- In /etc/exports make sure you use (no_root_squash)
- /p client.domain.com(rw,sync,no_root_squash)
- On all machines that plan to participate in mounting your NFS server (including the NFS server), be sure that their domain names match up. Mine match up in DNS, but this wasn't good enough for NFS. Specifically, add the hostname and FQDN to /etc/hosts as follows:
- 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain
42.3.4.50 nfs nfs.domain.com
Saturday, January 28, 2012
NFSv4 nobody nobody permisions
Wow, what a bitch. Finally figured it out though. My installation was on an Amazon stock Linux Box. I used Yum to install nfs and rpcbind. Easy as can be. The real problem came in after I had the mount in place. between the 2 servers. I could set privileges on the server, but regardless of what I set, the client side privs were nobody nobody. There are 2 key pieces of info that took me forever to piece together.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Who really missed earnings? Apple (AAPL) or the analysts?
DISCLOSURE (I am LONG AAPL)
I've been reading a lot today and it's amazing to see how analysts pumped up Apple projections over the month leading up to the Oct 18, 2011 earnings announcement. Many blatantly ignored Apple's hint that sales slow prior to a new product announcement. Apple's guidance, granted they are always low, was EPS $5.50. In July, analysts were tracking this around $5.85. Through August and September, the targets kept rising. For those who got it right ($7.00 - $7.10 EPS), kudos! The amazing part of this is that we all have watch the frenzy because of those who got it wrong.
What I am seeing develop right now it pretty amazing though. Analysts are now looking at their numbers and starting to make sense of their reasoning for the euphoria. Since I'd imagine, many read the tea leaves through overseas production clues, etc, I have a theory as to what happened.
Already, we are seeing some interesting signs of analysts who seem to understand what is going on here and are even upgrading their targets for Apple. The fact is, Apple is just beginning to touch on their global market and when push comes to shove, you can't really argue with their numbers. The only thing (someone) can really argue about it the P/E. It's a high growth tech stock. Anyone can see that it's absurdly low, but seems there's not much we can do about that now is there?
BTIG $500 -> $550
Eric Savitz also posts an excellent article with a voice of reason noting that Apple providing higher future guidance than the analysts $9.30 vs $9.13 is just about as rare as Apple coming in under current guidance. This serves as additional evidence to the lopsided nature of iPhone sales.
Darcy Travelos doesn't offer any specific target but does make a great case, that this isn't an earnings miss, it's an exuberant analyst miss.
Lastly, let's put this into perspective: Apple earned 1.39 billion less than anticipated, basically earning 26 billion instead of the analysts exhuberant predictions of 27.39 billion for the quarter.
Update from Bloomberg about the Analyst misses:
Apple had said in July that it expected sales and profit to fall because of changes to its product lineup.
“It’s not the company that missed, it’s the people who follow Apple that are clueless,” said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research in San Francisco.
Analysts may revisit projections that Apple will continue to grow at a record rate and exceed estimates, said Michael Obuchowski, chief investment officer at First Empire Asset Management.
“That the company can maintain the growth rate that some of the analysts envision is not very realistic,” he said. “There will be a reevaluation of the analysts’ expectations.”
I've been reading a lot today and it's amazing to see how analysts pumped up Apple projections over the month leading up to the Oct 18, 2011 earnings announcement. Many blatantly ignored Apple's hint that sales slow prior to a new product announcement. Apple's guidance, granted they are always low, was EPS $5.50. In July, analysts were tracking this around $5.85. Through August and September, the targets kept rising. For those who got it right ($7.00 - $7.10 EPS), kudos! The amazing part of this is that we all have watch the frenzy because of those who got it wrong.
What I am seeing develop right now it pretty amazing though. Analysts are now looking at their numbers and starting to make sense of their reasoning for the euphoria. Since I'd imagine, many read the tea leaves through overseas production clues, etc, I have a theory as to what happened.
Analysts expected a different form factor iPhone but since the 4S uses a lot of the same components cosmetically (not necessarily internally), they were mistaken for iPhone 4 parts rather than a build-up of inventory for iPhone 4S parts. Logically, analysts would assume that they would be sold in the JUL-SEP quarter instead of the OCT-DEC quarter.Hindsight being 20/20, it's pretty clear to me that we are simply deferring revenue from last quarter for revenues in the next quarter. It will be interesting to see what more analysts say to their readers over the next few days. Personally, it's all a big sigh of relief. There are fewer unknowns now and Apple has guided to $9.30. Remember, Apple beat their guidance of $5,50 by posting $7.05. They guided to $5.50 for a reason, because they had a legitimate concern about the new launch and it's impact on sales for last quarter. Analysts threw out guidance on average of 34% higher than Apple's own guidance. Maybe we should be asking them why they missed earnings instead of the other way around.
