> That's why switch hitters generally bat left when a lefty is on the mound.
It's the other way round. A right-handed pitcher's curve/breaking ball will break away from a right handed batter, and towards a left handed batter. And vice-versa.
It's much easier to see and hit a ball curving towards you than away from you. A switch hitter will always line up on the opposite side of a pitcher's hand -- i.e. the batter will bat lefty against a right-hander, and righty against a left-hander.
Also worth noting: batting left-handed puts you a step closer to first base than batting right handed. Also: it's much easier to bunt opposite side than same side. If you bat lefty, opposite side is down the third base line -- meaning it's much easier to bunt for a hit as a lefty than as a righty.
Dads take note: teach your kids to bat lefty. They'll have to go a long way in the sport before they face a left-handed curve-ball. In the meantime, there's a non-negligible number of times they'll be safe on an infield hit where they wouldn't be safe batting right-handed.
It isn't 1995 any more, and these tactics are not going to work today. Ten or fifteen years ago, MS had the ability to bend the market to its will. But they don't any more.
That is, if they try to make corporate mail incompatible with non-Win phones, it won't make people buy Win phones; it will make them dump MS mail systems.
All you have to do is look at the stories MS plants in the press. They're never about the current products, which have invariably failed to live up to expectations, but always about the next generation, which will be the coolest, most awesomest thing ever.
Just look through the comments here. Nobody is even trying to claim that WP7 comes close to iOS or Android (although before lauch there were plenty of such claims). Instead they're all claiming that the next iteration will be the killer.
This is the same song MS has been singing since the '80s, and it's really not a surprise that people have finally quit listening.
The've got a staggeringly large R&D budget, but they've also got shockingly little to show for it. The fact is that Microsoft isn't, and has never been, particularly good at innovation. They're always trying to solve yesterday's problems, and have no real concept or imagination about what comes next.
I tried to allude to the Zune with the 'Plays for Sure' comment -- I think it's important not just to point out MS' failures, but also what happens to people who get in bed with Microsoft.
And the potential list of world-changing developments that completely failed to change anything would just be too long.
E.g. The ribbon, tablets, WinCE, WebTV, MSN, Windows ME, Vista, the list goes on and on and on.
Selling to everyone is ALWAYS more profitable than locking it down. Only mentally retarded Low IQ Business degree holders and IP lawyers think the first is the most profitable.
Accountant: We're losing money on every unit we sell.
Exactly. I'm starting to dislike this narrative that has developed here, namely that MS doesn't know what it has and that they're going out of their way to stop people from hacking it.
But that certainly does appear to be the case, even though the Kinnect is sold with a healthy margin -- I recall seeing a hardware breakdown that suggested a build cost of around $55 to $60.
1. [...] Its just that MS isn't in the 3D video space and aren't trying to sell 3D video software for movie production or whatever.
A bit odd, considering Apple has been so successful at it. Microsoft's MO has always been to copy others' successes, particularly Apple's. Maybe they've just failed at this more spectacularly than they've failed at their other attempts to copy. (Hows that 'Plays For Sure' thing working out?)
Which is to say that despite years of effort and tens of billions in R&D, they're no more than marginal players in most of the 'spaces' they try to enter. It's all OSs, office suites, and business backends, and the clock is ticking in each of these areas.
I'll give you game consoles, although it will take several more generations of Xbox before the billions in development are paid off. Anyone other than MS, however, would have considered the Xbox project a failure years ago.
2. From what I've read from the guy who built the first drivers, there isn't any crypto or other tricks to stop PCs from communicating with the Kinect. Its just a plain jane USB device.
They're not interested in you buying their hardware without their software any more than you buying a white-box PC without a Windows license. I'm not sure their tactics from the '90s will work again.
3. At the end of the day the interesting parts of the Kinect are its software. If you wanted a stereo camera or something that could do 3D depth, there are items like this in the 3D space that do a hell of a lot more than VGA resolution.
Sure, but not in an off-the-shelf package that costs $200.
4. MS is monetizing this technology again in Win8. Gestures are built into the OS, etc. Its not like Kinect doesn't have a future on the PC platform as a commercial device.
Hee hee. I'll never get tired of Microsoft shills harping on the supposedly great stuff we'll see in the next edition of whatever. I don't know of any company ever that has so consistently over-promised and under-delivered -- and that behavior goes back to MS-DOS 1.0.
Remember how Longhorn was going to, like, totally change everything? Remember how WinFS was going to be revolutionary? Heck, remember how in the early '90s we were all going to be controlling our computers with voice commands?
