The movie house probably charges high rent to be there. It's like an airport, they have travelers effectivly stuck there because you usually don't want to bear the costs of leaving security and returning. As a result prices are higher there, don't worry the vendors aren't all gathering to screw you, the airport charges higher rent and extractes it from them. It's not collusion, there are plenty of places to buy cola's around the area, but the movie house has some limited market power over people already in the theater.
I recall reading a Gillette recuiter who was having trouble getting good materials engineering candidates (who didn't want to go work for something as boring as a razor company) until he changed his job statement to something like come work here where we need to bring steel 40 microns from living tissue without touching the tissue cutting materials as hard as copper. Think about that next time you lather up.
I loved that. I was the state champ in Road Rally (it was just reading topo & road maps and taking a test) and took second in bridge building (my 11 g bridge held 18 kilos or something close (I seem to recall 40 lbs)), and my partner and I hit the big city paper). Extra bonus were the HP scientific calcs that were donated to winners. That got me started on RPN, which might even be better. I'll have to see if I can help out now.
Earnings are pretty small, there aren't too many companies that earn more than 10 billion/year. He was likely refering to revenues, (hit about $6.2 last fiscal year, $6.7 last calendar year).
IANAL, I am an economist who enjoyed industrial organization a bit too much for my own good. It is only when you have meetings or evidence of collusion that you begin breaking the price fixing portions of anti-trust law in such a way as to invite prosecution. As long as your monopoly arises as a result of a competitive market (for handles and printers) you are not violating the law.
The justice department generally tries to avoid procecutions for anti-trust violations, which are very expensive and prefers to regulate the market by barring mergers which would reduce competition. However there was a ton of case law generated on these subjects from the turn of the century through the 1970s when suits were more common.
Another huge difference comes down to parody laws, under the case between Fallwell and Flynt, if something would not be believed about someone it falls into parody. IANAL, so a large grain of salt is required, the comics about taking psychotropic drugs or bestial asphyxiation are both beyond what a reasonable person would actually believe about the CEO of Infinum, and easily fall into parody. In the Strawberry Shortcake case, they were parodying a game creator, he likely couldn't have sued them, but they used a third party's intellectual property, at the same time that the third party was attempting (pretty successfully if the local Hot Topic is any indication) to cash in on the same intellectual property for nostalgic value. They likely would have lost a suit brought by American Greetings. An infinum suit would mostly just reduce the number of Umbrella shaded drinks available to the guys and hamster.
Not the war, but it was an important battle. The GeForce 2 and 3 had much better driver support than anything ATi offered, especially for the then new Windows 2000. However N'Vidia first started having problems slightly before they were announced as the video providers for the XBox, they missed a targeted tape out for the NV31 or NV35 (future GeForce 4), and ATi took the lead with better products and driver support they they had had in several years. The war isn't over until one of the two is out of business. We'll see how ATi manages with Microsoft breathing down their necks, but it might be easier now that gamers don't expect product refreshes every 6 months.
Our first microwave came with a recipe book for the microwave, one recipe was for bownies that included the tip, put a bit of foil in the corners to keep the brownies from drying out. It was the first time we had ever used a microwave, and you can imagine the shock when lighting began flying around the microwave.
No usually they are down signficantly, think of Christmas as an annual 6 week long shopping bump. Many stores will get more than 1/4 of their sales in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Then typically you have signficant decline in sales in the weeks after Christmas, back to the usual level of sales, with some bouncing around, pre-holiday weeks are generally up weeks. I know with video game software December sales are about 5 times most monthly sales (Novemeber is generally about half of December's level). Summer is the slowest selling period.
The american listings mean that someone takes care of all the currency transactions and make it much easier for you to invest in their companies. You still get all the benefits of the strenghtening Rupee and any new business they get, since you are really buying shares in the Indian company, it is just listed here to make it easier for Americans to invest in it. Just like Nokia or SAP the companies trade in two markets, with almost no difference between them (except time).
