...my understanding of fault lines is that there are areas where tectonic plates cross, with one moving over the top of the other, pushing one down and one up. So far so good right?
Half right. Sometimes it cause by plates rubbing against each other but there are other ways to create earthquakes. Since Texas is far away from any fault lines that I know of I don’t think this is the case.
So the model I have understood is, the fault compresses over time as the plates move, and then an earth quake happens when the stress is suddenly released, allowing the plates to slip some amount, relieving the stress and starting the process over again from its new position.
So now if this is an accurate enough description of the process, it seems to me like more frequent, smaller quakes are likely preferable to less frequent larger ones. So could this triggering of earth quakes actually be a....good thing? Is that question even being asked?
It has been asked and the answer is maybe. The energy of small earth quakes is trivial to that of large earthquakes. Small earthquakes might just transmit the stress down the fault line resulting in larger earthquakes later. The current models are not very good and this sort of stuff so no answers yet.
I am confused by your comment – where did you get the idea that I was against basic research? “Hard to quantify” does not mean “Not Important”. What it means is that one has a very hard time picking one’s way from George Heilmeier work in 1964 through all of the intermediate steps (and dead ends) to my computer monitor.
People have tried to quantify the benefits of basic science but have largely failed – but that does not mean it is not important. By pushing the boundaries of knowledge two things happen. One is the development of elite intuitions which tend to churn out more scientists who tend to go on and do other, different, interesting things. The other is that they stumble onto new weird things which have other applications.
People have tried to quantify the benefits of basic science but have largely failed – but that does not mean it is not important. The spillover effects are hard to measure. There tends to be a long lag time between new discoveries and everyday applications.
Now, off hand, I would think something in genetics or biology would have a bigger impact then space but that is just my 2 cents.
You kind of have this backwards. It because everybody is looking for return when there is none.
Normally when the central bank prints money this pushes up inflation. During inflation real assets, such as stocks, tend to hold their value which pushes up their prices.
Quantitative easing is not (currently) causing inflation mainly because the economic is so anemic. Take a look at 10 year TIPs and one comes to the conclusion that inflation will be tame. But an anemic economy does not generate great stock returns. Historically the government bond market has real returns of 2% and the stock market a real return of 7% (plus another 3% for inflation.) Now it is closer to 1% to 4%. Pensioners can’t live on these returns.
So anything that can deliver yield from junk bonds to junk stock is being snapped up. Or we are kind of talking about the same thing – a chicken and egg problem – just we place different emphasis on different parts.
To do what? Don’t leave me hanging. At this point we are comparing apples to berries.
On one hand we are talking about paid in capital. I will point out that Apple only has 20b (plus retain earnings).
On the other hand we are talking about 10b in profits for a large company that is involved in phones, tables, computers, software, etc. verse a medium sized focused company. That indicates that Apple is well run not that 1b could not be wisely spent. I will also point out that when Steve Jobs was hired on the second time Apple’s profits were minuscule compare to Microsoft, Dell, or Intel.
Maybe. They are pumping a billion dollars into the company. Less than the 2 to 3 billion the buyout would have pumped in but still a large amount. Then thing about fight or flight.
Selling stock is like voting with your feet. That’s fleeing.
Buy the company and changing the management. That’s fighting. Not a choice for many small investors. The new management might have some brilliant ideas. Or maybe they will just shut down the company and sell the company in chunks. I understand it has a lot of patents.
.Seriously, why do we want to do this? Is power usage going to cut in half?
Yes. Well, about in 1/2. Think about signal processors and cell phones. Would you accept a 5% reduction in voice quality for a doubling of your talk time?
LCDs started off strong. This encourage more investment in fabs, which encourage more research on how to produce LCDs, which lead to better fabs, which lead to lower prices, resulting in stronger sales. A vitreous cycle ensures.
LCDs clearly have the better manufacturing technology. Now if we are talking about display quality..
Remember we are talking about misinterpreting the genetic evidence, Prejudice is giving an unwarranted weight on some evidence.
Or let me put it a bit more starkly. You are smart parents who wants smart kids. The geneticist comes backs and says a new tests suggests that maybe your child is dumb or at the very least has no special genes. So what do you do? Just chuck it Kid has the gene for math but likes music. What then? Geneticist say your kid has the gene for math but 20 years latter says that they make a mistake – that gene was not the math gene.
