Does anyone really need to be a billionaire?

[Ray]

Have done that.

What do you mean by true billionaires as opposed to the billionaires who aren't. 'true' billionaires ?

That's very arguable.

[Clare Snyder]

I wonder how long THAT had been on the shelf - they are about as rare as dial phones today - and as foreign to a GenZer

Or side-loads it from their computer to their phone and listens to it. Phones actually make pretty decent MP3 players -and with my IPhone and my OPN hearing aids I don't even need earbuds.

Like a friend who went to the local Parts Source store to buy a pack of fuses for his Acura and they said they don't carry them because they don't sell many - to which he replied something like "you don't sell much corn either, I guess". Even in our relatively large market area there is a LOT that you cannot pick up same day at a store any more - and stuff you need NOW when you need it!

And when they decide to either not print certain materials, or raise the price too high, there is no "local competition" left to take up the slack. Thankfully there is a pretty active "self publishing" segment which is still locally supplied.

[Clare Snyder]

That was to prevent the workers dying if boredom. Had a sign one place I worked saying something to the effect that dying on the job was no longer allowed because it made it too difficult to tell the difference between those who were dead and those who were asleep. I'll have to see if I can find it -- -

[Ray]

In fact Bezos made the real killing by owning so much Amazon stock given how long it took Amazon to make any profit at all.

And with the ebooks published by Amazon no one else gets any cut of the price sells for except the author of the book if its only in ebook form.

But the authors get much more of the wealth created now that the north american publishing business doesn't get that anymore.

And most don't bother with printed books anymore, they use the ebooks instead.

[Ralph Mowery]

Has the CDs paid any interest worth while in years ?

The few times I looked into them , it was hardly worth the gas to ride to the bank to set one up.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I got a couple this year at 2.54%. Better than a saving account.

[rbowman]

Check with some of the authors...

[rbowman]

If there was any theft it was by Seattle Computing who cloned CP/M for the 8086 family.

[rbowman]

No, I mean it's pretty much unreadable. It may compile and function but it is not maintainable.

[rbowman]

Some of ours is pushing that age. I always feel like an archaeologist when I go hunting bugs preserved in amber. Many of them come from 'optimizations' that may have made sense back then. I found one where the programmer did a 'good enough' hypotenuse calculating because he didn't want to include the math library. To his credit it took over 20 years before anyone noticed.

The advent of GPS receivers so people know where things really are has been a pain in the ass at times.

[rbowman]

Some have to move to onion to do so. See the recent history of 8chan.

[Ray]

Don’t need to, it obviously does enrich some of the more successful authors.

[Ralph Mowery]

Are they for 1 year or 5 years ?

If you have to tie up money for 5 years, I would never do that.

Inflation seems to be 2.4% for 2018 and 1.7 % for the last 12 months.

Still the 2.54 % is hardly with the time and gas for me, especially if for 5 years.

From about the time Trump was elected to now, my IRA which is being handled by JP Morgan and mostly what I call mutual funds of my choice is up over 25 %

A couple of stocks I play with on my own which is less than 10% of the IRA have done ok. I did a lot of so called day trading with them. Not every day, but maybe once a month or less on the average. They had a habit of going up and down about one or two dollars every week or so. As they were around 20 dollar stocks, that was a big percentage gain . The cost of the trade over the internet was less than $ 10 each time.

I really blew it in the last month. One I had been trading had not done much in the last 6 months. Sold it at about $ 75 that I had in it, and a few days ago it took a big jump several times and is now just slightly over $ 100.

[rbowman]

I had to read the packaging to make sure what it was. I do have a cassette player that rips tapes to a USB drive but that's specialized.

My phone makes phone calls... End of story. I sideload to the tablets but a 7" tablet isn't something I want to carry around in the gym. I got luck in that the one they had was exactly what I wanted. A player slightly bigger than a 9V battery with a spring clip on the back. I've got a couple of other players but they all are fully packed.

When I bought a Yaris in 2007 it was a new model. It came without a radio so I went to the local audio specialist. So-called. They didn't have a dash kit and were going to kludge something up. I went to the Yaris forum and got the Metra number. They ordered it from one of their distributors. It wasn't in the shipment. They ordered from another source. It wasn't in the shipment.

At that point I ordered the radio, kit, and harness from Amazon. It was on my porch it two days and I installed it. Luckily the Yaris forum also had a photo guide to all the little plastic bits and pieces you had to remove to get to the cutout.

[rbowman]

Not really. I got one at a credit union recently that paid 2.3%. I walk by the place almost every day since it's a block from where I work. It was a place to park money other than my usual bank. The odds are I'll go out of business before the bank but diversity is good, right?

[Ralph Mowery]

Sort of like some bugs in Microsoft . They had one in there caclulator about the time windows 3.11 came out. Went something like if you entered 3.11 and subtracted 3.1 from it, you got 0 instead of .01. That may not be the exact numbers, but should be close.

Took them a long time to own up to it and correct it.

[trader_4]

I would say you're right if they guaranteed to you that they would never change the retirement metrics or benefits. In the private sector, retiring at 55 with a full pension is a rarity. And if competitors aren't offering it, they have lower costs. Things like that are what helped bust Detroit. But I'm betting they never guaranteed it. If I was running it, I would have tried to come up with some transition, so that those nearing retirement are not affected as much, if at all. But that's me and it may make them less than desirable employers, but I don't see how it's stealing. A lot of employees have faired far worse, eg the company goes bust.

[Ed Pawlowski]

These are one year. I was not sure what to do with the money so it was a safe place and would make at least a few bucks. End of term it may go into a different investment.

What I'm not sure about is what do do with some money that I want to keep liquid for easy access. Saving account is near zero. Money market is better, but if the balance drops below $10k there is a $17/month charge. It may only be a month or two a year after paying taxes, insurance, etc balance could drop and quickly for a couple of months wiping out the gains. Just does not seem right to have over 10k in an account and get 19 cents interest.

[trader_4]

That's pure BS. Gates bought what became MS-DOS from Seattle Computer.

Except that you have it wrong. AFAIK MSFT was never sued by Digital Research for "stealing" MS-DOS. DRI was sold and years later the new company sued MSFT for a variety of issues related to how they were licensing and competing in the marketplace, but not for "stealing" the code.

Irrelevant of course. Gates was a better visionary and businessman. Gary Kildall was approached FIRST by IBM. He couldn't reach an agreement with them, refusing to sell CP/M to them outright. So, IBM went looking elsewhere and Gates was willing to sell it to them. Gates then bought an OS similar to CP/M from Seattle computer. If this is stealing then it's done all the time, eg Compaq and all the IBM clone makers, "stole" the PC from IBM. If Kildall believed Seattle Computer or MSFT had stolen anything from him and he had a legitimate case, he would have brought it at the time. He didn't. The rest is sour grapes and revisionist history. I'm sure Kildall wishes he wasn't so pig headed and had made the deal with IBM.

Oh, please. Any more nonsense?

[Ralph Mowery]

My credit union gives a 1 % interest on the money market account. However there is no minimum deposit required. Just $ 5 to keep the account open. Not much of a rate. The CD rates are not much better for less than 2 years. I probably make/save more money by paying the bills on line than mailing them in. The savings is in the few dollars of stamps it would cost to mail.