Compare and contrast the pricing of the prior version here and here. Yes, I realize that the second version is an OEM copy, but if you look a bit you can find legal copies Corel office for about $20-$30, they set the retail prices to get the clueless user who will comapre them to MS office and be happy with the savings. The second is for those who know about Open Office and want a cheap suite.
WP 5.1 was the finest example of word processor out there, everything that came after that added mostly bloat. It took a bit of getting the funky user interface (you had the function keys for action buttons, modified by the shift alt and ctrl buttons. It was complex enough to let you do anything you wanted, but remained easy enough that nothing was buried deep in the UI. It reminds me of most things Linux, I'm surprised there isn't a project to recreate it in Linux. Then WP 6 came out, it was slow, (on the hot rod 486s even) and sucked compared to Word and WP 5.1. I think they decied that Word's wysiwyg editor was the way of the future and tried to mimic it, and unfortunately their product sucked. That and Excell began to kick everything else's tail about that time, just as PCs got powerful enough to do more interesting math (statistical analysis and such).
You are aware that a home version of Windows is pretty cheap for a Dell or HP to place on a sub $500 desktop. I'd guess that their price is less than $50 per seat. It's not pocket change, but not outrageous for them. It also keeps upstart competitors out of the way, since the prices are set on number of desktops sold.
I think the issue with open source tax software is not so much that it is difficult to write, but that it changes, requiring annual updates and relatively specialized knowledge in two fields (tax law) and programming. Anyone with enough knowledge probably already works for Intuit or H&R Block (you might try them sometimes the second place guy is more interested in working with odd requests), and doesn't what to give away for free the things they get paid to create.
In the posting community, I'd guess that there are well below 10,000 semi active users. In the reading the front page group, there are probably well over the user number. I know I lurked for well over two years before finally getting a userid.
In that train of thought Oracle is one of the new big supporters of Linux, which signficantly lowers the overall cost of an Oracle database. Rather than buying an E10k with Solaris, you can run your oracle installation on a cluster of 5 dual Xeon/Opterons running Linux saving several hundred thousand off the total cost of Oracle. Eventually Oracle is more likely to improve Linux to work better with Oracle, which others can adopt. Linux is like outsourcing. It is good for some, bad for others, but not going away so you should adapt how you will take advantage of it or you will likely get steamrolled.
In the case of higher taxes and government grants, rather than innovation and skill, the rewards flow to butt kissers and those who befriend elected officials and other decision makers. There will always be disparity in how things are distributed, the reason I prefer capitalism is that it rewards those who come up with good ideas more consistently than other systems. Do you really think Dell would have flourished under another economic system? If it didn't would the computing revolution have occured as quickly?
The two biggest outsourcing firms Wipro and Infosys are both traded on US exchanges. Their tickers are WIT and INFY. Asian car makers should benefit from India, too if you prefer not to own the outsourcing companies directly.
The problem with any fee structure is that it structures the incentives of the manager differently from the desires of the investors. Paying a manager on returns will lead to managers taking on too much risk, hoping for a big payoff and not caring if the fund tanks because his compensation is tied to out performance.
The real problem is that for anyone who doesn't have several hundred thousand to invest, there is no other way to get proper diversification without huge transaction costs. As a result the funds offer such significant savings that they have a ton of rip off room before they begin to approach the cost of their closest substitute.
A few good reforms for the industry would be contented elections for the fund boards, annual meetings for fund investors, and better education of investors. Another big problem is that investors somehow perceve their broker as a trusted advisor, when in reality they are little more than used stock sales people. There are a few exceptions to this but not very many. If you are looking for a broker, check out their qualifications (look for a degree in business, and try to get one with a compensation structure that pays him for based on funds under management rather than trades).
The fund company gets an expense ratio (usually assumed at 0.75% but I think the average is between 1.00% and 1.25% now. The fund manager usually gets a six figure salary and a bonus that is tied to how much he beats the index (typically the S&P 500) in a given year. The bonus is usually in the seven to eight figure range. However if he underperforms he will generally be replaced in a year or two.
