Re:Other mappable relationship environments?
on
Guilty By Association
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It's the fact taht trials are slow, expensive, and predictable, if there was some question about the chances of a convition the prosecuter offers a deal. It's a lot like Law & Order, where the guy might be a sleaze, but if they don't think they can prove he's a sleaze to the jury they offer him a plea. They guy considers the terms, and decides that it's not worth the risk that he will be convicted so he takes it (boosting conviction rates (guy pleading guilty to 2nd degree manslaughter still counts as a conviction). The only trials that take place are the few that are questionable enough or have defendant's who firmly believe they are innocent, and have lots of money. As a more recent example, Martha should have just settled with the SEC paid a few hundred grand and gotten on with her life. For whatever reason, she decided that the expense and risk of a trial was worth the attempt to clear her name. We'll probably find out next week if her gamble paid off.
I'm at the state pension fund in Montana, the pay sucks compared to NY, but my 40 hr week and my sub 10 minute commute more than make up for it (including a coffee stop).
You and your partner need to sit down and think about what your goals are after high school. The trouble with most businesses is that it's almost impossible to make your opportunity cost back (after paying taxes) in 3 months. Most assets (even cheap ones) require more than 3 year payback. Sure sometimes you can sometimes reuse assets that you already own. If you want to go to college after you graduate, I'd say suck it up and get a minimum wage job, sorry. You'll likely have more cash at the end of the summer, and that becomes much more important as you want to pay tuition. If you're thinking more about running with this after you graduate, I'd look for a part time job. Getting a part time job will provide additional investment capital next summer when you get started for real, but will give you free time to build your business this summer/next year. You'll be doing well if your business generates anything other than a customer list or brand name this year.
Keep in mind that this country has split pretty severely with the coasts, largely requiring what would be princly wages in the fly over states. A quick look at housing prices, is a good start as to why. $75/hr in Seattle, San Fran, NY, Boston, or DC ect, likely provides a decent living to it's owner after taxes take 1/3, and cost of living is taken out. It would be like $40 or $50 around here. Plus the grand parent probably has some decent experience.
A lot of farm work is paid by the piece, it's not exactly a business, but you do have some control over how much you can make in a summer. Besides that it usually gets you outside, excercising, and you meet some cool people. Physical labor tends to build relationships between people more than office work.
I forgot two, if you live near the forest and are safe with power tools, and have occasional access to a truck, you could cut firewood for the summer. Probably more of a fall business, but you could probably get some work in the later summer months. Check on going rates in your area.
Another new industry is take the trouble out of ebaying things. People drop of their stuff they want to sell, and you photogaph, list, pack, and ship it. You'll need a paypal account, digital camera, knowledge of how ebay works (both tech and market wise, go examine auctions for the same thing and see why prices vary), and it would help to have a supply of boxes.
Guys always like making stuff, but more successful small businesses are usually services. If you are both detail oriented, you could try a wash the car service, you go to the self serve wash places (espeically those near something to do) offer to wash cars (wash, wax, glass cleaner vaccum, armorall/leather cleaner, etc) while the person shops/eats. You'll probably have to split revenue with the wash place. You could offer your services to several dealerships to keep business up.
If you have a demonstrable history of tech stuff, you could be geeks for hire, check with friends and teachers who have computer problems (there have been a ton of viruses lately so you can probably get plenty of business) and fix them for ~$20/hr (or charge by the job).
Other than that think about things that others complain about and ways you could provide the service.
It's a pretty good assumption, the idea of short term over reaction/long term underreaction probably still nets you a decent return. But you're right a ton of volume is strictly based on very fleeting things, like momentum volume, support, the price of derivatives. It's rather amazing that the market works so well in the longer term.
Typically these sorts of agreements have revenue recognised over a period of time. SCO management mentioned in the call yesterday, that they were recognising revenue periodically. So the $20,000 is one quarter's worth of the contracts they signed prior to Oct, and part of a quarter's revenue for contracts signed Oct-Jan. Next quarter will recognise one quarter's revenue for all the contracts that were signed prior to Jan 30 and partial revenue on newly signed contracts. I'm no accountant but would assume that partial quarters are pro rata daily or monthly.
Dang, now I have to move all my money, I don't want it associated with such rag tag filth. I suppose I'll put it in my safe, with the same combination as my luggage.
I'm curious couldn't a company make an X-Box that downloaded games rather than sticking in a DVD? Would anything major have to change? You could either just ship the games to the console overnight as they were released or download the next level as they were playing the current one. It doesn't seem like much of a leap to me. Can anyone fill me in on the technical difficulties here?
