Comments for sneaker.org

Comment on The decreasing importance of longhand by James Landay

James Landay — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:58:10 +0000

People have been saying this for 10-15 years and I haven’t seen much movement. I have little kids and all the schools they have been in still start with pencils and do it for years. I think we will do both, just move to keyboards earlier. These devices are still slower than a piece of paper and pen for quick notes.

Comment on The decreasing importance of longhand by admin

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:46:05 +0000

@VoottooChief: Absolutely, the iPad would make for a great Wacom replacement. Having a pen/brush for it would be even better. I’m all for that. My point is that we won’t be “writing” much. Using a tablet for sketching, painting, coloring, doing CAD work etc. makes perfect sense. I just don’t think “writing” using longhand is going to be around too long. Keyboards and voice are way more efficient.

Comment on iPhone’s Achilles’ heel: lack of background processing by Ish Harshawat

Ish Harshawat — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:29:44 +0000

While I too am a bit disappointed by the lack of major iPhone OS updates including some form of background processing — I think Apple has a huge lead based on its uniform UI paradigm and lead in pure number of apps. I have used Nexus One. I am very unimpressed. While its great for geeks like you and me all the apps run differently from each other and the learning curve is just to steep.The mobile developer in me is scared by Android because of the sheer device fragmentation issues and lack of a uniform addressable market. I think Apple will introduce backgrounding later. How would I do it? App registers to wake up at a periodic intervals. A central timer dispatches the appropriate notification. Simple observer pattern that should deal with the battery life issues.

But i’m not worried for Apple they have lots of lead time on their competitors.

Comment on The decreasing importance of longhand by VoottooChief

VoottooChief — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:22:50 +0000

The Apple iPad form factor is far better suited for writing that it is for typing. It is not currently accessorized for it but imagine a box full of writing, painting, coloring accessories. Imagine the Wacom Intuos Tablet – now the iPad could potentially completely replace that.

Comment on Why I don’t trust Yelp by Rhonda D.

Rhonda D. — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:54:11 +0000

…I am afraid Yelp has no credability as far as I am concerned – They are essentailly the “Fox News” of web review sites.

I have also had Yelp reviews totally deleted, and others that disappear unless I am logged in.

The reason I love sites like apartment.ratings dot com, among others, is that I can see negative as well as positive reviews, and I can BE THE JUDGE of the integrity of the reviewer. I do not need my reviews to be pre-digested for me.

And, of course, I am suspicious of any business that has 100% positive reviews – my goodness, it must be run by Nother Theresa!

Goodbye, Yelp.

Comment on Why I don’t trust Yelp by Deanna

Deanna — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:10:42 +0000

I submitted a positive yelp review about about a salon I had recently visited. Yelp said it posted my review and it only shows the review if Im logged. I think its shady that yelp only posts what reviews they like. I thought that this was freedom of speech. A lot of people that I have spoken to have had the same problem with YELP…Shady

Comment on On Saving vs. Consumer Spending by Richard

Richard — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:42:31 +0000

The People Next Door

It seems easy to understand why the people next door drive a car that must be 14 years old, dress quite plainly and don’t much if anything on landscaping. He is a sell-employed carpenter and she is an assistant in a doctor’s office. Neither has a college education. But, each of their three children went to an Ivy League undergraduate college and then on to an Ivy League business, medical and law school. One of the children mentioned to you how grateful they were to have left school without a cent of debt. When you’ve spoken with either of the parents over the years, they’ve never complained about their children’s educational expenses or indeed about anything to do with money. How can this be? Their combined incomes can’t be over $100,000, yet it seems they may have paid over a half million dollars in educational expense for their children. Your annual household income is $250,000 but you live paycheck to paycheck.

The main difference between you and your neighbors is that they are sitting on a stock portfolio worth $4 million, throwing off more than $120,000 per year in dividend income. You couldn’t raise $10,000 if you had a month to do it. How in God’s name did this come to be? Neither of the neighbors inherited anything.

Here’s what happened. In the early 1970’s, when your neighbors and you were in the early 20’s, they realized they would probably not make great incomes so they decided to live beneath their means, utterly to ignore advertising, to buy used cars, stay out of bar rooms, restaurants and malls, and to invest what little they could spare in the stocks of companies that sold things to other people, such as you.

