LaughingTrader

Apple May Be on the Verge of Kneecapping the Cable Industry

How long will it be before Apple rebrands "iTunes" as "iMedia", or something even more generic like iCloud? Maybe Microsoft actually was a little more forward thinking that Apple for once when they settled on the name Media Player back in the day?

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

"President Obama told bankers to "take a third and fourth look" at their small-business lending, saying they were obliged ..."

Isn't that what got us into this mess (at least partially) in the first place? And by "that" I mean government strong-arming banks to give loans to people or companies who could not pay it back.

The Google Phone, Unlocked (Confirmed and More Details)

I don't see how this can work, so there must be more to the story. The value in smart phones is the combination of the network and the phone. And a cheap voice plan does not cut it. You must have a data-plan (preferably all-you-can-eat). Now, data-plans are quite profitable for the carriers, which is why they provide such a generous subsidy for smartphones. If you force consumers to pay full price for a smartphone (forgoing the carrier subsidy) and also require them to purchase a data-plan, the economics start to make much less sense. Why would I go with a Google unlocked phone (for, I'm guessing $399 to $599) when I could get a subsidized iPhone for $199? The monthly charge would be the same in either case. The $200 to $400 difference could pay for a full year's service (I pay $30/month for data on Verizon), making the total cost of a Google phone about twice as expensive as an iPhone.

My guess is Google is planning something on the service side as well. Perhaps they are planning some sort of advertising-based data-plan subsidy.

GE Is David Hartzell's Highest Conviction Holding - Here's Why

With the way health care reform is settling out I have come to the conclusion that one "winner" that will result from the new policies is the medical device repair and support industry. The proposed legislation is going to crush the medical device industry, both with direct taxation of that industry ($40B targeted at the industry) as well as by cutting reimbursements and usage (see recent mammography and pap smear "recommendations"). The net result is a tremendous opportunity for companies that can keep old medical devices working. This is where GE fits in. In this new inhospitable (to device manufacturers) environment, new systems will be very difficult to justify and consequently medical device companies will not be investing in the design of those new systems (other than to cost-reduce existing systems).

I pulled this quote from the GE website:

"Count on GE Healthcare to care for your equipment with the largest, most highly trained service force in the industry. GE deploys more service engineers per square mile across the U.S. than any other service provider – their thousands of hours of rigorous training continues to raise the standard for service expertise."

Can Apple Stop the Android?

I am a gadget guy as well. I recently purchased the Droid after having been a WinMo guy for years. The superiority of Android 2.0 over WinMo (6.1 pro) is stunning. I should add that I have never been an Apple fan as I have always viewed their products as well-designed, but over-priced.

From my perspective, the mobile smartphone marketplace is now a 2 horse race: Android and iPhone. And as a software developer who develops for desktop Windows and has in the past developed for the WinMo platform, I believe Android will emerge as the dominant platform due to superior openness and due to friendliness to developers.

Developer friendliness is where Microsoft has historically excelled, and is in my opinion one of the overlooked keys to their success. However, developer friendliness in the mobile world is expanded relative to the desktop world, and I don't think Microsoft has quite grasped this yet. They need more than just a good set of developer tools.

That said, it is still not too late for Microsoft to become competitive in the mobile market. Perhaps 6.5 will help. They still have a developer-centric viewpoint which is wired into their DNA. What they need is a more competitive platform, which should lead to a larger installed base, which itself helps to attract 3rd party developers. Of course the mobile platform is now more than just the OS itself. It includes a slick application store, in addition to developer tools that make it easy for 3rd party developers to create applications, publish them, and reap the lion's share of the profits from their efforts. Oh, and it has to be easy for users to find, purchase and install these applications. In short, Microsoft has quite a bit of catch-up work to do.

Tuesday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

On Sep 01 07:17 AM Dr. O wrote:

> 2003-2004 looks nearly identical to this years rally off the bottom.
> However, the economy, the financial system, and the political environment
> seem far more impaired now than then.

You've got that right. In 2003 we were on the cusp of benefiting from a real stimulus package ... tax cuts "for the rich". Today we are being subjected to exactly the opposite "remedy" ... huge increases in government spending, followed soon after by massive tax increases. I for one am not optimistic.

