Categories
Future Science & technology

[401] Of 640K ought to be enough for anybody

I bought a Seagate 160 Gigabytes Barracuda ATA 7200 RPM hard drive for $116 yesterday. The original price was $150 but an instance rebate brought the price down tremendously. The end price should hover around $60 after a mail in rebate that I plan to send out later this week.

160GB for $60 is a bargain I tell you. That is about 60% discount and price per space ratio is less than 30 cent per gig. Usually, the ratio would be more than a dollar per gig.

Despite the excitement of finding a great bargain with a help of a friend, I think I will encounter a possible problem.

On the manual, it says somewhere that my BIOS and OS need to support 48-bit addressing if I want to use more than 137GB. After spending some time on the net researching, I found out that it is related to Bill Gates’ infamous “640K ought to be enough for anybody”.

640K. Yeah. Right.

Anyway, what I do know is that this addressing stuff seems to put a limit on the volume of space that can be made available to the system regardless the physical size of the hard drive. I wonder why do that want to limit it anyway?

I am not sure whether my current system supports 48-bit or 24-bit addressing and I have no idea how to find it out. I honestly however, have not really made a thorough search on the internet about this addressing stuff. Any l33+ out there? Help this poor n00b out will ya?

But man, I did not even use all of my old 40 GB hard drive and now, with this new 160 GB hard drive, I don’t know what I want to do.

200 GB definately sounds like great way to piss RIAA. 200 gigs dude. 200 gigs. Dude, this is better picking my nose, that’s for sure.

Maybe I should start uploading part of myself into my hard drive. Yeah, I’ll do just that!

Categories
Economics

[400] Of the sky is the limit

Yup folks! Three more bucks to $50 per barrel!

And there is no promise for the price to not go pass the $50 mark.

Categories
Economics

[399] of GOOG

GOOG is what Google is known to the investors in New York and everywhere else. And on Reuters:

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Friday the 13th was decision day for investors weighing whether to bid for shares in Google Inc.’s initial public offering. The big question now is, how many of them were feeling lucky on an unlucky day.

Google is probably the initial public offering of the year. Google is the most successful search engine ever; not only it is big, it is profitable. Last Friday was the last day for interested investors to register for the Google’s IPO auction. The price of the offering is expected to be announced today.

What is the most peculiar characteristic of this IPO, at least for me, is the auction itself. Now, auctions perhaps are typical when the issuer of IPO presents the shares to the underwriter. Furthermore, most IPO’s that I have heard of are sold at some predetermined price, if I am not mistaken. Google, through Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston as the lead underwriters, is doing something unconventional. The IPO will be sold to the public, not to the underwriter, using a modified Dutch auction, also known as single-priced auction.

I do not know which part of the method is modified but through my financial economics class, I do know that the winners of the bid will pay the lowest winning yield for the shares. Take note, the lowest yield means the lowest cost to the issuer (borrower of the money). Now, let’s say there are three bidders, A, B and C and there are 40 units issued. All participants make their offers known. A want 20 units and offers 5.0% yield. B wants 20 with an offer of 6.0% yield and C wants 20 with 7.0% yield. C will lose out and both A and B will win the bid. At the same time, both A and B will pay out 6.0% yield. If A were to pay its initial offer, that would make the auction as something known as multiple-price auction.

Regardless of the method of offering used, each Google share is expected to range between $108 and $135. At the same time there are 25 millions shares available, making a possible capitalization at around $3 billions. That is a cool $3 billions.

It will be traded on NASDAQ, the home of the tech bubble. And this is financial history in the making.

And Blogger is part of Google and this site is powered by Blogger. I am proud to be part of it. Hmm…

p/s – I’ve just received an interview request from The Star, Malaysia. I am not really sure the person that sent me the email was referring to ReCom.org or ReMag, but hey, this is going to be fun. And I bet the special branch would take notice too. LOL! I’m flattering myself. Damn me.

Categories
Economics Science & technology Sports

[398] Of update in Enschede

Ajax has just beaten Twente three to two and is currently placed third in the Eredivisie standing. PSV earlier won five against two against Roosendaal and Feyenoord won six to one against De Graafschap.

Ajax managed to take a 2 – 0 lead by halftime. The first goal was scored by Tom de Mul, a rising star in Ajax that was promoted from the youth team earlier this season. Ten minutes later, van der Vaart made it 2 – 0.

In the second half, on the 46th minute, Ibrahimovic scored Ajax’s third goal. But Twente almost managed to catch up with Ajax. Two of their players, Karim Touzani and Blaise N’Kufo scored a goal each. Thank goodness their third goal never came.

Though I am a bit disappointed by Ajax’s low number of goals compared to the other big three teams, I must say I am relieve to see Ajax won.

On other update, Ajax has taken two Argentinian youths on loan with an option to buy them after the loan period ends. I heard that the two Argentinians are exciting.

From the inside, some youth team members have been promoted to the first team. One of course is Tom de Mul of whom scored for Ajax. The other is Daniel de Ridder, said to be the next big thing in Ajax. But we will see. There is still a lot of time for de Ridder.

On the goalie position, the younger Stekelenburg has finally replaced Lobont. Stekelenburg has also been selected into the Dutch national team as the first keeper. The national team is currently under Marco van Basten, an Ajax and a world football legend.

Cronyism eh?

Across the channel in London, Chelsea has just beaten the Red Devils, courtesy of Gudjohnsen’s goal. Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

Soccernet has this to say:

Mourinho seemed relaxed enough to lounge on the Chelsea bench, with his feet up and a wide grin on his face, an expression matched by his boss, Roman Abramovich, in the directors’ box.

I trust, many of us are still grinning. I know I am.

p/s – Holy crap! Somebody is aunctioning B$1 trillion on EBay, currently priced at $46! 46 bucks! Damn! This is getting out of hand.

Categories
Economics Sports

[397] Of the Olympics again!

The Olympics has officially begun!

Fair use. Associated Press pool photo by Ben Curtis of the Aug. 13 Opening Ceremonies fireworks display.

Thank goodness they managed to complete the Olympics Stadium.And, just to show how unpopular Bush’s foreign policy is, according to Wikipedia:

As a reflection of the unpopularity of the American-led War on Iraq, many audience members protested the entrance of the American delegation into the stadium by making a thumbs-down gesture.

Oh well.

p/s – Somebody just auctioned 5000 Blogshares chips on EBay. It is priced at $22.56 now. Damn, that is free money!

If the admins of Blogshares do not do anything, soon, real money will be used for trades on Blogshares. But damn! $22.56 for something that is not even real!