rkbabang

If this is out of line for this site, I apologize in advance and feel free to delete this post. Good friends of my wife and I are trying to raise money to fund their next adoption and are holding a raffle for an iPod Touch. You could turn $5 into an iPod Touch not a bad return if you win. It's for a good cause and these are great people and excellent parents. www.LarsonFamilyAdoption.com Thanks, --Eric

You've got a pretty small house. My house is about the size of his gym. Buffett's house is modest compared to the other billionaires, but compared to us regular folk 6000 square feet is quite large. --Eric

I agree Amazon needs to support some open formats. My wife gave me a Barnes & Noble "Nook" for Christmas, and so far I love it. It works like a Kindle with some important differences. You can load it with ePub or PDB formated documents, as well as easily load PDF files onto it. I've got tons of ebooks in PDF format on my computer that I've been wanting to read but I hate reading on a computer screen. Also I've found free epub format books on line as well. I know kindle lets you read pdf files, but you have to email them to get them on the device. The nook simply lets you hook it up to your computer via a USB cable and drag and drop them onto the device. Much easier. It also comes with free G3 mobile Internet like the kindle, but uses my wifi when I'm at home which is faster. Searching through the B&N catalog it seems that they have better pricing then Amazon and even many free choices. All that with the ability to let other Nook users borrow books from your library. Also the color touch screen is a nice touch and easy to use, I think we'll be seeing more of this type of thing in the future on ebook readers instead of Amazons approach with a ton of buttons. I think Amazon needs to make the kindle more open format friendly, make it easier to load it with your own content (get rid of the use of email to load files onto it), and a way to share ebooks is an excellent feature that the Kindle lacks. --Eric

Yep, I just logged into my Fidelity account, which is a retirement account and not eligible for foreign trading and sure enough, I now own FRFHF. --Eric

Kawikaho, absolutely. My wife has a brother-in-law who has never worked. I mean never. When he was a teenager and just married he got a job as a metal worker which lasted about 2 months. He didn't like it so he quit and has been sitting home ever since. He lives rent free in a building his parents own, but other than that his family (him, his wife, and their 2 children) live on his wife's Walmart income. He won't see anywhere near a million dollars in his entire life, yet has managed to do nothing all of his adult life (he's in his mid-30's now), with no signs that the situation will ever change. Some people are lazy. An inheritance makes being lazy a bit more comfortable, but it certainly isn't a requirement. There are many people who inherit money and live productive lives and there are many who don't inherit money and still manage to do nothing. The real question is who should determine what happens to the wealth you've created when you pass on? You or a government? Would the world be a better place if the government took WEB's money after he died? Or should he decided what is to be done with it? I'd much rather it go to charity and his children then to the IRS. People are painting with a pretty wide brush here. Yes, some who inherit money are irresponsible and stupid, but many people are that way even when they have next to nothing. I find it hard to beleive that inheritance ruins people's lives, it is more likely they would have been just as lazy and stupid regardless. --Eric

True. The from a British perspective someone Buffet's age is way too old to be treated, so almost any little health problem could be deadly. It doesn't work that way (yet) in the US. Although even when it does Buffet will have the money to fly to Mexico and pay cash for superior healthcare over the boarder. --Eric

"Nearly every time the Nobel Committee hands its “Peace Prize” to a politician, the hand which accepts it is a hand literally dripping innocent blood. Barack Obama isn’t an exception to that rule — he embodies it." An IgNobel History - http://c4ss.org/content/1234 --Eric

Yes, Bush started these insane wars, O-bomb-a (aka Mr. Peace) just escalated them. "War is Peace" --Nobel Committee, 2009 --Eric

I thought this was a joke when I heard it on the radio this morning. It's completely and utterly inexplicable.

I think what you are basically saying is that some people are good at capital allocation and others at marketing, but the same person is not usually good at both. This could be said about any business. The ones that market themselves the best are not usually the ones with the superior product. --Eric

That is an excellent way to explain it and can also be used to explain the problem with 3 doors. To rephrase what you said and apply it to the 3 door problem: The host will always open the door that doesn't have goats. Therefore, the probability of the car begin behind the other door is 1 - P(it's behind the door you pick). In other words, when you start, there's a 1/3 chance (33.33%) that it's behind your door, so there's 2/3 chance (66.66%) that it's behind one of the other doors. After the other doors are opened (and the host will always open the other door with goats), there's still a 66.66% chance that it's behind one of the other doors. The only other door left is door 3, so there's a 66.66% chance that it's behind that door. So, if you stay with your 1st pick you still have only a 33.33% chance of getting the car, whereas if you switch you have a 66.66% chance of getting the car. --Eric

My Kids are 8 & 9, two years ago, when they were 6 & 7, I started explaining to them about businesses, what they are, how they make money (satisfy a human want or need), and how it is possible to not only start your own business but own some small part of businesses that already exist (stocks). At this time I started giving them allowances for doing work around the house. Every week we give them a certain amount of money and they divide it into 3 cups, 1) The Save Cup, 2) The Spend Cup, 3) The Share Cup. The Save Cup is money they save up to buy stocks. The Spend Cup is money they save up for any other things they want to buy. The Share Cup is money they save up to donate to charity. We put about 45% in the Save cup, 45% in the Spend cup and 10% in the Share Cup. I explained to them that these are the three things you can do with money. Save it, Spend it, Share it. When they each had about $1000 in their save cups (not only from allowances, but birthday and Christmas money etc..) I opened a UTMA brokerage account at firstrade.com for each of them (only $6.95/trade) and discussed what companies they might want to invest their money in and why. I let them pick their own companies out of a list I provided for them. My son picked KO, DIS, MVL. My daughter picked KO, DIS, MAT. (they both also own SNS now also). I show them their accounts occasionally and show them how the dividends are reinvested (and try to explain what a dividend is). You'd be surprised how much a child can understand if you are patient with them, after all ownership is something children just know and understand instinctively. As Frank Zappa said: "In every language, the first word after "Mama!" that every kid learns to say is "Mine!" A system that doesn't allow ownership, that doesn't allow you to say "Mine!" when you grow up, has -- to put it mildly -- a fatal design flaw." At times they get excited about saving or sharing and want to put more money into either their "Save Cups" or "Share cups" and nothing into their Spend Cups. I let them do this, but when they want to buy something and want to put everything into their spend cups I let them put more in their spend cups for a week or two but something always has to go into the other two. As for the Share Cups, once a year in December we decide on a charity and donate the year's worth of Share money to it. The first year it was Toys for Tots, we used the money to buy a toy and donated the toy. Last year we gave the money to a convent who used it to feed hungry children in Haiti. My great-aunt is a Nun in this convent so we know 100% of the money went for food for the children and she went to Haiti personally to distribute it. She sent my kids back pictures of the children they had helped, which was really emotionally satisfying to them. --Eric

If my calculations are correct, yes. I sold all of my Middleby shares and bought OVEN this winter (as well as putting quite a bit of new money into OVEN) which all got converted to MIDD shares after the acquisition plus a good amount of cash. Taking my number of MIDD shares that I now own and dividing it by the sum of the new money I put into OVEN plus the money my original MIDD shares cost me, minus all transaction costs, I get $6.95/share as my cost basis. I know at least one other board member thanked me for posting info about this arbitrage situation on the old board, so I'm not the only one here that made out like a bandit on this deal. --Eric

This is based on the value as of the close yesterday. 21.76% WEST (cost basis $10.83/share) 17.93% MIDD (cost basis $6.97/share) 15.78% ISRG (cost basis $107.95/share, hoping for a good day today, may sell some) 12.80% FFH (cost basis $280.15/share) About 29% in 20 other stocks including some stocks followed on this board such as BRK-B (3.2%), SNS (1.8%), and CCLR.OB (1.7%). About 2% cash. --Eric (Dammit Jim! I'm an engineer, not a investment professional)

Two things that spring to my mind are our complete dependence on oil and war as some sort of solution for anything. Any other thoughts from the sharp minds around here? I think if I had to guess, or rather I had to hope, it will seem absurd that we put our faith in politicians and government to "fix" markets and solve world problems (the slaughter of war being just one of the many absurdities). That in an age where we now have the ability to "speak" for ourselves to the world, we let our "leaders" speak for us as if one man can speak for 300 million. Our complete and utter reliance on, and faith in, a few men wearing funny costumes or holding lofty titles to rule over us will someday seem primitive and humorous to those who will one day speak for and rule only themselves. And the notion that a single human being or any group of human beings can have the wisdom to know enough about the wants and motivations of millions, or even billions, of people and to have the hubris to "set interest rates" or fiddle with the money supply will seem absurd, or decide which businesses are "too X to fail" whether X equals "big", "important", "politically connected", etc. If humanity is lucky the word "Keynesian" will bring the same reaction to the average person as the word "fascism" does today. Of course this is all probably just my wishful thinking. We could be heading into another dark age where we'll let those who rule us stifle progress for another 1000 years just as what happened after Rome collapsed under the weight of its grown-too-big government and its empire it could no longer afford ... until the next renaissance ushers in a new age of increased individualism and freedom once more. I've just laid out the best and worst cases, the reality will probably be somewhere in between. --Eric

No. I joined the original board sometime in 2007 (I think) and have never left, nor have I been involved in any heated arguments on this board like the Eric you are referring to. I read the board frequently but don't post very much. --Eric

Yes, the MSN Board was excruciatingly slow, this board is excellent. Sanjeev has done an excellent job. And if the ads bother someone very much there are ways to avoid them. I can't understand why anyone would surf the web using Microsoft's horrible IE browser anyway. I use Firefox w/ its adblock add-on and haven't seen an ad on the internet in years (on this site or anywhere else). After seeing this thread I turned off adblock just to see what everyone was griping over and I don't think the ads here are very disruptive at all. There are some sites that become unreadable without adblock turned on. I think I'll try to remember to disable my adblock once and a while when visiting this site so I can click on an ad or two, now that I know they are there. --Eric