They bought shares in what was then Philip Morris, and of Johnson & Johnson, Colgate Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, GE, Wal-Mart, Coca Cola, William Wrigley, and Abbott Laboratories. They got into Microsoft in the late 1980’s at 10 cents per share. They had the broker deliver the shares to them so that they could reinvest the dividends and buy more shares without paying brokerage commissions. Over a period of some 35 years, your neighbors invested maybe $200,000 of their own savings plus all the dividend income. While you were going through your considerable income buying new cars, running up big credit card balances shopping at Burberry’s, Barney’s and Brooks Brothers, Neiman Marcus, and Bloomindales, eating out 5 times a week, ordering drinks made with premium priced liquor and leaving money on the tables of Indian-run casinos, your neighbors were reserving against their future obligations and for a time when they might not want or indeed be able to work. While you were unable to separate your wants from your needs, your less well educated neighbors had no trouble doing that for themselves. The result is that capitalism turned your income into your neighbors’ principal. One not so small consequence was that their children could apply to Stanford, Princeton and the University of Chicago without requesting a cent of financial aid. If you don’t think that sways the minds of top college admission committee members, think again.

Now, your neighbors love their jobs, in large part because they know they don’t need them and could cease working on any given day. You and your spouse hate your jobs because you know you have to keep them and maybe to work until you are 70 or older. You might want to continue to be most cordial to your neighbors’ children. When you end up looking for a job, one of them might give you a reference.

Oh, wait…you suddenly awaken from the horror of this wretched scenario and discover it was but a dream and a nightmare at that. You are still only 28 and what has been written above is but one possible outcome. Fortune has favored you and given you a second chance. If you are comfortable with the future outlined above, keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll get it. Keep spending all your income on consumer junk and trying to live as if you were a person with money and be sure to plan to work for a high school kid when you are 70, maybe parking cars.

If, on the other hand, you want to be able to live more or less without financial worry, curb your spending now and begin investing. Sure, driving a flashy car, having $50 lunches and $100 dinners, drinking martinis made with Grey Goose vodka and buying $500 Jimmy Chu shoes seems stunningly enjoyable now, but, I assure you, it won’t come up to having $4 million when you are 60.

Comment on Twitter updates for 2009-08-23 by ComcastMark

ComcastMark — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:35:01 +0000

You can contact us for assistance. We are here to help. Sorry for the trouble.

Mark Casem
Comcast Corp.
National Customer Operations
We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com

Comment on On Saving vs. Consumer Spending by Richard E. Savoy

Richard E. Savoy — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:17:03 +0000

