It's always great when some random guy on Slashdot who probably knows nothing about the topic espouses exactly the opposite of what all the experts say. Apple has a price to earnings ratio over 20. Microsoft's is 13, and Exxon's is 13.5.
Yes and if you knew what P/E actually meant, you would understand that you want a LOW P/E, not a high one. PRICE to EARNINGS. High Price divided by Low Earnings = high ratio. Low Price divided by High Earnings = low ratio. It's arithmetic, idiot.
PS: This "random guy on Slashdot" makes thousands of dollars a week trading stocks and stuff.
But: there is indeed a change taking place. As the article in the NY Times says, "Consumer tastes have overtaken the needs of business as the leading force shaping [endpoint information] technology".
Except, the consumer is broke, can't pay the mortgage on his house, and is getting deeper in debt again this year. The Dow and S&P are trading now under their 200 day moving averages. That puts us roughly in the same spot we were in Oct 2007. We're headed down again economy-wise, and it's about time - there wasn't enough blood 2 years ago. But the day of the $600 PDA is coming to a close.
Is that AAPL is grossly overvalued. Especially when you consider price to earnings and return on equity. Microsoft sells 8 billion more per year than Apple (59 bn vs 51 bn), and keeps a larger percentage of it as profit. Sales growth has also been greater for MSFT than for AAPL. And Microsoft pays a dividend to boot, Apple doesn't.
But I guess like everything else Apple, it's no surprise that their stock is overpriced as well. Feel free to buy it.
Yeah just ignore all that stuff about transduction, transformation and conjugation.
You are told bacteria reproduce asexually in high school. However when you take a university microbiology course you learn that different bacteria can share genetic material, even across species (leading to all the antibiotic resistance we see today). While it might not look like sex to mammals, the exchange and recombination of genetic material through mechanisms other than meiosis IS sexual reproduction, since offspring inherit characteristics from both parents.
It was on a Friday, it's not like anything gets done on Fridays anyway.
You need to hang around my hospital's ER a little more on a Friday night. You will see that quite a lot gets done. I usually find myself wondering why people don't just stay home... there's never a rush during the football game.
Twain had a cunning plan to beat the early 20th century copyright law with its short copyright terms. Twain planned to republish every one of his works the moment it went out of copyright with one-third more content, hoping that availability of such 'premium' version will make prints based on the out-of-copyright version less desirable on the market."
Wait, so shortening the terms of a copyright law actually INCREASES creativity by forcing the author to modify, amend and add to his work, instead of resting on his laurels? Perish the thought! No we need indefinite term copyright laws so that works can stagnate and progress can come screeching to a halt.
The difference is that my "getting annoyed" (right, like an internet post is going to change my life) in no way stops you from living your life, or doing whatever you wish. Telling you to fuck off basically means I want nothing to do with you. Unless of course you thought that I meant it literally.
You, on the other hand, are not telling me to leave you alone. You are trying to tell me what to do. You are trying to put limits on me, by saying that I cannot judge by my standards (whose standards am I to judge by, then?). You are saying that you are right, and I am wrong. Well, buddy, you're going to have to prove that in order to convince me. I don't respond well to being told what to do. See, I'm not 4 years old.
Unfortunately the one with the overactive emotions here seems to be yourself. So I do recommend a bit of masturbation - or at least masturbation without guilt. It's quite healthy and lets out all the tension. Oh and a couple roast pork sandwiches are sheer heaven, too. You can munch on them while browsing some of facebook's funnier groups. However I'm not telling you what to do or how to think - it's merely a suggestion.
Why not just leave them alone and let them do what they think is best for them and not judge them based on your standards, if any.
So what you're basically saying is you think I should do what you say. I have an answer for you: go fuck yourself. I will judge whomever I wish. That's why I have a brain. It's what brains do.
I was there. It dropped 700 points in roughly 40 seconds, simply because suddenly there were no buyers after a huge sell order came in and took out all the stops. A few minutes later, buy orders came in, but no one was prepared to sell for such low prices, so it bounced right back. The whole thing took under 10 minutes. However it was preceeded by a sharp (8%) increase in value of the Japanese Yen, causing the USD.JPY to plummet 10-15 minutes before. Not a coincidence. Money was being moved out of the Euro all day into the Yen, and someone (probably a Chinese sovereign wealth fund) decided to liquidate billions of dollars of US assets and move them out. Problem is they did it all at once.
We are still reeling from that. So is the Euro. Of course Merkel is not helping at all, either.
