rkbabang

Just to be clear. When you say "vote to allow" what you are implying is some right to "vote to disallow". What you are really asking is would you send armed thugs to force someone to do (or not do) X, and to shoot them if it becomes necessary to get them to comply. "There aught to be a law..." simply means "Deadly violence should be used to force people to do/not do ..." I for one would not use violence (nor support the use of violence) to stop consenting adults from having any kind of relationship between themselves that made them happy regardless of the number or gender of the adults involved. Nor would I use violence or support the use of violence to stop adults from buying or selling drugs and/or sex if that is what they want to do.

Here are a few exerpts from an excellent article called Contraception Debate Misses a Basic Question. Which is just another way of saying what I've been saying throughout this thread that when politics is involved every opinion and preference suddenly becomes everyone else's business. Imagine if what was stocked at the local grocery store was voted on and determined by the town government instead of through the free market. The debates that would take place over the items in each aisle. Especially the contraceptives, magazines, junk/health food (by a bunch of different definitions of what is junk and healthy), etc. When the market rather than government offers a service these issues simply disappear. You can shop at your local health food store, someone else can shop at Johny's Junk Food Emporium, and still someone else can shop at a market that carries a little bit of both. Nothing run or heavily regulated by government is driven by market intensives like this. Everything is one size fits all and let's fight it out in the political arena. Anyway, I've digressed, here's the quotes from the article:

And as an anarchist I'll be delighted to pay for none of it. Unfortunately government doesn't work like that, there is nothing even remotely voluntary about it. You pay your protection money (or else) and they spend it on all those things and more.

As far as "age of consent" goes, this is similar to the question of when someone becomes an adult, can enter into contracts and be fully responsible for their own actions. When someone lives on their own and supports themselves, regardless of age they are unquestionably an adult. Before that it should be up to the parents. If someone decides to declare themselves to be an adult at age 13, move out, get married or support themselves, then they are an adult. If someone decides to do none of those things and they are 28 years old, then he or she is still a child under the care of the parents. People mature at different rates (and some people never do). Putting an age to it and drawing a hard line is just stupid.

That is an opinion. Which he is completely entitled to. His opinions are entirely his business right up until the point where he wants to use the violence of the state to enforce them on others. No one is trying to force homosexual marriage on him. If Sanatorium wants to not marry another man everyone is fine with that. When he wants to tell other people who they are "allowed" to marry themselves (i.e. use government force to enforce his personal preferences on others) that's were the problem is.

That's just crazy. Why not just not charge the woman? I'm 39 now and my wife is 36, but when we started seeing each other I was 18 and she had just turned 15. I could have been charged with a crime. Luckily I wasn't, but if I had been, a good solution wouldn't have been forcing us to get married before we were ready. We did get married 6 years later when we were ready. Why not just admit that it's "statutory rape" laws that are the problem in the first place. The government passes one law that causes a problem then workarounds need to be found. Just like with gay marriage. Why is marriage a government thing to begin with? Why are people treated differently depending on who they have sex with? The world marriage shouldn't be in law anywhere. If you want person X to inherit your belongings that is what a will is for. If you want to get "married" that is a contract or a religious commitment between you and (one or more) other people, it should have nothing to do with the government or with law. Other than maybe contract law. --Eric

Fortunately you don't need to read threads on any message board which don't interest you. You are correct however that all political discussions are nothing but opinions. Unfortunately political opinions are not harmless like "I think sunsets are nice", rather they are opinions backed up by the violence of the state. More like "we're going to steal half of everything you earn then use it to build weapons to slaughter people oversees and there is nothing you can do about it". Oh wait, you can vote. What a joke. A sick joke with massive piles of bodies as its punch line.

Absolutely. This is what Intel came up with to make CMOS work at the 22nm node. Many people are assuming that there is only one or two shrinks possible from here, maybe maxing out around 12-14nm. I think with billions of dollars thrown at these problems Intel or some other company will find a solution to take us to 7-8nm then down to about 4nm. At 4nm the transistors would literally be a few atoms wide so that will be about the physical limit of silicon and some other type of device, most likely made of some form of carbon will need to be developed for Moore's Law to continue. --Eric

Whew! Looks like radio isn't the only place one can find over-the-top generalizations. OK, I'll be more specific. Any show I've tried to listen to, both nationally syndicated and local to the Boston radio market has hosts that fit that description. I have no idea if EVERY conservative talk radio host is a blood-thirsty bigot. But judging by the candidates in the Rep. Primary. The only one not looking to continue the old wars and anxious to start a new war or two is widely referred to as "unelectable" simply because he lacks the blood-lust needed to be a Republican presidential candidate. Not to pick on republicans too much. After all Obama is every bit as much of a war criminal as BushII.

