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

[Martin Brown]

On 16/08/2011 01:36, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

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.

And they decided to spin off the excellent bit as an IPO and keep the
established quality brand name for the consumer PC part of the company.
You could perhaps unkindly describe it as passing off or trading on the
name. I still have difficulty in remembering that todays HP *isn't* the
one that made my excellent old flatbed scanner or Laserjet.

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

I preferred TI and still have an SR59 and print cradle in the loft
somewhere. RPN was ATIP.

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.

Look at the upfront costs for the printer - they are selling it as a
loss leader end expecting to get their money back on the overpriced
inks. All makers do it to some extent. HP print heads don't last well
because of their relatively high stress boil the ink operating mode.

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.

But surely you accept that the company has to make money by selling its
products. Discounting the printer and overpricing the media has been one
method that works to open up the market. Colour lasers for instance.

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.

You have to do the sums for total cost of printer ownership *extremely*
carefully to find the right printer for your needs. At the moment with
some of the deals on offer the Dell 1320N colour laser through the right
channels is hard to beat coming with 3 sets of OEM toner for about Ł170.
Depends on throughput whether it is right for you.

I bought a second one to get the OEM toners and a spare chassis & print
engine. Book price for 3 sets of toner if you were daft enough to pay
full price would be Ł750 or cheapest aftermarket refilled ones Ł240.

Its only disadvantage is that it is a big ugly brute. And by pure chance
it produces its best photoreal output on HP 120g/m^2 Laser Paper.

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.

HP now target a different end user market which is *very* price
competitive. I don't like chipped ink cartridges at all but the
manufacturers all do it with different degrees of success. What you seem
to be coplaining about is that HP have chipped theit cartridges in a way
the the third party ink suppliers have not been able to beat.

The only thing that stops me refilling my laser toner cartridges at the
moment is that I cannot buy the toner refills for less than the cost of
brand new toner cartridges from my alternative supplier.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 15/08/2011 20:58, John Larkin wrote:

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.

They are technical sales selling stuff on repeat business.

I was talking about big salesmen selling high end stuff at $100k and up
relatively infrequently to a given site. Some are definitely worse than
others but they will all say whatever it takes to close the sale.

There was another scandal reported yesterday of UK high street
electrical stores scamming customers buying HDTVs and Blueray players
for Ł100 HDMI interconnect cables "to improve the picture quality".

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

Never had any problems at all with technical sales guys from chip
makers. I sort of miss the old paper applications books though.

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.

You really have to be aware that the salesman's job is to take as much
money off you as he can get for as little product. On high end stuff his
bonus is in part determined by the margin he gets. That is why stores
are so disappointed when you don't buy ripoff extended warrantee.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/08/2011 01:43, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

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,

Who said *anything* about the company. The objective is to make the CEO
as rich as possible in the shortest time and then exit at the peak.

and it's in their long-term interest to protect them.

That is how the market works these days. I have had a London barrow boy
trader from the stock exchange tell me that it is the duty of employees
to lie about their company so as to maximise "shareholder value".

I have pretty much described the .com bubble above.

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

And plenty of companies do. I watched Fisons PLC implode in exactly that
way after they completely lost the plot by diversifying into areas like
scientific instruments where they were utterly clueless.

The writeup on this site is far too kind to the senior executives:
http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/88/Fisons-plc.html

The timeline is slightly inaccurate but you can get the gist of it.

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.)

General Motors never had a good name - it was at best "barely adequate".
Certain UK & US businesses are extremely good at asset stripping.

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

It isn't valuable enough to stop the sharks from destroying perfectly
good businesses to make a quick buck.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Jon Kirwan]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 08:24:45 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

snip
I sort of miss the old paper applications books though.
snip

Not only do I miss them, but I've tried to get PDF's printed
via places like Lulu and Amazon. Problem is, they want to
see that I have a right to print them. A specific right, not
a bunch of handwaving. I tried to get ahold of TI's
attorneys to get such a document and it was like pulling
teeth, only a lot worse.

