OT: James Arthur, the perfect market and the perfect op amp

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 15, 3:49 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 9:16 pm,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 15, 7:13 am, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 08/14/2011 05:04 PM, Nico Coesel wrote:

Phil Hobbs<pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net>  wrote:
Do you lie like that when it's in your economic interest?

I do not own HP shares neither am I somehow employed by them.
Actually, when I announced to be self-employed someone warned me my
honesty would cost me money at some point

If you're honest, why do you impute dishonesty to everyone else?

Rational people don't. James Arthur was irrationality imputing
dishonesty to the whole of HP on the basis of localised dishonesty in
the part of the company that makes low-end printers,

No, that's you opining without information.  I bought a computer, not
a printer, prior to the divestitures.  The thermal design was outright
negligent, causing separate failures of the power supply and hard
drive.  I corrected the flaws myself and am still using it.  It hasn't
failed since.

Okay, low-end printers and low-end computers.

You don't seem to have noticed that the comapny split in 1999, and the
bit that we all had fair\th in ended up as Agilent Technologies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard

The old HP would never, EVER have shipped that computer.  Ever.

and Nico Coesel was - perfectly rationally - pointing out that
this was an over-generalisation.

It certainly was not an over-generalization, it was a completely
accurate judgement that the company had lost its way, and no longer
provided the absolutely impeccable products that people had been
willing to pay more for.

And Agilent may well still do.

In short, they'd ruined their good name and reputation, and were set
to lose the enormous goodwill and financial value that goes with it.

I've always wondered why the low-end products got the famous name -
presumably they figured that the people who buy low end computers
know enough to recognise the Hewlett-Packard name, without recognising
that Hewlett and Packard didn't get famous as box-shifters, while the
people who buy the high-tech Agilent products will know enough to know
where Agilent came from.

Experienced in business and as investor, I was assessing their value
as a business.  I was 100% right.  I sold my shares for many times
what they traded for just a few years later.

Do you own any Agilent shares?

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 15, 7:57 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 5:04 pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:



Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
On 08/14/2011 03:30 PM, Nico Coesel wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 1:30=A0pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

The idea that companies stand by their product is something you should
let go. They are only interested in maximising profits. Show me an
honest sales person. They are extinct like dinosaurs.

Honest companies prosper because people trust them.  Honesty is in
their economic interest, especially if they're going to be around very
long.

Sorry, but that is a lie. Sales people like to use that to gain your
trust.

Just look at Microsoft and how long they are getting away by selling
crap. Its all about marketing, not about quality. In general: count
the number of adds touting 'new formula', 'better taste', 'stronger
than ever'. Like the original product was crap!

Yesterday I bought an inkjet.  I specifically avoided and did NOT buy
a Hewlett-Packard because I don't trust them.  How does that help HP?

I used to do the opposite, because once upon a time I knew that if HP
made it, it was excellent.  But Carly Fiorina's HP sold me some shoddy
gear.  I haven't trusted them since.

HP may have lost one customer but by lowering the prices and quality
they gained hundreds of new customers. HP still has good business gear
but you must be willing to pay a bit more.

Do you lie like that when it's in your economic interest?

I do not own HP shares neither am I somehow employed by them.
Actually, when I announced to be self-employed someone warned me my
honesty would cost me money at some point

I owned HP shares.  I sold them (profitably) the moment I bought
something from them that was grossly inferior, because I knew at that
point they weren't the company they used to be.

The stock later plummeted to a fraction.  Selling shoddy stuff hurt
them badly.

They got the message.  They fired their CEO.  They changed. I think
they're better now, but their ink-jet business practices just don't
smell right (selling pennies of ink for tens of dollars, with dollars
in cost to prevent you from refilling).

That's problem with the boil-the-ink to make the jet ink-jet
technology. The print heads wear out fast, and the the penny's worth
of ink comes with a complete new print head.

 I still don't trust them.

Because you confuse what HP is now with what HP used to be before the
high-tech bits we all trusted got spun off as Agilent.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 15, 4:46 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 8:58 pm,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 15, 4:45 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Politicians have no such incentive.

Politicians have exactly equivalent incentives to behave honestly

No they don't.  The penalties are far smaller, and rarely enforced.

The President attempted to bribe at least two people running for
office (Joe Sestak was one), a felony.  Penalty?  Nope.

And your evidence for this claim is?

The President deliberately misled seniors recently into thinking their
SS checks might be in danger.  An absolute lie.  Penalty?  None.

"Might be in danger" is rather unspecific. Calling it an "absolute"
lie is a longer stretch than the "might be in danger" particularly
when the Tea Party idiots were one of the items that might have
endangered the social security system - you seem to think that it
ought be shut down, and some of the Tea Party Republican seem to be
even more rabid than you are.

It has surfaced recently that the CBO was deliberately required to
score Obamacare in a fashion that understated the true cost by
hundreds of billions (omitting dependents of newly eligible), so that
Obama could claim it cost less than it actually does.  Penalty?  None..

