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Hurd was responsible for the creation of HP's strategic business plans, including its FY2010 and FY2011 business plans.

You say:

Oracle's relational database isn't a competitor to any relational database that HP creates, because they don't create relational database server software.

Oracle competes with HP in the server market.

Squeezing better margins out of HP doesn't involve trade secrets. Just because you understand how a company works and makes decisions doesn't make your knowledge of that a trade secret. If he knew of specialized technologies and was able to shepherd the workers to build that product (or to better it) then he would have trade secrets, but I highly doubt he's written a single line of code. Hurd's knowledge isn't specific enough to be considered trade secrets (in those areas). Now, if he knew the formula to their "ink" (say, as maybe Pepsi knew the formula to coke) and he was able to give that out to his new employer, then it would be specific knowledge of trade secrets.

Unfortunately, you don't know what you're talking about. Trade secrets include knowledge of internal procedures. Hurd is familiar with them. Trade secrets include knowledge of specific business plans - Hurd was responsible for writing HP's FY2010 and FY2011 business plans.

Also, "say, as maybe Pepsi knew the formula to coke" - Pepsi knows the formula. When Coca-cola introduced New Coke, Pepsi successfully cracked the formula for the original Coke, and was prepared to market it (the project was named Savannah Cola"). Since the formula was only protected by trade secret, and not patent, Pepsi had every right to market a duplicate. http://boards.fool.com/buffett-speaks-at-columbia-17197137.aspx

In reality, Coke can make Pepsi and Pepsi can make Coke. You can break down the formula. At one point, Pepsi was moving towards introducing a product called Savannah Cola, which was equal in formula to the Old Coke. The only problem they faced was that one of the ingredients from the formula was hard to obtain because almost the entire production was purchased by the Coca Cola company. Little by little, they were able to obtain this ingredient and were within 2 weeks of bringing it out when Coke relented and made Classic Coke.

You wrote:

Anyone working at HP in marketing or say as the manager of the department, etc could have that specific knowledge.

And they're all enjoined from using it elsewhere by trade secret law. What don't you understand about that? It's right there in the california civil code. Have you ever even signed an NDA?

That idea that they learned is a joke. here is a quote from a news site comparing the BP blow out to an earlier one.

79 Mexico oil spill
Attempted Fixes

# They attempted to put a cone over the top, calling it operation Sombrero (as oppose to Top-Hat)

# They attempted to plug up the leak by pumping rocks, mud and seawater into it

Pemex pumped cement and salt water into Ixtoc for months before finally bringing the runaway well under control and sealing it with cement plugs.

Pemex's scramble to come up with other solutions while the relief wells were being drilled will sound familiar to those who have followed BP's efforts to stop the oil gushing out of its ruptured well.

Divers tried to manually operate the blowout preventer but this effort was unsuccessful and over the next several months Pemex tried a variety of solutions, including a plan to force metal spheres into the well to cut the flow of oil and lowering a steel structure over the spill to capture the crude.

BP is trying similar schemes but the huge water depth it is operating at is vastly complicating its efforts.

Does any of that sound like BP learned anything from an almost exact issue as theirs?

In both cases natural gas flowed unnoticed into the well being drilled, causing an explosion. In both cases a critical piece of fail-safe equipment -- the blowout preventer -- failed. And in both cases the operators struggled to quickly staunch the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Here are some links.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64N57U20100524
http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/an-identical-oil-spill/399603

In the unlikely event that geeknet continues to run this site as a going concern, can someone make sure they get the memo about removing the "idle" and "entertainment" sections?

Thanks.

You can open an account anywhere to trade. Just buy against indexed funds like the S&P or DOW. Do the research though -- don't take my word for it. But this is the way the lay person without financial expertise can manage their money in a manner that's close to what the big boys get. You may lack the software, and algorithms that get you the big returns, but you have diversity built into those indexes and will fare better than the average investor without much work.

