I appreciate the convenience of the Kiosk as I frequent locations with Kiosks at least twice a day between going to the gas station, going to the grocer, going to the drugstore, etc. I've got Redbox and Blockbuster kiosks within 2 minutes of my front door.
I find the main pratfall of the Kiosks to be that they are largely tuned to new releases. Even if there are only a scant handful of new movies each year that I find worth seeing, using the Kiosk for those 'guaranteed in stock' titles is still helpful because I don't need to waste valuable (now even more so) DVD queue turnover time on them.

With 1 DVD out at a time you could generally average 8 DVD's a month. With the changes in USPS service this number is going to decrease, driving the average dollar cost per rental well over $1 while making kiosks attractive and easier on the pocket. Add in the fact that you can also rent video games at some kiosks, and Netflix is going to be hurting.

Whether people in more rural areas without such ready access to kiosks get on board or not, the end result is still a net loss for the USPS.

That is going to be a pain for subscribers to Netflix, Gamefly, etc. I used to be able to validate the turn around time with local processing centers, but this is going to impact monthly turnover for those with DVD plans. I can see where this is probably going to do more to push consumers to use Redbox and Blockbuster kiosks, furthering the impact to the bottom line of USPS when more Netflix subscribers drop their service, decreasing use of traditional mail.

You've never played D&D or watched lottery results have you?

I generally trust that the list of numbers that don't match my ticket at the lottery website are genuinely randomly generated.

The Google story is older than you give it credit for. Just because you were too young to know what it was didn't mean that some of us weren't already 'feeling lucky' in choosing Google over Altavista, Lycos, and everyone else. Google got the job done AND worked just fine in Mosaic.

Whoops, forgot the www in my code. Sorry 'bout that.

As it happens, the place I was referencing for that particular statement has had more than a few accolades. Whether people like her or respect her opinion, Rachael Ray named us in the top 8 pizzerias in the US. I ran the kitchen there for over 2.5 years; Purchasing, production, and everything else that wasn't mixing a drink up at the front bar eventually fell into my lap. Groupon wasn't a major factor in anything.

The owner is a big fan of analytics, having set the Guiness record for solving the rubik's cube at the age of 14, writing a book on it at 16, graduating from Yale to spend years as a programmer before going into Pizza and doing lectures on mastery & analytics for Google and other companies. He tracked more fiscal minutiae and marketing variables than I've ever seen on the back end of the business. Did I mention Groupon wasn't a major factor? It wasn't a factor.

I suspect we are talking at cross purposes.

Probably.

I was addressing the actual cost per unit (to include labor and materials) as ~1/20th of the cost paid by the consumer.
Occasionally particular items require more effort or require a higher cost because of specific ingredients, but most bakers with business longevity don't have that cost associated with EVERY item.

Most of the orders aren't unique as such, but rather chosen from a limited selection. Some of the cupcake styles will of course require more effort than others, but many of her offerings are simple designs that use cookie-cuttered fondant or edible pastry print, and all of the cupcakes are presumably using one of several base cupcakes. Cross utilization is always king in this type of operation.

Filling the oven is less of an issue because the bulk of the labor is going to be the actual decoration of the cupcakes. It would only take one unskilled laborer that can read and follow directions(though that can be asking a lot these days) to keep everyone on staff but the dishwasher rolling in cupcakes.
Secondly, it is unlikely that 8500 people went to a cupcake store that they probably didn't know much about that same week, much less that month. Business was swamped by comparison to her normal routine I'm sure, but Groupon is a tricky devil that is still kicking you long after the initial rush.

I like to use the deals on Groupon, but I hate what it does to my food costs when it's used on me.
One of the last deals we had with them was a $25 coupon for the cost of $15. We then paid Groupon $5 for each of those coupons they sold. Sadly customers didn't use it all on baked goods...

I've only ever baked for 'mom and pop' affairs, so I wouldn't know about chain stores. The first time was for a boss who started with $500 and 2 credit cards 18 years ago and turned it all into a well known gourmet market in the Atlanta area. Another time was for another well known DIY restaurant/bakery in town.
My mother was a pastry chef who has made cakes similar to those on the website of your wife since I was 3 years old. I know the costs and labor involved to make make breads, cakes and other assorted patisserie fair. There is still an insanely low margin on baking using 'fancy' ingredients.

As for Groupon...Groupon costs a lot in food costs, and 2 years later I hadn't seen any significant change in sales that could've been attributed to their involvement.

Most baking is on a very low margin because of the bulk batches made by the Baker. Bread, Doughnuts, Pastries, and such can all be under 6% even utilizing 'expensive' ingredients like nuts and fruit. It's laborious, but only requires a few people to have any actual skill depending on the situation because of easy recipes.

I'm surprised she didn't approach a local culinary school if her cupcakes took such skill to prepare and create.

Read the article (Or just work it out by looking at the picture).

The unit as conceptualized involves an exit via that white little tube sticking out of the back of the structure. The unit as presented is assembled around a window pane (walls aren't thin enough) with a hole cut in it to allow the exit tube to feed through.

Funny. I typed in 'Railo' and didn't see a single 'Rails' result.

If you don't offer more context than a single word it's not hard to take the logical next step and presume that most users are probably interested in something that would be considered a common interpretation for your potentially misspelled query than they would some 'obscure' cold fusion markup language. I've never heard of Railo before today, but I know what Rails are.
Google tends to do a very good job in offering results for the probable intent for schmoes like me who were probably misspelling 'rails' as well as the literal intent of a query for people like you in my experience. And by the fact that I was unable to find a 'rails' result in my search a few minutes ago, I'm given to a bit of lenience on the part of Google in assuming that they are performing search refinements constantly so that everyone gets what they want.
'Rails' is not more popular than 'Railo,' it's just has more utility for more people. I don't know about you, but I appreciate when someone takes that effort when I was too lazy to use a few more keystrokes to elaborate on my obscure query.

Obviously everything you desire is a minor interpretation or unrelated to whatever query you've entered if you're not getting the results you want. I'd be interested in knowing what search engine you think provides more utility than Google, because I can't think of one.
Bing is more useful to me than Google maybe 1 in 20 times. Maybe.

I'm going to mark this as 'slightly relevant' when it comes up in Google ratings.

I vote every time. The people I vote for always win. I still don't win.

The rating hike is negligible though. The cost to have streaming + 3 Dvd's out at a time is still less than what Comcast and other service providers are charging for basic cable. With Hulu being free to watch new episode content, I'm still happily along for the ride that Netflix is offering.
It was the idea of having to login to 2 different websites to find what I want to watch that really chaffed.