While I'd categorize the experience as one that was a bit of an acquired taste, I have to argue a couple of your points:
Using the keyboard drained new batteries within a day.
Didn't happen to me. Weekend classes (all day Friday and Saturday), and the battery drain wasn't any more noticable than usual. Certianly better than the poor chumps who had to plug in their laptops.
Not to mention that it was precarious to use in a moving vehicle.
Usually, there's some sort of payment schedule stated in the contract:
i.e. "due the 15th, 10% penalty applies after the 20th" means that the payment will be made on the 19th. Obviously, the payer wants to keep his cash in his pocket until the last possible moment. The biller, of course, wants his cash immediately. So, occasionally, there'll be incentives for prepayment. i.e. 10% off if paid before the 10th.
or something. Obviously, the smart companies will look at all the potential payment schedules, and make the best decision for their organization.
one - you can only do this once or twice before they stop giving you pay raises, and each iteration burns a bridge at a potentially new and exciting job, with new and better opportunities for you.
I would, however, be VERY careful about confusing "new and exciting" with "different."
If the Bowie model of doing bonds makes more money than the current revenue model, then the record companies might start to listen, but Bowie's catalog is reasonably consistent. Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, Pinups, and The Man Who Sold the World are (presumably) all steady sellers. We're not talking Pink Floyd or The Beatles here, commercially, but still...
Point being, you can't apply this model to an artist that doesn't have that kind of track record. Try floating "Britney Bonds" or "'Nsync Notes" and see how far those fly. They won't, because they don't have any chance of producing the kind of steady cashflow that Bowie's sales produce over time.
Even looking at more relevant bands of this era (choose your own), they are ALL likely to fade within 10 years, and won't provide the sheer volume of Bowie's output. I happen to love the Pixies, but I have trouble thinking that anybody's chasing down "Bossanova" in their local Tower Records.
Neato model, points to Bowie's finance team for developing it, but applicable in a miniscule number of cases. If Bowie, in fact, owns his own IP, it might even be unique.
For instance, my TiVo (as opposed to my wife's) gets all the NBA playoff games. I estimate that over this particular version of the playoffs, with the horrific Eastern Conference, and the (to date) non-competitive nature of the series in the Western Conference, I've watched maybe the rough equivalent of three to four games, none from start to finish.
Now, the cable company is (presumably) getting feedback that someone's watching the program, when in fact, my TiVo's watching the show, and I'm ignoring the vast majority of it. Kind of like the early Neilsen household who watched ABC from 7-11 every night. The owner of the house didn't watch TV, but his cat seemed to like ABC the best.
If anything, I'd think sports viewers are MORE likely to skip through stuff they don't want, including programming. For instance, when I taped the NCAA Men's Hoop Tournament's First round (16 games on Thursday, then 16 more on Friday), I implemented rules (once a team's up by 15, triple-fast-forward until the lead's back to eight or the next game starts) just to get me through to the footage I wanted to see. With octuple headers, getting home at 5 was an issue, but I was still done by midnight.
I suspect this would hold for other sports as well. Baseball games that are 9-2 in the third inning, 4-1 soccer matches entering the second half, 122-50 Aussie Rules Football games, and so on.
Off topic, but baseball actually looks better at single-fast-forward, IMHO.
I know you're kidding, but I used to install computer systems in junkyards.
We're talking people with "offices" made out of old railroad cars, and grease/oil/whatever on the lot so thick you'd swear it would catch fire when somebody tossed a cigarette butt. Keyboards with crust so thick, you couldn't read the keys.
One box came back with half an inch of dust INSIDE the computer. It still worked, but needed a HD upgrade.
And now Clorox's marketing types are trying to get me concerned about the keyboard/mouse at my current (fully indoor, with trash removal, and everything) office? Bwaahahah.
I found this link to be far better than Courtney's ramblings. Besides which, I'll take Steve Albini's word over Courtney's any day of the week.
Of course, Albini's opinion is pretty set, too, but at least there're more hard figures involved.
