rkbabang

Interesting. I'll have to look into that. Can you store other info besides passwords? I store a bunch of info right now in my text files besides username/passwords, such as: Account Name, Account Number, customer service tel#, URL of login page, account unlock questions/answers, etc... I don't have just one big file to search through, because truecrypt creates an entire disk partition that is mounted to look like a disk to your OS, I have a directory with one file for each type of accounts. Bank Accounts, Credit Cards, Online Forums, Brokerage Accounts, Online Shopping, ... I find the right file then it is easy to find the right account. It really is a fairly quick process. I'd say equal to keeping it in a scrap of paper in your wallet. If I'm on Windows 7 I can usually find what I'm looking for with just the text file preview in explorer without even opening the file. On linux it is just a few key strokes: > xe ba<TAB><ENTER> TAB key is autocomplete and only my bank_accounts.txt file begins with 'ba' and 'xe' is my alias for XEmacs. But if KeePass works on iOS that might be reason enough to switch. --Eric

I personally have a different strong password for each and every account online. Each passwork is 15+ characters long containing upper/lower case letters, numbers, symbols and spaces. Some of them on accounts that I use often enough I remember, but I keep all usernames and passwords in a file that I have encrypted into a TrueCrypt partition. I store that partition as a file in google docs. So if I'm at home or at work or anywhere else (you can carry truecrypt around with you on a usb stick or install it on a machine) I can download the file, decrypt it, open the partition and read the file containing my passwords. The downside is that there is no way to decrypt it and view it from an iOS or Android device. Maybe it isn't the best solution, but it is secure. EDIT: I should also mention that with this method I need to remember both my Google docs password and my TrueCrypt volume's password. Otherwise I would not be able to download and decrypt the file.

I think he was talking about Apple, but I think all three companies will likely be around in 10 years. 1) Amazon is a retailer which specializes in running a low margin business. As long as Bezos is around and willing to run it like this it will remain a powerhouse of retail. There will always be stuff to sell, whatever that stuff happens to be 10 years from now Amazon, will be selling it; will most likely have a larger share of the retail market than it enjoys today; and probably not making much profit doing so. At some point investors may grow tired of the low margins and the stock price may suffer, but that shouldn't have that much of an impact on its operation. Although it may mean increasing salaries to retain talent and increasing prices slightly or reducing R&D, but it shouldn't kill the business entirely. 2) Google does a ton of stuff and always innovating hoping something will catch on, which is why I'm sure Taleb isn't thinking it will go anywhere in 10 years, nor do I. 3) Apple's dominance rests on it always coming up with the next best thing. It did it with the iPod, then the iPhone, now the iPad. With greater and greater success each time: http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/styles/view_body_embed/public/images/MeekerIPad.jpg Can it continue this indefinitely? Probably not, but for the next 10 years? I think it probably can. They have a huge opportunity to do to the TV what the iPhone did to the telephone (fundamentally change what it is, how we interface with it, and what we use it for). If they can pull it off then Apple will be a multi-$Trillion company in 10 years. If not, Apple might not end up as big as it could have been, but I think you can make a good profitable business selling handheld gadgets for at least the next 10 years if you're Apple. In short I think, unless Bezos gets hit by a bus and his successor destroys the company, Taleb is wrong.

I'm not saying I would put 90% into one idea, although I currently have more than 60% in my best idea. In the past I've had as much as 15-20 positions. But I'm no investing genius. If there is a stock Mohnish Pabrai is willing to go almost all into, I'd at least like to look at it for consideration. This isn't either/or. You could hold this as a 5-10% position and if it returned 40X that would be a great thing, you could also hold a basket of Japanese net-nets alongside it, but you are unlikely to get a 10X return on them. I see no harm in trying to figure out what it is. However if I found out it was BYD, I'd be unlikely to invest at all, because I've tried to understand it in the past and have not felt confident enough to invest. I don't like technology stocks, why couldn't another company come up with some better battery technology and make everything BYD does irrelevant? What is its moat?

You got that right oddballstocks! This is a perfect example of confirmation bias and social proof bias at work. We all want the mystery stock heavily owned by the Guru who wishes to up his concentration to be the same one we own! We're just so darned predictable ;D I'm pretty sure whatever it is, it isn't one I own. So I want to know what it is so that I can look into whether or not I want to own it. Also I'm an actions speak louder than words type who finds it interesting that despite said guru's talk about Japanese stocks being so undervalued, he has a 60-90% position in some non-Japanese stock. Clearly undervalued Japanese stocks aren't among his best ideas either.

