Harry Newton's In Search of The Perfect Investment
Newton's In Search Of The Perfect Investment. Technology Investor.
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8:30 AM EST, Wednesday, September 26, 2007: The
three most powerful words are "Please help me." The
most powerful word is "NO."
Questioning
invoices is useful: More
and more vendors are following the banks, the cell phone companies and the package
delivery guys and adding spurious charges they didn't tell you about: Fuel taxes.
Internet access charges, government taxes (which don't exist), etc.
Your
job is to root out the charges, question them and say "NO!"
It's a pain checking every invoice. But pretty soon the savings add up
to real money. Most vendors will take the charges out -- if you ask.
ShareSleuth
picks 'em going down. Here's the story: Mark
Cuban funds a site called www.ShareSleuth.com.
The writer of the site called Chris Carey investigates questionable small-company
stocks, usually pointing out their failings. Cuban trades on the findings --
typically by selling short -- before the results of Carey's investigations
are published are the site.
The site has had some notable "successes," including Utek (UTK) and
Xethanol (XNL). Carey does not publish every day. He publishes only when his
extensive research finds something awry and after Cuban, his boss, edits and
approves the copy. But, to save you visiting the site, you can sign up for an
email alerting you to when the site has been changed.
There
is a long story on ShareSleuth in the October issue, page 136 of Wired Magazine,
now on the newsstands -- but not (ironically) on the Internet.

The October issue of Wired Magazine.
Don't
use Microsoft's Office 2007: Excel 2007 --
part of Office 2007 -- is buggy. Here's an example: When you multiply
850 by 77.1, Excel says the answer is 100,000. The
real answer is 65,535 -- and that's the answer you get in Excel 2003 -- the
previous version.
I don't know if
this is the only problem with Excel 2007. I don't have other examples.
I sent this bug
to my friend who's senior at Microsoft. He told me his Excel people are "all
over" it. But he did not say if or when Microsoft might release fix..
And Microsoft's web site makes no mention of the problem.
If a spreadsheet
can't do maths, something is seriously wrong at Microsoft.
I repeat my warnings:
+ Do not use
Office 2007.
+ Do not use
Vista.
Fred Boness writes
the insider rumor among computer techies is that Windows Vista Service Pack
1 (just released) installs Windows XP. (That's a geeky joke.)
Save
as you go along: This morning my PC locked
up -- the first time in months. I don't know why -- perhaps Microsoft read my
words above and sent the devil my way. Suffice, follow my rule. Hit the Save
button every time you change something.
Good
news for airline passengers: No Limit for Waits on Runways.
From today's New York Times:
Months after
thousands of passengers were stranded for hours on airport runways last winter,
airlines still have not agreed on how many hours confined passengers would
have to wait before they can demand to be released from a plane, the Transportation
Departments inspector general has found.
My
favorite new business idea: Pudding
Media, a start-up in San Jose, Calif., is introducing an Internet phone service
today that will be supported by advertising related to what people are talking
about in their calls. The Web-based phone service is similar to Skypes
online service consumers plug a headset and a microphone into their computers,
dial any phone number and chat away. But unlike Internet phone services that
charge by the length of the calls, Pudding Media has free calls.
The trade-off
is that Pudding Media is eavesdropping
on your phone calls in order to display ads on the screen that are related to
the conversation. Voice recognition software monitors the calls, selects ads
based on what it hears and pushes the ads to the subscribers computer
screen while he or she is still talking. A conversation about movies, for example,
will elicit movie reviews and ads for new films.
This
is vulgar, disgusting, but funny. The more
I look at it, the more I can't stop laughing. What will he do to win? Are they
all hoping he'll do it? Is the cartoonist making some deep moral point?

The
world's worst Jewish "joke"
Two Jewish men, Sid and Al, were sitting in a Mexican restaurant.
Sid asked Al, "Are there any people of our faith born and raised in Mexico?"
Al replied, "I
don't know, let's ask our waiter."
When the waiter
came by, Al asked him, "Are there any Mexican Jews?"
The waiter said, "I don't know Senor, I'll ask the cooks."
He returned from
the kitchen in a few minutes and said "No sir, no Mexican Jews."
Al wasn't really
satisfied with that and asked, "Are you absolutely sure?"
The waiter, realizing
he was dealing with dumb "Gringos" gave the expected answer, "I
will check again, Senor!" and went back into the kitchen.
The waiter returned
and said "Senor, the head cook said there is no Mexican Jews."
"Are you
certain?" Al asked once again. "I can't believe there are no Mexican
Jews!"
"Senor, I
ask EVERYONE," replied the exasperated waiter, "All we have is Orange
Jews, Prune Jews, Tomato Jews, and Grape Jews."

This column is about my personal search
for the perfect investment. I don't give investment advice. For that you have
to be registered with regulatory authorities, which I am not. I am a reporter
and an investor. I make my daily column -- Monday through Friday -- freely available
for three reasons: Writing is good for sorting things out in my brain. Second,
the column is research for a book I'm writing called "In Search of the
Perfect Investment." Third, I encourage my readers to send me their
ideas, concerns and experiences. That way we can all learn together. My email
address is .
You can't click on my email address. You have to re-type it . This protects
me from software scanning the Internet for email addresses to spam. I have no
role in choosing the Google ads. Thus I cannot endorse any, though some look
mighty interesting. If you click on a link, Google may send me money. Please
note I'm not suggesting you do. That money, if there is any, may help pay Claire's
law school tuition. Read more about Google AdSense, click
here and here.
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