Business, commerce, finance

Wed - August 12, 2009

Mulally is a ninja

Here a fellow tells how he was thinking about getting rid of his Audi after test-driving a Ford Edge, and how Ford CEO Alan Mulally himself called him up to seal the deal.

He now owns a spiffy black Edge Sport. As should you.

Posted at 09:05 AM

Thu - April 30, 2009

He was a great one

Here is an article Fortune ran six years ago called "The Ten Greatest CEOs of All Time."

Bill Allen, CEO of Boeing from 1945 to 1972, is ranked number 2.

I mention this article because I wanted to make sure you had read the opening paragraphs, describing an event in 1956:

"It's a familiar scene. An industry under fire. A congressional committee demanding answers. A corporate CEO called to testify.

"Yet the familiarities, in this case, end there. When Boeing CEO Bill Allen appeared before a House subcommittee -- addressing charges that military aircraft makers had improperly inflated profits at the government's expense -- there was no lawyer whispering in his ear. There were no notes before him. There was no hint that he wasn't personally responsible for Boeing's actions. And when he had finished his quietly forthright explanation, there was no question that Boeing -- far from gouging the government to pad executives' bonuses -- had in fact been laying the foundations for future greatness, plowing profits into research and development. The committee's response now seems unimaginable: It erupted into a standing ovation."

The people running Boeing today, and in the recent past, could not carry Bill Allen's [athletic supporter]. Boeing achieved aviation dominion under him, and it continued under T Wilson, but it has been slowly slipping away ever since.

Posted at 06:05 PM

Tue - February 10, 2009

The Girl From Ipanema

Muzak has declared bankruptcy.

Let us observe a moment of silence.

Posted at 11:43 AM

Mon - January 5, 2009

Humor in Commerce

This is delightful: Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer, now offers the "Zappos.com Gear $50,000 Cease and Desist T-Shirt." You pay Zappos $50,000, and they send you a t-shirt and ban your significant other from ever shopping there again.

From the product description:

"Buy this rare collector's t-shirt and we'll make sure your significant other never shops at Zappos.com again! When you purchase this limited edition t-shirt, we will permanently disable your significant other's Zappos.com account for the rest of his/her life.

"Within 30 days of purchase, a Customer Loyalty Team ("CLT") representative from Zappos.com will arrive to the location of your choosing in the United States to break the news in person to your significant other.

"The CLT rep will also be a shoulder to cry on for up to 1 hour (60 minutes) for your significant other. As time permits, the CLT rep will also be available to share tears of joy with you.

"The CLT rep will be happy to frolic in a field of daisies with you or do anything that is mutually agreed upon to not be morally or ethically objectionable."

Brilliant.

They later list some Disclaimers which are pretty darned funny, so go look at them.

(I have bought shoes from Zappos and would do it again, in case you have not ever shopped there.)

Posted at 12:54 PM

Thu - December 18, 2008

Explain this to me

So, this Madoff whack out in NYC gets in trouble for running a Ponzi scheme to the tune of $50 billion.

Apparently, the government is going to prosecute him, or something -- the same government that runs a Ponzi scheme to the tune of over a trillion dollars, and counting, called "Social Security." Social Security is exactly a Ponzi scheme; money is taken from new "investors" to pay "benefits" to earlier "investors," but there is no real investment. A Ponzi scheme collapses as the return paid to the earlier investors outstrips the new investments, and despite ever-increasing mandatory "contributions," that is exactly what is happening with Social Security. (When Social Security was set up, the tax was 2%, and now it is 12.4%.)

At least Madoff's investors were willing participants. On the other hand, we and our employers (or just us, if self-employed) are compelled by the police power of the government to make our Social Security "contributions."

So how come the people who set up the Social Security Ponzi scheme were not prosecuted? "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal," we've been hearing in the ads for "Frost/Nixon." Nixon said it, but FDR must've thought it, too.

Posted at 10:02 PM

Sun - August 24, 2008

They're practically giving it away, which does not mean you should

I don't know if you know it, but Amazon.com now sells MP3 music downloads.

It appears these MP3s are free of the digital rights management features that the music labels require of digital music sold in Apple's iTunes Store. That means you can freely share them with others.

Being a sometime purchaser in the iTunes Store, I was going to resist Amazon in this area, as I don't particularly need to share my digital music with anyone, and the prices are about the same as in the iTunes Store, but dang it, Amazon knew how to get me. They have started offering, every day, one-day specials of complete albums for the price of a song or two. And I love a bargain. For example, today you can get the fine "The Bird and the Bee" by The Bird and the Bee for $1.99. I bought the first track off that album, "Again and Again," from the iTunes Store a few months ago, one track, for $0.99. Drat!

And I see that they have "Aja" by Steely Dan, the greatest album of all time, for $0.99. That does not appear to be the daily special, just a cheap price. I already have "Aja" on vinyl and CD, so I don't need to buy it, but you do.

Moreover, Amazon offers a daily Twitter feed telling that day's special. I follow that feed in Twitter, so I always am automatically updated. So I have bought a several albums from them, for practically nothing.

You might want to look into this.

