Besides, that's not really a fair comparison: Nemo was planned as a feature film, Timon and Pumbaa Aren't Dead as straight-to-video.
Now, if you want to compare Nemo to Brother Bear or Dinosaur, well, you're right there....
TSG
Re:Jobs buys Disney...actually a good idea.
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Steve Jobs' Grand Vision
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Agreed....and I think that's been the plan for awhile.
Does anyone else remember this:
Apple buys Next in order to have a source for its next generation operating system. Steve Jobs gets a bunch of stock options. Some months later, when the stock isn't doing so well, he suddenly dumps them with a comment about how he doesn't think the company is ever going to come back -- coincidentally driving the stock down even more. Soon after, the CEO of Apple is out and, oh look, Steve is in.
Compare with: Disney partners with Pixar for a number of successful films. Some years later, the stock isn't doing so well and a major shareholder starts a campaign to get rid of the CEO. Suddenly, Steve Jobs ends negotiations to continue the relationship.
Think it's a coincidence that this gave the CEO a bunch of trouble at a time when he didn't need it? That it was just as annual reports and proxy cards were going to shareholders?
Think Steve would allow Pixar to be merged with Disney if he replaced Eisner? Me too.
They are interested in working with Pixar, but they won't get profits: Just a distribution fee. Pixar will keep rights to their pictures and everything else.
It's not a bad deal, and it should be worth $10 million+ per picture, but it's nothing like Disney was able to set up with Pixar in the first place. It would generate only a small fraction of profits for any of the companies that might be able to run their distribution. Even Disney.
But it's good money if you can get it, and if the other studios can make Disney look bad in the process, so much the better.
Still, I wouldn't say that Disney came out on top. Taking the deal offered was certainly a financial non-starter, but they would be better off if they were still working with Pixar in the future. Pixar would probably be better off working with Disney for that matter.
But I think that's what's going to happen, anyway.
Everyone remember, carat is only one of the Four C's. You need to consider the color (it was only blue-white while it was burning) the clarity (probably easy to see some flaws if you got close enough) and the cut (currently round but not brilliant, I suspect)
So, don't overpay for it, no matter what the salesman says about size mattering...
EVERYTHING is solved by simply attaching a price tag to it.
The price on the tag isn't always in terms of cash money, but it's always there.
Your first question is valid, though. Here's one answer:
When beneficial actions need to be encouraged, or malicious acts discouraged, one can either attach a price tag to those acts or enable independent identification and enforcement processes. The former ("price tags") are enabled through the use of a marketplace involving those acts, while the latter ("processes") are generally referred to as governing bodies, or government. A sufficiently large marketplace will enable very precise determinations of the value of the actions, but only in terms of that marketplace. Government can take additional inputs that a marketplace will ignore, but generally comes with higher overhead -- which is to say, they come with their own price tag.
An extreme way to stop spam, for example, would be to station a government official with each computer, with the job of slapping the hand of the user before spam could be sent. This would naturally be very costly, and not just because the officials would have to be paid. Nonetheless, this is the basic form of any anti-spam law: Watch computers so that people don't want to spam. Reduce the costs, and the number of spams will increase.
This is fine for actions in which there is general agreement on acceptable costs and benefits. Almost everyone would agree that preventing murder is worthwhile, so laws against murder and enforcement of those laws are easily accepted costs.
When there isn't general agreement on costs and benefits, government is too blunt a tool. Everyone would not agree that Coke is better than Pepsi, so we simply enable a marketplace in colas. With the examples here -- polluting and spam, at least -- there is agreement that they are Bad, but there is not general agreement on costs and benefits.
To try to really answer your question: Everything isn't solved with a free and open market, but governing processes that don't solve the problems they should, at a reasonable cost, can be good candidates for market solutions.
That's the theory, anyway, and it seems to be well-supported in fact, as well.
I wouldn't go that far just for this. The Pixar deal(s) were good while they lasted, but Jobs is too smart to let Disney pick his pocket for another ten years. He has a duty to his shareholders, just as Eisner has one to Disney's, to get every single cent he can. The rumors have been that he's asking for a straight distribution fee -- no change of ownership i.e. the films will belong to Pixar -- which would be chump change to Disney. Nobody should have expected that Pixar would accept the same terms as before.
For that matter, Pixar has had a good long run, but it's bound to go aground at some point. When that happens, Eisner may look smarter than he is.
That's the best case for Eisner: The movies after Cars sink, and he's in the position to require Jobs to, say, do Toy Story 3 with Disney. The worst case isn't all that bad: Pixar has the gold touch for another five movies, worth a billion, yielding perhaps one hundred million over seven years...Even twenty million a year in lost profits would be a relatively small change to Disney's net income, and that isn't "lost" until 2006 and later.
This sounds like less of a financial question than a personal issue: Eisner: How dare Pixar squeeze us on this transaction! We made them what they are! Jobs: Disney is on the outs, we're the rising star, they will pay what we ask or someone else will. This way, Eisner doesn't have to negotiate over lunch money with the upstart, while Jobs can position himself as a player with the other studios.
The other two replies hit the big points. I just want to suggest you look up Amartya Sen, 1998 Nobel prize winner in economics.
