Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Gun Sales Up

You've probably seen on other sites about the brisk sales of guns on Black Friday and just before Christmas, but I found this to be an interesting data point:
"January is typically a slow month for retailers, but it's the opposite in for gun stores. In fact, Coal Creek said January is their busiest month."
Via WBIR


Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Yaesu Musen

Always interesting to see what happens to the pieces when companies are split into parts:
"According to Vertex Standard President and Chief Executive Officer Jun Hasegawa, effective January1, 2012, Motorola will keep the Vertex Standard Land-Mobile Division, while the amateur, marine and air-band will be under the Yaesu Musen banner."

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Surveys

I get e-mails about surveys all the time. Some of which are through LinkedIn or TechSay. These surveys promise a reward for completing the survey. If I have time, I complete these surveys with care. I figure it is a business transaction and I should earn by reward by being thoughtful in my answers. I, of course, answer truthfully and on many occasions am told I don't fit the target pool they are researching. Overall, this is a win for both parties. They get data. I get a gift card or other reward.

However, some of the e-mails tell me I may win a thumb drive (or some cash or a widget) if I complete the survey and I am one of the first 250 people to respond. Unless I am unemployed and desperate for any sort of "income," I will never complete one of the surveys. A million people could have gotten that e-mail before I did. I think it is even more ludicrous when I get one of these "first 250" through the postal service.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Cut the baby in half

In a modern day Kramer vs. Kramer, Merck and Merck duke it out over the Facebook URL. Oh, the power of Facebook.

Via Slashdot.org

Bunnie On Counterfeit Chips in US Military Hardware

An interesting read from Bunnie on counterfeit chips in US military hardware. (I like Bunnie's stuff. He rarely posts, but when he does his electronics, manufacturing, and China experiences make for good reading.)

The problem:
"In the case of the US Military, they have a unique problem where they are one of the biggest and wealthiest buyers of really old parts. Military designs have shelf lives of decades, but parts have production cycles of only years."
A solution:
"A final option could be to establish a strategic reserve of parts. A production run of military planes is limited to perhaps hundreds of units, and so I imagine the lifetime demand of a part including replacements is limited to tens of thousands of units. I can fit ten thousand chips in the volume of a large shoebox"

Business Smarter than Government

Surprise! Why make a healthier meal when you can make more money?

Via Uncle

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Lessons Learned

jsnell Netflix announces that HP will keep its PC division after all, won't spin it off into "Compaqster."Thu, Oct 27 16:43:29 from Twitterrific for Mac
retweeted by asymco

Monday, August 22, 2011

Signs

WizardPC is on a roll at his new blog - Guns, Cars, and Tech. While covering some familiar territory, he hits on a key point:
"I’ve had business owners tell me that posting reduces their liability. It doesn’t:

(d) Nothing in this section shall be construed to alter,reduce or eliminate any civil or criminal liability that a property owner or manager may have for injuries arising on their property."
So let's play a little logic game.

Why do businesses exist? To ensure our safety? No. To make money.

To make money, businesses cannot lose money. So, to protect themselves from lawsuits, they post signs prohibiting guns on the premises.

Except Section D above says they don't get any protection from doing that.

Therefore, if they post a sign, they don't mitigate the risk from lawsuits AND they alienate gun owning customers, therefore reducing their profit.

So it is only logical that business should not post signs prohibiting guns.

And I would like to add that...

Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
And signs don't save people. People save people.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Coal Creek Armory II

This makes no sense to me:
"SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! Coal Creek Armory is opening a new location 1 mile off I-40 on Gallaher Road in Kingston TN! The new location will offer everything our Knoxville store has including an indoor A/C & Heated range!"
So they are opening a store between Frontier Firearms and the interstate?

Via CCA's Facebook Page

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

A Case for Pseudonyms

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) makes the case for Pseudonyms. I do not fear for my life, but I still think there ought to be some separation between personal and public - on-line pseudonyms seem to be a reasonable method for maintaining that separation. If I started doing evil things with this blog, then there is a legal process for finding out who am. Not that it would be that hard given the various tidbits of personal information I've provided in my posts to track me down IRL.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Business Insider

Here is why I subscribe to the Business Insider newsletter - lots of fun tidbits.

Facebook Investor Roger McNamee Explains Why Social Is Over - an interesting take on the state of the technology union and its future.

Then And Now: The Most Visited Domains Of 1996 And Today - Quite a few surprises.

Netflix Unveils Its Monkey Army - I think I work with some of these guys.

REAL OR FAKE: These Computer Generated People Look So Real You Won't Be Able To Spot The Humans - Almost scary - We got rid of dramas/sitcoms because writers are too expensive and soon reality TV shows will be too expensive, so we'll just let the computers generate the shows for us.

How Men And Women Look At This Half Naked Woman Differently - Also known as, what do mean she was wearing shoes?

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Pomplamoose

TNJeff pointed me to this NPR article about a group making a living on the internet. Maybe some day I can turn my 1's of 1's of readers into a career. In the mean time, I'll enjoy their success and hope you can as well. Without further ado... Pomplamoose covers "Single Ladies."

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Private Enterprise

I read David Moon's article in the Sunday paper and it is another great example of what's wrong with the world. Forget if you are pro-gay rights, anti-gay rights, Christian, or an ardent supporter of the separation of church and state - let private enterprise do what they want. If people don't want to do business with a conservative or liberal bank, let them vote with their dollars.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

On-line Ads

I love the Business Insider SAI Chart of the Day. Today's chart shows why on-line advertising might grow. This makes sense to me. Targeting areas where potential customers are spending more time (plus other advantages like directly linking an ad to a sale) has to make on-line advertising even more attractive to companies.