Ez a Mechayeh!

In July, Microflaccid's offer for a free upgrade to Windows 10 expires, and it means that those f%$#ing pop up windows will be going away:

There was one issue that went unspoken in Microsoft’s announcement on Thursday that the free Windows 10 upgrade offer would end on July 29. What would the company do about all those annoying, almost malware-like, pop-up notifications to upgrade to Windows 10 that appeared on the PCs of Windows 7 and 8.1 users? The answer is they will disappear.

“Details are still being finalized, but on July 29th the Get Windows 10 app...will be disabled and eventually removed from PCs worldwide,” Microsoft told WinBeta in a written statement.

Hallelujah

The company warned that it may take some time to disable the upgrade pop-ups on computers worldwide.

Hallelujah is right.

I am sick to death of Microsoft's nags to install its f%$#ing spyware.

^*It's Yiddish, "איז אַ מחיה," and it means that it is a great joy.

College Costs: It Ain't Climbing Walls

In response to a particularly egregious post by an overpaid (aren’t they all?) sales weasel about marketing to the “4 Ps”^*, Paul Campos of LGM notes the remuneration of the 15 highest paid staff at the school, and the size of the school (less than 200 faculty), and draws obvious conclusions.

First, let me say, read the comments on his post.  They are a wealth of information as well.

Second, as is my wont, let me run the numbers:

The top 15 luminaries at this institution earn a total of $3,928,000.00, with the 15^th most highly paid getting $145,000.00 a year.

There are 200 teaching staff, none of whom make $145,000.00 a year, or their names would be on the tax records used at LGM.

Assuming that they each average $100,000.00 a year, this means $20,000,000.00 spent on teaching staff, which means that 14% of the teaching budget is spent on such notables as the , "Vice President of Campus Environment ," "Associate Assistant Vice President/Dean", "Vice President of Institutional Advancement, " and "Associate Vice President and Chief of Staff".

According to the comments, almost all the teacher are adjuncts, so that number is probably less than $60K, it's primarily a liberal arts institution, which would mean that of these people have get the ⅓ of what is spent on instructors.

When you further consider that it is likely that each of these bits of administrative deadwood have 5 flunkies working directly for them on average (and my guess would be that there are at least 10 working for both the marketing and alumni development chiefs) , and that each of them earn $30K a year, and this goes up to more than 50% of the teacher budget.

Note from the comments also, "It is telling that she refers to customers rather than students."

A major problem with higher education, and higher education costs, is the explosion of overpaid and under-worked administrators.

Another one is that, particularly at the top schools, there is monopolistic collusion as to prices and aid awards, allowing prices to skyrocket.

Instead, we have people talking about climbing walls for students, and those palatial some new dorms.^†

College is a microcosm of society, where an unproductive and parasitic managerial class suck the marrow out of business, the economy, society, and the "customer".

^*Product – What product or products should we offer? Price – How should our products be priced? Place – Where should we offer our products for sale? Promotion – What’s the compelling story we tell about our product and where do we tell the story to get people to buy our product?
^†In fact, the high end student amenities are predicted by monopoly theory. Once monopolists stop competing on price, they jack up prices and compete on bling.

1000 Words on Big Pharma Research Spending

9 Out Of 10 Big Pharma Companies Spent More On Marketing Than On R&D

I would also note that 84% of the basic R&D funding is by the taxpayers.

What I am talking about is the research that discovers the basic science that leads to drugs.

I would argue that if we were to repeal the Bayh-Dole act, and once again require that federally funded inventions be assigned to the federal government, we would get more innovation, because universities would not be acting like private companies regarding their (our) inventions, and it would save enormous amounts of money, particularly with regard to pharmaceuticals.

The Washington consensus, which is that no matter how badly the private entities loot the rest of society, we must privatize everything, because ……… Capitalism!

It's why we have hepatitis C drugs that are costing over $1,000.00 a pill.

As an alternative, have the government fund taking basic research to a marketable drug, and then allow drug manufacturers to bid for the right to manufacture those medications.

H/t The Big Picture.

A Quick Announcement

I really don't give the proverbial flying f%$# in a rolling doughnut about any Apple product announcements.

Never been a fan of their products, and absent a major technological breakthrough, unlikely since Apple is about taking new technology to the mass market, not creating new technology, I will continue not to care.

It is Called Price Gouging, You Moronic Free Market Mousketeer!

The latest poster boys for techno-Libertarians is the taxi service Uber, which is a smartphone based car hire service.

At the core of their business model is the idea that there is no need for any pesky regulations, because ……… Internet.