Dictators? Limbaugh isn't a dictator, just a loud-mouth bigot. Dictators use force. The astonishing part is that all of his listeners are actually choosing to listen to him. I do have to admit that I used to listen to him for a while myself in the early 90's when I was in my late teens/early 20's. My views have evolved since then. I'd still listen to him in the late 90's, because no one would go after Clinton like he would and I quite enjoyed that, even if I did hold many of his views to be appalling. Once Bush II was elected however I could no longer listen to him, and after 9/11 I could no longer listen to any conservative talk radio at all. Just a bunch of blood thirsty, flag waving, bigots looking to murder darker-skinned people who talk funny and live far away. Good for the boycotters.

I suspect you're probably 8-10 years off wrt the end of silicon transistors. If I was a betting man I'd wager that Intel will find a way to manufacture some form of CMOS down to around 4nm device sizes. Which is a lot smaller than most people are assuming to be possible currently and which will put us well into the 2020's and even that will not be the end of Moore's Law as processing at the molecular and atomic level will follow. But I agree with you about quantum computing, it is coming. It works differently than traditional computers however. It can solve problems quickly that traditional computers can not solve at all, but does not work well for traditional type sequential programs. I suspect you will eventually see a quantum processor sitting next to a multi-core traditional Von Neumann type processor working together. The traditional micro will run the program and offload certain things to the quantum co-processor. One other thing that will be interesting is the development of neural-network-brain-type processors using memristors. Maybe in the medium-to-long-term there will be systems that contain massively multicore Von Neumann CPUs with quantum co-processors all controlled by a neural-memristor processor. We are at the very beginning of all this stuff, most people have no idea what's coming.

I also forgot to mention that Windows 8, which will be released this year will support ARM processors as well as Intel. You could very well see an ARM based PC running windows. I'm not sure how likely that will be for desktops or workstations, but you will almost certainly see, not only ARM based Windows 8 tablets, but laptops as well. This will erode Intel's moat even further as ARM eats into its Windows laptop market share.

I'm a tech guy as well, although more on the hardware side (I'm an IC designer). You are correct in that Intel isn't going away anytime soon. They have a stable business and are clearly the market leader by quite a long way when it comes to desktop PCs, workstations, servers, etc. But where will the future growth come from? If you want a growth story starting from a smaller base and representing more of where we are going you have to take a hard look at ARMH. ARM has a great business in the mobile processor space and also a long held deeply entrenched position in the IP business (embedded processors / standard cell libraries / as well as various other IP) so that it isn't going away any sooner than Intel will, yet its embedded processor business will almost certainly grow faster than any business Intel is in. I haven't done any research into these companies recently as far as the stocks go so I won't speak to their current valuations, but I think as far as where the technology is headed ARM is in a much better position to take advantage of current and near-term trends. Also one word of advice on circle of competence. You can (and probably should) work on building a circle of competence for investing purposes in a number of areas outside of technology and I highly recommend you do so. As a recent college grad in the mid-90s I used to invest exclusively in tech stocks, because I believed that I should stick to what I know best. Needless to say I got hit pretty hard by the tech crash of 2000 and have been working on extending my circle of competence into other areas for investing purposes ever since. I have been investing in restaurants, restaurant equipment companies, insurance companies, construction/farm equipment companies, and with ISRG, a surgical device manufacturer. The only tech stock I now own is GOOG and restricted stock in the semiconductor company that I work for. I'd highly recommend picking an industry that interests you outside of technology and start doing some research and trying to build some competence in that area. It can never hurt to widen your circle, especially when your initial circle of competence only includes one industry which is very difficult to invest successfully in.

Eric Schmidt thinks technology will help save the world. I tend to agree, if governments get out of the way (and stop murdering people and destroying things) there is a lot we can accomplish as a species. And even if they don't get out of the way voluntarily, as Schmidt points out, technology may just help us push them out of the way. Google: Technology is making science fiction real "People who predict that holograms and self-driving cars will become reality soon are absolutely right," Schmidt told thousands of attendees at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the planet's largest cell phone trade show.... It will redefine the relationship these people have in the world. In times of war and suffering, it will be impossible to ignore the cries of people calling out for help," Schmidt said. "In this new world there will be far fewer places for dictators." That already happened during the Arab Spring that saw governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya fall, with more turmoil still under way in places like Syria. "With information comes power and with power comes choice, and smarter resourceful citizens are going to demand a better deal for their communities," Schmidt said.

