produces nothing. The JPY is the strongest currency in the world. It’s become a kind of uber-claim on world goods and services. However, it’s also a claim on the dead star of Japan. Which is to say it’s a claim that no one really wants, or can use. It’s likely that during this period, most of the world has panicked into the Yen, thus reversing the multi-decade short position. Up to this point that trade has been the best trade in the world. And then, it reverses...."

The Meltdown... Why?

2008-10-27T16:46:00.001-05:00

Robert Reich's Blog: The Meltdown (Part IV):

"Why? Because the underlying problem isn't a liquidity problem. As I've noted elsewhere, the problem is that lenders and investors don't trust they'll get their money back because no one trusts that the numbers that purport to value securities are anything but wishful thinking. The trouble, in a nutshell, is that the financial entrepreneurship of recent years -- the derivatives, credit default swaps, collateralized debt instruments, and so on -- has undermined all notion of true value."

True, But I Am Old

2008-10-19T20:42:00.002-05:00

I am an alumni of the first Internet Boom/Bust cycle, more specifically of Viant Corp which was originally founded with the name "Silicon Valley Internet Partners" or SVIP. I joined SVIP from Merrill Lynch, and the shift was dramatic... SVIP and eventually Viant was an organization of extremely bright, energetic, optimistic, creative and interesting people. People who, to this day, remain in touch. There is a Viant Yahoo group where a few of us communicate and many of us lurk. Recently there was a thread around the current events in the market and the general feeling that...

Things will get worse before they get better... The "spend more than you earn" party is over. It's going to be a massive hang-over.

A fellow former CXO responded in his characteristically upbeat , poetic and humorous style. I enjoyed it so much that I've included it below....

True, but I am old.

In junior high school, Comet Kohoutek was predicted by some to wipe out the entire Earth. True, this was mostly predicted by people in California and,true again, most Americans were stoned out of their gourd during that time period...so that prediction doesn't really count.

But when I was in high school we all learned the metric system because "the rest of the world uses it and by 1980 America will too!". Well, that didn't happen.

A little later, Time magazine ran a cover story on "The Second Ice Age" which was fast approaching upon us and would have Americans moving to Mexico in droves so they wouldn't freeze to death! (Seriously, look it up, it was the late 70's.) Now we are warming globally, it seems, and Ohio will soon have beachfront property.

Let's see, what else? Communism was on the doorstep of taking over the world and we would all be calling each other comrade by the turn of the century. A wall came down instead.

Here's my favorite: Y2K. Remember that one, folks? People were preparing for the end of the world (again) and I think the only thing that happened was that one toaster in Australia malfunctioned or something.

I'm not saying that this isn't a real crisis or that there won't be real pain and suffering as a result of this. There probably will be.

I'm just skeptical.

Optimists vastly outperform pessimists.

I know that's true because a consulting company proved it to me with a 3X3 matrix and a very thick presentation binder that made a loud "thud" when they dropped it on my desk next to their Y2K report.

-Bill

Thank for sharing Bill!

Scramble to avoid collapse - Financial Times

2008-10-12T19:55:00.002-05:00

FT.com / In depth - Scramble to avoid collapse

World leaders are scrambling to finalise rescue plans for their banking systems before stock markets open on Monday, amid fears that the global financial system is on the brink of collapse.
...
The extraordinary series of moves, which followed record market falls last week, came amid grave concern that investors would scramble for cash this week, threatening the implosion of financial institutions.
...
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, International Monetary Fund managing director, said: “Intensifying solvency concerns about a number of the largest US-based and European financial institutions have pushed the global financial system to the brink of systemic meltdown.”
...
Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, said last night: “We need concrete measures, we need unity, which is what we achieved today. None of our countries acting alone could end this crisis.”

Wrenching Market Friday

2008-10-10T15:12:00.004-05:00

Today's Markets - WSJ.com:

"Stocks staged another wrenching turnaround on Friday afternoon, this time bouncing sharply higher as banking stocks surged, in a fitting cap to one of the most turbulent weeks in financial history"-WSJ

"Euthanize Weaker Banks..."

2008-10-10T14:23:00.002-05:00

Heard on the Street - WSJ.com:

"Injecting capital alone isn't enough. The government also needs to force banks to recognize losses they have so far ignored, require banks to provide fuller disclosure of holdings, push banks to lend to one another again, euthanize weaker banks while helping strong banks get stronger, guarantee deposits and backstop a portion of bank credit.

Above all, the government needs to tell banks that they have to take part in a systemic solution. The time for negotiation by banks is over.

Yet such a draconian approach should also include market-based solutions. The strong should be encouraged to use markets to get stronger, in some cases in conjunction with government support."

Unstoppable...

2008-10-10T13:38:00.001-05:00

FT.com / In depth - Plunge in global stocks puts pressure on G7:

"Investors warned against further falls. “Sadly it is now impossible to call the bottom of this market rout,” said Howard Wheeldon, strategist at the BGC Partners brokerage in London. “Irrational fear has gripped and it seems markets will now trash almost anything that walks. For now it is unstoppable.”"

The Only Stuff Not Nailed Down

2008-10-10T10:28:00.002-05:00

Across the Curve � Blog Archive � More Thoughts on Treasury Market Weakness:

"Another portfolio manager made an interesting point about the manner in which large portfolios have chosen to operate recently. He suggests that many funds have moved to private equity funds from public stock. He also notes that many had retreated from individual stocks and bonds for the glitz of hedge fund returns.

The problem there is that the new technique of management parks money in a place from which it is not extracted with ease, speed and dexterity. So the only stuff that is not nailed down and available for sale is Treasury and mortgage paper."

In this market climate, I recommend reading this guy's (John Jansen) stuff ☛ http://acrossthecurve.com/ (keep in mind I'm a technologist and someone that has been away from "the Street" for almost 20 years....)