Re: Help With Sounds

  • From: Chris Hofstader <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 07:53:14 -0400

Sina, a slight correction between the myth and the reality:

Blind ghetto companies want to maximize profits in terms of dollars, yen, 
euros, rupees, etc. and are not thinking about profit margins (a percentage of 
total revenue). As the integral dollar component is important, they charge 
profoundly more dollars per unit than one would be able to do in a market much 
larger than our little sandbox. As long as the board of directors and investors 
are happy with return on their investment, they do not give a rat's ass about 
what percentage of the total revenue is EBIDTA but only the number of dollars 
that get distributed as dividends.

Of course, the blind ghetto companies lie and tell us that its the small market 
and blah, blah, blah about costs per unit. Unit costs for JAWS (for instance) 
are negligible (something like $500,000 per year) and result in really big 
dollar sales numbers ($20,000,000 when you include SMA, upgrades and the like). 
If you could get away with a 20x margin, I think you would probably do the same 
and, as FS and most of their competitors are profit making companies, lying 
comes natural to them.

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize for the number of times I have 
repeated this lie when I worked at FS and for a little while afterward.   When 
users on mailing lists or elsewhere asked about the pricing model, they would 
have me write up some kind of memo on the matter telling people how poor, poor 
FS was working hard on their behalf and could hardly make our payroll. This was 
pure and unadulterated bullshit, bullshit bullshit!

I know I also repeated this lie to some of you on this list over the phone. I 
will not mention specific names as I did it so often that I would definitely 
leave people out.

So, if you ran a company that could build a PAC Mate with 40 cell display for 
around $500 wouldn't you charge $6000 to get those $5500 for your investors? It 
was our fiduciary duty as officers of the company to maximize return for the 
investors, wasn't it?

BTW: If anyone at FS challenges the numbers I cite above, challenge them to 
open their books. If anyone there says I was a bad employee for six years, 
challenge them to open my personnel file.

cdh
 
On Sep 8, 2010, at 5:40 PM, Sina Bahram wrote:

> Sure, and if you enjoy living in the ghetto blindness space, then that's 
> fine. I love it, frankly, 10 to 20X margins, only a few
> tech conferences a year, the most you have is a few releases per financial 
> year and you can usually charge the user for some of
> those, etc, etc ... It's great. I love that market. Exploiting blind people 
> is the way to go if you want some cash, my friend. It's
> as easy as apple pie, but that doesn't make it better.
> 
> You have short-term advantages for ghetto blind products written specifically 
> for the blind. Very little learning curve, easier
> navigation for a little while, etc, etc, and then you realize that this 
> product is written by an industry who doesn't have any
> capitalistic pressure on it. People, have, to buy from them, so they can 
> continue releasing complete garbage, charging an arm and a
> leg, and oh, I love this part, we should be grateful because it's a company 
> incurring such costs to develop in the blindness space.
> 
> And I swear, if you show me a company that has that level of cost, I'll show 
> you the most incompetent set of idiots ever in charge
> of a product. I don't care if they are nice, or good people. That makes me 
> want to have a beer with them, but the fact that they are
> such incompetent tech managers makes me want to throw said beer in their face.
> 
> So here's an idea, take a tenth of those dollars, and make some real 
> applications used by real people in the real world accessible.
> 
> You mentioned Outlook. Show me a blindness application that works half as 
> well for the things Outlook can do.
> 
> You mentioned editors. For IDE's, I use eclipse, when I need something more 
> than wordpad, not a proprietary editor, and I actually
> prefer it to anything I've used, including Boxer.
> 
> There's word processors ... Show me anything that works better than MS Word 
> for the kinds of things it supports, for the blind.
> 
> Same for presentation software: there's PowerPoint.
> 
> And so on
> 
> Take care,
> Sina
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ken Perry
> Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 5:28 PM
> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: Help With Sounds
> 
> I like to argue this.  If  you actually get good software written for the 
> blind it's much better than software adapted for the
> blind.  Unfortunately that means its more expensive but then look at gold 
> wave, dreamweaver, Adobie, and the list could go on I will
> not even list Microsoft because we all know they are um well interesting when 
> it comes to pricing their software have you tried
> buying Outlook?  Don't give me that use thunderbird crap I have to actually 
> get my appointments sometime this week.  Some times its
> better just to buck up and pay for software that is easy to use so
> 
> you don't have to spend time and money fighting with it to make it work the 
> way it should have when you got it.  Hell I am even
> working on an extension for Safari to try to make that piece of shit work 
> better.
> 
> Ken
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Sina Bahram
> Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 4:11 PM
> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: Help With Sounds
> 
> Let me be less kind, haha. Anything written in the blindness market.
> 
> Other industries do actually know how to write software.
> 
> Take care,
> Sina
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Chris Hofstader
> Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 3:59 PM
> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: Help With Sounds
> 
> When did Sina become a lousy communist?
> On Sep 8, 2010, at 2:58 PM, Sina Bahram wrote:
> 
>> There is also Reaper, and some other programs as well.
>> 
>> $200 for anything other than an entire operating system is not only
> ludicrous, but down right despicable.
>> 
>> I'd laugh, but I'm too busy being sick to my stomach at such an insane
> price for anything.
>> 
>> Take care,
>> Sina
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> 
>> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ken Perry
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 12:27 PM
>> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: RE: Help With Sounds
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Sound recorder (SR) by APH is my tool of choice.  It is $200 but it is 
>> the most accessible and coolest sound tool made for blind folks.  If 
>> you
> don't have a volunteer yet let me know and I can see what I can wack out.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Ken   
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of QuentinC
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 11:04 AM
>> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: Re: Help With Sounds
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> You could use programs such as audacity to make that. It's not very
> difficult but take some time.
>> 
>> 
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