bargainman

In soccer/futbol :-) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/22/us-soccer-germany-greece-idUSBRE85L1G020120622 Not sure if that's more or less a negative to the Greeks than the financial takedown...

I find that article somewhat ironic, blaming the downfall of MSFT on Ballmer being a 'control expert'. There's this other guy what was his name at that other company who had a bit of a reputation for being a control... freak was it? I guess being a control expert leads to a downfall, and being a control freaks leads to mass admiration ;-) clearly I'm simplifying, but I do find it amusing...

Right but the big difference is that the keyboard *is* the cover! That means it travels with you where ever you go! iPads don't currently come with this option. You can get something similar: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/tablet-accessories/keyboards/ultrathin-keyboard-cover but it's not part of the package (oh, and that one doesn't have a touchpad either, which you'd want when you're typing since you don't want to lift your hand up all the time to 'click' on things... Plus the touchpad presumably provides greater fidelity)

These are interesting points. To me it's pretty interesting how Apple basically broke into this market by focusing on the consumer, and going after new form factors. I remember several times where Jobs saying that he wanted to focus on consumers where everyone voted their own wallet, as opposed to IT departments and enterprises where you had to convince some CTO/CIO to buy a bunch of machines. He said he wanted to infiltrate corporations from the consumer side. If consumers were using their devices eventually IT would be forced to adapt. That's basically what's come to pass. MSFT on the other hand is coming from the other side. They are very strong in the IT world. They're still strong in the consumer world, but not on new form factors (mobile/tablets). So they are trying to extend their reach from their core strength.. The enterprise, and in particular Office/Outlook/Sharepoint. It makes sense. IMO it's more compelling to an enterprise to have people on Windows Tablets than to have them on Android tablets. it will be interesting to see if that transfers over to Windows Phones to eventually. So far no go... That said I suspect that in IT these tablets will start to cannabalize the windows laptop sales.. Since they are essentially a replacement for them.

Well I don't know about desktops making the most sense for corporations. Any meeting I go to these days is littered with laptops all connected to some conferencing software. If someone has a desktop they RDC into it all the time. Teams are distributed around the world, and when they travel they need their laptop with them, and that's in tech/engineering. Now for sales and marketing laptops are probably the only thing that makes sense vs desktops. WRT the tablet, well this is almost a full powered laptop with an i5 chip. The only underpowered aspects are screen size, SSD memory, and the keyboard potentially (although msft claims the thicker keyboard cover allows for full speed typing since the keys do have a millimeter or 2 of give). So... there's a USB 3.0 port - attach your keyboard, mouse, and extra hd if you need it. There's an SD port too so add memory at least up to 32gb if not more. There's a displayport (or HDMI, I forget), attach your nice 24" monitor! Unless you're doing something intensive like coding/video editing you now have the best of most worlds.. I say of most, since the small screen would still be worse than a 15" laptop screen for doing real work, but at least you have a 'real' keyboard on the go, and the stylus, and the tablet like nature.... it's relatively compelling...

Well that's one of the selling points if you read the announcement! Windows Office will be on these devices...

Notice how the kickstand is in the landscape direction? one can imagine that most people will use it in landscape mode? I've never been a fan of the 16:9 format. It's annoying to have so much horizontal space that never gets used... it makes sense on a 24" monitor where I can stack 2 windows next to one another, but to have it on a tablet or a laptop doesn't make that much sense to me. After you look at the menu, the title bar, the toolbars, the ribbons, then the headers for most websites etc, everyone makes use of the vertical space, squishing whatever is left into nothingness... I'll stop my rant now...

I spent some time watching the event posted online today: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57455851-75/microsoft-posts-video-of-surface-event-online It looks very interesting. The guy who talked about the design was interesting in a 'not very like Jon Ive' sort of way. Sounds like they put a lot of emphasis into making it feel solid. The hinges and the piece that folds out to make it stand apparently was engineered to sound like a car door closing and to be flush so the hinges don't show. Apparently they also have a vent all along all the edges so that the air can flow no matter where you hold it. Also the magnetic cover makes it so that you can not put it on wrong since it glides in correctly. When you move the keyboard/cover to the back, it knows it's disconnected and doesn't press keys. Also it looks like the pixels are supposed to be very close to the glass so they have a stylus which just clamps on magnetically when not in use, and samples at 600 dpi, meaning that when you write on the screen, since the pixels are so close, it really looks like you are writing where you are writing (if that makes sense). Anyway after that I was watching part of the apple wwdc event, and I must say... MSFT has a lot of work to do in putting together a polished presentation. Balmer and Sinofsky stumbled over their words a number of times, the tablet crashed, and the design guy, although passionate kept going on and on about how perfect it was and kept trying to hit you over the head with all the things they did with it to make it just perfect...

And how would that appeal to MSFT's demographic? MSFT has always gone for the masses while Apple has always gone for the discerning customer. Gates talked about it numerous times. I doubt it will be as polished as Apple's tablet, and I don't think it will need to be as long as the price point is right. The question is whether it will deliver the value to MSFT's constituency not whether they will out Apple Apple.