You'd think that the logical response from the HFT guys would be 'okay, let's put in a rule such that if the stock price drops by X amount, hold off from trading for Y seconds in case it's a market glitch'
Spoken like a non-trader.
OK, put a value on 'X'. Large price drops happen often. In fact there's a saying - prices drop faster than they rise. Look at any stock chart and you will see oscillating waves trying to build the price up, and cliffs where it drops again. This patterns repeats over and over, and what's more it's fractal - it happens on all levels from yearly charts, to minute-by-minute charts.
So, if you build in an algorithm into your program and pause it if the price drops "x", and my program DOESN'T pause, then I will have sold my stock, and you will still be holding on to your loss. The price might continue to drop, at which, after the pause, you can either sell (for an even greater loss) or ride it out. Eventually I will buy it again, and make more money than you.
That is why programming a number is a very very bad idea. I can beat you just by plugging a slightly bigger number into my program. Thus the idea of a circuit breaker - which stops EVERYONE, preventing me having an advantage over you. I doubt it would have much effect though. Circuit breakers have never been "combat tested". There's no guarantee the plunge just simply won't resume.
Some of those automated trades were selling stocks at pennies on the dollar when there was no fundamental reason for that stock to be down at all that day.
Supply and demand are fundamental reasons. Someone sold a huge position of Procter and Gamble based on the declining S&P 500 reaching a certain level, and this started a cascade of selling in that stock. That it happened in under 5 minutes does not change the fact that there was an over-supply of stock. The laws of supply and demand assume that price changes occur over time - however "time" is actually not assigned any quantitative value in the theory. It could be years or in this case, seconds.
Stock prices rarely have any bearing on the "fundamentals" of a company. I've often seen companies report record profits, only to have their shares plummet. Or companies announce losses, and seen the shares spike. Company fundamentals are a very LONG term play (over a matter of months and years) but have absolutely no bearing on the instantaneous price. That is governed by market sentiment, positioning by large institutions, attempts at manipulation by certain wealthy traders (or their programs), volume and all the things that make up this minute's supply and demand.
more stop orders are hit, and everyone that had one gets taken to the cleaners.
No, if you have a stop loss you have agreed to lose (at most) a certain amount on your trade. So, you agreed with your broker to lose 40%? Well, congrats. One morning you wake up and 40% is gone.
Stop loss is silly. It's used by amateurs in highly leveraged positions to prevent them from imploding their accounts. However you are actually telling someone else "how low" you are willing to go. Well guess how brokers make money - by taking out all the stops. Oh and then usually the market bounces right back. Coincidence?
Keep your trades small, and get out fast or ride it out if you screw up. What goes down usually comes back up, and vice versa. It's only a matter of time. If you can't afford to wait, if you're desperate because your capital is locked away in a paper loss and you needed it, well, you shouldn't be trading anyway.
In the vid the inventor doesn't really say "infinite torque" - just that the torque is dependent on the size of the gears - which is technically correct. Although gears 50 feet across will not be used on automobiles, they might on ships. And such gears will handle a lot more torque.
Was the Amiga really that rare in the United States?
Yes, however their owners are very vocal. The "Apple" phenomenon was vastly multiplied in the case of the Amiga user, who was convinced it was the "most amazing computer in the world" and never failed to let everyone know about it in online communities (BBS, GEnie, CIS). However the most generous sales estimates have a total number of 3.8-4.8 million Amiga owners worldwide. A drop in the bucket compared to PC's. In fact the best Amiga ever did was garner just over 5% market share one year, in 1991. However it was usually never more than 3% of the market.
I'm not criticizing the machine (Amiga owners tend to be a bit fanatical and I would hate to receive death threats). It had some extremely innovative features for its time, including a decent sound chip when PC's still went "beep". But the PC's main features as always were expandability and compatibility - both of hardware and software. You were guaranteed that your stuff would work if you had a decent XT/AT clone.
Slashdot Mirror
Half of the population are dumber than the other half!
However I am not sure for which half the original article was intended for.
It's always great when some random guy on Slashdot who probably knows nothing about the topic espouses exactly the opposite of what all the experts say. Apple has a price to earnings ratio over 20. Microsoft's is 13, and Exxon's is 13.5.
Yes and if you knew what P/E actually meant, you would understand that you want a LOW P/E, not a high one. PRICE to EARNINGS. High Price divided by Low Earnings = high ratio. Low Price divided by High Earnings = low ratio. It's arithmetic, idiot.