It's coming in the next version of Windows, and it'll be, like, the most totally mind-blowing thing you've ever seen! Really soon now! Promise!
You should be happy with how many people hate Microsoft. Nobody will hate them when they are no longer relevant, and I don't reckon that's more than about five to ten years away.
There's a bit more to it than that. If you travel in Europe for business, you're going to be visiting different countries. They're all on the same GSM standard, but roaming and out-of-network rates have traditionally been extortionate.
When I lived there in the late '90s, early '00s, I knew plenty of people who carried multiple phones -- one with their primary number, another with their 'other network' number, and sometimes a third that they could swap pay-as-you-go cards into when travelling.
When I lived in Slovakia there were two carriers, one owned by Orange the other by DT (later T-Mobile). All outgoing calls were metered. Calls in-network were reasonable but out of network -- i.e. from Slovak T-Mobile to Slovak Orange, cost something like five times as much. Calls elsewhere in the EU could approach 20 times as much.
The carriers didn't want to sell unlocked phones, but that's what people demanded. Generally you couldn't buy an unlocked phone from a carrier, but if you already had one, they were happy to sell you a SIM.
Everybody age 16 to 25 either could unlock a phone themselves or knew someone who could. Everyone knew someone that age. Also, most people who wanted one bought an unlocked phone from sources other than the carriers.
Plus, it was much more common for people to buy the phone and use a pay-as-you-go service rather than get a subsidized phone as part of a fixed contract.
The carriers wanted a long-term plan system like exists here but the market wasn't interested, for many reasons including those mentioned above.
But if it cost a US user 20x as much to call someone in another state, things might have worked out differently.
My HTC Hero (CDMA) has a goofy shaped mini-USB port, but a standard mini-USB cable works fine.
I was really impressed with the charger design. There's no transformer at all -- just a wall socket adapter that collapses flat, with a removable piece for changing socket type. USB cable plugs into that; the other end (modified mini-USB) plugs into the phone.
The cost of hiding from law enforcement and dealing with police raids/theft/etc is included in the current street price.
Economically speaking, that is risk, and as you note, it's already factored into the cost.
If cannabis was legalized tomorrow prices would drop by a non-zero amount.
Probably. After all, if the risk is reduced, you'd expect to pay a lower premium for it. Like how an older driver with a clean record and sensible car pays less for insurance than a 20 year-old with a new Corvette.
On the other hand, while living in Europe, I didn't notice a significant difference in cannabis prices in places where there was less risk (e.g. Netherlands) vs significantly more (e.g. UK, Austria).
It's partly a question of risk premium, but it's also partly a what-the-market-will-bear issue.
What's a gram of medical skunk go for in CA? How does it compare to the mentioned street price of about $17/gram?
Agreed that we need laws to protect property rights, but not business models.
By business models, think specifically about finance. It's nasty and heartless, but the fact is that modern society is only possible with finance.
But if a borrower is under no legal obligation to pay back a loan, there is no finance, and by extension, very little business.
The marriage between big business and government is destructive to society and hinders economic growth by propping up failed business models [...]
As easy as it is to hate big business and government, we do actually need both.
That is not to excuse Hollywood for trying legislation as a solution to an obsolete business model, or to excuse tariffs in protecting certain agricultural sectors.
But we simply couldn't have a society of such prosperity and material comfort without large businesses willing to assume the long-term financial risk, and a government with laws that protect not just property but investment.
Name one "business model" that isn't artificially supported by laws?
Drugs?
You'll note that even the biggest busts, e.g. the seizure of 30 tons of cannabis last week in San Diego, seem to have no effect whatsoever on either supply or pricing.
You'll also note that organized crime and violence go hand-in-hand because criminal groups have no other means other than loose, mafia-style collusion to resolve disputes.
The fact is that we want laws to protect property and business models. If you disagree, I suggest moving your business operations to Mogadishu.
All private entities initially dismissed the Internet. Hell, when Jobs visited PARC he didn't even get the point of networking. Seemed trivial and dumb to him. [...]
No.
Jobs left Apple in 1985 to start NeXT computers. From their first model in 1988, all NeXTs had built-in networking. This was the late '80s, when pretty much no one outside of university computer departments and research labs had ever even heard of the internet, let alone had any idea what it was.
Rolls-Royce? They are a luxury brand dominating a niche market with a good margin and good capitalization. While they may have a small part of the general market, they have a large share of a niche market.
