Jurgis

That's because it's impossible to obtain... people are forced to make their own copies that are not really license ;)

There could be. Just to note that so far some filters are shown to be more leaky than expected before. E.g. the number of planets is much higher than expected before. The number of planets in "life zone" is much higher than expected before. Some of the filters you mention are addressed in the studies and are much leakier than you suggest. But for some probabilities are not known and cannot be easily known until we find life/etc. in other planets/stars. So you might be right about them.

Anybody who posits a "Great Filter" has to remember that it has to be very very good filter. There are billions of stars/planets. There's also billions of years in development. So "Great Filter" has to be something on the order of 1B:1 if not stronger. Most of the filters proposed here and elsewhere are much more leaky IMO.

More like nine. ;)

Whose morals??! Mine of course. I reserve the right to call a person or a business evil if it goes against my morals. I freely give you the same right too. Edit: just to clarify: the fact that I believe person or business are evil, does not necessarily make it such for others. People may agree or disagree with moral judgements. Investment-wise, people may invest in things I consider evil and I may invest in things that others consider evil. Schwab711's reaction to my sentence was as if he thought I was proposing some kind of moral police. I did not. I just stated the fact that everyone is free to consider certain ways to make money evil even if they are legal. Best.

I think that widespread automation in near future will kill social mobility completely. You will either be smart and talented to learn and program things (before they start programming themselves) or not. And the nots will have no jobs and no money. Let's hope that I am wrong. If I'm right - and there are quite a few things pointing in that direction - societies will have to deal with funding over 80% unemployed. Let's see what tax debates rage then. ;)

I'm interested to hear what others think about some of my watchlist. Some of these I barely "passed" on: OTCM MSON PFHO PLOW PSSR MKRS DHIL OPRX ANFC (low-cost O&G producer) ELMD I don't hold any of these (only interested in top 2 at this point, though they are considerably more expensive than I'd be willing to pay). All have "moats" or potential moats, though I doubt any of them have real pricing power (PSSR and MKRS should, but never have). Sorry to say, but out of these OTCM might be the only one interesting and possibly the only one with a moat. Not cheap though, especially since they will get hit in equity downturn. The rest - well, your definition of a moat is probably very different from mine. ;)

Right, I know about simulation argument. I don't bet on simulation argument since it is rather depressing possibility IMHO. They could pull the plug and we would not even have time to sell our BRK holdings. :P Or more seriously: what's the benefit of exploration if you're living in simulation? ::) There are other deep philosophical questions in such situation, most of them quite depressing. Certainly this is one of the possibilities though.

I've read this some time ago. On one hand it is disconcerting. On the other hand, if we found alien civilization(s), the likely effect would not be positive, so "no news is good news" perhaps. If I had to bet, I'd likely bet for "they are so advanced we cannot detect them and they either ignore us or zoo/quarantine us". I think that any Great Filter would be too leaky given the number of stars/planets/life/civilizations involved. Of course, I can't prove this especially if the Great Filter is "every techno civilization eventually self-destructs". It just seems that any filter would be too leaky.

There's nothing to be celebrated about somebody being rich. If they build great companies, create great inventions, help the humankind, that's something to celebrate. If they get rich on the way, great for them. But just being rich or becoming rich is nothing great in itself. It's not gonna be popular sentiment on this board, but making a bunch of money by investing does not make you great. On the other hand, making a lot of money is not evil either if done in legal and moral way.

I'm curious. Why is adesigar not getting the same comment? Because Eric is being a jerk and adesigar isn't.

The problem with "Government is corrupt, so I won't pay taxes" attitude is that it's not a solution. The corruption and fraud just perpetuates. My experience with this is from Soviet Union where the attitude was to steal everything that was "Government's". Twenty five years later and the attitude has changed a bit, but there are definitely still leftovers of that thinking. I am not sure there is a fast solution to this. Clearly, if you would get incorruptible government that would pass tough reforms, but at the same time dole out carrots for doing the right thing, it might work. Mindless austerity won't work though. Whatever anti-Keynesians say, budget cuts, pension cuts, etc. just push country into endless recession. There have to be balancing pro-growth actions, for example, tax cuts. If nobody's paying taxes anyway, why not drop them to 10% or whatever so that people would have some incentive to pay them? Clearly balancing pro-growth actions need either monetary policy that Greece does not control or allowance for some freedom in fiscal policy that is being suppressed by Eurocrats.

Whining about being estate taxed at 5 million forgets that though 5M might be just a house in Los Altos or a condo in NYC, it is enough to retire and not work for the rest of your life in the rest of the country. I somewhat agree that this could be adjusted a bit depending on the number of people inheriting.

+1 Internet: a place where people know simple solutions to everything.