One of these days, there won't be paper books at all anymore.
This event, the shifting from paper databooks to PDF only
modes of operation, is a microcosm of a larger movement that
will likely nearly eliminate paper books as publishers decide
to save expense and trouble and end users get used to the
idea. Problem then will be, it will be very easy to change
them and deny they ever were any different. Especially if
the publishers can wireless access to your book readers
without your permission. Who knows what history we will be
told one decade a certain way and then another decade a
different way. Will be interesting times. Not unlike the
way the book 1984 suggests, perhaps.

Write-once memory like paper books has its advantages.

Jon

 

[Jon Kirwan]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:43:12 -0700 (PDT),
dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

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.

Doesn't matter. I worked at Tektronix and for a time very
closely with the sales force, since I was writing the
programs that paid them their checks and computed their
bonuses. I can't tell you how many times I encountered a
salesman who'd get their customers to order hardware (their
STS systems was a line I saw this done with on a number of
occasions) or just lie about the order.

Thing is, their bonuses were on order, not sale. So they'd
get paid right away. If cancelled, the idea is that it would
come out of some future order's bonus. But there were
accelerators in the plans, as well, so getting an order in
even if cancelled would push them over useful lines. And
quite a few would just "quit" before the order would be
cancelled, anyway. Some I saw were $30-40k bonuses that were
never paid back when the order was cancelled because the
salesman just up and quit before it could be taken out of his
hide.

Happened a lot. So much that I had no idea at all why Tek
allowed more of it to continue. We all knew what would go
on. But the sales management at the top (VP's) didn't do
anything I could see, anyway.

People look out for themselves, often, more than they do
their employers. If the calculations work out in their favor
to make a quick buck and leave, they will do that. If it
works out better to keep the job, they will do that, too.

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

Yes, and...?

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.

Cripes.

I've been personally involved in starting three companies,
one of them with a peak of perhaps 60 employees in it. That
one secured venture capital, by the way, so I got some early
experience with that process there and plenty more later on
(2007 was my last, close-up and personal experience with the
venture community.)

I can't believe you write that way. I haven't met a single
venture capitalist or even heard of another via personal
relationships who care the least bit about the long term
future of a company. They want to make a killing and soon.
Most would prefer no more than two years, but accept three as
a reasonable time period. Four if it is a multi-company deal
they are pulling together for an IPO. All of them want that
IPO and they don't care at all what happens after. The whole
damned thing can fall to pieces the day after they sell out
and they will be just fine about it. Really.

Funny, but true story. An acquaintance was struggling to
find a venture capitalist for a new graphics board he had
designed (and not yet built.) Knowing venture capital, I
told him they would be asking him if he still had his car and
his house (they may not know a technical business area, but
they _do_ know that _you_ must truly believe enough in what
you say if you've already jumped off a cliff and only _then_
ask for help -- it's good evidence of your convictions.) He
still did, so I told him he needed to look more desperate
than that. I also gave him some names to call, once he had
"invested himself" a bit. He got his startup money and some
time later opened up shop near the business I'd cofounded
earlier.

I'd stop by, from time to time, just to see how he was doing.
Visit 1? Not there. I said I'd come back. Visit 2? Still
not there. Same with 3 and 4. On the 4th, I asked his
secretary if he was seeing XXXX (the venture capitalist to
whom I'd referred him.) She looked totally shocked and asked
me, "How do _you_ know that?" I just smiled.

What happens is simple. They give you money. You start
business. They want more investors, but at MUCH LESS % for
each $, just to help make their own early investments a bit
safer (more money for less stock = much good for them.) So
they get the one guy who should be spending all his time
developing the company for its health working instead on
attracting in more investment money for the least possible
stock transfers -- which means almost constantly wasting time
on stuff the president should NOT be wasting time on.

It's like this. The venture capitalist sees a tiny window in
the sky, called an IPO. Your business is a rocket to them,
that can reach that tiny window -- maybe. They want you to
fuel up and launch. And, hopefully, if all goes right, you
might actually direct the rocket (business) well enough to
hit that IPO just right (accounting looks good on paper) so
that they get maximum return as soon as possible. Once they
have bailed out of the rocket, they really don't care if it
has any fuel left. It's kind of a one-way ticket, so to
speak. It goes up, and where it comes down they don't care.

It's all about getting in and out. Not about long term
health.