Rave on, brother. I still can't figure out why anybody thinks this is a good deal, unless there's something in Compaq's server offerings that I'm missing. It strikes me that HP's got printing, and some relatively big iron, while Compaq is just nowhere, competitively. Esp. since you can't make serious money with PCs any more.
The cost of developing the drugs isn't just cost of development. Even worse, the 20 year (IIRC) patent starts ticking when you enter testing with the FDA, which can take an ungodly amount of time testing the drug. You're not making dime one until the FDA approves it.
After that, you've got a limited amount of time to recoup your development and testing costs, plus trying to make a profit, plus covering future development, plus making up for failed drug development efforts, plus cost of capital over the development period.
Given a $50M (number pulled out of my butt) plant, you've got 50M * (1+costOfCapital) ^ (yearsInDevelopment) to recover, which isn't trivial, and I'll bet $50M is chump change in that industry.
Once generics enter the market, you're toast because of the aforementioned low production costs, so you've got to charge out the wazoo during your exclusive patent period to stick around. Note what happens to stock prices of drug companies when a drug either gets approved or moves to a different stage of testing. Analysts know what they're doing in that regard. I mean, they're not VCs.
Irrespective, I would suggest drug prices ARE hysterically overwrought, but there might be some cause for that.
Actually, so long as you're doing web sites, it's really, really simple. Get a notebook, install some version of linux/bsd, get some reasonable facsimile of your production environment (tomcat, in my case) and postgresql going, and (here's the useful bit) NO CONNECTED NIC.
Fun? No. Problematic? Occasionally. Productive? You betcha. Do the vast majority of your coding on the notebook, connect to upload your files, change the JDBC drivers and connection strings, and you should be pretty close.
I'm USian, but it strikes me that our friends overseas might appreciate the CD so they don't have to download stuff over their dialups, which I understand to be orders of magnitude more expensive than those in the US.
Note that I said cheap-ER. I hear you, but the other problem is that something's going to come along and replace mp3 (or ogg, or whatever), so you're probably going to have to go back to the source material anyway.
Another thing to check out is whether you can get them in 25-packs from a retail outlet. It'll be a little pricier, but they were $15 @ BestBuy here in Austin, TX, and $15 every couple of weeks as you gradually migrate is a LOT easier to swallow than $300 all at once.
Bantha poodoo. Get some of these 3 ring notebook pages, and use a bookshelf. Much prettier and denser than storing in those stupid jewel cases. I've got about 800 CDs currently housed in 3 or 4 feet of shelf space. The 3ring solution is cheaper, too.
Note that I HAVE NOT DONE THIS, but I considered it while pondering my CD -> MP3 migration.
Basically, you set up the CDR drive s.t. it burns whatever you want it to when the device closes. When it's done burning, eject it. The ejection nudges a light or touch sensor on the legoBot. The legoBot picks up the freshly burned CD, and drops it onto a spindle, then gets a new blank, inserts it into the drive, and closes the drive door.
The tough part would be getting the "pick up the new blank" part, since you could only pick up one, and the height of the stack of CDs would differ. I dunno, maybe something like "the Claw" from Toy Story would work.
Add a rooster and some fire, and Rube Goldberg would be proud.
PRECISELY. I was struck by that phrase that went..
"UNIX boxes that don't need upgrading or maintenance..."
Frankly, I'm fighting this same battle at my company. We've got a multiplatform network, and while the UNIX boxes require LESS maintenance, they'll still go to hell in a handbasket if someone doesn't feed/care for them every so often.
Admittedly, the down side of UNIX isn't as brutal as that of NT (the server stays up), but people seem to miss the fact that the no maintenance *nix box is just as absurd a notion as the no maintenance NT box.
The competition here isn't NT/*nix, but securing boxes, and the skript kiddiez using the cracks probably don't care WHAT they're breaking into, just THAT they're breaking into something.
Well, my classes taught me that there isn't a hard and fast rule, either. Lots of items (other than mkt share) are factored in, including cost of market entry (steel mills are pricey), ability and likelihood of competitive reaction, among others.