Not really, and certainly not at the time. There was a bidding war between BMW and VW in 1998, but not because of RR's success -- they were in fact in serious danger of going under.
RR had gone from a company with virtually sole-ownership of the ultra-luxury car market to an old firm, struggling to adapt, and squeezed on all sides.
Neither VW nor BMW were at all interested in RR's technology (much of which they already provided), margin (which was small-to-nonexistent), or market share (which was tiny, even for the ultra-high end market).
They were both interested because of the name, i.e. the brand.
We are not talking about the value of a brand but rather whether a brand is "dying", and the measure of that is the brand's market share.
No. A brand is dying as its market loses faith, trust, positive association, etc with that brand. A 'dying' brand is simply one that is losing its cachet within its market.
It's not really that important when you're an effective monopoly, like Comcast, or when you're cheaper than everyone else, like WalMart.
But when you're trying to sell consumer electronic gadgets into a very crowded market, and they're not the best, nor the most attractive, nor the easiest, nor the cheapest, nor the most capable... all you really have going for you is the brand.
This seems to work well with Sony TVs, for example, because they still have quite a good reputation for TVs.
MS has no (nor deserves any) good reputation for consumer devices -- the only decent one they've made is still billions in the hole.
Microsoft Surface is a device that actually made it through to a limited release and it seems like it should have had some potential but apparently they didn't end up knowing exactly what to do with it and who to market it too.
The Surface is a very good example of the company. MS decided to play with multi-touch control, so they build huge machines costing $20,000 and up, for a potential market of a couple dozen.
Apple decided to play with multi-touch control, and they came up with pocket-sized devices costing a few hundred dollars for a potential market of hundreds of millions.
It's not that MS can't innovate or that they're not doing clever things. They've just never had any imagination at the management level, and that's been such a deep part of the culture for so long that I don't see them breaking the mold.
The only thing I find surprising about MS being declared 'dead' as a consumer brand is that anyone thinks otherwise.
[...] The sales are designed as a way that people without much money can buy books to encourage reading.
No. They're sold to clear shelf space for new books.
Thrift stores are often charities, designed for pretty much the same purpose. Neither is set up so some douchebag can make a profit off of them.
Yet people do, all the time. You can comb thrift stores and often find items priced well below their market value -- everything from knick-knacks and gewgaws to records and vintage clothing to antiques.
The thrift store moves their merchandise, gets their income, and frees up space for new inventory. The educated buyer takes advantage of the margin to make a profit. No problem.
It's the same with library/used book sales. Any decent used book shop will have a number of volumes bought from library sales. How is that different? Are all used-book vendors also douchebags?
What about interior designers who sell books by the square-foot for decorative purposes? Where do you think they get their books?
Besides, libraries (and thrift shops) generally have barely enough manpower to accomplish their primary purpose; they certainly don't have enough to research and catalog every item they have for the after-market -- which is quite different than the cataloging they do for the library/shop.
If it really bothers you so much, I recommend you volunteer for your local library to look up and price appropriately every book in their next sale. It will take you much longer than you think, and most likely will result in an overall reduction in fundraising.
There is no such thing. x86 chips are used for desktop computers because they are the only things that have been cheap, common, and powerful. MS has no special interest in pushing Intel.
Except that pretty much all of their profit comes from the x86/64 architecture. And it's far from trivial to port Windows, let alone Office to a different instruction set. If it were easy, Win7 and WinPhone would be built around the same kernel. They're not.
So MS has a definite interest in pushing Intel -- they can't sell Office on an ARM machine.
Now for Windows CE (also the basis for Windows Mobile), their mobile/embedded OS, well then that runs on all sorts of things.
This would be relevant if CE were in any way similar to their desktop OS. It isn't. It would also be relevant if CE hadn't been discontinued. It has.
So you want ARM desktops? Well first an ARM CPU that is competitive in that market has to come out. Competitive, please note, doesn't mean "Barely can compete with the low end."
Ah, but you're assuming that competitive is purely a matter of performance. A (theoretical) sub $100 desktop loaded with free software is pretty damn competitive with a $500 machine with Windows only.
A $60 MS tax is easy to sell in a $500 box. In a $99 box, it may be impossible.
Should ARM desktops start to become popular, you can be pretty confident MS would move Windows over to them.
Absolutely. At about the same speed they developed Longhorn, and with all the confidence and resolve with which they moved everything to WinFS.
MS is in a similar position with ARM devices today as they were with the Internet in the mid '90s -- they're vaguely aware of something new in the market but are completely unprepared to deal with it.
