Y2HH

QUOTE (iamshack @ Apr 11, 2013 -> 11:30 AM) Let's revisit this in about 20 years... We don't have to revisit in 20 years. I already believe it's "fake", so why would it matter to me? If I say no, they're not going to just break up...so it's all fake. Oh, and for the record, the answer is no. No asshat guy is good enough for my daughters, not now, not in 20 years. So when they ask, and I say no, and they still get married, it'll show exactly how much it the fathers blessing doesn't mean.

I'm with Sqwert on this one. I didn't ask anyone but my wife to marry me. This is our life. I find the whole asking the father somewhat silly anyway. To me, it's completely shallow/fake "respect", and I say this as a father of two daughters. What are you going to do if he says no? Walk away? Doubtful. Odds are you're going to marry her anyway, showing this to be nothing more than a fake respect thing in the first place. I dislike fake.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 05:32 PM) Yes but very little increase. My comps are spot on. I need to gut half the place, so you can't use 2-3 year old updated comps. What are comps?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:50 PM) Waiting for Amazon to correct so I can hold some of those shares. No way do I buy at those prices they have right now. But Amazon the company clearly isn't going anywhere. They have debt but it's not toxic debt, it's from investments and whatnot. Amazon's problem isn't debt, it's their business model. Due to the fact that they're online only, they have massive competition, and a constant drive to the bottom in price, they have a profit margin of less than 1%. I don't need to explain how and why that's not a very good thing. This is why Amazon is trying to use this time to create other businesses that can drive profits for them, because their retail branch will never get high margins, as retail never does.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:46 PM) (I coudln't read the scale that easily myself so I downloaded the spreadsheet). You can clearly see in the data that it starts taking off in 1995 and doesn't look back. By1997 it was in "unusual" territory and we went from there. Yea, but that's the point, it wasn't until around 97 that things were no longer looking like a standard cycle, and they absolutely skyrocketed on speculation. The market, throughout time, usually hovers around 10-25 in P/E, some short term spikes here and there, but nothing like what occurred between 98 and 2000. Then again, we have a mini .com bubble happening right now, with the likes of Facebook (1,785) Amazon (was about 2000 until they went negative in the recent quarter) and LinkedIn (900) P/E ratios.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:42 PM) You say that like I didn't download the data. P/E ratios crossed 30 in early 1997. That chart shows that they didn't cross 20 until about 98. There are always companies with high P/E ratios, but on average, they were still hovering around 20 in 97/98, it was then they exploded.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:39 PM) I'd actually say it was about a 5-6 year bubble if you look at P/E ratios: PE ratios cross 20 at the start of 1995 and continually rose until the peak (with one notch associated with the asian economic crisis and the LTCM bailout) It wasn't until 1998 where PE ratios were rocketing above 20. Below 20 is average, even now.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:31 PM) You know, there was one thing Greenspan did that actually helped a whole lot of people. There was enormous pressure on him around 1996 to start raising interest rates because there was a generally believed rule that anything under 5% unemployment rates would rapidly lead to inflation surges. Greenspan didn't listen to those folks, and as a consequence we wound up with unemployment rates closing in on 3% and the only period in the last 35 years where there has been actual wage growth for anyone but the investor class. He ended up raising them far beyond that shortly after to "control" the .com boom, though. So, if the interest rates are the answer to both problems, you are going to have to blame him for keeping them that low in 1996, when in 1998 the .coms sprang up from his economy. By then, it was too late to control the growth. So, by one token, keeping the rates low in 1996 was a good thing, but by 1998, they were too low, and then it was too late to do anything about the pending bubble.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:27 PM) Serious Q in reply: what should have been done in 2000 then? There was an enormous, unsupported, multi-trillion dollar asset bubble sitting there (with a few hundred billion in fraud thrown in for good measure). Should they have continued to let it grow? Somehow attempt to pop it more slowly? The right answer ought to be to have regulations and actions that prevent the development of such an asset bubble, but by 2000 that ship had sailed, so what do you do? Nothing. It was going to pop one way or another, and all they did to "control it" did absolutely nothing, if not make things even worse. The .com bubble lasted all of 2 years. People make it sound like something that spanned decades. Control was an illusion, and all they did with the interest rates made it even worse on the fall as when the bubble popped we were stuck with massively inflated interest rates for quarters to come. The only thing that stops any kind of bubble is conservative investing, something most people don't do, because fad investing is the cool thing to do.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:22 PM) I said s*** 4 times in one post. I really, really hate Alan Greenspan. I wish he played around fast-moving buses more often. Yea, can't say I'm a fan of his either. I remember that douche trying to "control the .com economy" by inflating interest rates on what seemed like a weekly basis back then. He was one of those that were arrogant enough to actually believe he [they] had control of it in the first place.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:19 PM) Yeah, I'm not letting the government(s) off the hook here. They clearly failed to protect American citizens and to foster a strong, robust economy with solid foundations. In fairness, on the way up, that looked to be exactly what they were doing.