About a year ago, I was in the market for a laptop.
Pretty sure it would be an Acer, a Thinkpad or an HP, but it was less clear what OS I would get.
Vista was about to launch, and XP was still on the machines in the stores.
I told my wife, You watch, they’ll launch Vista and then jam them onto the existing XP laptops in the chains, which won’t run them right, and people will blame the OS and Microsoft.
That’s exactly what happened. WSJ is reporting that Microsoft lowered the technical requirements to help Intel hit its targets.
Now they’re whacking the price of Vista to make up sales.
Wonder if Intel shareholders will give some of the money they made that quarter to Microsoft shareholders, you know, as a gesture of solidarity.
Bullsh*t, total bullsh*t.
1 year ago
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How much is that house worth?
Well, depends on your metro in the Case Shiller index, but a way to check the estimable Prof. Shiller is to simply roll back to a house in that metro that sold in 2001 or so.
I did it. Saw a house in Charlotte on the market for $250,000. Checked the tax records. It was bought in 2001 for $165,000.
So, a 34% premium over the buy price.
Checked the Charlotte, NC metro index. And it is (drumroll….)
131.90
Put another way, its 32% over the index, which like all good indexes makes 100 the base line.
Pretty damn close to perfect. So now you know what to offer.
Problem, of course, is that way, way too many people bought houses after 2001, on the upswing, and borrowed too much to do so.
Uh, oh.
1 year ago
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God bless Alan Greenspan.
He flooded the economy with cheap money, keeping us from feeling even the slightest twinge of pain.
He cleaned up after us, credit binge after credit binge.
And he spoke an odd dialect of Olde Economics English, now known as Greenspeak. Here’s a sample:
“I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I’ve said.”
Ah, the master…
The Fed’s new occupant? He says what’s really going on, and people just can’t deal.
1 year ago
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Okay, let me see if I get this:
If you put up an expensive wind turbine, as long as the wind blows, you get free or nearly free power.
And when the wind stops blowing, you get … panic? brownouts?
Apparently, that’s how they do it Texas.
1 year ago
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The race to place blame for global warming is headed for the courts, starting with a tiny Eskimo village that has long relied on ice to keep the ocean from flooding it away.
Before you snicker and say, You go, Eskimos, sue that big oil company!, consider this:
Your gas and power consumption is the cause (whether you subscribe to global warming or not, that will be the basis of the case).
If the oil companies lose, they will pass along the legal costs to you.
Gas prices will rise as a result or fall less than they might on oversupply.
Some Eskimos will get paid, victory or settlement.
Some lawyers will REALLY get paid.
Global warming will continue unabated, regardless of the legal outcome.
1 year ago
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India is considering breaking Pfizer’s and others’ patents on some cancer drugs.
This all started a few years back when Brazil broke patents on AIDS drugs. It was seen then as a humanitarian issue, since AIDs drugs are expensive and poor people have the disease in great numbers.
So the WTO buckled and said okay, do it, make your own generic copies and give them away, and we’ll keep Big Pharma at bay.
Thus it starts. Expect the drug companies to go nuts if India goes through with the cancer patents.
Expect the humanitarian argument to resurface. And for drug prices to rise in rich countries to offset what will surely be significant losses for pharma stocks.
What goes around, comes around.
1 year ago
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Remember when Bush was waving around switchgrass and saying we should start running our cars on mulch and whatnot?
Turns out he was more right than anyone would have guessed, ‘cause the price of wheat is now so freaking high that Cargill is giving up on building ethanol plants.
Breaks down like this:
Poor people sell us oil and toys.
We give them dollars.
They buy more food with it.
Wheat price rises.
We pay more for food, too.
Ethanol no longer makes sense, economically, either.
So we buy more oil instead.
Infinite repeat.
1 year ago
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Most campaigns would spend hundreds of thousands to reinvent the Web wheel, come up with an overthought Web “strategy” and a passel of consultants and weeks of development.
Obama’s people are about gettin’ it done.
Just go create a Meet Up site and let’s start meetin’!
1 year ago
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But if the airlines were to offer me fly anytime, fly anywhere seats (I know, on standby…) for oh, $1,000 a year domestic and maybe $2,500 international, I’d buy it.
Then they could just put me on Delta, or Northwestern, or JetBlue, hell I don’t care, as long as I get there in a day or so.
Then, instead of staging fake merger talks every five or six years they could get serious about providing service. This is already how things work on Orbitz, which they own, so why not?
I’m just sayin’…
1 year ago
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That Apple is now the No. 2 music retailer is only slightly less astounding to me than the fact that Wal-Mart is No. 1.
And that neither of these companies were in the “record store” business just a few years ago. In fact, Apple’s business DID NOT EVEN EXIST.
Talk about gettin’ bitch-slapped by the invisible hand…
The real comeuppance is due, though. To quote Moby, “Why do I need a record company to put my music on my own Web site?”
1 year ago
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