{"id":239,"date":"2005-01-16T00:06:36","date_gmt":"2005-01-16T05:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=239"},"modified":"2005-01-16T00:12:01","modified_gmt":"2005-01-16T05:12:01","slug":"the-idiots-or-wow-glad-i-subscribe-to-xm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=239","title":{"rendered":"The idiots! [or, “Wow, glad I subscribe to XM”]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quick quiz: let’s say you’re a major media powerhouse… or at the very least, a company trying to become<\/em> a major media powerhouse, and your entire business depends on delivery of your service by satellite. Without the satellites, your company is just plain dead in the water. They cost millions and millions of dollars, and you had to take out sizeable loans to pay for their construction and launch. If they fail, you probably can’t really afford to put a new one on the next available rocket.<\/p>\n

That’s quite a risk you’re taking. But that’s what insurance is for, right?<\/p>\n

If you’re Sirius<\/a>, you apparently don’t need insurance. After all, what could possibly<\/em> go wrong?<\/p>\n

Well, according to their most recent 10-Q<\/a>, things are<\/em> starting to go wrong… and they buried it in two little lines in the middle of that whole document:<\/p>\n

Among the significant factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements are:
\n[ …]<\/p>\n

  • the useful life of our satellites, which have experienced circuit failures on their solar arrays and other component failures, and are not insured<\/strong><\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    ::boggle::<\/p>\n

    Who was the genius that decided not to sign on the dotted line? If you put extremely complex, extremely expensive hunks of metal several miles up into orbit where space debris, radiation and other nasties can affect them over time, then something’s bound to fail eventually. Insurance is just, well, prudent<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    Their competitor was wise to this, and in spite of the possibility of similar failures on their equipment, there’s little to worry about because they already claimed with their insurance and new, improved satellites are on the way<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Hopefully the problems those satellites are experiencing aren’t so bad. Otherwise, howard Stern might find himself working for a dog. Oh, wait a minute<\/a>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Sirius satellite uses a single line buried in a quartlery report to indicate how much trouble they might be in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets-widgits-and-whatzits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}