Already, we are seeing some interesting signs of analysts who seem to understand what is going on here and are even upgrading their targets for Apple. The fact is, Apple is just beginning to touch on their global market and when push comes to shove, you can't really argue with their numbers. The only thing (someone) can really argue about it the P/E. It's a high growth tech stock. Anyone can see that it's absurdly low, but seems there's not much we can do about that now is there?
2010 Q4 $6.43In closing, I'll post links to the analysts who I found, as of the evening of 10/18/2011, actually increased their guidance based upon the numbers posted by Apple.
2011 Q1 $6.40
2011 Q2 $7.79
2011 Q3 $7.05
Total: $27.67
P/E 15x: $415.05
Cash: 81.6 Million = $104 per share
Stock Value: $519.05
BTIG $500 -> $550
Eric Savitz also posts an excellent article with a voice of reason noting that Apple providing higher future guidance than the analysts $9.30 vs $9.13 is just about as rare as Apple coming in under current guidance. This serves as additional evidence to the lopsided nature of iPhone sales.
Darcy Travelos doesn't offer any specific target but does make a great case, that this isn't an earnings miss, it's an exuberant analyst miss.
Lastly, let's put this into perspective: Apple earned 1.39 billion less than anticipated, basically earning 26 billion instead of the analysts exhuberant predictions of 27.39 billion for the quarter.
Update from Bloomberg about the Analyst misses:
‘Clueless’
“Shame on me and other investors who got lulled into complacency based on how much they’ve beaten estimates in the past,” said David Rolfe, chief investment officer at Apple investor at Wedgewood Partners Inc.Apple had said in July that it expected sales and profit to fall because of changes to its product lineup.
“It’s not the company that missed, it’s the people who follow Apple that are clueless,” said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research in San Francisco.
Analysts may revisit projections that Apple will continue to grow at a record rate and exceed estimates, said Michael Obuchowski, chief investment officer at First Empire Asset Management.
“That the company can maintain the growth rate that some of the analysts envision is not very realistic,” he said. “There will be a reevaluation of the analysts’ expectations.”
Saturday, October 15, 2011
The eCommerce ATM
Here is the slide presentation from my Barcamp talk. Thanks for coming everyone.
eCommerce ATM
View more presentations from Bill Butler
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
AAPL Options strangeness
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| AAPL Option Chain 10/5/11 |
Sunday, August 28, 2011
uStream Equipment
I had a great conversation with one of the partners at CakesWeBake.com pertaining to the promotions side of Jay Qualls Cake Supply. They run a groupon of sorts for cake related items and we, of course, have Fondant Fabric. I asked about running a special on their site, and to my surprise, they had heard of our product and more importantly felt that we could both benefit by promoting a live cake event in which Jay would build a 4 tiered wedding cake.
So on Wednesday at 5pm central, we will be broadcasting on uStream on their site. I started looking for appropriate gear for the webcast last week and was floored by how little there is out there. You heard me how little there really is.
No medium end streaming gear
there are literally hundreds of camcorder and cameras on the market. It seems that every one of them has USB out and HDMI out. The problem is that the USB out is just for transferring photos and video, while the HDMI out is just designed to go to a TV. I did read about a device called BlackMagic that would allow the import of and HDMI signal, but it was overkill for what I wanted. You should have seen the look on the Best Buy reps face when I said the word firewire. I was an instant relic.
So the plus side, is that even if I wanted to drop $300-$500 on a low end HD camcorder or camera, it wouldn't have mattered because you can't stream to a computer for live broadcast. Even as I type that, I'm shaking my head at the stupidity of an entire industry.