Project Plowshare was not a wacko theory. It is based on sound principles and it probably would have worked. Of course back then they gave lesser weight to the radiation risks then we do today
Also there is an important but subtle difference been intelligence (how to do something) and wisdom (what should be done.).
First I find this kind of ironic that they are calling this “Project Einstein”. Einstein was not considered that smart when he was young.
Second, I am little skeptical of the project. I fear the results with be over simplified and applied wrongly. I think there are different types of intelligence. Language, mathematical, etc. I think intelligence comes from a subtle interplay between genetics and environment. I think character (drive, deferred gratification, etc.) is just as important.
But somebody is going to find a gene that explains 5% of intelligence (or lack of) and society will start focusing on that factor. Toddlers we be routed to different schools based on this thin evidence, prejudices will be formed, etc.
I think the research should be done but I do fear a dark period.
There are many UAVs out there with motors much bigger then 145hp so I don’t think that is going to be an issue. Besides you don’t need that much continuous power. You will not be shooting down missiles every second. Outfit the UAV with batteries / super capacitors. That should be sufficient.
They are not selling naked services like Amazon’s cloud or pure consulting services like EDS. They want to sell custom hardware solutions with fat service contracts.
Nope, those are corporate debt. It’s standard practice in a Leverage Buy Out. A close analogy is when you refi your house and pull cash out. The value of the house remains the same, your personal value remains the same (both assets and liabilities increase by the same amount) , it just your debt to equity ratio increases.
I don’t think so but I am still scratching my head over the loan.
Bondholders have no say in how the company is run. Well, unless the company goes bankrupt. Of the cash needed it was only a small slice. There was the chance to get an equity slice but MS passed. Maybe for good will but it still confuses me.
Leverage (i.e. the debt to equity ratio) affects the volatility and risk of the equity holds. It has no effect on EBIT. Dell was also kicking out a lot of free cash so I don’t think there is going to be an issue on servicing the debt.
If there are layoffs it’s not going to be to meet debt payments. It is because M. Dell wants to get out of the low margin commodity end of the market and move upscale into high end services. I have seen some hiring on that front.
It’s high end services, not high end computers, that M. Dell really wants to do is sell.
Take a look at what companies Dell has been buying recently. They have been high end high touch hardware (IIRC in the storage market) and consulting services. He wants to go down the same road that IBM and HP have travled.
You only need 1 phone [or cable] line to service a entire block.
Provided that the entire block is being serviced in an efficient way. With one provider, this efficiency cannot be guaranteed.
Sadly no. Being a natural monopoly gives the incumbent a huge advantage. Most natural monopolies fail because of a huge shift in the market (cell phones displacing landlines) or the incumbent is truly incompetent.
if there were a competitor a fierce price war would start up until there was only one standing.
Sometimes we need a price war to keep the price of entry-level service from rising faster than inflation.
Not exactly my point. I like price wars but in the special case of natural monopolies the end is foretold – only one company will be left standing.
And sometimes different providers can compete on varied services over their respective wires. If an ISP is only interested in providing "consumer" service (tiny upstream, inbound connections strongly discouraged or outright blocked), that leaves an opening for another provider to differentiate its service by providing more symmetric "enthusiast" and "business" tiers.
Maybe. This point made me think. I view most utilities as commodities where differentiation is hard. I think. I can’t see how much value “business class” would add. Then again I can’t think of how to differentiate water yet there are dozens of bottled varieties in the local market.
As a counter argument I will direct you to Michael Porter’s 5 forces. He suggests that you can either be a low cost provided of commodities or try to differentiate yourself and charge higher prices. This is basically what you suggested.
However, he also warns that firms can be “stuck in the middle”. Your differences have to be of a greater value then the benefits inherent with the incumbent’s natural monopoly.
I think you missed why this is a natural monopoly. It's not because the city owns the right of way. It's because the market lends itself to a single firm.
You only need 1 phone line to service a entire block. You only need 1 cable line to provide cable for a entire block. You only need 1 movie theater in the small town where I grew up. You only need 1 provider of water and sewer. You only need 1 railroad to connect city A to city B.
In any of the above cases, if there were a competitor a fierce price war would start up until there was only one standing. The last 2 cases come from London from the 19th century.
No, In a truly unregulated market the barriers of entry would be higher for new entries into the cable market. It is one of the justifications used for regulating cable.
