According to this article in IEEE Spectrum, SMS revenue alone dwarfs the entire music, film and game “industries” combined. Just another example of how Big Content occupies a disproportionate place on the public policy stage and needs to be cut down to size.
When you design remote controls, make them rubberized. The extra revenue you make from selling replacements (when the hard brittle plastic kind inevitably break) does not come close to compensating for the loss of goodwill and the sheer inventory management costs of keeping all those back models in stock.
Home automation units based on X10/Insteon or proprietary systems like Control4 or Savant start at $100-200. At a time when you can buy a fully functional WiFi router with a 200+MHz processor, a minimum 8M of RAM, 16MB of flash for under $50, why is there not a home automation system that costs $50 and uses standard TCP/IP and WiFi for connectivity?
As I was browsing through Google News, I saw some particularly acrid editorials in the WSJ. Their Op-Ed pages have been the preserve of lunatics long before Rupert Murdoch acquired them, but you would think the markets’ fiasco and the general opprobrium of discredit raining upon Wall Street would lead them to some well deserved humility.
The press recycles worn clichés when it reports on volatility in the markets. Last week’s 700-point drop was a “collapse” and today’s 5% drop is a “meltdown”.
I’m sorry, but 30% is a meltdown and 50% is a collapse. 5% or 7% do not rate such excessive terms.