When accusation of allegiance with the United States or Israel failed to thwart anti-government protesters, insiders clinging to power began executing them as Enemies of God.
Given that there's no worse accusation in the nominally theocratic state, the legal and moral escalation of government's accusations against those who would hold government politically accountable by demanding genuine ballot counts has apparently reached a pinnacle. The question is whether the government will abandon its nominal public participation and announce naked despotism, or will use terror fostered by religious-branded executions to suppress transparency advocates while pretending to continue public participation.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Flash Capacity Advances Mobile Device Prospects
Japanese researchers – a label with a strong post-WWII history for evoking efficiency in size and power consumption – claim to have developed solid-state storage technology that will support drives with no moving parts, no bigger than a postage stamp, deliverable by 21012, and offering a capacity of 1TB. They demonstrated a prototype.
The question is now how to make computers' UI elements small and low-power enough to match the improvements in processing and storage. Shall we jack the things directly into our heads?
More seriously, though, the prospects raised by such tech are pretty cool.
The question is now how to make computers' UI elements small and low-power enough to match the improvements in processing and storage. Shall we jack the things directly into our heads?
More seriously, though, the prospects raised by such tech are pretty cool.
Global Warming?
We're suffering a heinous cold snap that has Houston raining ice chips instead of water, and has stranded travelers, closed airports, and delayed flights from cold-weather issues. Endangered manatees are suffering cold-weather injuries in Florida's waters. Naturally, it's a fine time for pundits to issue a seasonal zinger on climate change policy. I mean, you really think it's getting hotter?
With Japan having already announced the conclusion that manmade global warming is as scientific and as grounded a theory as ancient astology, one wonders where the political and ecological pendulum will swing. And whether they will swing in concert, or in diametric opposition.
In the meantime, the music is good and the lyrics fun.
With Japan having already announced the conclusion that manmade global warming is as scientific and as grounded a theory as ancient astology, one wonders where the political and ecological pendulum will swing. And whether they will swing in concert, or in diametric opposition.
In the meantime, the music is good and the lyrics fun.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
iPad Cost Estimates In: Profitable, Price-Flexible
Now that parts people priced iPads' components south of $250, Apple's per-unit margins and potential price flexibility have at least some source on which to begin projecting things like Apple's ability to profit, battle competitors, etc. The most expensive part of the iPad (est. $80) is also the part most draining of its battery: the multitouch display.
I would expect Apple to be interested in partnering with producers of display innovation to address both issues. Anyone remember Apple investing in Samsung LCD-manufacturing capacity in order to ensure price and supply?
The idea that the brains in Apple's new machine cost within $5 of the iPhone's processor is interesting: Apple may be able to produce a lower-end version for even less money, assuming it doesn't want to try to stick a whole A4 in every phone, or improve iPhone margins by moving to an in-house chip. The flexibility created by Apple's in-house design and lack of need to support ancient instruction sets for customers Apple won't be seeking means that Apple can now make exactly what Apple needs, and can expect to benefit from huge-volume pricing since it will be installing each chip in every single unit it sells of the design that houses it.
As competition for iPhone and iPad competitors heats up over the next few years, Apple will be able to do with these products what it did with the iPod: move to more and more price points until nobody can compete without having their air choked out as high-end consumers prefer Apple's offering in the same price range.
Catching Apple could prove a trick.
I would expect Apple to be interested in partnering with producers of display innovation to address both issues. Anyone remember Apple investing in Samsung LCD-manufacturing capacity in order to ensure price and supply?
The idea that the brains in Apple's new machine cost within $5 of the iPhone's processor is interesting: Apple may be able to produce a lower-end version for even less money, assuming it doesn't want to try to stick a whole A4 in every phone, or improve iPhone margins by moving to an in-house chip. The flexibility created by Apple's in-house design and lack of need to support ancient instruction sets for customers Apple won't be seeking means that Apple can now make exactly what Apple needs, and can expect to benefit from huge-volume pricing since it will be installing each chip in every single unit it sells of the design that houses it.
As competition for iPhone and iPad competitors heats up over the next few years, Apple will be able to do with these products what it did with the iPod: move to more and more price points until nobody can compete without having their air choked out as high-end consumers prefer Apple's offering in the same price range.
Catching Apple could prove a trick.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Apple To Pull iPhone With iPad?
This article suggests Apple's management is ready to drop iPad pricing if demand doesn't hold up. Gruber's Daring Fireball suggests that Apple deliberately priced to grow the market and its share of the market and not just to make big per-unit profit as it did at the iPhone launch (whereupon Apple promptly dropped the price to grow share, based on evidence the market for the phones was a lot richer a hundred bucks or so cheaper).
