Can Turtles Fly?

Here's a really good video from 2010 of a conversation at Churchill Club between Reed Hastings and Michael Eisner. Michael Eisner is the former CEO of Walt Disney and, although he is a bit past his peak and semi-retired, he is still worth listening for his experienced views.  Reed Hastings is the CEO of Netflix (NFLX) and although considered by some to be the worst CEO of the year (for some strategic blunders), I still think he is one of the top CEOs in Silicon Valley. I am always impressed with Hastings and I think he is sort of like a Bill Gates, in that he is a visionary who understands not just technology but the business environment. A lot of topics are covered in this discussion: technology, media, entrepreneurship, public education, corporate culture, you-name-it. I highly recommend it if you are interested in any of those topics . There are a lot of interesting issues discussed, including, compensation for executives, Netflix's unlimited-vacation policy, how the...

If you pursue the value investing framework, one of the key decisions you have to make is whether you want to be a, what I call, classic value investor ; or a Buffett-Prime investor . In my mind, a classic value investor largely follows an asset-oriented strategy influenced by Benjamin Graham; whereas a Buffett-Prime-type investor follows an earnings-power-oriented strategy, influenced by Charlie Munger, Philip Fisher, and Warren Buffett of the 1970's. Some might say Buffett-Prime-type investing is the same as growth investing but I don't like to call it growth investing. The reason is because there is a whole genre of investing called growth investing that appears to be not based on any value investing principles. There are many growth investors, including some successful ones, who don't pay much attention to financial statements (some may call them medium-term traders). For instance, there are many who will form a bullish or bearish opinion of, say, a stock like Google...

Credit: " Toronto Christmas Market" by dtstuff9. Edited by Sivaram Velauthapillai Location: Distillery District, Toronto, Canada Downloaded from flickr on December 25, 2011.

I have been researching Netflix (NFLX) lately and checked out some Charlie Rose interviews with Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix. One of the interviews is from December 27, 2005 and the other one is from earlier this year. Although his star has faded recently, Reed Hastings is one of the visionaries in Silicon Valley. Not only did he build up Netflix, a DVD rental and video streaming service, but he is also very knowledgeable about technology. If you are interested in technology, media, or education—he has some thoughts on education—check out the 2005 interview. I found the 2005 interview quite insightful and it is quite impressive to see him hit the targets his laid out back then. The recent video from May 4, 2011 is more narrow and is probably best for those who are interested in media, online streaming, and technology. Unfortunately, it seems that Charlie Rose doesn't allow recent content to be embedded so click on this link for the 2011 interview . As usual, Charlie Ros...

(Copyright Parker Brothers. Download source .) (This post was partially written about two months back so some additional details confirming the story have emerged in the last few weeks. The main story remains the same.) Crime never really pays. Sooner or later, criminals get caught — not all the time, of course, but most of the time (in countries with adequate policing, with "decent" culture and legal system). One big reason criminals don't get away is because it's hard to cover the tracks. There are just too many things that can go wrong when trying to mask a crime's evidence. Such is the case with the Japanese electronics company, Olympus. Readers may recall a post from a while back , pointing out how the CEO of Olympus was fired within 2 weeks of being hired. Things looked puzzling at that time and the story kept getting interesting by the minute — assuming you are not a shareholder of Olympus, of course. Over the last month, the fired CEO reveal...

I posted a poll on the right-hand side of this blog at the top. The question is about how well you like the new template. If you typically visit my website for your content, vote. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment. Thanks.

Not sure what caused my prior template to fail all of a sudden but whatever it was, it was probably a good thing. I'm one of those who just sits on ideas and need to be pushed sometimes. I upgraded to a new template called Glory . Thanks to the creator for making this template available for free. The upgrade gave me the opportunity to try out some stuff. I decided to go for a cleaner look. It's still not a truly professional look and I didn't want that since they all look similar. Since this is a personal blog, it allows me to experiment. Hope all the readers like it. It should be easier on the eyes. As usual with any technology upgrade (in this case pretty simple), the older posts may be messed up. Also, if you notice any problems let me know.