> Jobs is a very single minded person, so its not all that > surprising that when information that he already knows is > presented in a manner different then how he thinks, it seems > either wrong or difficult to comprehend.
Benefit of the doubt:
Jobs is also a consummate marketer. If this poster was given out to customers are resellers, then oftentimes technical "correctness" makes way for marketing savvy. Sometimes we've had to argue with our R&D department about how we've changed a diagram or a subsystem name to make something more end-user friendly.
My background is electrical engineering, so I have slightly more "street cred" with our developers, but the truth is, part of my job is to make the incomprehensible not only understandable, but seemingly intuitive to our customers and others. If I have to bend the "technical rules" to do it, then sometimes you have to. "I don't care of the term 'XYAMMAA123' has some logical meaning; no sales person is going to be able to explain that. We're calling it 'Instant Publishing' (or whatever)."
So if Jobs arranged to have an internal poster changed to make it more outside-world friendly, then that makes sense. So maybe Jobs didn't misunderstand; maybe Raskin's logical color scheme was too esoteric to be useful for customers.
Okay, enough of the benefit of the doubt. The poster is really ugly. Changing Raskin's logical color scheme in favor of something beloved only to Disco Stu seems like a change for the worse. They might as well have stuck with the "logical coloring", just so they'd have an excuse.
Macs today don't have a scroll lock button, so that isn't that annoying for us.
What is annoying is the Help key (right next to Home, above the forward delete). Under Mac OS 9, when you pressed it accidentally, you would have to wait about 20 seconds for your Mac to open the Help application. God, that was annoying! One mistype and you were sitting around for 20 seconds, cursing the moron that thought that was a good idea (what about having that key just toggle Balloon Help on/off?). It was bad enough that I avoided using the forward delete at all for fear that I would accidentally press the dreaded Help button.
These days, Under Mac OS X, pressing the Help key seems to do different things. In iTunes, it mimics the annoying Mac OS 9 behavior of opening the Help Center. In the Finder, it does nothing. Safari is the oddest. Pressing the Help key makes the cursor turn into a question mark. Aside from providing a visual representation of what you're probably thinking ("hmm... what does the Help key do?" to which your computer answers, "?"), it doesn't seem to do anything.
To me, that's a great symbol of poor user interface design and a contempt for users: making the Help button on the keyboard unhelpful.
Yes, you are correct. I should have listed taxes before the net income line. I normally do pro forma income statements, so I often leave out the taxes during that kind of analysis. I could have also put depreciation for PP&E as a line item expense as well.
> By "Income" does he mean "Profit" or is MS actually predicting > a 50% revenue drop over the previous year?
Revenue is the amount of money you bring in due to products that you sell. This normally does not include money from investments and selling plant, property, and equipment (PP&E). So if you sell 1 product for $1, but you sell a building you don't use any more for $1M, your revenue is only $1.
Income is the amount of money left over after all expenses. The first expense is cost of goods sold (this means the cost of the actually sold unit). For software, this is nearly 0. Money left over after the COGS is your direct margin. For Microsoft, I believe this is something like 90+% (but I'm too lazy to look up their income statement at this time)
After that, you subtract off the other expenses, like R&D (this includes software engineering and the like), sales general and administrative (SG&A--including marketing weasels, such as myself), and interest payments (e.g. long term debt).
Whatever is left over is your net income. Here's a simplified example:
INCOME STATEMENT
Revenue (cost of goods sold) ---------------- Direct Margin (R&D) (SG&A) (Interest Expense) ---------------- Net Income
So Income is your bottom line. If the number is positive, then profit! That means the standard Slashdot cliche becomes:
1. Make revenue from a product or service 2. Minimize your expenses 3. Profit!
What's interesting about Microsoft is they are one of a very small number of companies with NO long term debt (Apple, I believe, just joined this exclusive club). That makes MSFT's balance sheet fairly impressive to look at.
My company uses VPN services from Verizon in conjunction with an iPass software package and I think a Cisco VPN client. They provide the client software for Windows, but they refuse to provide anything for Mac OS X. Is there a way to get this to work under Mac OS X? That would be great if someone else has had experience with this.
This is likely the most intelligent-sounding* post I've seen on Slashdot recently. I kept waiting to read about hot grits, a beowulf cluster, something about Jar Jar being the root of all evil or something like that. For a second there, I thought I was on the wrong site.
