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Non-Tech : Auric Goldfinger's Short List -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: who cares? who wrote (8939)	1/8/2002 1:52:47 PM
From: oldirtybastard	Respond to of 19428

yeah, that's what got my attention, it sounds like a circus over there. they also seem to pay way too much attention to their stock price and not enough to their lack of a business. Haven't read their filings yet, but they should be entertaining. Question is where the tender offer will be...can we rely on Vanini and the others to not overpay? -g/ng- does bowling even have to pay to get on tv, lol?

To: who cares? who wrote (8939)	1/11/2002 2:52:20 PM
From: oldirtybastard	Respond to of 19428

looking at MPH's last 10Q from 11/14/01, looks like most of their increase in cash came from accrued liabilities and impaired goodwill...they had $95 million in shrt term investments and $40 miilion in cash and cash equivalents, and no business left. I may just leave it alone, have an offer between the spread to short 1000 shares and its been sitting there for a half hour now

To: who cares? who wrote (8939)	1/22/2002 1:17:49 PM
From: Sir Auric Goldfinger	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 19428

Joe Bob's America: A national eye-dee? By JOE BOB BRIGGS NEW YORK, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- The idea of a National Eye-Dee Card scares the bejabbers out of me. For one thing, it's got a dang computer chip on it. New York City subway cards have computer chips on 'em, too. But here's what people don't know. If you really want to, you can send in a request to the New York City Transit Authority and get a computer printout of exactly where and when that thing was used. I'm already imagining the implications. "Would you care to explain to the jury, Mr. Briggs, why your subway card was used at 2:57 a.m. on the morning of the 17th at turnstile No. 96, 96th Street station, in the general vicinity of Brother Jimmy's Bait Shack, where you have frequently imbibed oyster shooters with companions, when your statement of the 18th states that you were working on spread-sheets all night in the East Village Women's Shelter?" I mean, it's just terrifying. The card they're talking about for national Eye-Dee is the kind of thing Communist Russia called the "domestic passport." Every time you went from one city to another, you had to register with the police or show your passport. (With ours you wouldn't need to register, because an electronic reader at the airport would automatically locate you.) But there was an even more frightening aspect to the Russian domestic passport. In singles bars Russian women would always ask to see it, because it recorded whether you were married or not and how many divorces you had. No wonder those poor devils got all strung out on vodka. But our proposed card would be even more foolproof than Stalin's. The one they're talking about has your thumbprint on it, all your personal information, and an all but INFINITE memory to record where you go and what you do. It's kinda like wearing one of those beepers on your leg when you're under house arrest -- only they haven't caught me yet! Everyone is saying, "Well, if you have nothing to hide, then why would you CARE that the government can track you down and figure out where you've been?" Maybe the answer to that is that I don't care if the GOVERNMENT knows where I' ve been, but this thing threatens the Constitutional right of all Americans to be sneaky in the private sector. What if you spent 1997 hanging out in Rudy's Adult Video? It was just sort of a PHASE you were going through, and yes, you did charge $3,500 on Rudy's Adult Video three-for-the-price-of-two video specials. But you had no idea that when you applied for a job 10 years later at one of those super-high-security Enron- type companies, they would do a "deep background check" tied to your National Eye-Dee Card. "Take a seat, Mr. Wilson. We have a few questions about the ' Nurse Nasty' video series starring Jasmine St. Clair. Is it true that you watched all 34 volumes?" Then there's the specter of multi-million-dollar divorce cases. Divorce lawyers eventually get a look at everything -- credit card receipts, airline tickets, pictures of your dogs, snapshots of the Tahiti vacation with Tiffany. But normally they at LEAST have to hire a private detective to smoke this stuff out. Sooner or later, believe me, some divorce lawyer would get the right to go into that computer chip and see what he could fish out of there. There aren't many people left alive from the Depression years, when the Congress first passed the Social Security Act, but part of the big debate over it was whether it was constitutional to REQUIRE people to have an official number. I can remember old coots in Texas who were ready to go to prison rather than to submit to being numbered by the government. There were preachers who said it was Satan's work, a sign of the end times, when everyone would have the mark of the beast. And look what happened. The old coots were right! After Congress repeatedly said that the Social Security number would ONLY be used to keep track of pension benefits, it was used by every government agency -- including law enforcement -- and every private agency -- including credit card databases that can track you back to the beginning of time -- to make sure you weren't pulling a fast one. Later the same thing happened with drivers licenses. The purpose of a drivers license is class? to DRIVE A CAR. Nothing else. I don't imagine there are people still around who, when getting their license, say, "Now you're not gonna use this information for any other purpose, are you?" Because they already know the answer. (While we're on this subject, I'd like to express my admiration for the state of New Jersey, which doesn't require you to have your picture on your license. They still believe the purpose of the document is to identify you just well enough to verify that you passed your driving test. How quaint.) In other words, we know what they're SAYING about just using the National Eye-Dee Card to track down criminals and people who are evading taxes and stuff like that, but we've got a history here, and it's not pretty. Up until October, we all thought it was illegal to listen in on your phone conversations or snoop into your e-mail or monitor your conversations with your lawyer -- and all THOSE assumptions turned out to be wrong. The reason Americans don't like Eye-Dee cards, Social Security numbers, or anything else that tells the authorities what we're up to is that we don't trust the authorities. We never have and we never will. If you can say one thing about the Constitution, it's a document that keeps screaming out "Don't trust the authorities." We don't trust em because we know they're LAZY, for one thing, so they'll always choose to do things the simplest way they can get away with. Just how much evidence has to build up against you before they say, "Oh, what the hell, let's run this ole boy's computer chip through the main- frame"? They'll do it because it'll be EASY to do it. And three days later, it doesn't matter if they say, "Sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Stephens. By the way, there is nothing illegal about dressing up in women's clothing and renting a suite at the Flamingo in Vegas. We want you to know that that's perfectly fine with us, and we didn't mean to intrude into your private life." We need a Constitutional amendment, I think. Not that the amendments seem to matter anymore, but let's give it a shot. Let's call it the "Right to Be Sneaky" amendment. Who knew that, even in America, we would ever have to apologize for slinking around. -- Joe Bob Briggs writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at joebob@upi.com or through his Web site at joebob-briggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas, 75221.