He put forth the thesis that famines are almost always caused by political action and/or inaction, and only rarely is lack of food the real problem. His cure for famines?
Democracy and a free press
That's it. With democracy, the people in charge have a reason to prevent famines. A "reasonably free press" ensures that potential problems are widely known. His claim is that there has never been famine in any society that has both.
There are probably people producing software just out of the goodness of their hearts, with no desire for any other benefit to themselves. But, I don't think you can characterize the entire free software movement as being like that.
I'd even say that most of it isn't like that. People make software because they have their own need for it. They make it free for a number of reasons that may include "the goodness of their heart" but is ultimately going to be "because it's easier than trying to sell it and will probably give me a better return."
Man, I'm stuck between moderating this up and replying to it. (Replying won.)
In fact, it would be fine by me to have a couple of exemptions for well-known characters - with fees paid to the Treasury rather than influential congressmen. Although I'd really prefer that Mickey not have eternal protection, it would probably be better than letting everything else be dragged down with it.
But it wouldn't work out - They would just take advantage of the cheaper path, which is to give a smaller amount to elected officials than would be reasonable to charge as fees.
We're just going to have to keep agitating for the next twenty years so that the next "copyright extension to keep us competitive/in sync with Europe" is seen for the bald-faced thievery that it is.
Hee hee -- just realized that Disney was recently hoist by their own petard on Peter Pan. The story actually does have an eternal copyright in England, with the caveat that all royalties go to a London children's hospital. Disney wanted to get involved with merchandising for that movie, but had some issue with paying copyright fees. (One story suggests that their problem was "We already pay royalties to the hospital to cover our animated version, why should we pay them again?")
Maybe we should send that story to our elected officials...
Although I still think it will have to be a whole lot smaller and cuter to justify such a minor price difference...
Just saw how it is, in fact, smaller and not much cheaper. I don't think that's going to work -- in fact, I think that's going to be trouble.
If it had been $199, or if they were to cut the price soon, it might have a chance. As it is, it doesn't seem to be distinctive enough to make up for the price/space difference.
Perfectly fair analysis, but I don't think that price will work. If the miniPod is happening, it's for people with smaller budgets and/or smaller music collections.
$199 is too high a price point to be easily differentiated from the price for the regular iPod. They won't cannibalize from the iPod because they won't sell: Folks who can set aside $199 for a music player will be able to set aside another $100 for the full version. Especially if they do the math and realize they get five times the songs for a 33% increase in price.
Consider further that Apple doesn't want you to do the math. If you start looking at tradeoffs and dollars per minute of music, you might realize that you can get a better deal on a flash memory player or one of those Dell things. Apple makes their money on the Cool Factor, and cold hard logic is dangerous to their bottom line.
$99 breaks the three-digit psychological barrier, and is something that many folks could scrounge out easily -- without thinking. A little voice might try to say that it's more expensive, but they'll be thinking of Courtney Love playing the new Nirvana song from her iPod and all those other rock stars who can't live without their iPods and -- sure, I can afford this, I need a player anyway. Maybe I'll get one for the wife, too.
I was expecting the whole miniPod rumor to blow away, like the PDA they were supposed to come out with a couple of years ago. The existence of the small drives makes it a lot more likely. If it does happen, I'd like for Apple to be smart [for a change!], lose a little money on these first ones and make it up as component prices go down.
It's not jumping the gun if we want to lift ownership restrictions on extra-terrestrial property. If that happens, I'd much prefer a Homesteading Act to Spanish-style land grants. (The paper mentioned speculation by American colonials in land beyond the Appalachians, suggesting it may have been on Mars for all their ability to develop it.)
Not being able to land on that asteroid didn't stop that kook from billing NASA for parking costs. What does stop NASA from paying him is a standard for property rights. The standard happens to be "Nobody on Earth is allowed to own property off earth," which has its own problems. We just want to be careful about how to change it.
I was going to make the comment that Earth doesn't necessarily need all that much metal. Then I realized that, if it's cheap enough, it will make its own market. (Although with current cost-to-orbit, it's probably worth more in space than on earth.)
I'm not sure I like the idea, though, of having speculation in Martian land at this point. Ownership, sure -- by homesteaders taking possession, with a limit on acres per homesteader. Yes, I know that Earth will be ill-equipped to handle any land disputes between folks on Mars...on the other hand, the homesteaders will be ill-equipped to defend any large areas, as well. All the more reason not to have the Full Faith, Credit and Arsenal of any or all countries committed to their defense.
Hmmm...which probably means that the ownership issue, isn't: Anyone that's not on Earth can basically say "You want to stop us taking posession, come up and take it back." Although it does still make financing a problem, unless investors can be convinced that profits can be generated even if the "estate" isn't "real."
The resources aren't just developers, but anyone who sends in a bug report, produces software that runs under Linux, or even just uses the product.
Those who use the product, if nothing else, contribute to the network effect inherent in operating systems: The more people there are, the more worthwhile it is to create applications for it, so more are created, making the OS more worthwhile, increasing the number of users....
Those who produce Linux software help to exercise the different parts of the code, which helps to find problems that can be checked and fixed. Plus, of course, they can pull in more people to use Linux, since they make it more worthwhile to use (see previous point).