And that's venture. Executive staff? Can be just as bad, at
times. I've seen cases where the president sells off
everything they can and simply high-tails it to Florida where
the bankruptcy laws make it possible to own something like
100 acres and god-only-knows how many millions of dollars in
the house, completely immune against all claims. Florida
shields a damned lot of wealth from bankruptcy.

People who look at companies as family and look out for the
long term are likely to get eaten before they can reach that
old age and collect on that reputation.

Tektronix? They were deathly afraid of leveraged buyouts,
back in the early 1980's. I was talking directly with one of
the board of directors, Jim Castles, at the time. So I know.
They had no short term debt, no long term, were looking out
for their employees, etc. Of course, that didn't work once
leveraged buyouts became the norm.

It's pretty harsh out there.

Jon

 

[Nico Coesel]

dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 15, 5:23=A0am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Aug 14, 9:16=3DA0pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Aug 15, 7:13=3DA0am, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 08/14/2011 05:04 PM, Nico Coesel wrote:

Phil Hobbs<pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> =3DA0wrote:

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 m=
y
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. =A0I bought a computer, not
a printer, prior to the divestitures. =A0The thermal design was outright
negligent, causing separate failures of the power supply and hard
drive. =A0I corrected the flaws myself and am still using it. =A0It 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.

Those days are gone thanks to people who only look at the initial
purchase price and not TCO.

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.

Why do you think that something that lasts forever is cheaper than
something that will only last -lets say- 5 years? I recently replaced
my 16 year old HP Laserjet 5. The price of the new printer (HP P2055dn
business model) is ten times less than the Laserjet 5. If the new
printer lasts longer than 1.6 years it is already cheaper than the
Laserjet 5!

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 16, 1:40 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:36:50 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@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.

And you've anything that Keynes wrote? Your idea of "Keynesian
philosophy" is what you have picked up from articles in teh right wing
newspapers that you fancy, and the proposition that there is a
homogenous "political class" that distorts Keynesian philosophy for
its own ends is just one more nutty conspiracy theory. Individual
politians are capable of every kind of knavery, but bleating about
their activity as a class reflects regretably sloppy thinking.

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.

Got any more irrelevant analogies? Keynesian pump-priming is borrowing
and spending, but for a very specific purpose, under very specific
conditions. James Arther is too dim - or too politically biased - to
be able to distinguish this from regular short-sighted extravagance -
but you ought to have more sense.

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

Which rather misses the point that Keynesian stimulus is a short term
reaction to a very specific problem. If you want to complain about
your long term balance of payments deficit (since Regan was president)
which has built up because you've imported more oil than you can pay
for, be my guest, but don't make the mistake of confusing it with some
kind of Keynesian stimulus directed at getting your economy out of
recession.

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

Try reading what I wrote - even if you find it tedious it might
prevent you from making a total ass of yourself.

" >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."

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/08/2011 12:08, Jon Kirwan wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:43:12 -0700 (PDT),
dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

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.

Doesn't matter. I worked at Tektronix and for a time very
closely with the sales force, since I was writing the
programs that paid them their checks and computed their
bonuses. I can't tell you how many times I encountered a
salesman who'd get their customers to order hardware (their
STS systems was a line I saw this done with on a number of
occasions) or just lie about the order.

Thing is, their bonuses were on order, not sale. So they'd
get paid right away. If cancelled, the idea is that it would
come out of some future order's bonus. But there were

Very dangerous. Our lot were at least on actual sales made and if they
hadn't jumped ship in the meantime they were expected to go and get the
last 10% on final acceptance from the customer.

People look out for themselves, often, more than they do
their employers. If the calculations work out in their favor
to make a quick buck and leave, they will do that. If it
works out better to keep the job, they will do that, too.

The problem for the company is to make sure that the bonus scheme
actually encourages employees to do the right things and do them
correctly. I have lost count of the number of times that people were
motivated to do things that seriously compromised production by myopic
stock control bonuses that were quadratic on minimal end of year stock
holding. The whole company would seize up in January as supply lines
from other divisions on the same bonus scheme also deadlocked.

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.

Cripes.

