'It's A Miracle That It Sold Anything At All. It Was Not A Rational Buy.'

Grok Headline matches for 'It's A Miracle That It Sold Anything At All. It Was Not A Rational Buy.'

The Observer | OMM | 'It's perfect
madness'

The Observer | OMM | 'It's perfect
madness' 03/23/2005 02:36 AM
Tom Waits writes about his 20 most cherished albums of all time .. bespricht seine 20 Lieblingsplatten .. top tunes

observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1439272,00.html
track this site | 3 links

For Motorola's Zander, 'It's Execution'

For Motorola's Zander, 'It's Execution' 07/28/2004 01:21 PM
Business Week Jul 28 2004 4:30PM GMT

In Bush's War Room, 'It's the Hypocrisy,
Stupid'

In Bush's War Room, 'It's the Hypocrisy,
Stupid' 07/13/2004 10:18 PM
President Bush's war room, which collects and disburses information to the news media, is the nerve center of the re-election campaign.

Descartes stock crumbles after CEO
dismissal amid accounting woes: 'It's
bad'

Descartes stock crumbles after CEO
dismissal amid accounting woes: 'It's
bad' 05/07/2004 07:13 PM
Canadian Press via Canada.com May 7 2004 10:52PM GMT

Town Sold On eBay Not Really Sold

Town Sold On eBay Not Really Sold 12/29/2003 04:51 AM
Earlier this month, I wrote about how it's become popular to use eBay as not just a buying and selling platform, but also as a PR platform for such things as selling towns - because you're almost guaranteed to get press coverage for selling something weird. Of course, it looks like there might also be a downside. Last year, a town in California received a ton of press for being put up on eBay, after conventional attempts to sell it had failed. That press coverage helped push up interest in the town until someone "won" the town with a bid of $1.8 million. Of course, as we pointed out at the time, with many such high profile auctions, the top bid is likely to be bogus. A few months after the original auction, it was reported that the sale still hadn't been finalized. Now, exactly a year after the original eBay auction happened, the folks who "own" the town are admitting that the buyer disappeared and never sent a check. Even worse, the sellers then went down the list of everyone else who bid on the town and failed to find a single legitimate buyer. Thus, the town is back up for sale - but not on eBay and at half the price of what they "sold" it for last year.

Miracle Max

Miracle Max 05/07/2004 06:23 AM
MLT Release 0.1.0

It's a miracle.......

It's a miracle....... 12/30/2003 04:06 PM
But i've actually eaten food and kept it down, my fever is gone, my ears still hum but my throat...

The Texas Miracle

The Texas Miracle 01/09/2004 09:57 PM
More on the Texas Miracle

It was called the “Texas Miracle,” and you may remember it because President Bush wanted everyone to know about it during his presidential campaign. It was about an approach to education that was showing amazing results, particularly in Houston, where dropout rates plunged and test scores soared. Houston School Superintendent Rod Paige was given credit for the school success, by making principals and administrators accountable for how well their students did. Once he was elected president, Mr. Bush named Paige as secretary of education. And Houston became the model for the president’s “No Child Left Behind” education reform act.

After yesterday's fund raising and self congratulatory orgy in Knoxville TN it seems appropriate that the record be examined more closely. No child left behind indeed.

Rational ignorance

Rational ignorance 02/10/2004 02:51 AM

Lago

Rational Ignorance

Academic life is ruining the internet for me. An example: Today I read Joi Ito’s wandering entry on money, economics, and physics, and the first thing I thought of doing was to post a bibliography of all of the reading that should have been done before that post was made. And then I realized that posting such a bibliography is the equivalent of shouting at the television. It doesn’t matter what I say about it. The TV (and the internet) can’t really hear me.

Lago reacts to an interesting point that I in fact pondered yesterday before posting my thoughts from my lunch with Seth. Is it better for me to post my superficial musings with Seth in the one hour that I had before I needed to move on to the next thing, or do I scribble them in my notebook and write a more rigorous treatment with references. I decided, as Cory often says, that my blog is my notebook and that even though many of my thoughts were half-baked, it was better to write early/write often than to back burner the thoughts and probably never get around to posting them.

If you read on in Lago's post, he does raise a very interesting way to look at the trade-offs of shallow vs rigorous. What is the cost of rigor and is it worth it?

I am not an academic. I am an extremely busy businessman who happens be lucky enough to meet quite a few smart people from a variety of fields. As one good friend has told me, my primary purpose is to connect people. It probably adds more value to society for me to spend one hour getting two people excited enough to talk to each other than to sit and ponder a notion by myself. My blog is not a rigorous treatment of the topics that I'm interested in, but rather a collection of links, questions, thoughts and points of view. A great variety of people read this blog and I'm sure that just about any professional thinker in on any topic I write about will find my treatment of the topic rather superficial. The question is to me is whether this is valuable or whether my lack of rigor could actually be a disservice to the discourse.

