Marketplace Support

[Tad Carlucci]

But, I take it, you also object to the nightly business reports in your news paper, and on your local radio and television stations? And it's OK to presume their business is doing so poorly that they might not be able to pay tier for the main store, as we saw earlier in this thread?

These are nothing more than estimates. Sure, it may upset some people to learn what a cash-cow successful breedables are. But it's simple math, based upon publicly available information, which anyone can do.

I put them out to refute the idea that a 5% service fee for food sales via the Marketplace would come anywhere close to imperilling the business. Yes, 5% of $1 million is $50,000, and, for a lot of people, that's more than their real-world wages. But, in the context of KittyCatS, at their sales volume, it's barely enough to break it out of the "other expenses" line on the other side of the balance sheet.

[Kayleigh McMillan]

Well, it is personal taste as said.
We can't argue personal taste vs somone who throws out all sorts of figures wether they are true or false.
Unless you found yourself access to their personal data which to me is also kind of mindblowing rude.

P.s. I am never upset with people which have good business sense why should I?
I am everything but a communist for what it's worth in this matter.
In my opinion there is nothing wrong with making money they do nothing illegal to gain it they rather work their *ss off as everyone does with fortunate bussinesses.
It is no 9 to 5 job.

[Tad Carlucci]

Now, I *know* I'll be asked, again, how I determine the number of boxes produced.

First, I observe that the Pedigree Tree page displays the actual sequence number.

So, I go to Charm's Cattery and click on the box she produced a few minutes ago. I see that it's sequence number (catid) is 1154245.

That number, 1154245, is weakly encoded. The first digit is "hexadecimal" .. has 16 values instead of 10. So I break it into two fields: "1" and "154245". That means we're 154245 boxes into "sequence 1, out of 16".

For a quick estimate, I just multiply 150000 by 16 .. 2.4million

The actual figure is
+16*10 (16 series of 1 decimal digit each .. all "two digit" catid's)
+16*100 (16 series of 2 decimal digits .. all "three digit" catid's)
+16*1000 (...)
+16*10000
+16*100000
+16*150000 (where we are now)

So, I guess a better estimate for boxes is 6.2 million boxes. And I should treble my estimates. Sigh. Anna's right I really SHOULD check my math instead of using quick estimates.

[Kayleigh McMillan]

(07-06-2014 11:17 AM)Tad Carlucci Wrote:  Now, I *know* I'll be asked, again, how I determine the number of boxes produced.

First, I observe that the Pedigree Tree page displays the actual sequence number.

So, I go to Charm's Cattery and click on the box she produced a few minutes ago. I see that it's sequence number (catid) is 1154245.

That number, 1154245, is weakly encoded. The first digit is "hexadecimal" .. has 16 values instead of 10. So I break it into two fields: "1" and "154245". That means we're 154245 boxes into "sequence 1, out of 16".

For a quick estimate, I just multiply 150000 by 16 .. 2.4million

The actual figure is
+16*10 (16 series of 1 decimal digit each .. all "two digit" catid's)
+16*100 (16 series of 2 decimal digits .. all "three digit" catid's)
+16*1000 (...)
+16*10000
+16*100000
+16*150000 (where we are now)

So, I guess a better estimate for boxes is 6.2 million boxes. And I should treble my estimates. Sigh. Anna's right I really SHOULD check my math instead of using quick estimates.

But why would you do such thing?
The fact they encode it means as much as:"stay out of our business" I think.

And even when those figures you have there are correct I am not shocked at all.
They do just good and above all decent bussiness.
Nothing wrong with that.

Doing breedables can bring good money indeed nothing new about that for me at least.
But it is also a huge and exhausting commitment which easily burns people out.
So from that perspective things are pretty relative.

[Tad Carlucci]

It was a field on the web page, and I wondered what it did (actually, from the name, I had a pretty good idea). I've not fully "cracked" it, just looked at a few dozen examples and saw the pattern, then looked at a few more to verify it was simply a sequence number. One of the things I do is track how various breedables are doing; KittyCatS is just one of several. Offspring production rates are a large part of that. I can't track them if I can't count them, so I look for something which does. In this case, it was the catid field.

You may think a 1-of-16 hexadecimal value is obscure. But, I'm a programmer, I work in Base-16 a LOT. Admittedly, it's a bit odd to use both Base-16 and Base-10 in the same element. As a programmer, though, I can hypothesize reasons. This scheme, for example, is meant to shuffle the record keys in the SQL database. We usually do that for performance reasons and it has nothing at all to do with system security. In fact, in researching the scheme, the references to this scheme I could find admitted that it was useless. As a cryptographic hash, it's too trivial. And a key hash, it's too regular. But, it's easy to implement and it's discussed because, every few years, someone "invents" it again.

You seem to be laboring under the false impression that I think it's somehow "bad" that KittyCatS has produced millions of boxes, and made a lot of money as a result. Just the opposite: I applaud their success, and wish them more of the same.