Those who generate bug reports on Linux, even if they never touch a line of code, help ensure that the code works as expected. What's important in this development model is that errors can be fixed in direct proportion to their severity. And if we're willing to make the semantic jump that a "missing feature" is a low-priority error, then we can also say that features are added in proportion to their usefulness.
Bill has most of these same resources, of course, but he pays for them. His current development model can't always respond as efficiently as Linux can, where "efficiency" is defined as "improving the parts most important to most of the users." I think it's difficult to determine who really has more resources, though, or who will continue to have them.
You do realize that if you ran a PR campaign and isolated the least moral and put up your more negative assumptions about motivations on just about anyone (yes, including Bush), you can make them look quite "evil".
"Evil" isn't a matter of "spin." We can discuss whether or not Bush is incompetent, ill-advised, or just acting from a point of view that many find disagreeable. There are certainly those who think he IS evil, and we could probably have an interesting debate on the subject of evil, how evil Bush is, whether he's more or less evil than Clinton, and how their evil might (or does) manifest.
But with Hussein, we're talking about a man whose career as Iraqi leader began with a purge of his party -- a no-kidding Stalinist purge, where backing the wrong horse meant you were immediately and messily dead. (Note that Hussein not only did not hide this, he made sure that everyone KNEW about it.) Just about every career high point for him points to a man who is evil by any definition of the word. The only exception I can think of -- a career high point, that is, where some might *not* define him as evil -- is his attack on Iran, where there was no shortage of folks who considered it a greater good.And that's just looking at situations that are readily acknowledged and well-reported - I don't have to look at the motivations for setting 600 Kuwaiti oil wells ablaze to recognize that it was an evil act.
I could, perhaps, be convinced that Saddam was doing his best to unify three separate geographic areas that had been carved together from the Ottoman empire, by consolidating power in the smallest ethnic group, but that wouldn't make the women who saw their husbands slowly lowered into vats of acid feel any better. Those tortures were still evil acts perpetrated by evil men, and no understanding of motivations is going to change that.
I don't have a problem with a Philosophy 101 discussion of the nature and perception of evil. But if you can't acknowledge that there are some people who really ARE evil, then it's a pointless exercise -- you're holding that evil is always and only a point of view, a difference of opinion. In that case, as the saying goes, your mind has become so open that your brains have fallen out.
There are plenty of good replies to your question already, so I'm going to question your assumption:
Free Software will not conquer all. Not ever.
It may conquer most, and there will be plenty of areas where the only viable options are free. There will still be areas where the user population is so large compared to the programmer pool, that selling software is still an option. Conversely, there will be areas where the user population is so small that there will be no choice but to bring programmers on board to ensure it's created.
The obvious first case is games, which aren't amenable to an open-source approach. Sure, you could collaborate to set up an application base, but designing a game that others want to play isn't something that can be done a piece at a time by different people.
For the second case, there's any application specific to a company or organization: Space shuttle software isn't useful to anyone without a space shuttle, certainly. And here, yes, you might be able to adapt aircraft software to a variety of uses, but now you need programmers again to do the adaptation.
And if it works out that are too few people getting paid to program, well, the Invisible Hand should reach out and convince a few companies to pay for folks to do updates.
The given example is supposed to be "Things not to do." That's not always obvious if you just look at how much money you're spending. The project could be sold as "Look, we spend 200K up front, get it all back in Year 4, and the other money we make is gravy!"
Okay, I just looked at it again, and it IS a bad example, since it should be pretty clear that you're paying 285K now to get 260K later. With some tweaking, though, you could probably end up with a project that "cost" (negative cash outflows) 260K, "earned" 285K, and was still a negative NPV project that should be avoided.
And I'm sure, with a bit more tweaking, we could even set one up where you pay $285K, get $260K, and end up ahead -- say, if you get the whole $260K in year one but wait ten years to pay the $285K.
But I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Well, that's why the guy said "Usually" rather than "Always."
And the subject at hand (the impact of bubble-era salaries on the current job market) is just the sort of place where relying on present-value cashflow comparison is likely to get you in trouble. Every one of those venture capitalists who invested in Pets.com or eToys had a fully descriptive present-value cashflow comparison that showed how they were going to make a mint.
The problem isn't the process, it's the assumptions. If I tell you that job A is 50K a year, with 5% increases each year and a 5% chance of layoffs every two years, while job B is 100K/year, with 5% increases every other year, and a 50% chance of layoffs every year, then the comparison is straightforward.
But what we get is that Job A is 50K a year with a large corporation trying to develop a new market while Job B is 100K a year with a startup that's trying to support an established industry. Which one is really riskier? How do you calculate your discount rate? Can you determine what your pay raises will look like?
Answer: You can't -- at least, I can't, and I've had a bit more than Business 101. Almost all of it would come down to assumptions like "a safe, well-paid, job is usually better than a temporary obscenely-paid one" and "if I lose this job in a year, am I better or worse off than if I lose that one?"
My point isn't that calculating the present values wouldn't be useful -- it's not a bad idea if you have a couple of options and the necessary parameters for each. But it won't tell you the whole story. Plus, it assumes a continuous function, and I'm sure we all remember what happens to all those useful mathematical theorems when we hit a discontinuity.
The point is that when you get off the edges of the curve, you're taking a lot more risk than if you stay, so to speak, within the lines.
