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Three Minutes With Mark Cuban
Thomas Hawk writes "Mark Cuban, owner of the Mavericks, HDNET, blogger extraordinaire and all around tech visionary really, really gets it. Read on for his views on Media Center, content delivery via hard drive instead of DVD, movie conversions to HD, Home entertainment, etc."
http://www.blogmaverick.com/
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
He's talking about, for the forseeable future, the mailing around of hard drives. That means people will need to put down a certain deposit to use the service, and sign for the drive rather than have it just show up in the mailbox, but it won't always be that way.
And of course, if you had cheap enough bandwidth to assorted points, like video rental places for example, you could pipe in HD content and let people come in and copy the DRM'd (of course) video to their disk for a fee and watch it for a couple weeks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It was smart for Mark Cuban to choose to hedge in this case, but the brains behind setting up the hedge resided at an investment bank.
Hedges of this type are set up by investment banks like Goldman or UBS. They have people who sell these kind of services to executives. I imagine that someone like this connected with Cuban. For a substantial fee they set up the hedge. The goal of the investment bank is to lay off the risk, by selling options, or a moving set of dynamically hedged options so that they keep the fee and have no risk.
As noted in the parent, the hedge limits the "down side" loss, while also limiting the "upside" gain. This would not have been such a good move for Google insiders, but it was a very good move for Yahoo insiders.
If you knew anything about Cuban, you'd know how stupid your question is. He isn't ON the company payroll, he FUNDS the company payroll. This is the guy that sold off broadcast.com for a sweet billion dollars and has proceeded to stay a step ahead of pretty much everyone on the technology curve. He's also one of the sincerest people you could meet. I hate to use this phrase because it sounds so fucking fanboyish, but the guy just radiates honesty. You know he's not bullshitting you. Down here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area he's on TV all the fucking time, and I have never got the impression he's anything more than a regular guy that happened to make an assload of money and is now using that money to do all the stupid shit he wanted when he DIDN'T have money. Fer fuck's sake, he bought his multi-million dollar house because the marble floors in one of the larger rooms was great for roller hockey.
What I'm saying is, he IS one of the real people and more importantly he's one of the SMART people that actually knows what they're talking about.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Admit it, the guy is a few steps ahead of you. What do you know about him? Have you read his blog? Read his "how I made it" story, about how he hustled his ass, starting up his own companies. Sure, he hit the jackpot with the dotcom bubble, but he didn't just step in shit, he worked to get there.
He made the point that hard drive costs are continually decreasing, while size is continually increasing. Optical discs are fixed size, encumbered with "standards" wars. If they eventually want to up the capacity again, you have to move to a new format, and re-purchase your entire library.
I don't necessarily agree that hard drives are the way to go, but I think it is an interesting approach. He's willing to try something new. What is your proposal?
I'm a big a fan of Mark Cuban as anyone, but the truth is more important. HD-Net is not the first channel to broadcast exclusively in HD, and Mark isn't even the first to broadcast more than one channel of HD at the same time.
Unity Motion was the first, a dedicated HD-only satellite system featuring three 24 hour, 1080i channels. In 1998. Dead by 1999. But I still have one of the receivers.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I don't see how mark Cuban thinks his stations are worth paying for. The other HD channels do not charge. Hell, even HBO throws in the HD channels with your regular subscription.
Tonight HDNet was covering the Republican Convention. So was INHD. The difference? I don't have to pay extra for INHD.
You people that believe that he's a visionary can keep giving him your money.
Sorry - Cuban's married, which means if he didn't sign the pre-nup then he won't be getting it for at least 6 months
(The hookers are there because the guy is too smarmy to have legitamate human contact).
So that chick was just a hooker that was paid to claim she was his wife. And his baby daughter is another very expensive 9 month old hooker as well I guess.
Mark Cuban is probably one of the most palatable businessmen out there. He's not the huge tech visionary some people are saying he is.
Regardless, you come off as nothing more than a bitter jealous little prick.
These geeks kill me sometimes! lol They want excellent-paying jobs. They wanna be able to afford all the gadgetry in the world, but they don't want the producers of this technology to get rich. Oh NO! Can't have that! lol
Ah...well, the Mavericks haven't really done anything except lose every year in the playoffs - but that's another issue. He's sort of seen as a real loose cannon in the sports circles who just has a lot of money and likes to make a scene of himself.
Well, I am far from a Dallas Mavericks fan (actually, I am often very embarrassed for their owner), but you are (IMHO) grossly underestimating the impact Mark Cuban has had on that franchise. They were an absolute doormat before he bought them. There was talk of the team folding or moving (that's why they were for sale). Now, they win a majority of their games, they advance in the playoffs (heck, they make the playoffs), people want to see them play (vs. say the Hawks, that's how bad the Mavs used to be), and the team may actually be turning a profit (it is hard to say in sports, there are so many contracts and deals, I don't even want to get into the stadium issues, that really gets me upset). The fact that they haven't won a championship is not that damning, considering only six teams (Boston, LA Lakers, Detroit, Chicago, Houston, and San Antonio) have done that in the last 20 years! Looks to me like you are not much of a basketball fan (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), so as a basketball fan I wouldn't discount Mark Cuban's success with the Mavericks so easily.