Electronic Arts Internal Practices Exposed

[2ndACR]

Licensed Contractor in Texas and Oklahoma. Great trade when the weather cooperates. Not so good when summer's suck.

70% Residential service/change outs
10% Custom Construction
20% Light Commercial

Not enough profit line for heavy commercial. Plus they take too long to complete for a 12 man company and take too long to get paid.

How did you figure out I was a air conditioning contractor?

[RBWhite]

Your profile

Always been pretty good in this latitude hazy, hot, humid and cold in the winter.

[2ndACR]

Forgot about that.[8|]

Down here, if it does not hit 100 degrees for 30+ days in the summer, with at least 10 of them in a row, then the summer is a bust. I only have 120 days to make all my money to run my company on and a profit. Not much of a margin for error.

This year we could not even seem to stay in the 90's. Kept dropping down to the 80's. Humidity is not too bad in Dallas. Now down on the coast it sucks.

[RBWhite]

We get those days in the summer, the mid to upper 90's, we might hit 100 + every couple of years. But the one thing we do have that is constant and that HUMIDITY.

Up here there is HVAC contractor about every 2 miles and they all make money and operate year round.

Open up a branch office up here, you couldn't loose.

My greatest nightmare was going to a job and find a Nesbitt rooftop unit with a copeland 3500 series compressor with a pump down shutdown, a-----------------------h.

Rick White

[RBWhite]

Before we get yelled at for going off topic, as long the employee is aware that there will be times where long hours will be necessary, salary or hourly thats that persons choice at the time of hiring.

But if the employee is being threatened with the loose of their job for not woking overtime or not getting any reward for their extra affort and remain at that job, that's when the bear gets you.

Rick White

[rhondabrwn]

Today's news... Electronic Arts just bought 19% of Ubisoft in what Ubisoft views as start of a possible "hostile" takeover of the company! Story at nytimes.com

Grrrrr.....

[RBWhite]

I have alot of EA's older games up to about 1997. Always enjoyed them and back than their games were expensive, always about 45 to 55 dollars, but enjoyable. Now having heard about their alegded working practices they would have start producing simulations similar to what I was purchasing when I stopped buying their products. Before I would purchase from them again.

I have a few Ubisoft games, was never very impressed. Buggy, very few patches.

They might just be ment for each other.

Rick White

[rhondabrwn]

ORIGINAL: RBWhite

I have alot of EA's older games up to about 1997. Always enjoyed them and back than their games were expensive, always about 45 to 55 dollars, but enjoyable. Now having heard about their alegded working practices they would have start producing simulations similar to what I was purchasing when I stopped buying their products. Before I would purchase from them again.

I have a few Ubisoft games, was never very impressed. Buggy, very few patches.

They might just be ment for each other.

Rick White

Ah... you so casually dismiss IL-2 Sturmovik and it's sequel? The best flight sim ever produced IMHO? I haven't tried Pacific Fighters, but I anticipate it being just as good.

[RBWhite]

Sorry, Its that I bought so many flight sims over the years I just lost all intrest in them.



Rick White

[freeboy]

pac fighters is good, still in its shakdown cruise, but I just figured out how to play thoise cool dynamic campaigns..
Forgot the web sight but a little serching and soon all IL2 user can get up and running in any theatre of ww2, very nice free add on from the community..
my problem is limited speed of my cpu, although at 1.5 p4 with a good ati card it is ok, just needs to be faster once 25, or more, planes are flying around...

Still waiting for Red barron for the current pc comes out, I am dreaming here..
loved the origonal, and of course Microprose Knights, must have played all those early ww1 and ww2 flight sims, then the market got saturated ...now there is so few left, and Microsoft flight sim 3 was limited to ground attacks , so I lost my faverote, fighter vs bomber as German!
[:'(]

[ravinhood]

I'm still waiting on "WINGS" my all time favorite flight sim. Red Baron was ok, but, just didn't have the fun factor and music of "WINGS". I do enjoy WWI flight sims though, I think I've played them all, but, when I hit WWII flight sims I get knocked out of the sky, can't hit what I'm shooting at and over bomb the site I am trying to bomb or crash into it cause the only successful method I ever found was to nose dive bomb the sobs. lol Ever try to nose dive bomb with a Ju87 Junker? haha

[Cmdrcain]

One thing is I hate EA

They a while back took over Kesmai and their Gamestorm Multiplayr gaming, soon after EA simply shutdown mot of the smorgasbord of games (9.95/mo to play Steller Emperor, Air Warrior, Multiplayer Battletech etc)

And finally closed Gamestorm, in essence simply had bought kesmai/gamestorm to remove compettion for their aborted attempt to get into the online gaming industry..

I have nothing to do with EA games since.

All of this reinforces my view best not to buy EA games, let EA get taken out itself.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn

Today's news... Electronic Arts just bought 19% of Ubisoft in what Ubisoft views as start of a possible "hostile" takeover of the company! Story at nytimes.com

Grrrrr.....

**LINK**

[rhondabrwn]

Once upon a time companies used to "grow" through generation of good products, good sales efforts, and good management. Now, all growth is obtained by buying it, not by being a better, more efficient competitor (with the exception of Walmart, I'm afraid).

I used to work for a large Property & Casualty Insurance company (18th largest in the US at one time) but it got there by buying up small, regional insurance companies and then dismembering them and absorbing their customers. It was quite a growth strategy with one tiny problem... after buying all that business the company couldn't keep it and was forced to continue to "buy" one company after another to avoid showing a significant premium volume loss. The big problem?: that they had lost their edge in being a strong regional competitor and had become a large bloated behemoth that couldn't react to the competition. This strategy finally ran out of steam, the company lost more than 1/2 of it's market share, and was, itself, acquired and dismembered.

I think EA is on that kind of acquisition binge to buy out the competition rather than competing with it by developing superior products.

I keep thinking that Karl Marx was just too far ahead of his time. The capitalism that I see in the future looks more like the target of his Marxist theories. I see America, for example, moving towards a concentration of wealth that will result in a new sort of "economic feudalism" and a resulting "oppression of the working class wage slaves" by a small group of huge corporate entities that have swallowed up all the competitors.

Remember in "Demolition Man" when Stallone's character is graced with a dinner invitation with the Mayor at "Taco Bell"? His character goes... "Waaah.... Taco Bell?" and his guide says "after the great corporate food wars... all restaurants are Taco Bell". A lot of potential truth there... except I predict it will be McDonalds! [:D]

[DamoclesX]

Thats the exact reason I hung up on ea when they called me for an interview, they are a bs company.