To: who cares? who wrote (8939)	2/4/2002 1:19:22 PM
From: Sir Auric Goldfinger	Respond to of 19428

Here's Rafi Khan on EUNI (which one should be VERY careful about listening to and whom I do NOT at all endorse): "Background Comments November 14, 2001 By Rafi Khan E Universe, Inc. (symbol EUNI) Price $3.10 Market Cap. $76 million FAST GROWING, HIGHLY PROFITABLE INTERNET GIANT MANY ATTRIBUTES AT A MICRO CAP. VALUATION!! WHICH fast growing, highly profitable Internet Giant: HAD RECORD NET INCOME of $900,000 in the September quarter, which was an impressive 13.4% of revenues. (Microsoft and eBay type profit margins) PROJECTS SEQUENTIAL QUARTERLY PROFIT GROWTH OF 44% in writing from the September 2001 Q to the December 2001 Q and another 38% profit growth from the December 2001 Q to the March 2002 Q HAS A PLETHORA OF NEW PROJECTS that may significantly enhance those already very robust revenue and profit growth numbers. RANKED #6 in the latest week survey by Nielsen?s NetRatings only below AOL Time Warner (AOL),Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) and Lycos (LCOS) HAD FLOWGO RANKED #1 Entertainment Site by Nielsen NetRatings. Flowgo is a flagship website of EUNI. HAD OVER 36 MILLION UNIQUE VISITORS go to its various EUNI websites in October 2001 according to figures from Juniper Media Matrix HAS OVER 40 MILLION HOUSEHOLDS that opt in, want or subscribe to EUNI?s various and numerous daily newsletters or special offers letters. SENDS OUT AN AMAZING ONE BILLION PLUS emails, newsletters, special offers and other compelling content to households that have subscribed to receive that content monthly. HAD FASTEST GROWING INTERNET PROPERTY which was Madblast.com, which grew an amazing 4072% in October 2001. The next fastest growing property grew only 292% (as reported by Juniper Media Matrix) HAD ITS BUSINESS MODEL LAUDED BY THE GARTNER GROUP in a report titled ?Beating the Online Advertising Slump?. EUNI relies almost entirely on a performance based direct marketing and advertising model which has continued to thrive under the current very tough business environment HAS RECEIVED A $5 MILLION CASH BOOST FROM SONY as part of a transaction by which EUNI bought the Sony InfoBeat Internet news and entertainment email service. The cash was very much needed as EUNI has never had the benefit of an IPO or a major capital raising from an Investment Banker. FEATURED IN A MICROSOFT CASE STUDY that highlighted the robust nature and scalability of EUNI?s infrastructure using Microsoft?s NET Servers. MANY ATTRIBUTES, HIGHLY PROFITABLE AND FAST GROWING A LOW PROJECTED P.E RATIO --- THE STORY ON E UNIVERSE IS ABOUT TO DISCOVERED BY PERCEPTIVE INVESTORS KEY COMPONENTS TO E UNIVERSE?S SUCCESS THE GARTNER GROUP praised EUNI?s business model approach and rightly so! Hardly any company doing business on the Internet has such a unique mix of attributes as EUNI. Here are some of the key components that go into making EUNI such a success story: - a) ?Close to Zero? Customer Acquisition Costs Whenever it costs you money, and often a lot of money, to put a new customer on the books or to have a new visitor come to your websites ? that is a business fraught with danger. The more successful you are in getting customers or visitors, the more it costs you and the more you lose or can lose. Time has proven the Amazon, WebMD, PriceLine (and too many more to mention) business models have inherent problems. Even Yahoo and AOL spend hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising. EUNI?s advertising budget on getting new customers or visitors is zero. Typically EUNI will send you a funny Flash such as ?The Taliban Song? or an ?Osama Bin Laden? Flash and encourage you to send it to others. For a popular joke, story, picture, poem, thought or Cartoon Flash this ?referral? or ?viral? marketing approach can lead to millions of people looking at EUNI?s content and the customer acquisition cost is virtually zero. So growth is capital intensive for most of the Top Internet Properties ? but capital free for EUNI. b) Extremely low overheads For EUNI there was no high profile IPO, or top notch Investment Banker touting their stock. The Chairman & CEO, Brad Greenspan, founded the company by backing it into a public shell. His initial annual salary was $50,000 a YEAR. There was no high priced top executives or advertising staff to sustain. The company?s focus was to grow visitors to its sites and develop its daily newsletter, emails