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=581079&p=1

Found any weapons of mass destruction in Irak yet?

The Attorney General has done more than enough to be put away, Tim
Geithner has told a number of whoppers--voters' recourse?  Nada.
They're Obama's appointees, beyond the voters' reach.

No doubt Ken Starr has been approached for another stint as a special
prosecutor.

Politicians are far worse than companies.

Much the same. After all, it is mostly companies that bribe them.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 15, 4:05 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 9:42 pm,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 15, 5:52 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 1:50 pm, Les Cargill <lcargil...@comcast.com> wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Utter nonsense.  What we are seeing is companies so afraid of the Obama
policies they're sitting tight until an administration change.

"Regulatory uncertainty" is mostly a red herring.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/playing-regulatory-uncertainty...

We'll get a natural experiment as the court ruling on the individual
mandate plays out in markets, but I predict "no effect". That
may be because they're waiting for a SCOTUS ruling. I'd bet
"no effect" then, too.

Survey data shows weak demand as more of a factor than
regulatory uncertainty.

The SBA estimates  compliance with federal regulations cost $1.75
trillion dollars in 2008.http://www.sba.gov/content/impact-regulatory-costs-small-firms-0

As might be expected in something you'd cite, this study doesn't make
any attempt to evaluate the financial benefits of the regulations that
are being complied with. Onerous "irrelevancies" like the safe
disposal of poisonous waste obviously benefit the people who don't
suffer from the consequences of tipping unsorted rubbish into an
unused canal.

Given that cost, why would firms be other than concerned about the
reams of new regulations presently being pumped out night and day?
That would be irrational.  They should, for example, have a rational
expectation that Obamacare and other regs are going to significantly
add to their cost of employing someone.  That, or make a rational
determination to dump employer-based healthcare, as many firms--1/3rd
IIRC--have indicated they will.

Employer-based health care is a bad idea. Universal health care works
rather better, and pretty much every other country that has
implemented it ends up with a price per head that is at least a third
lower than the US pays. The best examples - France and Germany - offer
everybody the same level of health care that only the fully insured
enjoy in the US, at about 65% of the price per head.

We get better care

Actually, you don't. The anti-Obamacare propaganda machine found a few
bogus statistics that made it look that way, but the French and the
Germans get health care that is just as good as that offered to
insured Americans, and their public health statistics are better
because their systems are universal.

and we pay more for it.  So what?  We pay more for
food than someone in Ethiopia too.

Waht you pay extra for is extravagantly expensive administration, and
- to a lesser extent - extravagantly defensive medicine that immunised
doctors against malpractice suits.

Most of the extra cost is directly the result of government
intervention--they pay more than half the bills already, and they
increased that at 7% a year before Obamacare, and 9% since.

That's not what the studies I seen say. Most of the money was wasted
in the medical insurance industry, paying for extravagantly numerous
administrative staff.

That's a bit of a strawman though--there are numerous actual effects
of the President's policies contributing to the whole mess, like
yelling at coal companies,

How does it contribute if the coal companies don't pay any attention?

Drivel.  The President pre-announced that he was going to bankrupt
coal-based enterprises--the source of most of America's electricity.
He's doing it.

The coal industry does extract the fossil carbon that is burnt in
America's generating stations, which vent lots of carbon dioxide to
the atmosphere. America is reponsible for about 18% of the extra CO2
fed into the atmosphere every year, and it might be a good idea if it
reduced it's emissions.

You could still burn coal, capture the CO2 generated and sequester it,
but that roughly doubles the cost of generating electric power by
burning coal, and thermal solar power would actually be cheaper.

The long term prospects for coal mining are consequently bleak.

You don't believe in anthropogenic global warming, any more than you
believe in Keynesian economics, so you regard Obama's - rather better-
informed - observations as some kind of anti-capitalist assault on the
coal industry.

This is merely fatuous ignorance on your part. Go away and learn some
physics.

I heard an estimate that just one EPA regulation currently being
drafted will retire 8% of the US' generating capacity.

It's a small step in the right direction. "Merchants of Doubt" spelled
out why this kind of move doesn't find favour with right-wing nitwits.
It's not a book you'd enjoy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt

seizing car companies,

Who had gone bankrupt and were consequently worth nothing to their
share-holders

Wrong.

Really. It was a very popular delusion, shared by all the newspapers
that I read. Technically speaking, the car companies weren't actually
bankrupted before they were rescued, but this was entirely for the
convneience of their rescuers, who didn't want to have to pay reeivers
to administer what was left of the companies.

stopping oil drilling,

Continuing a long-standing policy which Dubbya had tried to dismantle,
in the interests of the oil-companies who had funded his election
campaign

snipped the rest of the misinformation

Not a single item was misinformation--you're misinformed.

Not so much misinformed, as not susceptible to your favoured brand of
political propaganda

All these things incite fear, and redirect people from doing other
more important things.

They shouldn't actually incite fear, because they are actually
business as usual.

Name a President, other than a dictator, who dispossessed secured
bondholders?