*I have to say "intelligent-sounding" because I know little about schizophrenia.
VMac looks Carbonized, but it's still asking for a ROM. Does this mean I have to go hunt down my original Mac 128k? Seems like a lot of trouble for me to be able to play Dark Castle on my PowerBook G4.
> Name the country that used the following law enforcement > tactics > A) Soviet Russia (USSR) > B) Nazi Germany > C) United States of America > D) All of the above
So maybe this was the Bush Administration's plan all along: end debate about the PATRIOT Act by making it so draconian that people couldn't talk about it without invoking Godwin's Law.
> The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the FBI's use > of expanded powers to compel Internet service providers to > turn over information about their customers or subscribers.
> People who receive the letters are prohibited by law from > disclosing to anyone that they did so. Because of this legal > gag order, the ACLU was forced to reach an agreement with > the Justice Department before a heavily edited version of the > lawsuit could be unsealed.
"PATRIOT Act"? Damn you, Orwell and your Newspeak!
So the ACLU was suing to protect Americans' privacy from the government prying into ISP customer data. But no one knew about it, since there's another law that prevents the ACLU from telling the public. So they're basically fighting for our freedoms in secret?
It reminds me of that light from the classic show, "The Prisoner": "Why don't you just lock us all up and be done with it?"
I call upon the self-proclaimed conservatives who never tire of claiming they're against "big government". Stop for a minute punctuating every sentence with "terrorism," and "support the troops; we're at war!" like some sort of right-wing Speak and Spell. Remember this on election day: Bush believes the PATRIOT Act should be renewed and celebrated. There's your big government, pal.
> And that's pretty sad. Helen Keller in particular: the part of her > life where she first managed to overcome some part of her > disabilities is remembered, but the campaigning work she did > afterwards is forgotten. It's just about the most patronizing > thing I can think of.
Great comment. My history professor in college referred to this as "chaining to a pedestal". Elevating one aspect of a person (or group of people) with the intent to suppress another aspect.
> On one hand, having used every Mac keyboard dating back to > that of the original Mac 128k, I feel I should know.
Man, I still remember that hollow-echo noise that the original Macintosh 128k keyboard made. It was like typing in the shower.
The old Apple Extended keyboards were a little better since the Pro Keyboard (black keys) is a little squishy. I might pick up one of these new ones. Plus the Pro Keyboard seems to want to store crumbs and stuff inside it. I guess all keyboards do this, but the clear plastic that Apple uses takes this disgusting trait and showcases it for all to see.
> Call me paranoid, but all those "xxx, Chief Information > Officer/Vice President at Avensis" quotes make it look as if > they were fabricated prior to even figuring out who to talk to > at the company
Everyone knows Microsoft deserves bashing for what they do, but this isn't one of those times. I've had to do my share of edits to press releases, and it's not unusual for the quote associated with an executive is written by a PR person. All big companies do this.
> he's said nothing newsworthy at all... he's just trying to get > the geek vote without offering much in return.
Ironically, he is saying something, but with his actions and not his words.
He's actually saying, everyone should have broadband. So he recognizes the opportunity.
On the other hand, he proposes no funding, no time table, no vision, no structure, nothing. So he doesn't think it's important enough to ask a single member of his administration to look into this. He relegates this to a vague promise.
It's like this. Bush He had his administration immediately work to revitalize their space-based missile program. At the same time, he announced a terrorism task force back in early 2001 (pre-9/11), with Dick Cheney as the head, but the task force never met and never did anything. Since actions speak louder than words, clearly Bush considered setting up a space-based missile program to be more important that preventing terrorist attacks.
So, the fact that he recognizes the opportunity, but he chooses to do absolutely nothing about it indicates the relative priority of the task.
> Bush says he wants broadband for everybody by 2007, Kerry > says he wants to spur technologies that will bring broadband > to everybody. Same thing. However, on slashdot, we're only > allowed to point out when Republicans say stupid things, not > when Democrats do. Didn't you read the F.A.Q.?
Simple. Challengers run on change. Incumbents run on their record.
The point is, Bush has been president for four years. He determines the budgets, the direction of Federal departments, and in general tax policy (with the help of the other Republican who have been in power for the past four years). And Bush has done absolutely nothing to make universal broadband a reality in America since he's been president. His FCC has worked to allow more media consolidation, he's cut taxes for the rich (thus reducing the amount of revenue available to fund a public works project), and he was so focused on going to war in Iraq, that his priorities haven't accommodated universal broadband, among other even more serious issues.