Friday, February 5, 2010
Schwartz Quits Sun, Doesn't Understand Haiku
Sun Microsystems (formerly known under the symbol SUNW, then later JAVA) was all but irrelevant by the time it was acquired by Oracle. Whether bought for its engineers or for its server support contracts, Sun was no longer the quality leader in hardware or software its CEO Johnathan Schwartz tried to portray when he pitched black-box server containers and argued Java was the way to deliver applications to the world, and pitched Java as the next smartphone platform.
However, Sun's focus on Microsoft's operating systems and its refusal to do serious Java work for some of its most significant alternatives in the server and desktop space caused Sun to blow its Java opportunity. And what, exactly, was that opportunity? To give away an open platform to anyone who wanted to use tools sold by anyone? How does a company make money like that? The lesson seems clear: one doesn't.
Today, Schwartz left Sun on a low note. Quitting by Twitter wasn't all that surprising for a CEO known for blogging, but his pretense at poetry was simply shameful. He claimed he wrote a haiku, but what he wrote was classic drivel: "haiku" selected as a form by someone without the sense to build a rhyme. This isn't haiku at all. "In traditional haiku there is always some reference to a season." The necessity of the season reference in real haiku is underscored by the kigo, the word or phrase specifically associated with a particular season, which occurs in haiku. The kigo anchors each haiku in a specific time and place so that experiencing the haiku allows one to experience a particular snaphot of nature.
In English, the lack of traditional kigo doesn't mean haiku have no seasonal reference, but that writers must stretch themselves to make haiku despite the lack of traditional seasonal anchors.
In college I met a group who thought it was extremely funny to write stomach-churning perversions with a 5-7-5 syllable count and call them "haiku" as if they were subtle art. I tried to explain what haiku was and they quickly dismissed it: writing would be hard if one had to satisfy the requirements of the art.
So I undertook to educate them. I wrote a haiku – a true haiku, with clear seasonal reference to anyone familiar with the mating habits of frogs – that turned everyone's stomach. I did exactly what they wanted done, but I wrote an actual haiku. I will not repeat it here because then I will never be able to seduce any of the chicks that visit. It's so gross, N won't let me recite it.[1]
Now, Johnathan Schwartz is an educated guy and surely possesses the brains to write a genuine haiku. He could have grounded it in winter, to highlight the death of his job or of Sun as an independent company; he could have grounded it in spring to emphasize his future opportunity; he could have linked it to the moon, which will appear to change completely but will before long look exactly the same again. There are so many ways one could write a haiku about leaving Sun that would have been real haiku that it's simply shameful to see Schwartz' drivel even treated with the name "haiku".
[1] N does, however, allow me to recite a haiku I wrote for her. In autumn in our part of the country, we get cicadas. Every few years, we get lots of cicadas. When they make their cicada-noise in the trees in such vast numbers, it's a swelling, roaring sound that penetrates any wall or window, overcomes gentle indoor music, and interferes with sleep. The sound is so deep at its lowest that it moves straight through earplugs. N was cursing, shaking her fist, and yelling the worst epithets she could muster while enraged to the point it was hard to make coherent sentences. After enough nights of the cicadas, you can get pretty fried and sleep-deprived. And N is a light sleeper. I suggested to her that her passion could be more fruitfully channeled, and she regarded me with doubt, but suggested I write a haiku on the topic. She really hated my haiku about the frogs, and she wanted revenge on the cicadas. She wasn't in the mood for love, so I appealed directly to her rage as I slowly spoke the words of a haiku made just for N:
However, Sun's focus on Microsoft's operating systems and its refusal to do serious Java work for some of its most significant alternatives in the server and desktop space caused Sun to blow its Java opportunity. And what, exactly, was that opportunity? To give away an open platform to anyone who wanted to use tools sold by anyone? How does a company make money like that? The lesson seems clear: one doesn't.
Today, Schwartz left Sun on a low note. Quitting by Twitter wasn't all that surprising for a CEO known for blogging, but his pretense at poetry was simply shameful. He claimed he wrote a haiku, but what he wrote was classic drivel: "haiku" selected as a form by someone without the sense to build a rhyme. This isn't haiku at all. "In traditional haiku there is always some reference to a season." The necessity of the season reference in real haiku is underscored by the kigo, the word or phrase specifically associated with a particular season, which occurs in haiku. The kigo anchors each haiku in a specific time and place so that experiencing the haiku allows one to experience a particular snaphot of nature.
In English, the lack of traditional kigo doesn't mean haiku have no seasonal reference, but that writers must stretch themselves to make haiku despite the lack of traditional seasonal anchors.
In college I met a group who thought it was extremely funny to write stomach-churning perversions with a 5-7-5 syllable count and call them "haiku" as if they were subtle art. I tried to explain what haiku was and they quickly dismissed it: writing would be hard if one had to satisfy the requirements of the art.