Here's an article so you know I'm not full of shit:

http://www.fool.com/mutualfunds/indexfunds/indexfunds01.htm

http://www.fool.com/investing/international/2010/06/18/can-anything-save-nokia.aspx

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/nokia-warns-on-handset-profits-ftimes-edf08c1a77e7.html

Income stocks *were* a good place for your retirement money. They may be again- but for the near to mid term future, you risk losing 20 to 30% of your retirement money owning in come stocks. You risk losing just as much in bonds because once interest rates start rising they are going to lose a lot of value. And you can't get better than about 2% in CD's.

I cited 2 income stocks, both with better returns than those 2% CDs, the lower return being almost 4%. For more examples do what I did, Google income stocks. Right now the first result is the definition of "income stock" given by investopedia and the second Stocks For Income Investors In 2010. I didn't check it out but the third result is the Fool's 5 Stocks for Strong Income. Now while those links may be from people who have their own agendas, such as trying to have stocks they own rise in price before they're dumped so does Warren Buffet. I say that even though what I know about him I like. The same with George Soros. Now do you think they have the same outlook on investments? Here's the portfolio at Soros Fund Management LLC.

I'm using a mixture of approaches ... dividends as you suggest (I'm 17 years from retirement), some dollar cost averaging, a big pile of cash, and a big pile in overseas investements as a hedge. And I'm getting debt free-- no house debt, no car debt. I'm already free of debt other than those and both of those are now quite low (I might be out in 24 months).

While the rest sounds okay, why the "big pile of cash"? As you said yourself inflation could gobble it up. One year's living expenses should be enough. But not just cash. Have 3 months in saving for ready cash, then have the rest in 6 month CDs that mature every 3 months. Of if a money market account offers higher interest then use that instead of CDs. If and when it comes down to it cutting out non-essentials, taking out odd or temporary jobs, and growing some of your own food should stretch that year of emergency funds out further.

And yes, gardening. Just this week even though it's still early I picked some greens in my garden for salad, leaf lettuce and mustard. Now I did buy some carrot, onion, and radish because it's too early for those and I tossed some sliced ham and turkey and well as grated cheese I bought too. However within a few more weeks I should have enough in my garden for more salad and other dishes. I have Roma tomato plants to make tomato sauces, yellow tomatoes for salad, and more for soups and salsa. For salsa, and soup, I also have tomatillos. Though it won't be much I hoping I can at least can a few quarts of them.

Oh, lest I miss it, you say you have no house debt, did you pay off a mortgage early or on tyme? If early, was the interest high? If so then it may of been better to refinance to a lower rate. With the one year emergency fund even if you lose your job and become unemployed you could still make your payments. Of course, you may feel better being debt free and having less risks. If so and that's important to you then go for it. Personally I wouldn't, but then again I can handle higher risks. So long as I have that year of funding I can get by.

Get by? HAHA Because I'm on disability and it is being messed with, so far this year I've only got money 4 out of 6 months and not once was it the full amount of my disability, I'm living week to week. I am glad

Income stocks *were* a good place for your retirement money. They may be again- but for the near to mid term future, you risk losing 20 to 30% of your retirement money owning in come stocks. You risk losing just as much in bonds because once interest rates start rising they are going to lose a lot of value. And you can't get better than about 2% in CD's.

I cited 2 income stocks, both with better returns than those 2% CDs, the lower return being almost 4%. For more examples do what I did, Google income stocks. Right now the first result is the definition of "income stock" given by investopedia and the second Stocks For Income Investors In 2010. I didn't check it out but the third result is the Fool's 5 Stocks for Strong Income. Now while those links may be from people who have their own agendas, such as trying to have stocks they own rise in price before they're dumped so does Warren Buffet. I say that even though what I know about him I like. The same with George Soros. Now do you think they have the same outlook on investments? Here's the portfolio at Soros Fund Management LLC.

I'm using a mixture of approaches ... dividends as you suggest (I'm 17 years from retirement), some dollar cost averaging, a big pile of cash, and a big pile in overseas investements as a hedge. And I'm getting debt free-- no house debt, no car debt. I'm already free of debt other than those and both of those are now quite low (I might be out in 24 months).

While the rest sounds okay, why the "big pile of cash"? As you said yourself inflation could gobble it up. One year's living expenses should be enough. But not just cash. Have 3 months in saving for ready cash, then have the rest in 6 month CDs that mature every 3 months. Of if a money market account offers higher interest then use that instead of CDs. If and when it comes down to it cutting out non-essentials, taking out odd or temporary jobs, and growing some of your own food should stretch that year of emergency funds out further.

