Thursday, January 26, 2006

Fastest Mercedes Benz Cars

An interesting bit of research I have been doing, comparing the 0-60 times of different Mercedes Benz models and comparing them to the current list price. Clearly most expensive is not always fastest with the E55 appearing to be a bit of a bargain:



































































ModelPrice0-60
SLR£330,0003.8
SL65£147,9604.2
SL55£97,2674.7
E55£64,4554.7
S55£89,7484.8
CL600£88,0804.8
SLK55£50,5554.9
CLK55£48,7855.2
C55£49,7405.4
SLK350£34,9555.6
SL500£74,1256.3
C350£34,2256.5

Sunday, January 22, 2006

A new way of charging for web hosting?

I am having some thoughts about charging models and doing some "free thinking".

In the past hosts charged based on disk and bandwidth usage.Because we now buy bandwidth by the mbit, the cost is pretty stable and the average use per customer is relatively low.Disk space is getting cheaper (but as we keep three backup copies of everything its 4x the cost you might thing).
So, this leaves three costs:

1. Processor usage
Processing power is a finite resource.I have strated using quad processor servers which have a lot more resilience to usage spikes and are less likley to crash but it still means that if we have a few heavy users on one machine we can put much fewer sites on that server.This increases the cost per account to us and this gets passd on evenly to all customers.It may be possible at some point to reilably measure processor usage and charge based on that.

2. Support costs
Customers who require a lot of support cost us so much money we donot make a profit from them and this has to be recovered from profit made from other customers.This is unfair to customers who are competent or who are willing to read the documentation.How about charging a low fee for hosting and a per ticket charge for support?That would mean that competent customers paid less and those who needed more support paid more.

3. Customer acquisition
In some cases we pay more to acquire a customer than we ever make from them, so is there a case for charging less for repeat business or word of mouth customers and substantially more for those who are recruited through advertising?
This would appear to be unfair, but so might charging per support ticket.

These sort of issues do need to be discussed in the industry as the current low level of pricing is leading to unreliablilty and corner cutting (when it gets to the £1.99/mo level), but the cvurrent pricing models just don't reflect the real costs.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Three things that were not in the Labour Party manifesto.

  1. Reclassification of Cannabis to a class C drug.
  2. Gay marriages.
  3. Legalisation of "small" brothels.

Is there any point in them publishing a manifesto next time?

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Is there a seperate Baptism of the Holy Spirit?

This is my understanding based on my reading of the book of Acts and the four gospels:

Prior to pentecost the holy spirit was given to believers on an individual basis for specific purposes and was not a permanent indwelling.

People who came to faith in Christ after pentecost received the holy spirit at the same time as they believed and accepted the promise of salvation.

People who believed prior to pentecost received the holy spirit either on the day of pentecost or when they had hands laid on them by someone with apostolic authority. They did not have to do anything to receive it, it was a gift and was just given in a straightforward fashion.

Therefore we (i.e. all people beyond 100 AD given the lifespans of the time) received the holy spirit indwelling us when we believed.
This does not preclude the command to be "filled with the spirit" which has nothing to do with the spirit indwelling us, but is more to do with "not quenching the spirit" and allowing God control of our lives via the work of the holy spirit.

You see, a doctrine of baptism of the holy spirit seperate from conversion can have only two possible practical implications.

Either:

1. Not all Christians have the holy spirit indwelling them and there are therefore two classes of Christian.

or

2. Only Christians who had a verifiable supernatural experience of the holy spirit are really christians, and the only way to get the verification is speaking in tongues.

Either way its pretty devisive and condemnatory.

The "new wave" Christians I have come across say that they don't believe in a baptism of the holy spirit but they believe in the gifts. However, every one of them I have asked to explain in details what they believe ends up expounding position #1: that there are two classes of Christian.