rkbabang

This stock doesn't get much mention on this board. I've been a shareholder for a while with a smallish position. I just doubled my investment in MIL today. I'm expecting the special dividend announcement soon. Smith said "by November" earlier in the year.

Sure, but investing aside there's nothing wrong with having some guns, food and ammo on hand whether TEOTWAWKI comes or it doesn't.

I disagree with their theory. I think they were in talks with someone to sell the DVD business. When the market cap was twice+ what it is now selling off the DVD business made all kinds of sense. They could get a lot for it, they could use the cash to buy streaming rights for the streaming business. Now that the stock is so low, you could buy all of Netflix for a lot less than they probably expected to get for just the DVD business earlier in the year, it just doesn't make sense any more to sell it. If it was the streaming business they were planning on selling they would have changed the name of the streaming business (to streeemster or something equally ridiculous I'm sure) not the DVD business. Its all moot now anyway.

The Occupy movement is more of a left wing thing, the TeaParty was more of a right wing thing. This diagram is a good illustration of why I sympathize with both of them.

Exactly! Which is why both sides hate the libertarians. Unfortunately the traditional media are made up of large politically connected corporations and they, for the most part, support public unions. The media represents the worst of each side. They are a big part of the problem.

Netflix Co-Founder, Marc Randolph, blogs about the Netflix/Qwikster split. Did Netflix screw up? I don’t think so. "Wall Street didn’t approve of the move either, and the stock is now trading at less than half the price it was two months ago. Even my own friends are sending me puzzled notes, wondering if the “wheels are coming off the cart”. What can I say? They are all wrong.... "But what is truly mindblowing, is that when I was CEO trying to screw up my nerve to walk away from selling DVDs, I risked alienating tens of thousands of customers. Reed is showing that he has courage and conviction to do the right thing despite having tens of millions of them. This is why this guy is the best entrepreneur on the planet."

I agree as well. They couldn't have chosen a worse name. Some of my random thoughts are that 1) They don't want "Net" or "flix" in the name, because they wish to sell it off to raise money to acquire streaming rights. 2) They don't want "flix" in the name because they are adding games. 3) They probably want to sell it off in the near future before the game rentals bring down the margins too far. But still Qwikster is horrible. I'm not good with names and I think even I could come up with something better than that. How about MediaByMail or MediaRoo (have a kangaroo with disks sticking out of its pouch on the envelopes). Anything would be better than Qwickster. --Eric

This has made us re-evaluate our Netflix subscription and the results were that we are staying with the 2-out DVD plan and streaming. No change for us. Compared to the 3-figure per month that we pay Comcast, Netflix is still a steal. I'd give up cable completely before giving up Netflix even if they were the same price. I don't watch much TV and when I do it is either a movie or TV series disk from Netflix. My wife and kids use the streaming constantly. My re-evaluation has led me to cut back on my cable channels, not my Netflix services. I cancelled HBO & Showtime, and went from "Digital Plus" to just the basic Digital cable package. Compare the value you get with Netflix vs what you get from your cable company. It isn't even close. I'm no longer a Netflix shareholder, so the recent price drop didn't effect me. I bought NFLX years ago at $11 then sold after it ran up to what I thought was a ridiculous $68. Of course it kept going and going and going after I sold. --Eric

Like everything political, the scientific method is never employed. There are no control groups, ever. Someone has an idea, it is lobbied for and implemented on everyone. And that is that, only times 1000, because 1000's of other things are implemented as well each and every year. And nothing is ever fully done away with or repealed just more distortions piled on to "fix" the problems with the previous distortions. And every decision is done blindly, by committee, and usually for political reasons. You couldn't possibly design a less scientific process. --Eric

I agree completely. I usually recommend his shorter "Why We Get Fat" book to people though, because a 600 page densely written book with 150 pages of footnotes turns many people off. I'm a engineer, so I just took it all in and loved reading it. But it has been my experience, that such a tome is quite intimidating to a lot of folks. I recommended both books to a relative of mine. He read "Why We Get Fat" twice, but still hasn't been able to bring himself to start "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and it's been 6 months. Yet he's made the lifestyle changes anyway and is doing great. --Eric