And yes, gardening. Just this week even though it's still early I picked some greens in my garden for salad, leaf lettuce and mustard. Now I did buy some carrot, onion, and radish because it's too early for those and I tossed some sliced ham and turkey and well as grated cheese I bought too. However within a few more weeks I should have enough in my garden for more salad and other dishes. I have Roma tomato plants to make tomato sauces, yellow tomatoes for salad, and more for soups and salsa. For salsa, and soup, I also have tomatillos. Though it won't be much I hoping I can at least can a few quarts of them.

Oh, lest I miss it, you say you have no house debt, did you pay off a mortgage early or on tyme? If early, was the interest high? If so then it may of been better to refinance to a lower rate. With the one year emergency fund even if you lose your job and become unemployed you could still make your payments. Of course, you may feel better being debt free and having less risks. If so and that's important to you then go for it. Personally I wouldn't, but then again I can handle higher risks. So long as I have that year of funding I can get by.

Get by? HAHA Because I'm on disability and it is being messed with, so far this year I've only got money 4 out of 6 months and not once was it the full amount of my disability, I'm living week to week. I am glad

In that case, I was told that only a fool thinks moonshine is the answer, at least with current biofuel technology.

BTW, I'm referring to shady link-baiting stories like these:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=32470
http://gizmodo.com/5505682/how-adobe-and-google-are-making-sure-flash-will-never-die
http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2010/03/30/is-this-googles-sneak-attack-on-apple.aspx
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/30/chrome-os-flash/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/30/google_integrates_flash_with_chrome/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20001429-264.html

"Uh, if you pay for your own insurance and file a claim, where do you think your insurance company acquires the money to pay for your claim? "

They mostly get it from investments (the insurance industry world wide has a portfolio in excess of 3.5 trillion dollars). Basically what happens is that the insurance companies take everyone's premiums and invest them in various markets and ideally make money off these investments with which to pay the costs of insurance claims. There are some tax advantages to this as well. Part of the reason why premiums have gone up in the past few years is that the insurance companies investments have not done so well, not that they are paying out more claims.

This concept is called float.

http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/insurance/2006/12/05/insurance-industry-basics-float.aspx

IBM would not last a month if it were prohibited from selling products or services in the United States.

A few minutes with Google suggests otherwise.

"At the beginning of 2009, 71% of IBM's nearly 400,000 employees are working overseas - a 65% increase from two years prior." http://seekingalpha.com/article/131421-ibm-s-broad-global-presence-should-boost-q1-earnings

"IBM cut U.S. workforce by 6,000 while adding 18,000 overseas in 2008" http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/news/story/4783439/

"IBM is aggressively selling to small businesses and local governments around the world." http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/01/22/ibm-is-dead-long-live-ibm.aspx

"Not so gradually over the next five to 10 years, the 70/30 split between domestic and foreign investment could invert, resulting in an optimal placement of 70 percent of U.S. investment capital in international ventures."
http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/financialservices/us/detail/resource/B069979J37301Z69.html

I think you're somewhat confused.

Media mogul billionaires do not become billionaires by investing in only one side of a two-sided political spectrum. They invest in both (in this case) left and right wing media sources so that an election (and the resulting dissatisfaction with the choices made) do not drastically skewer their bottom line.

In this case, we are not talking about the right wing/conservative/whatever Fox News. We're talking about The New York Times, which is decidedly not conservative. The NYT is failing horribly: they went from being a newspaper which many people would pay for half a world away 10 years ago, to getting rid of staff.

Yes, part of this is due to the whole digital/print media 'war' going on now. All the newspapers are suffering somewhat. But the NYT, in particular (as well as a couple other big city papers) have been hit due to their brazen slant in reporting: being blatantly, brazenly partisan during the last election, for instance, did not win many friends (at least amongst those who pay attention to the news and world events).

And guess what? Fox News is doing quite well right now, it would appear.

As an investor (which is the term the article is using--among whom are you and I), you had better not be trading like these traders.