Sure does. Remember Magic Johnson? There are consequences, some dire. I would probably put Larry Bird up there as a reasonably good role model although I'm pretty sure he had his share of indiscretions too. I doubt there's any high level professional athlete who hasn't cheated. Magic Johnson talked about how at every city there would be women leaving their name and number at his hotel box. Lawyers, businesswomen, models etc, not just any woman. Society has its icons, and pro athletes are right up there.

Yeah something tells me they won't get things *that* clean with UV wands: http://www.guardiantechnologies.com/LW18-UVC-Sanitizer-Wand-Details.html Under the "How it works" tab: "Disinfection of items or surfaces can generally be achieved by holding the UV-C Sanitizer Wand over an object or surface for 20 seconds at a distance of approximately 1-2 inches." I doubt they'll be going over everything at a distance of 1-2 inches for 20 seconds each!

If you think it's complicated with just one person, imagine how complex it gets when you have a spouse and kids. You really have to start modeling out scenarios. What if I lose my job? What if my spouse? What if we both lose our jobs? Then there are the kids. Losing a job would mean fewer daycare expenses. Then under what scenario do you take the 6 month - 2 year fund? Then you assign probabilities to the scenarios and their required funding requirements and come up with a number. Kind of tricky since the best case scenario (6 months + lower income earner loses job) is an order of magnitude less than the worst case scenario (both lose our jobs + 2 years). This is not a simple question at all unfortunately.

Ok, I was surfing the web and found this: http://jobs.aol.com/articles/top-10-companies-hiring/#photo-1 Sears is #1 on the list! Supposedly they say they have 2,552 openings! And get this quote: "My favorite thing about working with Sears.. is the stability. The company has been around for over 100 years.. has great benefits.. work life balance is excellent. They have really great quality people who are easy to get along with"" That's borderline hilarious. I wonder if it's true or if it's a statement provided by SHLD's PR department...

For all those food fans, an interesting look at the power of the food lobby: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/27/us-usa-foodlobby-idUSBRE83Q0ED20120427

Are you taking account a decline in sales/profitability? Or are you assuming that the stores will continue to sell at their current level? Do you think their brands will keep their current market share with a smaller store footprint?

One of the articles linked to this one: http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor?page=1 I don't know how much of it's true, but it's pretty brutal. It's really got me thinking twice about amazon and the products I buy from there. It's clear they are using every unfair disadvantage they can, from not having to collect state taxes to using temp agencies to keep a distance from the pretty brutal working conditions described. This is kind of hard to read for someone who was loving being an amazon and amazon prime customer...

good points. I like this article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/ There are some very interesting points in there: "The change had the opposite effect from what was intended The proponents of shareholder value maximization and stock-based executive compensation hoped that their theories would focus executives on improving the real performance of their companies and thus increasing shareholder value over time. Yet, precisely the opposite occurred. In the period of shareholder capitalism since 1976, executive compensation has exploded while corporate performance has declined. “Maximizing shareholder value” turned out to be the disease of which it purported to be the cure. Between 1960 and 1980, CEO compensation per dollar of net income earned for the 365 biggest publicly traded American companies fell by 33 percent. CEOs earned more for their shareholders for steadily less and less relative compensation. By contrast, in the decade from 1980 to 1990 , CEO compensation per dollar of net earnings produced doubled. From 1990 to 2000 it quadrupled. Meanwhile real performance was declining. From 1933 to 1976, real compound annual return on the S&P 500 was 7.5 percent. Since 1976, Martin writes, the total real return on the S&P 500 was 6.5 percent (compound annual). The situation is even starker if we look at the rate of return on assets, or the rate of return on invested capital, which according to a comprehensive study by Deloitte’s Center For The Edge are today only one quarter of what they were in 1965."

Engineers are attracted to cool technologies, interesting projects and challenging problem sets. There was a lengthy discussion on an engineer-heavy forum earlier last year comparing Google and Amazon cultures, which might be interesting to some here. Several former Amazon employees shared their views: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3101876 perhaps, but clearly they left. There are still better options than Amazon for brilliant engineers.. Looking through that thread, read what "nirvana", simplekoala and others say. I think long term getting rid of brilliant engineers is going to hurt them bad. "Everything Steve says about Amazon is true, only, it was much worse. Amazon was, by far, the worst employment experience I've ever had. I'm not saying that lightly, I worked for a dozen startups, a couple of which crashed hard in the most gut wrenchingly painful way you could imagine." "It was by far the worst employment experience I had at a tech company. In my 10 year tenure, I fortunately didn't come across any company as bad as Amazon, when it comes to how it treats its employees. The management doesn't have any value for the lives of their developers, and use them as tissues." "Attrition at Amazon is at horrific rates. I know the actual number, though I'm pretty sure that'd violate my NDA to reveal. It's high. It's really high. Guess a really truly terrible number. It's probably higher than that." "You can sustain such an illusion only for so long, however. In seattle, as far back as at least 1998, everyone know that Amazon was a terrible place to work and an even worse place to do business with (as a supplier, etc.)"