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:09 PM) Mortgage lending of the type that caused the collapse was the most unregulated segment of mortgage lending. I don't think the lenders gave one s*** about who would back a mortgage--they weren't holding on to them for any length of time. They were re-selling them to people who would then chop them up and securitize them after paying S&P to give them a AAA ratings while others were selling Credit Default Swaps based on those s***ty mortgage-backed securities and everyone leveraged themselves to insane levels because there was little or no regulations on them doing that. Oh, and we got the mixing of commercial and investment banking thanks to the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which again only made matters worse. Every step towards deregulation was a step that fueled the crisis. And, again, Freddie and Fannie were way late to the whole sub-prime game and started getting into it because they were losing market share and getting hammered by investors for it. Accepting only 5% down wasn't the problem. The problem was giving out mortgages to anybody and everybody without verifying income or assets in any way, even going so far as to lie on application forms so that people would get approved. Originators made money this way, the banks that securitized it made money, the ratings agencies made money, the insurance companies made money. Lots and lots of people made huge fortunes exploiting the system in every way possible. Nowhere does "forced by government to make bad loans" enter into this. There's no such thing as a completely free market in reality because there are always governments and always laws. It's just a No True Scotsman to try to downplay the role that deregulation and lack-of-regulation played in this. It's the fault of a LOT of people, from the borrowers to the lenders, to the lawmakers, to the auditors that combined, allowed this to happen, and watched WHILE it was happening. It was then the fault of the insurance underwriters claiming the mortgages were safe, and when they could no longer do that, accepting 'bundles of mortgages', and instead calling those safe when they could no longer be called that on their own. It was then the fault of the likes of AIG and other insurance carriers ACCEPTING and backing those loans. Deregulation of the mortgage industry led to this, because the things they did were simply never before thought of...and when you deregulate an industry thinking they do things XYZ, but suddenly they begin doing them ABCXYZ under the new regulations, which didn't account for the ABC, this is what you get.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 12:54 PM) How do you rip the DVD collection? Install a program called Handbreak (free), and an encoder/decoder like VLC (free), works on either Windows or OSX. Handbreak is a ripper, VLC is used by Handbreak to decrypt the DVD. You insert the DVD, then select any one of a number of presets that are pre-configured, such as AppleTV3, which is basically a maximum quality, full 480p rip (which is DVD quality). You then click Start. And depending on the speed of your computer, it will take 15-30 minutes to complete, and you have your digital copy that can be imported into iTunes, or whatever streaming media player you use where you can tag it, add album art, etc. There are a few other things, but nothing complicated. You just have to make sure you rip the right track, as sometimes there will be multiple tracks and one will be Fullscreen and the other Widescreen (you can use a preview button to see a sample image, and you'll be able to tell if it's widescreen or not, either with that or looking at the resolution width.) ---- It takes a long time...it's not something I did overnight, but I did it slowly over the past year whenever I was sitting at my computer. But now that it's done, it's really cool having a huge library of movies to watch at any time. I have an AppleTV on both of my larger televisions, and of course the stream works to any iPad/iPhone on my WiFi, too. It's really kinda cool.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 12:34 PM) I don't know why I ever buy movies...I can probably count on 1 hand the number of movies I have ever watched more than once or twice. That's exactly why. For the most part, if you watch a movie more than once, you may as well have bought it, since the rental fees were approaching 5$ anyway. Besides, now you have it and can rip it to digital format. I ripped my entire collection, and have a library ready to stream to any of my AppleTV's of over 700 movies, completely cataloged by name, year, synopsis, and even a movie poster image.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 12:25 PM) I never knew of a specific deal until reading that but I did always wonder, why were movies available for rent several weeks before you could buy them but this didn't apply when we started getting DVDs in 2000? To an employee, the way this looked is the sale price would show on the computer screen of a new release VHS for something like $109 (next to the rental price of $3.99 or whatever) until it was designated "for sale," when Blockbuster would start selling it in stores along with other stores. But when we started selling DVDs, the sale price was the standard $19.99 or $24.99 and you could get the movie at any other retail chain. Yep, originally, the studios didn't think there was a big market for "buyers", but there was for "renters", so they made these deals with the chains that after a movie was released on VHS, it would be available to purchase for like 80$+, OR you could rent it for cheap, and the studio would share in the revenue. Blockbuster (and others) figured the same thing would happen with DVD as what happened with Laserdisc, meaning they never thought it would take off like it did, so they didn't think making such a deal was necessary. After the offer was turned down, WB was forced to go retail with DVD, and it took off like a rocket. The writing was on the wall as the other studios quickly piled on, because now the entire profit was theirs and theirs alone...they no longer needed to share anything with Blockbuster or anyone else. This was a HUGE blunder on Blockbusters part...nearly as big as the epic of all epic blunders committed by AT&T when they turned down the US Govt/DARPA for taking complete ownership over what we now call the Internet. AT&T told them, it's too expensive to maintain, and regular people would never use it anyway.

