Computer Genius Blog :: aka “TheGarage”

And don’t we know to whose advantage Windows Genuine Advantage is. But what happens when Windows Genuine Advantage doesn’t work?

Late last night we started receiving reports from readers experiencing problems with Windows Genuine Advantage authentication. Users of both Windows XP and Windows Vista were writing to say that they could not validate their installations using WGA, and one user even said that his installation was invalidated by the service.

We contacted our sources at Microsoft, who told us off the record that the company is aware of a major WGA server outage affecting users across the globe. The Windows Genuine Advantage support forum has exploded with complaints, as a result, and Phil Liu, WGA project manager, says that he won’t sleep until the problem is fixed. Windows Vista and XP are affected, 32- and 64-bit versions.

I bet Phil Liu is one very tired son of a gun.

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Why is it that when people are sitting on top of the world they aways reach for more? Is it just Human Nature? Add Steve Jobs and Apple to the long list of back-grabbing money grubbers.

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A little over a month ago I said:

You never know, oil could fall a dollar a day for the next three weeks. Funny thing is that BP will still have to fix their damn rotten pipeline without the big price spike.

So it’s only been fifty cents a day.

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I guess Yahoo was slightly over-valued.

Yahoo is probably a pretty good buy right now.

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CHECK THIS OUT. I don’t know who thinks this crap up, but it’s freakin’ genious!

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Upon re-reading the post on Money’s top jobs, I noticed that the list did not include any of the people managing those jobs. The moral: Beware! Corporate advancement is not always what it’s cracked up to be.

Not only that, but on retrospection the list seems somewhat Bourgeoisie, no?

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DEPENDING ON HOW YOU CLASSIFY IT, I have either the best job in America or the seventh best job in America.

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This guy, Patrick Cox, President of Tax Masters, must have one hell of a big ego to feature his fat mug on an expensive television ad I just saw on FoxNews.

Sorry if that seems a bit crude, but in the world of marketing, sensitivity does not hew well with reality. In reality, obese people do not make good spokes people.

The URL on the screen during the commercial was something equally as stupid as putting Patrick’s rotund jowls on the screen. It was www. txmstrs.com, or something like that. I can’t find it. (Here it is. Wisely, Patrick is not featured on the website or there would be a pic here.)

After a cursory search, I can’t find anything on Patrick, the company, or the website. Yet they bought airtime for a commercial they must have produced in a garage. Very interesting execution of what is evidently a masterful business plan.

Anybody else see this commercial? It was so bad I am starting to think I imagined it.

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If you are a technology professional, especially a programmer/analyst, this study result comes as no spurprise to you:

Consulting company Sand Hill Group last year surveyed executives from about 50 software companies and found that offshore software development has become standard practice. Eighty-four percent of companies said they use offshore developers, an increase from about 63 percent two years earlier.
“Core software development is done offshore, not just maintenance and testing,” said M.R. Rangaswami, co-founder of Sand Hill Group. “These executives said they are more reliant on offshore development than ever before.”

The study also showed that many of the overseas IT sweatshops are passing along higher prices and are experiencing a shortages in skills.

A couple of years ago I predicted that the huge costs savings of off-shoring would soon begin to fade. India has 1 billion people with about half living in squalid conditions. As more and more Indians climb the socio-economic ladder, there will be more of a demand for technical services internally. Not to even mention the greater demand for more social services. Also, other emerging economies as well as developed economies all compete for the same IT resources in the major offshore labor markets.

As competition increases and thus costs rise for the offshore resources, the better domestic IT providers look from a competitive standpoint. For the deal to work the decreased labor costs overseas have to offfset the higher cost of managing a distributed workforce. One solution of course is to move the management overseas too. Which I have also predicted.

As a free market conservative, I believe that the laws of supply and demand will bring balance to the technology services market, even on a global scale. I don’t change my viewpoint because I am one of the ones sitting on my ass while programmers on the other side of the world do the same work for about 20% or less of what I used to earn.

One other item of note in the study:

[Rangaswami] said many software companies expected massively lower costs by hiring offshore developers. However, those companies found that prices were about 40 percent lower when all factors were included.

I wonder if all factors are indeed included in the price. For example, is there a value placed on the stability of using a predominantly domestic workforce? Or a cost placed on the risk of using a predominantly foreign workforce? How much does a one month work stoppage of three dozen programmers cost a small software company who uses offshore IT for 80% of its labor? A hit like that could be a deal killer.

I only bring this up because they are burning Valentines cards in India today and they always seem to be on the brink of nuclear war with Pakistan. Other than that, there are probably no concerns regarding India’s security.

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Rather than making good movies, movies that people might actually want to watch, Hollywood chooses to make fewer movies in an effort to stop the bleeding that has resulted from the crap they’ve been shoveling for quite some time.