PS: This "random guy on Slashdot" makes thousands of dollars a week trading stocks and stuff.
But: there is indeed a change taking place. As the article in the NY Times says, "Consumer tastes have overtaken the needs of business as the leading force shaping [endpoint information] technology".
Except, the consumer is broke, can't pay the mortgage on his house, and is getting deeper in debt again this year. The Dow and S&P are trading now under their 200 day moving averages. That puts us roughly in the same spot we were in Oct 2007. We're headed down again economy-wise, and it's about time - there wasn't enough blood 2 years ago. But the day of the $600 PDA is coming to a close.
Is that AAPL is grossly overvalued. Especially when you consider price to earnings and return on equity. Microsoft sells 8 billion more per year than Apple (59 bn vs 51 bn), and keeps a larger percentage of it as profit. Sales growth has also been greater for MSFT than for AAPL. And Microsoft pays a dividend to boot, Apple doesn't.
But I guess like everything else Apple, it's no surprise that their stock is overpriced as well. Feel free to buy it.
more umbilical cord blood and crucial stem cells to transfer from mama to baby
Who wrote this crap? Transfer from PLACENTA to baby, yes. From MAMA to baby, no. Absolutely not, under normal circumstances.
How on earth did you ever manage to make money in an environment devoid of copy protection technology and with everyone copying floppy disks like mad?
Never mind, it's a rhetorical question.
Yeah just ignore all that stuff about transduction, transformation and conjugation.
You are told bacteria reproduce asexually in high school. However when you take a university microbiology course you learn that different bacteria can share genetic material, even across species (leading to all the antibiotic resistance we see today). While it might not look like sex to mammals, the exchange and recombination of genetic material through mechanisms other than meiosis IS sexual reproduction, since offspring inherit characteristics from both parents.
There is prior art in creating extremely variable genes. It's called sexual reproduction, and it's so simple even bacteria can do it.
It was on a Friday, it's not like anything gets done on Fridays anyway.
You need to hang around my hospital's ER a little more on a Friday night. You will see that quite a lot gets done. I usually find myself wondering why people don't just stay home... there's never a rush during the football game.
Life isn't all about productivity, or it would be boring as shit.
Twain had a cunning plan to beat the early 20th century copyright law with its short copyright terms. Twain planned to republish every one of his works the moment it went out of copyright with one-third more content, hoping that availability of such 'premium' version will make prints based on the out-of-copyright version less desirable on the market."
Wait, so shortening the terms of a copyright law actually INCREASES creativity by forcing the author to modify, amend and add to his work, instead of resting on his laurels? Perish the thought! No we need indefinite term copyright laws so that works can stagnate and progress can come screeching to a halt.
There was only one small glitch during the rehearsal when they couldn't get it to stop playing.
I guess I am excluded from using this license.
Whatever happened to simple interfaces, like:
"Would you like to play Global Thermonuclear War? [YES|NO]"
The difference is that my "getting annoyed" (right, like an internet post is going to change my life) in no way stops you from living your life, or doing whatever you wish. Telling you to fuck off basically means I want nothing to do with you. Unless of course you thought that I meant it literally.
You, on the other hand, are not telling me to leave you alone. You are trying to tell me what to do. You are trying to put limits on me, by saying that I cannot judge by my standards (whose standards am I to judge by, then?). You are saying that you are right, and I am wrong. Well, buddy, you're going to have to prove that in order to convince me. I don't respond well to being told what to do. See, I'm not 4 years old.
Unfortunately the one with the overactive emotions here seems to be yourself. So I do recommend a bit of masturbation - or at least masturbation without guilt. It's quite healthy and lets out all the tension. Oh and a couple roast pork sandwiches are sheer heaven, too. You can munch on them while browsing some of facebook's funnier groups. However I'm not telling you what to do or how to think - it's merely a suggestion.
Why not just leave them alone and let them do what they think is best for them and not judge them based on your standards, if any.
So what you're basically saying is you think I should do what you say. I have an answer for you: go fuck yourself. I will judge whomever I wish. That's why I have a brain. It's what brains do.
And nothing of value was lost.
I was there. It dropped 700 points in roughly 40 seconds, simply because suddenly there were no buyers after a huge sell order came in and took out all the stops. A few minutes later, buy orders came in, but no one was prepared to sell for such low prices, so it bounced right back. The whole thing took under 10 minutes. However it was preceeded by a sharp (8%) increase in value of the Japanese Yen, causing the USD.JPY to plummet 10-15 minutes before. Not a coincidence. Money was being moved out of the Euro all day into the Yen, and someone (probably a Chinese sovereign wealth fund) decided to liquidate billions of dollars of US assets and move them out. Problem is they did it all at once.