Look up the term “Natural Monopoly”. In any industry with high fixed costs and low marginal costs market structure will favor only one provider. If a challenger faces an incumbent, the incumbent will just drop prices until they drive out the challenger. They don’t need to pay for the high upfront capital costs – they have already done so.
And while it is a valid reason to regulate I am not saying the cable companies haven’t captured the regulators to entrench their position – they have.
Well, yes, and in some cases that it’s perfectly fine but not so much in others. Let’s take the current World Series. The Red Socks can’t pouch all of the Cardinals’ pitchers in the middle of the series. That would be a exterme case. That would be anti-competitive – as well as breaking some MLB rules.
The pouching cases I am thinking about is when everybody (from the department manager to the assistants) in a functional department (sales office, specialized technical team, or something else that is self-contained.) hands in their resignation letters en mass at 4 p.m. on Friday and show up across the street on Monday doing their old job for a competitor. I have seen some companies seriously gimped by such a move. In the case of a sales office defecting there are supposed to leave client lists behind but they almost never do.
IIRC there is already some federal laws on this. Part of the laws forbid cooperation on hiring which are part of the labor laws / monopoly laws. Part of the law forbids pooching, in particular when one firm tries hiring away entire departments from another firm, as an anti-competitive tactic.
No, Sears got crushed way before Amazon was around. discount stores (Wal-Mart, Target) , big box stores (Best Buy), and specialized mail order catalogues had long ravaged Sears.
As long as Wal-Mart is out there I expect the big discounts to continue.
Also AMZN does not hoard cash like Microsoft and Apple. Just the opposite. They have often been criticized for their heavy investment in infrastructure and other capital projects to drive the next wave of growth.
That was my gut feeling at the time. I will point out that Edison and Tesla did succeed in killing a lot of things with both AC and DC power. So neither case is completely smoke and mirrors.
Side Note - On the other hand I have always wondered why America chose AC cycle that was most likely to kill. I know a reason was that it is easy to sync to a clock but other countries avoided that issue.
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...my understanding of fault lines is that there are areas where tectonic plates cross, with one moving over the top of the other, pushing one down and one up. So far so good right?
Half right. Sometimes it cause by plates rubbing against each other but there are other ways to create earthquakes. Since Texas is far away from any fault lines that I know of I don’t think this is the case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intraplate_earthquake
So the model I have understood is, the fault compresses over time as the plates move, and then an earth quake happens when the stress is suddenly released, allowing the plates to slip some amount, relieving the stress and starting the process over again from its new position.
So now if this is an accurate enough description of the process, it seems to me like more frequent, smaller quakes are likely preferable to less frequent larger ones. So could this triggering of earth quakes actually be a....good thing? Is that question even being asked?
It has been asked and the answer is maybe. The energy of small earth quakes is trivial to that of large earthquakes. Small earthquakes might just transmit the stress down the fault line resulting in larger earthquakes later. The current models are not very good and this sort of stuff so no answers yet.
I am confused by your comment – where did you get the idea that I was against basic research? “Hard to quantify” does not mean “Not Important”. What it means is that one has a very hard time picking one’s way from George Heilmeier work in 1964 through all of the intermediate steps (and dead ends) to my computer monitor.
Basic Science.
People have tried to quantify the benefits of basic science but have largely failed – but that does not mean it is not important. By pushing the boundaries of knowledge two things happen. One is the development of elite intuitions which tend to churn out more scientists who tend to go on and do other, different, interesting things. The other is that they stumble onto new weird things which have other applications.
People have tried to quantify the benefits of basic science but have largely failed – but that does not mean it is not important. The spillover effects are hard to measure. There tends to be a long lag time between new discoveries and everyday applications.
Now, off hand, I would think something in genetics or biology would have a bigger impact then space but that is just my 2 cents.
You kind of have this backwards. It because everybody is looking for return when there is none.
Normally when the central bank prints money this pushes up inflation. During inflation real assets, such as stocks, tend to hold their value which pushes up their prices.
Quantitative easing is not (currently) causing inflation mainly because the economic is so anemic. Take a look at 10 year TIPs and one comes to the conclusion that inflation will be tame. But an anemic economy does not generate great stock returns. Historically the government bond market has real returns of 2% and the stock market a real return of 7% (plus another 3% for inflation.) Now it is closer to 1% to 4%. Pensioners can’t live on these returns.