This is where Blockbuster went wrong, and it had nothing to do with late fees, etc...that was their attempt to band-aid their original gaffe, which started the dominoes falling. I vividly remember this occurring, as I was one of the very early adopters of DVDs. I was so happy this occurred, because the old deal was that within the "window of rent", movies would cost upwards of 80$ each only going on sale for a normal price AFTER the rental period expired. "In 1998, at the dawn of the age of the DVD, Blockbuster made a decision that would change the future of Hollywood. Warren Lieberfarb, who then headed the home-video division of Warner Bros., offered Blockbuster CEO John Antioco a deal that would have made the DVD the same kind of rental business as that of the VHS tape, which, at the time, provided the studios with $10 billion in revenue. Lieberfarb proposed that Warner Bros. (which, along with Sony, was launching the DVD) create a rental window for DVDs during which sell-through DVDs would not be available for new movies." "With this window, Blockbuster, which then accounted for nearly half of the studios' rental income from new movies, would have had the opportunity to rent out DVD releases before they went on sale to the general public. In return, the studios would receive 40 percent of the rental revenues that Blockbuster earned from DVDs, which was exactly the same percentage they received for VHS rentals. In fact, it was Sumner Redstone, whose Viacom conglomerate then owned Blockbuster, who personally pioneered the revenue-sharing arrangement for video. Only a few years earlier, Redstone had told Lieberfarb, "The studios can't live without a video rental business—we [blockbuster] are your profit." Yet, even though Lieberfarb was only asking that the same deal be extended to DVD, Blockbuster, perhaps not realizing the speed with which the digital revolution would spread, turned him down." In the end, after WB was turned down, WB was successful in showing the DVD selling business was vibrant, and no such deals needed to be made with the big chain rental shops in order to turn home movies into money. The original thought in Hollywood was that people would only buy very very specific movies, but never "collect" them in mass quantities that could essentially replace revenue sharing with rental. The remaining studios quickly copied WB's new model, and Blockbuster was history in the making. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_hol...new_zombie.html

QUOTE (iamshack @ Apr 8, 2013 -> 10:20 AM) Y2H will enjoy that. I did, that was awesome.

QUOTE (Jake @ Apr 8, 2013 -> 07:21 AM) 1st season is good. I got sick of it midway through third season though. Also, Y U NO NETFLIX? Because I never used it. Now that I hasn't been giving Netflix 7$ a month for the last year, I figure I have 84$. I also didn't know it was on Netflix, because Netflix never has anything I actually want to watch. If I keep watching this, I'll pay netflix 7$ for a month and cancel it again after I've watched all of the episodes...but odds are, they don't have them all anyway.

Ok, I just bought season 1 of breaking bad to give it a chance. This better be good.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 5, 2013 -> 06:59 PM) Really? Tell the boss at my job, he'd LOVE to know how to do that I'm talking about congress/presidential powers here, these all-encompassing budgets they pass don't mean anything. I wasn't saying a budget for a specific section of government can be ignored, but there are vast areas where they can be, because they simply vote for additional "emergency funds". This isn't something your boss has the power to do on his own.

Can we stop pretending like these budgets even matter? Whether they have them or not, it's not like they have to actually follow them. There are ALWAYS ways around any kind of budgetary constraints within a government.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Apr 5, 2013 -> 10:55 AM) This is unreal. I see no viable options other than give it to their demands or go to war. Is there truly middle ground here? What can China do to tame their little chihuahua? If it were up to me, I'd send Wayne Brady in to choke a b****. But that's going a bit beyond thermonuclear, and may start an intergalactic war.

QUOTE (Jake @ Apr 5, 2013 -> 11:24 AM) More facebook fun posted above. I KNOW not all conservatives are like this, but damn some of the hot garbage that my conservative friends and relatives post on facebook makes me fearful for what is happening out there. I'm convinced that whatever liberal garbage that exists is not as bad as this. An academic I really respect was telling me all this doom and gloom stuff about SS and Medicare and I took it at face value for a while. Obviously, there is some doom and gloom to Medicare I suppose -- at least there is an argument. I just remember the first time I decided to go look at exactly how SS works and why it is that someone might say it is increasing the deficit or might disappear and I was really just flabbergasted that somebody would come to that conclusion. You might say you don't like the government providing that service, but you can't say it harms the deficit or that it should go insolvent in the near future or ever. This pretty much captures my thinking when it comes to pensions, social security, and/or other benefits.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 5, 2013 -> 09:06 AM) http://www.icij.org/offshore It was originally on one of the left-leaning political sites I go to but now it's on the washington post and this link comes from there. Is this really surprising, though? I thought everyone already knew this.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 5, 2013 -> 08:57 AM) Anyone hear about the leak of financial data on offshore accounts? No, what's this you speak of?