Of a company that was - for all practical purposes - bankrupt.

 Who's demanded $20 billion in ransom from a company
without first a determination that they were even in the wrong?

Not a case I've ever heard of. Do tell us more. Your bizarre
mispereceptions are often screamingly funny.

 Whose
administration has prevented companies from locating where they will?

What was this? A chlorine-generating plant or a Bhopal-style isocynate
plant in downtown New York?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

These sorts of pesky regulations are an anathema to your kind of right-
wing nitwit, but dangerous industries make nerve-wracking neighbours.

It was the President who recently suggested publicly, several times,
that Social Security checks might not be paid.

He said that deliberately to scare people.  There was never any such
possibility.  He made it up - it wasn't true.

Oh, I don't know. He might have read some of your comments about
social security, and could have figured that there was a risk that the
Tea Party republicans in congress were equally rabid. It's rather
difficult to guarantee that something couldn't possibly happen,
especially when you've got a bunch of right-wing nitwits involved in
the process.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 06:44:09 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 15, 1:29 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Aug 14, 1:21 am,BillBowden <bper...@bowdenshobbycircuits.info
wrote:

Well , I don't know, but gold seems to be a hedge against the riots
going on in London. If they burn down all the stores, what will there
be to eat?

Under Keynes London's riots are a positive boon.

Only if the economy is in recession, and then only in terms of
generating extra economic activity.

Cool. Burn the entire country down. Rebuilding will create lots of
jobs.

Think of all the construction needed to fix the damage, all the workers
that will be needed for repairs, all the materials that will be purchased.
GDP will soar!

GDP has never been an entirely satisfactory metric. You have a better
one?

How about production of actual stuff? You can't eat or drive legal
services or brokerage fees or union pension expenses.

Excuse me for mentioning "production". Nothing personal.

On top of these Keynes adds his multiplier - each worker with a new job
will spend his money at the shopkeepers' stores, who will spend their
new income yet somewhere else. The cycle repeats several times before
taxes at each transfer reduce the original sum into nothingness, for
net multiplier claimed of 1.89 or such.

Precisely 1.89? You appear to be summing geometric series run on to
infinity, having chosen to assume that 53% of the cash handed over in
each transaction become available for the next one.

The multiplier effect is silly. It says that we can prosper if only we
will spend all of our income, which precludes savings and investment.

Keynes was silly, but he especially didn't expect that we'd be buying
most of our consumables from Japan and China and OPEC.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 08:38:52 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/08/2011 00:01, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 08/14/2011 03:30 PM, Nico Coesel wrote:
dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 1:30=A0pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

The idea that companies stand by their product is something you should
let go. They are only interested in maximising profits. Show me an
honest sales person. They are extinct like dinosaurs.

Honest companies prosper because people trust them. Honesty is in
their economic interest, especially if they're going to be around very
long.

Sorry, but that is a lie. Sales people like to use that to gain your
trust.

You keep going on like that. Some sales people are crooks, but some
aren't. Assuming without evidence that other people are less virtuous
than you is not a good strategy. Just saying.

That they are a salesman is evidence enough that they cannot be trusted.

Most of the sales people that call on us are helpful and honest, like
the folks from Arrow and Avnet and the semi companies. They give us
eval boards, access to tech support, good pricing, and will take back
anything that's defective.

I had a problem with a Maxim part, called a sales guy, and he sampled
me 3500 replacements. No PO, no hassle.

Even the people I meet in shoe stores are helpful. There are some bad
sales people, but a little thought and caution spots them easily.

John

 

[tm]

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
newsnti471cu87iljesabpt3cselnts49e6lt@4ax.com...

On top of these Keynes adds his multiplier - each worker with a new job
will spend his money at the shopkeepers' stores, who will spend their
new income yet somewhere else. The cycle repeats several times before
taxes at each transfer reduce the original sum into nothingness, for
net multiplier claimed of 1.89 or such.

Precisely 1.89? You appear to be summing geometric series run on to
infinity, having chosen to assume that 53% of the cash handed over in
each transaction become available for the next one.

The multiplier effect is silly. It says that we can prosper if only we
will spend all of our income, which precludes savings and investment.

Keynes was silly, but he especially didn't expect that we'd be buying
most of our consumables from Japan and China and OPEC.

John

Very good point.


tm

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:08:24 -0400, "tm" <No_one_home@white-house.gov>
wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
newsnti471cu87iljesabpt3cselnts49e6lt@4ax.com...

On top of these Keynes adds his multiplier - each worker with a new job
will spend his money at the shopkeepers' stores, who will spend their
new income yet somewhere else. The cycle repeats several times before
taxes at each transfer reduce the original sum into nothingness, for
net multiplier claimed of 1.89 or such.

Precisely 1.89? You appear to be summing geometric series run on to
infinity, having chosen to assume that 53% of the cash handed over in
each transaction become available for the next one.

The multiplier effect is silly. It says that we can prosper if only we
will spend all of our income, which precludes savings and investment.