So I undertook to educate them. I wrote a haiku – a true haiku, with clear seasonal reference to anyone familiar with the mating habits of frogs – that turned everyone's stomach. I did exactly what they wanted done, but I wrote an actual haiku. I will not repeat it here because then I will never be able to seduce any of the chicks that visit. It's so gross, N won't let me recite it.[1]
Now, Johnathan Schwartz is an educated guy and surely possesses the brains to write a genuine haiku. He could have grounded it in winter, to highlight the death of his job or of Sun as an independent company; he could have grounded it in spring to emphasize his future opportunity; he could have linked it to the moon, which will appear to change completely but will before long look exactly the same again. There are so many ways one could write a haiku about leaving Sun that would have been real haiku that it's simply shameful to see Schwartz' drivel even treated with the name "haiku".
[1] N does, however, allow me to recite a haiku I wrote for her. In autumn in our part of the country, we get cicadas. Every few years, we get lots of cicadas. When they make their cicada-noise in the trees in such vast numbers, it's a swelling, roaring sound that penetrates any wall or window, overcomes gentle indoor music, and interferes with sleep. The sound is so deep at its lowest that it moves straight through earplugs. N was cursing, shaking her fist, and yelling the worst epithets she could muster while enraged to the point it was hard to make coherent sentences. After enough nights of the cicadas, you can get pretty fried and sleep-deprived. And N is a light sleeper. I suggested to her that her passion could be more fruitfully channeled, and she regarded me with doubt, but suggested I write a haiku on the topic. She really hated my haiku about the frogs, and she wanted revenge on the cicadas. She wasn't in the mood for love, so I appealed directly to her rage as I slowly spoke the words of a haiku made just for N:
chirping cicadasI don't pretend this is a masterpiece – the seasonal reference only gets you into autumn, and you have to imagine the blackened, smoking tree full of blazing cicadas – but it's a damn sight better than what Schwartz published. He should be ashamed.
thunder rolling from the skies
flaming cicadas
ACAS: What is WRH, Inc.?
Earlier the Jaded Consumer posted about some apparent duds in ACAS' portfolio. The idea was to identify companies whose listed fair value wasn't holding after investment, the better to understand what was going on with the valuations and to shed some light on whether ACAS' investments were terrible or whether, instead, ACAS' pricing environment was terrible but its investments were not.
ACAS' last 10-Q shows another such company whose data invites inquiry: WRH, Inc.
ACAS lists the industry of "WRH, Inc." as "Life Sciences Tools & Services". Depending whose Google links you trust, the private company WRH Inc. is either an Iowa company with $15m in annual sales involved in water & sewer system construction, or a New Mexico company with revenues between $2.5m and $5m in an industry described by NAICS Code 532412 ("Other Heavy Machinery Rental & Leasing"). The moniker "life sciences" seems a bit closer to water and sewer systems than to heavy machinery leasing, but who knows? If you have a clue, please post. ACAS' site seems bereft of detail. Based on the quarterly interest payments ACAS gets from the company (described below), I think it's clear that if either of these companies is our man, WRH, Inc. has to be the $15m/y water treatment tools and services company.
Two ACAS vice-presidents of buyouts – the Stanford MBA graduate Scott Kauffman, and former KPMG manager Justin Dufour – are observers on the board of WRH Holdings Inc. As of September 30, 2009, ACAS had invested $353.3 million in its "non-control/non-affiliate investment" WRH, Inc. in the following manner:
I haven't looked at ACAS' internal accounting, but one scenario suggests itself: when WRH informed ACAS that it wouldn't be able to pay dividends on the convertible preferred, ACAS converted some of the preferred (reducing its basis in the remainder of its convertible preferred holdings) to increase its holdings in still-paying sub notes. The reduction in "cost" of ACAS' holdings of WRH's senior notes suggests something similar occurred in the senior notes, but the transaction isn't as easy to guess as in the case of the convertible preferred, which was almost certainly converted to sub debt under the shares' conversion feature at whatever rate applied to the shares. The fact that the change in costs doesn't equal zero means that ACAS realized a loss at the time it exited the non-performing convertible preferred. The face value of the sub debt increased $5.4m in the transaction, quite close to ACAS' change in cost (the least-significant digit's off-by-one issue could result from rounding; or the other digit could represent something having to do with the change in senior debt).
So, ACAS converted preferred into sub debt, and did something with its senior debt that's less clear. ACAS gets $3,088,500 per quarter in interest, could potentially convert more preferred to debt, and holds common stock. Assuming that water treatment is still a valuable industry in Ohio or the nation, it's expected that the long term value of the zero-listed common stock isn't zero, and that the currently-nonperforming preferred stock may have future value either on conversion to debt or after reinstatement of dividends. At currently-listed "fair value" the interest payments are rather better than many of my own holdings, though presumably ACAS entered the deal to profit from equity increases (hence, the equity investment).