and special offer services. Having reached a critical mass EUNI could then hire addition executives as needed that would, typically, contribute immediately to top and/ or bottom line growth. Even now with monthly visitors exceeding 36 million and emails sent out to over 40 million households, EUNI?s monthly burn rate is under $2 million a month. So revenues needed to be generated to turn the company profitable are also at a relatively low number. c) Performance based advertising revenues If a Visa Credit Card Company, a debt consolidator, a mortgage refinancier, a diet program operator etc. values a new customer as being worth $50 and offers to pay EUNI $30 to find that customer on which EUNI makes money ? this clearly is an advertising model that works for both parties and also is a program that may not be affected by the advertising slump faced by the more ?intangible benefit? advertising programs. So whilst many others suffered through the Internet recession and economic downturns, EUNI has not been afflicted with these problems. Indeed the challenge has been to maximize the opportunities afforded by the ever growing critical mass of the EUNI network of websites and newsletters. There is no shortage of Credit Card Companies, Insurance Companies, Magazines Sellers, CD & DVD sellers, Diet Programs, Vitamin Sellers, Dating Companies, Computer Accessory Sellers wanting to use EUNI?s services to generate additional sales and profits. d) Compelling Content EUNI?s rise has been constant and meteoric. You simply cannot have such performance unless you are providing the American public content that is compelling. The results speak for themselves: ? Fastest rising Top 20 U.S Internet property as measured by Nielsen ? Fastest rising Top 20 Global Internet property as measured by Media Matrix ? Fastest growing individual website as measured by Media Matrix (Madblast) ? #1 Entertainment website (Flowgo) as measured by Nielsen Clearly the EUNI formula for ratings and visitors work and there is no reason why the core EUNI team that has been so hugely successful in the past should not continue its success in the future. e) Internet Recession may have been good for EUNI Access to new capital has largely been cut off in recent months for any number of Internet properties. That has meant less competition for EUNI as Internet companies have been forced to close and the wonderful opportunity to buy newsletters and websites at pennies to the dollar to what EUNI and others would have had to pay even just a few months ago. EUNI has been busy over the last 6 months developing and increasing its infrastructure and network at very little cost as others have been forced to abandon potentially exciting projects due to the inability to raise even small amounts of capital. So, in many ways, the economic downturn and Internet recession has been a big benefit to EUNI. f) Macro Trend towards email has been re-invigorated Even before the Anthrax scares in the U.S., there had been a trend to using more and more email. After all a piece of ?junk mail? may cost about 30 cents and a similar content email may cost only 1-2 Cents. After the Anthrax scares, these macro trends away from conventional mail to email may be irrefutable. Arguably EUNI is the premier targeted email marketing company in the world today. And the beauty of EUNI?s emails are that they are sent to households that want, have asked, have subscribed and/or welcome receiving those emails. That may make the EUNI email a lot better for business clients than junk mail that customers are now loathe to open. Business conditions and the outlook for EUNI?s email based initiatives may never have been better. Another attribute of EUNI?s email is that they have a very strong demographic for Women aged 40 plus ? and often these women are the decision making buyers in the house. THE E UNIVERSE EMAIL NEWSLETTERS If you want the latest Hollywood gossip, a new recipe every day, a new joke everyday, special offers on the latest technology items, a new Flash Cartoon daily, or the latest entertainment stories ? EUNI will most probably have a daily newsletter suited for you. In total there are some 20 newsletters that typically are sent daily such as: - GossipFlash ? The latest gossip from Hollywood and elsewhere sent to you in conjunction with National Enquirer to 10 million households. Justsaywow -- The latest funny flash cartoons, stories and jokes that goes out to about 8 million households. InfoBeat