Kerry is a senator, but he's not president. So he's saying that if he were president, this is a possible works project that would stimulate the economy, create jobs, and help broadband become universal like phone service. Kerry is the presidential challenger, so it's up to him to present his vision for America and explain why he's the right man for the job.
Bush is the presidential incumbent. It's up to him to explain his record for the past four years and explain why that record is good enough that he deserves another four years. If Bush really thought this was a good idea, well, he's been able to do it for four years. It makes no sense for the presidential incumbent to make vague promises about things he has not done anything about for the past four years. But when your record isn't good enough to run on, you avoid talking about it. You change the subject to talk about going to Mars, you make vague subjects about universal broadband, you resort to hateful language about constitutional amendments, etc.
> Low margin means that the sale price is not much higher than > the price to market, and price to market includes a lot more > than the cost of manufacturing. How much do those snazzy > commercials take from the budget? How many dollars > disappear to get the ITunes concept going?
I don't think this is true. Direct margin is calculated simply as
(selling price - direct material and direct labor cost)
So if the price = 2.00, and the materials cost is 0.50 and it takes 0.50 of direct labor to assemble and ready it for shipment out of the factory, then the direct margin is 2.00 - (0.50 + 0.50) = 1.00.
Some items are combined from the manufacturing overhead (like equipment setup charges, supervisor salary, factory cafeteria, etc) are allocated as overhead to the cost of goods sold, usually as a percentage.
However, ads, marketing budget, R&D, software development, administration charges, etc are allocated as a period expense and considered on a company-wide basis that isn't attributed to a particular product.
> if Apple is making money on its investments and losing > money on operations, wouldn't it make more sense to cease > operations, wind up the business, and just make money on > the investments? Is there some major financial concept I am > missing here?
Tha's a good question. Companies that are growing (or changing significantly) can finance their growth in two ways: cash from financing or cash from investments.
1. Cash flow from financing is the typical way to do it. You can get money from a venture capitalist fund (in exchange for a lot of issued stock and partial loss of control). You also can get money from banks by taking on long-term debt. The way this works out is this dilutes shareholder equity indirectly since in the event the company goes out of business, the bank gets in line for assets before any of the shareholders. Although technically this should have zero impact on a company's balance sheet, it does tend to make investors pissy.
2. Cash flow from investments gets money into the company without diluting shareholder equity. That's why shareholders prefer this method, but few companies are in a position to do this.
This incoming cash flow is then invested into operations to expand the business, and thus cash flow from operations is negative. Eventually, the company wants to have positive cash flow from operations and use that to sustain the business. So, yes, the end game is for the company to have positive cash flow from operations and to a lesser extent positive cash flow from investments, and 0 cash flow from financing (unless the company is taking advantage of debt leverage, then there will be a positive cash flow from financing).
So why do they need this cash? Because one way to become cash flow positive from operations is to increase the company's operating leverage. Think of a graph of costs as a function of sales volume. The slope of the line is the variable cost, and the y-intercept are the fixed costs. Generally, for cost structures, the larger the y-intercept for the line, the smaller the slope of the line. So the idea is to get the y-intercept of the line up and the slope approaching 0.
The way to do this is to adjust the cost structure such that the variable costs are as low as possible. The way to do this is to increase the fixed costs such that at the targeted sales volume, the variable costs are significantly lower than the competition.
So in the short term, Apple is increasing their operating leverage using financing from their investments. It's a good strategy assuming that they can succeed. And as I said in my grandparent post, I don't think there's reason to doubt Apple won't.
I haven't read the entire article since I'm not a subscriber to Money Magazine, so it's hard to gauge the article from just those quotes. However, the quotes seem to point out some valid concerns, but it might be a bit of "chicken little" as well.
The market share numbers aren't terribly convincing (since there's about a dozen different ways to measure market share, and one can always pick one that fits what you're trying to say). Without more info, it's hard to judge. Though Apple would obviously rather hear others saying their numbers are going. I've heard that the iPod is the #1 digital music player today and Apple has something like 75% market share for online music, so there's an upward trend. It would be interesting to see Apple's own tracking of unit shipments compared to these numbers. (I'm ignoring comments from someone suing Apple are never convincing until the case is over. There's too much incentive for the plaintiff to basically try to blackmail the defending company into settling).
