Like all Internet reviewers, I hate this title because of the strain it puts on the writer just to put the name down on the keyboard. However, it has received a number of reviews. Let’s see some of them:
Intel has several Developer forums per year in the world. In Spring 2008, they went to Shanghai in order to reveal the future of computers, mobile data and processors. Oddly enough, I also was in Shanghai at the same time.
I observed not the forum itself, but people going to the Forum (located in the Shanghai International Convention Center). Some of them were cramed in the Sofitel Jin Jiang Oriental Pudong (Tong Jin Jiang Pudong Hotel). Man! Do they think that the attendees are dumb? Any person (probably identified by his/her westerner/caucasian appearance) staying more than 30 seconds in the lobby would be met by some Intel-appointed people asking “are you here for the Intel forum?” and immediately trying to help you to the shuttles.
This is nice, I suppose, if your lost. But it seems that the Intel people were guessing that any IDF participants would have to be too dumb to see the buses stopped in front of the hotel doors.
Was it an evaluation of the mental capacity of developers or of journalists?
Revver.com, the American video sharing web site, seems to have closed its doors on the Internet. We knew that they had some financial difficulties, but we had learned that Brad Greenspan, co-founder of MySpace, founder of LiveUniverse, had just bought the site out.
There is still to see if Brad Greenspan will re-launch the site, modify it, or abandon it as it happen sometimes after such a buyout.
In the mean time, some of the videos appearing on Roumazeilles.net and hosted on Revver are no longer available. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Actually, this is DRAM manufacturers that have these nightmares. While prices have been regularlyfalling down for months (consumers love it), the financial results of most of the manufacturers are falling through the floor. It has been quite long in the making, but we can expect that there will be some consolidation when some manufacturer close their DRAM activity or sell to the competition within 2008.
Prices may keep plumetting but sales are stabilizing, and this could be the end of it in 2008.
Sometimes, the economy is not faring well, sometime it’s too good. In both cases, it may lead to astonishing bills. I found some cases, I really loved.
The biggest single US dollar bill
This is not even really a bill since it’s more a tool to manage gold exchanges in an economy that was based on gold: a gold certificate. It was never circulated in the public since 1034, and is only visible in museums.
In a country where the economy totally collapsed, the Zimbabwe dollar has no value left: Inflation reached several tens of thousands of percents (much more than what hit the German economy of the 30’s), crushing the mere value of any bill in just days.
As a matter of fact, this 10 million dollar bill does not allow you to pay anything (valued a few euros a few months ago, it’s really worthless now).
Most people did not really notice this bit of information: The United States of America reached a point where 1,6 million Americans are in jail. This is nearly one percent of the 230-million population.
I am starting to believe that this is (maybe not only) a way to manage a significant part of unemployment. When a society has 1% of its people behind bars, this is becoming not only a marginal management of violence but a strategy to economic management of population. One of the first advantages there is that it has a visible impact on unemployment (jailed people do not look for a job).
Has jail become a nation-wide population control system?
You may not have the time and money to go to University lectures. But there are other open options that the Internet is now offering. Many universities and famous institutions provide free online lectures. Let’s browse a few of the best ones I could find:
Collège de France : the most famous French scientific institution has free-access lectures all year long. Most of them are available online too (from Mathematics to Philosophy through Archeology).
Your hard disk drive is a black box in more meanings than one. Wouldn’t it be pleasant to be able to directly visualize its contents? That is the core of the following proposal: an external hard disc drive whose surface is covered by an OLED screen used to display a treemap contents like it’s done by SequoiaView (see the example here showing the contents of a large disc drive containing hundreds of small files and a few bigger masses).
The display is slightly different, but takes advantage of the same principles and gives you a direct perception of the internal status of your storage media. It reminded me (in a more practical way) the slightly silly proposal I saw a few weeks ago, of a USB key chain that would physically inflate as you fill it with data.
As everybody is starting to understand that Blu-Ray won the Hirez battle for the next generation DVD format, the other contender is seeing its products dumped en masse on eBay. If you (still) want to buy a HD-DVD player, it’s your lucky day. Go to eBay auction outfit and you’ll find dozens of players for unbelievable prices.
The only catch (and the main reason): Nobody in their right mind would want to get stuck with HD-DVD technology while its father (Toshiba) is expected to be ready to announce its demise.