Entertainment ? One of the Sony group of newsletters goes to about 4 million households. Intelligent X Technology ? A technology newsletter goes to about 3 million households Gotlaughs ? Focuses on jokes and funny cartoons and goes to 4 million households. THE LATEST NEILSEN NET RATINGS For the week ended November 4, 2001 the Nielsen Net Ratings were as follows: - Rank Property Unique Time Audience Spent (Millions) Mins/Sec 1 AOL/Time Warner 39.3 15.35 2 Yahoo 31.6 26.47 3 MSN 28.9 24.29 4 Microsoft 10.0 5.24 5 Lycos 9.4 7.08 6 eUniverse 7.8 7.13 7 eBay 7.5 38.58 8 Walt Disney 7.3 15.16 9 Excite@ Home 7.2 12.24 10 Google 6.9 8.37 Interesting to note that the time Americans spent on the eUniverse network exceeded the time spent on Microsoft and that is despite the recent launch of Microsoft Windows XP and the Microsoft XBox Also most of these companies have multi billion dollar valuations and a number of them have had turbulent profit performances in 2001. Other than Microsoft (MSFT) and eBay (EBAY) only EUNI has recently had net income which is more than 10% of revenues. In that regard EUNI is in exceptional company indeed --- the next stage for EUNI may very well be an earnings multiple rating that is more in line with EBAY, MSFT and other well regarded stocks. NEW E UNIVERSE PROJECTS Having achieved critical mass, EUNI is poised to launch a number of high margin new business initiatives which may further increase the company?s projected profit whilst EUNI takes minimal capital risk. Mega Lotto Club ? Invites membership at $9.95 a month to participate in 8 Lotto drawings daily for a total of $14million and over 240 Lotto drawings monthly FC Advantage ? Takes an attractive offline secondary medical insurance business and offers those products on the Internet affording EUNI the opportunity of enhanced commission for a prolonged time ? a win/ win situation for both companies. Many other such offline joint ventures are contemplated. Home Security ?Anthrax? Test Kit ? Offering an inexpensive Test Kit to test for Anthrax and other Security Tests in the Home Debt Consolidation & Mortgage ReFi Programs -- Offers the advantage of the recent lower interest rates to make substantial savings on debts and mortgages These new programs are a follow on to the hugely successful All You Can Ink and CupidJunction dating programs that were largely responsible for the sharp rise in September Q revenues and profits. If these new programs have any success similar to the Inkjet and Dating programs, there very well could be major upside earnings surprise from the already robust growth projected by EUNI. OUTLOOK The future outlook for EUNI both in terms of revenues and profits looks super strong. EUNI management, is conservative by nature and yet, has stated in writing that revenues will grow from the $6.7 million in the September Q to $7.8 million in the December Q to $9.0 million in the March 2002 Q. Correspondingly the profits are projected to grow from $900,000 reported in the September Q to $1.3 million in the December Q to $1.8 million in the March 2002 Q. THE NIELSEN RATINGS for EUNI have risen by about a huge 30% in the last 2 months and also EUNI management has been very conservative in assessing the revenue and profit impact of the new programs that are coming on stream. AS SUCH PROFITS OF $2 MILLION FOR THE DECEMBER Q AND $3 MILLION FOR THE MARCH 2002 Q ARE ENTIRELY POSSIBLE AND THE SALE OF JUST A 100,000 HOME ANTHRAX TEST KITS WOULD MAKE EVEN THESE NUMBERS SUPER CONSERVATIVE Now start to annualize $2- $3 million quarterly profits, add grow, couple that with the potential of a 40 million household Internet Giant and the possibilities of a major re-rating for EUNI seem compelling So purchase of EUNI is strongly recommended at current levels The information contained herein is based on sources, which we consider reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. The information contained herein is not a representation, nor is any recommendation made herein based on privileged information. The information is not intended to be, nor should it be relied upon as a complete record or analysis. Neither is it a solicitation of an offer to sell or buy any securities mentioned herein. Any individual concerned with producing this document may have a position in any security discussed in this document or any related security. These securities may be bought and sold notwithstanding any recommendation made in this report"