Well, my impression was that Andy said:
"This could be an issue. I don't think I like it. I'm not smart enough to know for sure. Government will have to decide."
In a less cynical age, we might have replaced "Government" with "The People" but in this case it might come to the same thing: We have to decide how many dollars an hour in wage reductions $99 DVD players are worth.
And I don't think it's an easy question, either. If that DVD player was $199 , then I have to work about half a week more for it if I'm minimum wage, but only for half an day if I'm an average IT worker. If the price goes down 12% but my wages drop $1, am I better off? Will my children be better off? How about their children? Will it matter if I starve before they are born?
My understanding of economics says that when the questions get this complex then, yup, let the market decide. It might make mistakes, but it has a better chance of getting it right than the government does.
My understanding of theology says this is what folks used to do about most decisions, though: Yup, let God decide. He might make mistakes, but...
I am rather impressed that Mr. Grove is smart enough to realize he's not smart enough to know the answer. In this discussion alone we have people saying
Economy unification is going to happen, one way or another.
The Market Will Take Care of Everything
We absolutely DO need to save local jobs, and here are a number of actions we can/should/must do to enable it.
To which I will add
How do we know the jobs we are saving are ones we want or need? Maybe when all the SQL jobs are done in Bombay I'll realize that I'd much rather work for a rocket startup.
and also
When we don't like the results generated by existing markets, it's proper to have them changed so we do like them. Which doesn't guarantee that we really will like things any better afterwards...
It's not simple. We should try to figure the answer. I'm not sure what it is.
It costs $9 to see a movie (once) in a cineplex, $20 to get it on DVD legally and watch it many times, $5 to rent it for a relatively short period. There are various tradeoffs in quality of experience and price and reusability.
Or you can pay some low but not-quite-zero amount to get a pirate copy -- assuming that your time is worth something, you'll have to pay for a blank DVD at least, the person who copied it is skimming from you in some fashion, etc. Plus the risk of being caught, which carries potential penalties including loss of the pirated copy, loss of the equipment used to pirate, fines, and jail time. How "potential" all of these are depends what the law says, resources spent on enforcement, your role in the process, etc.
Which just means that the number of "pirating acts that occur largely because the pirates aren't going to purchase something" isn't fixed, but depends on the cost of piracy versus the cost of a legitimate purchase. Furthermore, the Net Income depends on the number of people willing to purchase a product that returns money to the copyright holder. How the prices and costs are adjusted and interact affect the net income, and I daresay that the net income changes significantly based on simple alterations.
Figuring the optimal (i.e. highest net income) point isn't easy, though, and no doubt the copyright holders work on it. Increase movie prices and the theaters lose money, tempting them to allow pirates to copy from new prints. Drop DVD prices and you might make a little less money, but the pirates have a harder time selling. Increasing legal pressure on pirates requires government interaction (e.g. getting the FBI to close down professional pirates) which means spending money on political clout -- and that's money not spent on marketing that hot new film that may make enough money to finance next year's films, on which they'll hire costumers, grips, makeup folks, caterers, etc.
However you look at it, though, pirating pulls money out of the industry by reducing the value of its products. Does it put money back in by building up a customer base among those who wouldn't normally purchase the product? Does it cost more than, say, heavy-handed ads that imply its customers are criminals, or wholesale price reductions that decrease per-unit income but increase net? After all's said and done, does the industry have more money to spend on films because of piracy, or less? Well, that's the question, but it's not unreasonable to say "less," which is all they are doing.
(Unlike, say, the BSA, which pushes the BS level by calculating that EVERY pirated copy is a full-price sales loss...)
I was at that concert too. The guy's great, but EVERYONE sang along to the songs. Fine for the rockers, but I wish they would have shut up for the ballads.
The person I went with hadn't seen the guy live before, and it took to the second song to hear him live.
The good part was that it's the closest I've been to the stage for one of his shows. Which is probably why everyone around me were complete geeks who knew the word to every bloody song.
And yes, $7.50 for beer. I tipped the waitress a buck, and I don't really care that it was less than 15% that way -- for a beer, you tip a BUCK. That's how it's *supposed* to work.
Some of our highest-value companies (MS, etc) are just sitting on cash and investing overseas.
That's a good point: EVERYONE hunkers down when the economy goes south, even people and companies with resources available. Which is a decent argument for being Keynesian: The government should react to the will of the people to get cash flowing again, since the alternative is for everyone to wait for everyone else to make the first move.
Capital is competing to make residential mortgage loans around 5% instead of investing in any businesses.
What's wrong with this, though? Joe Sixpack refinances, he saves $100 a month on his mortgage, he has $100 extra to spend on goods and services. Hopefully they'll be local ones, like hiring a contractor to expand his house, but in any case those dollars will give some businesses, somewhere, reason to invest. Not everyone can take advantage of this, but it's probably more people than take advantage of the capital available for business investment.
...Marx got a few things correct (a little too soon). He also predicted that economic fluctuations would become increasingly severe.
Well, he predicted that the state would whither away under communist rule, too, and that didn't seem to quite work out. And I'd say that economic fluctuations since Marx's time have become less severe -- nothing as bad as, say, the Great Depression for a while now. I wouldn't be surprised if we've exchanged relatively rare depressions for frequent recessions, but that doesn't sound like what he's saying.