Hedge funds, venture capital, and other private equity funds have compensation structures of the following nature. The fund management company usually gets an expense fee of 2-3% per year, but returns are split in the following manner, the investors recieve their investment back. Then any additional returns are split 80/20 investors to fund partners. This is virtually standard, although I've seen some small variences. Don't worry about the fees in this group, unless you started a company that went public (and you got out) you'll never have to pay them.
Certain companies require a significant part of net worth be in the fund a guy manages but they are a bit rare. Yes their pay is quite high, and it's a result of their bosses largely not caring because the diversification benefits being so great as to outweigh a ton of screwing around. Buy index funds to avoid both problems pay there is much more reasonable, as are expense ratios and returns are usually within a few basis points (hundredths of a percent) of the index.
Keep in mind that CalPERS is included in the institutional side, but their investments are for the benefit of the employees of California (it's their pension fund). I think CalPERS holds several percent of Disney's stock. And while CalPERS might not have a board member they sort of speak for the silent majority of public pension money that holds enough of most big company stocks to have a say in board elections. In addition almost all retail investors hold their money in mutual funds which are included in the institutional side, it's the millionare investors who are more likely to hold individual securities and be counted in the individual investor group. You're correct in that most board members are wealthy or influential individuals. Change is coming there, but it is very slow.
Re:Here is another solution:
on
DIY HVAC
·
· Score: 1
It would be a while before I would install this but I'm curious. Where does it go? Between the stud/truss and sheath or inside between the stud/truss and the sheetrock? I couldn't tell from a picture. How does it compare to things like housewraps or just more fiberglass (more than R19 in the walls or R35 in the ceiling). Thanks.
Re:Here's some solutions to help lower the bill:
on
DIY HVAC
·
· Score: 1
One trick I picked up last summer was to take a quick cool shower right before bed. The water cools you off, and again when it evaporates. My apartment has no AC and while I am fine during the day up to about 105, the warmer nights here in the summer, were a bit more than this desert boy could adapt.
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The movie house probably charges high rent to be there. It's like an airport, they have travelers effectivly stuck there because you usually don't want to bear the costs of leaving security and returning. As a result prices are higher there, don't worry the vendors aren't all gathering to screw you, the airport charges higher rent and extractes it from them. It's not collusion, there are plenty of places to buy cola's around the area, but the movie house has some limited market power over people already in the theater.
I recall reading a Gillette recuiter who was having trouble getting good materials engineering candidates (who didn't want to go work for something as boring as a razor company) until he changed his job statement to something like come work here where we need to bring steel 40 microns from living tissue without touching the tissue cutting materials as hard as copper. Think about that next time you lather up.
I loved that. I was the state champ in Road Rally (it was just reading topo & road maps and taking a test) and took second in bridge building (my 11 g bridge held 18 kilos or something close (I seem to recall 40 lbs)), and my partner and I hit the big city paper). Extra bonus were the HP scientific calcs that were donated to winners. That got me started on RPN, which might even be better. I'll have to see if I can help out now.
Earnings are pretty small, there aren't too many companies that earn more than 10 billion/year. He was likely refering to revenues, (hit about $6.2 last fiscal year, $6.7 last calendar year).
IANAL, I am an economist who enjoyed industrial organization a bit too much for my own good. It is only when you have meetings or evidence of collusion that you begin breaking the price fixing portions of anti-trust law in such a way as to invite prosecution. As long as your monopoly arises as a result of a competitive market (for handles and printers) you are not violating the law.
The justice department generally tries to avoid procecutions for anti-trust violations, which are very expensive and prefers to regulate the market by barring mergers which would reduce competition. However there was a ton of case law generated on these subjects from the turn of the century through the 1970s when suits were more common.