The nice thing about a cable company console, is that the cable companies will pay a much higher price, and charge their users monthly rather than the hardware companie at best breaking even on the early consoles.
Certainly biased, but the most insightful book on the whole Enron mess (Pipe Dreams) put the timing of everything going downhill about the time Kinder left the company in 1996. Kinder was an old school pipeline guy (still is actually with a new successful company). Once he left, the company became obsessed with cloning a Wall Street trading firm, but had none of the skill to do so, and they entered into a ton of bad deals (Indian power plants, European water, their broadband group) until finally they wasted enough money that the pipelines couldn't provide the liquidity to cover the company's trading.
Does volvo still use that 5 cylinder engine? After they were turbo charged they had a bit of power, but the car weighed so much they were not exactly hot rods (never seen a T5 up close which might affect final judgement).
I think most of the new BMWs come with a 3 or 5 year no maintenece warrenty, you only buy gas. The dealer does your oil, water, and from the ad all other maintenance work. I thought it was sort of a cool idea, expect Toyota (Lexus )to offer it before Honda. Good choice with the Honda, I absolutly love mine, but I reccomend that you get a stick the Hondas with a manual surprisingly peepy (not roast the tires peepy) and are a blast to drive.
Here's how it went down. Congress back in 1996 told the FCC to get competition working in the phone business. So they made some new rules, which were struck by the Supreme Court a few years later. Incidentally the bubble was mostly caused by the 96 telecom act, rather than the internet. The interent was rolling along nicely prior to 96, but all of the sudden from 96 to 2000 there were a bunch of startups who wanted to eat AT&T's lunch. They all went after the same market flooded it and killed the industry for the past three years. IT only suffered because a whole bunch of telecom equipment depends on computers to make it work, (telecom was buying 20% of Sun and IBM's hardware through 2000, then it all went away.
Anyway, last year, the FCC tried again, but basically left the dicision making up to the states. The court mostly said that the FCCs lack of decision making ability angered it and they have 60 days to try again. The decision was almost as good as the crayon related one posted yesterday.
IIRC, we had tons of trouble with our 2000-2001 Dells, which used the P3 and Intel's first RDDAM chipset (i810). There were all sorts of problems with that chipset and the then new RDRAM overheating. I don't know if Dell continued to use that chipset through 2002 or not.
Ironically, price fixing is quite common in industries that have huge fixed cost requirements that are generating losses because of overcapacity (which is the normal condition in memory manufacture). The issue is not how much money was made or lost, but the difference between what you charged and what a competitive market would have charged.
They have some pricing power as Saudi Arabia is the cheapest place to pull the stuff out of the ground and get it into useful form, but other places exert some competition if they try to price it too high. As they learned in the 80s when lots of production went online, and people started becoming more oil effecient in their operation. The higher they let the price get, the more investment their customers make in efficency technology and the more investment in higher cost extraction takes place causing eventual lower prices. But from $10-$25 the Saudis can exert a ton of pricing power.
Trouble with checking for knocks is that modern engines will adjust timings and other variables to keep the engine from destroying itself when Joe Idiot puts the cheap stuff in his tank, so the best check on your gas quality is the milage (the adjustments move the engine out of its ideal range reducing power or efficiency).
There is some leeway for vendors of items that require more than average selling costs. Take stereos for example. Imagine a town with two stereo stores, an audiophile shop and Best Buy. The small shop will let you send the afternoon listening to various speakers and amps with your collecction of CDs and the owner will likely give you tons of advice about room placement or other product specific info. But he might only get 10 sales a week and needs to make $100 per sale. Best buy will box it up and sell it to you and might let you listen to the radio or the movie loop they have playing there. However they sell 200 systems and are happy making $20 per system. Dennon needs to show users how much better quality their systems are to justify the high price they wish to charge. Which of the two shops is more likely to do that for potential customers? The first one is the rational answer.
As a result Dennon doesn't want Best Buy to undercut the small shops pricing because then all the sales go to Pioneer, who is always cheaper at Best Buy and the average rep doesn't know enough about the features to up sell to Dennon as effectivly. As a result Dennon wants to get some additional business without killing the audiophile shop, so they set a minimum price for retailers to charge so as not to kill the more focused sellers off. Does that make sense?