Keynes was silly, but he especially didn't expect that we'd be buying
most of our consumables from Japan and China and OPEC.

John



Very good point.


tm

The multiplier stops at the seashore. Idiots like Obama praise
"innovation" as the way to revive the economy, but all those iPads are
made in China.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 11:38:53 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Aug 14, 5:30 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sun, 14 Aug 2011 14:57:16 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On Aug 14, 5:04 pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
On 08/14/2011 03:30 PM, Nico Coesel wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 1:30=A0pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

The idea that companies stand by their product is something you should
let go. They are only interested in maximising profits. Show me an
honest sales person. They are extinct like dinosaurs.

Honest companies prosper because people trust them. Honesty is in
their economic interest, especially if they're going to be around very
long.

Sorry, but that is a lie. Sales people like to use that to gain your
trust.

Just look at Microsoft and how long they are getting away by selling
crap. Its all about marketing, not about quality. In general: count
the number of adds touting 'new formula', 'better taste', 'stronger
than ever'. Like the original product was crap!

Yesterday I bought an inkjet. I specifically avoided and did NOT buy
a Hewlett-Packard because I don't trust them. How does that help HP?

I used to do the opposite, because once upon a time I knew that if HP
made it, it was excellent. But Carly Fiorina's HP sold me some shoddy
gear. I haven't trusted them since.

HP may have lost one customer but by lowering the prices and quality
they gained hundreds of new customers. HP still has good business gear
but you must be willing to pay a bit more.

Do you lie like that when it's in your economic interest?

I do not own HP shares neither am I somehow employed by them.
Actually, when I announced to be self-employed someone warned me my
honesty would cost me money at some point

I owned HP shares.  I sold them (profitably) the moment I bought
something from them that was grossly inferior, because I knew at that
point they weren't the company they used to be.

Two cool books:

"The HP Way" by David Packard

"The Way Forward" by Carly Fiorina

John

I read "The HP Way". Beautiful.

I'm not sure I could read anything Carly wrote without a barf bag--she
always struck me as a clueless new-age light weight, and her public
performances only reinforced that.

One of her first acts at HP was to downsize the cubes.

But I'm getting ahead of myself and possibly being unfair--one should
never judge a book by covertly spying on competing board members. (Oh
dear, did I write that out loud?)

Was it a good book?

The Way Forward was distributed to HP employees, so may not be
available. An HP droid read about half (which takes, maybe, 5 minutes)
and then gave it to me. It's a small book, essentially colorful
PowerPoint motivational blather. The contrast to The HP Way is
stunning.

John

 

On Aug 15, 9:23 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 15, 4:46 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

The President deliberately misled seniors recently into thinking their
SS checks might be in danger.  An absolute lie.  Penalty?  None.

"Might be in danger" is rather unspecific. Calling it an "absolute"
lie is a longer stretch

A small lesson in ethics for you Mr. Bill: if you know something is
impossible, telling people it /is/ possible just to scare them for
your personal gain is a lie.

It's particularly despicable--and poisonous to open, honest public
debate--when coming from a President with respect to a critically
important public issue that honest people are trying to agree on and
solve.

than the "might be in danger" particularly
when the Tea Party idiots were one of the items that might have
endangered the social security system

That's stupid. If it weren't for the Tea Party, the USA would be
rated 'BBB' right now.

Barack Obama and Paul Krugman spent us into a hole, not the Tea
Party. The downgrade is theirs.

I just heard Krugman talking. He actually said that paying large
masses of people to dig, then fill holes is stimulative, that it would
pull us up out of recession. He sounded like an airheaded blond.
It's official--he's clueless.

- you seem to think that it
ought be shut down, and some of the Tea Party Republican seem to be
even more rabid than you are.

Nope, you made that up. That's why people don't bother responding to
you. The Democrats can't resist cannibalizing SS, gobbling up legs
and feet and arms in a gory feast. Their deficit spending is the
threat to SS' existence.

It has surfaced recently that the CBO was deliberately required to
score Obamacare in a fashion that understated the true cost by
hundreds of billions (omitting dependents of newly eligible), so that
Obama could claim it cost less than it actually does.  Penalty?  None.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=581079&p=1

Found any weapons of mass destruction in Irak yet?

Exactly. What would send any CEO to jail, in public view, and that's
your response. QED.

James Arthur

 

On Aug 14, 5:30 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sun, 14 Aug 2011 14:57:16 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On Aug 14, 5:04 pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
On 08/14/2011 03:30 PM, Nico Coesel wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 1:30=A0pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

The idea that companies stand by their product is something you should
let go. They are only interested in maximising profits. Show me an
honest sales person. They are extinct like dinosaurs.

Honest companies prosper because people trust them. Honesty is in
their economic interest, especially if they're going to be around very
long.

Sorry, but that is a lie. Sales people like to use that to gain your
trust.

Just look at Microsoft and how long they are getting away by selling
crap. Its all about marketing, not about quality. In general: count
the number of adds touting 'new formula', 'better taste', 'stronger
than ever'. Like the original product was crap!