Another huge difference comes down to parody laws, under the case between Fallwell and Flynt, if something would not be believed about someone it falls into parody. IANAL, so a large grain of salt is required, the comics about taking psychotropic drugs or bestial asphyxiation are both beyond what a reasonable person would actually believe about the CEO of Infinum, and easily fall into parody. In the Strawberry Shortcake case, they were parodying a game creator, he likely couldn't have sued them, but they used a third party's intellectual property, at the same time that the third party was attempting (pretty successfully if the local Hot Topic is any indication) to cash in on the same intellectual property for nostalgic value. They likely would have lost a suit brought by American Greetings. An infinum suit would mostly just reduce the number of Umbrella shaded drinks available to the guys and hamster.
Not the war, but it was an important battle. The GeForce 2 and 3 had much better driver support than anything ATi offered, especially for the then new Windows 2000. However N'Vidia first started having problems slightly before they were announced as the video providers for the XBox, they missed a targeted tape out for the NV31 or NV35 (future GeForce 4), and ATi took the lead with better products and driver support they they had had in several years. The war isn't over until one of the two is out of business. We'll see how ATi manages with Microsoft breathing down their necks, but it might be easier now that gamers don't expect product refreshes every 6 months.
Our first microwave came with a recipe book for the microwave, one recipe was for bownies that included the tip, put a bit of foil in the corners to keep the brownies from drying out. It was the first time we had ever used a microwave, and you can imagine the shock when lighting began flying around the microwave.
No usually they are down signficantly, think of Christmas as an annual 6 week long shopping bump. Many stores will get more than 1/4 of their sales in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Then typically you have signficant decline in sales in the weeks after Christmas, back to the usual level of sales, with some bouncing around, pre-holiday weeks are generally up weeks. I know with video game software December sales are about 5 times most monthly sales (Novemeber is generally about half of December's level). Summer is the slowest selling period.
The american listings mean that someone takes care of all the currency transactions and make it much easier for you to invest in their companies. You still get all the benefits of the strenghtening Rupee and any new business they get, since you are really buying shares in the Indian company, it is just listed here to make it easier for Americans to invest in it. Just like Nokia or SAP the companies trade in two markets, with almost no difference between them (except time).
Have we really improved on them? Yeah there are more bells and whistles, but do they really do more for most of the userbase?
Compare and contrast the pricing of the prior version here and here. Yes, I realize that the second version is an OEM copy, but if you look a bit you can find legal copies Corel office for about $20-$30, they set the retail prices to get the clueless user who will comapre them to MS office and be happy with the savings. The second is for those who know about Open Office and want a cheap suite.
WP 5.1 was the finest example of word processor out there, everything that came after that added mostly bloat. It took a bit of getting the funky user interface (you had the function keys for action buttons, modified by the shift alt and ctrl buttons. It was complex enough to let you do anything you wanted, but remained easy enough that nothing was buried deep in the UI. It reminds me of most things Linux, I'm surprised there isn't a project to recreate it in Linux. Then WP 6 came out, it was slow, (on the hot rod 486s even) and sucked compared to Word and WP 5.1. I think they decied that Word's wysiwyg editor was the way of the future and tried to mimic it, and unfortunately their product sucked. That and Excell began to kick everything else's tail about that time, just as PCs got powerful enough to do more interesting math (statistical analysis and such).
You are aware that a home version of Windows is pretty cheap for a Dell or HP to place on a sub $500 desktop. I'd guess that their price is less than $50 per seat. It's not pocket change, but not outrageous for them. It also keeps upstart competitors out of the way, since the prices are set on number of desktops sold.
I think the issue with open source tax software is not so much that it is difficult to write, but that it changes, requiring annual updates and relatively specialized knowledge in two fields (tax law) and programming. Anyone with enough knowledge probably already works for Intuit or H&R Block (you might try them sometimes the second place guy is more interested in working with odd requests), and doesn't what to give away for free the things they get paid to create.
In the posting community, I'd guess that there are well below 10,000 semi active users. In the reading the front page group, there are probably well over the user number. I know I lurked for well over two years before finally getting a userid.
