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To: Stock Farmer who wrote (53835)	4/8/2003 8:21:39 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

John, after I wrote that signal:noise stuff, I got to thinking [lying awake in the night on and off]. There's a paradoxical problem going on. Buying the shares of QCOM means that one thinks QUALCOMM management can get a good return on the money. Better than any other opportunity. Now that QUALCOMM is in the business of buying their own shares with the profits from their businesses, the situation changes. Not only that, they sold shares on becoming S&P500 listed. So now, they are buying and selling their own shares. They will sell when the shares over too expensive for what they think they can achieve and will buy shares when they think that they can do better than the sellers believe. They also are insiders, knowing details such as exactly what the royalties are, contracts say, and a lot more besides. Nobody can know more than the insiders do on what the company can achieve. So, anybody selling to QUALCOMM is betting that they know better than QUALCOMM management what the company can do. Anyone buying from QUALCOMM is paying too much [in the insiders' opinions]. If QCOM sells more shares, it means they are overpriced. They will need to sell more shares if they are going to run my Q cyberspace monetary system and even if they don't it'll be tempting to sell shares on an opportunistic basis if they see the share price above what they think it should be. QUALCOMM is full of people who know about signal:noise ratios. They are in the best position to price the company. Better even than Uncle Al, KBE, is in a position to price the US$ - economists aren't as mathematically talented as engineers who defined reality in mathematics. Economists always do a bunch of arm-waving and use adjectives. Economists do also make up some economic maths and graphs and stuff to make their US$ signal:noise reductions look scientific and mathematical. But as Alan Green$pan says, it's only by looking backwards that they can know whether there was a bubble. Engineers cannot look backwards to see whether a building will fall over or signal:noise ratio will be good. They have to predict the future, model reality in plans and calculations, then create reality. Who better to run a monetary system where signal:noise management is crucial. Anyway, back to the paradox. If one buys QCOM, one is over-valuing the company because QUALCOMM doesn't think they can meet the buyer's expectations, or they would be doing the buying. If one sells QCOM, and QUALCOMM management is on the other end of the trade, one is undervaluing the company. By buying the company, one is saying that QCOM management does indeed have the talent to manage signal:noise. But if QUALCOMM management is selling the shares, one is by definition paying too much. Okay, I think I've got too much noise:signal going now, so I'll knock off. Since QUALCOMM issues shares to staff, rather than selling them on the open market, the buying of shares is probably not so much of a problem as the selling of shares. If one is buying shares in competition with QUALCOMM, then it's probably good timing. So, one probably shouldn't buy QUALCOMM shares unless the company is also in the market buying them. Which means QUALCOMM will set the market price, because unless they are buying, it's probably a bad bargain for new shareholders. Prices should be allowed to fall until QUALCOMM feels obliged to enter the market using cash which doesn't have anything better to do. Which then leads to the SEC and companies setting the price rather than the 'invisible hand' of a free and liquid market. We have seen for decades and centuries that the invisible hand is not attached to a brain. The signal:noise ratio shows a lack of engineering talent behind the invisible hand. QUALCOMM will manipulate the market to what they see as a good price at which to buy their own shares. Anybody paying more than that is a sucker. If QUALCOMM isn't buying the shares, why on earth should I? Such a negotiation would be: QUALCOMM managers say, "I think I'm worth $15 an hour". The share buyer says, "No way! You are worth way more than that. I insist on paying $30 an hour". The share buyer has little information but QUALCOMM management have all the information. I don't see how the share buyer can more correctly determine the price than the company can. I suppose the answer is that the company only has $3 billion to spend and the daily volume is 10 million shares x $30 = that much every day [more or less, ignoring the Nasdaq double counting stuff]. But if they really get busy with monetizing the company and really do establish a Q, then their talent for improving the signal to noise ratio will be the thing people want to buy. A monetary system ideally has all signal and no noise. The US$ has a lot of noise and is backward looking. Maybe the true talent of the engineers at QUALCOMM is to create a financial empire with all signal and no noise. The free market in their shares does a very bad job. Well, there's some noise for you. Maybe you'll find some signals in it. Mqurice

To: Stock Farmer who wrote (53835)	4/8/2003 8:30:50 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 54805

Re SETI. They looked for 'intelligent' signals. Of course they were looking for the wrong thing. They need to look in the microwave background radiation and separate Gaussian noise into the real thing. Just as CDMA is a bunch of phragmented photons jumbled into a coded mess, which makes no sense without being decoded, the 'intelligent' noise from everywhere is sure to be similarly messed up. What if the universe is full of pulsed monocycles across a broad microwave muddle? On Earth, the claim is that regular licensed spectrum users won't even notice the superwideband Time Domain style signals which will just ever so slightly raise the noise floor. That idea created a lot of noise from the spectrum holders, which raised the noise floor a longggggg way. SETI is obviously looking in the wrong place. Distant intelligent galaxies won't be sending analogue re-runs of I Love Lucy. I hasten to add that I have no idea how SETI is searching. Maybe they are decoding 'random' noise as I write. Mqurice