I've been personally involved in starting three companies,
one of them with a peak of perhaps 60 employees in it. That
one secured venture capital, by the way, so I got some early
experience with that process there and plenty more later on
(2007 was my last, close-up and personal experience with the
venture community.)

I have to speak up for the US venture capital industry here.

We did once meet some very good high tech VCs/business angels who were
tied in to well known US high tech companies and my university. I will
not name names. Their brief was to find ground breaking new ideas in the
UK at the seedcorn stage and give them enough money and management to
get off the ground with a view to a later IPO. They had a timescale of 5
years and were prepared to back things no UK banker would touch.

At the time UK's 3i were only interested if you were already big enough.

It's like this. The venture capitalist sees a tiny window in
the sky, called an IPO. Your business is a rocket to them,
that can reach that tiny window -- maybe. They want you to
fuel up and launch. And, hopefully, if all goes right, you
might actually direct the rocket (business) well enough to
hit that IPO just right (accounting looks good on paper) so
that they get maximum return as soon as possible. Once they
have bailed out of the rocket, they really don't care if it
has any fuel left. It's kind of a one-way ticket, so to
speak. It goes up, and where it comes down they don't care.

They are not all quite that bad (or rather weren't in my day).

Yes they wanted an IPO but they were prepared to wait a while and
preferred things that either crashed and burned or grew up quickly to
businesses that bumbled along without either growing or failing. The
admin costs otherwise rapidly end up being dominant.

It's all about getting in and out. Not about long term
health.

Unfortunately that is true of the stock market and particularly true of
the so called "absolute return investments" aka hedge funds. They will
happily destroy other shareholders value if they can make money by doing
it (usually by circulating unsubstantiated market rumours).

And that's venture. Executive staff? Can be just as bad, at
times. I've seen cases where the president sells off
everything they can and simply high-tails it to Florida where
the bankruptcy laws make it possible to own something like
100 acres and god-only-knows how many millions of dollars in
the house, completely immune against all claims. Florida
shields a damned lot of wealth from bankruptcy.

We don't have anything quite like that in the UK although you do get to
keep your primary residence I think. I hope never to find out.

People who look at companies as family and look out for the
long term are likely to get eaten before they can reach that
old age and collect on that reputation.

Unfortunately the market is all about short termism these days. Your
company is only as good as the bottom line on next quarters accounts. No
room for strategic vision any more.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:52:01 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Aug 15, 11:02 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
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.

It looks like you need a lecture Bill, a bit of schooling.

Even without more borrowing Obama's Treasury Dept. has ~$200 billion a
month in money coming in. SS checks are about $50 billion a month.
Debt service is about $30 billion a month. You can get all the
current numbers from the Monthly Treasury Statement.

First payment on SS and the debt before any other obligation is
required by /law/, and there was plenty of money to pay them.

So, even absent new borrowing, other programs might suffer, but those
never could. No matter what else, there was never the slightest
chance there wouldn't be "enough in the coffers" (to paraphrase Obama)
for SS checks. It was impossible. He had the money, and he's
compelled by law to pay those first.

This is where your ignorance disserves you yet again Mr. Sloman.
That's why you're so easily gulled by the simplest, most transparent
of lies. I s'pose you get it from our media. They're idiots.

James Arthur

As far as I can tell, 98% of economists are idiots, too.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 11:19:14 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Aug 15, 2:50 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 06:44:09 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman

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.



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.

It's better than that--the best possible thing we can do is all go on
unemployment and collect food stamps. So reasons Pelosi--she says
those pay back in spades.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/06/pelosi-fires-back-at-gingrich-over-food-stamps/
"For every dollar a person receives in food stamps, Pelosi said that
$1.79 is put back into the economy."

"It is the biggest bang for the buck when you do food stamps and
unemployment insurance. The biggest bang for the buck," she said.

79% return! Where can we buy foodstamp futures?

James

New Math.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:58:46 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Aug 16, 7:06 am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:


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.

Those days are gone thanks to people who only look at the initial
purchase price and not TCO.

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.

Why do you think that something that lasts forever is cheaper than
something that will only last -lets say- 5 years? I recently replaced
my 16 year old HP Laserjet 5. The price of the new printer (HP P2055dn
business model) is ten times less than the Laserjet 5. If the new
printer lasts longer than 1.6 years it is already cheaper than the
Laserjet 5!