Ignoring for the moment supply restrictions like New York City's Medallion^* system, there is a reason that cabs, and cabbies, are regulated.

There is a need to ensure that the cars are safe, that the cabbies are properly trained,^† and that pricing is consistent and transparent, so, for example, we do not see price gouging, on New Year's eve, or during a rain storm.

So, what does Uber do?  It triples rates for New Year's Eve, and Randroid morons like Rob Leathern, the Chief Product Officer of Brand Networks, has this is not like price gouging at all, because ……… Internet:

Uber’s pricing isn’t price gouging. It’s just in an area we are deeply conflicted about, and missing some transparency that would increase consumer trust. They could certainly give all or some more of their excess surge profits to the drivers, or show us more of the extensive data their Math Team produces but doesn’t yet share– if their algorithms are as sophisticated as they claim then the benefit they get from sharing information with customers will outweigh any competitive concerns.

Bullsh%$.

This is price gouging, and it has been defined as such throughout the developed world for something over 80 years.

One of the reasons that we as a society make laws against this is because it is unethical, and dishonest.

I really hope that if he ever has a heart attack, that Mr. Leathern does not find an ambulance driver who jacks up the rate to take him to the hospital.

^*Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? The medallion system sucks.
^†Uber has already had at least 1 rape allegation attached to its service so far, and it turns out that rape by gypsy cab drivers is endemic.

Unregulated Competition Hurts Innovation and Consumers

This analysis comes from that bastion of Communist thought, the Financial Times. John Gapper compares Europe, where GSM was mandated by government, and the US, where anyone who rented the spectrum could use whatever standard they wanted, giving us providers with GSM and CDMA.

He quotes a 5 year old article from Wired:

Once the marketplace was allowed to work, it quickly converged to CDMA, which proved to be superior. CDMA is ascendant in America. More important, it's the foundation for the next generation of cell phone technology - 3G - since it turned out to be the only technology capable of making the leap to fast and capacious wireless data transmission. Had the US government mandated a standard, by contrast, it would undoubtedly have picked TDMA or GSM, since those were the dominant technologies at the time. And then we wouldn't have CDMA leading the way to 3G today.

Certainly, it is good to read such a deeply held faith in the marketplace leading to its own advancement.

Of course, it would help if it were not 180° wrong. As Mr. Gapper states:

I am afraid that history has not been kind to this argument. Europe has stayed ahead of the US in mobile telephony, and in 3G services. Having one technology standard has spurred competition among network operators and handset manufacturers while competition in the US has been stymied by a proliferation of technologies.

In truth, he is only partly right. US mobile technology deployment, and for that matter US broadband suck because this is what the unfettered free market leads to.

The Europeans mandated a single standard, and have prevented carriers from locking in customers. From a purely profit perspective, there is more money in making your customers captive than there is in providing them a superior and innovative product.

That's why local phone carriers and cable companies spent their money on lobbying, and creating limited products that require you to purchase all or nothing. To quote Willie Sutton, it's where the money is.

They are monopolists by necessity....There is only so much in the way of wire or cable you can place in a city, so the last mile is necessarily a monopoly or duopoly, and they spend their money on protecting this, not on benefiting the consumer.

Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week is Scam to Get Speaking Gigs

David Whororitz admits it in an interview with the George Washington University Hatchet, the Student Newspaper.

"I'm a prominent conservative but no one is inviting me to speak at their campuses," Horowitz said in an interview with The Hatchet. "I had to create an event."

Ummm...No, you are an obnoxious lying fascist clown, who jumped from one extreme to the other, and have since been trying to milk that for all it's worth.

You have less credibility as a speaker than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad^*, who at least believes the crap spewing forth from his mouth.

^*And DAMN you for forcing me look up his name.

Under Achiever, and Proud of It

I just want to say that Matt Groening is a bloody genius.

7-Elevens turn into 'Simpsons' Kwik-E-Marts
DALLAS, Texas (AP)-- Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of "The Simpsons" fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art.

Those stores and most of the 6,000-plus other 7-Elevens in North America will sell items that until now existed only on television: Buzz Cola, KrustyO's cereal and Squishees, the slushy drink knockoff of Slurpees.

It's all part of a campaign to hype the July 27 opening of "The Simpsons Movie," the big-screen debut for the long-running television cartoon, which loves to lampoon 7-Eleven as a store that sells all kinds of unhealthy snacks and is run by a man with a thick Indian accent.

For 20th Century Fox Film Corp. and Homer's creators at Gracie Films, the stunt is a cheap way to call attention to their movie, since 7-Eleven is bearing all the costs, which executives of the retail chain put at somewhere in the single millions.



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