rkbabang

Nobel Prizes are normally awarded for work that was done many years ago. Only the peace prize tends to be more focused on recent work. Or expected future work (which never materialized) in Obama's case. Imagine if they awarded the physics prize to a promising young physicist who said he was going to come up with something really profound next year?

We've been doing that for audio and video. On the audio side you have Pandora, Grooveshark, Spotify, etc. On the video side you have Netflix. But the thing about streaming audio and video is that there are limits to how much bandwidth we need. For audio we don't need quality that is better than 192kbps mp3s. For video we don't need better than 4K. Once we get close to the limits of human perception, the demand growth for bandwidth stops. I don't think he is talking about streaming Video and Audio. What I think might happen (and its probably what merkhet is talking about) is all our devices are like Chromebooks but more than just Data is in the cloud. We have an interface and the CPU/GPU/RAM/HDD/VideoCard/OS/Software(Office/Databases/Games) is all in the cloud. No need to maintain hardware or upgrade it. Interface separates data storage from Hardware layer. Rent it by the month switch to a different configuration/OS at anytime. Yup, that's what I meant -- so it's not so much that we haven't already created dumb terminals (out of our TVs, for sure) -- rather the number of dumb terminals that we have will increase. Imagine if devices could move data into/out of the cloud as quickly as computers today can move data in or out of DDR4 memory, equivalent to moving 64bits at a time at a rate of 3.2GHz. That is over 200 Gbps, more than 200 times Google Fiber's 1Gbps. Now imagine 15-30 devices in every house (hundreds to thousands in every office building) all trying to do that at the same time.

Like anything else, there is a difference between what you "need" and what you'd like. I'd love it if I could back up all of my computers and devices to the cloud in about 2 seconds (maybe 6TB of data) and restore any one of them in a second. But I certainly don't "need" that kind of bandwidth. As far as storage and CPU/GPU speed. I'd love to be able to have that 6TB of data on redundant SSDs. rather than HDDs. I'd love to be able to render 2 hours of 4K video in under a minute. None of these things are possible right now. I'm converting my old home movies from tapes to only standard-def video and for a 1.5 hour tape it takes over 2 hours to do that on my 8-core 3.2GHz machine with 16GB of RAM. I have to play the tape (about 1.5 Hours) to get it into the software (Adobe Premiere) then it takes about 30-45 min to render it and save it to the format of my choice. I have probably 60 of these tapes to do and I'm on tape 12 right now. It is a long process. If this was 4K video it would be frustrating as hell. Asking how much bandwidth, or CPU speed, or storage do you need is like asking how much horsepower do cars need. Certainly we had enough 50 years ago, but you can buy 400-800HP cars now, hell there are 300+ HP 6 cylinders now.

When will the discrimination against my kind end? Geek Power!

Well, the integration is beneficial for eBay -- but is it beneficial for PayPal? I don't think so. It might be better to think of this as PayPal spinning off eBay.

Those are actually very IN right now. Go to any hipster spot and you'll see people wearing them. Urban Outfitters wouldn't sell them if they weren't cool right ? http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?id=31612567&parentid=M_ACC_WATCHES#/ In all seriousness, I wonder if Prem will flaunt that thing around at the Fairfax AGM next year. I do have to admit to thinking that watch is pretty cool, it is not only retro and brings back memories, but appeals to the geek in me. I'd certainly be more likely to buy that watch than a new Blackberry.

Us Blackberry users have a holster, thank you very much. It sits nicely on our sides, out of the way not like those tween girls shove them in their back pocket with the sparkly cover. Much like the pocket protectors from days gone by................. 8) Oh yeah, holsters, that's right. It is nice when your pager goes off you can grab your blackberry out of its holster and return the call right then and there without needing to go find a pay phone. I heard they're teaming up with Sears on this, Chen was quoted as saying "We think two failures will make a success when we work together." They'll be offering a Blackberry app that makes ordering from the Sears catalog a lot easier. Users have also been asking for a CB Radio app so they can keep in touch with the ever changing traffic conditions reported real-time by truckers... I heard about that partnership with Sears. I think they are going to be doing a promotion where if you buy the new BB they give you a K-Mart. "Attention K-Mart shoppers! There's a blue light special right now in the cell phone department"

At first I was kind of chuckling at how much John Chen is sweating in the photo attached to the story, but then I thought if I was in his shoes and had to introduce this product to the world I'd be sweating a lot worse than that. He actually looks pretty cool considering. http://ei.marketwatch.com//Multimedia/2014/09/24/Photos/ZH/MW-CU832_bbry_b_20140924110818_ZH.jpg?uuid=ad8edeaa-43fc-11e4-bff3-6fde369198aa%5D

Us Blackberry users have a holster, thank you very much. It sits nicely on our sides, out of the way not like those tween girls shove them in their back pocket with the sparkly cover. Much like the pocket protectors from days gone by................. 8) Oh yeah, holsters, that's right. It is nice when your pager goes off you can grab your blackberry out of its holster and return the call right then and there without needing to go find a pay phone.