TSG
Not an economist, but hope to play one on TV someday.
Re:Development isn't the biggest cost
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Ageism in IT?
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· Score: 1
You're assuming that all software is developed for sale. I have no absolute proof of this, but there is the anecdotal evidence of Eric Raymond asking a group of IT professionals how many of them develope software for sale. The response, as I recall, was a small percentage of the large group there.
I can note that the software I develop won't ever be seen by anyone but the half-dozen folks in my work group, and that's likely to be the case for most of the people at my company -- a Fortune 500 company that generally doesn't produce software for sale but does employ a lot of software engineers.
Given that, I'll certainly agree with your point: Its stupid for companies that develop software for sale to short their development teams. Those of us who aren't in that situation, though, have to do the best we can to convince Management that a) what we do really is important to the company's bottom line and/or b) just because it's working now doesn't mean it's easy to do.
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Besides, that's not really a fair comparison: Nemo was planned as a feature film, Timon and Pumbaa Aren't Dead as straight-to-video.
Now, if you want to compare Nemo to Brother Bear or Dinosaur, well, you're right there....
TSG
Does anyone else remember this:
Apple buys Next in order to have a source for its next generation operating system. Steve Jobs gets a bunch of stock options. Some months later, when the stock isn't doing so well, he suddenly dumps them with a comment about how he doesn't think the company is ever going to come back -- coincidentally driving the stock down even more. Soon after, the CEO of Apple is out and, oh look, Steve is in.
Compare with: Disney partners with Pixar for a number of successful films. Some years later, the stock isn't doing so well and a major shareholder starts a campaign to get rid of the CEO. Suddenly, Steve Jobs ends negotiations to continue the relationship.
Think it's a coincidence that this gave the CEO a bunch of trouble at a time when he didn't need it? That it was just as annual reports and proxy cards were going to shareholders?
Think Steve would allow Pixar to be merged with Disney if he replaced Eisner? Me too.
TSG
They are interested in working with Pixar, but they won't get profits: Just a distribution fee. Pixar will keep rights to their pictures and everything else.
It's not a bad deal, and it should be worth $10 million+ per picture, but it's nothing like Disney was able to set up with Pixar in the first place. It would generate only a small fraction of profits for any of the companies that might be able to run their distribution. Even Disney.
But it's good money if you can get it, and if the other studios can make Disney look bad in the process, so much the better.
Still, I wouldn't say that Disney came out on top. Taking the deal offered was certainly a financial non-starter, but they would be better off if they were still working with Pixar in the future. Pixar would probably be better off working with Disney for that matter.
But I think that's what's going to happen, anyway.
TSG
So, don't overpay for it, no matter what the salesman says about size mattering...
TSG
The price on the tag isn't always in terms of cash money, but it's always there.
Your first question is valid, though. Here's one answer:
When beneficial actions need to be encouraged, or malicious acts discouraged, one can either attach a price tag to those acts or enable independent identification and enforcement processes. The former ("price tags") are enabled through the use of a marketplace involving those acts, while the latter ("processes") are generally referred to as governing bodies, or government. A sufficiently large marketplace will enable very precise determinations of the value of the actions, but only in terms of that marketplace. Government can take additional inputs that a marketplace will ignore, but generally comes with higher overhead -- which is to say, they come with their own price tag.
An extreme way to stop spam, for example, would be to station a government official with each computer, with the job of slapping the hand of the user before spam could be sent. This would naturally be very costly, and not just because the officials would have to be paid. Nonetheless, this is the basic form of any anti-spam law: Watch computers so that people don't want to spam. Reduce the costs, and the number of spams will increase.
This is fine for actions in which there is general agreement on acceptable costs and benefits. Almost everyone would agree that preventing murder is worthwhile, so laws against murder and enforcement of those laws are easily accepted costs. When there isn't general agreement on costs and benefits, government is too blunt a tool. Everyone would not agree that Coke is better than Pepsi, so we simply enable a marketplace in colas. With the examples here -- polluting and spam, at least -- there is agreement that they are Bad, but there is not general agreement on costs and benefits.
To try to really answer your question: Everything isn't solved with a free and open market, but governing processes that don't solve the problems they should, at a reasonable cost, can be good candidates for market solutions.
That's the theory, anyway, and it seems to be well-supported in fact, as well.
TSG
For that matter, Pixar has had a good long run, but it's bound to go aground at some point. When that happens, Eisner may look smarter than he is.
That's the best case for Eisner: The movies after Cars sink, and he's in the position to require Jobs to, say, do Toy Story 3 with Disney. The worst case isn't all that bad: Pixar has the gold touch for another five movies, worth a billion, yielding perhaps one hundred million over seven years...Even twenty million a year in lost profits would be a relatively small change to Disney's net income, and that isn't "lost" until 2006 and later.
This sounds like less of a financial question than a personal issue: Eisner: How dare Pixar squeeze us on this transaction! We made them what they are! Jobs: Disney is on the outs, we're the rising star, they will pay what we ask or someone else will. This way, Eisner doesn't have to negotiate over lunch money with the upstart, while Jobs can position himself as a player with the other studios.
