turar

Seems like a good example of Cargo Cult to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

The problem I have with iPad and longform reading is that it's not e-ink paper. I'm really hoping Amazon comes out with an improved version of Kindle DX sometime soon. http://www.rationalwalk.com/?p=10241

This is somewhat related, which I found interesting and amusing. In 1987, Apple held a competition among college students on the design of the computer of the future. The winning team's design now looks a lot like an iPad. Details: http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2007/5/10/project-2000-apple-computer-1988.html http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19880008883_1988008883.pdf

Harry, you never answered Bronco's question...

I certainly enjoyed reading this one. http://www.raptitude.com/2011/01/how-to-make-trillions-of-dollars/

You can check Professor Damodaran's page too: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ with valuation covered here: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/valuation/val.htm

The product may be terrible, but from the sound of it, very profitable. So, may not be that stupid after all. Just like pay day loans, extra warranty for purchases at Best Buy, or rental car insurance...

g2i, sin't LEAP a lot less riskier than using margin, having very limited downside?

I think many potential sponsors of immigrant parents, myself included, would agree to do this through buying private health insurance, given reasonable cost. Unfortunately that alternative is not available that I know of.

I know no one said it, I was just trying to make a point that not all policy decisions should be guided by economic feasibility alone. I may have pushed it a little trying to make a parallel, but I hope you see my point. The current system is that a sponsor of a relative immigrant has to financially support the sponsored person for 10 years, without government support. Given that it takes up to 5 years or so to complete the process of bringing a family member in, statistically, there are not many years of an elder person's life left for the government to worry about! And that's assuming that older immigrants cannot be productive members of a society well into their old age, which may not be true given the service-oriented, knowledge-based economy we're in.

It's not all about economic sense. As a recent immigrant to Canada myself, and with household income well above Canadian average, I'd want to bring my parents here at some point of time, if they agree to it. Would it make sense for Canada economically? Probably not. Would I stay in Canada long-term if I couldn't reunite with my parents? Not sure. If you go strictly by what makes economic sense, it's very rational to round up the economically unproductive bottom 1% of population every year, homeless and elderly, strip them of their citizenship, and deport them somewhere far away.

I don't get it, how is it a flop if you held since around inception? Are you selling because of the size of the fund?

FWIW, NFLX and AMZN have something more in common than just valuation. Netflix is now apparently using Amazon's AWS for a lot of its technology infrastructure. http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/four-reasons-we-choose-amazons-cloud-as.html

Another article that may of interest in connection to this: http://oilandgas-investments.com/2010/latest-reports/2012-outlook-for-canadian-natural-gas/ Quote: Western Canadian gas exports to the United States could be completely displaced into Northern California by 1. Abundant, low cost US natural gas production, and 2. By several new gas pipelines in the US… Says a new market study by Bentek, a US energy analysis company.

That was Schiller, not Schilling.

Wow, I wish retail investors could enter these contracts! Barminov, what's the usual interest rate for these deals?

They charged me $2.50. Did you also become interested in menlo's idea?

Amazon already "loosely integrates" with hundreds, if not thousands of retailers. Far from everything you buy from Amazon is actually sold by Amazon. Amazon just collects the middleman fee. Target was mentioned on this thread. If you go to Target.com and scroll all the way down, you will see "Powered by Amazon" in tiny print. The point is that the writer of the linked article probably has no idea about the extent of the back-end integration. He may not be able to use his Amazon.com account to login to Zappos.com, but his shoes may still come from an Amazon (not Zappos) warehouse. So, logistics advantages to integration are most likely there or will be at some point, but not necessarily obvious to a consumer. Why? Because it's already done by Amazon for other retailers that they don't own. Check out http://webstore.amazon.com/

Jeremy Grantham keeps mentioning that timber is one of his favorite areas. Does anyone own timber companies or have any insight or ideas?

I thought this was an interesting presentation on Japan and China. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6010227/Webshare/China%20Japan%20Presentation%20v3%20-%20By%20Vitaliy%20Katsenelson.pdf

Yeah, having the same issue with VSAT, which is now their largest equity holding. Can't figure it out, but they must think it's cheap.

They're all publicly available at http://www.fairholmefunds.com/ E.g: http://www.fairholmefunds.com/ann-00.pdf http://www.fairholmefunds.com/ann-01.pdf etc...

Well, funny you should mention it, majority on this board wouldn't buy Fairfax either: http://cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/index.php?topic=2956.0;viewResults

Another contrarian indicator? Gold bar vending machines are now in Germany, and are on the way to the US. http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/luxury/you-chose-gold-bar--please-insert-11350-20101022-16xs5.html

Is anybody on this board actually using Kindle DX to read SEC filings? Currently it seems people are theorizing mostly. I'm also looking to buy Kindle DX for this sole purpose, but I'd like to see if it would actually work. From what I understand, you will have to flip the screen horizontally and display half-page at a time to be able to read full-zoomed PDF (half page at a time).