Anyone know anything solid on the company? My understanding was that infrastructure was considered a sexy industry and that efforts to improve greenness and sustainability had strong support. A company that provides water treatment tools and services seems well-positioned to benefit from increasing water demands as populations grow and their associated ecological concerns become infrastructure plans.
Is this really a long-term loser? Is the company reinvesting in growth rather than paying dividends in order to capitalize on some present opportunity? Was business horrible after the end of 2008 but picking back up? If ACAS didn't think the preferred shares had value, why would it not have converted them all to get paid interest?
WRH Inc. will be a holding to watch: both for listed fair value and for evidence of ACAS converting investments into different holding types as performance changes. In the meantime, several million a quarter in cash doesn't hurt ACAS' prospects.
If you have insight into WRH Inc. or any other ACAS holding, please post.
ACAS' last 10-Q shows another such company whose data invites inquiry: WRH, Inc.
ACAS lists the industry of "WRH, Inc." as "Life Sciences Tools & Services". Depending whose Google links you trust, the private company WRH Inc. is either an Iowa company with $15m in annual sales involved in water & sewer system construction, or a New Mexico company with revenues between $2.5m and $5m in an industry described by NAICS Code 532412 ("Other Heavy Machinery Rental & Leasing"). The moniker "life sciences" seems a bit closer to water and sewer systems than to heavy machinery leasing, but who knows? If you have a clue, please post. ACAS' site seems bereft of detail. Based on the quarterly interest payments ACAS gets from the company (described below), I think it's clear that if either of these companies is our man, WRH, Inc. has to be the $15m/y water treatment tools and services company.
Two ACAS vice-presidents of buyouts – the Stanford MBA graduate Scott Kauffman, and former KPMG manager Justin Dufour – are observers on the board of WRH Holdings Inc. As of September 30, 2009, ACAS had invested $353.3 million in its "non-control/non-affiliate investment" WRH, Inc. in the following manner:
- $4m in senior debt (4% coupon and $4m face value, due 9/13, pledged as collateral and not non-performing, for an apparent quarterly income of $40,000 or $0.04m; this is valued at $4.0m which is both the investment's face value and its cost);
- $86.5m in subordinated debt (14% coupon and $87.1m face value, due over the period 7/14-9/15, pledged as collateral and not non-performing, for an apparent quarterly income of $3.0485m; this is valued at $87.1m or face value, which is above listed cost);
- $213m in convertible preferred stock, listed as not income-producing and valued at $$86.9m; and
- $49.8m in common stock, listed as not income-producing and valued at $0 (nil).
I haven't looked at ACAS' internal accounting, but one scenario suggests itself: when WRH informed ACAS that it wouldn't be able to pay dividends on the convertible preferred, ACAS converted some of the preferred (reducing its basis in the remainder of its convertible preferred holdings) to increase its holdings in still-paying sub notes. The reduction in "cost" of ACAS' holdings of WRH's senior notes suggests something similar occurred in the senior notes, but the transaction isn't as easy to guess as in the case of the convertible preferred, which was almost certainly converted to sub debt under the shares' conversion feature at whatever rate applied to the shares. The fact that the change in costs doesn't equal zero means that ACAS realized a loss at the time it exited the non-performing convertible preferred. The face value of the sub debt increased $5.4m in the transaction, quite close to ACAS' change in cost (the least-significant digit's off-by-one issue could result from rounding; or the other digit could represent something having to do with the change in senior debt).
So, ACAS converted preferred into sub debt, and did something with its senior debt that's less clear. ACAS gets $3,088,500 per quarter in interest, could potentially convert more preferred to debt, and holds common stock. Assuming that water treatment is still a valuable industry in Ohio or the nation, it's expected that the long term value of the zero-listed common stock isn't zero, and that the currently-nonperforming preferred stock may have future value either on conversion to debt or after reinstatement of dividends. At currently-listed "fair value" the interest payments are rather better than many of my own holdings, though presumably ACAS entered the deal to profit from equity increases (hence, the equity investment).
Anyone know anything solid on the company? My understanding was that infrastructure was considered a sexy industry and that efforts to improve greenness and sustainability had strong support. A company that provides water treatment tools and services seems well-positioned to benefit from increasing water demands as populations grow and their associated ecological concerns become infrastructure plans.
Is this really a long-term loser? Is the company reinvesting in growth rather than paying dividends in order to capitalize on some present opportunity? Was business horrible after the end of 2008 but picking back up? If ACAS didn't think the preferred shares had value, why would it not have converted them all to get paid interest?
WRH Inc. will be a holding to watch: both for listed fair value and for evidence of ACAS converting investments into different holding types as performance changes. In the meantime, several million a quarter in cash doesn't hurt ACAS' prospects.
If you have insight into WRH Inc. or any other ACAS holding, please post.
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