Don't forget 40X was the high end of his possible range, with 10X the low end. That is a pretty large range. It could be that his opinion is that the most likely outcome is closer to 10X than to 40X. Also 10 years ago XOM had a market cap of $235B, it could be that in 10 years it has a $800B-$1T. Which would make a $400B company significantly smaller than XOM. I suspect in a future where CHK is a $440B company XOM would be over $1T. I've owned CHK in the past, bought in the $30s sold in the $60s if I recall correctly. I haven't looked at it in a long time though.

I agree with the above. On BAC and FFH, not hookers and blow. If you must make such an investment make it a <<1% position as the world isn't going to end in two weeks and I don't think of a VD as a desirable dividend.

Ohhh, so it was all just to give you the opportunity to get in? Well good, now that you have made your purchase it is free to increase again. I think he was saying that his purchase caused the price fell, i.e. everything he touches turns to....coal? I think every investor has felt this way at some point! Just a little self-deprecating humor :) If that is the case I misunderstood him. I though he bought after it went down not before. So he's saying that he is the anti-midas, not that he can move markets with his will (which would certainly be a useful skill to have).

Ohhh, so it was all just to give you the opportunity to get in? Well good, now that you have made your purchase it is free to increase again.

An interesting discussion. While I'm not on the level of many (most) on this board I have learned quite a lot from many of you over the years. My portfolio which historically has been around 8-20 positions, usually concentrated in the top 5-10 or so, is now basically in 2 companies. I've had 30%+ positions before: Fairfax recently, and in the past: Western Sizzlin, Steak and Shake, and the MIDD/OVEN situation (all of which worked out very well for me), but the rest of my portfolio was always fairly well diversified. This is by far the most concentrated I've ever been. I've got roughly 40% BAC class A warrants, 10% various BAC 2014 & 2015 calls, a small amount of class B warrants and BAC common. 34% Fairfax, and <5% positions in BRK-B, CMG, GOOG, HOTR, ISRG, MIL, MNGGF, SAFT, MKL. Most of those were larger positions which I sold all but a small amount to invest in BAC. Earlier this year I spend about a week reading the BAC A warrants discussion on this board from start to finish (I'd recommend doing that to anyone interested in BAC, there is a wealth of info and links to more info there) and that helped me with the decision to concentrate. I've been building my Fairfax position for years, it was already more than a third of my portfolio at the beginning of this year and it is the reason that I am down for the year right now after having a few years of pretty good returns (70.9% in 2009, 21.2% in 2010, 12.7% in 2011). In 2012 so far I'm down 15.2%.

Yes, some small percentage of companies are always going to want their own servers and won't want to build and maintain them themselves, this will be especially true in the short to medium term as many won't trust the cloud at first. But I think this is a business that will soon find itself in decline. You have large companies that will build and maintain their own stuff as they are starting to do now. For the ones that don't there will be some who (like Netflix) run entirely in the cloud and some who will be potential customers of Dell. Then you have mid-sized businesses who will find the cloud more and more attractive from a cost standpoint as Amazon and Google fight a price war for this commodity service. The number of these businesses who buy and maintain their own data-centers will decline as time goes on I think. Then you have small-sized businesses who will almost certainly take advantage of the cost savings of the cloud. Finally you have government, which doesn't need to worry about cost or being efficient in any way, so maybe Dell can hold on to these sales as well. I don't see Dell's business having a lot of room to grow long term. I of course could be wrong, but it will stop me from buying. I already own some DELL though my ownership in Fairfax, that is more than enough DELL exposure for me.

