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Still not true. Unless you sell to an individual who is interested in paying retail you will never make your money back on a diamond purchase (or most any jewlrey purchase actually). You can't generaly purchase wholesale. And stores will only give you a fraction of wholesale if they will buy from you at all. You are normally relegated to pawn shops and such and there you get pennies on the supposed 'value'. Actually I rather think you get something approaching the true value. But thats just me.

Look no matter if you get ripped off or not you still pay retail at a jewlrey store. The store will NEVER buy the ring back at the price you paid for it. They MIGHT buy the diamond back at something approaching the wholesale value... MIGHT. That is just similar economics to a car dealership.

An Interesting read about it can be found here.

Diamonds are not rare. And the marketing around them is phenomenal. De Beers ranks as the deffinition of successfull advertising. They sought and succesfully implemented a social value regarding diamonds which has been maintained for more than a century. Mostly because guys don't have the balls to buck the 'traddition' of a diamond ring and women like having guys blow absurd amounts of money on them. Its not the rock they crave... its what it represents as an effort by a guy to win their affections or to proove their devotion. And perhaps to some degree showing his financial viability... though these days that is much less important than in the past. Which is good since most guys go into debt for a rock these days.

One of the reaons insurance fraud is so rife with Jewlrey is that is often the only time you will ever see the so called 'value' of the gem returned to you in the form of cold hard cash. Not that there are not exceptions. Truly unique pieces of art or extrodinary gems can be auctioned off for substantial amounts. But that just amounts to finding an individual to deal with who will buy on the supposed value... not as a means to make money (like a store).

Excellent, clear analysis.

You said, "I used to work at Microsoft's PSS. I can tell you their support is nothing to write home about. They aren't someone you call because you need expert advice."

That reminded me of a comparison of Microsoft technical support with Psychic Friends Network. Neither know the answer, but Psychic Friends Network is more friendly and less expensive.

Next time, try the Psychic Friends Network. They don't know the answer either, but they are friendlier, cost less, speak English, and won't waste your time.

FYI: the highest tax bracket is ~34%.
Though because of the way the tax system works, not all of the money is taxed at this rate. The tax scheme has brackets. This means that all the money that anyone makes up the next bracket is taxed at the rate of that bracket. For example: If the 1st bracket has a rate of 5%, and the 2nd bracket was at $2000 with a rate of 7%, and I made $2050, I would pay 5% of $2000 and 7% of $50.
This is sort of fair since my first $1000 is taxed just as much as a rich person's first $1000.

"It's the rich people...who create jobs"

Since when do rich people create jobs?
Do rich people have magical job-creating powers?
Do jobs just pop out of rich people's orfices?

The majority of jobs are created by small-medium sized businesses. Very few of the owners of these businesses would be considered rich. Rich people speculate on the stock and commodities markets. Rich people speculate on the currency markets.
Guess who usually ends up on the down side of the rich people's business interests?

As for you question of how can someone create more jobs than there are unemployed people: Unemployment statistics only measure those that are seeking a job. If wages were higher or work conditions were better, many people may decide to stop housewiving or work a second job and would join the masses of people seeking employment. In addition each year a large number of people enter the job market.

Most (nonfanatical) democrats don't base their ideas on taxation on "jealousy and class warfare", but instead on stopping a growing trend. The division of wealth in America is changing. The rich are becoming richer, and everyone else is getting poorer.

A little Google digging turns up these links:
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts. html
http://karmak.org/archive/2004/04/income&wealth.ht m

The second link also suggests it would be more effective to tax wealth than income (which is not something I've thought of before...so I'll have to think on it...).

Anyway, congrats on the self-employed thing and kudos for not passing the blame.

It's been said before don't be a sharecropper.

If you must work on proprietary OSes then don't do something that extends the Operating System itself. Widgets are a classic example. If you read Konfabulator's post about it - they do not seem totally surprised.

Software development is a Red Queen Race - you've got to stay ahead of the competition by being better faster cooler. The race that Apple is running is not against its developers but Windows. All power to them. Sure it would be nice for them to buy up innovative products like they (supposedly) did with the original multi-finder.

Not sure why they don't. It seems obvious that Windows developers half hope that MS would buy them out. But it could be argued that this would open Apple up to problems of intellectual property challenges that they couldn't afford to pay for. If you've another idea way they don't play more fair then post here.

But they do buy out good software products. Some of the Pro software has been bought from other developers.

But if you develop software too close to Apple's core business then I guess you have to look at that Sharecropper paradigm again and avoid it.

So lookout if you work on the following plots of ground...

Search (Watson)
Music (Audion)
Networking (Dave)
Desk Accessories / OS extensions (Konfabulator)
Browsers / Internet Content & Search (Camino, NewsNetWire)
Video editing

I think you'd be foolish to develop a PVR for Mac OS X for instance - that covers several of the above fields... basically a Video iTunes with search and networking - perhaps that RSS stuff as well. Expect Apple to run with this for sure - that new codec H.264 should run pretty well over AirPort Express... and wait until wireless UWB Firewire hits silicon.

Still - shame on Apple - seems like they could do better. They even had the gall to present this stuff at the WWDC - where the developers would surely know where they were getting the inspiration from.... amongst the ranks of those in the audience. Hell the Konfabulator guys, Arlo Rose & Perry Clarke, were probably in the audience!

Those with experience know that if you have a difficult Microsoft technical support question, it is better to ask the Psychic Friends Network. They don't know the answer either, but they are more friendly and less expensive.

I've asked 3 questions of MS Tech support recently, and got 0.00 useful answers. For anyone who would like more accuracy in that number, it was 0.00000000000 useful answers.

