Liberty

Similar arguments were made about all kinds of things. It reminds me a bit of "640k of memory should be enough for everybody" or "there's maybe a market for 5 computers in the world". These are of course extreme, but if there's one thing we've seen so far, it's that when technology gives people a new capacity, people invents ways to use that capacity in some way or other, often with things they didn't even know they wanted to do. If you had told people just a few years ago that many of us would have terabyte hard-drives and run out of space, it would have seemed impossible. Or just look at what used to be "big" and "fast" and how ridiculously underpowered and small it seems now (want to do your stuff on a 60mhz Pentium with 16 megs of RAM? I started out on a 25 mhz 386 with 4 megs of RAM personally, and I had dreams about the first pentiums...). It might not be just ever increasing resolution that fills the pipes. People certainly have more connected devices and spend more time online than ever before (remember when you had to be at a desk?), which means more data, and they get more and bigger apps, games, photos, streaming videos, etc. They share more stuff with more people -- who would ever have though of sending HD videos to multiple people from a phone?. And when they do have to download something big, they don't want to wait for it, or have junior take up all the bandwidth when other people in the house want to do something. A lot of people could easily use multi-100s of mbits today, easily up to a gigabit, and cable is def the cheapest way to get that. In fact, I'd say that the biggest bottleneck these days is bandwidth; CPUs and GPUs and hard-drives have progressed a lot faster than bandwidth, and if you want to really make a difference for customers, increasing bandwidth is the low-hanging fruit. That's just IMO, though. An empirical way to check would be to ask people with fast connections (200mbit/sec, 1 gigabit/sec) if they're noticing a difference, if the fast connection has changed their habits, and if they could ever go back to a slower connection and be satisfied.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/blackberry-co-founder-mike-lazaridis-sells-26m-us-in-shares-1.2476040?cmp=rss

Thanks for sharing. CommerceHub is part of LINTA, though, not LMCA. It's the second time this week that I see a news organization mix up some of the Malone companies (I think it was the Economist saying that something was owned by Liberty Global when they meant Liberty Media). I suppose it shows that Malone's strategy of confusing everybody with complexity is working. The confusion leads to a market discount, which makes buybacks more effective. And then he can simplify things (and he's doing by splitting LINTA into two) when he wants the market to see the real value...

Over 1 million FTP.DB.A traded today. I've never seen such high volume, and it barely moved the price.

Looks like good news. I'm still digesting it all. What I want to understand better is the exploration potential of this new area and how new royalties could be created there, or existing ones could be expanded. Knowing how these guys operate, I'm pretty sure that there's more than meets the eye.

As far as I know he doesn't know management personally (not more than what is public about them). I think Buffett sees: -decent moat + decent capital allocation + a size he can work with He probably doesn't understand everything about the business, though probably a lot more than people would give him credit for as he's been reading the 10Ks for 50 years, but from talking to various Berkshire subsidiaries, he seems to be confident that IT departments everywhere have been and will be dealing with IBM for many of their needs for years to come. If he didn't have tens of billions to deploy he probably wouldn't have bought it... I think it works for him because no-cost insurance float is levering up the returns, but for a small investor without leverage, I doubt the results will be as good as what Buffett will get.

It already exists :) http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/what-are-you-selling-today/

Looks like it wasn't quite all priced in yet... But there's still huge uncertainty in media reports about how many iPhones will be sold through China Mobile. I've seen numbers ranging from 12m/year to 40m/year. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw numbers close to the top of that range because it isn't just the iPhone that is launching, it's also a new 4G network that is rolling out. Most Chinese customers were not even on 3G, they were on EDGE. So going from EDGE to LTE is a huge draw for the iPhone that wasn't there before, even for people getting them on the gray market. A iPhone on LTE is qualitatively more useful than a iPhone stuck on EDGE.

Very cool. Glad you had a good time! :)

I guess if there's an award for creepy ads, it'll be hard to pick a winner this year...

Excellent news, even if expected. I like that they mention that it's a "multi-year agreement". One small thing to take into account: Only the 5s and 5c will be sold on China Mobile at first (because of network compatibility issues, afaik). Next year when the iPhone 6 comes out, they'll likely have at least 3 models available (one of the 5's available at a lower price point), which should help even better with segmentation. But just getting the iPhone out in China Mobile's stores all around the country and pushed to its 760 million customers should help a lot. 2014 should be quite interesting for Apple. "China Mobile plans to sell 220m smartphones in 2014 (including 100m on LTE), versus 150m in 2013"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25460719 Quick interview with QVC's UK chief.

I'd love to read it. Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts.

The US has some of those gnomes too. Superchargers are free to all Tesla customers everywhere, and many places provide access to HOV lanes and parkings for free for electric cars.

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/12/19/northern-gateway-pipeline-approved-by-panel-with-209-conditions/

Model S in Norway, winter driving:

http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-inc-aapl-china-mobile-chl-deal-still-being-negotiated-formal-announcement-week-unlikely

Reddit is a large online community, and for a few years now they've had a secret santa thing during the holidays. One person received a gift from.. Bill Gates. http://redditgifts.com/gallery/gift/spoiler-alert-bill-gates-did-not-get-you/# Pretty cool of him :)

Isn't the goal of anti-dumping duty to equalize market prices such that low cost producers are penalized more, while high cost producers are penalized less? If so, the 13% duty means FTP's operating costs are at the higher end. I think this is a +ve, because as you say, the chinese audit was before the generator was turned on. Hence, the 13% duty can be taken care off by the generator and further operation efficiency. Additionally, wouldn't a falling C$ help FTP? I'm no expert on dumping and tariffs, but based on my understanding of the situation, I think lessthaniv is right. Wikipedia on dumping: "It occurs when manufacturers export a product to another country at a price either below the price charged in its home market or below its cost of production." So if you have a plant that produces a ton of DP for 1200 and the market price they sell it as is 900, they're selling below their cost of production and the difference could be called dumping (especially if they get a subsidy to make up for the difference and keep them operating). There are probably complex arcane WTO rules for how long you can do this and so on, so that you can't be accused of dumping every time the spot price dips below your costs... If your production cost is 800 and you sell for 900, you can't be said to be dumping, unless you sell it for 900 in your home market and 800 elsewhere. But if the Chinese checked Thurso when it was still ramping up and without a cogen, they could easily have concluded that its production costs were above the market price. If things work like this, a low tariff compared to others is indeed a sign that Thurso's production costs are lower than others. So dumping is based on production costs for each producer, not on the cost difference between the high-cost producers and low-cost producers. Otherwise china could say that Australia was dumping iron ore in China because Australian producers have lower costs than Chinese ones. DP is priced in USD, so it would.

I don't know anything anymore. I'm just watching and waiting at this point. Risk/reward looks good to me too, but who knows?

Back where it was Monday morning. Could've been worse.

*sigh* :D

Never a dull moment.. :P At least the cogen is still running and bringing cash in (imagine if it still wasn't operational...). And focusing on cutting costs and improving efficiency can't hurt and might be easier/faster to do when they're not producing DP at the same time. But what will the next surprise be? If we ever have a positive surprise, I'll probably fall off my chair...

I don't, just an amateur. But I am interested in the space and I've seen enough LEDs to know that quality can vary a lot. Thanks for sharing your insights. It's always very cool to get info from someone on the inside! :)

That makes a lot of sense, thanks.