However, the author is suggesting that Apple's cash flow from operations is negative, while its cash flow from investments is positive. I presume Apple's cash flow from financing is 0 since they've retired their debt. That's not a good pattern for a mature company, and after 20 years, Apple sure is.
Apple has been remaking itself as of late, and one would expect that its cash flow profile would match that of a growing company. And since Apple has a lot of cash, it wouldn't have positive cash flow from financing (meaning its getting its money from VC funding or by borrowing), but positive cash flow from its own investments to finance its remake of its operations.
As an investor, I would argue that I would rather have Apple financing its changing operations from investments rather than from financing. That's because financing from investments is better for shareholders since it doesn't dilute shareholder equity the way issuing more shares or even borrowing from a bank does.
So is it okay for Apple to have negative cash flow from operations at this time? I think so. They've changed their business quite a bit since 1996, and those changes will affect operational income in the short run. For example, Apple has opened some 80 stores, and that's a tremendous operational expense since they've incurred a lot of fixed costs. I believe that their retail story makes sense, since they're the direct opposite of most computer stores. In a way, the Apple Stores are like Target to Best Buy, CompUSA, and the others' Walmart.
Since the stock market currently values Apple at nearly the price to earnings of Dell, it means that the market believes that what Apple is doing will pay off in the long term. And it probably will. I believe Mac OS X and Apple's incredible industrial design are the foundations of its future success. The iPod is positioning itself as the next Walkman, and Apple's in a great position regarding digital music. Their recent deal with HP further solidifies this. As for iPods driving Mac sales, anecdotal evidence is often misleading, but I've met a number of people who have recently bought new Macintoshes after being Windows users for years, and the iPod has helped drive that. There's always room for Apple to pull another Cube and screw things up, but Apple's track record has been respectable in the past couple of years, so people are giving them the benefit of the doubt in that place.
I'm against frivolous lawsuits like everyone else, but this is like extortion. Imagine a patient is wronged by an incompetent doctor, and they sue for damages. Other doctors are basically saying that this patient likely will never get care again?
Texas already passed Proposition 12 last year capping jury awards for non-economic damages in malpractice cases to $250,000. So parents whose children have the misfortune of needing expensive medical care must be even more wary.
I guess these Texas doctors are saying, "Oh, you'll pay a pretty penny for care. But don't even think about holding our professional accountable for incompetence."
If these doctors believe there's nothing wrong with this list, I'd like to see a list of doctors who are members of that organization.
They have a different type of scout walker? That's a spoiler? Maybe they meant that they were going to put one of those giant wings on a scout walker, to match a folger's can exhaust pipe?
I saw nothing there that would give away a key plot point. Anakin looked like he had a rough time, but that's hardly a surprise for anyone who's even remotely paying attention.
Cool to see some photos to tie us over until the May after next.
> why they refused to document elimination of the rest, even > after threat of invasion?
Occam's Razor would still suggest they didn't have them. Which is more likely?
A. Saddam Hussein was a madman who had nuclear weapons, 25,000 tons of Anthrax, etc, and hid them successfully from U.N. weapons inspectors for months. Then he refused to use them on the U.S. as we invaded, and now we can't find anything despite nearly a year of searching.
B. Saddam Hussein was a tinpot dictator who had no weapons any longer. Thus, he had no weapons to be found or to be used during the war.
> you often find that people with more education or experience > have more of an axe to grind.
They also stereotype more often, too!
People with more education or experience are annoying because they know too much about these topics! The problem is so much in life can be solved with ignorance. The key is to compromise with people who have no experience or education, and stake a position based on political or personal ideology instead. The trick is to learn to trust the demagogues, instead of some egg-head knowledgeable person. Why not throw out years of research or insight in favor of a well-crafted bumper sticker? The "creation scientists" have been doing it for years, and it's worked for them!
Slashdot Mirror
> Jobs is a very single minded person, so its not all that
> surprising that when information that he already knows is
> presented in a manner different then how he thinks, it seems
> either wrong or difficult to comprehend.
Benefit of the doubt:
Jobs is also a consummate marketer. If this poster was given out to customers are resellers, then oftentimes technical "correctness" makes way for marketing savvy. Sometimes we've had to argue with our R&D department about how we've changed a diagram or a subsystem name to make something more end-user friendly.