As to breedables bringing in "good money" .. that's a yes-and-no thing (which is why I track them). A few do well. Some flash and fade. But there are a LOT of breedable products out there which never made it, some from companies which had other, successful, breedables.

[anna Acanthus]

Right about what ?
Anna said she herself had done some quick rough calculations, anna didn't say a thing about anyone else doing so. The word "hypothetical" does not mean this.
And any estimates can only be hypothetical unless someone is shown an actual accountancy breakdown INCLUDING overheads, initial outlay etc.

The problem is with the term "multi-million dollar company" is that for many this can imply a LOAD of millions and not just a very small handful and that over 3 years.
In fact my own rough estimate a good while back didn't fall so far short of your's but it didn't suggest this term to me at all.
In the general imagination it's synonymous with private jets, private islands and luxury houses all over the place.
And this is certainly not the case with this business.
Not forgetting that profits are split at least 3 ways, 4 maybe, but anyhow ok they make a pretty comfortable living for as long as it lasts but by no means do they each rake in a handful of Ms per year.
And i'd say that for the amount of work, skill and commitment put in it's deserved.

I know that stateside there is a tendance to flout one's money and even make no secret of the sometimes rather illegal and often immoral ways of obtaining it, but our side of the atlantic financial investigation is a bit like sniffing through someone's linen closet or their panty drawer, just not done, a violation of privacy.
The exceptions being of course, the heads of multinationals and politicians who more than deserve all the shite we can throw at them.

[Kayleigh McMillan]

(07-07-2014 02:47 AM)anna acanthus Wrote:  Right about what ?
Anna said she herself had done some quick rough calculations, anna didn't say a thing about anyone else doing so. The word "hypothetical" does not mean this.
And any estimates can only be hypothetical unless someone is shown an actual accountancy breakdown INCLUDING overheads, initial outlay etc.

The problem is with the term "multi-million dollar company" is that for many this can imply a LOAD of millions and not just a very small handful and that over 3 years.
In fact my own rough estimate a good while back didn't fall so far short of your's but it didn't suggest this term to me at all.
In the general imagination it's synonymous with private jets, private islands and luxury houses all over the place.
And this is certainly not the case with this business.
Not forgetting that profits are split at least 3 ways, 4 maybe, but anyhow ok they make a pretty comfortable living for as long as it lasts but by no means do they each rake in a handful of Ms per year.
And i'd say that for the amount of work, skill and commitment put in it's deserved.

I know that stateside there is a tendance to flout one's money and even make no secret of the sometimes rather illegal and often immoral ways of obtaining it, but our side of the atlantic financial investigation is a bit like sniffing through someone's linen closet or their panty drawer, just not done, a violation of privacy.
The exceptions being of course, the heads of multinationals and politicians who more than deserve all the shite we can throw at them.

Exactly!

[Tad Carlucci]

To violate privacy, one must use private information. Using the publicly published price and the publicly published number of units sold at that price cannot be a violation. If they don't want me to use their publicly published information, they can ask me. This is there web site, if they want me to take something down, they know I will.

I ask again: is it illegal, in YOUR country for the news papers, television and radio stations to publish business news? What about international services, are MSNBC, FOX Business, and similar satellite services illegal because they have analysts who examine public information and discuss company performance?

I'm quite sure there were a lot of articles recently about the Flappy Bird app being taken down, which included a lot of discussion about the income it generated for the sole proprietor who created it. Were those articles were censored in your county to comply with privacy laws.

No?

There you go.

---

Here's an article about a privately held corporation which has been in the news a lot, recently.

I trust you'll complain to Forbe's that their article is in violation of privacy laws in your county, and that they'll take it down as a result since it plainly and prominently exposes the revenues that private company generates.

http://www.forbes.com/companies/hobby-lobby-stores/

[anna Acanthus]

Errr … apparently i didn't make it clear enough that my comment concerned the CULTURAL, and not the LEGAL aspects of the subject in hand.

[Kayleigh McMillan]

To answer your question when a real business here is reaching the stocksmarket and just people like you and I can obtain stocks they are obviously mentioned in the newspapers and on TV because that is in the interest of the stock market and investors and they deserve to know how their holdings are doing.
But they sure make no time to magnify a small business which is not big enough to reach the stock market.
But lets get real people rarely write about SL or mention it on TV let alone a company within SL without shareholders and a stock market.

When a RL business decides to sell stocks they pretty much give up to have private figures to a certain degree or they devote themselves to inform their shareholders each quarter of a year to tell the public how they are doing, what their plans are and so on and so forth.

While it is certainly not oke in (our culture) to combine some random numbers from a business' system and do some math with them with the soul purpose to find out how much money a business makes and as such make unfounded publicatations via an assumed method about that without even making the efforts to ask the business concerned if you are even close to the truth and by that give them a chance to avoid false rumors to be spread or to friendly ask you not to publish it.

It shouldn't be the other way around that they have to come to you and ask you to remove an already publiced assumption that would make things only worst.
I'm sorry I can't make that decent in what ever world.