b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
Most Popular
- Historical Yearly Average Gasoline Prices
- Outlook 2003 Message-ID Insanity
- Real-time Sand Animations
- Adobe Acrobat 7
- Adobe Announces Name Change and New Product
- Largest Technology Boondoggle in Public Education History
- Yahoo! Buys del.icio.us
- Skype - Disruptive, Not Compelling
- Aluminum Christmas Tree Museum
- Network Printing Hell and windoze XP
Book Reviews
Recently
We Did Nothing Wrong, But We'll Give You $2 Billion Just To Be Fair
Business Software Alliance - The Poor Can Pay Like Everyone Else
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Invest While You Rest
Have you seen this? It's a stock award program for frequent customers at Jameson Inns. I saw a billboard for it on the way to the office this morning, and I've never seen anything like it. I don't know anything about Jameson Inns, and can't imagine that many people who actually stay in a Jameson actually want stock in a hotel chain (JAMS is currently trading at about $2.40 on NASDAQ.) But I have to give them credit for innovation.
You get 10% of your room rate in credit towards stock purchase. You have to stay three (3) nights to qualify, at which point Jameson automatically (assuming you've enrolled in the program) creates a stock account for you. The max applicable room rate is $100/night, meaning a max of $10 credit toward stock purchase. I suspect most Jameson's are considerably under $100/night, but you can still figure on getting 3-4 shares of the company for each night's stay. I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but it's interesting. Is any other company doing something like this? Maybe Trader Mike knows...
Terry Frazier at 10:19 AM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Business & Finance
Friday, June 17, 2005
We Did Nothing Wrong, But We'll Give You $2 Billion Just To Be Fair
The Economist reports on two US banks - Chase and CitiGroup - settling a lawsuit claim that they aided Enron in screwing Californians.J.P. MORGAN CHASE agreed to pay $2.2 billion to settle its part i a class-action lawsuit, led by the University of California, that accuses several banks of aiding Enron in defrauding investors before the energy trader went bankrupt in December 2001. Last week, CITIGROUP said it would pay $2.0 billion to settle its part in the suit. Both banks deny any wrongdoing.
We now live in the age of credulity. What sort of wrongdoing could these banks have possibly not done that would cause them to pay $2 Billion each?! I've never not done something for which I would pay a measly $1 million, or even a paltry $100,000. But these guys have not done a thing worth $2 Billion. Wow. Not doing stuff can sure get you in trouble. It's lucky they didn't actually do anything or someone might have had to spend five months under house arrest.
Terry Frazier at 4:10 PM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Business & Finance
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Business Software Alliance - The Poor Can Pay Like Everyone Else
Via Ars Technica comes this link to a Business Software Alliance press release proclaiming 2004 software piracy losses in excess of $30 billion.
STOP THE INSANITY!!
The Ars Technica article, thankfully, notes the silliness of BSA’s 1–to-1 ratio of pirate copies to lost sales:
However, some of the BSA's claims deserve closer scrutiny. Does US$33 billion in pirated software automatically equate to US$33 billion in lost sales? Actually, it's not even close. Despite the BSA's arguments, each sale of a pirated title does not correspond to a lost sale of a legitimate copy.
They also note that the top piracy offenders - Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe - also have the lowest per-capita GDP and pull a great quote from BSA Regional Director Jeffrey Hardee via an AP story:
If you can afford the hardware, you can afford the software.
This attitude, and the absurd insistence that every pirate copy is a sale forgone, serve to completely undermine the honesty, believability, and effectiveness of Hardee’s position and show him in a harsh light. Let's examine Hardee's World for a moment and see just how this adds up. According the BSA press release:
- Although piracy rates decreased in 37 countries, they increased in 34 countries. They remained consistent in 16 countries.
- In more than half the 87 countries studied, the piracy rate exceeded 60 percent. In 24 countries, the piracy rate exceeded 75 percent.
- The countries with the highest piracy rates were Vietnam (92 percent), Ukraine (91 percent), China (90 percent), Zimbabwe (90 percent) and Indonesia (87 percent).
- The countries with the lowest piracy rates were the United States (21 percent), New Zealand (23 percent), Austria (25 percent), Sweden (26 percent), and United Kingdom (27 percent).
- The emerging markets in Asia Pacific, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa account for over one-third of PC shipments today, but only a tenth of spending on PC software.
Using data from the CIA World Factbook, piracy leader Vietnam ranks 161 in per-capita GDP, with an average annual income equivalent to $2,700 USD and 29% of the population under the poverty level. Runner-up Ukraine ranks 115 at $6,300 USD. Third-place finisher China comes in at 121, with per-capita equivalent of $5,600 USD.
What a stunning development – these people have shown absolutely no interest in spending 5%-10% of an entire year’s wage for a bloated, crashing, overrated piece of software like WindowsXP. That’s like asking the average US Citizen to pay $4,000 – yes, $4,000 – for a copy of Windows. Hello?! Am I the only one that sees how absurd this is? Based on statistics published at ITFacts.biz, the Chinese are buying PCs at the rate of 10–12 million per year. But when you can buy a PC in China for well under $200USD and the OS costs almost 2x that what do you expect?
To their credit, BSA does note that total financial losses from the top pirates are substantially less than losses in the major software markets of North America and Europe. Even though the number of pirated copies as a percentage of total copies in circulation is much smaller in these markets, the overall market size is substantially larger. And, assuming that every pirate copy has cost them a sale is a convenient way to generate some big, scary, “We have to do something NOW!” numbers.
There is certainly a problem with Asian PC makers who bundle bootleg copies of software in order to sell PCs (many do) and therefore profit unfairly from the work of US companies. But there is simply no legitimate economic basis for any of the current “loss estimates.” So long as the RIAA/MPAA/BSA continue to ignore basic economic principles and engage in blatant fabrication to suit their PR and political goals it will be a tough battle to get any popular support for their cause. I do not believe businesses – Chinese or otherwise – should profit from pirated software, but organizations that blatantly lie to achieve their goals are just as bad..
If the piracy cops want honesty from software users maybe they should start with a little honesty in their business practices. I don’t appreciate being treated like an idiot – fed ridiculous numbers as if I don’t have sense enough to do basic math. Until these organizations start to put some legitimate piracy/sales ratios in place we have no reason to trust them, pity them, or help them.
Terry Frazier at 9:06 PM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Business & Finance, Copyright, Technology
Syndication
Contact
Presence
This Page was last updated: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:06:57 GMT