So anything that can deliver yield from junk bonds to junk stock is being snapped up. Or we are kind of talking about the same thing – a chicken and egg problem – just we place different emphasis on different parts.
A billion is *not* enough.
To do what? Don’t leave me hanging. At this point we are comparing apples to berries.
On one hand we are talking about paid in capital. I will point out that Apple only has 20b (plus retain earnings).
On the other hand we are talking about 10b in profits for a large company that is involved in phones, tables, computers, software, etc. verse a medium sized focused company. That indicates that Apple is well run not that 1b could not be wisely spent. I will also point out that when Steve Jobs was hired on the second time Apple’s profits were minuscule compare to Microsoft, Dell, or Intel.
Maybe. They are pumping a billion dollars into the company. Less than the 2 to 3 billion the buyout would have pumped in but still a large amount.
Then thing about fight or flight.
Selling stock is like voting with your feet. That’s fleeing.
Buy the company and changing the management. That’s fighting. Not a choice for many small investors. The new management might have some brilliant ideas. Or maybe they will just shut down the company and sell the company in chunks. I understand it has a lot of patents.
.Seriously, why do we want to do this? Is power usage going to cut in half?
Yes. Well, about in 1/2. Think about signal processors and cell phones. Would you accept a 5% reduction in voice quality for a doubling of your talk time?
It depends on what you mean by technology.
LCDs started off strong. This encourage more investment in fabs, which encourage more research on how to produce LCDs, which lead to better fabs, which lead to lower prices, resulting in stronger sales. A vitreous cycle ensures.
LCDs clearly have the better manufacturing technology. Now if we are talking about display quality..
Really? Why would you want to be willful blind?
Remember we are talking about misinterpreting the genetic evidence, Prejudice is giving an unwarranted weight on some evidence.
Or let me put it a bit more starkly. You are smart parents who wants smart kids. The geneticist comes backs and says a new tests suggests that maybe your child is dumb or at the very least has no special genes. So what do you do? Just chuck it Kid has the gene for math but likes music. What then? Geneticist say your kid has the gene for math but 20 years latter says that they make a mistake – that gene was not the math gene.
Project Plowshare was not a wacko theory. It is based on sound principles and it probably would have worked. Of course back then they gave lesser weight to the radiation risks then we do today
Also there is an important but subtle difference been intelligence (how to do something) and wisdom (what should be done.).
First I find this kind of ironic that they are calling this “Project Einstein”. Einstein was not considered that smart when he was young.
Second, I am little skeptical of the project. I fear the results with be over simplified and applied wrongly. I think there are different types of intelligence. Language, mathematical, etc. I think intelligence comes from a subtle interplay between genetics and environment. I think character (drive, deferred gratification, etc.) is just as important.
But somebody is going to find a gene that explains 5% of intelligence (or lack of) and society will start focusing on that factor. Toddlers we be routed to different schools based on this thin evidence, prejudices will be formed, etc.
I think the research should be done but I do fear a dark period.
There are many UAVs out there with motors much bigger then 145hp so I don’t think that is going to be an issue. Besides you don’t need that much continuous power. You will not be shooting down missiles every second. Outfit the UAV with batteries / super capacitors. That should be sufficient.
You put that better than me.
They are not selling naked services like Amazon’s cloud or pure consulting services like EDS. They want to sell custom hardware solutions with fat service contracts.
Nope, those are corporate debt. It’s standard practice in a Leverage Buy Out. A close analogy is when you refi your house and pull cash out. The value of the house remains the same, your personal value remains the same (both assets and liabilities increase by the same amount) , it just your debt to equity ratio increases.
I don’t think so but I am still scratching my head over the loan.
Bondholders have no say in how the company is run. Well, unless the company goes bankrupt. Of the cash needed it was only a small slice. There was the chance to get an equity slice but MS passed. Maybe for good will but it still confuses me.
Leverage (i.e. the debt to equity ratio) affects the volatility and risk of the equity holds. It has no effect on EBIT. Dell was also kicking out a lot of free cash so I don’t think there is going to be an issue on servicing the debt.
If there are layoffs it’s not going to be to meet debt payments. It is because M. Dell wants to get out of the low margin commodity end of the market and move upscale into high end services. I have seen some hiring on that front.