Yesterday I bought an inkjet. I specifically avoided and did NOT buy
a Hewlett-Packard because I don't trust them. How does that help HP?

I used to do the opposite, because once upon a time I knew that if HP
made it, it was excellent. But Carly Fiorina's HP sold me some shoddy
gear. I haven't trusted them since.

HP may have lost one customer but by lowering the prices and quality
they gained hundreds of new customers. HP still has good business gear
but you must be willing to pay a bit more.

Do you lie like that when it's in your economic interest?

I do not own HP shares neither am I somehow employed by them.
Actually, when I announced to be self-employed someone warned me my
honesty would cost me money at some point

I owned HP shares.  I sold them (profitably) the moment I bought
something from them that was grossly inferior, because I knew at that
point they weren't the company they used to be.

Two cool books:

"The HP Way" by David Packard

"The Way Forward" by Carly Fiorina

John

I read "The HP Way". Beautiful.

I'm not sure I could read anything Carly wrote without a barf bag--she
always struck me as a clueless new-age light weight, and her public
performances only reinforced that.

But I'm getting ahead of myself and possibly being unfair--one should
never judge a book by covertly spying on competing board members. (Oh
dear, did I write that out loud?)

Was it a good book?

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:15:26 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
<mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

Les Cargill wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 14 Aug 2011 02:04:53 -0700, Rich Grise
richg@example.net.invalid> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:54:02 GMT, nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel)
John Larkin<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

and europe; look at the debt crisies in europe. Did any government
economists do anything to prevent these? On the contrary, governments
and their financial ministries caused all these messes.

No, greed and total lack of any moral integrity caused the mess! The
problem is that big companies no longer value their customers. Letting
(big) companies do what they want leads to mass destruction.

You blame companies for grotesque government benefits and borrowing?

They fail to realize that companies can't steal from you, but only sell
you their products. If you don't like the company, you can simply not
buy their crap. With government, you don't have that option. But they
worship the ground that the bureaucrats slither across.

Cheers!
Rich

Companies can steal, and some reasonable legal protections make sense.
Stealing has been illegal since biblical times.

So, why are all 2x4s actually 1.75x3.75 inches? Why is a 1x12 actually
3/4 x 11? Where is the Consumer Protection Department on this?



Typical Larkinism BS. 2" X 4" are the rough cut dimensions, right
after being saw from logs. You can still buy them that way from a local
sawmill, but very few people want to use them that way. They want
milled lumber that's easier to handle, and less likely to cause injury
during construction work. You might enjoy having hundreds of splinters
in your body to become infected, but most people don't.

Except that's not true. They do *NOT* plane 1/4" off every side to make a
dimensional 2x4 (1-1/2x3-1/2), or 3/8" off the top and bottom and 1/4" off the
sides (why would lumber >2x6 be different than <=2x6?) to make a dimensional
2x8 (1-1/2x7-1/4).

At ONE TIME, a 2x4 was smaller than 2x4 because of planeing, but they start
out smaller than 2x4 now. Of course you can have lumber custom milled anyway
you want it. ...if you can afford it.

 

On Aug 15, 5:23 am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Aug 14, 9:16=A0pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Aug 15, 7:13=A0am, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 08/14/2011 05:04 PM, Nico Coesel wrote:

Phil Hobbs<pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> =A0wrote:

Do you lie like that when it's in your economic interest?

I do not own HP shares neither am I somehow employed by them.
Actually, when I announced to be self-employed someone warned me my
honesty would cost me money at some point

If you're honest, why do you impute dishonesty to everyone else?

Rational people don't. James Arthur was irrationality imputing
dishonesty to the whole of HP on the basis of localised dishonesty in
the part of teh company that makes low-end printers,

No, that's you opining without information.  I bought a computer, not
a printer, prior to the divestitures.  The thermal design was outright
negligent, causing separate failures of the power supply and hard
drive.  I corrected the flaws myself and am still using it.  It hasn't
failed since.

The main question is: is this a business or consumer product?
In the mid 90s I repaired computers. I quickly learned that the big
brands had business products which just work and consumer products
which won't work.

I understand the difference of course. It's just that once upon a
time you didn't have to worry--if it said "HP" you knew it was
excellent.

I've got a couple of their calculators from long ago. Magnificent.

Nowadays some of their stuff looks really questionable, and I question
the ethics. That is, I somehow don't trust someone who's gaming their
ink cartridges to prevent me from refilling them.

Why? Because that person's spending too much time plotting against my
best interest. That attitude's not what I want in a supplier.

And yes Bill, I fully understand the mechanics, the economics, and the
business model. I just don't respect it.

I want and give preference to a supplier that is trying to make
something truly excellent, something that lasts forever, and which
best serves my needs in every way. IOW, someone who's interested in
my needs, trying to earn my loyalty, not trap or trick me.