This is what scares me about Dell: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/11/amazon-google-secret-servers/ The big guys Amazon, Google, Microsoft, FB are all building their own servers and selling time on them to the little guys. Where does this leave Dell? It leaves them out. If you are already writing off the retail PC business as unprofitable this should be a big concern. Here are the relevant quotes from the article: " Amazon buys its server processors and memory directly from Intel, doing an end-run around middle men such as HP and Dell and other original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs." "The result is an enormous shadow market for servers and other data-center hardware that’s hidden from those who traditionally track hardware sales. Google goes straight to Asia. So does Facebook. And according to a former Quanta employee who spoke to Wired earlier this year, even Microsoft is purchasing data-center hardware straight from Asian companies that the average American has never heard of." "In short, the hardware landscape is changing in a big way. Earlier this year, Diane Bryant, the head of Intel’s data center group, told us that eight server makers now account for 75 percent of Intel’s server chip revenues — and one of those is Google. Just four years ago, three companies made up that 75 percent: Dell, HP, and IBM." "Amazon Web Services were remarkably cheap from the very beginning, and the prices continue to drop. This week, at its first AWS conference in Las Vegas, Amazon announced a 25 percent price cut on S3, its online storage service. Amazon is running its web operation in much the same way it runs its famous retail business. Ultimately, EC2 is just selling a commodity. So many others can sell the same thing. In order to make it work, you have to operate on very low financial margins. “Amazon, from our retail upbringings, has this background and this comfort and this skill in running high-volume, low-margin businesses,”" "Google and Amazon are giving the world an even easier — and cheaper — way of running their operations without the likes of HP and Dell. They provide virtual servers you can use from any web browser."

The software couldn't handle signed integers. It assumes an unsigned integer and thus -6 (0xFFFFFFFA in 32-bit 2s compliment) is interpreted as 4,294,967,290 contracts worth $460 trillion. Stockholm stock exchange paralyzed by order for -6 futures

The problem here is the same as the housing boom. Giving loans to everyone at low rates, and in this case with deferred interest and payments until 6 months after graduation in the case of government subsidized loans, simply causes prices to rise to make up the difference. Parents can pay $X so schools would have to charge X, but now parents can pay $X and kids can borrow $Y, so schools can charge $X+$Y. Like almost every government program, it certainly doesn't end up helping the people it purports to in the end.

There is no good reason to do it that way as opposed to some other way other than it is politically popular. In a market someone who wants a product or service pays for as much of it as he desires, no more no less. When you introduce violence into the equation things no longer need to make sense they just need to be popular enough that people find it easier/safer to comply rather than to rebel. If the same organization which is violently collecting the protection money can get ahold of its victims children starting at a young age for 15,000+ hours of "free education" over a period of 12-13 years in order to instill loyalty (patriotism) and obedience in them to continue the scam into the next generation, and the next, all the better.

Just like how liberals stopped caring about war or civil rights the moment he was sworn into office. I don't like either party, but the Obama worship I see almost everywhere is both astonishing and troubling. One of my libertarian friends asked me recently to think about the liberals I know and ask myself is there any abuse, any abuse at all, that would be unacceptable if done by Obama? And for the life of me I can't think of anything. At first I said "short of loading people into cattle cars and bringing them to the camps to be gassed, nothing." But then again, if Obama smiles into the camera and calls them terrorists, even that I fear would be a-okay. As megalomanical as Obama is, I don't think even he realizes the true extent of his power. If he did....my god... The world has never had a God-King in an age of nuclear weapons before.

Yes I am against a graduated income tax as well. 50+% of Americans pay no federal income tax yet they vote. This is completely wrong. There should be no tax brackets. Just one standard deduction which is the accepted poverty line. You deduct that amount from your income (income, dividends, capital gains) and pay x%. End of story, no deductions or tax breaks for anyone except the extreme poor who are below the standard deduction and thus pay no tax. The entire U.S. tax code should be repealed and replaced with one paragraph. Also no withholding. Make people see the money they pay, so they think about whether or not they are getting their money's worth.

Yes in the long run something will need to be done about so-called "entitlements" too, but right now cutting food stamps isn't going to get us anywhere if we are spending $900+ Billion (and growing) on our military adventurism. That is something that could be cut drastically and immediately, as there is no one storming our beaches at the moment. It is called "defense" spending after all, it should be for "defense". If I get a list of ex-cons in a nearby city, grab my gun, and start hunting them down one by one on the basis that they may someday be a threat to me, no one would say I was acting in "defense". When I shoot one in the middle of the night while he's climbing my staircase wearing a mask that is a different story all together and takes much less time and resources to prepare for and accomplish. Our "defense" budget should be a tiny fraction of what it is. If it was cut in half, then in half again, it would still be largest defense budget in the world. We have 80 Million armed civilians and a ton of nuclear weapons what country would be insane enough to attack the United States even if we didn't have the largest defense spending? It is insanity to the extreme. And it will bankrupt us long before entitlements do. Not to mention cause death, destruction and utter chaos in the world, making things like terrorism more likely, not less, for generations to come. If you kill one person and you don't also kill his entire family, you will have problems for generations. This is the reason the mob (the other group of violent criminals who force their victims, in geographic areas in which they claim, to pay protection money) sometimes does just that. The U.S. is creating life long enemies by the thousands every year and the current president, who's first campaign was anti-war, has stepped up the killing since he was first elected. The next biggest budget items are healthcare and social security and, just like the military, neither one will even be mentioned by the political class, (unless it is promises of more, more, more), so the conservatives pick on the food stamp ladies and the liberals pick on "the rich". Not that anyone should get something for nothing or (if there is going to be taxation) anyone should get away without paying an equal percentage, but those things are the least of the problems.

