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Russ Henke
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Author: |
Russ Henke |
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3/2/2007 6:15 AM |
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Thoughts of interest to COFES and COFES attendees |
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Dates, Days and Deaths |
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By Russ Henke on
5/27/2007 6:12 AM
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The latest Q1 2007 financial results from the
leading MCAD and EDA vendors are finally out,
and I wanted to discuss them in today's blog
entry.
But Memorial Day 2007 is upon us, just about
1487 days since the infamous declaration of
"Mission Accomplished" in IRAQ. And the
situation there is getting worse, not better.
Over 100 American GI's have been killed in May,
with 5 more days to go. Some 104 soldiers were
killed in April. The last six months have been
the most deadly six months of the war. And
thousands more GI's have been injured, many
incapacitated for life. To say nothing about
the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and
injured. And further, there is still no end
to the IRAQ war in sight. Millions of Iraqis
have fled the country, more by the day.
And don't forget, the war in Af ...
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Still Looking for Some Good News... |
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By Russ Henke on
5/20/2007 12:32 PM
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Here are some more headlines from May 16 - 20:
Because the US Army is so over-stretched today, more
than 25,000 US National Guard troops are now serving
in Iraq. Nearly 5,000 are also in Afghanistan and 6,000
more are stationed along the Mexican border. Because
of equipment left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan,
domestically-based Guard units have only 40% of
the equipment they need for disaster response.
Nearly 90% of stateside Guard units are rated
less than fully ready (for domestic duty)
because of equipment and training shortfalls.
Scientists working with the US Defense Department
have found evidence that a low-level exposure to
sarin nerve gas — the kind experienced by more
than 100,000 American troops in the Persian Gulf
war of 1991 — could have caused lasting brain
deficits in former service members.
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The Week in Review |
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By Russ Henke on
5/13/2007 7:20 AM
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Again this past week, the economic news contained
some ominous signs for the businesses and people
of the United States.
Here are just a few items:
- The US Trade Deficit surged in March '07,
up 10.4% from the February level. So far
this year, the US trade deficit is running
at an annual rate of $723 billion, just
a tad below the $765 billion deficit set
in 2006, the fifth consecutive year of
record trade deficits.
- And this was reported as good news: "In
a reversal of recent trade trends, the trade
deficit with China improved in March 2007,
growing by (only) $17.2 billion compared with
an increase of $18.4 billion in February."
- Growth of the US economy, as measured by the
GDP, slowed ...
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Happy Cinco de Mayo |
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By Russ Henke on
5/5/2007 10:13 AM
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On April 7, 2007, the blog entry in this space began as follows:
Yesterday, April 6, 2007, the US Labor Department reported that
180,000 new jobs were added to non-farm US payrolls in March.
This figure elevated the average number of new jobs added per
month in Q1 2007 to 151,000. While 151,00 per month may
seem large, and it is compared to the dismal record over the
last six years, 151,000 per month does not even keep pace
with the need for new jobs generated by normal US population
growth.
Yesterday, May 4, 2007, the Labor department revised these numbers, having
overstated the February and March job gains by some 26,000. This correction
lowers the Q1 average per month to an even weaker 142,000.
But the cha ...
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Looking for Some Good News – The Saga Continues… |
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By Russ Henke on
4/28/2007 6:08 AM
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Recent blog entries in this space have dealt with
headlines in the news that affect the daily lives
of Americans in particular, and many more people
everywhere. The latest news has not been encouraging.
Here are several more recent news items for readers’
consideration:
- The worst economic growth in four years is raising
concern that troubles in the US housing market will
spread and throw the country into a recession before
the year is out. The economy practically crawled at
a 1.3% pace in the opening quarter of 2007, the US
Commerce Department reported on April 27. The
reading on gross domestic product in Q1 2007 was
the weakest since the 1.2% pace in Q1 2003, right
before the US-led invasion of IRAQ. The 1.3% GDP
growth in Q1 2007 was far weaker than the already-
sluggish 2.5% rate in Q4 2006. The country’s
bloated trade deficit al ...