We are still reeling from that. So is the Euro. Of course Merkel is not helping at all, either.
You'd think that the logical response from the HFT guys would be 'okay, let's put in a rule such that if the stock price drops by X amount, hold off from trading for Y seconds in case it's a market glitch'
Spoken like a non-trader.
OK, put a value on 'X'. Large price drops happen often. In fact there's a saying - prices drop faster than they rise. Look at any stock chart and you will see oscillating waves trying to build the price up, and cliffs where it drops again. This patterns repeats over and over, and what's more it's fractal - it happens on all levels from yearly charts, to minute-by-minute charts.
So, if you build in an algorithm into your program and pause it if the price drops "x", and my program DOESN'T pause, then I will have sold my stock, and you will still be holding on to your loss. The price might continue to drop, at which, after the pause, you can either sell (for an even greater loss) or ride it out. Eventually I will buy it again, and make more money than you.
That is why programming a number is a very very bad idea. I can beat you just by plugging a slightly bigger number into my program. Thus the idea of a circuit breaker - which stops EVERYONE, preventing me having an advantage over you. I doubt it would have much effect though. Circuit breakers have never been "combat tested". There's no guarantee the plunge just simply won't resume.
Some of those automated trades were selling stocks at pennies on the dollar when there was no fundamental reason for that stock to be down at all that day.
Supply and demand are fundamental reasons. Someone sold a huge position of Procter and Gamble based on the declining S&P 500 reaching a certain level, and this started a cascade of selling in that stock. That it happened in under 5 minutes does not change the fact that there was an over-supply of stock. The laws of supply and demand assume that price changes occur over time - however "time" is actually not assigned any quantitative value in the theory. It could be years or in this case, seconds.
Stock prices rarely have any bearing on the "fundamentals" of a company. I've often seen companies report record profits, only to have their shares plummet. Or companies announce losses, and seen the shares spike. Company fundamentals are a very LONG term play (over a matter of months and years) but have absolutely no bearing on the instantaneous price. That is governed by market sentiment, positioning by large institutions, attempts at manipulation by certain wealthy traders (or their programs), volume and all the things that make up this minute's supply and demand.
more stop orders are hit, and everyone that had one gets taken to the cleaners.
No, if you have a stop loss you have agreed to lose (at most) a certain amount on your trade. So, you agreed with your broker to lose 40%? Well, congrats. One morning you wake up and 40% is gone.
Stop loss is silly. It's used by amateurs in highly leveraged positions to prevent them from imploding their accounts. However you are actually telling someone else "how low" you are willing to go. Well guess how brokers make money - by taking out all the stops. Oh and then usually the market bounces right back. Coincidence?
Keep your trades small, and get out fast or ride it out if you screw up. What goes down usually comes back up, and vice versa. It's only a matter of time. If you can't afford to wait, if you're desperate because your capital is locked away in a paper loss and you needed it, well, you shouldn't be trading anyway.
Facebook is so 3 years ago. People still use it?
In the vid the inventor doesn't really say "infinite torque" - just that the torque is dependent on the size of the gears - which is technically correct. Although gears 50 feet across will not be used on automobiles, they might on ships. And such gears will handle a lot more torque.
Was the Amiga really that rare in the United States?
Yes, however their owners are very vocal. The "Apple" phenomenon was vastly multiplied in the case of the Amiga user, who was convinced it was the "most amazing computer in the world" and never failed to let everyone know about it in online communities (BBS, GEnie, CIS). However the most generous sales estimates have a total number of 3.8-4.8 million Amiga owners worldwide. A drop in the bucket compared to PC's. In fact the best Amiga ever did was garner just over 5% market share one year, in 1991. However it was usually never more than 3% of the market.
I'm not criticizing the machine (Amiga owners tend to be a bit fanatical and I would hate to receive death threats). It had some extremely innovative features for its time, including a decent sound chip when PC's still went "beep". But the PC's main features as always were expandability and compatibility - both of hardware and software. You were guaranteed that your stuff would work if you had a decent XT/AT clone.
The fearmongering about the amount of oil that is spilling is getting seriously stupid.
I read it on the internet so it has to be true, dammit! :)