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It's the fact taht trials are slow, expensive, and predictable, if there was some question about the chances of a convition the prosecuter offers a deal. It's a lot like Law & Order, where the guy might be a sleaze, but if they don't think they can prove he's a sleaze to the jury they offer him a plea. They guy considers the terms, and decides that it's not worth the risk that he will be convicted so he takes it (boosting conviction rates (guy pleading guilty to 2nd degree manslaughter still counts as a conviction).
The only trials that take place are the few that are questionable enough or have defendant's who firmly believe they are innocent, and have lots of money. As a more recent example, Martha should have just settled with the SEC paid a few hundred grand and gotten on with her life. For whatever reason, she decided that the expense and risk of a trial was worth the attempt to clear her name. We'll probably find out next week if her gamble paid off.
I'm at the state pension fund in Montana, the pay sucks compared to NY, but my 40 hr week and my sub 10 minute commute more than make up for it (including a coffee stop).
You and your partner need to sit down and think about what your goals are after high school. The trouble with most businesses is that it's almost impossible to make your opportunity cost back (after paying taxes) in 3 months. Most assets (even cheap ones) require more than 3 year payback. Sure sometimes you can sometimes reuse assets that you already own. If you want to go to college after you graduate, I'd say suck it up and get a minimum wage job, sorry. You'll likely have more cash at the end of the summer, and that becomes much more important as you want to pay tuition. If you're thinking more about running with this after you graduate, I'd look for a part time job. Getting a part time job will provide additional investment capital next summer when you get started for real, but will give you free time to build your business this summer/next year. You'll be doing well if your business generates anything other than a customer list or brand name this year.
Keep in mind that this country has split pretty severely with the coasts, largely requiring what would be princly wages in the fly over states. A quick look at housing prices, is a good start as to why. $75/hr in Seattle, San Fran, NY, Boston, or DC ect, likely provides a decent living to it's owner after taxes take 1/3, and cost of living is taken out. It would be like $40 or $50 around here. Plus the grand parent probably has some decent experience.
Here in Montana it's $5.15 or $5.25/hr. But you can rent a place for 200 (with roommates), or $300 if you like to live alone.
A lot of farm work is paid by the piece, it's not exactly a business, but you do have some control over how much you can make in a summer. Besides that it usually gets you outside, excercising, and you meet some cool people. Physical labor tends to build relationships between people more than office work.
I forgot two, if you live near the forest and are safe with power tools, and have occasional access to a truck, you could cut firewood for the summer. Probably more of a fall business, but you could probably get some work in the later summer months. Check on going rates in your area.
Another new industry is take the trouble out of ebaying things. People drop of their stuff they want to sell, and you photogaph, list, pack, and ship it. You'll need a paypal account, digital camera, knowledge of how ebay works (both tech and market wise, go examine auctions for the same thing and see why prices vary), and it would help to have a supply of boxes.
Guys always like making stuff, but more successful small businesses are usually services. If you are both detail oriented, you could try a wash the car service, you go to the self serve wash places (espeically those near something to do) offer to wash cars (wash, wax, glass cleaner vaccum, armorall/leather cleaner, etc) while the person shops/eats. You'll probably have to split revenue with the wash place. You could offer your services to several dealerships to keep business up.
If you have a demonstrable history of tech stuff, you could be geeks for hire, check with friends and teachers who have computer problems (there have been a ton of viruses lately so you can probably get plenty of business) and fix them for ~$20/hr (or charge by the job).
Other than that think about things that others complain about and ways you could provide the service.
It's a pretty good assumption, the idea of short term over reaction/long term underreaction probably still nets you a decent return. But you're right a ton of volume is strictly based on very fleeting things, like momentum volume, support, the price of derivatives. It's rather amazing that the market works so well in the longer term.
Typically these sorts of agreements have revenue recognised over a period of time. SCO management mentioned in the call yesterday, that they were recognising revenue periodically. So the $20,000 is one quarter's worth of the contracts they signed prior to Oct, and part of a quarter's revenue for contracts signed Oct-Jan. Next quarter will recognise one quarter's revenue for all the contracts that were signed prior to Jan 30 and partial revenue on newly signed contracts. I'm no accountant but would assume that partial quarters are pro rata daily or monthly.
Dang, now I have to move all my money, I don't want it associated with such rag tag filth. I suppose I'll put it in my safe, with the same combination as my luggage.
I'm a buy side analyst too. Who do you work for? Nice to see a few other financial types here.
I'm curious couldn't a company make an X-Box that downloaded games rather than sticking in a DVD? Would anything major have to change? You could either just ship the games to the console overnight as they were released or download the next level as they were playing the current one. It doesn't seem like much of a leap to me. Can anyone fill me in on the technical difficulties here?