Getting back to my last post... I actually did think about spending the weekend dragging out my old notes from Hayek, Coase, Arrow, Chandler, Shannon, Mauss, Simon, etc. and digging into my memory and trying to tie all of this together. Instead, I posted a my rambling thoughts because I knew I'd never do it if I put it off. Also, I realize that I will never be able to compete directly with full-time academic and that it is not my position to answer these questions in a rigorous way. I suppose that if I can end up getting Seth, an economist and a rabbi to sit down and chat about world views over dinner at some point, I will have served my purpose.

I don't want to ignite a academic vs non-academic flame-war here. I'm just trying to point out, as Lago does, that we are all making decisions about how much to study in order for us to make the right decisions. I don't have the time or the ability to do "all of the reading that should have been done before that post was made." Having said that, I would encourage people to post "a bibliography of all of the reading" since I am interested and so are many other people.

The Two Year Miracle?

The Two Year Miracle? 06/18/2004 11:04 AM
I have recently had some experience in my favorite field of forensics on a machine which I affectionately call a "Ronco" Box. Many of you are familiar with Ron Popeil and his famous television infomercials covering everything from food dehydrators...

The miracle of seeing colors

The miracle of seeing colors 05/22/2004 06:32 PM
McMinnville News-Register,OR-4 hours ago ... I make no pretense at being an expert on this subject, so I turned to Google, the source of information about everything, a miracle in itself. ...

Q&A: Mike Devlin, IBM Rational GM

Q&A: Mike Devlin, IBM Rational GM 12/29/2003 11:10 AM
Devlin tears himself away from integrating the software development tools company he helped create to discuss Rational's fusion with Big Blue.

Rehhagel hails "miracle"

Rehhagel hails "miracle" 07/01/2004 11:53 PM
Greece coach Otto Rehhagel terms his side's win over the Czech Republic as miraculous.

The miracle of stem cells

The miracle of stem cells 03/13/2003 10:25 AM
A boy's own stem cells are used to trigger re-growth of part of his heart. Now if these cells were...

How IBM Is Tucking in Its Rational Tools

How IBM Is Tucking in Its Rational Tools 12/12/2003 10:26 AM
IBM executives give an overview of how they are integrating tools provider Rational Software while re-aligning software divisions.

The miracle of life in a dead garden

The miracle of life in a dead garden 06/05/2005 11:56 PM

With all my travel, my fire escape garden has been sorely neglected. In fact, nearly everything out there is dead. Most stuff did not survive last summer/fall, and what managed to hang on died this spring. Everything that is except my pinks, which are growing well and on the verge of exploding with blossoms.

So yesterday I leaned out the window to clean some dried dead stuff out of the container (old dried pinks from last summer) and as I did so, I moved a dead rose plant out of the way. All of the sudden, there was a huge fluttering of wings and lots of cooing, and right there, nestled between two containers was a momma dove and her nest of eggs!! I hadn't noticed the nest because it wasn't visible from my window, but there it was once I moved a pot. I quickly replaced it, and momma dove settled back onto her nest.

Now I just need to figure out a way to view the nest and watch the family's progress without disturbing them. Perhaps a small camera mounted on the railing of the fire escape? Last spring a dove family created a home in my neighbor's window box. I wonder if it's the same family, this time relocated to have a nest with more of a view? I can't wait to watch and see when the babies are born!

Halls of Ivy May Receive Miracle-Gro in
Germany

Halls of Ivy May Receive Miracle-Gro in
Germany 05/09/2004 04:47 AM
Over the last few decades, on the higher rungs of higher education, the U.S. has been outpacing pretty much everybody.

Dyson On The Paranormal or Expect A
Miracle

Dyson On The Paranormal or Expect A
Miracle 07/14/2004 10:09 AM
Expect a miracle? Freeman Dyson on Littlewood's Law of Miracles: "...the total number of events that happen to us is about thirty thousand per day, or about a million per month. ...The chance of a miracle is about one per million events. Therefore we should expect about one miracle to happen, on the average, every month." From his review of book debunking the paranormal (whose views he isn't entirely willing to accept). Via Marginal Revolution

IBM Rational focuses on software quality

IBM Rational focuses on software quality 07/06/2004 12:07 PM
IBM Rational on Tuesday will announce plans to standardize its suite of automated software quality tools on the Hyades open source platform and is unveiling concurrently a software quality campaign dubbed ?Continuously Ensure Quality,? or CEQ.

