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  1. Re:AAPL is still cheap on Apple Announces Most Profitable Quarter in History · · Score: 1

    They have a pile of cash which is incredibly problematic for their business model. Piles of cash don't grow the company. A business like Apple is theoretically about acquisitions and R&D. Piles of cash help with the former, but at a certain point that money becomes a wasted resource. I take it you haven't noticed what MS does with it's piles of cash.

    The consumer is going to start caring about the competition when they can't get the device they wanted. And the image, honestly, I'm less sanguine than you are about Apple being able to continue to gloss over the crap build quality, anti-consumer interfaces and just general bad behavior.

    And how long precisely do you think that's going to happen? Eventually companies can't out do what they previously earned, and anybody dumb enough to own shares in AAPL when that happens is likely to lose a lot of money.

  2. Re:AAPL is still cheap on Apple Announces Most Profitable Quarter in History · · Score: 1

    No, I get business. And the problem is that in the future they're going to have to make a switch from luxury good to commodity and they've already done that in terms of the build quality. In some markets they're so dominant that their products have become synonymous with the market.

    Products can be luxury items or they can be incredibly popular, in the long term you don't typically see products that can do both. Sure it's working for them right now, but I see no reason to assume that they'll always be able to get away with it. At some point people start to actually look at the products and compare them with the competition and that hasn't been Apple's strong point in a really, really long time.

  3. Re:AAPL is still cheap on Apple Announces Most Profitable Quarter in History · · Score: 1

    No, what I'm saying is that if you think you've got a sure thing, save your money and buy something else because you haven't thoroughly researched it. I'm sure if folks buy Apple now they'll be able to make a profit. I just don't buy the notion that it's as safe as people think or that the possible profits are sufficient to outweigh the inherent risk of buying a stock that's been pumped up.

  4. Re:There is acting and there is knowing on Apple Announces Most Profitable Quarter in History · · Score: 1

    You've got that backwards, you're the one that's arguing that past performance means that it has to keep going up. iPad 3 and iPhone 5 could very well both be duds. It's unlikely as it's going to take a bit longer before we really know what Apple is capable of without Steve, but assuming that they'll continue to dominate long enough that one can profit by timing it is folly.

  5. Re:Who Cares? on Apple Announces Most Profitable Quarter in History · · Score: 1

    The problem is groupthink. As long as you can find one sucker to pay an extra dollar for a stock the price will go up on all of them. In terms of the earnings as long as they can find suckers that are wiling to overpay for the product they'll keep making profit.

    With Steve gone and the very real possibility that their suppliers are going to be unhappy getting sued, they could very well see their components getting a tad difficult to procure.

    Plus, they've been on thin ice as far as antitrust matters are concerned for quite a while with the shenanigans at the ITMS and more recently with the way they handle the Appstore.

    Sure, they could keep going up, but in practices companies don't keep going up indefinitely, and there's a pretty clear bubble forming. As an investor I don't want anything to do with it and neither do other investors. Now if you're a speculator, fine go and buy it up, but that just reinforces my point that it's a sucker bet. Most of the price rise has already occurred and there's a ton of risk. If I knew when it was going to correct itself I'd be shorting it, but in practice it's incredibly hard to identify the date when the delusion is no longer sustainable.

  6. Re:Is a UAV necessary? on Amateur UAV Pilot Exposes Texas River of Blood · · Score: -1

    You're missing the point. In the Google Maps image you really don't get a true sense of the color. I never suggested that there was red silt there. Merely that in the Google Maps version the color isn't clearly visible as anything other than brown.

    Brown is not a color that CRTs or LCDs are capable of doing so you'll end up with a bit of coloration other than the expected brown.

  7. Re:Is a UAV necessary? on Amateur UAV Pilot Exposes Texas River of Blood · · Score: 1

    Comparing the images you can't tell that it's blood in the Google Maps image, but in the image from the UAV, you can at least see that it's red. Red silt in that part of the country looks rather at odds with the geographic features there.

  8. Re:AAPL is still cheap on Apple Announces Most Profitable Quarter in History · · Score: 1, Insightful

    That's precisely why I don't own any shares of Apple. As soon as people start acting like there's a sure thing you can be pretty sure that the price is already way too high.