Solution: get a high res webcam that connects to USB 2.0 ports. I tried to get the iSight at Best Buy, but they didn't carry it so I found Microsoft's LifeCam Studio 1080p HD. Pretty slick. For audio, I went to guitar center and looked at Lavalier Mics. The Audio Technica was nice at $200, but then I'd still need to get it into the computer. I decided to try the Blue Yeti with USB. It had 4 different audio patterns with one being directional so I figured this would work since our broadcast will be relatively stationary.
uStream just released uStream Producer. It's a nice little (un-intuitive) app. It's fairly easy to add video shots, but managing the audio was tricky. Actually, due to a quirk with the M$ camera, the video was quirky too. When I first plugged in the M$ camera, it did not appear. I ended up quitting uStream Producer and opening Photo Booth on my Mac. Tadaa! the M$ camera was recognized and I was able to quit and relaunch uStream Producer and then add the camera on the left. The audio is the real tricky part. Basically, uStream treats the pane at the bottom as your video sources. Then, after you select a video source you can use the pictures on the left to assign relevant audio to the video/picture tracks. For instance, you could have music playing over a graphic, or a microphone input assigned to a graphic. Then, whenever you switch to a new graphic, whatever audio you pre-assigned to it, is the one that plays.
The Yeti mic by Blue sounds great. Minimal hum. I'd advise pumping up the microphone volume in your sound control panel to give you broader range for the gain knob on the Yeti Mic. The mic has 4 settings for omni, one way, two way and something else I can't remember. It also has a very handy mute button and even a build in 1/8 jack to monitor audio directly.
I chose the LifeCam by M$ because it had a threaded tripod mount. Nobody else had that and it was important that I wasn't 'rigging' things in a way that would cause problems on the big day. I'm happy with the solution. Major con is that I cannot directly control the iris on the cam nor can I zoom. easily solved for this application, but I'd love to hear if anyone has a good solution for the camera end (with a current camera under $500 streaming to a Mac).
Products Discussed
So on Wednesday at 5pm central, we will be broadcasting on uStream on their site. I started looking for appropriate gear for the webcast last week and was floored by how little there is out there. You heard me how little there really is.
No medium end streaming gear
there are literally hundreds of camcorder and cameras on the market. It seems that every one of them has USB out and HDMI out. The problem is that the USB out is just for transferring photos and video, while the HDMI out is just designed to go to a TV. I did read about a device called BlackMagic that would allow the import of and HDMI signal, but it was overkill for what I wanted. You should have seen the look on the Best Buy reps face when I said the word firewire. I was an instant relic.
So the plus side, is that even if I wanted to drop $300-$500 on a low end HD camcorder or camera, it wouldn't have mattered because you can't stream to a computer for live broadcast. Even as I type that, I'm shaking my head at the stupidity of an entire industry.
Solution: get a high res webcam that connects to USB 2.0 ports. I tried to get the iSight at Best Buy, but they didn't carry it so I found Microsoft's LifeCam Studio 1080p HD. Pretty slick. For audio, I went to guitar center and looked at Lavalier Mics. The Audio Technica was nice at $200, but then I'd still need to get it into the computer. I decided to try the Blue Yeti with USB. It had 4 different audio patterns with one being directional so I figured this would work since our broadcast will be relatively stationary.
uStream just released uStream Producer. It's a nice little (un-intuitive) app. It's fairly easy to add video shots, but managing the audio was tricky. Actually, due to a quirk with the M$ camera, the video was quirky too. When I first plugged in the M$ camera, it did not appear. I ended up quitting uStream Producer and opening Photo Booth on my Mac. Tadaa! the M$ camera was recognized and I was able to quit and relaunch uStream Producer and then add the camera on the left. The audio is the real tricky part. Basically, uStream treats the pane at the bottom as your video sources. Then, after you select a video source you can use the pictures on the left to assign relevant audio to the video/picture tracks. For instance, you could have music playing over a graphic, or a microphone input assigned to a graphic. Then, whenever you switch to a new graphic, whatever audio you pre-assigned to it, is the one that plays.
The Yeti mic by Blue sounds great. Minimal hum. I'd advise pumping up the microphone volume in your sound control panel to give you broader range for the gain knob on the Yeti Mic. The mic has 4 settings for omni, one way, two way and something else I can't remember. It also has a very handy mute button and even a build in 1/8 jack to monitor audio directly.
I chose the LifeCam by M$ because it had a threaded tripod mount. Nobody else had that and it was important that I wasn't 'rigging' things in a way that would cause problems on the big day. I'm happy with the solution. Major con is that I cannot directly control the iris on the cam nor can I zoom. easily solved for this application, but I'd love to hear if anyone has a good solution for the camera end (with a current camera under $500 streaming to a Mac).
Products Discussed
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Spotify, You Rock!
Dear Spotify,
Thanks. I could stop there, but I'll elaborate. You let me have all my music and playlists come from the cloud and optionally allow me to cache the music locally for offline listening. I can dynamically discover new music by searching for it and then adding it to whatever playlist I want. Switch devices and my playlists are all in sync. And you do this for $10 per month!