I'll probably buy something HP eventually, I'm just not that
motivated, excited, or interested in re-qualifying an outfit that
still doesn't seem to have my best interest at heart. I buy and spec
Agilent parts all the time, that's no problem.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

On Aug 15, 5:49 am, Martin Brown <|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk>
wrote:

On 14/08/2011 19:45, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 1:30 pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

The idea that companies stand by their product is something you should
let go. They are only interested in maximising profits. Show me an
honest sales person. They are extinct like dinosaurs.

Honest companies prosper because people trust them.  Honesty is in
their economic interest, especially if they're going to be around very
long.  Honesty maximizes profits.  Politicians have no such incentive.

Pump and dump maximises returns for the senior executives if they can
time it just right.

That's truly cynical. Even if maximal for certain individuals, that
is not a maximal strategy for a company. Companies have reputations,
and it's in their long-term interest to protect them.

If they let in a bad batch of executives, the company suffers.

If some fool can be persuaded to buy the company at
the top of the market then they carry the can when things turn sour.
The stock markets are so short term these days that no-one plans for the
long term future of the company except in Japan.

That strategy doesn't last long. If you have a group of looters who
cash out the company's good name, the company quickly falls. (Assuming
Obama doesn't bail them out.)

Goodwill is valuable, a long time in coming, and quickly lost.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 16, 5:50 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 06:44:09 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Aug 15, 1:29 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Aug 14, 1:21 am,BillBowden <bper...@bowdenshobbycircuits.info
wrote:

Well , I don't know, but gold seems to be a hedge against the riots
going on in London. If they burn down all the stores, what will there
be to eat?

Under Keynes London's riots are a positive boon.

Only if the economy is in recession, and then only in terms of
generating extra economic activity.

Cool. Burn the entire country down. Rebuilding will create lots of
jobs.

Destruction does create extra economic activity in restoring the
damage. Even somebody as silly as James Arthur ought to be able to
realise that building new infra-structure - as practiced in
Roosevelt's New Deal - is a more profitable way of generating the
necessary extra economic activity.

Think of all the construction needed to fix the damage, all the workers
that will be needed for repairs, all the materials that will be purchased.
GDP will soar!

GDP has never been an entirely satisfactory metric. You have a better
one?

How about production of actual stuff? You can't eat or drive legal
services or brokerage fees or union pension expenses.

So find an economist who has worked out how to construct such a metric
from accessible information

<snipped personal abuse - it lowers the tone>

On top of these Keynes adds his multiplier - each worker with a new job
will spend his money at the shopkeepers' stores, who will spend their
new income yet somewhere else.  The cycle repeats several times before
taxes at each transfer reduce the original sum into nothingness, for
net multiplier claimed of 1.89 or such.

Precisely 1.89? You appear to be summing geometric series run on to
infinity, having chosen to assume that 53% of the cash  handed over in
each transaction become available for the next one.

The multiplier effect is silly. It says that we can prosper if only we
will spend all of our income, which precludes savings and investment.

The multiplier effect is relevant only in terms of generating extra
economic activity in a recession, when the economy is running below
capacity. Once the economy is running at capacity you really don't
want to try to generate extra economic activity - all such attempts
only create inflation.

James Arthur doesn't understand the idea of generating extra economic
activity in an economy in recession, which is why he thinks it
legitimate to extrapolate the idea as a way of making an economy
running at capacity more productive, which even you ought to have
enough sense to recognise as nonsense.

Keynes was silly, but he especially didn't expect that we'd be buying
most of our consumables from Japan and China and OPEC.

OPEC sells you unrefined oil, which is refined in US-owned refineries
and sold in US owned gas station. Both the refineries and the gas
stations collect a proportion of the price paid at the pump.
The consumables that are made in Japan and China are sold to US
distributors who in turn sell them the on to retailers. Between them
they collect a substantial proportion of the price finally paid by the
consumer - typically more than half.

The fact that you fail to realise this is silly. Keynes was a little
better informed than you seem to be, and he was writing before OPEC
and before the US had dismantled large chunks of its manufacturing
industry in the name of free trade.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:36:50 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 16, 5:50 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 06:44:09 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Aug 15, 1:29 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Aug 14, 1:21 am,BillBowden <bper...@bowdenshobbycircuits.info
wrote:

Well , I don't know, but gold seems to be a hedge against the riots
going on in London. If they burn down all the stores, what will there
be to eat?

Under Keynes London's riots are a positive boon.

Only if the economy is in recession, and then only in terms of
generating extra economic activity.

Cool. Burn the entire country down. Rebuilding will create lots of
jobs.

Destruction does create extra economic activity in restoring the
damage. Even somebody as silly as James Arthur ought to be able to
realise that building new infra-structure - as practiced in
Roosevelt's New Deal - is a more profitable way of generating the
necessary extra economic activity.

Think of all the construction needed to fix the damage, all the workers
that will be needed for repairs, all the materials that will be purchased.
GDP will soar!

GDP has never been an entirely satisfactory metric. You have a better
one?

How about production of actual stuff? You can't eat or drive legal
services or brokerage fees or union pension expenses.

