Stupid Quiz

Judas Iscariot You scored 35% Pride, 37% Envy, 65% Ambition, and 55% Deceitfulness!

You are Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Many Christians would consider you to be one of the worst villains who ever walked the Earth. Jesus himself said that it'd be better for that man if he had never been born. As horrible as that sounds, you do have some good qualities. You were a humble servant of Christ for three years. You also genuinely cared about your fellow man. You had compassion for the plight of your people. This compassion and your ambition, eventually led you to betray Jesus. Your ultimate goal was to overthrow the Roman Empire and set up the Messianic Kingdom in Israel. You thought Christ came to Earth for this purpose. When you found out that Jesus was not going to do this any time soon, you betrayed him to the authorities in hopes that this may provoke Jesus to wield his powers upon the inhabitants of the Earth and save Israel. Your ambition took you out of accordance with Christ and eventually led you to the dark side. Your deceptive nature made you a perfect candidate to betray your master. Only a snake can hide out in the leader's circle for three years without being noticed. Well, Jesus knew, but the other eleven didn't have a clue. You're pretty sharp.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 12% on Pride You scored higher than 33% on Envy You scored higher than 61% on Ambition You scored higher than 58% on Deceitfulness

Link: The Which Biblical Villain Are You Test written by MetalliScats on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Google Print and Copyright

One of the recent stories to catch my attention is the lawsuit by the Authors Guild against Google for the Google Print program. I won't get into any legal details as other sites can present them such as Groklaw in much better detail. However the ramifications are great and many. I have no doubt this lawsuit may eventually go to the Supreme Court to decide what is fair use. The argument is essentially the difference between how much use is fair use. The Authors Guild contends any attempt to make a copy even if the public information displayed is short snippets violates copyright. Google contends the copy is private and allowed under copyright while the public information is only short snippets allowed by the fair use provisions of copyright. I believe if Google could obtain the short snippets through other means than copying the book digitally, the Authors Guild would not make this fuss. I also believe the Authors Guild is concerned about the amount of people accessing snippets from the book. Never before has a medium allowed for millions of people to find any snippet in the book they are wanting. We always had to take the snippets offered by the publishers, reviewers and authors and buy the book to judge its content. Now we may be able to obtain these snippets quickly and can judge the content for ourselves. I believe this scares publishers and book distributors as much as copying the book. I've always hated reviews which just quote a few words from books. You are never able to understand even the most basic context and need to rely on the reviewer for any insight. I have always adored publishers who add a couple pages to the end or beginning in a book about another book they are promoting. It gives you a feel for how the book is written and the content you may expect from the book. Google Print does much less than provide a page or two about the content. They only provide at most a paragraph and at least a couple of lines. In the end Google is trying to provide people with another resource about the content of printed materials. They are allowing us to view short snippets from a huge collection of books and asking us to evaluate the content. I think Google Print will allow people to more accurately evaluate whether a book may fill our needs or not.

Confirmation

Two weeks ago I received confirmation from my parents they booked tickets to the Broadway musical Spam-a-lot for the day after Christmas. Ever since they asked if the family was interested in going to NYC for Christmas I've been looking forward to the trip. Yesterday I received confirmation my plane ticket to Philly is booked for Christmas. My parents live in Newark, Delaware so we'll spend Christmas there and then stay in NYC overnight. I am very excited as this will be my first trip to New York City. I'll get to experience the Big Apple, Broadway and hopefully some other institutions. Last weekend I also received confirmation someone really does read this blog. A friend from work asked for a RSS feed on my LiveJournal blog. I decided to switch because this one looks prettier and easier to customize. Yesterday I also received confirmation that my co-workers read this blog too. It was promptly reported to my supervisor. No problems arose yet. I am puzzled how it can be found so quickly as it is a very new blog and the search engines probably haven't indexed it very high. I can't find it doing some specific searches. If you have any ideas, I would like to hear them. That fact makes it very creepy and suspicious. It reminded me of this piece done by 60 Minutes.

Look at Creative Lab's Financial Data

I thought it was time to put to use all this information I'm learning in school and make an amateur attempt to analyze Creative Lab's latest financial filing. It hasn't been good news for the company announcing a $588,000 profit this year and a net operating loss of $68,548,000. Those are the numbers which really stand out. The troubles with the company's excess inventory have been well reported and I think overemphasized. There are bigger problems within the income statement. The largest trouble spot is the excessive growth of receivables. Accounts Receivable grew 91% while sales revenue grew 50% from 2004 to 2005. This could mean the company didn't collect the sales it made on credit and/or extended credit to distributors or retailers when the company normally would only accept cash terms. Also the allowance for bad debt only grew 2.8% representing management's confidence they will collect most of the sales on credit. The other problem with the company is the acquisition of 3dLabs. This year the company wrote off $65,225,000 in goodwill and intangible assets from 3dLabs due to performance below expectations and new product delays. In 2002, Creative Labs acquired 3dLabs for $25,806,000 net. This probably represents a loss for the company because I do not believe 3dLabs has generated $90 Million in operating profit. However the financial statements do not separate income by subsidiary. Some areas of minor concern is the product warranty and settlement increases. In 2004, the company had $4,871,000 in warranty settlements with $8,417,000 in warranties issued. In 2005, the company had $21,241,000 in warranty settlements with $27,603,000 in warranties issued. This is a significant increase in the settlement rate of the warranties. Creative also issued a $0.50 dividends ($41,357,000) during 2005 compared to $0.25 dividends for 2004 and 2003. This comes after borrowing $175 Million to pay for the net cash flow loss of $208,464,000 in operating activities. The company faces several challenges including reducing inventory and increasing gross profits, collecting receivables in a timely manner and reducing accounts receivable, managing 3dLabs more effectively and investing the loan in product research and development. If the company can overcome these challenges, they will make a return to profitability. Now comes time for the disclaimer. I do not make any warranty, expressed or implied, or assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. The opinions of the authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of Creative Labs or any of its subsidiaries and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.