[TheForge] Re:analog vs digital YAK

[Andy Vida]

Dann Johnson wrote:

> Andy and Steve,
> 
> The thread below has been educational for me.   I knew that my old stereo
> was analog  but ....     Thanks all for this quickie course in
> electronics.   8 years ago, I remember sitting  on the board of
> directors  of our electric coop,  being given the same kind of hype  at an
> area convention.   The presenters  sounded exactly as Andy described  and
> were big muckety mucks  for  a dot.com company, getting ready for
> the  IPO.   Luckily  my electric coop didn't get hooked on that one either.

	The vast and overwhelming majority of CEOs of the dotcoms
	had absolutely ZERO qualifications for the positions.  A
	REAL CEO should have at least 10 years of business
	experience (rule of thumb, not an absolute) and should
	almost certainly be an MBA.  There are all manner of highly
	oblique structures and considerations in the world of professional
	business that require some very specific technical business
	knowledge due to their very intuitively inobvious and often
	even scientifically complex nature.

	Real professional business management is a highly technical 
	affair.  A CEO is, at least in theory, responsible for 
	navigating the market waters and charting courses for the 
	company based upon various considerations such as market 
	research and forecasting, a black art in itself.  To do this 
	well requires some serious talent, training, and experience.  
	This is more so today than ever before, what with all the 
	foreign competition and ever thinner margins in many sectors 
	such as semiconductors and mass storage	devices.  In addition,
	the science of management has matured tremendously in the past
	40 years and the days of seat of the pants CEOs enjoying great
	success are basically over.  

	But the title "CEO" carries with it a lot of weight.  When
	Deloitte & Touche tried to stiff me for $60K in 97, I called
	their CEO directly.  When his secretary asked who I was, I
	gave my name and title, CEO of Meikdo International Inc.  I
	was on the line with their CEO quickly and a week later I had
	my check and several people in the office where I worked, who
	refused to see me paid, wound up on the unemployment line.  Real
	CEOs don't like hearing about things like this.

	I'm just some two bit, clueless d00d as far as professional
	business management goes, yet my use of the CEO moniker opened
	a door that would not have opened for me otherwise.  It's a
	bit of McLuhan's "the medium is the message" syndrome and that
	is what reeled in all the sucke^H^H^H^H^Hinvestors during the
	dotcommie days.  People by and large WANT to be lead by the nose.
	THey WANT to believe.  How do you think people like Alexander
	the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin, FDR, and GW 
	Bush get away with the things they get away with?  Tell a big 
	enough lie with a straight enough face and I can sell you  your
	own underwear and have you walking away thinking you punked me
	good.

	People are very interesting critters and in some ways they are
	predictable almost to the point of boring one to pain.