Posted at 02:08 PM

They put the zhur in luxury

If you need new polo gear, or $700 fountain pens, or $4000 suitcases, or similar accouterments, it appears Asprey of London is the place to go.

I do not need any of those things. But you might.

Posted at 01:50 PM

Mon - July 7, 2008

Reminds me of 1981

Here is GasBuddy.com's county-by-county map of the gasoline prices across the USA.

You can see at a glance which states have lower gas taxes.

[Found at J-Walk Blog.]

Posted at 11:53 AM

Sun - June 22, 2008

Nickels and dimes

You may have heard -- or experienced -- that airlines are starting to charge passengers to check a bag.

It used to be that a passenger had to pay to check an overweight bag, or more than two bags. More recently, the airlines changed that policy to require payment to check more than one bag. Now, some airlines, American and United and US Airways, are requiring a payment of $15 to check each bag, including the first bag.

In an opinion piece on Yahoo! News, George Mason University professor Mark Katz writes that the airlines are charging for the wrong bags. He says they should be charging for bags carried into the passenger compartment.

And he is absolutely right.

Bringing bags into the passenger compartment slows the security process, slows the boarding process, creates tension between bag-toting passengers, and creates annoyance among the non-bag-toting passengers. And yet, many people want to do it -- so make them pay.

But by making folks pay to check bags, the airlines are only going to encourage the behavior of bringing bags into the passenger compartment. And there is no more room in the passenger compartment for bags.

Schlepping your bag through the airport and onto the airplane is very Third World. Checking bags is just much more civilized. It ought not be penalized.

Posted at 03:08 PM

Sat - June 21, 2008

AMF

I wish I had been clever enough to write a resignation letter as good as this when I departed Boeing.

But, if I had, I don't think they would have thought it was funny. Casting pearls before swine, and all that.

Posted at 10:47 AM

Tue - June 10, 2008

American Hero

This happened a couple of weeks ago, but is worth noting: J R Simplot died at 99.

Jack Simplot is an American hero. To the extent that Idaho has an economy at all, he built it. Every person in Idaho is picking apples off the trees he planted, metaphorically speaking.

The Associated Press obituary tells the bare bones of his life story, but for the thrilling saga of this great entrepreneur, I suggest you get your hands on a copy of George Gilder's book "The Spirit of Enterprise" (sadly out of print), in which the first chapter, "A Patch of Sand," is about the first sixty or seventy years of Simplot's life. Simplot comes back later in the book, because some of his greatest contributions came in his seventies, so read the whole thing.

"The Spirit of Enterprise" is one of the best books about business I have ever read -- it's not about the numbers and strategies and such, but about the joy and true altruism inherent in building a business, and about some of the great people who have done it.

Posted at 12:04 PM

Sun - May 11, 2008

Making it easy for you to spend

I have written before about Amazon Wish Lists. But I didn't know this until recently: You can subscribe to an RSS feed of someone's Amazon Wish List. So anytime a friend or relative updates his or her Wish List, you can immediately be made aware of the new items.

For example, you can subscribe to an RSS feed of MY Amazon Wish List.

Posted at 05:30 PM

Mon - March 3, 2008

Ask the man who owns one

Several blogs had links to this several days ago: Neat-o-Rama has a page devoted to the evolution of automobile manufacturers' logos.

For example, here is the original Volkswagen logo, complete with swastiki:

The swastiki was removed after the war.

Posted at 11:09 AM

Thu - February 28, 2008

Liars. Scoundrels. Knaves.

The Seattle P-I features excerpts of internal Microsoft emails discussing the "Vista Capable" marketing campaign, and the resultant blowback when machines that were labeled "Vista Capable" proved not capable of running Vista. The blowback turned into a class action lawsuit against Microsoft, which is why we now get to see all these emails.

The P-I also has a PDF file of ALL the emails released in the court case, if you want to wade through them all. I don't. I don't even read all my own emails, why would I read theirs?

To me, the most interesting bit is where one Microsoft executive writes that the reason they lowered the "Vista Capable" bar to include an Intel graphics chip that really couldn't run Vista was to help Intel make its quarterly revenue numbers by continuing to sell motherboards containing this obsolescent chip. Ooh, that tingles. That's going to tingle more come verdict time.

Lesson One: Think twice about believing anything Microsoft ever says.

Lesson Two: Do not use email for sensitive communication. Use voice only (preferably not over VOIP, to which the usual rules about wiretapping and secret recording do not apply).

Posted at 11:45 AM

Tue - February 5, 2008

Here is a hot tip

It appears Microsoft is going to have to borrow money to finance its $44.6 billion hostile takeover of Yahoo.

And you just know Microsoft is buying Yahoo to acquire its search engine traffic and throw the rest away. Microsoft has a history of wasteful acquisitions, but it has never made an acquisition of this magnitude and risk to the company's pocketbook.

If you own MSFT, sell it. If you don't own MSFT, short it.

Posted at 04:15 PM

Treat your feet

Taxi!

Your tax dollars at work

Some folks just want money

In French, it's spelled "vroum."

This seed corn tastes REALLY good!

Deep

Quote of the Day

Crash! Smash! Tinkle!

"I can't even remember Apple without the stores."

Buy things you don't need, and save