If they were prepared, they wouldn't be developing separate and incompatible mobile systems, neither of which are compatible with their core products. If they were prepared, they'd already have a working ARM Windows environment that supports Windows applications.
We all know MS doesn't pioneer or innovate. They don't create markets but try to take them over after they've been created. But it's not 1996 anymore, and MS doesn't have the leverage anymore to force their vision on users.
MS has had a miserable decade. I don't think we need to reiterate the litany failed initiatives. It is enough to point out the one non-core product line touted as a success, the XBox, would have ruined any normal company that doesn't have a billion dollars to spend getting it right. It may be profitable, but they're still years away from breaking even.
I don't see how a MS product on ARM in any form would be at all compelling without full Windows application compatibility, and I don't see that happening. The alternative is system-agnostic applications and/or application-agnostic data formats. Neither of these are strengths for MS.
It's not an analogy, it's a comparison between poor engineering and quality control in a phone, and a historic example of poor engineering and quality control.
Both are examples where the manufacturer knew there was a problem yet opted not to fix it before shipping.
An analogy would be: The iphone 4 is like a car that stalls when you hold the steering wheel in the 10-2 position -- but it's alright because it only stalls sometimes.
While it may be that the Pinto was only marginally less safe than other cars of the era, it's also true that a rear end collision with a Pinto, given the right circumstances, could result in an explosion. Other cars of the era exploded significantly less often.
Given a choice between a car that sometimes explodes and one that doesn't, which would you choose?
Or more on topic, given a choice between a phone that can connect to emergency services and one that can often connect to emergency services (provided you hold it the right way), which would you chose?
1) Every phone exhibits signal attenuation to some degree when the hand is placed on/near the antenna assembly, and many can be made to exhibit this same behavior;
Every phone can be manipulated into signal degradation, but this phone allows the user to short the antenna while holding the device in a natural manner. Hardly the same thing.
2) The dropped call data from ATT shows that the iPhone 4 has performed less than 1 *more* dropped call per 100 calls than the 3GS - an increase, and a sign of a problem, but certainly not in the "IF YOU HAZ IPOHNE 4 U WILL DIEZ" class of problems.
Self-serving comments from ATT notwithstanding, the iphone has always been known to have relatively poor reception. It's a fantastic little device that does everything extremely well except make phone calls. And ATT's comment only cements that this model has the worst reception of all. This is a problem.
3) 1.7% have been returned so far (about 1/3 the rate for the iPhone 3GS)
No way to verify the figure, but considering the short amount of time this has been out, and the publicity around the antenna problems, it's same to assume that a) not all phones that have been 'sold' have even been unboxed yet, and b) many who would be returning the phones were awaiting word from Apple on a recall or other remedy. In other words, this statistic is meaningless.
4) ~0.5% of the sales have prompted a call to AppleCare about this problem.
Another misleading number. Only a small fraction of people would ever call Apple support about this -- they'd be more likely to blame ATT, or to accept that the iphone just has poor reception.
You could easily turn same number around and completely change the meaning -- 'Within just weeks of the iphone's release, tens of thousands of user calls flooded AppleCare with complaints of antenna problems'.
5) 3 Million units have been sold so far.
Ford sold over 11 million Pintos. That doesn't excuse them from releasing a shoddy product that could have easily been fixed before its release.
What percentage of Pinto buyers do you think called Ford to complain about exploding gas tanks? How many of the cars were returned within a month of sale? Do you think other cars could be manipulated into having their tanks explode?
The iphone is a very cool device, but that doesn't give Apple a free pass when they screw something up.
The warning about Behringer gear isn't that it doesn't produce good sound. It does, especially for the price.
It's that Behringer gear will flake out on you. And most likely at the worst possible time.
Maybe the quality has changed, but I'd be a bit put off by the fact that all the sales reps are pushing this gear. It's also an assumption that an equivalent Roland rig (for example) is higher margin just because it's more expensive.
I know a guy who's been using (for guitar) the same Roland JC 120 for 20 years. Behringer's not been around that long, but I don't know anyone who'll claim a Behringer rig will be working five years from now, let alone 20.
Music gear is a funny business. Companies have to bring new products to market all the time, but it's the standards that keep them going.
Shure has new mics every year, but their best sellers are still the SM57 and SM58. Those pieces are still the same as they were 20, 30, 40 years ago. And the Les Paul?
Maybe the quality has improved, and maybe I'm just too much of a natural skeptic. But if I were a salesman, I'd push a Behringer amp over a Roland just because I know I'd be seeing you again a whole lot sooner.