Microsoft technical support people not only cannot answer your question, but they are prevented by the Microsoft management hierarchy from communicating with anyone who would know the answer.

Also, permissions policy in NTFS has some bugs, apparently. (Mentioned by someone else, earlier. I've encountered quirkiness, also.) There is at least one policy setting in Windows XP that says, "Only works in Windows 2000".

Often a commercial company will not tell the truth about bugs. That's why I like Open Source people. They are honest about bugs. I reported 3 bugs in the NET USE command in Windows XP, and Microsoft Technical Support refused to do anything about it. Too much paperwork to report bugs, I guess.

The problem with computers are the idiot end users who still think in terms of computers as being magic. They probably do not realize it. Even IT people (bosses) I have worked for before think in terms of computers as magic. As long as people say it can be done if you just put a computer to it, this waste will continue at all levels of government and business.

There are very useful computer games out there (learning tools). But they do not make an education, only a small part of it. To make an education, you start with reading, writing, arithmetic, music, art, athletics (not sports) and socialization. These develop the mind in the most critical areas first. Believe it or not, language and physical learning are linked in very fundamental ways. Slashdot Posting and Google

Computers are only useful when the brain is to the point where they are able to be used as a tool. Education by gaming is mostly unsuccesful because the games are written to sell to our lazy entertain me desires, not to our educate me needs..

The other problem with computers is administrations pushing administrative work down on teachers via computers that eats up time they do not have. This I see much more often. Good record keeping on our children in school is important to the needs of the child. But, that requires smaller class sizes, and that means more teachers, less computers.

InnerWeb

Perhaps one of the reasons that Linux has an inherently low TCO is because the users who have installed it, configured it, compiled it and made it run on their toaster have taken the time to read the docs. They're familiar with the hardware, the apps they run, the OS under the apps they run, and viola -- things run nicely.

It's more like there ARE manuals to read for the rare ocasion an install script does not work or you don't like the default settings. People would customize windoze just as much if the information was easy to get at.

But in the Windows world? Everybody has a support line to call for absolutely everything. Almost every product offered has some form or another of support to it, to an extent that the people who are using these systems no longer have to use any mindshare whatsoever to get their stuff working.

Some companies have call lines. Microsoft charges some outrageous fee for theirs and it's been compared unfavorably with psychic consultation.

My site would have far lower TCO if the users exercised a small, trifling fraction of their potential intelligence. ... I've spent hours updating virus signatures and restoring systems lost because a user thought it was a fine idea to open up an encrypted zip file they received from someone they didn't know.

I got one of them yesterday. Did it hurt me? No. I unziped it and had a look at it. Is it possible to craft such a thing for Linux? I don't think so. You would have to go through a lot to trouble to undo system defaults to make something like that work. Then the author would have to know which of the hundreds of programs I use to look at such things. Unlikely.

All of that "patching" and bandaid application is not required in the reasonable world of *nix. It's a well known fact that you need about five times the number of administrators for Windoze than you do for any flavor of Unix. Those administrators are not the cheap drooling morons Microsoft would have you think can run your network, but they would be much better informed if they were working on any flavor of Unix.

It's not a tangent! It's important. Chen and Chan and Lu and Li (not their real Chinese names) have been completely unable to answer an important question about Windows XP. The reason? They're in China, and if they don't know the answer, they have to lie, since they have no way to contact anyone at MS who will listen.

Whenever I ask for MS technical support, I am calling about a difficult question. If it weren't difficult, I would answer it myself. Those are exactly the kind of questions MS technical support can't answer.

The Psychic Friends Network is sometimes equally as good as Microsoft technical support at understanding bugs in Microsoft software.

It isn't just accent. It is huge, huge, huge cultural differences. Sometimes you would be able to understand their words more easily if it weren't so difficult to believe what they are saying.

About two weeks ago I was helped by a Microsoft tech support person in New Delhi, or maybe Bangalore, I forget which. Some otherwise correctly running Windows XP computers had trashed themselves so that it was impossible to run the Recovery Console. The MS tech support guy had absolutely no clue about how to fix the problem, although he did have plenty of time-wasting ideas. This is not unusual, of course. The Psychic Friends Network is sometimes equally as good as Microsoft technical support at understanding bugs in Microsoft software.

What made this technical support call different is that the Indian Microsoft technical support guy was the most arrogant person with whom I've ever talked. He made Larry Ellison look humble. He was cheerful enough, but entirely useless doing technical support because of believing that I am an inferior who should believe any lie he tells me.

After a while, for me it stopped being a support call and began to be an interesting social interaction. In Hindu culture, if you don't belong to one of the castes, you are an untouchable, a person below any of the castes. Obviously, I don't belong to any of the castes, so you know where that left me. To him, I was of the social class that cleans up after bodies that have been burned on a funeral fire, or empties latrines, or eats dogs.

Many, many Hindus are little influenced by the caste system, but this guy seems to embrace it completely. Whenever I would tell him that it was obvious that what he was saying was untrue, he would tell me another lie. No amount of mentioning that what he was saying was obviously incorrect stopped him. To him, anything that popped into his mind should be gold to someone like me. I would say, "You invented that; there's no reason to think that whatsoever", and he would just cheerfully continue with another invention.

If you aren't familiar with the arrogance and disconnection of the Hindu caste system, here is a quote: "By his very birth a Brahmin is a deity even for the gods and the only authority for people in this world, for the Veda is the foundation in this matter." -- Manusmrti 11:85.

For another example of Indian arrogance, see this story by an Indian : Hindian Arrogance on a Tourist Bus.

We hear a little about the problems of outsourcing technical support, but things are a lot worse than most stories say.