A friend worked at LambWeston (a potato processor) who sold fries to most fast food stores. McDonald's picked the most rotten spuds, while Arby's and BurgerKing had the best spuds. The translucent crispy part of a McDonalds fry is rotten potato. The current secret to McDonald's fries is a bit of sugar mixed with the salt. If you don't believe me add some to the next batch of fries you get, they will taste just like McDonald's with a bit of sugar.
You can usually tell this is occuring at Walmart because one will be in cents per oz and the other will be in dollars per lb (or pt). Consider it a tax on those who can't divide by 8 or 16.
I've heard that there are only 2 or 3 battery factories in the world, and they apply a bunch of labels to their product. Look at the negative end to see if your battery came from the Energizer or Duracell factory (they have different bumps). It wouldn't surprise me if they did less testing or if the private label batteries were manufactured on an older generation. The dirty secret of manufacturing is that there are a whole bunch of Celeron 300As out there, but most consumers have no idea what they are selecting between.
All laptops (and 1U servers) are built (and usually designed) by a handful of Taiwanese manufacturers. If you can find the ODM firm supplying the computer, you can usually find it from another vendor very inexpensivly.
I used to track this more closely, and the budget poweredge was identical to a relatively high end Dimension (less video card, but with SCSI drives). Both used the same intel chipset (IIRC the i875) but one used the embedded video (with an open AGP slot) while the other had a card in the AGP slot. Dell is a master of price discrimiation (and studies of price elasticty). They admit as much to their owners if you can read between the lines in their conference calls.
I'm a young buck at 26, but have found that quality doesn't so much aboultly rise and fall, it changes relative ot other brands. BMW Lexus (and Audi) seem to be doing very well with quality even as M-B declines. E machines is improving as HP turns to crap. Samsung and LG are giving you a ton of phone for the cash relative to Nokia, etc. The difficulty is to follow the changes and adjust.
That said, I'm keeping my honda until the wheel's fall off, and my IBM model M until I get arthritis.
I've found Panasonic's audio stuff to be of decent quality. Anything from HP's business lines that is at least 5 years old has more than 5 years of life left in it.
Thank you, I always figured that there was some pattern to the seemingly randomness that was matress sales. To attempt to return the favor, most chain cabinets are made by Fortune brands (a big luxury brnad conglomorate) who labels's them differently to make it difficult to price compare between Home Depot and Lowe's.
I thought 500k was a good average for breaking in a 740. Perhaps that's just the diesel M-B's. If I were buying a car for complete lack of thought/concerns I'd go with a Lexus. I don't consider a BMW to be in the same ballpark as a lexus. Both are at the top of their game, one makes cars for people who love to drive, the other for people who hate to drive. There is nothing better than a shift happy car that redlines above 7000 RPM (and doesn't come alive until at least 4000).
There are precious few times I'm happy to be red green color blind. When new themes show up on/. is one of those few times. Beige, Olive green, they are all the same to me.
I tried clone wars comboed with tetris worlds, and found that the old NES tetris was more fun, and clone wars just doens't rock. The last game that captureed my attention was the KOTR, I picked it up out of the bargain bin last spring. I'm waiting for Jade Empire now. I'll agree that it's a dry season. Is ESPN football worth the $20 for a copy?
I had an AO subscription that i finally canceled as I wasn't playing much (all my friends were still in college and were well more than 20 levels ahead of me. Anyway the other day I reinstalled my D2 game and had a blast playing it. Yeah I was never going to make it to a ladder, but I had a wonderful time beating the game on normal (and starting an expansion game). It was also fun to play a game with a relative newbie (been playing diablo since the alpha was released), and just hook them up with stuff, advice, or experience. Sure I got toasted by p2ping the level 90 sorceress but it was a fun battle while it lasted.
I don't know about platinum but if you found a gold astroid, there would be ton's of uses for gold that are too expensive now which could be cost effective at $50/oz or $5/oz. I am not an expert on gold's elasticity of demand but would guess that you could make money at some level with exceedingly cheap gold because of its more interesting physical properties. Energy and construction certainly seem like the most likely profit centers in space, one potential way to profit would be to be the materials supplier in space rather than here on Earth, moving things to or from the surface is pricy, having refined resources in space would be quite valuable.
I was thinking that many of the early Pacific crossings were running for their lives with technology that they weren't sure would make it. I think the threat of death here would jump start our ability to get to Mars or beyond.
I've always gotten a kick out of the story that they built their own fab to make chips that were no longer available from US companies, because a foreign power could put some tracking semiconductors in the dice. It takes a special kind to be the logistics and concern department for the inteligence agencies.
It's actually more like half, windows is the other half (if you pull Windows out from Server & Tools I'd be surprised if that made any money either). While MSN now makes a bit of money, most of their other businesses are either breakeven (CE business solutions) or retching cash (Home and Entertainment). The windows and office division together produce more than the total company operating profit.