There was an interesting article a a couple of weeks ago on The Motley Fool regarding the difference between an investor and a speculator and how institutional investors, who hold 80% of the stock traded today, had become the later, leading to an average stock holding time of 8 months today. According to the article, the fallout of this is that it has lead to the problem of short-sighted managements strategies concerned with maximizing immediate profits instead of insuring the long term success of a company. It also proposed a solution by eliminating the capitol gains tax for "investors" and having an extremely high tax for speculators along a sliding scale. Food for though.

Software developers and domestic employees are hurt the most, having less employer competition due to work being outsourced.

So how long have you been living under that rock? Microsoft didn't need curbs on tax avoidance to start it down the the path of outsourcing and H1B's.

You also overlook an important fact... MSFT is a pyramid scheme, the software is incidental. Gates has been divesting MSFT stock for a few years now and MSFT have been issuing debt... the writing's on the wall for anybody with enough of a clue to read it!

Yes, you can grow faster, but that's not always stable or able to weather harsh economic times. Not all large companies maintain long-term debt:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/01/28/5-debt-free-stocks.aspx

Granted it's an old article...

Here's a more recent one: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/01/28/5-debt-free-stocks.aspx

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? They are using stock options to pay their employees. They are then buying back stock to prevent devaluation of the shares. This has enabled them to save a lot of money on salaries and taxes. Also see this article: Why Microsoft's Stock Options Scare Me

In the US, the cable companies seem pretty excited about offering VOIP these days, and Vonage is still around, despite the legal battering it has taken, even though we don't hear as much about them as we used to.

Of course Verizon doesn't like VOIP in the home. It's still losing customers because of it. I suppose they can take some solace in the fact that many of us have been replacing our land lines with mobile phones more often than with VOIP via home internet.

Cydia's appstore makes a rather well timed appearance.
That, having a special product with a high utility for customers, an excellent manager and a high rate of innovation almost puts it on par with the Worlds top business outlets.
My admiration for Saurik's work. Respect!

because it is a good way to keep a thin attachment to people who are just contacts, but people I don't want to loose touch with entirely.

That's one of the best reasons to be on it. I started using LinkedIn (free, not paying!) to get in touch with old colleagues; that's it, nothing more. Recommendations and invitations are for only people I absolutely know (I reject any others out of hand.)

For any social networking sites, it's the Thermodynamics of Humanity--crap and chaos will increase. AOL, Yahoo Message boards (social, financial, etc.), the garbage always builds up.

On that note, are only a few places I still follow that have stayed "fairly" clean. Joke as much as you want, but Slashdot has stayed pretty close to mission over the years. Groklaw is still pretty good. Motley Fool is still fairly new, but has hung on to it's central theme for a couple of years now.

Think of social networking sites like sex, or dating: Before you sign up, imagine that some Glenn Close nutjob is going to hunt you down and kill your pets, or some pimply teenager is going to show up on your door step 16 years from now at the family reunion shouting, "Dad! Mama tol' me you owed us for that fling all those years ago!"

If those kinds of problems are foreseeable, don't use the sites.

On the environmental front - recognizing that you're not really fighting me - (government) controls and audits are an absolute necessity for anyone who produces toxic waste.

On the current financial crisis - the root of the problem is indeed bad mortgages, but the total value of the US mortgages is somewhere around $2 trillion. Compare that to the total value of CDSs, which was at one point around $30 trillion. If the problem were confined to the mortgage business we would have already bought ourselves out. The largely unregulated financial institutions have compounded our problems many times over.

I'm not arguing that nationalizing debt is a facet of libertarianism, I'm arguing that it it it's fatal flaw. I know that libertarians don't accept this argument, but the citizenry doesn't have the patience to watch things play out. In this interconnected economy there are cascading failures that we cannot abide.