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The Dow is down about 150 today and the NASDAQ 45. I wonder if any American executives will commit Hari Kari like the LiveDoor guy?

I used to own and operate a small business that depended heavily on continuously running heavy duty trucks around the greater Houston area. During the year 2001, after the Y2K threat was a bust along with the entire tech market, fuel prices had been high for some time and the Dow had been fluctuating around 10,500. I said then and have been saying since then that the Dow would never budge from the 10,500 median until the price of gasoline comes back down to an affordable price. Little did I know how right I was. Five years and counting and I am still right.

9/11 knocked the Dow in the dirt but it recovered. That the stock market recovered from 9/11 but not from the high fuel prices should put in to perspective how important inexpensive fuel is to the economy.

A buck twenty–buck fifty max–is the price point under which the stock market will resume its inexorable growth to 100,000. The reason the market wont grow otherwise is that our economy, like no other in the world, is dependant on gasoline. This is especially true for the small business economy, which everyone knows makes up the bulk of the economic activity in America.

When the Dow recently went over 11,000 for the first time since June 2001, I was worried that my corollary was about to be shattered. Today, I stand on my prediction. As long as fuel is above a buck fifty–and certainly while it is above two bucks–the Dow will remain around 10,500, give or take five hundred.

In lieu of fuel prices receding, the only thing that can kick off a significant surge in the stock market is another technology bubble that everyone will scramble to get in on. Irrational exuberance I think it is called.

UPDATE: Dow down 174, NASDAQ down 50, due to spike in oil. Google down 8%

FINAL: Dow down 210, NASDAQ down 54, oil settles over $68, Google down 10%

Dayum!

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The market always sorts out supply and demand issues.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - More bicycles than cars have been sold in the United States over the past 12 months, with rising gas prices prompting commuters to opt for two wheels instead of four.

Not since the oil crisis of 1973 have bicycles sold in such big numbers, according to Tim Blumenthal, executive director of Bikes Belong, an industry association.

When everyone from the corner gas station to the storage tanks at the wellhead in Saudi Arabia have excess inventory on hand the price will plumment. Always does.

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The Rita evacualtion cost me approximately 56 hours of downtime. No big deal, right? I don’t even advertise. The only costs to me are intangible. Or are they? How much is ten percent of Google PageRank worth?

I bet there are a lot of organizations who have a pretty close approximation of what PageRank is worth to the their revenue model. Marketing folk can probably cite the figure off the cuff for many different industries and sectors.

How much is a point of PageRank worth to an average blogger’s advertising revenue model? Anyone know? Guesses?

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Murdoch is building a significant position in the internet sector:

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp on Thursday made further progress in its internet ambitions by agreeing to acquire IGN Entertainment for $650m in cash.

The video games and entertainment company - one of four key internet properties identified earlier this year by Mr Murdoch as desirable internet purchases - brings the total spent by News Corp on internet acquisitions this year to over $1.5bn.

He has another half billion yet set aside for further acquisitions. Seems he got bullish on the internet once he realized all the advertising was moving to the internet.

Mr Murdoch embraced the internet earlier this year after largely shunning the medium following losses made during the internet bubble five years ago. Like many of his competitors in the media sector, Mr Murdoch has realised advertising revenues are shifting to the internet and so are audiences.

Of course yours truly has been all over this for a while, I just don’t have a couple bil laying around. Maybe he has someone reading my blog.

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I suspect this will become a trend. Of course the RIAA will be looking to sue somebody since music changed hands and they didn’t get their cut.

The new recording industry motto might quickly become: one artist, one label.

Related:

• Recording industry boo boo
• SCO suffers setbacks, retreats
• EZ-Jackster

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I was spelunking the web today and came across a Dean Esmay essay Asparagirl vs. Instapundit from a couple of years ago, which is an analysis of link blog rolling / link exchange and the merits of a long link list vs a short link list.

Much of his argument is based around the concept of a gift economy, which makes perfect sense to me given the context of June 2003. But I would be interested in an updated version of his link analysis taking in to account the advertising dollars that have been showered over much of the Blogosphere and will supposedly continue to flow in the coming years.

Maybe Dean would stick to the original analysis, but it seems to me that an incoming link has taken on a new value. A value in the real economy. A value called PageRank.

I like Dean’s link strategy, by the way:

So what is the process I go through, to decide if I’ll blogroll someone?

1. I don’t assume I have to like everything about a blogger, just something.
2. want to see that this blogger seems like a decent being, who trades in the same kind of respect and decency that other bloggers do.

One way to show me that respect and decency is to participate in the same gift culture I do: offering to exchange links with me goes a long way toward making me think you’re the kind of person I’d like on my blogroll. Not that I accept all such requests. But such a request does show me some respect, that at some level you “get it.”

