This One’s for You

Awesome, awesome post by Justin Lee.  No quotes.  Go to the site and read.

Tax Common Sense

Bruce Bartlett speaks of economic common sense in the midst of the current political circus. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Bruce Bartlett www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The…

Bruce Bartlett speaks of economic common sense in the midst of the current political circus. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Bruce Bartlett www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The … Continue reading

Dirty Money

Why Apple isn’t the only one dirty in the terrible workplace conditions at Foxconn. Continue reading

David Coldewey writes in his article Dirty Money:

Well, not all the cards. As I wrote once, the reason Apple does the things it does is to please us, the consumers. We demand a new iPhone every year that must be better and cheaper. We insist that a thousand dollars is too much for a state of the art computer. We want bigger TVs and external hard drives and slim cameras. And we, almost without exception, fail to care when our demand for more iPads drives Apple to double its orders, driving Foxconn to push more overtime, driving poorly-maintained ventilation systems to their maximum, driving a spark to ignite an aluminum-dust explosion. It’s not our problem, it’s Apple’s or it’s Foxconn’s or it’s China’s. Very reassuring.

One dreamer quoted in the NYT article says: “If they committed to building a conflict-free iPhone, it would transform technology.” Yes, and at the same time, it would transform Apple into a bankrupt company. A conflict free iPhone would cost far, far more and would in all likelihood not be as well-built. Apple knows this. The system we and they have in place works, unfortunately, at least for everyone but the workers coated in N-hexane. And at a twelve to a hundred thousand dollars a pop, they aren’t worth rocking the boat for, especially when you’ve got record profits coming in.

Just don’t forget that we’re in that boat too. Unlike many other companies whose profits come largely from ads, enterprise products, or components, the vast majority of what Apple makes comes straight out of a consumer’s pockets, more or less willingly. More than any other mega-corporation you and I deal with on a daily basis, we are fully in control of our contributions to this company. We’re part of this. Some would say the biggest part.

(Via TechCrunch » apple)

Take ‘Em to Church?

Gruber explains that profit is not to be sacrificed on the altar of market share. Continue reading →

Gruber explains that profit is not to be sacrificed on the altar of market share. Continue reading

Kinect Voice Not Commanding

The Kinect’s voice command is no Siri. Continue reading →

The Kinect’s voice command is no Siri. Continue reading

More on the Louis C.K. Experiment

It was successful, but we need more data. Continue reading →

It was successful, but we need more data. Continue reading

Beleagured Doesn’t Begin to Describe It

RIM can’t get even begin digging out of the hole it’s until late 2012. Continue reading →

RIM can’t get even begin digging out of the hole it’s until late 2012. Continue reading

Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater…Cheap!

Louis CK shows how a disintermediated artist can make money, control his/her brand, and provide added value to the customer. Continue reading

Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater:

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. [emphasis mine] They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

(Via The Loop.)

Information on the internet is costly to produce, near costless to distribute, but marketing can be an issue, a costly one at that.  Louis CK has an established brand so he can take the risks in production and let the viral nature of the Internet do its thing.

The experiment was successful but it’s not a game changer for Louis CK per se.  (If you doubt that, you put out $250,000 for production and see how viral your show goes.)  He just cut out a middle man, made more money and we saved some.  That’s the game changer for the big distribution, really marketing, companies.  Social networking is not good for their business model.  Not at all.

Read his whole post.  A lot to learn there.

Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater…Cheap!

Louis CK shows how a disintermediated artist can make money, control his/her brand, and provide added value to the customer. Continue reading →

Louis CK shows how a disintermediated artist can make money, control his/her brand, and provide added value to the customer. Continue reading

In Ways that Seem Inconsistent

Disturbing allegations of Apple connected with Digitude given Apple’s consistency. Continue reading

Apple may be using patent troll to do its legal dirty work:

It’s not clear just how complicit Apple is in Digitude’s business, but EFF staff attorney Julie Samuels told TechCrunch that if Apple was deliberately aiding Digitude’s patent trolling, “it would be horrifying.” And even if Apple were somehow coerced into settling with Digitude, Samuels doubts that “Apple didn’t have any other options.”

As we noted recently, Apple has a tendency to use its intellectual property in ways that seem inconsistent. For instance, an Opera developer claims that Apple has a pattern of using patents to slow down the W3C’s open standards process, while promoting open standards when it gives Apple leverage against its competitors. This situation with Digitude seems similar; Apple opposes the tactics of patent trolls when they come after iOS developers, but seems to support them if it aids its ongoing legal battle for dominance of the smartphone market.

(Via arstechnica.com)

Disturbing to say the least!

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