Basically a low carb diet. 1) I try to eat 20grams of net carbs or fewer per day. (net carbs = total carbs - fiber), I go over sometimes, but not by much. 2) I try to keep my sugar consumption as close as humanly possible to 0g/day. I am very strict with sugar, I simply won't eat anything with added sugar. Any sugar I do consume is naturally occurring in the food itself (i.e. blueberries). 3) Any carbs I do eat come from vegetables and a small amount of berries. That's basically it. In practice in a typical day, my meals look like this: BREAKFAST: eggs and meat. Sometimes cheese. LUNCH: Salad (a lot of veggies) with some meat and/or a hard boiled egg. Topped with olive oil and a little vinegar. DINNER: I eat about half vegetables and half meat/fish/or eggs. Example chicken and broccoli, steak and green beans, etc. SNACKS: 0-1 per day, some examples are: nuts, or berries on whipped heavy cream, or cheese&pepperoni. DRINKS: I drink a lot of water (sometimes with a wedge of lemon or lime in it), I also drink 1-2 cups black coffee per day (hot or iced, no cream or sugar). Sometimes I'll drink unsweetened iced tea or hot tea. OILS: I cook with olive oil, lard, coconut oil, tallow, or grass fed butter. Which reminds me, I try to use as much grass fed beef and dairy as possible because they have a better omaga3/6 ratio. I use omaga3 eggs and take fish oil pills as well for that reason. I try to use non-processed foods when ever possible, I buy non-cured bacon with no added nitrates, for example. And I also take vitamin D3 pills because I work indoors. Good books to read: "Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It", by Gary Taubes "The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet", by Robb Wolf My diet could be described as Paleo with a small amount of dairy added (Butter, cheese, heavy cream). Robb Wolf says "no dairy". --Eric

I'm still doing very well on the low carb diet. I was about 225lbs at the beginning of the year, ~190lbs after 3 months and 178lbs today (about 9 months on the diet). My bloodwork comes out better and better every time I get it done. I've had it done in December/2010, then April/2011, then again in July/2011. In July my triglycerides were down to 77 (from 140's in Dec). My HDL (Good cholesterol) was up to 65 (from 30's in Dec). My A1C improved well into the normal range from pre-diabetic range in Dec. Everything else was in normal range in Dec and stayed normal in April and July. I'm going to get more bloodwork done at the 1 year mark in December. I'm still having a lot of fun with the food I can eat and experimenting with new things. Last night I made pork-chops dipped in egg, "breaded" with coconut flour then deep-fried in lard. BTW: Here are the old threads on this topic: Do You Really Need This? 4 hour body --Eric

Sears still publishes a physical paper catalog? Seriously, I had no idea. I haven't seen one of those since I was a kid in the early to mid 80's probably. I was born in 1972 and wouldn't think to shop at Sears either online or off for anything. One exception is that my wife will go there to look at the Land's End clothes sometimes, but that is about it. I agree that it is a dying brand. To me Kenmore just means some other company's appliances re-badged to say Kenmore. Why not just buy the Whirlpool or whoever really makes it? --Eric

No problem. Glad to help. --Eric

Lib, do you know of any extensions that work with Outlook Express? i.e. I can click on something and it will prepare to email a link but opening outlook express instead of Gmail or Yahoo? I see the GMail ones but not one for OE. Thanks Try the extension called "email this page" It will add an email button to your tool bar and when you click it it will use your default email tool, which will be outlook express if that is what your default email tool in windows is. I just tried it and it starts a message in thunderbird which is my default email tool. --Eric

Firefox 6.0 is available now. I just upgraded and I don't notice any difference in the user interface, but it does seem to be a bit faster rendering pages. --Eric