    There have been a few very significant changes at Apple lately which lead me to suspect that it might not continue going up much longer. One they lost their CEO and the individual that drove the branding and marketing for Apple.Apple is mostly marketing, they rarely if ever do anything first and most of the time they way over price the items they sell, depending upon name recognition and glamor to pull it off. I'm not so sure that they're going to be able to continue that without Steve. Sure, they may very well, but so far I don't have any reason to assume so.

    Then there's been the patent trolling and general dickishness of Apple trying to kill Android. It's going to come back to haunt them in the future in terms of increased competition and damaged image. I personally, am not going to be recommending Apple products any time soon, which makes it somewhat difficult as I don't generally recommend MS products either.

    Lastly, stocks have a nasty tendency to regress to the mean over time and the more people view the money as guaranteed the more likely that it is that there's going to be a correction. Right now, if you want money, MSFT is a much better buy than AAPL is.

    Will this lead to AAPL taking a bit of a dive, I don't know, it's hard to really figure out how long delusion is going to last before it finally comes into contact with reality.

  9. Re:Who Cares? on Apple Announces Most Profitable Quarter in History · · Score: 0

    You do realize that the PE is based upon current numbers, right. Only idiots by based upon PE, personally, I tend to take into account other things as well such as discounted cashflow, outlook in the industry and ability to protect itself. Apple isn't going to continue pissing everybody off without making the wrong enemies. Just look at how the relatively small number of suits have already snowballed and how Apple is starting to actually lose some of the suits as they go to completion.

    Apple fans are loyal, but there's only so far that's going to take them, keep filing patent troll law suits, overprice the gadgets and behave generally like dicks and eventually the bad karma is going to catch up with Apple.

    When all is said and done, right now Apple is rather aggressively destroying value as it tilts at windmills. Sure, they might get away with it in the short term or figure out a way of avoiding it in the long, but eventually this sort of behavior catches up with a company.

  10. Re:Who Cares? on Apple Announces Most Profitable Quarter in History · · Score: 1

    Maybe or maybe they'd have some hope of being relevant outside of a few niches. Right now they're relevant in the tablet and smartphone markets, I'm guessing that's not going to last too much longer as they're losing in the smartphone market and they're having to resort to patent trolling to protect themselves from competition in the tablet market.

    This isn't like a decade ago when they could just misappropriate other people's work and expect to get away with it, they're competing with outfits that generally know how to compete and care about making money.

  11. Re:Next step on Apple's iBooks EULA Drawing Ire · · Score: 0

    No, his drinking lead to his death in a rather direct way. Who knows what other works he could have completed had he not drank himself to death.

  12. Re:Ehhhhh, and? on Apple's iBooks EULA Drawing Ire · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem is that there isn't even a correlation there. That's 4 authors and how many other authors were largely sober? Neither William Shakespeare nor Agatha Christie are known for their drunken escapades and they're more published than anybody else.

  13. Re:Next step on Apple's iBooks EULA Drawing Ire · · Score: 0

    He would have lived to be somewhat older if he hadn't killed himself and who know what works we don't get to read because of it. Even just a matter of a year or two could have seen the completion of some other masterpiece.

    And no, I'm not older than 62, but based upon my family history, I should be around for another 70 years with some luck.

  14. Re:dunno if I'm feeling that on Julian Assange To Host Talk Show · · Score: 1

    He represents the organization because he's good at keeping himself in the spotlight. Considering how many folks have been gunning for him, he's done a damn good job of largely avoiding being disappeared.

    The charges are bunk, I think most people realize that, and unlike people conducting themselves in a discrete fashion, he hasn't just disappeared to some black site.

  15. Re:for the money? on Julian Assange To Host Talk Show · · Score: 1

    A man who serves as his own attorney has a fool for a client. I think that old saying has a lot of merit to it. Just because one has a legal education does not mean that one is qualified to try a case in court and it certainly does not mean that it's a good idea to try a case in which one is otherwise involved.

    I'm quite sharp and good with logic, but there's absolutely no way in hell that I would be going to court pro se unless there were no other options.