TSG
But despite having a bunch of quotable lines and being just generally awesome, the lines lose their punch individually:
(How he can talk to a squirrel):
"I was a junior chipmunk. We had to be versed in all the woodland creatures."
(After accidentally turning Kuzco into a llama):
"In my defense, your potions all look alike. You might want to think about relabeling them."
Yzma's great too:
(To Kronk):
"It's called a cruel irony. Like my dependence on you."
And one of the finest lines in all of Disneydom, by a perfectly generic guard:
"For the last time, I did not order a giant trampoline!"
But you'll just have to go see it yourself to understand that one. Just buy it.
TSG
He put forth the thesis that famines are almost always caused by political action and/or inaction, and only rarely is lack of food the real problem. His cure for famines?
Democracy and a free press
That's it. With democracy, the people in charge have a reason to prevent famines. A "reasonably free press" ensures that potential problems are widely known. His claim is that there has never been famine in any society that has both.
TSG
TSG
In fact, it would be fine by me to have a couple of exemptions for well-known characters - with fees paid to the Treasury rather than influential congressmen. Although I'd really prefer that Mickey not have eternal protection, it would probably be better than letting everything else be dragged down with it.
But it wouldn't work out - They would just take advantage of the cheaper path, which is to give a smaller amount to elected officials than would be reasonable to charge as fees.
We're just going to have to keep agitating for the next twenty years so that the next "copyright extension to keep us competitive/in sync with Europe" is seen for the bald-faced thievery that it is.
Hee hee -- just realized that Disney was recently hoist by their own petard on Peter Pan. The story actually does have an eternal copyright in England, with the caveat that all royalties go to a London children's hospital. Disney wanted to get involved with merchandising for that movie, but had some issue with paying copyright fees. (One story suggests that their problem was "We already pay royalties to the hospital to cover our animated version, why should we pay them again?")
Maybe we should send that story to our elected officials...
TSG
Although I still think it will have to be a whole lot smaller and cuter to justify such a minor price difference...
Just saw how it is, in fact, smaller and not much cheaper. I don't think that's going to work -- in fact, I think that's going to be trouble.
If it had been $199, or if they were to cut the price soon, it might have a chance. As it is, it doesn't seem to be distinctive enough to make up for the price/space difference.
But I've been wrong before...
TSG
$199 is too high a price point to be easily differentiated from the price for the regular iPod. They won't cannibalize from the iPod because they won't sell: Folks who can set aside $199 for a music player will be able to set aside another $100 for the full version. Especially if they do the math and realize they get five times the songs for a 33% increase in price.
Consider further that Apple doesn't want you to do the math. If you start looking at tradeoffs and dollars per minute of music, you might realize that you can get a better deal on a flash memory player or one of those Dell things. Apple makes their money on the Cool Factor, and cold hard logic is dangerous to their bottom line.
$99 breaks the three-digit psychological barrier, and is something that many folks could scrounge out easily -- without thinking. A little voice might try to say that it's more expensive, but they'll be thinking of Courtney Love playing the new Nirvana song from her iPod and all those other rock stars who can't live without their iPods and -- sure, I can afford this, I need a player anyway. Maybe I'll get one for the wife, too.
I was expecting the whole miniPod rumor to blow away, like the PDA they were supposed to come out with a couple of years ago. The existence of the small drives makes it a lot more likely. If it does happen, I'd like for Apple to be smart [for a change!], lose a little money on these first ones and make it up as component prices go down.
But I guess we'll all find out tomorrow.
TSG
Not being able to land on that asteroid didn't stop that kook from billing NASA for parking costs. What does stop NASA from paying him is a standard for property rights. The standard happens to be "Nobody on Earth is allowed to own property off earth," which has its own problems. We just want to be careful about how to change it.
TSG
I'm not sure I like the idea, though, of having speculation in Martian land at this point. Ownership, sure -- by homesteaders taking possession, with a limit on acres per homesteader. Yes, I know that Earth will be ill-equipped to handle any land disputes between folks on Mars...on the other hand, the homesteaders will be ill-equipped to defend any large areas, as well. All the more reason not to have the Full Faith, Credit and Arsenal of any or all countries committed to their defense.
Hmmm...which probably means that the ownership issue, isn't: Anyone that's not on Earth can basically say "You want to stop us taking posession, come up and take it back." Although it does still make financing a problem, unless investors can be convinced that profits can be generated even if the "estate" isn't "real."
TSG
Those who use the product, if nothing else, contribute to the network effect inherent in operating systems: The more people there are, the more worthwhile it is to create applications for it, so more are created, making the OS more worthwhile, increasing the number of users....
Those who produce Linux software help to exercise the different parts of the code, which helps to find problems that can be checked and fixed. Plus, of course, they can pull in more people to use Linux, since they make it more worthwhile to use (see previous point).
Those who generate bug reports on Linux, even if they never touch a line of code, help ensure that the code works as expected. What's important in this development model is that errors can be fixed in direct proportion to their severity. And if we're willing to make the semantic jump that a "missing feature" is a low-priority error, then we can also say that features are added in proportion to their usefulness.
Bill has most of these same resources, of course, but he pays for them. His current development model can't always respond as efficiently as Linux can, where "efficiency" is defined as "improving the parts most important to most of the users." I think it's difficult to determine who really has more resources, though, or who will continue to have them.