Ah but you missed the point where stars replace eyeballs with a single letter (g) earnings are growing rapidly at Google which can be used to justify almost any valuation as most people (non-engineers) really don't understand exponetial growth. Google's quarterly net rose something like 10% from the first quarter (more like doubling 2Q03's level). You put that on there and the thing starts to look cheep to some investors. Figure that they are already expecting at least $325-$400 million for the year and for it to grow to well over $500-$600 million next year. Deep down everyone knows that that can't continue forever, but the bet is all about how long it can last and if you can spot it ending before anyone else, which is what makes investing so addictive to many people. Also the market generally looks at forward estimated P/E's and you should adjust MS and AAPL for the mountains of cash each have (more than 10% of corporate value is cash in both cases).
I've heard that Colorado is where most talk radio guys used to be required to live for a few years as they have a very neutral Amreican accent. I've noticed a few interesting changes in my own pronunciation over the past few years, grew up in Washington school in the midwest, lives in Montana.
In Berkshire's case, I'm sure it does. I'm not sure Google's is high enough to discourage speculators. I wonder if the reduced speculation interest is worth the lack of trading volume that would keep some large investors out. Liquid markets are valuable and most are willing to put up with a significant amount of volatility to maximize liquidity.
Presumably you are on the West side of the state, in which case the large mountain chain and prevailing winds should keep you reasonably safe (if the moss/mutant banana slugs don't get you first).
Europe looks pretty good too as more international investors shift away from US stores of value to a similar stable, large, fully developed region which will lower cost of capital to European companies. All said you combine low expectations with better fundamentals almost anywhere internationally.
I have trouble seeing Google doing as well as they are now for the next five years with Microsoft pouring a whole lot of money, talent, and other resources into a competitor, no mention of more tying tricks. Longhorn is expected to have Internet search built in to the windows search.
It's relevant in two ways. To funds a very high share (to some extent) price is preferable as commissions are paid per share traded (higher prices mean that you pay lower commissions to move $10 million the limiting factor is volume. If you want to buy that same $10 million in a BRK company it might take several days to not move the market. If BRK had a more normal share price it would no doubt trade more frequently lowering transaction costs.
To retail investors besides their irrational love of stock splits (a signal that you have performed well over the past several years). Lower prices are usually preferable as most retail investors have to own a round lot (100 shares of most companies). It's a whole lot easier to pony up for 100 shares of HPQ than it would be to buy the same 100 shares of IBM. Although it has changed in the past few years, with more discount brokers competing and reducing fees many brokers charge an extra commission for buying in odd lots. Both of these are fairly minor costs but minor costs add up to a vast amount over a lifetime.
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A friend worked at LambWeston (a potato processor) who sold fries to most fast food stores. McDonald's picked the most rotten spuds, while Arby's and BurgerKing had the best spuds. The translucent crispy part of a McDonalds fry is rotten potato. The current secret to McDonald's fries is a bit of sugar mixed with the salt. If you don't believe me add some to the next batch of fries you get, they will taste just like McDonald's with a bit of sugar.
You can usually tell this is occuring at Walmart because one will be in cents per oz and the other will be in dollars per lb (or pt). Consider it a tax on those who can't divide by 8 or 16.
I've heard that there are only 2 or 3 battery factories in the world, and they apply a bunch of labels to their product. Look at the negative end to see if your battery came from the Energizer or Duracell factory (they have different bumps). It wouldn't surprise me if they did less testing or if the private label batteries were manufactured on an older generation. The dirty secret of manufacturing is that there are a whole bunch of Celeron 300As out there, but most consumers have no idea what they are selecting between.
All laptops (and 1U servers) are built (and usually designed) by a handful of Taiwanese manufacturers. If you can find the ODM firm supplying the computer, you can usually find it from another vendor very inexpensivly.
I used to track this more closely, and the budget poweredge was identical to a relatively high end Dimension (less video card, but with SCSI drives). Both used the same intel chipset (IIRC the i875) but one used the embedded video (with an open AGP slot) while the other had a card in the AGP slot. Dell is a master of price discrimiation (and studies of price elasticty). They admit as much to their owners if you can read between the lines in their conference calls.
The airlines have survived off this concept for the better part of three decades.
I'm a young buck at 26, but have found that quality doesn't so much aboultly rise and fall, it changes relative ot other brands. BMW Lexus (and Audi) seem to be doing very well with quality even as M-B declines. E machines is improving as HP turns to crap. Samsung and LG are giving you a ton of phone for the cash relative to Nokia, etc. The difficulty is to follow the changes and adjust.
That said, I'm keeping my honda until the wheel's fall off, and my IBM model M until I get arthritis.
I've found Panasonic's audio stuff to be of decent quality. Anything from HP's business lines that is at least 5 years old has more than 5 years of life left in it.
Thank you, I always figured that there was some pattern to the seemingly randomness that was matress sales. To attempt to return the favor, most chain cabinets are made by Fortune brands (a big luxury brnad conglomorate) who labels's them differently to make it difficult to price compare between Home Depot and Lowe's.