My background is electrical engineering, so I have slightly more "street cred" with our developers, but the truth is, part of my job is to make the incomprehensible not only understandable, but seemingly intuitive to our customers and others. If I have to bend the "technical rules" to do it, then sometimes you have to. "I don't care of the term 'XYAMMAA123' has some logical meaning; no sales person is going to be able to explain that. We're calling it 'Instant Publishing' (or whatever)."
So if Jobs arranged to have an internal poster changed to make it more outside-world friendly, then that makes sense. So maybe Jobs didn't misunderstand; maybe Raskin's logical color scheme was too esoteric to be useful for customers.
Okay, enough of the benefit of the doubt. The poster is really ugly. Changing Raskin's logical color scheme in favor of something beloved only to Disco Stu seems like a change for the worse. They might as well have stuck with the "logical coloring", just so they'd have an excuse.
> I think you're supposed to click on something.
Clicking doesn't do anything unique. If you click on a web page, it beeps. If you click on a widget, it acts like a regular click on the widget.
Macs today don't have a scroll lock button, so that isn't that annoying for us.
What is annoying is the Help key (right next to Home, above the forward delete). Under Mac OS 9, when you pressed it accidentally, you would have to wait about 20 seconds for your Mac to open the Help application. God, that was annoying! One mistype and you were sitting around for 20 seconds, cursing the moron that thought that was a good idea (what about having that key just toggle Balloon Help on/off?). It was bad enough that I avoided using the forward delete at all for fear that I would accidentally press the dreaded Help button.
These days, Under Mac OS X, pressing the Help key seems to do different things. In iTunes, it mimics the annoying Mac OS 9 behavior of opening the Help Center. In the Finder, it does nothing. Safari is the oddest. Pressing the Help key makes the cursor turn into a question mark. Aside from providing a visual representation of what you're probably thinking ("hmm... what does the Help key do?" to which your computer answers, "?"), it doesn't seem to do anything.
To me, that's a great symbol of poor user interface design and a contempt for users: making the Help button on the keyboard unhelpful.
Yes, you are correct. I should have listed taxes before the net income line. I normally do pro forma income statements, so I often leave out the taxes during that kind of analysis. I could have also put depreciation for PP&E as a line item expense as well.
> By "Income" does he mean "Profit" or is MS actually predicting
> a 50% revenue drop over the previous year?
Revenue is the amount of money you bring in due to products that you sell. This normally does not include money from investments and selling plant, property, and equipment (PP&E). So if you sell 1 product for $1, but you sell a building you don't use any more for $1M, your revenue is only $1.
Income is the amount of money left over after all expenses. The first expense is cost of goods sold (this means the cost of the actually sold unit). For software, this is nearly 0. Money left over after the COGS is your direct margin. For Microsoft, I believe this is something like 90+% (but I'm too lazy to look up their income statement at this time)
After that, you subtract off the other expenses, like R&D (this includes software engineering and the like), sales general and administrative (SG&A--including marketing weasels, such as myself), and interest payments (e.g. long term debt).
Whatever is left over is your net income. Here's a simplified example:
INCOME STATEMENT
Revenue
(cost of goods sold)
----------------
Direct Margin
(R&D)
(SG&A)
(Interest Expense)
----------------
Net Income
So Income is your bottom line. If the number is positive, then profit! That means the standard Slashdot cliche becomes:
1. Make revenue from a product or service
2. Minimize your expenses
3. Profit!
What's interesting about Microsoft is they are one of a very small number of companies with NO long term debt (Apple, I believe, just joined this exclusive club). That makes MSFT's balance sheet fairly impressive to look at.
Maybe this will spur on some other help ...
My company uses VPN services from Verizon in conjunction with an iPass software package and I think a Cisco VPN client. They provide the client software for Windows, but they refuse to provide anything for Mac OS X. Is there a way to get this to work under Mac OS X? That would be great if someone else has had experience with this.
> The only think I know about dealing with someone with
> Schizophrenia is to never confront them.
> If you are talking to them, don't sit or stand opposite them,
> but beside them.
> Try not to disagree with them about this, or if you do, don't
> do it negatively.
Not to make light of this, but man, this is how we treat the vice presidents at work!
This is likely the most intelligent-sounding* post I've seen on Slashdot recently. I kept waiting to read about hot grits, a beowulf cluster, something about Jar Jar being the root of all evil or something like that. For a second there, I thought I was on the wrong site.