TSG
"Evil" isn't a matter of "spin." We can discuss whether or not Bush is incompetent, ill-advised, or just acting from a point of view that many find disagreeable. There are certainly those who think he IS evil, and we could probably have an interesting debate on the subject of evil, how evil Bush is, whether he's more or less evil than Clinton, and how their evil might (or does) manifest.
But with Hussein, we're talking about a man whose career as Iraqi leader began with a purge of his party -- a no-kidding Stalinist purge, where backing the wrong horse meant you were immediately and messily dead. (Note that Hussein not only did not hide this, he made sure that everyone KNEW about it.) Just about every career high point for him points to a man who is evil by any definition of the word. The only exception I can think of -- a career high point, that is, where some might *not* define him as evil -- is his attack on Iran, where there was no shortage of folks who considered it a greater good.And that's just looking at situations that are readily acknowledged and well-reported - I don't have to look at the motivations for setting 600 Kuwaiti oil wells ablaze to recognize that it was an evil act.
I could, perhaps, be convinced that Saddam was doing his best to unify three separate geographic areas that had been carved together from the Ottoman empire, by consolidating power in the smallest ethnic group, but that wouldn't make the women who saw their husbands slowly lowered into vats of acid feel any better. Those tortures were still evil acts perpetrated by evil men, and no understanding of motivations is going to change that.
I don't have a problem with a Philosophy 101 discussion of the nature and perception of evil. But if you can't acknowledge that there are some people who really ARE evil, then it's a pointless exercise -- you're holding that evil is always and only a point of view, a difference of opinion. In that case, as the saying goes, your mind has become so open that your brains have fallen out.
TSG
- They're asking for the money upfront!
- Much more difficult to register their products for copyright protection!
- Two words: Free T-Shirts!
- No big release festival for "WinDDoS 95"!
- Hey, at least it doesn't come with Clippy the helpful paper clip!
Remainder of the top ten list left to the general public.TSG
Free Software will not conquer all. Not ever.
It may conquer most, and there will be plenty of areas where the only viable options are free. There will still be areas where the user population is so large compared to the programmer pool, that selling software is still an option. Conversely, there will be areas where the user population is so small that there will be no choice but to bring programmers on board to ensure it's created.
The obvious first case is games, which aren't amenable to an open-source approach. Sure, you could collaborate to set up an application base, but designing a game that others want to play isn't something that can be done a piece at a time by different people.
For the second case, there's any application specific to a company or organization: Space shuttle software isn't useful to anyone without a space shuttle, certainly. And here, yes, you might be able to adapt aircraft software to a variety of uses, but now you need programmers again to do the adaptation.
And if it works out that are too few people getting paid to program, well, the Invisible Hand should reach out and convince a few companies to pay for folks to do updates.
TSG
Okay, I just looked at it again, and it IS a bad example, since it should be pretty clear that you're paying 285K now to get 260K later. With some tweaking, though, you could probably end up with a project that "cost" (negative cash outflows) 260K, "earned" 285K, and was still a negative NPV project that should be avoided.
And I'm sure, with a bit more tweaking, we could even set one up where you pay $285K, get $260K, and end up ahead -- say, if you get the whole $260K in year one but wait ten years to pay the $285K.
But I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
TSG
And the subject at hand (the impact of bubble-era salaries on the current job market) is just the sort of place where relying on present-value cashflow comparison is likely to get you in trouble. Every one of those venture capitalists who invested in Pets.com or eToys had a fully descriptive present-value cashflow comparison that showed how they were going to make a mint.
The problem isn't the process, it's the assumptions. If I tell you that job A is 50K a year, with 5% increases each year and a 5% chance of layoffs every two years, while job B is 100K/year, with 5% increases every other year, and a 50% chance of layoffs every year, then the comparison is straightforward.
But what we get is that Job A is 50K a year with a large corporation trying to develop a new market while Job B is 100K a year with a startup that's trying to support an established industry. Which one is really riskier? How do you calculate your discount rate? Can you determine what your pay raises will look like?
Answer: You can't -- at least, I can't, and I've had a bit more than Business 101. Almost all of it would come down to assumptions like "a safe, well-paid, job is usually better than a temporary obscenely-paid one" and "if I lose this job in a year, am I better or worse off than if I lose that one?"
My point isn't that calculating the present values wouldn't be useful -- it's not a bad idea if you have a couple of options and the necessary parameters for each. But it won't tell you the whole story. Plus, it assumes a continuous function, and I'm sure we all remember what happens to all those useful mathematical theorems when we hit a discontinuity.
The point is that when you get off the edges of the curve, you're taking a lot more risk than if you stay, so to speak, within the lines.
TSG
"This could be an issue. I don't think I like it. I'm not smart enough to know for sure. Government will have to decide."
In a less cynical age, we might have replaced "Government" with "The People" but in this case it might come to the same thing: We have to decide how many dollars an hour in wage reductions $99 DVD players are worth.
And I don't think it's an easy question, either. If that DVD player was $199 , then I have to work about half a week more for it if I'm minimum wage, but only for half an day if I'm an average IT worker. If the price goes down 12% but my wages drop $1, am I better off? Will my children be better off? How about their children? Will it matter if I starve before they are born?
