I tried to allude to the Zune with the 'Plays for Sure' comment -- I think it's important not just to point out MS' failures, but also what happens to people who get in bed with Microsoft.

And the potential list of world-changing developments that completely failed to change anything would just be too long.

E.g. The ribbon, tablets, WinCE, WebTV, MSN, Windows ME, Vista, the list goes on and on and on.

Anybody remember their Smart Watch?

Accountant: We're losing money on every unit we sell.

PHB: That's okay, we'll make up for it in volume.

But that certainly does appear to be the case, even though the Kinnect is sold with a healthy margin -- I recall seeing a hardware breakdown that suggested a build cost of around $55 to $60.

A bit odd, considering Apple has been so successful at it. Microsoft's MO has always been to copy others' successes, particularly Apple's. Maybe they've just failed at this more spectacularly than they've failed at their other attempts to copy. (Hows that 'Plays For Sure' thing working out?)

Which is to say that despite years of effort and tens of billions in R&D, they're no more than marginal players in most of the 'spaces' they try to enter. It's all OSs, office suites, and business backends, and the clock is ticking in each of these areas.

I'll give you game consoles, although it will take several more generations of Xbox before the billions in development are paid off. Anyone other than MS, however, would have considered the Xbox project a failure years ago.

They're not interested in you buying their hardware without their software any more than you buying a white-box PC without a Windows license. I'm not sure their tactics from the '90s will work again.

Sure, but not in an off-the-shelf package that costs $200.

Hee hee. I'll never get tired of Microsoft shills harping on the supposedly great stuff we'll see in the next edition of whatever. I don't know of any company ever that has so consistently over-promised and under-delivered -- and that behavior goes back to MS-DOS 1.0.

Remember how Longhorn was going to, like, totally change everything? Remember how WinFS was going to be revolutionary? Heck, remember how in the early '90s we were all going to be controlling our computers with voice commands?

It's coming in the next version of Windows, and it'll be, like, the most totally mind-blowing thing you've ever seen! Really soon now! Promise!

You should be happy with how many people hate Microsoft. Nobody will hate them when they are no longer relevant, and I don't reckon that's more than about five to ten years away.

Maybe you don't have a jet-powered lawn mower, but maybe you're just not that serious about your yard work.

I figure it was because the testers couldn't afford the licensing fees.

There's a bit more to it than that. If you travel in Europe for business, you're going to be visiting different countries. They're all on the same GSM standard, but roaming and out-of-network rates have traditionally been extortionate.

When I lived there in the late '90s, early '00s, I knew plenty of people who carried multiple phones -- one with their primary number, another with their 'other network' number, and sometimes a third that they could swap pay-as-you-go cards into when travelling.

When I lived in Slovakia there were two carriers, one owned by Orange the other by DT (later T-Mobile). All outgoing calls were metered. Calls in-network were reasonable but out of network -- i.e. from Slovak T-Mobile to Slovak Orange, cost something like five times as much. Calls elsewhere in the EU could approach 20 times as much.

The carriers didn't want to sell unlocked phones, but that's what people demanded. Generally you couldn't buy an unlocked phone from a carrier, but if you already had one, they were happy to sell you a SIM.

Everybody age 16 to 25 either could unlock a phone themselves or knew someone who could. Everyone knew someone that age. Also, most people who wanted one bought an unlocked phone from sources other than the carriers.

Plus, it was much more common for people to buy the phone and use a pay-as-you-go service rather than get a subsidized phone as part of a fixed contract.

The carriers wanted a long-term plan system like exists here but the market wasn't interested, for many reasons including those mentioned above.

But if it cost a US user 20x as much to call someone in another state, things might have worked out differently.

My HTC Hero (CDMA) has a goofy shaped mini-USB port, but a standard mini-USB cable works fine.

I was really impressed with the charger design. There's no transformer at all -- just a wall socket adapter that collapses flat, with a removable piece for changing socket type. USB cable plugs into that; the other end (modified mini-USB) plugs into the phone.

By my calculations, that's a year's supply for over 120,000 heavy dope smokers, or a month's supply for 1.5 million.

There may be plenty more coming in, but it's hardly a trivial amount.

Economically speaking, that is risk, and as you note, it's already factored into the cost.

Probably. After all, if the risk is reduced, you'd expect to pay a lower premium for it. Like how an older driver with a clean record and sensible car pays less for insurance than a 20 year-old with a new Corvette.

On the other hand, while living in Europe, I didn't notice a significant difference in cannabis prices in places where there was less risk (e.g. Netherlands) vs significantly more (e.g. UK, Austria).

It's partly a question of risk premium, but it's also partly a what-the-market-will-bear issue.

What's a gram of medical skunk go for in CA? How does it compare to the mentioned street price of about $17/gram?

By business models, think specifically about finance. It's nasty and heartless, but the fact is that modern society is only possible with finance.

But if a borrower is under no legal obligation to pay back a loan, there is no finance, and by extension, very little business.

As easy as it is to hate big business and government, we do actually need both.

That is not to excuse Hollywood for trying legislation as a solution to an obsolete business model, or to excuse tariffs in protecting certain agricultural sectors.

But we simply couldn't have a society of such prosperity and material comfort without large businesses willing to assume the long-term financial risk, and a government with laws that protect not just property but investment.

Drugs?

You'll note that even the biggest busts, e.g. the seizure of 30 tons of cannabis last week in San Diego, seem to have no effect whatsoever on either supply or pricing.

You'll also note that organized crime and violence go hand-in-hand because criminal groups have no other means other than loose, mafia-style collusion to resolve disputes.

The fact is that we want laws to protect property and business models. If you disagree, I suggest moving your business operations to Mogadishu.

It's working at the moment, but every headline is follwed by:

"This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:"

The really wonderful thing is that each 'post-protected' message also has buttons to share the link via email/facebook/digg, etc. Fantastic.

No.

Jobs left Apple in 1985 to start NeXT computers. From their first model in 1988, all NeXTs had built-in networking. This was the late '80s, when pretty much no one outside of university computer departments and research labs had ever even heard of the internet, let alone had any idea what it was.

Not really, and certainly not at the time. There was a bidding war between BMW and VW in 1998, but not because of RR's success -- they were in fact in serious danger of going under.

RR had gone from a company with virtually sole-ownership of the ultra-luxury car market to an old firm, struggling to adapt, and squeezed on all sides.

Neither VW nor BMW were at all interested in RR's technology (much of which they already provided), margin (which was small-to-nonexistent), or market share (which was tiny, even for the ultra-high end market).

They were both interested because of the name, i.e. the brand.

We are not talking about the value of a brand but rather whether a brand is "dying", and the measure of that is the brand's market share.

No. A brand is dying as its market loses faith, trust, positive association, etc with that brand. A 'dying' brand is simply one that is losing its cachet within its market.

It's not really that important when you're an effective monopoly, like Comcast, or when you're cheaper than everyone else, like WalMart.

But when you're trying to sell consumer electronic gadgets into a very crowded market, and they're not the best, nor the most attractive, nor the easiest, nor the cheapest, nor the most capable ... all you really have going for you is the brand.

This seems to work well with Sony TVs, for example, because they still have quite a good reputation for TVs.

MS has no (nor deserves any) good reputation for consumer devices -- the only decent one they've made is still billions in the hole.