I had one problem early on as I was trying to figure out how to transfer my iTunes playlists to you. Then I realized that all I had to do was drag and drop my itunes playlist onto you. You automatically recognized the majority of my music and made it available for me to listen to.
I only have a couple of gripes. They are fairly big gripes but not showstoppers because I'm confident you'll figure it out:
In summary, add Airplay and let's start this revolution. I wonder how Apple's iTunes cloud strategy is going to affect you. My guess is that your product is their inspiration. I hope you can keep your head above water for the next 12 months.
Thanks again,
Bill
Thanks. I could stop there, but I'll elaborate. You let me have all my music and playlists come from the cloud and optionally allow me to cache the music locally for offline listening. I can dynamically discover new music by searching for it and then adding it to whatever playlist I want. Switch devices and my playlists are all in sync. And you do this for $10 per month!
I had one problem early on as I was trying to figure out how to transfer my iTunes playlists to you. Then I realized that all I had to do was drag and drop my itunes playlist onto you. You automatically recognized the majority of my music and made it available for me to listen to.
I only have a couple of gripes. They are fairly big gripes but not showstoppers because I'm confident you'll figure it out:
- When I plug my iPhone into my Alpine car stereo, it accesses iTunes and not you. Apple may not want to play fair for you on this point. Sure I can just use the mini plug out, but control of my playlists from the headend unit would be awesome.
- A better strategy for you might be to support airplay. Then I could purchase an airplay compatible car unit, boombox, or home stereo, Airport, etc and enjoy you wirelessly.
In summary, add Airplay and let's start this revolution. I wonder how Apple's iTunes cloud strategy is going to affect you. My guess is that your product is their inspiration. I hope you can keep your head above water for the next 12 months.
Thanks again,
Bill
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Shopping Carts and Account Packages
It's 2011. Why is this still so hard? I'm starting a store that's going to sell real stuff. Fondant to be exact. It's exciting and a little daunting, but the rubber is about to hit the road and my clients need to be able to order product and have it delivered reliably. It's also critical that our back-end accounting get the data with complex imports and exports. Add to that a need to be able to ship and track orders reliably.
I'm a Mac guy and therefore wanted to be able to perform every function from a Mac. My first iteration involved finding an accounting program called AccountEdge, formerly MYOB for the Mac. Pluses included incredibly tight inventory management with build capability. Add to that an elegant but minimalistic web store called enStore, and I was captivated. "Could it really be this easy?" I thought to myself. The answer, after several days of rationalizing, was "No." For all the beauty of being able to push products and pull inventory between my accounting system and my online store, there were many many missing features including but not limited to: customer management, order fulfillment, shipping, inventory management (customer could order even when no product was in stock). Even AccountEdge stores the customer data on the export in bizarre fields (city, state zip are all stored in 1 field). I ask again, "What year is it?" While accountedge had extensive Applescripting capabilities, I was tearing my hair out with the thought of exporting my orders to shipping software and returning the tracking number to the order. There was also no real customer login system for managing repeat orders. It was quickly becoming a nightmare. On the plus side, enStore is elegant and light. Play with a demo store and you'll see what I mean. It's made by the guys at Sofa and as of Early July 2011, they were bought by FaceBook. Strike 3. Looks like the Acclivity people are going to take over the development of enStore.
I decided to approach the problem by finding the hosted store with the most widgets. Shopify stood out. So now I had to see if shopify could talk to any accounting systems. I had a hidden agenda that involved never using Quickbooks again in my life. Apparently quickify links shopify to Quickbooks but that was out for said reason. I found a really cool little accounting site called LessAccounting. Friendly, small, eager outfit. received incredible email and phone communications from them. Unfortunately, the biggest issues with this software were fundamental. For example, there was no equity GL. How do you account for owner's capital contributions....uh, you dont! There was literally nothing even approximating a way to create multiple CGS or sales categories. The integration to Shopify was tight but their "Less" was just too little for my needs.
Browsing through other Shopify partners, I found Xero. Where have you been all my life?? Really...What a great great great accounting package. It's the Quickbooks killer. API's out the freakin wazoo. Integration to shopify for order import via CarryTheOne. Live import from your bank account and Paypal with the smoothest reconciliation process I have ever, ever, ever used. Totally web based! Fast and streamlined. So with Shopify, CarryTheOne and Xero, I can sell stuff and get my orders into Xero. But now I have to fulfill them.