Miracle -- The Official Movie Web Site

Miracle -- The Official Movie Web Site 02/19/2004 08:05 AM
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! .. Miracle .. movie

disney.go.com/disneypictures/miracle/home.html
track this site | 4 links

IBM Sets Course for Rational 'Atlantic'
Suite

IBM Sets Course for Rational 'Atlantic'
Suite 07/19/2004 08:15 PM
Officials say the next generation of the Rational development tool suite, code-named Atlantic, represents deeper integration between IBM's Rational and WebSphere product lines.

How to Fail with the Rational Unified
Process (PDF)

How to Fail with the Rational Unified
Process (PDF) 04/12/2004 06:14 AM
This article has a good summary of a lot of mistakes in the software development life-cycle, including a comprehensive critique of the waterfall model (waterfalls are pretty but they just don't work).

More info on RUP. At our company we don't use RUP (you have to pay to use RUP), but we do adhere to the ideas of the spiral model.

Town Sold On eBay Finally Sold For
Real... But Not On eBay

Town Sold On eBay Finally Sold For
Real... But Not On eBay 05/21/2004 02:35 AM
Back in 2002 there was a tremendous amount of hype when Bridgeville, the small (mostly deserted) California town was put up for sale on eBay. It eventually sold in an auction for $1.8 million - and got a tremendous amount of press attention. The only problem: the $1.8 million bid was a hoax. A whole year went by and the owners of the "town" sheepishly admitted that the buyer (and his money) never showed up. Now, however, the town has been sold again - but not on eBay, and back down at its original asking price of $700,000. Even with the failure of the actual sale to go through, though, people still remember that you can "sell a town on eBay," contributing to the use of eBay as a PR platform beyond just its ability to match buyers and sellers.

Virgin on Mexican wall "no miracle"
(Reuters)

Virgin on Mexican wall "no miracle"
(Reuters) 05/11/2004 05:12 AM
Reuters - Mexico's Catholic Church has ruled out any divine origin for an image on a hospital wall that thousands of pilgrims are flocking to venerate in the belief that it shows the country's patron saint.

Rational Extends WebSphere Tool Lines

Rational Extends WebSphere Tool Lines 05/10/2004 01:44 AM
IBM's Rational Software division unveils new versions of WebSphere Studio Application Developer and WebSphere Studio Site Developer that feature ease-of-use capabilities.

Interview: Rational?s Devlin touts
merger

Interview: Rational?s Devlin touts
merger 07/23/2004 08:02 PM
Mike Devlin is general manager of Rational Software as part of the IBM Software Group. Prior to IBM?s February 2003 acquisition of Rational Software for $2.1 billion, Devlin was Rational CEO and was a co-founder of the company in 1981. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill talked with Devlin about the merger with IBM, open source trends, and other issues in an interview at the Rational Software Development User Conference in Grapevine, Texas, earlier this week.

Intel Promises Analysts "Rational
Growth"

Intel Promises Analysts "Rational
Growth" 05/13/2004 06:30 PM
With the dot-com bust completed, Intel Corp. is now returning to a period of "rational growth" driven by sound investment in new technologies, executives said Thursday.

IBM Rational Leader Charts UML's Path

IBM Rational Leader Charts UML's Path 06/07/2004 10:10 PM
Grady Booch, chief scientist at IBM's Rational division and one of UML's creators, talks about the language's ability to add value—and how Microsoft's changing approach to modeling could impact it.

Rational exec envisions software
prominence

Rational exec envisions software
prominence 07/20/2004 07:30 PM
GRAPEVINE, TEXAS -- Projecting what the world will be like in 2031, Rational Chief Scientist and IBM Fellow Grady Booch predicted that software would touch every aspect of life and, thusly, developers would only grow in their importance to society.

Rational unveils upgrade to next tools
portfolio

Rational unveils upgrade to next tools
portfolio 07/21/2004 10:59 AM
Computer Weekly Jul 21 2004 3:35PM GMT

Big Blue sails Atlantic (in Rational
manner)

Big Blue sails Atlantic (in Rational
manner) 07/20/2004 06:31 AM
Tooling up

Brainstorm 2004 tutorial notes -
Rational Executive

Brainstorm 2004 tutorial notes -
Rational Executive 07/15/2004 12:18 PM

The Agency Costs of Overvalued Equity - Michael C. Jensen

Here are my notes. They are rough notes and may be a bit inaccurate or unclear.

Any time two or more people try to engage in cooperative activities, there is a cost because they never have the same preferences.

