Daily Archives: December 22, 2004

An answer in search of a question: TV over phone lines

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I wonder if this is what we’ll get from local telco monopoly SBC if they win the Madison WiFi RFP:

If everything goes as planned, the telephone industry will be all about television in 2005. TV over your home phone line. TV on your cell phone. Few topics have been as popular this past year among phone companies and their technology partners.

I don’t think shoving conventional TV down SBC customer’s throats via DSL (will it ever be as fast as Japan or Korea’s service?) makes any sense…. As I said, an answer in search of a question. Clueless.

Wisconsin, Madison Property Taxes

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Several recent articles highlight the ongoing problem of state & local taxes growing faster than Wisconsin personal income:

  • Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Alliance released a study that forecasts 2005 property taxes will go up more than 6 percent. They also forecast that the local school portion of property taxes will go up 7.3%. They also found that property taxes will account for 4.1% of Wisconsin taxpayer’s personal income. (via JR Ross)
  • Unsurprisingly, The Taxpayer Bill of Rights continues to be discussed in Madison. This will continue to be a hot button issue as long as state and local spending continues to rise faster than personal incomes (there will be a reckoning unless the economy grows faster…., here’s an example: Judy Wagner, 65, a Milwaukee substitute teacher, said her property taxes were forcing her to postpone her retirement. Her property tax bill had risen from about $3,000 in 2000 to just under $4,700 now, she said.
    “My options are to work until I’m 75 or 80 or sell my home and move south like three of my friends have,” she said.) Via Patrick Marley & Steven Walters.

  • This will help, to some degree, though we must create a more robust environment for tax paying entrepreneurs. True statewide, 2 way broadband (not the current slow DSL and cable modem services) and a much simplified tax/paperwork process would be a great start.

Honda Accord V-6 Hybrid Drive

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Patrick Sauer summarizes his drive of a new Honda Accord V-6 Hybrid:

The new Accord V-6 Hybrid–that’s right, V-6 Hybrid–cruises out this winter and with it, a whole new way of looking at cars will follow in its wake. It used to be one or the other, V-6 power or four-banger mileage. But the super-geniuses at Honda have corralled an additional 15 horses under this Accord Hybrid’s hood (up to 255 hp) for those who like having their six cylinders but are feeling the pain at the pumps — by the way, this car will never, ever need to be plugged in. And here’s the best part, with that main course of horsepower comes a free side of better mileage–up from 24 city and 34 highway in the standard V-6 to 30 and 37 in the Hybrid. That means 633 miles per tank, in the fast lane–talk about wallet weight gain, ka ching.

The Business Sales Cycle: A Great Example from Jonathan Schwartz

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Sun Microsystems Executive Jonathan Schwartz writes a blog (which is a rather big deal). His most recent post summarizes the sales challenges when competitors are writing Sun’s obituary. Schwartz’s story is quite useful and interesting:

The customer started by telling us what our competitors had been saying about Sun, our platforms, and our future over the past two years. HP told him Sun was going out of business. IBM told him the future was all about linux, and that Sun was all about lock-in. Both competitors expressed a sympathetic concern that we weren’t “going to make it.” How charitable. The CIO wanted to know why they were wrong. This was going to be one of those “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” sessions. And we got right into it.
He told me consolidation was his number one priority. That’s why they were standardizing on HP. I asked “Which systems?” He responded “their enterprise systems.” I asked, “Itanium?” Wondering why they’d introduce a fork (new apps, new OS, new skills, and the expense of porting) if they were trying to consolidate platforms. He said they weren’t interested in Itanium. “No way, we’re going with PA-RISC.” I asked, “But isn’t that an end of life’d platform?” Silence. “Well, yes, I guess it would be.” How times change. Maybe HP had a specialty service for dead platform consolidation.