More examples here.
Posted on 01/31/2005 7:41:53 AM PST by pabianice
January 31, 2005: For over half a century, kits have been sold that enable military history buffs to assemble scale models of military ships, aircraft and vehicles. But that era is coming to an end, as the manufacturers of the original equipment, especially aircraft, are demanding high royalties (up to $40 per kit) from the kit makers. Since most of these kits sell in small quantities (10-20,000) and are priced at $15-30 (for plastic kits, wooden ones are about twice as much), tacking on the royalty just prices the kit out of the market. Popular land vehicles, which would sell a lot of kits, are missing as well. The new U.S. Army Stryker armored vehicles are not available because of royalty requirements. Even World War II aircraft kits are being hit with royalty demands.
This move grew out of the idea that corporations should maximize "intellectual property" income. Models of a companys products are considered the intellectual property of the owner of a vehicle design. In the past, the model kits were considered free advertising, and good public relations, by the defense firms. The kit manufacturers comprise a small industry, and the aircraft manufacturers will probably not even notice if they put many of the model vendors out of business.
Some model companies will survive by only selling models of older (like World War I), or otherwise "no royalty" items (Nazi German aircraft) and ships. But the aircraft were always the bulk of sales, and their loss will cripple many of the kit makers.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
What the hey? You fellas must really have been the redheaded step-kids. Weren't you ever honored by being herded a thousand at time into a non-airconditioned space to stand on a concrete floor for an hour while the regional sales VPs were introduced?
I'll be forever indebted to those guys for the way they singlehandedly kept my job afloat for all those years.
< sniff >
bump
Or that they get the tendentious PR they so richly deserve.
A good case in point is Major League Baseball -- who once sued Little League Baseball and affiliated municipal associations for using "their" names and colors without a license (or adequate compensation).
That PR gaffe was settled out of court. As I recall, Little League Baseball agreed to purchase a "token" license (for around $50K annually), while MLB agreed to commit support to Little League on the order of about $250K annually (in kind and cash).
Previously, MLB had been giving around $200K annually to Little League as a PR vehicle -- so the arrangement essentially codified the status quo.
But what made it all work was the bad PR major league baseball deservedly got when their suit was revealed.
OK, now you're just scarin' me....!
actually its pretty fun, like a fine woman.
The way they do it is to throw the in sync cylinders out of sync. The other is playing with the pipes but sound does not equal power.
When all is said and done, whether we ride harleys or they ride jap bikes, the most important thing is to ride and keep the rubber side down.
More examples here.
Really? What a surprise- most of the models from when I was a kid, especially planes, were military models. Nobody had a problem with that. I haven't really looked at models for a long time- my brothers had plenty of them when we were growing up and I'd imagined being able to buy the same kinds today for their grandsons. Guess not. Sad.
Go into a decent hobby shop and you'll find military models galore. But go into Wal Mart or some such,a nd if you're lucky enough to find models at all, they're probably cars. And likely pre-painted and mostly assembled.
Welcome to the world the likes of Protagonas have brought us.
The god of the world is the greenback dollar.
The issue is simple: these companies have used the public domain nature of their work as their primary defense against lawsuits for damage caused by their products. I can think of several notorious issues off the top of my head:
In each of these cases, the courts agreed with the contractor's arguments that the product was built for the military, to the military's specifications, and that the proper defendant was the military. This saved the contractors billions of dollars of liability.
Now, they're VOLUNTARILY casting aside that defense. It will be cited in any future cases as "admission against interest," and open the door to any number of lawsuits when someone's house winds up stopping (or at least slowing down) a military aircraft.
Your points are well taken. (I never took a different view in any post)
I was the architect and lead software engineer at an internet startup company. When the execs took the company public, the software engineering staff was forced into working 7 days a week, 14 hour days to deliver on commitments delivered in a press conference. The marketing weenies made claims without checking with the development staff first. Failure to meet the commitments meant the stock price would tank. We meet the commitments. I paid the price with carpal tunnel syndrome that was so bad that I could not open doors, hold a glass of water or shift my car.
I made a decision to walk away from 38,000 options priced at 38 cents. It wasn't worth being disabled for life. A year after I left, the stock price peaked at $26/share. All those options would have been eligible for exercise. I could have had a gain of $973,560 before taxes. Instead, I returned to my current employer and managed my stock carefully. I've still had lots of 70-80 hour WEEKS, but isn't non-stop to the point of injury.
Of late, I've spent lots of time reading financial books by Dave Ramsey, Robert Kiyosaki and David Bach. Following their advice has me on track to being debt free with good investments yielding passive income for the future when I can't pound out 60 to 80 hour weeks on demand.
Many times. Fortunately, I haven't been accosted that way since leaving the employ of PacBell in 1991. I remember a crusty old manager assigned to take over a group of IBM system programmers. His most memorable quote, "You guys give a whole new meaning to taking a dump".
PacBell Of Dilbert fame, IIRC?
One of my favorite real-life Dilbertesque stories was when the yearly attaboys devolved into cheap sweaters embroidered with the company name on the breast. Someone guaranteed that wouldn't happen again by taking up a collection of hundred or so from the plebeians and delivering them to a local homeless shelter. That resulted in months of somehow unappreciated street-level advertising.
I was also recruited in the "coding wars" that inspired the book "Peopleware". It is fun to read a book insired by something that was part of your daily life at work.
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