The nice thing about a cable company console, is that the cable companies will pay a much higher price, and charge their users monthly rather than the hardware companie at best breaking even on the early consoles.
Certainly biased, but the most insightful book on the whole Enron mess (Pipe Dreams) put the timing of everything going downhill about the time Kinder left the company in 1996. Kinder was an old school pipeline guy (still is actually with a new successful company). Once he left, the company became obsessed with cloning a Wall Street trading firm, but had none of the skill to do so, and they entered into a ton of bad deals (Indian power plants, European water, their broadband group) until finally they wasted enough money that the pipelines couldn't provide the liquidity to cover the company's trading.
Does volvo still use that 5 cylinder engine? After they were turbo charged they had a bit of power, but the car weighed so much they were not exactly hot rods (never seen a T5 up close which might affect final judgement).
I think most of the new BMWs come with a 3 or 5 year no maintenece warrenty, you only buy gas. The dealer does your oil, water, and from the ad all other maintenance work. I thought it was sort of a cool idea, expect Toyota (Lexus )to offer it before Honda. Good choice with the Honda, I absolutly love mine, but I reccomend that you get a stick the Hondas with a manual surprisingly peepy (not roast the tires peepy) and are a blast to drive.
If anything this should speed the roll out of cable telephony since the competitors prices just increaed.
Here's how it went down. Congress back in 1996 told the FCC to get competition working in the phone business. So they made some new rules, which were struck by the Supreme Court a few years later. Incidentally the bubble was mostly caused by the 96 telecom act, rather than the internet. The interent was rolling along nicely prior to 96, but all of the sudden from 96 to 2000 there were a bunch of startups who wanted to eat AT&T's lunch. They all went after the same market flooded it and killed the industry for the past three years. IT only suffered because a whole bunch of telecom equipment depends on computers to make it work, (telecom was buying 20% of Sun and IBM's hardware through 2000, then it all went away.
Anyway, last year, the FCC tried again, but basically left the dicision making up to the states. The court mostly said that the FCCs lack of decision making ability angered it and they have 60 days to try again. The decision was almost as good as the crayon related one posted yesterday.
I think the money required to buy happiness can only come from criminal organizations.
IIRC, we had tons of trouble with our 2000-2001 Dells, which used the P3 and Intel's first RDDAM chipset (i810). There were all sorts of problems with that chipset and the then new RDRAM overheating. I don't know if Dell continued to use that chipset through 2002 or not.
Here's your attaboy for finding a new arbitrage of the system. If I hadn't found a laser on my doorstep last spring, I'd try the same thing.
Ironically, price fixing is quite common in industries that have huge fixed cost requirements that are generating losses because of overcapacity (which is the normal condition in memory manufacture). The issue is not how much money was made or lost, but the difference between what you charged and what a competitive market would have charged.
They have some pricing power as Saudi Arabia is the cheapest place to pull the stuff out of the ground and get it into useful form, but other places exert some competition if they try to price it too high. As they learned in the 80s when lots of production went online, and people started becoming more oil effecient in their operation. The higher they let the price get, the more investment their customers make in efficency technology and the more investment in higher cost extraction takes place causing eventual lower prices. But from $10-$25 the Saudis can exert a ton of pricing power.
Trouble with checking for knocks is that modern engines will adjust timings and other variables to keep the engine from destroying itself when Joe Idiot puts the cheap stuff in his tank, so the best check on your gas quality is the milage (the adjustments move the engine out of its ideal range reducing power or efficiency).
There is some leeway for vendors of items that require more than average selling costs. Take stereos for example. Imagine a town with two stereo stores, an audiophile shop and Best Buy. The small shop will let you send the afternoon listening to various speakers and amps with your collecction of CDs and the owner will likely give you tons of advice about room placement or other product specific info. But he might only get 10 sales a week and needs to make $100 per sale. Best buy will box it up and sell it to you and might let you listen to the radio or the movie loop they have playing there. However they sell 200 systems and are happy making $20 per system. Dennon needs to show users how much better quality their systems are to justify the high price they wish to charge. Which of the two shops is more likely to do that for potential customers? The first one is the rational answer.
As a result Dennon doesn't want Best Buy to undercut the small shops pricing because then all the sales go to Pioneer, who is always cheaper at Best Buy and the average rep doesn't know enough about the features to up sell to Dennon as effectivly. As a result Dennon wants to get some additional business without killing the audiophile shop, so they set a minimum price for retailers to charge so as not to kill the more focused sellers off. Does that make sense?