I thought 500k was a good average for breaking in a 740. Perhaps that's just the diesel M-B's. If I were buying a car for complete lack of thought/concerns I'd go with a Lexus. I don't consider a BMW to be in the same ballpark as a lexus. Both are at the top of their game, one makes cars for people who love to drive, the other for people who hate to drive. There is nothing better than a shift happy car that redlines above 7000 RPM (and doesn't come alive until at least 4000).
There are precious few times I'm happy to be red green color blind. When new themes show up on /. is one of those few times. Beige, Olive green, they are all the same to me.
I tried clone wars comboed with tetris worlds, and found that the old NES tetris was more fun, and clone wars just doens't rock. The last game that captureed my attention was the KOTR, I picked it up out of the bargain bin last spring. I'm waiting for Jade Empire now. I'll agree that it's a dry season. Is ESPN football worth the $20 for a copy?
I had an AO subscription that i finally canceled as I wasn't playing much (all my friends were still in college and were well more than 20 levels ahead of me. Anyway the other day I reinstalled my D2 game and had a blast playing it. Yeah I was never going to make it to a ladder, but I had a wonderful time beating the game on normal (and starting an expansion game). It was also fun to play a game with a relative newbie (been playing diablo since the alpha was released), and just hook them up with stuff, advice, or experience. Sure I got toasted by p2ping the level 90 sorceress but it was a fun battle while it lasted.
I don't know about platinum but if you found a gold astroid, there would be ton's of uses for gold that are too expensive now which could be cost effective at $50/oz or $5/oz. I am not an expert on gold's elasticity of demand but would guess that you could make money at some level with exceedingly cheap gold because of its more interesting physical properties. Energy and construction certainly seem like the most likely profit centers in space, one potential way to profit would be to be the materials supplier in space rather than here on Earth, moving things to or from the surface is pricy, having refined resources in space would be quite valuable.
I was thinking that many of the early Pacific crossings were running for their lives with technology that they weren't sure would make it. I think the threat of death here would jump start our ability to get to Mars or beyond.
I've always gotten a kick out of the story that they built their own fab to make chips that were no longer available from US companies, because a foreign power could put some tracking semiconductors in the dice. It takes a special kind to be the logistics and concern department for the inteligence agencies.
It's actually more like half, windows is the other half (if you pull Windows out from Server & Tools I'd be surprised if that made any money either). While MSN now makes a bit of money, most of their other businesses are either breakeven (CE business solutions) or retching cash (Home and Entertainment). The windows and office division together produce more than the total company operating profit.
Ah but you missed the point where stars replace eyeballs with a single letter (g) earnings are growing rapidly at Google which can be used to justify almost any valuation as most people (non-engineers) really don't understand exponetial growth. Google's quarterly net rose something like 10% from the first quarter (more like doubling 2Q03's level). You put that on there and the thing starts to look cheep to some investors. Figure that they are already expecting at least $325-$400 million for the year and for it to grow to well over $500-$600 million next year. Deep down everyone knows that that can't continue forever, but the bet is all about how long it can last and if you can spot it ending before anyone else, which is what makes investing so addictive to many people. Also the market generally looks at forward estimated P/E's and you should adjust MS and AAPL for the mountains of cash each have (more than 10% of corporate value is cash in both cases).
I think they will each have ~15% of the company at the end ($9-$10 Billion if the range ends up being correct). They will have 100m cash.
I've heard that Colorado is where most talk radio guys used to be required to live for a few years as they have a very neutral Amreican accent. I've noticed a few interesting changes in my own pronunciation over the past few years, grew up in Washington school in the midwest, lives in Montana.
In Berkshire's case, I'm sure it does. I'm not sure Google's is high enough to discourage speculators. I wonder if the reduced speculation interest is worth the lack of trading volume that would keep some large investors out. Liquid markets are valuable and most are willing to put up with a significant amount of volatility to maximize liquidity.
Presumably you are on the West side of the state, in which case the large mountain chain and prevailing winds should keep you reasonably safe (if the moss/mutant banana slugs don't get you first).
Europe looks pretty good too as more international investors shift away from US stores of value to a similar stable, large, fully developed region which will lower cost of capital to European companies. All said you combine low expectations with better fundamentals almost anywhere internationally.
I have trouble seeing Google doing as well as they are now for the next five years with Microsoft pouring a whole lot of money, talent, and other resources into a competitor, no mention of more tying tricks. Longhorn is expected to have Internet search built in to the windows search.
It's relevant in two ways. To funds a very high share (to some extent) price is preferable as commissions are paid per share traded (higher prices mean that you pay lower commissions to move $10 million the limiting factor is volume. If you want to buy that same $10 million in a BRK company it might take several days to not move the market. If BRK had a more normal share price it would no doubt trade more frequently lowering transaction costs.
To retail investors besides their irrational love of stock splits (a signal that you have performed well over the past several years). Lower prices are usually preferable as most retail investors have to own a round lot (100 shares of most companies). It's a whole lot easier to pony up for 100 shares of HPQ than it would be to buy the same 100 shares of IBM. Although it has changed in the past few years, with more discount brokers competing and reducing fees many brokers charge an extra commission for buying in odd lots. Both of these are fairly minor costs but minor costs add up to a vast amount over a lifetime.