Will Virtualization Undermine Network Equipment Vendors?

The growth of virtualization seems to me to have a fairly predictable impact on the various players in the tech market. First, the computer hardware vendors (Dell, HP, etc) are hurt by this trend as a single box can be configured to "look" like multiple machines on the network. The network vendors are helped by virtualization as the number of nodes multiply with ease. Lastly, software vendors are helped by virtualization, again because the number of machines (licenses) is easily and inexpensively expanded.

Long term, I also think virtualization hurts Microsoft, even though in the short term it helps them. This is because I forsee a time when the operating system truly does not matter. The OS will be distributed bundled with the applications as a virtual machine that users will just run alongside other virtual machine/application bundles. Users would routinely be running OS/application bundles featuring different OSes, side-by-side, without even being aware, or caring, that one application is running in Linux while another is running in Windows. As this plays out, Microsoft will lose the massive leverage its gains from Windows' dominance.

Who's Blowing This Bubble - And When Will It Pop?

On Aug 08 02:56 AM Moon Kil Woong wrote:

> The Fed always encorages the US citizen to spend and hold as little equity as possible.

Precisely. Because they have many ways to tax consumption, but taxing savings is less lucrative (especially with such low interest rates). It is also in the government's best interest to foster stock market instability so that people will keep moving in and out of the market, generating taxable capital gains. If we "buy and hold" the government gets shut out. We must always remember that the government is no different from anybody else in terms of watching out for its own self-interests.

The Mac vs. PC Debate Was Never Clearer

I'll admit to being a dyed-in-the-wool PC/Windows user from way back. I have always built my own systems, and have built well over 25 machines by now.

One day two years ago I decided to buy a Mac Mini to see what all the fuss was about. I went to the Apple store and asked the salesman if there were empty RAM slots on the motherboard so I could upgrade the RAM. He had to go to the "genius bar" to find out, and when he returned he said "there are no free slots, and besides we recommend you have us do the upgrade since you void your warranty if you open the box yourself". "Of course you do" I replied with a smile. Anyhow, I bought the Mac and when I got it home I learned that I needed a special tool just to open the case ... so, something tells me you are not being very truthful in describing your upgrade experience as it doesn't match mine.

Well, I've had the Mini for almost 2 years now. At first I used it quite a bit, even downloading their development tools to see how difficult it was to write applications for Macs (I am a Windows developer). I found the machine unremarkable, and the OS quite similar to XP. Like Windows, it had some annoying foibles. For instance, when navigating to my NAS media archive, the Mac would crash every time I opened the movies folder. I learned to avoid that folder. Then one day I turned it on and it just wouldn't boot - it just showed the gray Apple logo for hours. I ended up restoring it from the rescue media, thereby wiping out most of what I had done on the machine (I did have a "time machine" backup, but it wasn't recent). Since the system restore episode I have very rarely even turned the Mac on. I failed to see what all the fuss was about, but I'm glad I took the plunge so I could see firsthand.


On Jul 24 05:52 PM enkidu21 wrote:

>
> Now I use a Mac Mini and, guess what, I self-upgraded a low-end Intel
> Core Solo Mini that I got dirt cheap -- hard drive, optical drive,
> CPU and RAM. Took me a 1/2 hour and no special tools or skills.
>
>
> Most people, however, with Macs or PCs, are not going to crack their
> computers open to upgrade even the RAM. They want to buy a computer
> that just works, out of the box. And this, too, is where Apple shines
> and Windows... not so much.

Portfolio Strategies - The Importance of Keeping It 'Relatively' Simple

On Jul 25 12:01 AM Paul H. M. wrote:

> Nationalized health care will mean more people will have health care,
> which means more demand, which is more jobs, and a better economy.
>
>
> Who would not want that?

With tightly-controlled (unprofitable) reimbursements, no health care investor wants an uncompetitive, government-run health care market.

I heard a really good summary of what nationalized health care will be: it will combine the compassion of the IRS with the efficiency of the Post Office.