Remember when the bailout was first being pitched back in September and ashen-faced congressmen on both sides left a meeting with Hank Paulson, stepped up to the podium and said that this is something we must do? Well, apparently Paulson, a regulation-is-always-bad child of wall street, literally said that martial law could result without a bail out. Now maybe that was a bit hyperbolic, but at a minimum the credit markets would have completely seized. Meaning no loans for anyone. Businesses would be unable to make payroll, retailers couldn't acquire inventory, people would be unable to access their money. There is no libertarian solution to such a problem. Let them fail doesn't cut it. There isn't an investor in the country with access enough liquid capital to snap up failed banks at fire sale prices, make good on their obligations, and avert disaster. Wall Street was largely unregulated and it drove this country to the brink of financial ruin. The proof is in the pudding, when push comes to shove, it's better to nationalize debt than have people take to the streets.

Last thing, a big reason for the tenth amendment's inclusion was slavery. Libertarian arguments that the states should be allowed to do whatever they please because of the tenth amendment fundamentally rests on a phrase included in a document that allowed local governments to trump human rights. I'm a huge fan of the constitution, but I'm under no illusions that it's perfect - we should be able to amend it to fix these problems, but the political reality of the day is that we're not going to be able to modify the bill of rights. The exploitation of the commerce clause is far from ideal, but it does make a certain amount of sense.

I've often though that Motley Fool's CAPS was ripe for the picking. Collective intelligence of investors - and they even are rated!

When will there be a Motley Fool CAPS fund that uses the investor intelligence?

For that matter, where is the utility to make my trades automatic based on investor intelligence?

Nano solar is also building another plant, in Germany, I think.

In Berlin.

In the US, it suddenly became necessary to suspend applications to build new solar plants for two years so that the environmental impact of new solar capacity could be studied and appropriate policy developed.

Only on federal land. However the BLM, Bureau of Land Management, reversed course.

Falcon

But how many of those trillion pages have unique, useful content? E-mail is over 95% spam, and the web is getting there.

There were about 153 million registered domains at the beginning of the year. The ones from the spam-friendly registrars are mostly junk. Tim Bernars-Lee said in 2006 that web junk was becoming a major problem, and it's become worse since then.

If you throw out all the anonymous but commercial domains (we call them "bottom-feeders"), as we do with SiteTruth, the Web looks a lot better. Search engines are getting stricter about this. You don't see that many "landing pages" in Google any more. Bad news for companies like Marchex, the publicly traded web spammer that cranks out all those junk "What you need, when you need it" sites.

"The mass trials are going well. There will be fewer Russians, but better ones." - Greta Garbo in Ninotchka.

Musician's right to retirement is pretty much the same as anybody else's :
* Public (state) welfare if existing in country of legal residence (and usually paid for with taxes on Musician's incomes during working years).
* Any sort of private savings.

The three legged stool of retirement also includes pensions/401(k)s. Defined Benefits (pensions) plans were much more prevalent until Congress decided to 'protect' them through a set of strict rules known as ERISA after which, the administrative burden proved too much. Fortunately, someone found a loophole for Defined Contribution plans, hence we have 401(k) plans.

It would be nice if the USA licensed the design and put it into production as, oh, I don't know, call it a "People's Car".

In WW2, the car companies and even the Navy proper built Airplanes for the war effort.In many cases, as the actual aircraft designer could only build a fraction of the demand, so the government licensed it out to a variety of commercial companies.

And this is a war. Consider the following unchallenged astroturf from Big Oil on fool.com :

BS Astroturf

Note how it conveniently leaves out the part where they extract America's oil from the ground for about $10 a barrel, and sell it to themselves at the global price of $150. Just a small detail, eh?

Nationalize oil production, license this car, learn how to build nuclear powerplants again. Bush/Cheney are drenched in blood and oil, and have their fingers in your ... wallet.

More interesting: http://www.fool.com/investing/small-cap/2008/04/29/the-man-whos-shorting-buffett.aspx

Microsoft has effectively paid its employees with your tax dollars for years.

http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rulemaker000217.htm

--
Basically, Microsoft receives cash by issuing employee stock options, after which the company then receives billions of dollars in tax deductions from the IRS for doing so. Add in the warrants it sells on its own stock, and the company made over $5 billion off the stock market last year (fiscal year ended July 1999), tax-free. For comparison, its after-tax net income was only $7.8 billion. Microsoft may not be much in the programming department, but its accountants are impressive.
--
Corporations pay taxes on their own income (generally 35%), but money they pay out in salaries to employees is deductible from the corporation's income. Since granting options to employees results in taxable income to those employees, Microsoft gets to deduct that taxable employee income from its own taxable corporate income, and that's where Microsoft got a tax-free $3.1 billion in cash in fiscal 1999: "Stock option income tax benefits."
--

There is a corresponding Bull Argument that argues the Counterpoint - each with its own rebuttal of the other argument.