*I have to say "intelligent-sounding" because I know little about schizophrenia.
VMac looks Carbonized, but it's still asking for a ROM. Does this mean I have to go hunt down my original Mac 128k? Seems like a lot of trouble for me to be able to play Dark Castle on my PowerBook G4.
> Name the country that used the following law enforcement
> tactics
> A) Soviet Russia (USSR)
> B) Nazi Germany
> C) United States of America
> D) All of the above
So maybe this was the Bush Administration's plan all along: end debate about the PATRIOT Act by making it so draconian that people couldn't talk about it without invoking Godwin's Law.
> The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the FBI's use
> of expanded powers to compel Internet service providers to
> turn over information about their customers or subscribers.
> People who receive the letters are prohibited by law from
> disclosing to anyone that they did so. Because of this legal
> gag order, the ACLU was forced to reach an agreement with
> the Justice Department before a heavily edited version of the
> lawsuit could be unsealed.
"PATRIOT Act"? Damn you, Orwell and your Newspeak!
So the ACLU was suing to protect Americans' privacy from the government prying into ISP customer data. But no one knew about it, since there's another law that prevents the ACLU from telling the public. So they're basically fighting for our freedoms in secret?
It reminds me of that light from the classic show, "The Prisoner": "Why don't you just lock us all up and be done with it?"
I call upon the self-proclaimed conservatives who never tire of claiming they're against "big government". Stop for a minute punctuating every sentence with "terrorism," and "support the troops; we're at war!" like some sort of right-wing Speak and Spell. Remember this on election day: Bush believes the PATRIOT Act should be renewed and celebrated. There's your big government, pal.
Sheesh. Someone get me a valium.
> And that's pretty sad. Helen Keller in particular: the part of her
> life where she first managed to overcome some part of her
> disabilities is remembered, but the campaigning work she did
> afterwards is forgotten. It's just about the most patronizing
> thing I can think of.
Great comment. My history professor in college referred to this as "chaining to a pedestal". Elevating one aspect of a person (or group of people) with the intent to suppress another aspect.
Either that, or Tron's really let himself go
> On one hand, having used every Mac keyboard dating back to
> that of the original Mac 128k, I feel I should know.
Man, I still remember that hollow-echo noise that the original Macintosh 128k keyboard made. It was like typing in the shower.
The old Apple Extended keyboards were a little better since the Pro Keyboard (black keys) is a little squishy. I might pick up one of these new ones. Plus the Pro Keyboard seems to want to store crumbs and stuff inside it. I guess all keyboards do this, but the clear plastic that Apple uses takes this disgusting trait and showcases it for all to see.
> Call me paranoid, but all those "xxx, Chief Information
> Officer/Vice President at Avensis" quotes make it look as if
> they were fabricated prior to even figuring out who to talk to
> at the company
Everyone knows Microsoft deserves bashing for what they do, but this isn't one of those times. I've had to do my share of edits to press releases, and it's not unusual for the quote associated with an executive is written by a PR person. All big companies do this.
How is it the parent got a "(Score:3, Informative)", but my legitimate response got a "(Score:-1, Offtopic)"
It looks like we've got a few angry Bush supporters trying to moderate an agenda. I call moderator abuse!
> he's said nothing newsworthy at all... he's just trying to get
> the geek vote without offering much in return.
Ironically, he is saying something, but with his actions and not his words.
He's actually saying, everyone should have broadband. So he recognizes the opportunity.
On the other hand, he proposes no funding, no time table, no vision, no structure, nothing. So he doesn't think it's important enough to ask a single member of his administration to look into this. He relegates this to a vague promise.
It's like this. Bush He had his administration immediately work to revitalize their space-based missile program. At the same time, he announced a terrorism task force back in early 2001 (pre-9/11), with Dick Cheney as the head, but the task force never met and never did anything. Since actions speak louder than words, clearly Bush considered setting up a space-based missile program to be more important that preventing terrorist attacks.
So, the fact that he recognizes the opportunity, but he chooses to do absolutely nothing about it indicates the relative priority of the task.
> Bush says he wants broadband for everybody by 2007, Kerry
> says he wants to spur technologies that will bring broadband
> to everybody. Same thing. However, on slashdot, we're only
> allowed to point out when Republicans say stupid things, not
> when Democrats do. Didn't you read the F.A.Q.?