So find an economist who has worked out how to construct such a metric
from accessible information

snipped personal abuse - it lowers the tone

On top of these Keynes adds his multiplier - each worker with a new job
will spend his money at the shopkeepers' stores, who will spend their
new income yet somewhere else.  The cycle repeats several times before
taxes at each transfer reduce the original sum into nothingness, for
net multiplier claimed of 1.89 or such.

Precisely 1.89? You appear to be summing geometric series run on to
infinity, having chosen to assume that 53% of the cash  handed over in
each transaction become available for the next one.

The multiplier effect is silly. It says that we can prosper if only we
will spend all of our income, which precludes savings and investment.

The multiplier effect is relevant only in terms of generating extra
economic activity in a recession, when the economy is running below
capacity. Once the economy is running at capacity you really don't
want to try to generate extra economic activity - all such attempts
only create inflation.

James Arthur doesn't understand the idea of generating extra economic
activity in an economy in recession, which is why he thinks it
legitimate to extrapolate the idea as a way of making an economy
running at capacity more productive, which even you ought to have
enough sense to recognise as nonsense.

Keynseyan philosophy has been distorted by the political class to
justify excess spending in good times and in bad. Short-term, you can
always borrow and spend and feel better off. Short-term, you can also
squirt heroin into your arm and feel good.

The economic problems of the US and Europe are systematic and
long-term. Keynesian stimulus is, long-term, part of the problem.

You don't seem to appreciate the difference between "economic
activity" and actual productivity. The UK has been enjoying a lot of
"economic activity" lately.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14461868?ref=nf

John

 

[Bill Bowden]

On Aug 14, 9:16 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

Lowering the prime rate in a recession so that it is cheaper for
everybody to borrow start-up capital, thus making it likely that more
people will expand their businesses or start new businesses is the very
antithesis of "constantly diddling from afar".

But isn't that what happened in 2003 when the housing bubble began?
The rates went so low that everybody went shopping for a house. The
sellers realized cheap money equated to higher prices, so they just
jacked up the price of the house and the game began. Even the traders
made out buying REITs and cashing in without even looking at a house.
So, it seems the Fed screwed up taking rates too low for too long.

-Bill

 

On Aug 15, 3:21 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 11:38:53 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On Aug 14, 5:30 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sun, 14 Aug 2011 14:57:16 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Aug 14, 5:04 pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
On 08/14/2011 03:30 PM, Nico Coesel wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 1:30=A0pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

The idea that companies stand by their product is something you should
let go. They are only interested in maximising profits. Show me an
honest sales person. They are extinct like dinosaurs.

Honest companies prosper because people trust them. Honesty is in
their economic interest, especially if they're going to be around very
long.

Sorry, but that is a lie. Sales people like to use that to gain your
trust.

Just look at Microsoft and how long they are getting away by selling
crap. Its all about marketing, not about quality. In general: count
the number of adds touting 'new formula', 'better taste', 'stronger
than ever'. Like the original product was crap!

Yesterday I bought an inkjet. I specifically avoided and did NOT buy
a Hewlett-Packard because I don't trust them. How does that help HP?

I used to do the opposite, because once upon a time I knew that if HP
made it, it was excellent. But Carly Fiorina's HP sold me some shoddy
gear. I haven't trusted them since.

HP may have lost one customer but by lowering the prices and quality
they gained hundreds of new customers. HP still has good business gear
but you must be willing to pay a bit more.

Do you lie like that when it's in your economic interest?

I do not own HP shares neither am I somehow employed by them.
Actually, when I announced to be self-employed someone warned me my
honesty would cost me money at some point

I owned HP shares.  I sold them (profitably) the moment I bought
something from them that was grossly inferior, because I knew at that
point they weren't the company they used to be.

Two cool books:

"The HP Way" by David Packard

"The Way Forward" by Carly Fiorina

John

I read "The HP Way".  Beautiful.

I'm not sure I could read anything Carly wrote without a barf bag--she
always struck me as a clueless new-age light weight, and her public
performances only reinforced that.

One of her first acts at HP was to downsize the cubes.



But I'm getting ahead of myself and possibly being unfair--one should
never judge a book by covertly spying on competing board members.  (Oh
dear, did I write that out loud?)

Was it a good book?

The Way Forward was distributed to HP employees, so may not be
available. An HP droid read about half (which takes, maybe, 5 minutes)
and then gave it to me. It's a small book, essentially colorful
PowerPoint motivational blather. The contrast to The HP Way is
stunning.

Yeah, I got that vibe. It's a shame she ran for office rather than
someone else.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 16, 4:25 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 15, 9:23 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 15, 4:46 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
The President deliberately misled seniors recently into thinking their
SS checks might be in danger.  An absolute lie.  Penalty?  None..

"Might be in danger" is rather unspecific. Calling it an "absolute"
lie is a longer stretch

A small lesson in ethics for you Mr.Bill:  if you know something is
impossible, telling people it /is/ possible just to scare them for
your personal gain is a lie.