Who said cheaper? Who said things can't get better?

Besides, why couldn't there be a HP P2055dn that lasted 5 or 10 years?

They sabotage their ink cartridges. Suppose you found an auto-
destruct timer in the new printer, good for 18 months? How is that
good for the environment, etc.? They're free to do it of course, and
I'm free not to buy it.

The printer I got cost about the same as an ink refill. Rather than
that, I'm also free to buy new ink jet after ink jet, and make gadgets
with the parts at their loss-leading expense. (Hmm, I kind of like
that idea.)

I have three HP Laserjet 6Ps, refurbs from ebay. Perfectly reliable,
and each cartrige lasts me a year or so. One day, maybe I'll get some
refurb color printers.

John

 

On Aug 15, 11:02 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

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.

It looks like you need a lecture Bill, a bit of schooling.

Even without more borrowing Obama's Treasury Dept. has ~$200 billion a
month in money coming in. SS checks are about $50 billion a month.
Debt service is about $30 billion a month. You can get all the
current numbers from the Monthly Treasury Statement.

First payment on SS and the debt before any other obligation is
required by /law/, and there was plenty of money to pay them.

So, even absent new borrowing, other programs might suffer, but those
never could. No matter what else, there was never the slightest
chance there wouldn't be "enough in the coffers" (to paraphrase Obama)
for SS checks. It was impossible. He had the money, and he's
compelled by law to pay those first.

This is where your ignorance disserves you yet again Mr. Sloman.
That's why you're so easily gulled by the simplest, most transparent
of lies. I s'pose you get it from our media. They're idiots.

James Arthur

 

On Aug 16, 2:15 am, Martin Brown <|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk>
wrote:

On 16/08/2011 01:36, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:



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:

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.

And they decided to spin off the excellent bit as an IPO and keep the
established quality brand name for the consumer PC part of the company.

Right, that was Fiorina IIRC, a self-absorbed airhead. The company
paid dearly for it, as I've already laid out in painful detail.

You could perhaps unkindly describe it as passing off or trading on the
name. I still have difficulty in remembering that todays HP *isn't* the
one that made my excellent old flatbed scanner or Laserjet.

That's exactly the stinkin' point--they once were great, now they're
not, and everyone has to think twice before buying their stuff.

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

I preferred TI and still have an SR59 and print cradle in the loft
somewhere. RPN was ATIP.

RPN rocks! I ditched my SR-whatever long ago. The HP LCD calculators
I have run a decade or soon a set of silver-oxide cells.

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.

Look at the upfront costs for the printer - they are selling it as a
loss leader end expecting to get their money back on the overpriced
inks. All makers do it to some extent. HP print heads don't last well
because of their relatively high stress boil the ink operating mode.

I understand ALL of that. FFS Martin, we're not all children. HP's
heads last more than long enough to refill many times. The reason
people don't is that HP deliberately makes it difficult.

I also understand the business model, I just don't respect it. I want
a company whose full efforts are devoted to serving my needs,
providing me with the best possible value, not a company that invests
so much time and effort actively plotting against me.

<snip>

HP now target a different end user market which is *very* price
competitive. I don't like chipped ink cartridges at all but the
manufacturers all do it with different degrees of success. What you seem
to be coplaining about is that HP have chipped theit cartridges in a way
the the third party ink suppliers have not been able to beat.

Have they? I wouldn't know--I'm not the slightest interested in
playing those games. That's the whole point. A once noble company
has prostituted itself to the point of playing games to where I'm not
the slightest interested in anything they do.

IOW, reputations are hard-won, of enormous value, and easily lost.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Nico Coesel]

John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:58:46 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Aug 16, 7:06 am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:


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.

Those days are gone thanks to people who only look at the initial
purchase price and not TCO.

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.

Why do you think that something that lasts forever is cheaper than
something that will only last -lets say- 5 years? I recently replaced
my 16 year old HP Laserjet 5. The price of the new printer (HP P2055dn
business model) is ten times less than the Laserjet 5. If the new
printer lasts longer than 1.6 years it is already cheaper than the
Laserjet 5!

Who said cheaper? Who said things can't get better?