Simple. Challengers run on change. Incumbents run on their record.
The point is, Bush has been president for four years. He determines the budgets, the direction of Federal departments, and in general tax policy (with the help of the other Republican who have been in power for the past four years). And Bush has done absolutely nothing to make universal broadband a reality in America since he's been president. His FCC has worked to allow more media consolidation, he's cut taxes for the rich (thus reducing the amount of revenue available to fund a public works project), and he was so focused on going to war in Iraq, that his priorities haven't accommodated universal broadband, among other even more serious issues.
Kerry is a senator, but he's not president. So he's saying that if he were president, this is a possible works project that would stimulate the economy, create jobs, and help broadband become universal like phone service. Kerry is the presidential challenger, so it's up to him to present his vision for America and explain why he's the right man for the job.
Bush is the presidential incumbent. It's up to him to explain his record for the past four years and explain why that record is good enough that he deserves another four years. If Bush really thought this was a good idea, well, he's been able to do it for four years. It makes no sense for the presidential incumbent to make vague promises about things he has not done anything about for the past four years. But when your record isn't good enough to run on, you avoid talking about it. You change the subject to talk about going to Mars, you make vague subjects about universal broadband, you resort to hateful language about constitutional amendments, etc.
> Low margin means that the sale price is not much higher than > the price to market, and price to market includes a lot more
> than the cost of manufacturing. How much do those snazzy
> commercials take from the budget? How many dollars
> disappear to get the ITunes concept going?
I don't think this is true. Direct margin is calculated simply as
(selling price - direct material and direct labor cost)
So if the price = 2.00, and the materials cost is 0.50 and it takes 0.50 of direct labor to assemble and ready it for shipment out of the factory, then the direct margin is 2.00 - (0.50 + 0.50) = 1.00.
Some items are combined from the manufacturing overhead (like equipment setup charges, supervisor salary, factory cafeteria, etc) are allocated as overhead to the cost of goods sold, usually as a percentage.
However, ads, marketing budget, R&D, software development, administration charges, etc are allocated as a period expense and considered on a company-wide basis that isn't attributed to a particular product.
> if Apple is making money on its investments and losing
> money on operations, wouldn't it make more sense to cease
> operations, wind up the business, and just make money on
> the investments? Is there some major financial concept I am
> missing here?
Tha's a good question. Companies that are growing (or changing significantly) can finance their growth in two ways: cash from financing or cash from investments.
1. Cash flow from financing is the typical way to do it. You can get money from a venture capitalist fund (in exchange for a lot of issued stock and partial loss of control). You also can get money from banks by taking on long-term debt. The way this works out is this dilutes shareholder equity indirectly since in the event the company goes out of business, the bank gets in line for assets before any of the shareholders. Although technically this should have zero impact on a company's balance sheet, it does tend to make investors pissy.
2. Cash flow from investments gets money into the company without diluting shareholder equity. That's why shareholders prefer this method, but few companies are in a position to do this.
This incoming cash flow is then invested into operations to expand the business, and thus cash flow from operations is negative. Eventually, the company wants to have positive cash flow from operations and use that to sustain the business. So, yes, the end game is for the company to have positive cash flow from operations and to a lesser extent positive cash flow from investments, and 0 cash flow from financing (unless the company is taking advantage of debt leverage, then there will be a positive cash flow from financing).
So why do they need this cash? Because one way to become cash flow positive from operations is to increase the company's operating leverage. Think of a graph of costs as a function of sales volume. The slope of the line is the variable cost, and the y-intercept are the fixed costs. Generally, for cost structures, the larger the y-intercept for the line, the smaller the slope of the line. So the idea is to get the y-intercept of the line up and the slope approaching 0.
The way to do this is to adjust the cost structure such that the variable costs are as low as possible. The way to do this is to increase the fixed costs such that at the targeted sales volume, the variable costs are significantly lower than the competition.
So in the short term, Apple is increasing their operating leverage using financing from their investments. It's a good strategy assuming that they can succeed. And as I said in my grandparent post, I don't think there's reason to doubt Apple won't.
I haven't read the entire article since I'm not a subscriber to Money Magazine, so it's hard to gauge the article from just those quotes. However, the quotes seem to point out some valid concerns, but it might be a bit of "chicken little" as well.
