So the core of cutting your electric bill in half wasn't from using a power strip to eliminate power use from electronics while they are in standby, but instead was from turning things off when they weren't in use. I laud your cut in consumption but I think you are attributing it to the wrong change.

You know what they call the person that flunked out of med school? Homeopathic Doctor.

Isn't it amazing how the year with the highest box office revenues was tied for 2nd lowest number of movies that showed up in the top 250? (also, from the ones listed in the summary, which all were great revenue producers, only LotR Two Towers made it to the top 250 list) It's almost as if a movie being critically acclaimed (or IMDB user acclaimed) doesn't have a direct relation to how likely people are to go out and pay to see it.

You're not quite familiar with the concept of a loss leader, are you? You put a product in at a price where you're losing money but advertise it heavily in order to drive traffic to your store. You have a limited volume so that it doesn't cost you too much, and you accept the problem that customers who come in looking for that product after it's sold out will be dissatisfied. By putting a limit on the number of items that one person could purchase, you end up with one pissed off customer who isn't really generating you any profit anyways, and a lot of more satisfied higher value customers. If the goal is to get more happy customers, and the options are to put up more product you're losing money on or pissing off one person who's costing you money, you'll quickly find out that you don't feel so bad about pissing off that one person.

Netflix actually does a similar thing with their mailed DVD service. Let's say Bob and Fred both have HotSummerRelease on their wish list. Bob watches tons of movies, about 10 a month, returning the movies every 3 days. Fred doesn't watch nearly as many, usually only 2 a month, keeping the movies for 2 weeks at a time. You only have one copy of HotSummerRelease, who do you send it to? Most efficient and logically minded people will instantly say Bob. He's only going to keep the movie for 3 days, so you'll get it back sooner and can then send it to Fred.

That's not what Netflix does, though. They send the movie to Fred. Why? Because with all the movies that Bob goes through, he costs the company more money in terms of postage. Since Fred and Bob pay Netflix the same amount, but Bob costs more, Fred is a more valuable customer. Fred gets the movie first because Netflix wants to make sure that Fred is happy.

tl;dr: Not all customers are equal, and it's a fairly standard business practice to give preferential treatment to higher value customers and to tell expensive ones to shove off.

Ahem? Ahem yourself. The quote being discussed, and the 75% claim is:

Now see page 10 of the report linked above. Notice how retail stores is a separate category than corporate offices.

Bottom line: No, the 75% does not include stores.

Because "corporate space" does not include "retail space".

Irony: the next planet we end up colonizing ends up getting hit by a meteor and is destroyed.

That is already what is expected for brick and mortar stores. You need to track all sales in all counties and collect all relevant sales taxes. If K-Mart can handle this, I'm sure Amazon can.

This is the current state of affairs. It's called a use tax. People ignore it.

Why go through all that hassle when you can simply legislate that the merchant has to collect, report, and pay the sales tax on every purchase directly? That by itself will already generate more revenue for you, and that's what politicians love

$$$$$

Woah that's bad. Good thing nobody's ever been harmed by a bee sting!

The better question would be why did she feel it was safe to store the guns in the same building as someone who she knows is mentally unstable.

True, and the *norm* for shelf life is typically when the expenses start to outweigh the income. It sounds like the plug was pulled on this far earlier, if they're taking in $900k/mo.

Yet amazingly, Everquest and even Ultima Online are still running, after 13 and 15 years respectively.

2.Happening in the opposite way to what is expected, thus typically causing wry amusement.

I would guess that if most people were asked if the DRM-included version or the DRM-free version would be the most pirated, they would have said the DRM-free. That is the expectation. The opposite happened.

There's no question that murder is worse than mass marketing copied media. I just felt the need to point out that this wasn't just some guy making copies for his friends.