In that train of thought Oracle is one of the new big supporters of Linux, which signficantly lowers the overall cost of an Oracle database. Rather than buying an E10k with Solaris, you can run your oracle installation on a cluster of 5 dual Xeon/Opterons running Linux saving several hundred thousand off the total cost of Oracle. Eventually Oracle is more likely to improve Linux to work better with Oracle, which others can adopt. Linux is like outsourcing. It is good for some, bad for others, but not going away so you should adapt how you will take advantage of it or you will likely get steamrolled.
In the case of higher taxes and government grants, rather than innovation and skill, the rewards flow to butt kissers and those who befriend elected officials and other decision makers. There will always be disparity in how things are distributed, the reason I prefer capitalism is that it rewards those who come up with good ideas more consistently than other systems. Do you really think Dell would have flourished under another economic system? If it didn't would the computing revolution have occured as quickly?
The two biggest outsourcing firms Wipro and Infosys are both traded on US exchanges. Their tickers are WIT and INFY. Asian car makers should benefit from India, too if you prefer not to own the outsourcing companies directly.
The problem with any fee structure is that it structures the incentives of the manager differently from the desires of the investors. Paying a manager on returns will lead to managers taking on too much risk, hoping for a big payoff and not caring if the fund tanks because his compensation is tied to out performance.
The real problem is that for anyone who doesn't have several hundred thousand to invest, there is no other way to get proper diversification without huge transaction costs. As a result the funds offer such significant savings that they have a ton of rip off room before they begin to approach the cost of their closest substitute.
A few good reforms for the industry would be contented elections for the fund boards, annual meetings for fund investors, and better education of investors. Another big problem is that investors somehow perceve their broker as a trusted advisor, when in reality they are little more than used stock sales people. There are a few exceptions to this but not very many. If you are looking for a broker, check out their qualifications (look for a degree in business, and try to get one with a compensation structure that pays him for based on funds under management rather than trades).
The fund company gets an expense ratio (usually assumed at 0.75% but I think the average is between 1.00% and 1.25% now. The fund manager usually gets a six figure salary and a bonus that is tied to how much he beats the index (typically the S&P 500) in a given year. The bonus is usually in the seven to eight figure range. However if he underperforms he will generally be replaced in a year or two.
Hedge funds, venture capital, and other private equity funds have compensation structures of the following nature. The fund management company usually gets an expense fee of 2-3% per year, but returns are split in the following manner, the investors recieve their investment back. Then any additional returns are split 80/20 investors to fund partners. This is virtually standard, although I've seen some small variences. Don't worry about the fees in this group, unless you started a company that went public (and you got out) you'll never have to pay them.
Certain companies require a significant part of net worth be in the fund a guy manages but they are a bit rare. Yes their pay is quite high, and it's a result of their bosses largely not caring because the diversification benefits being so great as to outweigh a ton of screwing around. Buy index funds to avoid both problems pay there is much more reasonable, as are expense ratios and returns are usually within a few basis points (hundredths of a percent) of the index.
Keep in mind that CalPERS is included in the institutional side, but their investments are for the benefit of the employees of California (it's their pension fund). I think CalPERS holds several percent of Disney's stock. And while CalPERS might not have a board member they sort of speak for the silent majority of public pension money that holds enough of most big company stocks to have a say in board elections. In addition almost all retail investors hold their money in mutual funds which are included in the institutional side, it's the millionare investors who are more likely to hold individual securities and be counted in the individual investor group. You're correct in that most board members are wealthy or influential individuals. Change is coming there, but it is very slow.
It would be a while before I would install this but I'm curious. Where does it go? Between the stud/truss and sheath or inside between the stud/truss and the sheetrock? I couldn't tell from a picture. How does it compare to things like housewraps or just more fiberglass (more than R19 in the walls or R35 in the ceiling). Thanks.
One trick I picked up last summer was to take a quick cool shower right before bed. The water cools you off, and again when it evaporates. My apartment has no AC and while I am fine during the day up to about 105, the warmer nights here in the summer, were a bit more than this desert boy could adapt.