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> That's why switch hitters generally bat left when a lefty is on the mound.
It's the other way round. A right-handed pitcher's curve/breaking ball will break away from a right handed batter, and towards a left handed batter. And vice-versa.
It's much easier to see and hit a ball curving towards you than away from you. A switch hitter will always line up on the opposite side of a pitcher's hand -- i.e. the batter will bat lefty against a right-hander, and righty against a left-hander.
Also worth noting: batting left-handed puts you a step closer to first base than batting right handed. Also: it's much easier to bunt opposite side than same side. If you bat lefty, opposite side is down the third base line -- meaning it's much easier to bunt for a hit as a lefty than as a righty.
Dads take note: teach your kids to bat lefty. They'll have to go a long way in the sport before they face a left-handed curve-ball. In the meantime, there's a non-negligible number of times they'll be safe on an infield hit where they wouldn't be safe batting right-handed.
It isn't 1995 any more, and these tactics are not going to work today. Ten or fifteen years ago, MS had the ability to bend the market to its will. But they don't any more. That is, if they try to make corporate mail incompatible with non-Win phones, it won't make people buy Win phones; it will make them dump MS mail systems.
All you have to do is look at the stories MS plants in the press. They're never about the current products, which have invariably failed to live up to expectations, but always about the next generation, which will be the coolest, most awesomest thing ever.
Just look through the comments here. Nobody is even trying to claim that WP7 comes close to iOS or Android (although before lauch there were plenty of such claims). Instead they're all claiming that the next iteration will be the killer.
This is the same song MS has been singing since the '80s, and it's really not a surprise that people have finally quit listening.
The've got a staggeringly large R&D budget, but they've also got shockingly little to show for it. The fact is that Microsoft isn't, and has never been, particularly good at innovation. They're always trying to solve yesterday's problems, and have no real concept or imagination about what comes next.
I tried to allude to the Zune with the 'Plays for Sure' comment -- I think it's important not just to point out MS' failures, but also what happens to people who get in bed with Microsoft.
And the potential list of world-changing developments that completely failed to change anything would just be too long.
E.g. The ribbon, tablets, WinCE, WebTV, MSN, Windows ME, Vista, the list goes on and on and on.
Anybody remember their Smart Watch?
Selling to everyone is ALWAYS more profitable than locking it down. Only mentally retarded Low IQ Business degree holders and IP lawyers think the first is the most profitable.
Accountant: We're losing money on every unit we sell.
PHB: That's okay, we'll make up for it in volume.
Exactly. I'm starting to dislike this narrative that has developed here, namely that MS doesn't know what it has and that they're going out of their way to stop people from hacking it.
But that certainly does appear to be the case, even though the Kinnect is sold with a healthy margin -- I recall seeing a hardware breakdown that suggested a build cost of around $55 to $60.
1. [...] Its just that MS isn't in the 3D video space and aren't trying to sell 3D video software for movie production or whatever.
A bit odd, considering Apple has been so successful at it. Microsoft's MO has always been to copy others' successes, particularly Apple's. Maybe they've just failed at this more spectacularly than they've failed at their other attempts to copy. (Hows that 'Plays For Sure' thing working out?)
Which is to say that despite years of effort and tens of billions in R&D, they're no more than marginal players in most of the 'spaces' they try to enter. It's all OSs, office suites, and business backends, and the clock is ticking in each of these areas.
I'll give you game consoles, although it will take several more generations of Xbox before the billions in development are paid off. Anyone other than MS, however, would have considered the Xbox project a failure years ago.
2. From what I've read from the guy who built the first drivers, there isn't any crypto or other tricks to stop PCs from communicating with the Kinect. Its just a plain jane USB device.
They're not interested in you buying their hardware without their software any more than you buying a white-box PC without a Windows license. I'm not sure their tactics from the '90s will work again.
3. At the end of the day the interesting parts of the Kinect are its software. If you wanted a stereo camera or something that could do 3D depth, there are items like this in the 3D space that do a hell of a lot more than VGA resolution.
Sure, but not in an off-the-shelf package that costs $200.
4. MS is monetizing this technology again in Win8. Gestures are built into the OS, etc. Its not like Kinect doesn't have a future on the PC platform as a commercial device.
Hee hee. I'll never get tired of Microsoft shills harping on the supposedly great stuff we'll see in the next edition of whatever. I don't know of any company ever that has so consistently over-promised and under-delivered -- and that behavior goes back to MS-DOS 1.0.