So much for Motley Fool writing off Microsoft. Typically - guess which article gets highlighted in /.!

A lot of people posting on this thread say that there's nothing to complain about, unless we're going to be filesharing with millions of people on the Internet. The problem is, this isn't about them reducing theft, and it never has been. The thieves are the ones who are savvy enough not to get caught! This is about them restricting the freedoms of legitimate users. In the privacy of your home you can let someone listen to tracks that you bought -- right now -- but if they had their way you wouldn't be able to loan them over the 'net, because someone will catch you and lock you away.

What if your iPod gets stolen? What if you want to gift tracks to someone? Do you think they care? It seems like they'll sue anyone if they think they can get away with it. Moreover, they're still gouging their customers, and keeping nearly all the money for themselves (instead of paying the artists).

I don't believe in taking things that aren't mine to take. I'm not filesharing, I'm not stealing music, and I'm still against DRM and digital watermarks. Furthermore, the Motley Fool stock gurus are cautioning people against buying stock in RIAA-affiliated companies. They're not in the business of creating value anymore -- if anything, they're the ones who are thieves.

I'm not sure if I saw it here or not, but an interesting direct impact from the RIAA's behavior as of late has been record industry stocks slipping. More here: http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2007/12/17/5-stocks-under-10-for-2008.aspx

or something like that?

According to the Fool Apple's market share is 6.3% slice of the domestic PC market, twice what you say. However that's still a small share of the market. However it looks as if Apple Macintosh Computers Likely To Gain Market Share. And a Wharton Prof Debunks Market Share Myth.

It seems like some other people believe that actively managed funds both don't perform as well as simple index funds, and also cost more in the form of yearly managing fees and short term capital gains tax from stock turnover. Also, with an index fund, you at least have the security that past performance is more of a guarantee than with an actively managed fund. I prefer to keep my growth steady and my expense ratios low.

Revenge?

Takes a fool to know another, perhaps?

Motley Fool was founded in 1993 by brothers David and Tom Gardner. Our name derives from Elizabethan drama, where only the court jester (the "Fool") could tell the King the truth without getting his head lopped off. We're dedicated to educating, amusing, and enriching individuals in search of the truth.

Off topic, but since you brought it up....

If he's not "very rich" or "rich", well, it's not because of a cash-flow problem:

http://www.ninwiki.com/Trent_Reznor

http://www.killoggs.com/news/?news=2651

Granted, it would suck to have your cash stolen by your business manager (if that's what happened), but the implication in your post is that he hasn't become rich. Quite frankly, he has. Sure, he's not as rich as some, but even at the lowest figure quoted in the above he's much better off than most folks: http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/retirement/2007/05/30/youre-ahead-of-41-million-americans.aspx

I also recall reading/hearing somewhere that having a true net worth in excess of $500 million US put you in the top 5% world-wide for net worth, but I cannot find the stat and don't know if it is true.

Either way, he's not a starving artist.

Want to bet this has something to do with it?

Mod parent up!

The grandparent post makes a theoretical argument about free markets. In a competitive market, one seller's choices about what to carry are not censorship. Sellers can decide what they will and won't carry, and buyers can simply go to other sellers. Competition insures that if there is demand for some product, a seller will emerge to provide it.

But that presumes a competitive market. If a market is dominated by a monopoly seller, and the monopoly seller uses non-market-based judgment to suppress certain products, then I think it is fair to call that censorship.

Reasonable analysts have raised the serious question of whether Wal-Mart has monopoly power. Not everyone agrees of course, but I don't think it's ridiculous to argue that in the music market, Wal-Mart is using its clout to enforce non-economic judgments about content.

The high amount of principal vs interest among prime borrowers might have something to do with taxes.