James Arthur lecturing on the ethics of presenting beliefs that aren't
universally shared has a fairly high ironic content.

James Arthur doesn't believe that SS checks might have been in danger.
Barack Obama said - and presumably believed - that they were.

James Arthur thinks that this is unethical.

James Arthur thinks that Keynesian pump-priming doesn't work, and that
we should not do anything to slow down anthropogenic global warming.
The fact that these beliefs aren't universally shared presumably makes
this behaviour on his part equally unethical.

It's particularly despicable--and poisonous to open, honest public
debate--when coming from a President with respect to a critically
important public issue that honest people are trying to agree on and
solve.

This begs any number of questions. What it comes down to is that James
Arthur thinks that it is despicable that anybody should air an opinion
that James Arthur doesn't happen to agree with. My - equally humble -
opinion is that anybody who agrees with James Arthur is displaying a
despicable willingness to put political prejudice ahead of
scientifically established real world facts.

than the "might be in danger" particularly
when the Tea Party idiots were one of the items that might have
endangered the social security system

That's stupid.  If it weren't for the Tea Party, the USA would be
rated 'BBB' right now.

In your "expert" but remarkably idiosyncratic opinion.

Barack Obama and Paul Krugman spent us into a hole, not the Tea
Party.  The downgrade is theirs.

Actually, your beloved bankers ninja-loaned you into the hole, and
Barack Obama and Paul Krugman prevented the disaster from being
anything like as severe as the consequences of the 1929 crash, but
your political blinkers make it impossible for you to see that.

I just heard Krugman talking.  He actually said that paying large
masses of people to dig, then fill holes is stimulative, that it would
pull us up out of recession.  He sounded like an airheaded blond.
It's official--he's clueless.

He ceratinly doesn't seem to be paying attention to the clues that
determine your opinions. I - for one - am very glad of this.

- you seem to think that it
ought be shut down, and some of the Tea Party Republican seem to be
even more rabid than you are.

Nope, you made that up.  That's why people don't bother responding to
you.  The Democrats can't resist cannibalizing SS, gobbling up legs
and feet and arms in a gory feast.  Their deficit spending is the
threat to SS' existence.

You'd be one of the people who don't respond to me ...

It has surfaced recently that the CBO was deliberately required to
score Obamacare in a fashion that understated the true cost by
hundreds of billions (omitting dependents of newly eligible), so that
Obama could claim it cost less than it actually does.  Penalty?  None.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=581079&p=1

Found any weapons of mass destruction in Irak yet?

Exactly.  What would send any CEO to jail, in public view, and that's
your response.  QED.

You'd like to think that it would send any CEO to jail. In practice,
what is being complained about is that CBO costing was rushed and over-
simplified, and that the higher echelons of the service could have
been more diligent in resisting the pressure to get results fast.

Dubbya's reliance on out-of-date intelligence reports to claim that
there was a risk the Saddam Hussein could develop weapons of mass
destruction sincerely upset the US intelligence community, and he
wasn't prosecuted. The problem with the CBO estimates has taken a lot
longer to surface, and hasn't been accompanied by stories of sincerely
upset people claiming that their advice was disregarded.

If you were less inclined to see Democrats as purely evil and
Republicans as uniformly virtuous, you might have been able to detect
up what I was implying.QED.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 16, 1:02 pm, Bill Bowden <bper...@bowdenshobbycircuits.info>
wrote:

On Aug 14, 9:16 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

Lowering the prime rate in a recession so that it is cheaper for
everybody to borrow start-up capital, thus making it likely that more
people will expand their businesses or start new businesses is the very
antithesis of "constantly diddling from afar".

But isn't that what happened in 2003 when the housing bubble began?
The rates went so low that everybody went shopping for a house.

The Bush tax cuts also fed into the economy at that point. Reduce
everybody's taxes and they have more money to spend, and one of the
ways to spend it is on a better house. Bush's claimed motive for the
tax cuts was to stimulate the economy.

And the problem with the US housing bubble was that it burst, with the
people who'd got ninja loans walking away from the property that they
had bought, flooding the housing market with houses that had to be
sold. In Australia house prices are too high at the moment, in the
sense that the average first time buyer can't borrow enough money to
buy a house, but the prices aren't collapsing - they aren't rising and
in some areas they are actually falling, but not by much - so the
"bubble" here can't be said to have burst.

The
sellers realized cheap money equated to higher prices, so they just
jacked up the price of the house and the game began. Even the traders
made out buying REITs and cashing in without even looking at a house.
So, it seems the Fed screwed up taking rates too low for too long.

This moves the responsibility away from the bankers who made ninja
loans to people who couldn't possibly pay them off. In countries where
the banking system behaved more responsibly, the house price bubble
didn't burst - house prices just stagnated. They are going to stay
stagnant for quite a while now, until the world economy gets back on
track. It was the ninja loans - packaged up as securitised mortgages -
that created the GFC, not some miscalculation by the Fed back in 2003.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen