turar

I'd say Amazon is a NO or a YES/NO. Revenues are indeed driven by software, since everything is automated and a tiny software glitch can cause revenue for the day to drop sharply (i.e. site down for a few minutes results in thousands if not millions in lost revenue). It is even more so with the emergence of AWS, Kindle, Digital, etc.

I just saw this video posted on another site, and decided that it's too good not to share here. It starts off slow, but has a lot of gems.

Agree with nodnub about the lottery. In addition, most would choose a "lump sum", which is a lot less than the advertised sum, and then get taxed heavily on that remaining amount. So real payouts are usually a lot less massive than the headline numbers, albeit still large.

To me it seems there's just much less of "livable/desirable" space in Canada, despite its overall geographical vastness. Just driving across the border from WA state into BC, you go from pretty sparsely populated rural area into a dense suburban area. Haven't been myself, but I bet it's same picture around Ontario/NY border, etc.

NPR had a good story on "Double Irish" and other strategies used by Google, etc. Transcript: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=134619750 Audio: http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2011/03/20110317_fa_01.mp3?dl=1

There's another one, that possibly could be better. I think it's coming out this fall or summer. http://videa.hu/videok/film-animacio/margin-call-trailer-svyAauTB6iDscZOK

I agree that it was slightly biased, but if some of the objective facts they present are indeed true, which they seem to be, it's a lot to think about.

Just watched this documentary on "Planned Obsolescence", and thought it was pretty interesting, still trying to reconcile this from an investor's side of things. The episode with printer was fascinating. A person's printer malfunctioned, he researched pretty deeply into the issue and discovered there was a "count-down" chip as part of the printer, that would count down and essentially stop the printer from working after a certain time. He then discovered a Russian website that provides a freeware that effectively resets the counter and the printer magically works again. Very disturbing. It goes wider and deeper into history and various other issues, which are all interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HnW6Mm5sUI

The contrast between Florida with a median home price of $122K and Vancouver is pretty incredible. And Florida is arguably a nicer place to live. Sometimes I wonder what would happen to Vancouver if Harper's and Obama's border initiative suddenly results in elimination of Canada/US border and allow Canadians to live and work freely in the US. http://www.canada.com/business/Harper+Obama+agree+integrate+border+creating+security+trade+perimeter/4225641/story.html

Financial Times has a good screener including Japanese (and other international) companies.

Out of curiosity, why do you think AHL deserve it?

Let's see if it works. My understanding is that you pretty much have to have a ".com" domain, others don't fly very well with general public -- fingers just type the last "m" mechanically. E.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2174478

Wow, a whole article in The Atlantic devoted to the issue: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1969/12/showdown-in-the-sunshine-state/8417/

I wish I knew. Or was that a rhetorical question which I didn't quite get?

It's a little weird hearing all the talk about bubbling market, while stocks like CSCO, MSFT, FFH, RSH, SVU, etc., are going lower and lower every day for the past month.

I thought it appeared when a comment was posted from a cellphone/smartphone.

It seems the sentence is saying that there are 9 public companies with 25 years record, period. Not 9 companies with 25 years record with a higher compounding rate. And they're only talking about P&C companies.

Yes, I've read about that too. Actually, they went to court against State of Virginia over withholding of the 30% tax on the grounds that they were a foreign entity, and initially the court ruled in their favor and awarded them an injunction requiring Virginia to pay out the 30%. However, the higher court overruled the ruling, BUT not on the grounds that it was a professionally-orchestrated operation, but simply because the lower court didn't have jurisdiction over tax assessment based on Anti-Injunction Act. As someone not very familiar with the judicial system, I found that whole case pretty weird. Details here: http://openjurist.org/20/f3d/589/international-lotto-fund-v-virginia-state-lottery-department Also, searching for Stefan Mandel on LinkedIn shows a person with that name in London, in "Investment Management" industry: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/stefan-mandel/2/662/3a5 :)

I thought this was a very interesting story. In 1992 Virginia lottery had a jackpot of $27 million. To win the jackpot you had to pick correctly 6 numbers ranging from 1 to 44. And the probability of that was 1 in roughly 7 million. The kicker was that one lottery ticket sold for $1. What happened next is described here: http://books.google.com/books?id=ZhWciYyPt-kC&lpg=PA86&ots=mlnmUv7D7a&dq=lottery%20%2B7059052&hl=en&pg=PA86#v=onepage&q&f=false And also a bit here: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/28/us/lottery-investors-unsure-if-jackpot-was-virginia-s.html Makes me wonder if holes like that still exist in lotteries. P.S. Seems there are more stories and a Youtube video if you search for "Stefan Mandel" on Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENCA374&q=Stefan+Mandel&aq=f&aqi=g3g-v7&aql=&oq= Youtube video:

More here: http://cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/index.php?topic=1586

They owned JOE for a while. From the sidelines it seems Einhorn's piece was a wake up call for Berkowitz. The sequence of events doesn't seem like a coincidence.

It doesn't look that obvious to me. Also, the premium over book that he would be willing to pay can't be that high. I'd rather own FFH long term, than FFH as part of BRK.

The ones I read every now and then are: http://boards.fool.com/value-hounds-118990.aspx http://boards.fool.com/deranged-monkey-criticism-117590.aspx http://boards.fool.com/liquid-lounge-115980.aspx If anyone knows other good TMF boards, I'd be happy to know as well.

Some of the discussion boards are pretty good though.

Port operators, e.g. DP World? Military contracting companies? Boeing/Airbus? Luxury automakers (Benz, BMW)?