Liberty

From Glenn: http://glennchan.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/the-not-so-pretty-side-of-altius-minerals/

Thank you racemize!

Another interesting one from Brooklyn Investor: http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.ca/2014/03/10x-pretax-earnings-case-studies-ko-bni.html

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2114733-sandstorm-metals-destroying-shareholder-value-for-3-years

I don't think anyone's saying that he doesn't have tremendous social skills. I'm just saying he didn't start out that way, unlike many others who are just natural social animals.

If you read his bios and listen to his interviews, you'll learn that he literally vomited from public speaking at first, that during social events he would go in another room and read annual reports, etc. He got over all that over time (Carnegie, Kay Graham), but that's certainly not where he started, not his natural inclination. I think he say that it could be a useful tool for him so he set out to consciously acquire those skills.

But unlike these people, you don't know Scott, so you have no reason to assume he's lying to us or to himself anymore than you have reasons to assume that any other person here is lying or mistaken about anything else. This makes you sound like those people who can't understand that some people are gay ("they should just try sleeping with someone of the other sex"), and to me that sounds very patronizing.

People not interested in sex or stuff are probably more common than good investors...

1) You didn't need to be rude about it. 2) You have no facts at all to make you think this was the case here. 3) By that standard, maybe you are a crackwhore projecting your own problems on others. Who knows, right?

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4279ccc4-b671-11e3-b230-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2xHQ55UlE

That's a different topic, but an interesting one. I think it depends. Was Buffett advantaged or disadvantaged by having such a different lifestyle from most other money managers? By staying in Omaha rather than going to Wall Street, etc, some could say he wasn't networking properly and wasn't plugged in the "deal flow" or whatever, but others could say he was avoiding the echo chamber and groupthink and reducing pressure of activity for activity's sake. Later in life he got pretty social thanks mostly to Kay Graham, but in his early decades he was a lot more awkward and isolated, and definitely had a very frugal lifestyle for a billionaire (buying hail-damaged used cars, never moving to a bigger house, not eating anything fancy, etc). I think Michael Burry is also a pretty unusual person, and that seemed to have helped him see things differently and do things that others couldn't be bothered to do. In the end, if you're good at what you do, have integrity and other virtues, people will overlook almost anything. And those who don't, you probably don't care about them anyway... I almost envy Scott, I know that my investing would probably improve if I didn't spend so much time thinking about sex...

Most people, sure. But I thought this was a forum of intelligent free-thinkers who "don't follow the crowd". Surely it can't be that big a surprise that there are asexuals and people not much interested in material things out there? Live and let live, I say.

Why should he do things he doesn't want to do? To please you? If it made him unhappy, he'd make a change. People are different and have different needs. You might want to open your mind to that fact.

http://oraclefromomaha.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/directv-update-the-future-of-the-pay-tv-industry/

Office for iOS should be good for Apple, not only because they'll sell more devices, but also for the software revenues that must be close to 100% margins for them: http://9to5mac.com/2014/03/27/yes-apple-is-taking-30-of-every-office-365-subscription-purchased-through-office-for-ipad/

I also enjoyed it when I read it a few years ago.

I have no idea who that is. Explaining the joke probably ruins it, but there's a recent Showtime series called Homeland. In it, there's this CIA guy named Peter Quinn who is a pretty mysterious character when we first meet him. When we finally learn more about him and see his apartment, it's basically empty except for a sleeping bag and we learn he's some type of black ops operative.

Peter Quinn, is that you? ;)

And for those who have been following the series, part 3, 4 and 5: http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.ca/2014/03/buffett-market-timer-part-3-berkshire.html http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.ca/2014/03/buffett-market-timer-part-4-berkshire.html http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.ca/2014/03/buffett-market-timer-part-5-berkshire.html

That's fair. Thanks for considering it, Sanjeev. I certainly don't lack motivation to attend in person, I just can't this year and feel bad I'll be missing both the dinner and AGM. I hope that board members will share their notes on the event like past years. Thanks in advance to those who will do so!

Not that I'm a big fan of Andreessen, but to be fair: https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/448576195223773184

Maybe you are misremembering something about iOS 7? Because Ive was in charge of design on that version. Whatever his faults, valueInv knew his stuff about Apple, so I doubt he thought that Ive was in charge of the software design for the original iPhone...

If such a project becomes successful, what keeps partners around is the money. Record labels could've stopped putting their music on iTunes over time, but it was bringing in too much revenue, and it's not like they had the capability to build their own ecosystem equivalent to iPod+iTunes. I'm sure Apple would structure a deal with video content owners and cablecos in such a way that they get most of the money from the content and distribution, so that if they pull out, they're basically just killing a big avenue for profitable distribution, and it's not like Comcast will replicate the Apple ecosystem. I'm sure Comcast will have their own thing, but Apple tends to bring its very loyal and profitable customers with it to whoever it partners with, and they don't benefit from losing that. That said, it's still much harder to do anything in that space than in music or books or whatever, and I'll be curious to see what they can do.

Who suggested that? Ive wasn't responsible at all for the software in the original iPhone. In fact, the software team didn't even know what the hardware would look like and vice versa.