The roulette table has absolutely no knowledge of the past. If the chances of the outcome coming up red on the 1st spin are 50/50, then even if it comes up red 4 times in a row, the chances of it coming up red on the 5th spin are still 50/50. Because the roulette table has no knowledge of the past, the odds are the same on every spin regardless of what has happened in the past. The results will only be a true 50/50 over the long term, no past knowledge can help you on any given spin of the wheel. --Eric

I agree with you 100%. Selling shares short that you do not own is like selling anything that you don't own. It's fraud. That is what should be gone after, but otherwise leave the market free to do what it needs to do. Unfortunately once government gets its dirty hands into something it tends to never stop regulating and trying to tinker and control, many times with disasterous results (just look at health care in almost any country).

I just wanted to bump this question up to the top since no one has answered it yet and because I have the same need. I break out the pencil and calculator all too often and I'm not happy with any software I've tried. What do people here use/recommend?

Indeed. A funny story. My 9 year old son as doing a project on the life of Babe Ruth in school (he got to choose the topic). So we got books from the library and looked up a bunch of stuff on the Internet. Well, he wanted to include the fact that Hank Aaron broke the home run record and we wanted to know what year that was. I thought this would be a good opportunity to teach him how to use an encyclopedia instead of looking things up on the Internet all the time. So I explained to him that "a long long long time ago", back in the 1900's, before the Internet, when we wanted to find out about some fact (like when Hank Aaron broke the Babe's HR record) we'd look it up in something called an <i>encyclopedia</i>. So I showed him our encyclopedia set that my wife's parents gave us ages ago and we proceeded to look up Hank Aaron....Only we couldn't find him in the A's, so we tried the H's... and nope still no Hank Aaron. So we looked up Babe Ruth only to find out that he holds the home run record. Yes, you guessed it, the copyright date was 1964. So back to the Internet again. My kids can't imagine an Internetless life. I must admit, I have a hard time imagining living without it myself. How quickly we forget. When was the last time you looked at a paper map (or bought one)?; or at a bound dead-tree encyclopedia set (or bought one)?; or read a company's quarterly report that you didn't get from the Internet?; or wrote a letter to a friend in long-hand on an actual piece of real paper and mailed it?; or drove across town to a video store to rent a movie?; or a million other things equally time-consuming and inconvenient in the pre-internet days that we now use the net for on a daily basis? And many things we use the Internet for, like this list, don't even have a pre-internet analog. It really <b>is</b> amazing if you think about it. --Eric

Thanks, I'll check it out. I'm always looking for stuff to listen to on my commute. A site I've been using for human read open source audio books is Librivox.org. I recently listened to "Voyage of the Beagle" and "Origin of Species". --Eric

I ran across this story today: Hooters Casino teeters toward default, possible bankruptcy "... Chanticleer Holdings Inc., which also has an interest in Hooters America (which controls the larger 440-store chain), also put on hold a separate deal to acquire 45 Hooters franchise stores in Texas. "Since the credit crisis hit, we have been unable to get financing," said Mike Pruitt, chief executive of Chanticleer Holdings Inc. "But the contract is still valid when the markets loosen up." ..." --Eric

My response is usually "Do you have unsweetened ice-tea?" If the answer to that is also no, (and the place doesn't server beer) I'll just have water. I like Coke, but even that is bordering on the too-sweet for me. Pepsi is like sticking my tongue into a bowl of sugar. Yuk... As far as GM goes, you can have all the manufacturing capacity in the world, but if you produce crappy products that no one is willing to buy, your capacity is not much of a moat. It would only be a moat if it allowed GM to produce products that were better (or at least as good) cheaper then its competition. Obviously (to anyone that has had the unfortunate experience of owning one) that wasn't the case. A moat can work in your favor as one of your defenses, but you still need to produce a good product or service at a reasonable price to defend your moat. If you leave your moat undefended, it will be crossed. --Eric

This is very true. The reason a political system ends up with this type of people at the top is that those are the type of people who want to be there. Most people wouldn't want those jobs it is that small percentage that spend their lives trying to get into power that are the problem. In a free market you need to have a product or service someone will willingly pay for to attain wealth, in a political system you just need to lie/cheat/steal/ or otherwise bully your way to the top. This is why the scum always rises to the top in such an organization. I lump union leaders in with politics, because unions are protected by the state to such a degree that they couldn't exist in the form that they currently do in a free market system. And religious leaders are in a category by themselves, since the whole system is unapologetically based on faith to begin with. What an easy group of people to lead when you can answer every question with some form of "its god's will" or "have faith". I always find it interesting how good people are when dealing directly with them. None of my neighbors would ever think to hold me up at gun point and take what belongs to me. Yet they feel not even the slightest pangs of guilt doing the equivalent via the ballot box. Funny how people justify things, especially when they can delegate the dirtywork and not have to think about it. --Eric