Haha, offtopic.

[CyberSh33p]

Man, this forum is dead as all getout. haha.

lets talk about how dead it is. I'll start

Off topic is so dead, even abe vigoda said "boy is that thing dead"

 

[SpuD]

Haha, Alabama.

 

[f|uke]

yah but the rest of the site is chaos.

HL2 pwns!

 

[Danimal]

Haha, Alabama.

Haha, Orlando

 

[Dr. Freeman]

yah but the rest of the site is chaos.

yeah, make sure u thank Valve for that :E

 

[oldagerocker]

these forums are as dead as a donkey, on a merry-go-round.

 

[CrazyHarij]

Yeah.. I guess this is the end of the party, the big thing is done, now it's time for all of us to pack our bags and head home. ;(

 

[Hot Soup]

It's the day after release ... people will be busy :x

 

[Recoil]

Haha, Montana

 

[Dalamari]

Network TV and Toasters

 

[Bad^Hat]

Yeah.. I guess this is the end of the party, the big thing is done, now it's time for all of us to pack our bags and head home. ;(

Stop being such a ****ing negative nancy and get back to spamming.

 

[CrazyHarij]

Stop being such a ****ing negative nancy and get back to spamming.

Negative nancy, eh.. lol, now that's a new one

Well, let's wait until our spam-comrades return from HL2 and perhaps we can talk business. :naughty:

 

[burnzie]

Half-life 2 satisfies me in ways you couldnt possably imagine...

...or maybe you can

 

[Maxi]

This forum is as dead as gordon is when attempting to fight 20 antlions.

 

[Fat Tony!]

Well there isnt much to talk about in off topic if you think about it. You cant talk about politics, music, hardware or games since there are seperate forums for them and you cant post art pictures for the same reason.

 

[Adrien C]

Whoa, it's dengerous up there, full of kidys posting spoilers and " Ive finished HL2 !!!!1111 one one "

The ones who are not playing it should fall back here, set up the sand bags and wait.

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Its dead but not forgotten...I'mr ather glad this si my area since it means I get plently of time to play my precious hl2, without worrying about a million threads along the lines of what you see in hl2 discussion.

 

[Yuri]

It'll come back, but in the meantime I'm gonna try to drift away from here since this place seems to eat up all my free time

Off to play HL2 woo woo!

 

[mindless_moder]

dont get one thing ...did everyone join here just to wait for hl2 ? ..
coz i didnt i joined to talk and share info .
i joined for the art and modeling section..
i think its jsut stupid that people are leaving because the game has come out :S .
and yeah the forum is pretty dead ....

 

[Tr0n]

Well I'm gonna be here...I have no money to buy hl2 and my comp sucks ass to much to be able to play it.So looks like I will be one of the few to browse off-topic.

 

[Recoil]

I play HL2 and I love it. But... I won't spoil the fun with playing it too intensively. So I chill through the game

...and I still have the time to visit the five forums I'm active in. Though this one here is pretty empty right now... really relaxing somehow

 

[Direwolf]

I think we're all busy playing HL2. I know I sure as hell am.

 

[marksmanHL2 :)]

Amazing..


EDIT: Just finished btw...


Amazing....

 

[<RJMC>]

dam you lucky people whit HL2

 

[Adrien C]

Whats the point of finishing it in 2 days.

 

[outpost]

We don't have a forum for talking about sechs!

/me checks forum list
...Oh wait....

 

[Tr0n]

Whats the point of finishing it in 2 days.

They probally want to go ahead and beat it so they will know the story line...then go back and play around with the physics more (like diffrent ways to kill the combine, zombies, headcrabs, etc...).

 

[oldagerocker]

Whats the point of finishing it in 2 days.

so you can finish it 2 days after that, and 2 more days after that finish it again, and again, and again... etc

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

dont get one thing ...did everyone join here just to wait for hl2 ? ..
coz i didnt i joined to talk and share info .
i joined for the art and modeling section..
i think its jsut stupid that people are leaving because the game has come out :S .
and yeah the forum is pretty dead ....

I don't tink people are necessarily leaving the forum, but they are taking time off to paly halflife 2. That is the main focus of this site and why most people are here..however, they wills tick around no doubt.

 

[TinyKilbasa]

Best part of the forumn to not risk getting spoilers for us non-hl2-ers.


Who wants pie!

 

[blahblahblah]

Aye, I would spam here more, but I'm busy right now.

Between HL2, World of Warcraft, and writing a 20 pages literature review on earnings management, fraud, and bankruptcy models, I don't have much time. But, Thanksgiving is coming up and thy glorious spamming shall recommence in the name of our true world leader, the duck!

PS - Was that spammy enough for you folks?

 

[Tr0n]

PS - Was that spammy enough for you folks?

No...you can do better!

 

[blahblahblah]

No...you can do better!

Statistics is a two way street. While incredible useful in estimating the probability of a particular event is happening, it can never determine the exact time of that event. This leads to a quandary in the field of accounting, in order to determine if a company is going to go bankrupt (from an external point of view), one must use statistics. However, great caution must be erred when predicting bankruptcy if you declare a firm as going bankruptcy, much harm can be done from that. A lesser amount of harm can be done if you are predicting bankruptcy and do not predict a firm that will go bankrupt in the future. To reconcile these problems, accountants have been determined to make better bankruptcy prediction models. Correlated to bankruptcy prediction, several other related topics to discuss such as earnings management and its evil, but not so distant relative, fraud. Those two topics can dramatic affect accrual based income measurements and possibly throwing off bankruptcy prediction models. The purpose of this article is to take a look at the current state of earnings management, fraud, and bankruptcy prediction models and see how they interrelate with each other. In addition, I will also take a look whether if using cash flow is a good predictor of bankruptcy especially in cases where fraud maybe taking place.