After a certian point, of course, it's all left to the lawyers and legislators, dammit.
So, if we assume that MSoft has 90% mkt share of business desktops, then their index would be upwards of.9^2, or.81, which is very high indeed.
Of course, the lawyers get involved with the definition of "market," as it's in Microsoft's interest to define market as broadly as possible, and it's in the DOJ's interest to be as finite as possible, since the DOJ can then "prove" that MS has a monopoly over the "secretary level OS sales among Fortune 30 companies involved in airplane wheel manufacture." Meanwhile, MS would claim that they only hold 10% of the "business machine requiring an electrical circuit" market.
The DOJ, at least here, uses the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, which is the same thing, only without the decimals. So, while the Herfindahl index goes from 1 (total domination of market) to 0 (atomistic competition), the HHI goes from 10000 to 0. According to the site, anything above 1800 (or, by the other scale,.18) is considered highly concentrated. They're applying it to M&A here, but you get the idea.
A while ago, I did a quick NPV calculation on whether you ought to do the monthly scheme or the lifetime subscription. It was a while ago, but used $250 for the liftime sub and $10 for monthly. It also did yearly, but that option has gone away.
Anyway, although I didn't count the end value of the box at the end of the lifetime sub, the point at which the two plans cost the same amount was about 18 months. I'd think, with the new scheme, that the break even point would be shorter, say, 14 months or so. Notably, the yearly sub never made sense.
End result: If you're planning on keeping that specific TiVo for more than a year and a half, you're probably better off with the lifetime sub.
Slashdot Mirror
When I called it a Visor Deluxe with a Targus removable keyboard.
Visor Deluxe (refurb) = $100 @ Fry's or online.
Targus Keyboard = $100
Foam Keyboard Pad, as the Targus is EVIL to carpal tunnels = $4
Total difference: $195.
Seems a lot for a slightly widened (and still monochrome) screen.
Nice try, though.
Usually, there's some sort of payment schedule stated in the contract:
i.e. "due the 15th, 10% penalty applies after the 20th" means that the payment will be made on the 19th. Obviously, the payer wants to keep his cash in his pocket until the last possible moment. The biller, of course, wants his cash immediately. So, occasionally, there'll be incentives for prepayment. i.e. 10% off if paid before the 10th.
or something. Obviously, the smart companies will look at all the potential payment schedules, and make the best decision for their organization.
Mileage varies widely, of course.
one - you can only do this once or twice before they stop giving you pay raises, and each iteration burns a bridge at a potentially new and exciting job, with new and better opportunities for you.
I would, however, be VERY careful about confusing "new and exciting" with "different."
If the Bowie model of doing bonds makes more money than the current revenue model, then the record companies might start to listen, but Bowie's catalog is reasonably consistent. Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, Pinups, and The Man Who Sold the World are (presumably) all steady sellers. We're not talking Pink Floyd or The Beatles here, commercially, but still...
Point being, you can't apply this model to an artist that doesn't have that kind of track record. Try floating "Britney Bonds" or "'Nsync Notes" and see how far those fly. They won't, because they don't have any chance of producing the kind of steady cashflow that Bowie's sales produce over time.
Even looking at more relevant bands of this era (choose your own), they are ALL likely to fade within 10 years, and won't provide the sheer volume of Bowie's output. I happen to love the Pixies, but I have trouble thinking that anybody's chasing down "Bossanova" in their local Tower Records.
Neato model, points to Bowie's finance team for developing it, but applicable in a miniscule number of cases. If Bowie, in fact, owns his own IP, it might even be unique.
How long 'till it puked? I'm imagining the following conversation:
Patrick: Please slashdot my handheld.
Slashdot Community: Well, OK, if you insist.
At least let us know how it went....
In fact, you've got a bigger problem:
For instance, my TiVo (as opposed to my wife's) gets all the NBA playoff games. I estimate that over this particular version of the playoffs, with the horrific Eastern Conference, and the (to date) non-competitive nature of the series in the Western Conference, I've watched maybe the rough equivalent of three to four games, none from start to finish.