It's easy to investment mney in ways that yield at least the same rate as I'm paying on my mortgage. This would make investing savings and putting them directly into the house can be pretty much equivalent by themselves. However, something changes the balance very significantly: taxes. Every dollar I pay of interest on my mortgage is deducted, while all that I earn from the investments is tax-deferred until I retire, when I'd probably be in a much lower tax bracket. This makes keeping my mortgage going for years while I invest for retirement pretty attractive. With aggressive investment, the numbers can just become massive.

There's plenty or articles on the subject out there, like this one: http://www.fool.com/foolu/askfoolu/2001/askfoolu01 0307.htm

I don't know whats wrong with them. It is just that it costs more to give more and we are talking about the costs.

It looks like if you have been there 10 years and received promotions to captian you are being paid a lot of money. I can see $100 per hour because it is specialized work after all. But some of the pilots make over $200 per hour. What is that going to do for the cost of a 6 hour flight? Well, probably nothing because all the other stuff adds up to a lot larger sum.

Here's a partial write-up from Motley Fool . com: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2003/08/19/s triking-investment-gold.aspx?vstest=search_042607_ linkdefault

from 2003:

"Odyssey does not have enough assets to list on the Nasdaq National Market, so it trades on the highly speculative Bulletin Board exchange, a place investors should all but categorically avoid. We all dream of finding a hidden gem cheap and riding it to riches, but you're much more likely to find your fortune on the Nasdaq or NYSE, trading in double digits.

We're looking at Odyssey today as an exception, because it's August, half of you are on vacation, and this company has a heck of a fun story -- but all the fun is in the treasure hunting, not the stock.

Like flotsam (or a dead fish), the stock has drifted without purpose from moon to moon, just waiting for a current to carry it. In July, Odyssey announced the discovery of an unnamed steamer, and over the next month speculators lifted the shares from $1.50 to $2.95. After news of the SS Republic broke last weekend, Odyssey's stock opened Monday above $5, valuing the company at $140 million -- a price rivaling the maximum value of the discovery."

Now the stock is over $8.

Not just the internet XM a pay service that offers "uncensored extreme language programming" has suspended Opie and Anthony for something a homeless guy said on there show. Oh, did I mention they are in the middle of a merger with Sirius as well. Whats next, no foul language on HBO/Showtime?

http://www.fool.com/investing/high-g...ops-at-xm.a spx
http://www.fool.com/investing/high-g...in-letter.a spx
http://www.peopleagainstcensorship.org/
http://www.wackbag.com/

Not just the internet XM a pay service that offers "uncensored extreme language programming" has suspended Opie and Anthony for something a homeless guy said on there show. Oh, did I mention they are in the middle of a merger with Sirius as well. Whats next, no foul language on HBO/Showtime?

http://www.fool.com/investing/high-g...ops-at-xm.a spx
http://www.fool.com/investing/high-g...in-letter.a spx
http://www.peopleagainstcensorship.org/
http://www.wackbag.com/

UbuntuDupe is a known forum troll.

I thought XM re-broadcast Clearchannel content? Where did you think all of those advertisements were coming from? http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2006/03/ 10/xm-the-sounds-of-salesmen.aspx http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/xm-canada-dumps- clear-channel-content.html And anyway, ClearChannel is dumping stations as well. http://www.clearchannel.com/Corporate/PressRelease .aspx?PressReleaseID=1825 "Clear Channel Announces Plan to Sell Radio Stations Outside the Top 100 Markets and Entire Television Station Group SAN ANTONIO - November 16, 2006 - Clear Channel Communications, Inc. (NYSE:CCU) today announced plans to sell 448 of its 1,150 radio stations, all located outside the top 100 U.S. media markets, as well as the company's 42-station Television Group. Collectively, these properties contributed less than 10 percent of the company's revenues last year. "

Par value (stock)

An arbitrary dollar value that a company assigns to its shares. Par value has no economic significance. The legal significance of par value is, roughly, that if shares are issued below par value, the holders of those shares might be assessed the difference between par value and the issue price. Most stock certificates state that the shares are fully paid and nonassessable to indicate that holders are not on the hook for additional contributions because the shares were issued at a price greater than par value. Companies usually assign a very low par value to common stock.