Yeah, I can't wait to get home, put my Blackberry in the charger, and put a good tape into my Betamax. After I stable my horses from my commute, of course.

Where Scotland failed, could New Hampshire succeed? One in four Americans want their state to secede from the U.S., but why?

These fuel cells look interesting: http://www.redoxpowersystems.com/ They claim that they will cost about $1K/kW, so these 25kW models that are coming out soon should be about $25K. I wonder how cheap they are to run and how long they will last. Certainly a lot quieter than a generator.

i have 12 currently. all are held because they in some way help me maximize the number of points/miles i receive from signup bonuses and spend. I have like 6 now. That's down a couple already. Those sign up bonuses are very lucrative. Wow, I guess I don't work as hard taking advantage of the cash back/points. I only have 3 cards. Not counting my debit card for my checking account which has a VISA logo on it, but it isn't a credit card and provides no cash back benefits. I only use it at ATMs to get cash, never to buy anything. Once you are already getting 2% cash back on everything you buy the extra effort to get a few bonus points here or there doesn't seem to me to be worth the extra effort.

I have no idea if it will pass, but I hope it does. Only because I like the precedent it sets. If a U.S. State ever does similarly (such as New Hampshire :) or Texas) the US FedGov will look like a bunch of bullies if it doesn't let them leave. Then again. Not that the rest of the world doesn't already think of the US as a bunch of bullies and not that the US cares.

Do people really hold 10 credit cards? Why would you have more than one from each company? I use my AmEx, unless it isn't accepted, then I use my Mastercard. Why would I need 5 AmEx cards and 5 Mastercards(or Visa cards)? Liberty's explanation makes more sense to me now that I think about it. If you make less than $50K/year before taxes, you can't possibly spend $2K/month on your card (without quickly getting to your credit limit).

I'm actually surprised by how low these numbers are even for American Express, but especially for the more common cards. I thought everyone used their card for almost everything the way I do, all their shopping (food, gas, etc), as many of their bills as possible (netlfix, cable, heating oil, electric, LP/NG gas, etc), and everything else they spend money on (discretionary spending, vacations, car maintenance, home maintenance, etc). I would have expected numbers in the ball park of those amounts to be monthly not yearly.

You might want to consider the equipment/construction industry. DE (or maybe CAT) for dividends or ASTE for a smaller growth pick with a smaller dividend (Astec is an excellent company).

I spent few minutes looking at the AmEx cards offered on their website. It seems that they are oriented strongly towards people who fly a lot. I don't. I prefer cash back. Right now I have 3 credit cards. A Fidelity AmEx which pays 2% cash back deposited into my brokerage account. With no limit on the cash back per year. This is the card I use most often by far. An Amazon.com Visa which I only use at Amazon.com, because it pays 3% cash back on Amazon purchases. And I have a Citi Master Card which I only use if I'm somewhere that doesn't accept AmEx. It pays 2% cash back, but has a $300/year limit on the rewards. None of the cards have an annual fee or give air miles or have airport privileges, but I'm not interested in any of that anyway.

I know when I get my 2% cash back on my charge card that I am free-riding off of the people who don't pay their balance every month, but I'm not sure I understand the charge card business. They provide the bonus points and service all for a $300-$500/year annual fee and never collect interest? How does AmEx make money on the charge cards? Float?

I have the same card. We probably don't get the service that other AmEx cardholders get, because we don't pay an annual fee.

+1 This is can't be stated often enough. As it is true for everything created by humans, including companies.

Agreed that is also part of their moat. It is just the flip side of saying that one of the things their brand represents is seamless integration of hardware and software. The Apple brand represents this, because they are the only company in the world that has pulled this off correctly. Not only do they design their own devices, but even their own IC's. They are a device design company, an IC design company, a software company, a services company, all rolled into one. I can't think of any other company that has pulled all of that off successfully and been world class in every area. Apple has a moat.

The notion that Apple doesn't believe in moats is absurd. Yes, they are willing to cannibalize existing products with new ones (abandon one moat by digging a new one in a different spot), but Apple's moat is: its design, its high build quality, its eco-system (breadth of products that all work together), its simplicity (all the features that are necessary, but none that are not). Apple has built a brand that stands for all of these things and more. That is its moat.

Would that make you a dummy? I love arguments that start out: If you disagree with what I'm about to say you are stupid.

My house is 246 years old (built in 1768). I don't want a sci-fi roof.