More Junkmail from Bob!

Sunday, April 2, 2000

Important Stuff.

Fortune Magazine has come out with the largest companies and some other interesting statistics. How do you rate how big a company is? Total sales? Total value of its stock (market cap)? Profit? Number of employees? Here are the top 10 companies in the U.S. by those criteria:

Sales:

1	General Motors	189,058,000
2	Wal-Mart	166,809,000
3	Exxon Mobil	163,881,000
4	Ford Motor	162,558,000
5	General Electric	111,630,000
6	IBM	87,548,000
7	Citigroup	82,005,000
8	AT&T	62,391,000
9	Philip Morris	61,751,000
10	Boeing	57,993,000

Profit:

1	General Electric	10,717,000
2	Citigroup	9,867,000
3	SBC Communications	8,159,000
4	Exxon Mobil	7,910,000
5	Bank of America	7,882,000
6	Microsoft	7,785,000
7	IBM	7,712,000
8	E.I. du Pont	7,690,000
9	Philip Morris	7,675,000
10	Intel	7,314,000

Seven out of ten in the top-ten market caps are in computing and communications. This is because these are growing areas, and (obviously) because they're popular with investors.

Market Cap:

1	Microsoft	492,462,000
2	Cisco Systems	453,879,000
3	General Electric	417,175,000
4	Intel	391,817,000
5	Exxon Mobil	268,598,000
6	AT&T	236,704,000
7	Oracle	217,258,000
8	Lucent Technologies	214,185,000
9	Wal-Mart Stores	212,666,000
10	IBM	193,810,000

IBM, General Electric, and Exxon Mobil are the only three companies in all three top-ten groups, and they're from different industries.

The number of employees doesn't measure the worth of a company, but it's interesting that Wal-Mart has more employees than the next 3 companies combined. There are over a million Wal-Mart employees!

Employees:

1	Wal-Mart Stores	1,140,000
2	General Motors	388,000
3	Ford Motor	364,550
4	UPS	344,000
5	General Electric	340,000
6	Sears Roebuck	326,000
7	IBM	307,401
8	McDonald's	300,000
9	Kmart	275,000
10	J.C. Penney	260,000

I expect Upperspace Corporation, the new purveyor of fine CAD software, to be on these lists soon:

I have deliberately kept my mouth (fingers?) shut about the Cuban 6-year old in Florida because it doesn't deserve a tenth of the publicity it's been getting. But it looks likethe politicians have milked this for what they can get and it's about over. You can help decide what to do!

Select one of the following:

(a) Take all the money the lawyers have made on this deal and send it to the children in Cuba.
(b) Kidnap all the kids in Cuba and take them to Florida "for the good of the children."
(c) Keep the kid and send Al Gore to Cuba.
(d) Have the Justice Department require Microsoft to buy Cuba as part of its antitrust settlement.

Email your decision to your choice of:

(a) Attorney General Janet, who comes from Florida,
(b) President Bill, who knows where Cuba is,
(c) Vice President Al, who invented the internet, or
(d) Governor Jeb, George's brother and son.

For equal time, here's Cuba's web site on the subject:

        http://elian.cu/

Here's what Fidel Castro had to say about it on Wednesday:

        http://www2.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2000/ing/f290300i.html

Here are his other recent "discursos." It's pretty interesting to read, even though it's not very unbiased.

        http://www2.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/

In 1936 Alan Turing published a paper about a finite state machine. It's a conceptual machine -- he didn't actually build it. This paper was being one of the first papers on programming and computability. He was arguably the most prominent computer scientist at the time, and there weren't even any computers yet. The Turing Machine, as it's called today, is still studied in computer science. Here's how it works:

        http://obiwan.uvi.edu/computing/turing/more.htm

During World War II, Alan started work at Station X, also called Bletchley Park, also called the Mansion:

        mansion.jpg

He worked on breaking the German Enigma codes. The Germans had some encoding and decoding machines that they used to send secret messages, such as tank movements and lunch orders. Here's an enigma machine that's on display at NSA in Washington:

        enigma.jpg

There were several versions of this in use throughout the war, and each type had changable codes that had to be broken. So once the allies figured out how to read the enigma codes, they had to keep after it to keep breaking new codes.

They were going to tear down the mansion a few years ago, but some people got together and got it restored into a museum. Mick Jagger, who has his own enigma machine, was one of the supporters. Yesterday someone stole the enigma machine that was on display in the mansion. I think this person is a bum.

Here's more information on Bletchley Park:

        http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/

In 1927, the Air Craft Carrier Lexington was launched, one of the first. Here's a picture of it being built:

        http://users.apex2000.net/mkkirkwood/launch.htm

It sank in May, 1942 in the Battle of Coral Sea. But in September of that year, they launched another USS Lexington aircraft carrier. It was mothballed from about 1947 to 1955. It was used for training in the 70's and 80's, and was parked at Corpus Christi in 1991 and turned into a museum.

Here is a picture on the Lexington in 1972:

        http://www.skyhawk.org/vt7-716a.gif

... and the first picture of today is of the USS Lexington. I took it Yesterday in Corpus Christi:

        img_3492.jpg

Here's more information on the USS Lexington:

        http://www.usslexingtoncv16.org/blueghostdesig.htm

Fred Moldofsky is a stock day trader. He was arrested on Thursday. He posted some false press releases on the Yahoo message board about Lucent Technologies, trying to make the price of the stock go down. It worked -- Lucent stock went down 3.6 percent. Of course, nobody knows if that's why the stock went down. I don't think he'll make any money on the deal at any rate.

Details:

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000330/wr/tech_arrest.html

Here's now not to drive a helicopter:

http://www.ntsb.gov/Aviation/LAX/00A129.htm

The pilot lost control when he was taking off in his Robinson R22 and flew the tail rotor into a plate glass window!

More pictures of today:

A ship headed for the channel to Corpus bay:

        Img_3509.jpg

Pelicans:

        Img_3502.jpg

Something big they're building near Corpus:

        Img_3496.jpg

Something bigger they're building -- an offshore rig:

        Img_3498.jpg

A guard bird:

        Img_3499.jpg

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