Now, the cable company is (presumably) getting feedback that someone's watching the program, when in fact, my TiVo's watching the show, and I'm ignoring the vast majority of it. Kind of like the early Neilsen household who watched ABC from 7-11 every night. The owner of the house didn't watch TV, but his cat seemed to like ABC the best.
If anything, I'd think sports viewers are MORE likely to skip through stuff they don't want, including programming. For instance, when I taped the NCAA Men's Hoop Tournament's First round (16 games on Thursday, then 16 more on Friday), I implemented rules (once a team's up by 15, triple-fast-forward until the lead's back to eight or the next game starts) just to get me through to the footage I wanted to see. With octuple headers, getting home at 5 was an issue, but I was still done by midnight.
I suspect this would hold for other sports as well. Baseball games that are 9-2 in the third inning, 4-1 soccer matches entering the second half, 122-50 Aussie Rules Football games, and so on.
Off topic, but baseball actually looks better at single-fast-forward, IMHO.
I know you're kidding, but I used to install computer systems in junkyards.
We're talking people with "offices" made out of old railroad cars, and grease/oil/whatever on the lot so thick you'd swear it would catch fire when somebody tossed a cigarette butt. Keyboards with crust so thick, you couldn't read the keys.
One box came back with half an inch of dust INSIDE the computer. It still worked, but needed a HD upgrade.
And now Clorox's marketing types are trying to get me concerned about the keyboard/mouse at my current (fully indoor, with trash removal, and everything) office? Bwaahahah.
I found this link to be far better than Courtney's ramblings. Besides which, I'll take Steve Albini's word over Courtney's any day of the week. Of course, Albini's opinion is pretty set, too, but at least there're more hard figures involved.
Rave on, brother. I still can't figure out why anybody thinks this is a good deal, unless there's something in Compaq's server offerings that I'm missing. It strikes me that HP's got printing, and some relatively big iron, while Compaq is just nowhere, competitively. Esp. since you can't make serious money with PCs any more.
Prove me wrong, kids.
The cost of developing the drugs isn't just cost of development. Even worse, the 20 year (IIRC) patent starts ticking when you enter testing with the FDA, which can take an ungodly amount of time testing the drug. You're not making dime one until the FDA approves it.
After that, you've got a limited amount of time to recoup your development and testing costs, plus trying to make a profit, plus covering future development, plus making up for failed drug development efforts, plus cost of capital over the development period.
Given a $50M (number pulled out of my butt) plant, you've got 50M * (1+costOfCapital) ^ (yearsInDevelopment) to recover, which isn't trivial, and I'll bet $50M is chump change in that industry.
Once generics enter the market, you're toast because of the aforementioned low production costs, so you've got to charge out the wazoo during your exclusive patent period to stick around. Note what happens to stock prices of drug companies when a drug either gets approved or moves to a different stage of testing. Analysts know what they're doing in that regard. I mean, they're not VCs.
Irrespective, I would suggest drug prices ARE hysterically overwrought, but there might be some cause for that.
Actually, so long as you're doing web sites, it's really, really simple. Get a notebook, install some version of linux/bsd, get some reasonable facsimile of your production environment (tomcat, in my case) and postgresql going, and (here's the useful bit) NO CONNECTED NIC.
Fun? No. Problematic? Occasionally. Productive? You betcha. Do the vast majority of your coding on the notebook, connect to upload your files, change the JDBC drivers and connection strings, and you should be pretty close.
Check out http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html. Might not be EXACTLY what you're looking for, but...
I'm USian, but it strikes me that our friends overseas might appreciate the CD so they don't have to download stuff over their dialups, which I understand to be orders of magnitude more expensive than those in the US.
just a thought.
Note that I said cheap-ER. I hear you, but the other problem is that something's going to come along and replace mp3 (or ogg, or whatever), so you're probably going to have to go back to the source material anyway.
Another thing to check out is whether you can get them in 25-packs from a retail outlet. It'll be a little pricier, but they were $15 @ BestBuy here in Austin, TX, and $15 every couple of weeks as you gradually migrate is a LOT easier to swallow than $300 all at once.