There are certain well-known webloggers who I do not link to. I like their stuff, but I don’t love it. If they showed me that they were willing to trade in the same sort of mutual-respect gift economy I’ve described, my opinion of them would probably go up enough to want to blogroll them. Because I’d at least be able to say, “okay, this is a person who gets it, who wants to give as well as he receives.” Otherwise, I’d have to truly love their stuff. If not, why should I bother? I don’t love their stuff, they obviously don’t care about my stuff. So, who cares?

Update:

Bill Quick has noticed PageRank and has some questions.

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From the Office Lexicon:

GFF - ‘Give-A-F*ck Factor:’ usually expressed as a decreasing trend after (or during) a long, painful assignment. “My GFF was OK until the customer puked all over our bid and told us to start from scratch; now it’s approaching zero.”

Ohnosecond - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a big mistake.

Cleans Up Well - A technical employee (usually a software developer) who can be brought to a product demonstration or customer meeting without embarrassing the company.

Hilarious, hilarious, hilarious! The longer you have toiled in the corporate environment, the funnier this stuff is.

via Dangerous Logic

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Err, compact. To the tune of 14,500 souls, or 10% of its workforce.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. on Tuesday said it will cut 14,500 jobs, about 10 percent of its full-time staff, as part of a restructuring plan designed to save $1.9 billion annually and boost business performance.

The job cuts will occur over the next six quarters, the Palo Alto-based company said.

Most of the job cuts will come in support functions — such as information technology, human resources and finance — and the rest will be made inside business units.

The company said job cuts in sales positions will be minimal, and there will be little change to the headcount in research and development.

One of Houston’s largest employers since taking over Compaq, HP has 8,000 workers in Houston, mostly in HP’s technology solutions business, which includes data-storage products, manufacturing of ProLiant servers, a large research and development operation, call centers, customer support, and sales and marketing.

Face it. Hp/Compaq is in serious trouble and slahing 14,500 over the next year and an half may exacerbate the problem as the more talented and mobile professionals begin to jump ship ahead of any posible layoffs. Good people don’t want to be associatied with percieved loser. Successfully slashing that many people while trying to retain the most talented, and maintain employee moral, can be a touchy operation.

Heck, and we just built the big ole 47 lane highway out to HP/Compaq’s big campus near Tomball, just north or Houston. Well, maybe it will come in handy for something in the future.

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Notice how everything is always calculated as a “cost” to either government or business? I regularly hear a PSA on KACC regarding allergies and how much money allergies cost the economy. How can allergies be a cost? Thirty five years ago, we didn’t know jack about allergies. Most people just suffered miserably through attacks. Many people died from severe attacks. Thousands of years ago before resistance built up, allergies may have wiped out entire societies. How can something that has always existed all of a sudden be considered a cost?

Well, take a look at how much all the lazy bastards out there are costing us:

BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. workers say they squander over two hours a day at the workplace, with surfing the Web, socializing with co-workers and simply “spacing out” among the top time-wasting activities, according to a survey released on Monday.

Most U.S. companies assume about an hour of wasted time, but workers admit to actually frittering away more than twice as much time at a cost of $759 billion in annual paid salary that results in no apparent productivity, an online survey conducted by America Online and Salary.com showed.

For most of the jobs I have had over the last thirty years, I considered the entire day spent at the job to be a waste of time. The older I get, the more I realize just what a waste of time those jobs were. If only I didn’t need that damn money I could have spent my day on more productive things. Like daydreaming.

If all of these naturally occuring phenoms like lazziness and allergies can be considered a cost, it would be an opportunity cost. This article could just as easy have been titled “Corporations, unskilled managers fail to reduce cost of laziness”.

Paying for hourly work is stupid for almost every non-labor job desription anyway. It encourages laziness because it puts a fixed value on time. The only way for a worker to maximize income is to stretch the job out.

On the other hand, if a worker is payed according to productivity, maximizing income would be a function of completing as many units of productivity as possible in a given set of time.

Sometimes quantitative analysis doesn’t give you the right answer.

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Do we really need a AAA survery and a newspaper story to tell us that gasoline prices are higher than a giraffe’s ass?

The weekly AAA Texas gas price survey released Friday finds the average price of regular unleaded self-serve vitually unchanged at almost $2.13 per gallon. That’s about a nickel short of the record price and up about 31 cents from last year.

But the auto club says this week’s terrorist bombing in London and possible Gulf Coast refinery disruptions from the approach of Hurricane Dennis could drive up prices.

AAA Texas spokeswoman Carol Thorp says oil industry analysts don’t yet know what effect those events will have on refinery production — if any. However, she said prices could drop if security concerns cause travelers to scrap late-summer vacation plans.

Did you get that? “[I]ndustry analysts don’t yet know what effect those events will have on refinery production — if any.”

A survey and a news story in the paper and the upshot is that they dont have a clue.

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