I've actually never used IE. I've used NCSA Mosaic, then I switched to Netscape Navigator until Netscape version 6, then to Mozilla, then finally to Firefox which I still use. I've experimented with Chrome a few times, but I always go back to Firefox. I'm using 5.0 right now. I just upgrade to the latest version whenever it is available. I've never liked Microsoft products and try to avoid them whenever I can. I've been running Linux at home for about 10 years now. And at work they give me two computers a Linux workstation and a Windows 7 laptop. I'd love to install Linux on the laptop, but I'm not supposed to, so I don't. I do have to admit Windows 7 isn't half bad though, it is the first Windows version that I actually don't mind using. I still have never tried any version of IE and don't plan on starting now. --Eric

I agree, only more so. I think you are off by many many orders of magnitude. --Eric

The Paleo Solution Podcast interview with Gary Taubes

The best way to look at home ownership is the same way you look at buying a car. It is a purchase of something you need to use on a daily basis(a place to live/a method of transportation), not as an investment. I rather own vs. rent simply because I don't want to have to ask permission to paint the walls, re-do the basement, put in a pool, etc... To me it is a quality of life decision, not a financial one. If I make any return > 0% at the end that is just gravy. If my return is 0% it is an excellent deal. If my return ends up negative, it was money well spent. Returns as high as 0% are very, very, very rare when it comes to automobiles or most other things we buy to use regularly. --Eric

It's a very real possibillity that this is total B.S. and he died in December of 2001 or some time after that. Throughout Bush's presidency I wondered if he was really dead and Bush just didn't want to lose his valuable bogyman. Like so many things, we may never know the truth. --Eric

I've been against these wars since 2001. I don't say anything different regardless of who is in the whitehouse. The left wants to tax, borrow, and spend us to death for social reasons, the right wants to do it for security reasons, and they both want to fight the insane drug war. When one side is in power they increase government in their favorite areas while doing nothing to reduce it in the other side's favorite areas, and vice versa when the other side is in power. Thus government increases regardless. And both sides are hypocrites to the extreme. Where have the anti-war left been since January 2009? Just like those on the right who only oppose spending and debt when a Democrat is in the Whitehouse, those on the left only oppose war and random murder of countless innocents when a Republican resides in the Whitehouse. It is lunacy. Quite true as far as it goes. Some people have it far, far, worse than we do. But just because the slaves on other plantations have much crueler masters than yours or mine, doesn't mean that we are free. Jefferson once said that it is government's tendency to grow and liberty to shrink. (I'm paraphrasing, I'm too lazy to look it up). Government is a cancer on society. It behaves the same in society as cancer does in the body, the end results are always the same, and it is just as necessary. --Eric

That is so true - but to be brutally honest, and I know alot of people are not going to like this but half the problem was how Bush and his administration handled the situation. When Bush left office they admitted they had no clue where Bin Laden was and his actions leading into the war on terror were rediculous and so costly in terms of lives not only $. Surprisingly Frank, (in Canada we have an election today y'know ;)) the CBC asked all Canadian Party Leaders what their biggest mistake has been since being leader of their party and our current PM - Harper, stated it was his declaration at the time that Canada should follow the US into Iraq. This was a surprisingly candid statement to make just days before his own election - I honestly didnt think he would own up to this at this point in the election. Absolutely. You won't get any argument from me here. I think Bush was more than half the problem, but Obama was the rest of the problem. When he won in 2008 I thought to myself "well he's a socialist, but at least he'll bring the troops home" LOL, was I naive. Mr. Peace-prize has done no such thing. Will he end these insane wars now? No, he won't. He's as much a part of the military industrial complex as Bush was. All B.S. campaign rhetoric aside, there isn't a dimes worth of difference between the two parties in the US when it comes to the military and expanding the empire. --Eric

I'm glad he's dead, he was a murderer and a terrorists, but it certainly isn't a clear victory for the USA. 10 years and trillions of dollars spent... not to mention all of the additional lives lost. Bin Laden's goal was to bankrupt the United States. One could make the argument that he won. --Eric

This could backfire. With voice only or real-time text only, you just have to sound (or type) professional. Most people imagine they are talking or text-chatting with someone who looks like this: They might not enjoy the experience as much if the reality is more: http://www.geekologie.com/2011/03/24/ps3-headset.jpg or http://blog.hpsgroup.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ugly-woman-moustache-pictures.jpg