In order to perform research on these topics aforementioned before, I used the ABI/Inform research database that is available at Arizona State University West. Once some promising, preliminary articles where found, a citation search was then performed on those articles for additional articles that may prove valid for these topic areas. To provide guidance upon doing citation reference searches, I consulted the Arizona State University West desk reference librarians. Unfortunately, there are no databases that ASUW has access to that will allow for online citation reference searches. All citation searches where done manually by looking up each reference via online journals, in the journals itself and in several cases by using microfiche at the ASUW library to locate specific journal articles.
Results

Earnings manipulation is one of the more fascinating features in accounting. While financial accounting has the purpose of presenting accurate information in a timely manor, earnings management slightly changes this ideal. For the purpose of this paper, earnings management can be defined as a way to smooth out net income for the purposes of meeting ulterior goals. This raises concern about earnings management to affect net income and balance sheet which could then throw off bankruptcy prediction models which have a heavy reliance on using external financial data.

Mention or reference Fortune article. A great example of earnings management is what Microsoft did around the release of Windows 95 . Instead of recognizing revenue as it is sold, Microsoft decided to defer the revenue of the hot selling Windows 95 on the basis that it will have to supply upgrades and customer support in upcoming years. This allowed Microsoft to defer a massive jump in revenue over time allowing it to smooth earnings. The result, from the release of Windows 95 to the close of 1996, Microsoft had effectively deferred 1.1 billion dollars worth of revenue. Clearly earnings management can clearly affect external financial information and its usefulness.

However, what can earnings management truly affect? An idea to understand what is affected by earnings management is to take a look at several statistical formulas that are used to measure earnings management. As a rule of thumb, these statistical models look for earnings management in areas that are deemed to be discretionary accruals. This requires accountants to separate discretionary accruals from total accruals. However, “Most of the models require at least one parameter to be estimated, and this is typically implemented through the use of an ‘estimation period’, during which no systematic earnings management is predicted.” (Dechow et al. 193-225) There are five major models used in detecting earnings management, The Healy Model, The DeAngelo Model, The Jones Model, The Modified Jones Model, and The Industry Model. The Healy Model and DeAngelo Model are closely related on the basis that they believe earnings management is something that always and thus considered as an assumption. The primary difference between the Healy and DeAngelo Model’s is the DeAngelo model only uses the last periods accrual numbers while Healy’s Model can use additional years. The Jones Model believes that earnings management does not consistently happen from period to period, but rather earnings management happens based off of economic performance. However, the Jones model makes the assumption that revenues are nondiscretionary. In reference to the Microsoft scenario mentioned above shows that revenues can be discretionary. The Modified Jones Model attempts to solve this by concluding that all changes to credit sales result in earnings management. The last model, the Industry Model assumes that earnings management doesn’t consistently happen from period to period and removes variation of nondiscretionary accruals among firms in the same industry. However, the downside to this model is that if a firm deviates from an industry average, the results will be off. Clearly you can get a grasp of how many models there are to analyze earnings management. Though one thing is clear, the goal to separate discretionary accruals from nondiscretionary accruals is crucial to understanding earnings management. However, no perfect model has been developed yet because of the underlying assumptions that have to be made. In terms of accounting that is related to bankruptcy and fraud, Burgstahler et al came to this conclusion “Concentrating on earnings management to avoid losses, we find evidence that two components of earnings, cash flow from operations and changes in working capital, have been used to manage earnings.” (Burgstahler et al. 99-126)

As you dig deeper into the topic of earnings management, you begin to analyze the other aspects of earnings management, namely its causes. From a corporate perspective, a firm is either in two positions, a financially stable position or a financially unstable position. Even if a firm does have a quarter or year of losses, it may still be classified as a financially stable firm. Regardless of how you can classify a firm, investors want consistent numbers. Corporations want to appease investors because of numerous factors. Such factors include dissatisfaction can decrease market capitalization, or cause problems with upper management. So the firm itself is looking out for its own wellbeing by trying to make it appear as strong and consistent as possible.

From a personnel angle however, the picture changes somewhat. Instead of being fearful of what will happen to the company itself where it to disappoint stockholder’s, managers are fearful of loosing their jobs if they turn in unsatisfactory numbers. However, this threat of job loss is greatly magnified when a firm is financially troubled. “This threat, combined with the low probability of earning a profit in the near term, suggests that job preservation, and not the hope of a future bonus, is managers’ main concern in troubled firms” (DeAngelo et al. 113-143). A new picture begins to emerge, instead of trying to focus on stockholder satisfaction, earnings management maybe done to ensure that one may keep his job at a struggling firm.

Bringing it around to full circle, you must ask how often is earnings management used in publicly traded companies. After all, worrying about earnings management when no such threat exists is pointless.

If you read this, I suggest you jump off a cliff or go back to playing HL2. I still have 14 pages to write. Now this qualifies as 100% qualified spammaroony.

To top it off, I do believe the sun is evil, I am so leet it is not even funny, and haha alabama.

:| :rolling: :O

 

[TinyKilbasa]

mmm..spam

 

[Dr. Freeman]

wow blahblahblah...i didn't think u had it in u.. really, u lived up to ur name :E

 

[Tr0n]

I'm not going to even attempt to read all that...also..

Haha, Sun worshipper.