You can disagree with someone on taxes (or views on other things) yet not hate the person or even disrespect them. I couldn't disagree more with Buffett on taxes yet I highly respect the man. I'm an atheist and an anarchist, if I hated everyone with whom I disagreed, I wouldn't like too many people. The corollary to the above article is that some people who highly respect Buffett will take anything he says on any subject as if it was handed down from god himself. Which is equally ridiculous. Warren Buffett is a human being like you and I, and shocking as it may seem to say it, can at times be wrong. --Eric

Hi Ragu, Do you care to elaborate on your reasoning a little? Saying simply "reason dictates" is not really a strong argument without sharing the reasoning. I was a BH shareholder (as well as a WEST shareholder and I invested alongside Biglari a number of times). I sold all of my BH as a result of the compensation package and its effect on IV. I'd love to understand why I'm wrong. Thanks, --Eric

This is going to change the way we are all connected. Giving us a connection to the noosphere every waking hour of the day. Navigation by slight head movements is genius. Not saying that Google will corner the market on this or even that Google's version will be successful. Just that something like this will be ubiquitous in very short order and will change the way we interact in both our personal and business lives. Leading eventually to contact lens type versions and ultimately to implants which tap into the optic nerve or directly into the vision centers of the brain. Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year’s End To get an idea of the type of tech and societal changes that are possible with this read the sci-fi books "Daemon" and its sequel "FreedomTM" both by Daniel Suarez. --Eric

Back when I was a Biglari follower/fan/shareholder I kept a pretty extensive file on him. I just dug up the interview that I think you are talking about. It is from 2004. InterviewWithSardarBiglariOctober2004.pdf

The current one is called Adblock Plus. I've been using it since it was just called Adblock going back probably 8-10 years. I haven't seen an ad on the internet for so long it always strikes me as weird when I see someone else surfing the web and sites like facebook, yahoo or others have these ads everywhere filling up the screen real estate and flashing at them, or even more annoying, popping up windows in their face. I guess I'm glad other people are paying my way by viewing and responding to all these ads and allowing web-sites to make money from them so that they are available for free to me. But I don't know why they do it when an easy and free solution is available. <editing my post> I forgot to comment about FB. I wouldn't invest in FB due to it being in the "I can't predict the future" category. It could very well turn out to be a good investment from the IPO price long term, but even if it does it will go down at some point before then. There is no way anyone has enough information to know right now. My profession is in high tech (Integrated Circuit design) yet I almost never invest in technology companies. I know enough about technology to know how unpredictable it is. The only tech stocks I own are GOOG, ISRG, and restricted stock in my own company that I've been given as compensation. And I've been trying to re-evaluate my ISRG position, my cost basis is $108 and I'm not sure my original thesis for buying it still holds at its current valuation. But like usual when I'm not sure what to do I do nothing until I am sure. --Eric

To this day I've never purchased a PC from a retail store. I built my first PC (a 25MHz 386) in 1989 and I've built every PC I've owned since. I've run DOS, Windows, and Linux at various times and for the last 10 years or so I've been dual booting various versions of windows with various version of Linux. I've never (and I mean never) used Internet Explorer with the exception of using it right after installing windows to go to mozilla (netscape before that) and download a real browser. I've never considered Microsoft a monopoly. Government (any government) should just stay the hell out of technology. I don't like Microsoft or its products, but I don't think costing it millions in legal costs to defend itself from government parasites benefits anyone (other than said parasites).

Just 7.4K in my personal account (7410 to be exact). Not tendering.

I don't think Fairfax has a DRIP plan, but Fidelity will reinvest dividends on most stocks for you. They do it for all of my dividend paying stocks except ITEX. I don't know why not ITEX, maybe it is too thinly traded. They reinvest my fairfax dividends even though I own the pink sheets version. --Eric

I just re-invest the dividend. Fidelity does this for me automatically giving me the exact amount in fractional shares and all without fees. So when Fairfax issues a dividend it increases my ownership stake in the company. Most of my shares are held in a retirement account so I don't pay taxes on the dividend of those shares, it goes directly to buying new shares (new shares which will earn a dividend the next year). Taxes do need to be paid on the dividend in my regular account though. What I do is have Fidelity reinvest 100% of the dividend and I pay the taxes for it when I do my taxes in April of the next year. So it does cost me some extra in taxes a little more than a year later. Yes it would be simpler if the company just bought back stock, but I'm OK with the dividend too.

If it goes up by the same percentage tomorrow you can do enhanceGoogle.com while your at it. --Eric

I don't know if I should admit this, so I'll just say that "someone I know" when he was a kid would dress up in his baseball uniform and sell candy bars door to door for $1 that he bought at the store for 25cents, never mentioning that it went for anything, just saying "would you like to buy a candy bar? They're $1" people would make an assumption that it was for charity. This person never corrected them.