Remember how Longhorn was going to, like, totally change everything? Remember how WinFS was going to be revolutionary? Heck, remember how in the early '90s we were all going to be controlling our computers with voice commands?
It's coming in the next version of Windows, and it'll be, like, the most totally mind-blowing thing you've ever seen! Really soon now! Promise!
You should be happy with how many people hate Microsoft. Nobody will hate them when they are no longer relevant, and I don't reckon that's more than about five to ten years away.
Just like a jet-engine is a great way to power a huge aircraft, no so great for powering your lawn mower or chain saw.
Maybe you don't have a jet-powered lawn mower, but maybe you're just not that serious about your yard work.
No one anywhere, except in your imagination, said Windows wasn't *able* to run on the extra nodes.
I figure it was because the testers couldn't afford the licensing fees.
There's a bit more to it than that. If you travel in Europe for business, you're going to be visiting different countries. They're all on the same GSM standard, but roaming and out-of-network rates have traditionally been extortionate.
When I lived there in the late '90s, early '00s, I knew plenty of people who carried multiple phones -- one with their primary number, another with their 'other network' number, and sometimes a third that they could swap pay-as-you-go cards into when travelling.
When I lived in Slovakia there were two carriers, one owned by Orange the other by DT (later T-Mobile). All outgoing calls were metered. Calls in-network were reasonable but out of network -- i.e. from Slovak T-Mobile to Slovak Orange, cost something like five times as much. Calls elsewhere in the EU could approach 20 times as much.
The carriers didn't want to sell unlocked phones, but that's what people demanded. Generally you couldn't buy an unlocked phone from a carrier, but if you already had one, they were happy to sell you a SIM.
Everybody age 16 to 25 either could unlock a phone themselves or knew someone who could. Everyone knew someone that age. Also, most people who wanted one bought an unlocked phone from sources other than the carriers.
Plus, it was much more common for people to buy the phone and use a pay-as-you-go service rather than get a subsidized phone as part of a fixed contract.
The carriers wanted a long-term plan system like exists here but the market wasn't interested, for many reasons including those mentioned above.
But if it cost a US user 20x as much to call someone in another state, things might have worked out differently.
Oooops. change mini- to micro-.
My HTC Hero (CDMA) has a goofy shaped mini-USB port, but a standard mini-USB cable works fine.
I was really impressed with the charger design. There's no transformer at all -- just a wall socket adapter that collapses flat, with a removable piece for changing socket type. USB cable plugs into that; the other end (modified mini-USB) plugs into the phone.
That's because 30 tones [sic] of cannabis is nothing.
By my calculations, that's a year's supply for over 120,000 heavy dope smokers, or a month's supply for 1.5 million.
There may be plenty more coming in, but it's hardly a trivial amount.
The cost of hiding from law enforcement and dealing with police raids/theft/etc is included in the current street price.
Economically speaking, that is risk, and as you note, it's already factored into the cost.
If cannabis was legalized tomorrow prices would drop by a non-zero amount.
Probably. After all, if the risk is reduced, you'd expect to pay a lower premium for it. Like how an older driver with a clean record and sensible car pays less for insurance than a 20 year-old with a new Corvette.
On the other hand, while living in Europe, I didn't notice a significant difference in cannabis prices in places where there was less risk (e.g. Netherlands) vs significantly more (e.g. UK, Austria).
It's partly a question of risk premium, but it's also partly a what-the-market-will-bear issue.
What's a gram of medical skunk go for in CA? How does it compare to the mentioned street price of about $17/gram?
Agreed that we need laws to protect property rights, but not business models.
By business models, think specifically about finance. It's nasty and heartless, but the fact is that modern society is only possible with finance.
But if a borrower is under no legal obligation to pay back a loan, there is no finance, and by extension, very little business.
The marriage between big business and government is destructive to society and hinders economic growth by propping up failed business models [...]
As easy as it is to hate big business and government, we do actually need both.
That is not to excuse Hollywood for trying legislation as a solution to an obsolete business model, or to excuse tariffs in protecting certain agricultural sectors.
But we simply couldn't have a society of such prosperity and material comfort without large businesses willing to assume the long-term financial risk, and a government with laws that protect not just property but investment.
Name one "business model" that isn't artificially supported by laws?
Drugs?
You'll note that even the biggest busts, e.g. the seizure of 30 tons of cannabis last week in San Diego, seem to have no effect whatsoever on either supply or pricing.
You'll also note that organized crime and violence go hand-in-hand because criminal groups have no other means other than loose, mafia-style collusion to resolve disputes.