Yes, while I love amazon.com as a customer I don't really think much of their culture, and would never ever want to work there. It seems like they reward their customers but pay no attention to their employees who are the ones who are supposed to serve those customers, or any of their partners. Whereas Bezos seems tremendously long term oriented and visionary in many ways, the way he treats his employees is not one of them. I'm a bit surpised given their culture and rewards that they are able to attract top engineering talent.

Dumb question.. if the current Chanticleer doesn't have the cash flows to sustain expenses, why would the future one have them? presumably the current management will be running the future Chanticleer.. What sorts of mistakes did they make that lead to their not being able to cover expenses?

Good call on the D3 by the way. Vitamin D is supposed to be one of the most important vitamins. It's supposed to be a prohormone, and it's supposed to be involved in all sorts of immune functions. Especially in influenza. Guess why most people are deficient in vitamin D? Well check out the dietary sources: http://www.algaecal.com/vitamin-d/vitamin-d-sources.html basically to get 100% (and several recommend that you get > 3x that), you have to go for cod liver oil or Salmon, Tuna or sardines or fortified milk. So what is going on? How could our body need a vitamin so badly that it can only get from a very limited type of food? Well we're supposed to synthesize it from the sun! Oh but wait, we don't go out in the sun anymore, and when we do, they tell us to put on 30 SPF which prevents our bodies from generating any vitamin D at all! I also remember reading that people were still getting the same amount of skin cancer even after SPFs went through the roof. The explanation, which made sense to me, is that you don't get skin cancer from tanning, you get it from burning. So when people use SPF 30 all the time, they don't build up sun tolerance, and the one time they forget to put it, they burn, which is what causes the cancer. So how crazy is that? We sure live in a wild wild world filled with unintended consequences! So.. take your vitamin D pills folks! Unless you eat a lot of fish, or go out in the sun a lot, you're probably low.

I think that if you had every company try to pass off an investment in technology as an asset Sears probably would not be that far ahead of anyone else! I mean compare them to amazon, target, walmart. Do you think any of those companies are investing any less in technology? I seriously doubt it. That said your point is one that is brought up in the book "It's earnings that count". If I remember he looks at earnings as defensive and enterprising (I think). The enterprising earnings he capitalizes R&D and marketing efforts to some degree. That's an 'aggressive' way to look at the earnings. It also assumes that they'll somehow be able to derive significant future benefit from that technology, and with technology it's always a toss up.. You never know if those millions you spent on web servers will be worth a lot or will be a lost cause... Especially for a company like Sears which really does not have a history of tech wizardry.

I think some of this article sums up the complexity of this argument very well: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm Scientists are still arguing about fat, despite a century of research, because the regulation of appetite and weight in the human body happens to be almost inconceivably complex, and the experimental tools we have to study it are still remarkably inadequate. This combination leaves researchers in an awkward position. To study the entire physiological system involves feeding real food to real human subjects for months or years on end, which is prohibitively expensive, ethically questionable (if you're trying to measure the effects of foods that might cause heart disease) and virtually impossible to do in any kind of rigorously controlled scientific manner. But if researchers seek to study something less costly and more controllable, they end up studying experimental situations so oversimplified that their results may have nothing to do with reality. This then leads to a research literature so vast that it's possible to find at least some published research to support virtually any theory. The result is a balkanized community -- ''splintered, very opinionated and in many instances, intransigent,'' says Kurt Isselbacher, a former chairman of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Science -- in which researchers seem easily convinced that their preconceived notions are correct and thoroughly uninterested in testing any other hypotheses but their own. What's more, the number of misconceptions propagated about the most basic research can be staggering. Researchers will be suitably scientific describing the limitations of their own experiments, and then will cite something as gospel truth because they read it in a magazine. The classic example is the statement heard repeatedly that 95 percent of all dieters never lose weight, and 95 percent of those who do will not keep it off. This will be correctly attributed to the University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Albert Stunkard, but it will go unmentioned that this statement is based on 100 patients who passed through Stunkard's obesity clinic during the Eisenhower administration. Personally I think it's a number of things at work. - genetics - different people will react differently to different diets. Some will tolerate wheat without a problem, others will have a major auto immune reaction (and to varying degrees.. some will tolerate small portions others large). - exposure - having to do with portions. If you are healthy and eat a bit of crappy food, your body can tolerate it, but the large the portions the larger the problem. - food industry - Ever heard of pink slime? look it up. The food industry is incentivized to get you to eat more food! They do it very successfully. Not sure what the answer is here. Regulation of crappy food in schools might help, so would education. - sugar and fructose in particular (see the earlier post about its toxic nature in anything more than token amounts). - exercise I think that due to the complexity of the problem, it's almost like religion, or economics! The dismal science. I mean, any complex open system is going to be provably impossible to explain. I think there are just certain limits, and when you bump up against them you run into problems. I think of all the research I've read, the only thing I think that is indisputable is that sugar in large quantities is very bad for you. White flour and carbs too. Everything else has proponents one way or another.

Here's an interesting blog post about 2 studies, comparing the outcomes of high carb vs high fat diets: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/02/25/the-science-of-fat-loss-why-a-calorie-isnt-always-a-calorie/

Interesting research at MIT: http://www.process.org/discept/2011/11/17/draco-death-to-the-virus/