Buzz Out Loud 939: Blue Brain and buckyballs
While Twitter has announced a sort of a business plan, and President Obama is ripping off Digg for an Internet town hall meeting, and Windows 7 may be getting a release candidate in May, we really don't care. Because we have some hardcore science stories.
While Twitter has announced a sort of a business plan, President Obama is ripping off Digg for an Internet town hall meeting, and Windows 7 may be getting a release candidate in May, we really don't care. Because we have some hardcore physics stories about buckyballs and hardware neuron simulators.
Listen now: Download today's podcast
 | EPISODE 939 |
Twitter to be a freemium service
http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-confirms-paid-pro-accounts-on-the-way-2009-3
AT&T exec: ISP will never terminate service on RIAA’s word
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10204514-93.html
Windows 7 Release Candidate coming in May
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7965513.stm
Giz explains: How a brainy worm might jack the world’s PCs on April 1
http://i.gizmodo.com/5183751/giz-explains-how-a-brainy-worm-might-jack-the-worlds-pcs-on-april-1
Apple refund clause: Bad for developers?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10204817-37.html
Obama turns to Web to take questions from public
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090326/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_online_town_hall
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7966226.stm
Google drawing and Google voice search for BlackBerry
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/03/drawing-on-your-creativity-in-docs.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10204643-2.htmle
Flash on Android
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/25/flash-coming-to-android-courtesy-of-bsquare/
Nintendo’s Iwata opens GDC with games, Wii storage news
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10204002-235.html
New lossless mp3HD format trades convenience for file size
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/03/new-lossless-mp3hd-format-trades-convenience-for-file-size.ars
Graphene chip could hit 1,000GHz, make your Core i7 feel totally inadequate
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/26/graphene-chip-could-hit-1-000ghz-make-your-core-i7-feel-totally/
Microchip mimics a brain with 200,000 neurons
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/25/1452209
VOICEMAIL
Unknown Penguin
Geek vs. Nerd
Mark from Florida
Shaq and Twitter
Shalin
Solution to Colbert space module
E-MAIL
Hey Tom, I just wanted to let you know that I actually went to Best Buy about a month ago to buy a dial-up modem. As I recall there was only one type of modem to choose. I had a friend that needed to replace his dial-up modem because it was fried when lightning struck his house. I talked to him about switching to high speed access but in the end he decided to stay with his existing dial up service.
Jeremy from Indiana, formerly of Greenville, IL
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Team RUSH 27 update — Hey guys,
Thank you SO much for reading my email. It was cool to get some props for the stuff we do from you guys.
Anyways, an update. After 2 district competitions (Kettering and Lansing) we are now competing at the Michigan State tournament in Ypsilanti in a little over a week. We have won the Chairman’s Award (the highest award you can win) at the District level, and now we are going on to compete for it at the state level.
GO TEAM RUSH! (You don’t need to fake enthusiasm for this one)
Love the show,
Patrick the robotics dude
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It just warms the cockles to discuss accounting! Time value of money is my real forte, but Apple’s accounting policies are fun too.
I fell several days behind due to a multi-day Battlestar Galactica Season 4.5 marathon. I was quite surprised that we still haven’t arrived at the reason for Apple’s “SOX” issue by the time I caught back up.
As Doug the CPA pointed out, it really isn’t a SOX issue, but SOX means companies pay more attention to GAAP because now all the CEOs and CFOs can get in huge trouble if they don’t follow or have good accounting practices.
So why is Apple doing this? I have no inside knowledge, but the issue is revenue recognition when you deliver a product/service in multiple pieces over time. When you have a subscription based business, it’s easy to tie something like major software upgrades to the ongoing payments customers make. But when you deliver major functionality over time to a device that was paid for all at once some time in the past, you must assess how much of the revenue is recognized at the time of the initial sale and how much of the revenue must be deferred to the time of the upgrade. There are many tests that accountants must apply to the situation. To give you an idea, here is a recent abstract from FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) about Revenue Arrangements with Multiple Deliverables (warning, geek accounting content!):
http://72.3.243.42/pdf/abs08-1.pdf
You have to divvy up all of the revenues you receive over the entire time that you are delivering the product. If you add functionality to a product, then you can be considered to still be delivering that product. Apple is being conservative, as many companies do not consider firmware upgrades to be “still delivering the product.” But their conservative approach isn’t completely unreasonable. Apple could choose to defer recognizing revenue from the initial sale, but that would be messier to account for and would decrease the revenue they got to recognize immediately when an iPod Touch is sold.
I guess you could say Apple gets to have their cake and eat it too 
Love the show,
Ernie from the East Bay
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Palm has had eBooks since Its’ beginning. While the Palm screen is more of
an LCD screen than the iPhone. Palm predates a 2002 patent application.
Charles
Sioux Falls, SD