Bantha poodoo. Get some of these 3 ring notebook pages, and use a bookshelf. Much prettier and denser than storing in those stupid jewel cases. I've got about 800 CDs currently housed in 3 or 4 feet of shelf space. The 3ring solution is cheaper, too.
Note that I HAVE NOT DONE THIS, but I considered it while pondering my CD -> MP3 migration.
Basically, you set up the CDR drive s.t. it burns whatever you want it to when the device closes. When it's done burning, eject it. The ejection nudges a light or touch sensor on the legoBot. The legoBot picks up the freshly burned CD, and drops it onto a spindle, then gets a new blank, inserts it into the drive, and closes the drive door.
The tough part would be getting the "pick up the new blank" part, since you could only pick up one, and the height of the stack of CDs would differ. I dunno, maybe something like "the Claw" from Toy Story would work.
Add a rooster and some fire, and Rube Goldberg would be proud.
PRECISELY. I was struck by that phrase that went..
"UNIX boxes that don't need upgrading or maintenance..."
Frankly, I'm fighting this same battle at my company. We've got a multiplatform network, and while the UNIX boxes require LESS maintenance, they'll still go to hell in a handbasket if someone doesn't feed/care for them every so often.
Admittedly, the down side of UNIX isn't as brutal as that of NT (the server stays up), but people seem to miss the fact that the no maintenance *nix box is just as absurd a notion as the no maintenance NT box.
The competition here isn't NT/*nix, but securing boxes, and the skript kiddiez using the cracks probably don't care WHAT they're breaking into, just THAT they're breaking into something.
Get a credit card linked to USAir miles, and give it to Loki. Then, it's just a matter of time.
Well, my classes taught me that there isn't a hard and fast rule, either. Lots of items (other than mkt share) are factored in, including cost of market entry (steel mills are pricey), ability and likelihood of competitive reaction, among others.
After a certian point, of course, it's all left to the lawyers and legislators, dammit.
the herfindahl index.
.9^2, or .81, which is very high indeed.
.18) is considered highly concentrated. They're applying it to M&A here, but you get the idea.
[sigma from 1 to n] (% mkt share) ^ 2
So, if we assume that MSoft has 90% mkt share of business desktops, then their index would be upwards of
Of course, the lawyers get involved with the definition of "market," as it's in Microsoft's interest to define market as broadly as possible, and it's in the DOJ's interest to be as finite as possible, since the DOJ can then "prove" that MS has a monopoly over the "secretary level OS sales among Fortune 30 companies involved in airplane wheel manufacture." Meanwhile, MS would claim that they only hold 10% of the "business machine requiring an electrical circuit" market.
The DOJ, at least here, uses the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, which is the same thing, only without the decimals. So, while the Herfindahl index goes from 1 (total domination of market) to 0 (atomistic competition), the HHI goes from 10000 to 0. According to the site, anything above 1800 (or, by the other scale,
but the idea isn't bad.
.75.
example 1: I post once on a new acct, get a five (net points of four), and bingo, my score is four.
example 2: I post 40 times, have the +1 bonus, so after 10 "5" postings, and the rest unmoderated (net: 30), my score is
Which is more valuable? A weighted average with total points makes a little more sense, but only knows what that might be.
A while ago, I did a quick NPV calculation on whether you ought to do the monthly scheme or the lifetime subscription. It was a while ago, but used $250 for the liftime sub and $10 for monthly. It also did yearly, but that option has gone away.
Anyway, although I didn't count the end value of the box at the end of the lifetime sub, the point at which the two plans cost the same amount was about 18 months. I'd think, with the new scheme, that the break even point would be shorter, say, 14 months or so. Notably, the yearly sub never made sense.
End result: If you're planning on keeping that specific TiVo for more than a year and a half, you're probably better off with the lifetime sub.
Besides, 30% of not much is even less....
I suspect those who frequent /. are not the people to ask about software that "sells well." Just a hunch.
Seriously, congrats (I hope).