Priming the Pump for $20/Gal. Gas: Interview with Chris Steiner

This sounds to me like another book written by a zealot. I'm finding that there are a lot of people who want to tell the rest of us how to live. They mock our choices of where we live, the homes and vehicles we buy, our family sizes, and our "consumerism". To justify these criticisms they are constantly spewing contrived/predictive books, movies and pseudo-documentaries. For some reason that I cannot fathom it really bothers them that people are living better, and longer, than they ever have in history. The human race is thriving as never before. Why does this upset them so?

As for the author's self-serving "predictions", I agree with another poster above who said nobody can predict the future. However, I will go out on a limb and suggest that the patterns evident in the past thousand years of human behavior is a pretty good predictor of the next 100 years. And those patterns include tremendous technological advancements in agriculture, transportation, energy and medicine. All of these advances improve the human condition and expand (or support the expansion of) the population of the planet. I am not one to bet against these trends continuing.

Will gas hit $20/gallon? Of course it will! And if $20/gallon does not allow us to continue to improve (nevermind maintain) our quality of life, or the quality of our children's lives, we will develop alternatives that do allow it. And I don't believe those alternatives include moving en masse back into crowded, crime-infested cities because that represents a step backwards. Instead, I believe we will develop new technologies that will allow the human race to further expand and flourish. They will allow us to live life on our terms in the manner WE choose. And in reaction to this, the zealots will cringe and rage and continue to try and scare us all into behaving the way they want us to behave. And so the cycle continues ...

Google Drops a Nuclear Bomb on Microsoft. And It's Made of Chrome.

Mainstreet said: "This Google OS news is a defensive response to MS's new Bing. Since Bing's early June launch, Google is down over 10%."

This is right on target. Why else would they pre-announce over a year early (it is due sometime in 2010)?

Respirate said: "On one hand, I've found Chrome, the browser, to be not only fast, but also rock solid stable -- most surprising given that it's new. It's also a feat never achieved by Microsoft in anything. "

Hmm, you didn't mention what OS you are running that "rock-solid" Chrome on. If it's Windows, then by implication Windows must also be rock-solid (as it would then be the underpinnings and foundation of Chrome). This, therefore would refute your second sentence. In fact, Microsoft gets bashed repeatedly for the failures and lapses of 3rd party application developers. Every once in a while someone does an uptown job on a Windows application, which should demonstrate how stable Windows actually is, but it never gets noticed or mentioned.

All of that said, I look forward to the competition. As is usually the case when two great companies duke it out, the consumer wins.

Why 'Cash for Clunkers' Is a Bad Idea

Here's a thought. If this program is really about reducing pollution, (rather than being a bone tossed to the UAW), spend the $1B putting sensors on traffic lights (or fixing the ones we already have) and synchronizing them. I can't tell you how many times I've been driving along only to hit a red light when there is nobody coming from the intersecting road. I stop, sit and idle, wasting gas, and then must re-accelerate, wasting more gas. I would love to know how much gas could be saved by making traffic lights more intelligent. And this pays back for all vehicles, not just the clunkers, and it keeps paying back year after year.

BRIC to BIC to BICI?

How can a country with negative population growth be considered an emerging market? It seems to me Russia is fading, not emerging. Short term they enjoy clout due to their energy exports, but a rapidly declining demographic will definitely hamper their future growth rates. This affects them in two ways. First, internal consumption will trail off. Second, a shrinking population means there are fewer workers available to replace those retiring, thereby slowing the production of goods and services.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz: We're a Different Company than Google

I actually liked what Bartz had to say regarding Yahoo! providing a great integrated experience. For busy people who can't be bothered to visit a handful of sites every morning to get their news, their My Yahoo front page is a very nice solution. I have been using My Yahoo! as my default home page since its first inception (I can't remember how long ago - it seems forever). It is basically my personal newspaper. It ties in with the excellent yahoo finance pages, gives me my sports, email, news, and comics, the way I want them. I have periodically tried Google's iGoogle stuff but it is far inferior. Of course I use Google for search and have for a long time.

One area I would like to see Yahoo improve upon is to come up with a decent mobile My Yahoo experience. In this area Google actually does a better job and so my default home page on my phone is iGoogle.