Junk No, not bonds. Even bonds backed by sub-prime mortgages have some value, maybe more than people think I’m calling your attention to your junk, the kind that had no value from the day you acquired it. It’s the junk consumer goods you’ve bought over the years. Look around your house, from basement to attic and see the sheer mass of junk you’ve bought over the last 10, 20 or 30 years. Recall, painful though it is, how much you paid for stereo system after stereo system, Bose speakers, Sony Trinitron TV’s, Panasonic flat screen digital TV’s, kitchen gadgets from Williams Sonoma. Recall how you rationalized making all of these purchases as “investments” when at the time you bought them you knew better.
Think of the cars you’ve bought, the excise taxes you’ve paid to have them on the road, the insurance premiums and the frequent and costly repairs.
Thank of what you’ve spent in restaurants on inflated meal prices and on clothes you almost never wore.
Think of the so-called jewelry you’ve bought. The jewelry industry does a real number on you with this, setting up selling areas with lavish appointments and intense lighting. One of the great con jobs of all time was that pulled off by 19th century raconteur Cecil Rhoades (remember Rhodesia?). He acquired control of famed diamond mines in South Africa and created the myth, perpetuated to this day by DeBeers, that diamonds are scarce. What a joke, but think of the number who fall for it every day. If you think jewelry is somehow “different” and is an “investment”, just try selling a piece back to the jeweler who sold it to you or to any other. Just try it.
Think of all the money you’ve earned over your career and think of how much of it you have left. You’ve probably lost nearly all of it. Where did it do? It was spent on junk. The consequence is that, while you may have earned more than $1 million or even $2 million, you have little or nothing to show for it, other than a pile of AMEX receipts for junk. AMEX and its shareholders did well off of you. How well did you do?
Retailers now call upon you to corral your credit cards and start spending again. That’s good for them. How good it is it for you or your family? As Suze Orman has pointed out time and time again, we, in this country, are in deep trouble not because we spend too little but because we spend too much.
Now, for the real pain. The price to be paid for all the good times you’ve had and the junk you’ve purchased can be calculated. I’m sure you are familiar with AFLAC, the insurance company whose products are endorsed by a duck. Ho much do you think you’d have today had you invested $10,000 in AFLAC stock in October, 1980? The answer is over $2.3 million. That’s right, had you never saved another cent, never created an IRA, never participated in a 401(k), but had had the good sense to have skipped a car or two or maybe a few years’ purchases of clothes that went to the Salvation Army years ago, and instead had purchased AFLAC stock, you’d have over $2 million today, and that’s down from nearly $4 million due to Wall street’s recent slide. $10,000 was a fair amount of money in October 1980, but you know you have spent far, far more on junk. By the way, the AFLAC stock would be about 50,000 shares paying over $50,000 annually in cash dividends.
Think what you’d have if in addition to buying the AFLAC stock you had created and funded an IRA and had participated in your employer’s 401(k).
It’s never too late to break bad habits, habits that harm us. I don’t care what situation you face…you will always stand a better chance of obtaining a better outcome if you have money. We’re well into the liquidation of the bad debt of the early part of the 21st century. Mark my words, there will be more bad debt cycles to come. Resolve today that you will no longer be the pawn in a game calculated to keep you poor and in debt. Resolve to separate your wants from your needs and to stop buying things you don’t need. Do you really need premium cable channels for which you receive a massive cable bill each month? Do you really need all the clothes you buy? Do you really think that jewelry is an investment? If you buy it at an auction conducted by Christie’s, Skinner or Sotheby’s and its can be established as having belonged to James I, Catherine the Great, or Nicholas Romanov, maybe it’s an investment. If not, I submit it’s likely more junk. Expensive watches are in the same category. The watch makers dummy up “auctions” where they secretly bid on their own merchandise so as to create the impression that watches are an investment. For them they are. For you, they are junk. Just try selling one. Just try it.
When you buy so-called “designer” goods, you are simply signing to pay more for something you certainly didn’t need but were convinced you had to buy to seem “cool”. You end up ever further into credit card or other debt and the “so-called “designer” ends up even better ensconced in Palm Beach. Good deal for him; possibly fatal for you.
When you don’t have money, you don’t have power. What you want is nether here nor there. Someone with money will tell you what you can have, what you must do and what you can’t have and what you can’t do. If that state of affairs appeals to you, keep doing what you’re doing. When you reach age 67, you’ll have less net worth than a high school kid and you may be working for one.
If you want your son to be able to apply to Stanford or your granddaughter to Yale and to be able to do so on the basis that no financial aid is requested, then change your habits today. The colleges would deny it, but you know the chances of acceptance are better if the applicant is not raiding the school’s endowment.
Stop buying things you don’t need and stop using credit cards.
You have no patriotic duty to be broke. Let your neighbors be the ones to buy products from the companies whose stocks you own. With some modest effort, you can begin building a portfolio today that will include shares in a sufficiently broad range of companies so that there will be almost nothing that other people can do that won’t in one way or another make money for you.
Oh, you say, who’d head of AFLAC in 1980? Granted, it was a far less well known company then. OK, let’s vary the example. I’m sure you’ve heard of Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic. $10,000 invested in Johnson & Johnson stock in 1980 would be worth $500,000 today. Invested in Medtronic in 1985, the result would be $600,000, and that’s after the current sell-off. It’s not the AFLAC $2 million, but it’s more than your junk is worth and it’s liquid.
Eat at home, stay out of bar rooms and malls, make your own coffee, make do with the clothes you have, cancel premium cable subscriptions. You’d be surprised what you can do without, and so doing is a very small price to pay for possibly becoming a millionaire. You may be the first on your block to do so. Keep in mind that the people who live near you, the ones who keep a low prolife, have old clothes and an older car, may have beaten you to it. What if they heard of AFLAC in 1980 or bought Microsoft at an adjusted cost of 10 cents per share in 1986? You just never know, do you?
Resolve today to learn something from this crisis, something that will benefit you and your family for all time. $1 million is not misplaced; it is lost $50 at a time. I close by quoting Jonathan Pond, CPA and lecturer on many PBS programs dealing with building personal wealth. “Your best dollar is the one you don’t spend”.
Richard E. Savoy
Boston, MA

Comment on Comcast is annoying by AC

AC — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:16:14 +0000

I hate comcast!
and every other company that has a front end of people who can’t think. Thanks for that rant.