Enter OrderCup. It's a shopify plugin that links to all your Fedex, UPS, or USPS accounts, sees the shopify orders, prints labels, packing lists and then shoves the tracking number back in the order. It even supports all the fancy Zebra printers etc. Done!
So I can do this from any computer, anywhere in the world. Added options include Shipwire or Amazon Fulfillment services native to Shopify. once our volume increases, we can just bulk ship our stuff there and then they can pick and pack it for us for around $2 - $3 per order plus postage and shipping supplies.
Another route for the shipping is Paypal believe it or not. They have a feature with their Web Payment Pro package that will pull the orders as they are paid for through paypal's credit card service. You can suck the orders in and queue them for fulfillment. Looks like a good standby method in case we have ordercup issues. Paypals Merchant rates seem competitive with everyone and the funds end up immediately in your paypal account. I had a dedicated rep throughout the application process who nudged things along as they got stuck.
The system will be in production by around the first of August. I'm excited to see how it goes. It all feels very solid right now, but the real world may have something to contribute after we get rolling.
I'm a Mac guy and therefore wanted to be able to perform every function from a Mac. My first iteration involved finding an accounting program called AccountEdge, formerly MYOB for the Mac. Pluses included incredibly tight inventory management with build capability. Add to that an elegant but minimalistic web store called enStore, and I was captivated. "Could it really be this easy?" I thought to myself. The answer, after several days of rationalizing, was "No." For all the beauty of being able to push products and pull inventory between my accounting system and my online store, there were many many missing features including but not limited to: customer management, order fulfillment, shipping, inventory management (customer could order even when no product was in stock). Even AccountEdge stores the customer data on the export in bizarre fields (city, state zip are all stored in 1 field). I ask again, "What year is it?" While accountedge had extensive Applescripting capabilities, I was tearing my hair out with the thought of exporting my orders to shipping software and returning the tracking number to the order. There was also no real customer login system for managing repeat orders. It was quickly becoming a nightmare. On the plus side, enStore is elegant and light. Play with a demo store and you'll see what I mean. It's made by the guys at Sofa and as of Early July 2011, they were bought by FaceBook. Strike 3. Looks like the Acclivity people are going to take over the development of enStore.
I decided to approach the problem by finding the hosted store with the most widgets. Shopify stood out. So now I had to see if shopify could talk to any accounting systems. I had a hidden agenda that involved never using Quickbooks again in my life. Apparently quickify links shopify to Quickbooks but that was out for said reason. I found a really cool little accounting site called LessAccounting. Friendly, small, eager outfit. received incredible email and phone communications from them. Unfortunately, the biggest issues with this software were fundamental. For example, there was no equity GL. How do you account for owner's capital contributions....uh, you dont! There was literally nothing even approximating a way to create multiple CGS or sales categories. The integration to Shopify was tight but their "Less" was just too little for my needs.
Browsing through other Shopify partners, I found Xero. Where have you been all my life?? Really...What a great great great accounting package. It's the Quickbooks killer. API's out the freakin wazoo. Integration to shopify for order import via CarryTheOne. Live import from your bank account and Paypal with the smoothest reconciliation process I have ever, ever, ever used. Totally web based! Fast and streamlined. So with Shopify, CarryTheOne and Xero, I can sell stuff and get my orders into Xero. But now I have to fulfill them.
Enter OrderCup. It's a shopify plugin that links to all your Fedex, UPS, or USPS accounts, sees the shopify orders, prints labels, packing lists and then shoves the tracking number back in the order. It even supports all the fancy Zebra printers etc. Done!
So I can do this from any computer, anywhere in the world. Added options include Shipwire or Amazon Fulfillment services native to Shopify. once our volume increases, we can just bulk ship our stuff there and then they can pick and pack it for us for around $2 - $3 per order plus postage and shipping supplies.
Another route for the shipping is Paypal believe it or not. They have a feature with their Web Payment Pro package that will pull the orders as they are paid for through paypal's credit card service. You can suck the orders in and queue them for fulfillment. Looks like a good standby method in case we have ordercup issues. Paypals Merchant rates seem competitive with everyone and the funds end up immediately in your paypal account. I had a dedicated rep throughout the application process who nudged things along as they got stuck.
The system will be in production by around the first of August. I'm excited to see how it goes. It all feels very solid right now, but the real world may have something to contribute after we get rolling.
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