Stock options should be adjusted to dividends and cost of capital or their incentives are not aligned with shareholders.

If you as a manager find yourself in a situation where your stock is overvalued. It sets up pressures that cause people to destroy value. When an executive commits fraud to deliver market expectation, they know it's overvalued. 70bn peak but was worth 30bn for Enron. They had a choice of defending the 70bn or confess that it's really only worth 30bn. The board and the investors won't feel that it is value reseting, but rather value destruction and would fire the CEO and look for someone who could perform. No easy way to correct. Probably prevent from getting there. If you're there, you've probably lost your job.

Enron could have stopped the run-up, but they didn't see the downside of the run-up. "Charlie and I get just as uneasy when a company is selling for more than the intrinsic value than when it is trading at less." - Warren Buffet.

Overvaluation is managerial heroin. Feels good at the beginning, but turns out really bad at the end. The pressures of the market cause messing with the gray area of accounting. People raise money to buy companies and destroy more value. Funding of risky investment.

For every $1 in the purchase price, $2.31 is lost in the value of the firm for Nortel when investors realized that the acquisitions were not adding value. Companies destroy value with acquisitions. They con the market into believing that they can add value so it postpones the day of reckoning, but it eventually comes and comes bigger. Bad acquisitions were overwhelmingly with stock. Auctions with multiple irrational people increasing irrationality.

Throwing stock options in is like throwing gasoline on the fire. The solution is in the governance system. Can't solve all problems with incentive systems. You need honest and intelligent people who are monitoring. Unwinding constraints. Lockups after vesting.

Why did the shorts shut down shop at the beginning of the turn-around and didn't correct the problems.

95% of waste from stock options went to people lower than the top five officers. Some people think it is costless to issue options, but this isn't true.

DON'T LET YOUR STOCK GET OVERVALUED. If your stock is overvalued, YOU ARE GOING TO BE IN TROUBLE.

Solution for not having stock overvalued. Communicate your strategy. Don't forecast earnings in value. Publish audit-able metrics for strategy. Stop producing short term earnings forecasts. Would not even do rolling 12 month earnings forecast. Managers should not be in business of forecasting.

Comment - TrackBack

Open source miracle horse stuns MS Japan

Open source miracle horse stuns MS Japan 07/06/2004 03:27 PM
The Register Jul 6 2004 8:01PM GMT

Virgin on Mexican Wall Is No Miracle,
Church Says (Reuters)

Virgin on Mexican Wall Is No Miracle,
Church Says (Reuters) 05/11/2004 10:50 AM
Reuters - Mexico's Catholic Church ruled out any divine origin for an image on a hospital wall that thousands of pilgrims are flocking to venerate in the belief that it shows the country's patron saint.

Tribute Micro supports the Children's
Miracle Network

Tribute Micro supports the Children's
Miracle Network 09/15/2004 02:12 AM
Tribute Micro will donate 1% of their gross profits to the Children's Miracle Network (cmn.org) during the month of September 2004 to help find a cure for childhood diseases. Children's Miracle Network-the alliance of premier hospitals for children-is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping kids by raising funds for 170 children's hospitals across North America. Each year these non-profit hospitals provide the finest care, research and community outreach to help millions of children with diseases and injuries of every kind. [PRWEB Sep 15, 2004]

Austrian emperor made miracle -- Vatican
(Reuters)

Austrian emperor made miracle -- Vatican
(Reuters) 12/29/2003 11:39 PM
Reuters - The Vatican has recognised a miracle performed by Charles, the last emperor of Austria and a relative of the colourful 19th-century empress "Sissi", officially setting him on the path to beatification.

IBM Rational: Rival Microsoft Faces
Uphill Battle

IBM Rational: Rival Microsoft Faces
Uphill Battle 07/29/2004 10:06 PM
In an eWEEK interview, IBM Fellow and Rational Chief Scientist Grady Booch discusses Rational's development strategy and competition from Microsoft with its Visual Studio Team System application lifecycle development tools.

'It's harder to manage growth than to
manage the status quo'

'It's harder to manage growth than to
manage the status quo' 01/27/2004 07:31 PM
Starting to use business rules like these for search in e-commerce is a very interesting trend. It's not happening only on Yahoo or Google. ...

Slow-Motion Miracle: One Boy's Journey
Out of Autism's Grasp

Slow-Motion Miracle: One Boy's Journey
Out of Autism's Grasp 12/28/2004 10:52 PM
An 8-year-old boy's continuing journey to break free of the grip of autism reflects a struggle that more than 150,000 American children have faced in the past decade.
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