The Tea Party started out with the extreme anti-government types (like myself) then came the Ron Paul people (who are pretty close to being of the same mind, although still think politics can solve problems), next came the religious nuts who took it over, and due to their numbers, took it mainstream making it a Republican thing. The same type of thing happened with the "occupy" movement. It started with the extreme anti-government/anti-corporate left, but was then co-opted by the Elizabeth Warren's of the world which brought in the mainstream left-wing and making it a Democrat thing. Two cases of the mainstream parties seeing which direction the parade is heading then getting out in front and pretending to lead it. Unfortunately this happens before the public even hears about it or knows what is going on. It works every time.

Yes, it seems a Republican can never cut a budget, and a Democrat can never end a war.

I'm sorry, but both the liberals and conservatives are completely out to lunch on this issue. Liberals think that raising taxes on the rich will solve our problems and conservatives think that cutting a few social programs will solve everything. But in both cases the numbers don't add up. Both sides need to admit this, but neither ever will. The elephant in the room is the defense spending. Moral issues about bombing poor innocent people overseas and trying to create a world-wide empire aside, the U.S. just can't afford it. The very same thing brought down Rome and will bring down the United States. Don't talk to me about raising taxes a few $Billion here or there nor about cutting big bird or some poor woman's food stamps when we are spending $trillions trying to rule the world. Sorry but both sides are full of Shi...ugh... crap. It needed to be said, because nothing else really matters.

Oh boy. I couldn't dissagree more. Maybe he wasn't the perfect father or husband, but who is? There are certainly worse. Much worse. The good one does by creating wealth on such a massive scale overwhelms almost any petty fault one has. If Hitler was good to his family would that cancel out the evil he did for society as a whole? Would it even matter in the least? The same is true the other way around. Even if he was the worst most abusive father/husband on the planet (which he most certainly was not) he would still have changed the lives of countless people for the better. I wouldn't respect him as much if I knew he beat his kids to within an inch of their lives or sexually abused them or something, but he didn't do such things (as far as I know). You don't give the man credit for the astronomical amount of wealth he has created. And I am not talking about his own. The wealth that has gone to others dwarfs the amount he has kept for himself. And even most that which he built for himself will be donated to help others in the end. He has done a net good for humanity far exceeding every king, dictator, prince, and elected official that has ever lived all put together. Yet it is to these very thieves and parasites that he writes op-eds about giving more money and power to. :(

+1 Yes all of that and more! I just wish he'd leave politics to the scum that inhabit that unfortunate area of life. There is no good to be done there.

"Ann Randists" lost the election? You are going to have to explain this one to me. While I don't consider myself a "Randist" she was dead wrong on a number of important things, I will admit to being heavily influenced by her in my younger years (her first name is Ayn btw). Reading her fiction then non-fiction works set me on the path to where I am at today. And I have never won an election. I actually thought O-bomb-ya was the lesser of two evils in this past one. Seeing the war mongers that the other guy was surrounding himself with scared the hell out of me. If I were to lower myself and add my support to the legitimacy of the leviathan by casting a ballot it would have been for Obama not Romney. Luckily I am still free to register my dessent by staying home.

I should also add that unlike those who many/most people come close to worshiping in DC, he is a good man who has done great things. He's created more jobs, built more wealth for more people, and helped more people than any politician ever has, or ever could. And if he could have paid a zero percent tax rate his entire life he could have done even more. It is sad that he appears to not realize this. He is humble to a fault. I guess if that is the worse you can say about someone, that isn't too bad a thing.