The market share numbers aren't terribly convincing (since there's about a dozen different ways to measure market share, and one can always pick one that fits what you're trying to say). Without more info, it's hard to judge. Though Apple would obviously rather hear others saying their numbers are going. I've heard that the iPod is the #1 digital music player today and Apple has something like 75% market share for online music, so there's an upward trend. It would be interesting to see Apple's own tracking of unit shipments compared to these numbers. (I'm ignoring comments from someone suing Apple are never convincing until the case is over. There's too much incentive for the plaintiff to basically try to blackmail the defending company into settling).
However, the author is suggesting that Apple's cash flow from operations is negative, while its cash flow from investments is positive. I presume Apple's cash flow from financing is 0 since they've retired their debt. That's not a good pattern for a mature company, and after 20 years, Apple sure is.
Apple has been remaking itself as of late, and one would expect that its cash flow profile would match that of a growing company. And since Apple has a lot of cash, it wouldn't have positive cash flow from financing (meaning its getting its money from VC funding or by borrowing), but positive cash flow from its own investments to finance its remake of its operations.
As an investor, I would argue that I would rather have Apple financing its changing operations from investments rather than from financing. That's because financing from investments is better for shareholders since it doesn't dilute shareholder equity the way issuing more shares or even borrowing from a bank does.
So is it okay for Apple to have negative cash flow from operations at this time? I think so. They've changed their business quite a bit since 1996, and those changes will affect operational income in the short run. For example, Apple has opened some 80 stores, and that's a tremendous operational expense since they've incurred a lot of fixed costs. I believe that their retail story makes sense, since they're the direct opposite of most computer stores. In a way, the Apple Stores are like Target to Best Buy, CompUSA, and the others' Walmart.
Since the stock market currently values Apple at nearly the price to earnings of Dell, it means that the market believes that what Apple is doing will pay off in the long term. And it probably will. I believe Mac OS X and Apple's incredible industrial design are the foundations of its future success. The iPod is positioning itself as the next Walkman, and Apple's in a great position regarding digital music. Their recent deal with HP further solidifies this. As for iPods driving Mac sales, anecdotal evidence is often misleading, but I've met a number of people who have recently bought new Macintoshes after being Windows users for years, and the iPod has helped drive that. There's always room for Apple to pull another Cube and screw things up, but Apple's track record has been respectable in the past couple of years, so people are giving them the benefit of the doubt in that place.
I'm against frivolous lawsuits like everyone else, but this is like extortion. Imagine a patient is wronged by an incompetent doctor, and they sue for damages. Other doctors are basically saying that this patient likely will never get care again?
Texas already passed Proposition 12 last year capping jury awards for non-economic damages in malpractice cases to $250,000. So parents whose children have the misfortune of needing expensive medical care must be even more wary.
I guess these Texas doctors are saying, "Oh, you'll pay a pretty penny for care. But don't even think about holding our professional accountable for incompetence."
If these doctors believe there's nothing wrong with this list, I'd like to see a list of doctors who are members of that organization.
They have a different type of scout walker? That's a spoiler? Maybe they meant that they were going to put one of those giant wings on a scout walker, to match a folger's can exhaust pipe?
I saw nothing there that would give away a key plot point. Anakin looked like he had a rough time, but that's hardly a surprise for anyone who's even remotely paying attention.
Cool to see some photos to tie us over until the May after next.
> why they refused to document elimination of the rest, even
> after threat of invasion?
Occam's Razor would still suggest they didn't have them. Which is more likely?
A. Saddam Hussein was a madman who had nuclear weapons, 25,000 tons of Anthrax, etc, and hid them successfully from U.N. weapons inspectors for months. Then he refused to use them on the U.S. as we invaded, and now we can't find anything despite nearly a year of searching.
B. Saddam Hussein was a tinpot dictator who had no weapons any longer. Thus, he had no weapons to be found or to be used during the war.
B is clearly the simpler explanation.
> you often find that people with more education or experience > have more of an axe to grind.
They also stereotype more often, too!
People with more education or experience are annoying because they know too much about these topics! The problem is so much in life can be solved with ignorance. The key is to compromise with people who have no experience or education, and stake a position based on political or personal ideology instead. The trick is to learn to trust the demagogues, instead of some egg-head knowledgeable person. Why not throw out years of research or insight in favor of a well-crafted bumper sticker? The "creation scientists" have been doing it for years, and it's worked for them!