  16. Re:Good. But... on Julian Assange To Host Talk Show · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People keep making those allegations about the selective releases, but the reality is that it's irresponsible to leak things that are completely unredacted and they didn't have the resources to process all the materials. They had even less resources after the bankers decided to not process the payments.

    Perhaps people should stop spreading this sort of FUD and character assassination and focus on things that actually matter.

  17. Re:After what Apple did with iTunes DRM on Apple's iBooks EULA Drawing Ire · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, PDF is an open standard and Adobe has granted anybody royalty free use of it. There may be patents that are not known that could apply, but for now there aren't any that have been asserted.

    The MP3 patents are most likely expired by now in the US, that should apply to other jurisdictions as well as the US presently conforms with the WTO's TRIPs

  18. Re:Next step on Apple's iBooks EULA Drawing Ire · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Those are bad examples. Hemingway had bipolar, Poe had all sorts of problems, Jack Kerouac seemed to be under the delusion that one can only write while in an altered state. I'm not familiar enough with Jack London to guess as to his motives, but apart from London the other writers had greatly shortened careers because of their alcohol and or drug use. Hemingway himself was only 62 when he killed himself and alcohol is known to make mood disorders worse.

  19. Re:How strange on The Google+ Name Game Continues · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, it's not a strawman. The claim that the GGP made was that Google was selling people. Reductio ad Absurdem is hardly a logical fallacy in this case. Slavery is a binary operation either one is a slave or one isn't a slave and if Google is selling people and slaves are defined as people who are owned by other people then the logical conclusion is that the GGP is claiming that Google is engaging in slavery.

    Now, if you take a more reasonable position than people being Google's product then it doesn't apply at all.

    Don't whine to me because the original description is horribly inept and poorly considered.

  20. Re:Sole commercial distributor, not sole distribut on Apple's iBooks EULA Drawing Ire · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not really, people distributing their works for money aren't typically going to also distribute them for free. That would undermine sales. Some people will distribute works under a pay what you can, pay what you want or pay what you think it's worth model, but in any of those cases it's going to be a commercial distribution.

    It might be technically a misstatement, but it's correct in virtually all cases.

  21. Re:How strange on The Google+ Name Game Continues · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sigh, I wish this meme would die. They don't sell people, they sell ad space. I realize that all the cool kids are into accusing Google of slavery, but let's at least try to maintain one tiny iota of accuracy.

  22. Re:Doublethink on Georgia Bill Would Prohibit Subsidies For Municpal Broadband · · Score: 1

    Wired phone service is regulated under a different set of rules than cable, cellular and FiOS is. It's generally the most regulated of the bunch and receives UTF subsidies to expand service into rural areas as well.

  23. Re:Interesting on VirtualBSD 9.0 Released · · Score: 1

    That tends to be a pretty unusual occurrence as FreeBSD rarely runs out of RAM. In fact in all the years I've run it I don't think I've had it happen even once. Keep a decent sized swap and you shouldn't ever have it happen.

  24. Re:Too fast ! on Ubuntu 12.04 To Include Head-Up Display Menus · · Score: 1

    To be fair, I wish I could migrate between versions of Windows without having to relearn menus. Seriously, there is no organization at all to some of the changes they introduce. For some reason rather than Devices you get "Devices and Printers." No idea why printers are special, but when you click that You find that it's located under "Devices and Sound."

  25. Re:Interesting on VirtualBSD 9.0 Released · · Score: 1

    Sigh, you do realize that the Linux camp played some awfully dirty tricks during the USL v. BSDi period of *BSD development, right. And that Linus is on record as suggesting that he probably wouldn't have bothered with it had he had access to *BSD at that point.

    Also, you do realize that frequently Linux ends up being unusable do the the radical course changes that some of the major distributions put into place. The OS itself is run so that changes aren't made just to make changes. People tend to bitch about sysinstall, but the fact is that until recently there was little reason to replace it. It could accomplish everything that was needed. Then GPT, ZFS and a couple other things came along and sysinstall was replaced.

    Worshiping stability is what competent OS developers do. I don't think the instability that comes from including half-baked features like Ubuntu does is really a point in your favor.

    Also, Linux is a kernel, if you're going to bother to make outlandish stories up, you should at least make them plausible.