The fact is that we want laws to protect property and business models. If you disagree, I suggest moving your business operations to Mogadishu.
It's working at the moment, but every headline is follwed by:
The really wonderful thing is that each 'post-protected' message also has buttons to share the link via email/facebook/digg, etc. Fantastic.
All private entities initially dismissed the Internet. Hell, when Jobs visited PARC he didn't even get the point of networking. Seemed trivial and dumb to him. [...]
No.
Jobs left Apple in 1985 to start NeXT computers. From their first model in 1988, all NeXTs had built-in networking. This was the late '80s, when pretty much no one outside of university computer departments and research labs had ever even heard of the internet, let alone had any idea what it was.
Rolls-Royce? They are a luxury brand dominating a niche market with a good margin and good capitalization. While they may have a small part of the general market, they have a large share of a niche market.
Not really, and certainly not at the time. There was a bidding war between BMW and VW in 1998, but not because of RR's success -- they were in fact in serious danger of going under.
RR had gone from a company with virtually sole-ownership of the ultra-luxury car market to an old firm, struggling to adapt, and squeezed on all sides.
Neither VW nor BMW were at all interested in RR's technology (much of which they already provided), margin (which was small-to-nonexistent), or market share (which was tiny, even for the ultra-high end market).
They were both interested because of the name, i.e. the brand.
No. A brand is dying as its market loses faith, trust, positive association, etc with that brand. A 'dying' brand is simply one that is losing its cachet within its market.
It's not really that important when you're an effective monopoly, like Comcast, or when you're cheaper than everyone else, like WalMart.
But when you're trying to sell consumer electronic gadgets into a very crowded market, and they're not the best, nor the most attractive, nor the easiest, nor the cheapest, nor the most capable ... all you really have going for you is the brand.
This seems to work well with Sony TVs, for example, because they still have quite a good reputation for TVs.
MS has no (nor deserves any) good reputation for consumer devices -- the only decent one they've made is still billions in the hole.
The Surface is a very good example of the company. MS decided to play with multi-touch control, so they build huge machines costing $20,000 and up, for a potential market of a couple dozen.
Apple decided to play with multi-touch control, and they came up with pocket-sized devices costing a few hundred dollars for a potential market of hundreds of millions.
It's not that MS can't innovate or that they're not doing clever things. They've just never had any imagination at the management level, and that's been such a deep part of the culture for so long that I don't see them breaking the mold.
The only thing I find surprising about MS being declared 'dead' as a consumer brand is that anyone thinks otherwise.
[...] It is about whether or not "Microsoft is a dying consumer brand" and when it comes to brands market share == life or death.
No. Comcast has enormous market share, but as a brand they're nearly worthless. Ever hear someone speak positively about them?
Rolls-Royce has a miniscule market share, but that didn't stop VW from offering over $700 million for the brand in 1998.
The value of a brand is difficult to quantify, but doesn't have much to do with market share at all.
[...] The sales are designed as a way that people without much money can buy books to encourage reading.
No. They're sold to clear shelf space for new books.
Thrift stores are often charities, designed for pretty much the same purpose. Neither is set up so some douchebag can make a profit off of them.
Yet people do, all the time. You can comb thrift stores and often find items priced well below their market value -- everything from knick-knacks and gewgaws to records and vintage clothing to antiques.
The thrift store moves their merchandise, gets their income, and frees up space for new inventory. The educated buyer takes advantage of the margin to make a profit. No problem.
It's the same with library/used book sales. Any decent used book shop will have a number of volumes bought from library sales. How is that different? Are all used-book vendors also douchebags?
What about interior designers who sell books by the square-foot for decorative purposes? Where do you think they get their books?
Besides, libraries (and thrift shops) generally have barely enough manpower to accomplish their primary purpose; they certainly don't have enough to research and catalog every item they have for the after-market -- which is quite different than the cataloging they do for the library/shop.
If it really bothers you so much, I recommend you volunteer for your local library to look up and price appropriately every book in their next sale. It will take you much longer than you think, and most likely will result in an overall reduction in fundraising.
Except that pretty much all of their profit comes from the x86/64 architecture. And it's far from trivial to port Windows, let alone Office to a different instruction set. If it were easy, Win7 and WinPhone would be built around the same kernel. They're not.
So MS has a definite interest in pushing Intel -- they can't sell Office on an ARM machine.
This would be relevant if CE were in any way similar to their desktop OS. It isn't. It would also be relevant if CE hadn't been discontinued. It has.