It’s high end services, not high end computers, that M. Dell really wants to do is sell.
Take a look at what companies Dell has been buying recently. They have been high end high touch hardware (IIRC in the storage market) and consulting services. He wants to go down the same road that IBM and HP have travled.
You only need 1 phone [or cable] line to service a entire block.
Provided that the entire block is being serviced in an efficient way. With one provider, this efficiency cannot be guaranteed.
Sadly no. Being a natural monopoly gives the incumbent a huge advantage. Most natural monopolies fail because of a huge shift in the market (cell phones displacing landlines) or the incumbent is truly incompetent.
if there were a competitor a fierce price war would start up until there was only one standing.
Sometimes we need a price war to keep the price of entry-level service from rising faster than inflation.
Not exactly my point. I like price wars but in the special case of natural monopolies the end is foretold – only one company will be left standing.
And sometimes different providers can compete on varied services over their respective wires. If an ISP is only interested in providing "consumer" service (tiny upstream, inbound connections strongly discouraged or outright blocked), that leaves an opening for another provider to differentiate its service by providing more symmetric "enthusiast" and "business" tiers.
Maybe. This point made me think. I view most utilities as commodities where differentiation is hard. I think. I can’t see how much value “business class” would add. Then again I can’t think of how to differentiate water yet there are dozens of bottled varieties in the local market.
As a counter argument I will direct you to Michael Porter’s 5 forces. He suggests that you can either be a low cost provided of commodities or try to differentiate yourself and charge higher prices. This is basically what you suggested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_five_forces_analysis
However, he also warns that firms can be “stuck in the middle”. Your differences have to be of a greater value then the benefits inherent with the incumbent’s natural monopoly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_generic_strategies#Criticisms_of_generic_strategies
I think you missed why this is a natural monopoly. It's not because the city owns the right of way. It's because the market lends itself to a single firm.
You only need 1 phone line to service a entire block.
You only need 1 cable line to provide cable for a entire block.
You only need 1 movie theater in the small town where I grew up.
You only need 1 provider of water and sewer.
You only need 1 railroad to connect city A to city B.
In any of the above cases, if there were a competitor a fierce price war would start up until there was only one standing. The last 2 cases come from London from the 19th century.
No, In a truly unregulated market the barriers of entry would be higher for new entries into the cable market. It is one of the justifications used for regulating cable.
Look up the term “Natural Monopoly”. In any industry with high fixed costs and low marginal costs market structure will favor only one provider. If a challenger faces an incumbent, the incumbent will just drop prices until they drive out the challenger. They don’t need to pay for the high upfront capital costs – they have already done so.
And while it is a valid reason to regulate I am not saying the cable companies haven’t captured the regulators to entrench their position – they have.
Well, yes, and in some cases that it’s perfectly fine but not so much in others. Let’s take the current World Series. The Red Socks can’t pouch all of the Cardinals’ pitchers in the middle of the series. That would be a exterme case. That would be anti-competitive – as well as breaking some MLB rules.
The pouching cases I am thinking about is when everybody (from the department manager to the assistants) in a functional department (sales office, specialized technical team, or something else that is self-contained.) hands in their resignation letters en mass at 4 p.m. on Friday and show up across the street on Monday doing their old job for a competitor. I have seen some companies seriously gimped by such a move. In the case of a sales office defecting there are supposed to leave client lists behind but they almost never do.
IIRC there is already some federal laws on this. Part of the laws forbid cooperation on hiring which are part of the labor laws / monopoly laws. Part of the law forbids pooching, in particular when one firm tries hiring away entire departments from another firm, as an anti-competitive tactic.
No, Sears got crushed way before Amazon was around. discount stores (Wal-Mart, Target) , big box stores (Best Buy), and specialized mail order catalogues had long ravaged Sears.
As long as Wal-Mart is out there I expect the big discounts to continue.
Also AMZN does not hoard cash like Microsoft and Apple. Just the opposite. They have often been criticized for their heavy investment in infrastructure and other capital projects to drive the next wave of growth.
That was my gut feeling at the time. I will point out that Edison and Tesla did succeed in killing a lot of things with both AC and DC power. So neither case is completely smoke and mirrors.
Side Note - On the other hand I have always wondered why America chose AC cycle that was most likely to kill. I know a reason was that it is easy to sync to a clock but other countries avoided that issue.