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Looking for Some Good News – A Brief Update |
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By Russ Henke on
4/17/2007 9:27 AM
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In the blog entry here on April 14, the following
paragraph was included:
On April 13, the Labor Department's Producer Price
Index came in flat for March 2007, an encouraging
result if one does not eat food or buy gasoline or
use electricity. However, including the real world
impacts of energy and food, wholesale prices rose
another full percent in March, following an even
larger 1.3% rise in February.
Readers may be interested in these additional facts:
Yesterday, April 16, the Consumer Price Index results
for March were announced. Consumer prices shot up
by the largest amount in nearly a year, driven by huge
increases in the cost of gasoline ...
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Looking for Some Good News |
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By Russ Henke on
4/14/2007 8:55 AM
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One week ago, this space was devoted to just-released
reports on relatively weak job creation in the US.
Further, what new jobs there are, are arguably in
service sectors that do not create real US wealth
and productivity. On the other hand, the US
Manufacturing Sector has been losing jobs for nine
consecutive months. The April 7 blog entry ended
with some economists suggesting that a US recession
was nearly 50% likely soon.
So in the interest of staying “fair and balanced”,
this week was devoted to trying to find some good
economic or political news to convey. Alas, here’s
just a sampling of the many new reports from the
last 7 days:
The US dollar traded near a record low against the
Euro on April 13, 2007. The Euro bought $1.3547 --
its highest level since January 2005, and only a
cent short of its all-time high from Decem ...
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US Jobs Data for March -- Good News? |
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By Russ Henke on
4/7/2007 9:26 AM
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Yesterday, April 6, 2007, the US Labor Department reported that
180,000 new jobs were added to non-farm US payrolls in March.
This figure elevated the average number of new jobs added per
month in Q1 2007 to 151,000. While 151,00 per month may
seem large, and it is compared to the dismal record over the
last six years, 151,000 per month does not even keep pace
with the need for new jobs generated by normal US population
growth.
Another concern, of course, is just where the jobs are being
added. For example, in March, 75% of the new jobs were
tallied in services sectors: Retailers added 36,000;
educational & health care services expanded by 54,000;
leisure & hospitality services picked up 21,000, while
the government itself added 23,000.
These services sectors are not where the rea ...
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MCAD and EDA Oligopolies |
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By Russ Henke on
3/31/2007 10:04 AM
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In my first Cyon blog entry on March 2, 2007, I mentioned that I would
occasionally offer comments on engineering software, particularly for Mechanical
CAD (MCAD) and Electronic Design Automation (EDA). On March 9, the blog entry
related to the recent passing of pioneers in MCAD and EDA. Today it might be
useful to take a moment to compare these two software industries in general,
especially the oligopolies that seem to dominate each.
In MCAD, one usually identifies four vendor companies whose worldwide revenues now
make up a huge percentage of the entire MCAD software industry: Autodesk, Dassault
Systemes, UGS and PTC. Each enjoys reported annual sales near or well-above one
billion U.S. dollars.
In EDA, observers usually refer to the “Big 3” vendors: Cadence, Synopsys and
Mentor Graphics. Both Cadence and Synopsys revenues are well over a billion
dollars per year each, ...
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Climate Change -- Danger and Opportunity |
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By Russ Henke on
3/22/2007 3:26 AM
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On the heels of my March 9, 2007 blog entry, lamenting the passing of two pioneers in MCAD/CAE and EDA, respectively, comes the news of the passing of John Backus at age 82, the creator of FORTRAN. As the early engineers and programmers of my generation recall, FORTRAN was among the first "high level computer programming languages" that allowed us to avoid machine coding. Many’s the late night of university thesis research and related software development, when we gave thanks to Mr. Backus of IBM.
But today I want to depart from MCAD and EDA briefly, to comment on the advent of Spring, the rising awareness of climate change, and finally doing something about it!
For example, while Applied Materials here in Silicon Valley sports over a thousand seats of commercial MCAD/CAE software, employing “virtual prototyping” to help design semiconductor manufacturing equipment, the company made other news on March 17, 2007, by announcing at its annual shareholde ...
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