Thursday, November 19, 2009

I Saw This Coming

AOL to Cut Its Work Force by One-Third

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Published: November 19, 2009

In recent years, amid the fallout from its audacious merger withTime Warner, AOL Inc. has steadily become smaller through subscriber desertions and rounds and rounds of layoffs.

Times Topics: AOL LLC

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It is becoming smaller still.
On Thursday, AOL announced it would cut its work force by one-third by eliminating close to 2,500 workers. The move comes as the company prepares to be spun off from its parent company, Time Warner, into an independent, publicly traded company.
AOL said in a regulatory filing that the job cuts were meant to save about $300 million a year. It will take a $200 million restructuring charge to account for the severance costs. The company said it would ask for volunteers first, and then resort to layoffs if it didn’t get roughly 2,500 people to accept a buyout package.
Tim Armstrong, who became AOL’s chairman and chief executive in March after a successful and lucrative stint at Google, told employees in an e-mail message that he would not accept a bonus this year. In the message, he wrote, “as a member of our team and the person who takes accountability for the results of the company, I am making the decision to forgo my 2009 bonus. That decision is a personal one and is not a sign for the future payout of the overall bonus plan for employees.”
Mr. Armstrong, 38, was guaranteed a bonus of at least $1.5 million this year, according to a regulatory filing. His minimum base salary, according to his employment contract, is $1 million.
At its biggest, AOL had more than 20,000 employees in 2004. It currently has about 6,900 and after the latest round of layoffs will be left with about 4,400 workers, making it roughly a fifth of the size it once was.
In terms of what was once its core business — selling dial-up Internet access — AOL had the most subscribers in the third quarter of 2002, when it counted 26.7 million of them. At the end of the most recent quarter, it had 5.4 million. Through the first nine months of 2009, AOL lost 1.9 million subscribers, or more than 200,000 a month.
This business is still profitable for AOL, although it is declining rapidly. Mr. Armstrong, in the face of continuing declines in the access business, has singled out several areas for growth, including premium content, online mapping and local services, communications like instant messaging, and online advertising.
In an interview with The New York Times in July, Mr. Armstrong said of the company’s challenges: “AOL has a choice to make. We either lose slowly or win quickly. We are choosing to win quickly.”
Time Warner, whose merger with AOL in 2000 was disastrous for both companies, decided earlier this year to spin off its struggling Internet unit. The spinoff is scheduled to be completed by Dec. 9.
In the most recent quarter, AOL’s revenue was down 23 percent, or $235 million, to $777 million. Of this decline, $138 million was ascribed to a decline in subscriptions, while $92 million resulted from a drop in advertising.
AOL became a force on the Internet in the 1990s by offering its ubiquitous dial-up service, but fell behind as high-speed service became widespread and the access business became commoditized.
It used its high-flying status and its stratospheric stock price to essentially buy Time Warner in a deal announced in January 2000. The balance of power shifted in the ensuing years, and Time Warner dropped “AOL” from its name.
Its formal spinoff in the coming weeks will be the closing chapter of the ill-fated deal.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Ama et fac quod vis

Saint Augustin said da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo , Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.

The title of this note means:

Love and do as you please.

Near Chilpancingo there is an Augustinian seminary, in the City of Chilapa. I assume that the original Saint, explains the ideology of this Catholic Order. They are freer than the Franciscans, and others with poverty vows.

"Along with being a prominent figure in the religious spectrum, Augustine was also very influential in the history of education. He introduced the theory of three different categories of students, and instructed teachers to adapt their teaching styles to each student's individual learning style. The three different kinds of students are: the student who has been well-educated by knowledgeable teachers; the student who has had no education; and the student who has had a poor education, but believes himself to be well-educated."

From the Wikipedia article linked above.

Otomí Mathematics

"3. Weaving and embroidery.

The Otomies have traditionally been highly regarded for their skills at textile arts, and I would like to examine the mathematics of Otomi weaving and embroidery. Some general observations about weaving and embroidery will motivate the mathematical considerations. I will focus on the Otomies, though many of my statements hold for traditional textile artists in general. Also, I will tend to refer to Otomi textile artists as female because most are women, though there are male weavers and embroiderers."

Taken from:

The Journal of Mathematics and Culture
October 2009, V4(1)
ISSN - 1558-5336

These present day Mexicans very likely belong to the oldest culture still living in Central Mexico.

My History of Mathematics Course

"La matemática se basó en hacer todos sus conteos con lo referente a la naturaleza por la necesidad de contar lo que tenían; así mismo en un principio, las nociones primitivas de número, magnitud y forma pueden haber estado relacionadas más bien con diferencias y contrastes que con semejanzas, tales como son la diferencia entre un lobo y muchos, la desigualdad en tamaño entre un pececillo y una ballena, el contraste entre la redondez de la luna y la derechura de un pino."

Translation:

Mathematics was based on counting nature around them; thus in the beginning primitive notions of number, magnitude and shape could have been related rather with differences and contrasts than with similarities, as the differences in number between one wolf and many, in size between a little fish and a whale, the contrast between the roundness of the moon and the straightness of a pine tree.

This is the answer to the following question:

Describe the type of evidence on which an account of prehistoric mathematics is based, citing some specific instances.

I am pleased with this student's answer.

Antígona Segura

This Mexican Astrobiologist is a source for the search of life outside our Solar System.

You can visit her page here.

Exoplanet Characterization and the Search for Life

" Introduction

A few times in human history, astronomers have made discoveries that changed people’s view of the universe and of themselves. The most renowned of these was Copernicus’ suggestion, and Galileo’s subsequent proof, that the Earth orbited the Sun, rather than vice versa. This list should also include the discovery that stars are other Suns, that some nebulae are galaxies like our own, and that the universe began with a Big Bang some 13 billion years ago. We now stand at the brink of answering two other paradigm-changing questions: Do other planets like Earth exist, and do any of them harbor life? The tools for answering these questions either exist already or can be developed within the next 10-20 years.

The stellar energy flux incident on a planet drives its atmospheric chemistry to a disequilibrium state. But the degree of disequilibrium can be profoundly increased by the presence of life on a planet’s surface. As a prime example, the simultaneous presence of O₂and reduced gases such as CH₄ or N₂O in a planet’s atmosphere is considered the best available remote evidence for Earth-like life.⁹

Marine plants and algae do this as well, although the effect is muted by overlying water. This red edge is easy to pick out if one looks directly at a leaf, or down from space at a patch of densely vegetated land.¹⁴

Nearly all of Earth’s O₂ comes from photosynthesis, which is carried out by plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. Predicted atmospheric O₂ concentrations prior to the origin of photosynthesis are too low to detect spectroscopically.¹⁵

References:
9. Lovelock JE. 1965. Nature 207: 568-70.
14. Sagan C, et al.,1993. Nature 365: 715-21.
15. Segura A, et al. 2007.Astrobiology 7: 494-5.

Taken from:
ArXive

Fire in Chilpancingo

Today we can read in a Chilpancingo newspaper that a drunkard burned the poor fruit stands of street vendors downtown at night.

It seems that in this town drunkards are really antisocial, I remember reading last month that a drunkard disappeared in a Government building after the authorities blamed students of attacking a Seven Eleven kind of joint outside campus. Later that night I saw a drunk man buying alcohol there, as I was going home.

I find these drunk people in the news odd. Maybe politicians here drink a lot and their drinking buddies volunteer for the dirty work. Who knows, I don't drink.