My understanding of economics says that when the questions get this complex then, yup, let the market decide. It might make mistakes, but it has a better chance of getting it right than the government does.
My understanding of theology says this is what folks used to do about most decisions, though: Yup, let God decide. He might make mistakes, but ...
I am rather impressed that Mr. Grove is smart enough to realize he's not smart enough to know the answer. In this discussion alone we have people saying
- Economy unification is going to happen, one way or another.
- The Market Will Take Care of Everything
- We absolutely DO need to save local jobs, and here are a number of actions we can/should/must do to enable it.
- How do we know the jobs we are saving are ones we want or need? Maybe when all the SQL jobs are done in Bombay I'll realize that I'd much rather work for a rocket startup.
- When we don't like the results generated by existing markets, it's proper to have them changed so we do like them. Which doesn't guarantee that we really will like things any better afterwards...
It's not simple. We should try to figure the answer. I'm not sure what it is.To which I will add
and also
Which is plenty for me.
TSG
It costs $9 to see a movie (once) in a cineplex, $20 to get it on DVD legally and watch it many times, $5 to rent it for a relatively short period. There are various tradeoffs in quality of experience and price and reusability.
Or you can pay some low but not-quite-zero amount to get a pirate copy -- assuming that your time is worth something, you'll have to pay for a blank DVD at least, the person who copied it is skimming from you in some fashion, etc. Plus the risk of being caught, which carries potential penalties including loss of the pirated copy, loss of the equipment used to pirate, fines, and jail time. How "potential" all of these are depends what the law says, resources spent on enforcement, your role in the process, etc.
Which just means that the number of "pirating acts that occur largely because the pirates aren't going to purchase something" isn't fixed, but depends on the cost of piracy versus the cost of a legitimate purchase. Furthermore, the Net Income depends on the number of people willing to purchase a product that returns money to the copyright holder. How the prices and costs are adjusted and interact affect the net income, and I daresay that the net income changes significantly based on simple alterations.
Figuring the optimal (i.e. highest net income) point isn't easy, though, and no doubt the copyright holders work on it. Increase movie prices and the theaters lose money, tempting them to allow pirates to copy from new prints. Drop DVD prices and you might make a little less money, but the pirates have a harder time selling. Increasing legal pressure on pirates requires government interaction (e.g. getting the FBI to close down professional pirates) which means spending money on political clout -- and that's money not spent on marketing that hot new film that may make enough money to finance next year's films, on which they'll hire costumers, grips, makeup folks, caterers, etc.
However you look at it, though, pirating pulls money out of the industry by reducing the value of its products. Does it put money back in by building up a customer base among those who wouldn't normally purchase the product? Does it cost more than, say, heavy-handed ads that imply its customers are criminals, or wholesale price reductions that decrease per-unit income but increase net? After all's said and done, does the industry have more money to spend on films because of piracy, or less? Well, that's the question, but it's not unreasonable to say "less," which is all they are doing.
(Unlike, say, the BSA, which pushes the BS level by calculating that EVERY pirated copy is a full-price sales loss...)
TSG
I was at that concert too. The guy's great, but EVERYONE sang along to the songs. Fine for the rockers, but I wish they would have shut up for the ballads.
The person I went with hadn't seen the guy live before, and it took to the second song to hear him live.
The good part was that it's the closest I've been to the stage for one of his shows. Which is probably why everyone around me were complete geeks who knew the word to every bloody song.
And yes, $7.50 for beer. I tipped the waitress a buck, and I don't really care that it was less than 15% that way -- for a beer, you tip a BUCK. That's how it's *supposed* to work.
TSG
That's a good point: EVERYONE hunkers down when the economy goes south, even people and companies with resources available. Which is a decent argument for being Keynesian: The government should react to the will of the people to get cash flowing again, since the alternative is for everyone to wait for everyone else to make the first move.
Capital is competing to make residential mortgage loans around 5% instead of investing in any businesses.
What's wrong with this, though? Joe Sixpack refinances, he saves $100 a month on his mortgage, he has $100 extra to spend on goods and services. Hopefully they'll be local ones, like hiring a contractor to expand his house, but in any case those dollars will give some businesses, somewhere, reason to invest. Not everyone can take advantage of this, but it's probably more people than take advantage of the capital available for business investment.
Well, he predicted that the state would whither away under communist rule, too, and that didn't seem to quite work out. And I'd say that economic fluctuations since Marx's time have become less severe -- nothing as bad as, say, the Great Depression for a while now. I wouldn't be surprised if we've exchanged relatively rare depressions for frequent recessions, but that doesn't sound like what he's saying.
TSG
Not an economist, but hope to play one on TV someday.
I can note that the software I develop won't ever be seen by anyone but the half-dozen folks in my work group, and that's likely to be the case for most of the people at my company -- a Fortune 500 company that generally doesn't produce software for sale but does employ a lot of software engineers.
Given that, I'll certainly agree with your point: Its stupid for companies that develop software for sale to short their development teams. Those of us who aren't in that situation, though, have to do the best we can to convince Management that a) what we do really is important to the company's bottom line and/or b) just because it's working now doesn't mean it's easy to do.
TSG