In the center of Brussels (near Rogier metro station), Dexia, a French bank opened its new building. 38 levels, 100,000+ LEDs and you get one of the most colourful urban vista in the world. At night.
Total volume of EuroStoxx 50, DAX, FTSE 100 futures
Ratio to total volume
21 Jan
317,600
4,135,100
7.6%
22 Jan
337,000
5,227,000
6.4%
23 Jan
237,100
4,271,600
5.5%
Of course, when a single operator must sell -with no price limit- more than 5% of the total market volume, you can easily imagine that panic spread quite quickly.
Last week was not a quiet river for the world’s Stock Exchange markets. Even if you are not usually in tune with these issues, you could not miss the flow of troubled news: World’s stock markets violently fell in the beginning of last week, leaving most economic and financial observers in very unsure waters. As a matter of fact, while the fog is lifting we start having a clearer view of the quite extraordinary panorama of events, and it links nearly all the significant elements in a global, logical and surprising composite image.
One could be surprised to see all the European stock markets diving suddenly, apparently without any external influence: no bad economic news from the US (the markets were closed for Martin Luther King’s Day and recession was only a lancinating but dull pain).
But in a global financial market like we have today, such a situation cannot be isolated. One of the largest Stock Exchanges in the world going down is a very strong signal for all the others. You may not know exactly why, but you prefer to sell in Shanghai and New York. everybody follows the hint, even if it means that there will be a later correction. Now, things start tumbling down.
In reality the economic situation in the US has been more and more troubling in the recent months. The real estate bubble built mainly on the granting of credits that are essentially doomed from the beginning (sub-primes are just an elegant way to re-finance and present the personal credits for people who are not able to pay them; When it happens locally, it is elegant, when everybody does it, it’s a recipe for nightmares and catastrophe) is blowing out while the American economy is a little soft and slow. In this context, the American consumer is understandably worried and limits its spending. The trouble is forwarded into the real economy: companies sell less, have less income. What was localized in the purely financial world is dripping down into the real world.
In such a context, Stock Markets see several important signal going red: losses on the financial markets, companies having more and more difficulties to sell their goods (the Stock Exchange always tries to forecast what the economic world will be in a few months). If some of the signals are not fully red yet, it’s enough anyway: Everybody goes selling, the markets run down.
An amplification also went from the technical analysis or graphical analysis. Many a trader (and as many trading software programs) concentrate on observing tendencies shown by a graphical representation of Stock Exchange prices. This technique is powerful enough to make relatively good forecasts, and it has been announcing a slow down then a drop of several percents in the following weeks.
Last words: If we remove completely the trigger, there is still a heavy trend linked to all the other factors. But there is still a troubling factor: You can notice that, now that every world’s Stock Exchange market has been hit, New York appears still unblemished (it was closed on the critical day). The Federal Reserve clearly helped protect it, but many experts believe that markets still need a real purge in the form of a still upcoming violent drop…
Canon has been a major manufacturer of photo cameras for many years. Is this worth a museum? I don’t know but they decided that they could not wait for somebody else to build it. Canon opened an online virtual museum of its cameras: the Canon camera museum.
The Camera Hall is a database of historical facts about Canon film cameras, digital cameras, digital camcorders, still video cameras and lenses.
In the Design Hall, rediscover the visual appeal of Canon many products through the years.
The Technology Hall explains the many advanced technologies incorporated into Canon cameras and takes you on a tour through a virtual lens plant.
And the History Hall introduces historical facts about Canon cameras and the technologies that have gone into them.
As the US dollar drops in Stock Markets, there are some unexpected victims. As many other companies whose customers pay in US dollars, many bloggers using advertising services are being paid in US dollars (or in Euros converted from US dollars). While the green bill currency was dropping through the floor, bloggers earnings dropped too because unit prices of ads did not climb as fast.
Some are said to have lost 20% compared to last year.
Previous Entries
Your hard disk drive is a black box in more meanings than one. Wouldn’t it be pleasant to be able to directly visualize its contents? That is the core of the following proposal: an external hard disc drive whose surface is covered by an OLED screen used to display a treemap contents like it’s done by 
As a complement of my previous post about the Stock markets Krach and Société Générale (”