Ah, but you're assuming that competitive is purely a matter of performance. A (theoretical) sub $100 desktop loaded with free software is pretty damn competitive with a $500 machine with Windows only.
A $60 MS tax is easy to sell in a $500 box. In a $99 box, it may be impossible.
Absolutely. At about the same speed they developed Longhorn, and with all the confidence and resolve with which they moved everything to WinFS.
MS is in a similar position with ARM devices today as they were with the Internet in the mid '90s -- they're vaguely aware of something new in the market but are completely unprepared to deal with it.
If they were prepared, they wouldn't be developing separate and incompatible mobile systems, neither of which are compatible with their core products. If they were prepared, they'd already have a working ARM Windows environment that supports Windows applications.
We all know MS doesn't pioneer or innovate. They don't create markets but try to take them over after they've been created. But it's not 1996 anymore, and MS doesn't have the leverage anymore to force their vision on users.
MS has had a miserable decade. I don't think we need to reiterate the litany failed initiatives. It is enough to point out the one non-core product line touted as a success, the XBox, would have ruined any normal company that doesn't have a billion dollars to spend getting it right. It may be profitable, but they're still years away from breaking even.
I don't see how a MS product on ARM in any form would be at all compelling without full Windows application compatibility, and I don't see that happening. The alternative is system-agnostic applications and/or application-agnostic data formats. Neither of these are strengths for MS.
It's not an analogy, it's a comparison between poor engineering and quality control in a phone, and a historic example of poor engineering and quality control.
Both are examples where the manufacturer knew there was a problem yet opted not to fix it before shipping.
An analogy would be: The iphone 4 is like a car that stalls when you hold the steering wheel in the 10-2 position -- but it's alright because it only stalls sometimes.
While it may be that the Pinto was only marginally less safe than other cars of the era, it's also true that a rear end collision with a Pinto, given the right circumstances, could result in an explosion. Other cars of the era exploded significantly less often.
Given a choice between a car that sometimes explodes and one that doesn't, which would you choose?
Or more on topic, given a choice between a phone that can connect to emergency services and one that can often connect to emergency services (provided you hold it the right way), which would you chose?
Wow, way to buy into all the marketing speak.
Every phone can be manipulated into signal degradation, but this phone allows the user to short the antenna while holding the device in a natural manner. Hardly the same thing.
Self-serving comments from ATT notwithstanding, the iphone has always been known to have relatively poor reception. It's a fantastic little device that does everything extremely well except make phone calls. And ATT's comment only cements that this model has the worst reception of all. This is a problem.
No way to verify the figure, but considering the short amount of time this has been out, and the publicity around the antenna problems, it's same to assume that a) not all phones that have been 'sold' have even been unboxed yet, and b) many who would be returning the phones were awaiting word from Apple on a recall or other remedy. In other words, this statistic is meaningless.
Another misleading number. Only a small fraction of people would ever call Apple support about this -- they'd be more likely to blame ATT, or to accept that the iphone just has poor reception.
You could easily turn same number around and completely change the meaning -- 'Within just weeks of the iphone's release, tens of thousands of user calls flooded AppleCare with complaints of antenna problems'.
Ford sold over 11 million Pintos. That doesn't excuse them from releasing a shoddy product that could have easily been fixed before its release.
What percentage of Pinto buyers do you think called Ford to complain about exploding gas tanks? How many of the cars were returned within a month of sale? Do you think other cars could be manipulated into having their tanks explode?
The iphone is a very cool device, but that doesn't give Apple a free pass when they screw something up.
The warning about Behringer gear isn't that it doesn't produce good sound. It does, especially for the price.
It's that Behringer gear will flake out on you. And most likely at the worst possible time.
Maybe the quality has changed, but I'd be a bit put off by the fact that all the sales reps are pushing this gear. It's also an assumption that an equivalent Roland rig (for example) is higher margin just because it's more expensive.
I know a guy who's been using (for guitar) the same Roland JC 120 for 20 years. Behringer's not been around that long, but I don't know anyone who'll claim a Behringer rig will be working five years from now, let alone 20.
Music gear is a funny business. Companies have to bring new products to market all the time, but it's the standards that keep them going.
Shure has new mics every year, but their best sellers are still the SM57 and SM58. Those pieces are still the same as they were 20, 30, 40 years ago. And the Les Paul?
Maybe the quality has improved, and maybe I'm just too much of a natural skeptic. But if I were a salesman, I'd push a Behringer amp over a Roland just because I know I'd be seeing you again a whole lot sooner.