Besides, why couldn't there be a HP P2055dn that lasted 5 or 10 years?

They sabotage their ink cartridges. Suppose you found an auto-
destruct timer in the new printer, good for 18 months? How is that
good for the environment, etc.? They're free to do it of course, and
I'm free not to buy it.

The printer I got cost about the same as an ink refill. Rather than
that, I'm also free to buy new ink jet after ink jet, and make gadgets
with the parts at their loss-leading expense. (Hmm, I kind of like
that idea.)

I have three HP Laserjet 6Ps, refurbs from ebay. Perfectly reliable,
and each cartrige lasts me a year or so. One day, maybe I'll get some
refurb color printers.

Actually equipment has become so cheap these days that buying
refurbished doesn't make sense. This year I bought a new laptop, new
monitors and a new printer. I did look into second hand but for the
laptop the difference between a 4 year old one with a dead battery and
a brand new one from Dell was €100. Ditto for the printer and the
monitors.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/08/2011 18:58, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 16, 7:06 am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

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.

Those days are gone thanks to people who only look at the initial
purchase price and not TCO.

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.

Why do you think that something that lasts forever is cheaper than
something that will only last -lets say- 5 years? I recently replaced
my 16 year old HP Laserjet 5. The price of the new printer (HP P2055dn
business model) is ten times less than the Laserjet 5. If the new
printer lasts longer than 1.6 years it is already cheaper than the
Laserjet 5!

Who said cheaper? Who said things can't get better?

Besides, why couldn't there be a HP P2055dn that lasted 5 or 10 years?

There could be. But at some point in the grand plan for the ultimate
consumer society it was decided that things should expire after about
3-5 years and that "good" citizens should be encouraged to upgrade kit
every couple of years. It was possible in Japan for western postgrads to
pick up on the street two year old hifi, TV and furniture that had
nothing at all wrong with it (apart from being >2yo) on big garbage day.

I suspect you can blame someone at Harvard Business School for this...

They sabotage their ink cartridges. Suppose you found an auto-
destruct timer in the new printer, good for 18 months? How is that
good for the environment, etc.? They're free to do it of course, and
I'm free not to buy it.

Exactly. Your choice is limited to buying the product they offer or not.
The company's duty is to maximise income for its shareholders or maybe
just pump the shares sky high and then allow the cognoscenti to sell out
to the sucker day traders like the poor "Rich".

What they are doing is bad for the environment, but it is a direct
consequence of the consumer society and the worship short term profits
above all else. If you go too far in the other direction you end up with
kit that never wears out and the company goes out of business before the
customer ever needs a replacement.

I take it that you don't own any CDs or DVDs then?

The printer I got cost about the same as an ink refill. Rather than
that, I'm also free to buy new ink jet after ink jet, and make gadgets
with the parts at their loss-leading expense. (Hmm, I kind of like
that idea.)

I agree is is bizarre that the refurbished waste stream that consists of
better than as manufactured gear can sometimes include sufficient
inducements for the savvy purchaser to buy a second market printer
simply to get the OEM consumables that go with it.

(I may yet be tempted to buy another one)

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

On Aug 16, 7:06 am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

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.

Those days are gone thanks to people who only look at the initial
purchase price and not TCO.

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.

Why do you think that something that lasts forever is cheaper than
something that will only last -lets say- 5 years? I recently replaced
my 16 year old HP Laserjet 5. The price of the new printer (HP P2055dn
business model) is ten times less than the Laserjet 5. If the new
printer lasts longer than 1.6 years it is already cheaper than the
Laserjet 5!

Who said cheaper? Who said things can't get better?

Besides, why couldn't there be a HP P2055dn that lasted 5 or 10 years?

They sabotage their ink cartridges. Suppose you found an auto-
destruct timer in the new printer, good for 18 months? How is that
good for the environment, etc.? They're free to do it of course, and
I'm free not to buy it.

The printer I got cost about the same as an ink refill. Rather than
that, I'm also free to buy new ink jet after ink jet, and make gadgets
with the parts at their loss-leading expense. (Hmm, I kind of like
that idea.)