I use Excel and SMF add-in. For mainstream stocks it works fine most of the time. The farther from mainstream you go (OTC, international, etc.), the less likely it will work. I don't do options, so I don't know if it handles options. Also SMF provides access to multiple data sources: Yahoo, MSN, Google, but you have to hand code which one to use. If you want reliability (sources may be down), you have to code it yourself. Even if you just want good data, you have to make decisions which source to use: one might cover more stocks, one might have better data, one might be up more. In short: this is workable, but messy. Also, spreadsheet paradigm issue: if something changes in sources or add-in itself, you have to redo all formulas in all spreadsheets. Might be easy if you have a single sheet, but if you have 400+ spreadsheets like I do... oh well. Some of mine are not updated for years now... ------- Back to the general topic. I understand that Yahoo is messed up as a company and therefore Yahoo Finance is messed up. I don't quite understand why Google, MSN, etc. would not replicate Yahoo finance and its features. Not enough demand?? Isn't financial pages advertiser honeypot? You'd think Yahoo Finance (and similarly Google/MSN finance) would be one of the top properties on the web...

Perhaps http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-Gallon-128/dp/B00032G1S0 or this http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001SNVXYA/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_3?pf_rd_p=1944687562&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B00032G1S0&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0TDC96EFZAK69FX9QQ58

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_value_%28finance%29 T0 = FCF/(k – g) Your g is zero, so it's just FCF/k

OK, here's timeline for fun: 5 years: >50% new cars with forward collision avoidance (FCA) (this is aggressive). >2% of new cars with driverless-but-human-in-loop-for-unexpected tech. 10 years: >90% new cars with FCA, >20% of new cars with driverless-human-in-loop (aggressive), >2% of new cars with driverless-human-not-in-loop. 15 years: >50% of new cars with driverless-human-in-loop, >10% of new cars with driverless-human-not-in-loop. 20 years: all new cars with driverless-human-in-loop, >50% of new cars with driverless-human-not-in-loop (aggressive). All of these might be gasoline or nat gas or electric or whatever.

Whatever gave you that idea? Of course not. Current Google/Delphi/Audi/etc. driverless cars are not electric and most of first-second generation won't be either. I just don't understand why driverless in your mind means electric. Of course major car companies are pushing driverless R&D like crazy. Why did you think Delphi had a driverless car drive cross country ( http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/03/autos/delphi-driverless-car-cross-country-trip/index.html )? Why do you think major car companies are releasing the Forward Collision Avoidance systems in their new models? ( See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_avoidance_system for a huge list) Of course they are going incremental unlike Google/Uber. But the ball is rolling like heck.

I fully support Prem. bearprowler6's note above did not change my opinion or my vote.

+1 to what innerscorecard said. To comment on Packer16's post: I found that international index funds suck unfortunately. It seems that either international indexes are crappy or international markets are inefficient or both. I think both. So it's easy to run US index funds and possibly US bond index funds. I'm still on the fence about US bond index funds - I think active managers might be better, but the cost differential of active bond funds vs index might affect return more than for stock funds. International stock and bond funds are much tougher, since possibly you want actively managed ones...

There are couple issues with mass-taxi-no-ownership view of the future: - Peak to trough demand/supply both in time and direction. Assuming most people still go to work at 9am and return at 5pm, will FutureUber maintain a huge fleet to satisfy demand at that time and direction? Compare this to midnight when nobody wants to take a car and most of the fleet is idle. Sure, FutureUber can apply surge-pricing, but that's not gonna make a regular-9-to-5 Joe happy, since they will have to pay surge pricing every day... - Out-of-way places and destinations. If you want to get rental car in LA and drop it in Montana, you pay through the nose since the company does not need a car in Montana, they need it in LA. Similar situation will happen with people living or going to locations that are out of way. This also can be dealt with surge pricing perhaps, but I'm not sure that would make people happy either. Also, I think there's a magical line of having car in 5 minutes or less. If you have to preorder a car and/or have waiting time over 10 minutes, the convenience drops quite a bit. Sure, in some cases it does not matter, but in some cases it's very annoying. Guaranteeing 5 minute car in peak demand or vice versa in out-of-way low demand location is going to be hard I think. These might be solvable. :) I'm just thinking aloud.

I fully support Prem.

We are back to the strawman argument. ::) Yes, everybody stopped driving GM cars "for decades" because of a "handful,of ugly incidents" with their ignition systems. ::) And obviously nobody buys cars with cruise control and antilock brakes, because the technology is not "infallible". You prefer to die, that's your choice. Have fun.

I consider myself above average driver (haha, lol), but I'd buy one in a heartbeat too. I don't see a point of me spending time, effort and mental energy driving. I'm always happy when someone offers to drive instead of me driving. And even if I'm above average driver, the self-driving car would still be safer than me driving. :)