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

On Aug 15, 10:40 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

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

Wow. They really hope-and-changed that Sony building. (image #1)

James

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/08/2011 18:10, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 16, 2:15 am, Martin Brown<|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk
wrote:

Look at the upfront costs for the printer - they are selling it as a
loss leader end expecting to get their money back on the overpriced
inks. All makers do it to some extent. HP print heads don't last well
because of their relatively high stress boil the ink operating mode.

I understand ALL of that. FFS Martin, we're not all children. HP's

But you are demonstrating a remarkably child like approach to this.

heads last more than long enough to refill many times. The reason
people don't is that HP deliberately makes it difficult.

If that is the case then they *are* over engineered. The whole purpose
of their replaceable print heads was to cut unit cost to the bone. They
*should* fail part way down the first or second refill.

I just checked - in the UK at least it looks like most HP inkjets can be
refilled so it may be a local difficulty in the "Land of the Free".

All printer makers chip their cartridges so I don't see why you want to
pick on HP for this. They would never sell any inkjet printers at all if
they charged the full hardware price up front in todays market.

I also understand the business model, I just don't respect it. I want
a company whose full efforts are devoted to serving my needs,
providing me with the best possible value, not a company that invests
so much time and effort actively plotting against me.

snip

Unless you are a shareholder you are always going to be disappointed
then. As a customer you are viewed at best as a target or mark and at
worst as prey. It is not for nothing that the corporate sales force is
split into trappers and skinners.

HP now target a different end user market which is *very* price
competitive. I don't like chipped ink cartridges at all but the
manufacturers all do it with different degrees of success. What you seem
to be coplaining about is that HP have chipped theit cartridges in a way
the the third party ink suppliers have not been able to beat.

Have they? I wouldn't know--I'm not the slightest interested in
playing those games. That's the whole point. A once noble company
has prostituted itself to the point of playing games to where I'm not
the slightest interested in anything they do.

All the inkjet printer manufacturers do something similar. If you really
object and print at high enough volumes there are third party archive
quality bulk ink systems available. The street price per gramme of most
of the dyes for these printer inks is higher than heroin.

IOW, reputations are hard-won, of enormous value, and easily lost.

You live in a world of your own.
Most modern day consumers have less attention span than a goldfish.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

On Aug 15, 2:50 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

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

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.



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.

It's better than that--the best possible thing we can do is all go on
unemployment and collect food stamps. So reasons Pelosi--she says
those pay back in spades.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/06/pelosi-fires-back-at-gingrich-over-food-stamps/
"For every dollar a person receives in food stamps, Pelosi said that
$1.79 is put back into the economy."

"It is the biggest bang for the buck when you do food stamps and
unemployment insurance. The biggest bang for the buck," she said.

79% return! Where can we buy foodstamp futures?

James

 

[Phil Hobbs]

John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:58:46 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Aug 16, 7:06 am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:


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.

Those days are gone thanks to people who only look at the initial
purchase price and not TCO.

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.

Why do you think that something that lasts forever is cheaper than
something that will only last -lets say- 5 years? I recently replaced
my 16 year old HP Laserjet 5. The price of the new printer (HP P2055dn
business model) is ten times less than the Laserjet 5. If the new
printer lasts longer than 1.6 years it is already cheaper than the
Laserjet 5!

Who said cheaper? Who said things can't get better?

Besides, why couldn't there be a HP P2055dn that lasted 5 or 10 years?

They sabotage their ink cartridges. Suppose you found an auto-
destruct timer in the new printer, good for 18 months? How is that
good for the environment, etc.? They're free to do it of course, and
I'm free not to buy it.

The printer I got cost about the same as an ink refill. Rather than
that, I'm also free to buy new ink jet after ink jet, and make gadgets
with the parts at their loss-leading expense. (Hmm, I kind of like
that idea.)

I have three HP Laserjet 6Ps, refurbs from ebay. Perfectly reliable,
and each cartrige lasts me a year or so. One day, maybe I'll get some
refurb color printers.

John

I have one of those too--$25 plus probably $40 shipping because it's so
heavy. It has the old Canon print engine, which everybody used back
then, so you can use all sorts of brands of toner cartridges, too. I
put 48 meg of memory in it, but it's pretty slow on bitmapped PDFs though!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs