Ray Conley, CFA

Madrone

2011-05-28T13:48:00.000-07:00

Flee

2011-02-25T11:28:00.000-08:00

Coupa with Chris

2011-01-18T08:29:00.000-08:00

Is Apple becoming the next Microsoft?

2011-01-11T13:27:00.000-08:00

Getting dirty

2011-01-11T12:21:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack

2011-01-09T12:34:00.000-08:00

2011-01-07T22:02:00.000-08:00

2011-01-07T18:23:00.000-08:00

2011-01-07T18:21:00.000-08:00

2011-01-07T16:12:00.000-08:00

$99 endoscope

2011-01-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

Www.e-h-e.cn

Rotorconcept.com

2011-01-07T15:10:00.000-08:00

Art.casio

2011-01-07T12:11:00.000-08:00

com

2011-01-06T17:48:00.000-08:00

2011-01-06T17:26:00.000-08:00

Remixd

2011-01-06T17:14:00.000-08:00

2011-01-06T16:48:00.000-08:00

Hail Caesar

2011-01-06T16:15:00.000-08:00

Ready to eat

2011-01-06T15:59:00.000-08:00

Icepan Japanese custom ice-cream

2011-01-06T15:56:00.000-08:00

Next kindle display

2011-01-06T14:34:00.000-08:00

Reflective mems

Open source 3d printer

2011-01-06T05:45:00.000-08:00

Canon and Panasonic merge to form new Chinese based company

2011-01-06T04:27:00.000-08:00

Wind turbine for the home

2011-01-06T02:48:00.000-08:00

iPhone enabled toilet ...

2011-01-06T02:39:00.000-08:00

Virtual keyboard for phones

2011-01-06T02:33:00.000-08:00

Sub $2000 thermal imaging

2011-01-06T02:22:00.000-08:00

Look out JimmyJane

2011-01-06T02:13:00.000-08:00

Battery powered credit card

2011-01-06T02:10:00.000-08:00

Citi launching at end of year.

Empty in the middle of the day at sjc

2011-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

Memory prosthesis

2011-01-05T05:32:00.000-08:00

Table top supernova

2011-01-03T01:51:00.000-08:00

More traffic control

2011-01-03T01:47:00.000-08:00

Palo alto's random art disguising traffic light controllers.

Traffic control

2011-01-03T01:43:00.000-08:00

Look out Vegas

2011-01-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

Grand Unified Theory of Physics

2010-03-19T15:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received the three volume, 1727 page, "Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics" by Randell Mills. I successfully replicated Mill's original experiments when I was in grad school at MIT, and have followed his research ever since. It's been fascinating to observe how science progresses at such glacial speeds, especially when the disruptive insights are greatest. For example, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was in the new again today about achieving a new level of energy. What most people don't realize is that the LHC is largely a waste of money. The hypotheses the LHC hopes to test are largely irrelevant in the context of Mill's discoveries. Unlike string theory, which is mostly un-testable math, Mill's theory, which integrates Maxwell's equations with Einstein's field equations (aka relativity), actually gives measurable, testable predictions--and the results have actually worked. No theory can ever be "proven" true, but they can be proven false (see Karl Popper). In Mills' case, there are many testable assertions and the theory has survived testing. The cool part is that the theory opens up whole new possibilities for technology--new energy, new materials, superconductivity, even anti-gravity. Think about the world pre/post electricity--the changes in technology that this will enable will be on a similar scale of magnitude.

Cell Tower Radiation Poisoning of School Children

2009-09-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

A substantial body of research suggests that radio frequency (RF) radiation (the kind emitted by cell towers as they provide "signal" to mobile phones) has harmful health effects on humans and animals, even in amounts well below FCC exposure limits. Surprisingly, the FCC standards for RF emissions are based on thermal effect but the case for non thermal hazards from RFs is substantial. Here are a few examples:

A study presented in the peer-reviewed publication of Germany's environmental medicine society found that the risk of newly developing cancer was three times higher among those patients who had lived during past ten years (1994-2004), within a distance of 400m from a cellular transmitter, in comparison to those who had lived further away. The study indicates a 99% confidence interval that the difference observed was not due to a random statistical effect.

An Israeli study published in the peer-reviewed journal The International Journal of Cancer Prevention also showed an association between increased incidence of cancer and living in proximity to a cell-phone transmitter station. In a two year period, there were 4.15 times more cancer cases in the area of proximity to the cell tower than in the entire population. The authors made a point of noting, "The measured level of RF radiation (power density) in the area was low; far below the current guidelines based on the thermal effects of RF exposure. We suggest, therefore, that the current guidelines be re-evaluated."

The Bioinitiative Working Group, a collaboration of neuroscientists and others studying the effects of electromagnetic radiation from a variety of sources, has taken the position that "current standards are inadequate to control against harm from low-intensity, chronic exposures and that an entirely new, biologically-based standard is needed."

The European Union, which deployed GSM cellular technology on a broad basis long before it was deployed in the US, and thus has been able to observe longer exposures on its population, formally adopted a resolution in April 2009 recommending that GSM antennas be kept a safe distance from schools.

Why would a resolution be needed to keep towers out of schools? Because the cell tower companies prey upon schools that have prime locations and need the money. They also take advantage of the lack of finance and legal resources at most schools so they can get an advantageous contract.

Parents in Cupertino, CA successfully fought a proposal to place a tower at Monte Vista High School, as have many other schools and municipalities throughout the U.S. In 2000, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board of Education adopted a resolution opposing the placement of cellular telecommunications towers on or immediately adjacent to school property until appropriate regulatory standards have been adopted. For a list of other municipalities examining this issue, see http://cloutnow.org/localres/ .

However, their success is even more notable since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 explicitly prohibits municipal governing bodies from saying “no” to cell towers based upon health concerns. See page 117 of the Act (Section 704 amendment). Who was the genius legislator who put something like that into law? In reality, it was more likely instituted by the cellular companies through a lobbying process to provide liability coverage, should the truth eventually emerge. I predict the tort cases from cell tower induced cancer will eclipse the tobacco industry’s damages.

Snow Leopard demand

2009-08-28T09:35:00.001-07:00

I just bought a new copy of Snow Leopard, the latest Apple operating system. The curious thing, is that there was no line at the store. My office is across the street from Apple's flagship store on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Doors opened at 9am. There were 3 people waiting outside. When I walked in at 9:09 am, I was the only person in the store who was buying a copy.

This might not seem odd, unless you've bee working across the street from the Apple Store for the past six years. I've seen every queue out the door for the iPhone, the new iPhone, the new MacBook, Leopard, etc. Most times, people are camping outside the store a day or two in advance, and by opening time, the line is literally around the block. With the latest iPhone, the line persisted for several DAYS. That's why today's complete lack of a line (demand) struck me as surprising.

"No Short" List--only hurts small individual investors

2008-10-02T08:37:00.000-07:00

The new ban on short selling financial stocks has not only broken the integrity of the financial markets, it really only impacts the small, individual investors. If you were a large hedge fund who wanted to short a financial stock, it can still be done by selling short a futures contract on the S&P 500, and simultaneously going long 499 stocks in the index--excluding the stock to be shorted. The net position is a synthetic short on the targeted stock.

Why does this hurt the small, individual investors relative to the big guys? Because the commissions on buying 499 stocks adds up relative to the gain from shorting one stock--if you are right. The bigger funds are likely going to be short more than one stock and they are making much large investments, so the transaction costs are a much lower fraction of the amount invested.

Will Bush Give the Order to Invade Iran?

2008-06-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

According a June 13, 2008 document published by the UN Security Council, Iran has restarted the construction of an IR-40 heavy water reactor. Such a reactor is necessary to generate plutonium. Making plutonium is necessary for creating a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on one of Iran’s missiles. (Uranium bombs are big an heavy, plutonium bombs are compact).

The week before this report was published, Bush met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. After the meeting, Olmert had the following things to say, “We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. I left with a lot less question marks [than I had entered with] regarding the means, the timetable restrictions and America's resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on the matter before the end of his term in the White House” …."The Iranian problem requires urgent attention, and I see no reason to delay this just because there will be a new President in the White House seven and a half months from now."

One thing worth pointing out, since this is rarely mentioned, is the location of Iran relative to Afghanistan and Iraq—it’s directly between the two countries. Said another way, Iran is positioned directly between two territories that are fully occupied by the United States armed forces.

What are the chances that the US will have their forces deployed on both sides of Iran again in the next 50 to 100 years if we pull out of the current conflict now? Now imagine you were running military strategy in the Pentagon. Changes are you would have a point of view that Iran is a long term threat since they don’t like us and they are strategically located near most of the world’s major oil fields. You’d then look at the current placement of US armed forces and then checked the polls to see that Obama is highly favored in the election to win based on a promise to pull out the troops. If you had a strategy to spread democracy in the Middle East and secure US interests (ie oil), and you had Iran thumbing their nose at UN resolutions to stop working on Nuclear weapons, what are the chances you’d recommend a military strike against Iran while Bush is still in power? How hard is this politically? Consider the situation in Iraq before we invaded. In that case, there was no evidence of WMDs and Hussein was even saying that they didn’t have WMDs. Despite lack of evidence or admission, we invaded anyway. Contrast that to today, were there is both evidence and self admission of a nuclear program.

For all our sakes, I hope that this scenario is obvious to the leadership in Iran and they would recognize the inevitable logic that they are about to be attacked, and choose a diplomatic solution before it’s too late.

Auctions on eBay: A Dying Breed: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

2008-06-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

Auctions on eBay: A Dying Breed: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Given that I plugged eBay a while back for having Microsoft like economics, I've elicited a lot of feedback from folks. While eBay had the chance to be the next Microsoft, I fear their management will go down in history as killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Instead of executing on international growth and expanding the platform with new innovations, eBay has grown through continued price gouging of their core customers. They have, in fact, behaved like most economists fear a monopolist would.
However, we don't need the government to fix things with anti-trust lawsuits. Free markets are taking care of the problem, as competitors capitalize on the opportunity created when eBay prices at the marginal point of indifference. Had eBay left prices alone, they would never have been exposed to such risks, but greed appears to have gotten the better of wisdom.

CDN Discussion Video

2008-05-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

For the past 10 years, a lot of my investing work has been in the area of content delivery networks. It’s cool to see that they are now enabling video distribution over the internet, and even cooler that there’s now a video I can post where I’m talking about this stuff. The link below is taken from the Streaming Media East Conference where we discussed Wall Street's view on the CDN industry.

Taxes and Politics

2008-01-30T15:33:00.000-08:00

The following is from an email I got recently, and it (I assume) is quoted from David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D. Professor of Economics University of Georgia. It's a great anecdote that highlights how conflict is created from the process of change....

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth wo uld pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20." Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six me n - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings). The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28% savings). The eighth now pa id $9 instead of $12 (25% savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20 declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"

"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible

Tax Free, For Profit Corporation Idea

2007-12-05T15:35:00.000-08:00

At the Renaissance Weekend this past Labor Day, I proposed the creation of an "F Corporation" as an alternative corporate entity to the traditional "S Corp", "C Corp", and 5013c non profits. Several people asked me to post this idea, especially given the political fireworks around the elections. This isn't intended to be political, but I'd welcome criticisms to be posted on the blog.

This "F Corporation" would be Free of federal taxation, but would be allowed to operate for profit. The catch is that upon incorporation, and for any share issuances thereafter, the US Treasury receives 35% of the equity.
Why this could make things better:
The Directors and Officers of a corporation have a fiduciary duty to benefit shareholders. This is a real, legal obligation. That obligation requires that Directors and Officers take action to maximize the cash flow from the business that ends up in the hands of the shareholders. One way this obligation is met is by avoiding payment to other stakeholders in the corporation--in particular the tax authority--since that stakeholder provides no direct benefit to corporate interests.
A significant amount of inefficiency exists because of this lack of alignment of interests between the government and the shareholders, as evidenced by the existence of an entire industry for corporate tax accounting and consulting.
Over time, the shares held by the US Treasury generate cash flow in two ways: first, through the payment of corporate dividends, in the same way that other shareholders receive dividends; and second, through the cash payment for shares when a corporation is acquired.
If tax payments were retained within a corporation, that capital could be reinvested and grown at a rate equal to the return on equity, less dividends. In the time period from 1802 through 1998, a dollar invested in Treasury bills—the effective return on tax receipts, would have grown by a factor of 3,847 while a dollar invested in large cap equities would have returned 9,856,849 times. (Source: Pioneering Portfolio Management, Swensen, page 61). Few people appreciate the magnitude of compounded returns over long periods of time. Compounding our national wealth in such a way could easily erase a federal debt that is otherwise insurmountable. Existing corporations could elect to irreversibly convert into “F Corporations.” This strategy leverages one of the United States greatest assets—efficient, well developed capital markets.
Argument against: What about the other stakeholders, like employees and the environment? Government taxation of corporations allows these interests to be represented by #1 diverting cash flows directly to the government for allocation and #2 changing corporate behavior through implementation of tax incentives and penalties.
Counter argument: The cash flow to the government from the equity interest is significantly higher than from direct taxation for 3 reasons: 1) the elimination of loss from tax avoidance and deferral strategies 2) the compounded returns gained from corporate reinvestment of capital, 3) the increase in corporate profitability due to the increase in ability to make decisions solely based upon profitability uncompromised by the considerations of tax implications. This increase in ultimate tax revenue to the government, by growing the pie, will give other stakeholders more capital for their needs. Moreover, legislators can still influence corporate actions through non-tax oriented laws. A good example of a law which changed corporate behavior without a tax motivation is Sarbanes Oxley.

The Psychology of Making Money

2007-11-20T10:05:00.000-08:00

http://beta.personalityzone.com/view/blog/psychology-and-making-money.html
I posted the article below as a guest author at PersonalityZone.com, a startup that I've recently funded. Personalityzone is a pretty cool, because it allows content to be customized based upon personality type.
-------------------------

The goal of investing is to accumulate wealth.

However, the practice of investing is an exercise in cultivating self awareness. Knowing your own personality type and your how this effects your investing behavior can make the difference between sustained success and flaming out as you pursue your financial goals.

What does psychology have to do with making money? In short, almost everything. Most investing advice begins with something that tells you how to think about something. Changing your thinking requires an awareness of not only how you currently think, but an ability to be self aware, in the moment, to recognize unproductive thought patterns. Investing also requires mastery of the animal instincts—fight or flight—and their emotional manifestations—fear and greed. The emotions can have a strong impact on the outcome of otherwise objective, analytical judgment. Understanding how emotions color judgment can not only help you avoid cognitive errors, but also allow you to capitalize on such errors when they are made by others.

Through evolution, our brains are wired at the core (the amygdala to be exact) to respond rapidly to threats and opportunities. The amygdala triggers an emotional override of the rational brain because reflexes respond much faster than the slow process of cognition. Recognizing this mechanism and delaying a decision until the emotions settle and there is time for contemplation distinguishes the rational investor from the trader.

It is interesting that the amygdala also has a central role in memory processing. It ensures that memories associated with pain and pleasure are disproportionally burned into long term memory. This was an advantageous evolutionary adaptation when we needed to remember where the saber tooth tiger lived or where to locate food or a mate. However, this feature is a maladaptation when the brain is used to invest. It causes us to remember the painful loss on a bad investment far more than the steady, unexciting returns generated across the rest of the portfolio. In fact, psychological studies have proven that one dollar of financial loss is equivalent to three dollars of gain. Such asymmetry in psychological response to a quantitative event can create inefficiency in asset prices in times of crisis. Fortunately, we have the benefit of computers and historical datasets that represent a much better history of the facts than we can remember. However, it is incumbent on the investor to objectively look at the data and not bias it with their emotionally colored memories.

Recognizing the mistakes that our brain may create in the investment process is the first step in transcending its limitations. While the brain may not change in its physical form, we can reprogram it through the effort of conscious thought. With such mindfulness in practice, the rational investor can gain an advantage for accumulating wealth by recognizing opportunities that others do not. Being centered is the secret to buying low and selling high.

Signs the Dollar is near the bottom...for now

2007-11-20T09:44:00.000-08:00

Gisele Bündchen is said to be keen to avoid the US currency because of uncertainty over its strength.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7078612.stm
When nonsense like this gets press, it raises the likelihood that the trend is likely played out.

Wiki Mind Map --UI for Wikipedia

2007-09-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

I’ve found Wikipedia.org to be an extremely useful research tool. However, I’ve found something even better:

http://www.wikimindmap.org/

This site will create a “mind map” of a Wikipedia topic. The value of this map is that it provides a visual representation of the topics that are adjacently related to your primary search phrase. This reduces the amount of time it takes to find what you were actually looking for. It also increases the chance you will notice a related and relevant topic that you were not anticipating.

The Earth is Expanding

2007-07-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

The following video makes a case for the idea that the diameter of the Earth is expanding. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjgidAICoQI&mode=related&search . What's not mentined in the video, is the observed evidence that supports such a theory--the slowing of the Earth's rotational rate, which is observed to be decelerating at about 2 milliseconds per day per century --

http://geology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://maia.usno.navy.mil/eo/leapsec.html

The deceleration of the Earth's rotational speed is caused by the conversation of angular momentum--mass stays the same, diameter increases, so rotational velocity must decrease.

Given how much the diameter has increased from dinosaur days, the cross-sectional area of the Earth as viewed from the sun would have increased significantly. This increase in thermal flux would result in an increase in the temperature of the Earth, all things being equal. This change in thermal flux over time may help explain a lot of open ended questions about the history of the Earth's climate.

Sun/Opteron 4x cheaper than Bluegene

2006-11-27T11:29:00.000-08:00

Simon Bullen's Weblog : Weblog
Nice comparison of supercomputing performance. Sun is 4x more cost effective than IBM's bluegene, plus you have ongoing savings in the maintenance. It looks like the difference is driven by the difference in number of processors, which could be attributed to the parallel intensity of the test program. However, it does raise some interesting questions about the economics of grid computing.

MSFT sticks a fork in OpenOffice

2006-11-22T09:59:00.000-08:00

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog : Licensing the 2007 Microsoft Office User Interface: "There's only one limitation: if you are building a program which directly competes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access (the Microsoft applications with the new UI), you can't obtain the royalty-free license."

I wonder if the DOJ will take issue with this? So much for Office embracing open standards.

Ballmer on Novell, Linux and patents

2006-11-17T09:41:00.000-08:00

Ballmer on Novell, Linux and patents: "Linux comes from the community -- the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders."

EETimes.com - UMC claims silicon frequency record of 192 GHz

2006-02-21T15:21:00.000-08:00

EETimes.com - UMC claims silicon frequency record of 192 GHz
Most folks don't appreciate the advances of Moore's Law beyond the increase in their computer's performance. However, this recent achievement of a 192 GHz chip funded by Darpa dollars has the promise of advancing sensing technology at a very fundamental level. The key intuition is that sensors detect electromagnetic radiation--x-rays, ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, and microwaves are all examples. The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelenght. The shorter the wavelength, the smaller the thing you can resolve, or sense. Thus, faster chips let you see smaller things. At 192 GHZ, this chip should provide a new level of sensing functionality and new applications that were previously impossible to do.

US Troops In Iran Now

2006-01-13T17:50:00.000-08:00

Democracy Now! | Seymour Hersh: U.S. Conducting Covert Operations in Iran For Possible Military Strike
I almost lost a bet this year--a bet that I was hoping that I'd loose. In late 2003, I made a bet with a few friends that we'd have US troops in Iran before the end of 2005. When we got back from New Years, It looked like I owed folks lunch. However, given the above link, it looks like I might be in the money....We will have to wait a little while longer for confirmation, but it looks like Pentagon troops are already in Iran scoping out targets.

Net Sense: Skype might help eBay extend its 10-year-long monopoly - Internet Services - Internet - Opinion

2005-11-09T10:04:00.000-08:00

Net Sense: Skype might help eBay extend its 10-year-long monopoly - Internet Services - Internet - Opinion This was the article leading up to my interview with CBS Marketwatch.

eBay and Skype logic

2005-10-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

Why did eBay pay billions for Skype? Because it was a great deal. Here's why:

The most expensive elements of putting together a telecommunications network are 1) capital investment for infrastructure 2) customer acquisition costs and 3) a billing system. Now let's consider each of these elements for Skype under the eBay umbrella:

Skype customers use their own computer an internet connection to make calls, so there is essentially zero capital investment required to create the network. Nice. eBay is great at identifying projects with high return on very little capital.

Skype ID's look a lot like eBay ID's --in fact they are essentailly the same. If you have an eBay ID, you already entered the data you essentially need to have a Skype account--thus, eBay is one mass emailing away from establishing the largest telecom network in the world---at NO COST to eBay. Very nice.

Skype users can use Paypal for their bill payment. Convenient that eBay owns Paypal--maybe thats how eBay became aware of Skype in the first place--the guys at the paypal division gave Meg a call, and said, "Check out the guys at Skype, because their Paypal billings are going through the roof". Now that they are one big family, Paypal becomes the deFacto billing system for this new global telecommunications service---at ZERO COST since it has already been built and integrated. Does it get any better than this?

In fact it does, because aside from the value of the business itself, eBay gets the derivative benefit of now connecting it's users for free via voice. Voice communications build trust more easily than email. Trust it the basis for the eBay economy. Skype will further enhance the value of the eBay network and increase already impenetrable barriers to entry. They already have Skype Me buttons you can add to your website--or your eBay listing.

MIT Media Lab: Reality Mining

2005-07-25T17:20:00.000-07:00

MIT Media Lab: Reality Mining The Reality Mining project at MIT uses the cell phones of students and Faculty to track their behavior and then predict their future behavior. They claim that it's accurate in predicting someone's next move 85% of the time. This is pretty poor performance. If I know the MIT student is in the lab, there's a 100% chance of correctly predicting their next activity will be to go to their dorm room. Similarly, if they are in the dorm, there's a 100% chance that they are going back to the lab. I'm guessing they had a bad sample set, and that 30% of the students were from Harvard and they had a 50/50 chance of predicting if they would show up at lab versus sleep in, or if they would go to a bar after lab or take the bus to Wellsley.

Psychology of Intelligence Analysis

2005-07-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

Psychology of Intelligence Analysis Wow! Online presentation of a book used by the CIA on Intelligence Analysis. Big focus upon how our brains are wired to make mistakes.

Del.icio.us - Complete Tool Collection

2005-07-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

Quick Online Tips: Absolutely Del.icio.us - Complete Tool Collection: "kmarks manager. It allows you to easily post sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others. RSS feed"

Slashdot | Mac OS X Gaining Ground In Corporate Environs

2005-07-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

Slashdot | Mac OS X Gaining Ground In Corporate Environs Apple's strategy is working. the best way to unseat microsoft is to get more developers working on their platform. By basing OS X on Unix, they've captured the Linux community and have done just that. The money is in the enterprise, and now the numbers are starting to show it. Folks have been so focused upon desktop Linux as an idea without realizing that it already existed--it's called Tiger/Panther by Apple.

The Forgotten Technology

2005-07-21T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Forgotten Technology OMG! This guy has clearly nailed a simple explanation for how the pyramids were built. What blows my mind is the combination of the solution's obvious simplicity with the fact that it's been thousands of years before anyone re-discovered the idea. How many other "obvious" ideas are right before our eyes that we don't see, yet have the capacity to fundamentally change our capabilites and the world?

EBay's 2nd-qtr profit soars 53 percent - Yahoo! News

2005-07-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

EBay's 2nd-qtr profit soars 53 percent - Yahoo! News Let me start by saying, eBay is the largest position in my personal portfolio. I hold it in such esteem because the market currently does not know how to value this company. How should the market value eBay? While one can analyze the current financial metrics in detail, the primary driver of eBay’s valuation is the “terminal value” approximation for the cash flows created beyond the two year time period forecasted by most analysts. Analysts depend upon comparables for approximating the terminal multiple. Unfortunately, there are few comparable business models to the unique nature of eBay’s business.

eBay’s unique combination of seller and buyer ratings create a high switching cost for the users of its liquid market place. Moreover, the barriers to entry continue to rise as the business expands—something reflected in its continuous rise in gross margin. The business is not capital intensive, so free cash flow margins are very high. eBay’s primary customers are consumers and small businesses. It not only controls the platform for its services (the market place), but it leverages that control to expand into other services like eBay Stores, PayPal and Half.com. Finally, eBay is the undisputed leader of online auctions.

After listing these business model attributes, one might notice it sounds a lot like Microsoft. However, I have never seen anyone use Microsoft as a proxy for a comparable valuation analysis. Of course, this is in part due to the fact that Microsoft is at a very different point in its maturity relative to eBay. However, at some point in the past, Microsoft was the size of eBay. As such it might be instructive to consider Microsoft’s valuation multiples at the time to determine two things: 1) would the multiples square with eBay’s multiples today and 2) how accurately did the market forecast the long term cash flows that were ultimately realized. Following this line of reasoning, I found Microsoft generated strikingly similar financial performance from 1985 to 1993 (FY) relative to eBay’s 1997 through 2005. The revenue is nearly the same in absolute dollars during each of the last five years of this time series comparison.

One of the similarities in growth rates could be related to the similarities in the underlying customer base (consumers and small businesses) and the rate at which this market segment adopts technology. Another similarity could be attributed to the speed at which a standard spreads and the associated rents that a monopolistic provider can capture over time. Whatever the reason, the growth rates and absolute revenue numbers are very similar. It is notable that the analyst community has consistently underestimated eBay’s growth rate (the same can be said for Microsoft in the past). In both cases, the estimation error in forecasting could be attributed to the dependence upon “comparables” that were not really comparable. Comparing Microsoft’s growth to other software companies at the time would cause an analyst to consistently underestimate results. The same can be said of eBay when compared to other Internet companies.

The similarity in revenue leads to the next logical question—how do margins compare? To compare apples to apples, I’ve taken eBay’s margins from 1997 through 2005 and compared them to Microsoft’s margins from 1985 to 1993. Given the similarity in revenue during those respective time periods, comparing margins should be a fair exercise. If I knew how to post a chart I would, but suffice to say, these metrics are very close to each other near the end of the time series comparison.

Given the similarities in business models, it is not surprising that every element of the P&L between the two companies are similar. What’s is surprising, however, is that eBay’s gross margin has been higher than Microsoft’s for some time, and its other metrics are on track to meet or exceed as well. Is it possible that eBay could be a better business than Microsoft?

The sustainable monopoly position of Microsoft was not clear in 1991. Competitive offerings from IBM and even Apple kept the markets guessing as to who would win the war for standardizing the operating system. In contrast, most recognize that eBay has defeated Yahoo and Amazon’s efforts to create competitive online auctions. While Google has the potential to compete for some share of the small business online market, Google does not provide an auction marketplace that is competitive to eBay’s platform.

There are a few reasons to believe that eBay should trade at a premium to Microsoft now and in the future.

In the long run, eBay’s margins could be greater than Microsoft’s. For example, Microsoft will invests billions in R&D to develop the next generation operating system and technologies to extend into other markets like video games, voice recognition, and home entertainment. In contrast, eBay does not have to innovate its platform because the value comes not from the features offered by the platform, but the liquidity of the market place it supports. eBay investment dollars fund expansion into different markets like used cars or trading cards, but the expense required to develop the software for those markets is trivial relative to the cost of developing a new software application like Microsoft Office or Windows XP.

eBay’s revenue growth could exceed Microsoft’s in the long run. eBay’s revenue growth rises with the economic activity of its users since it charges on a per transaction basis. This model efficiently captures the consumer surplus created by the platform. In contrast, Microsoft fails to capture a significant amount of the consumer surplus it creates. As an example, the analyst who uses Excel every day to model a billion dollar portfolio pays the same price for the software as the student who uses Excel once a month to keep track of their MP3 music collection. Moreover, eBay has multiple sources of growth that do not require it to stray from it’s core platform and service, including international markets, verticals such as Motors, Sports and Consumer Electronics, category expansion, and extensions of PayPal. In 15 years eBay could be the global distribution environment for retailers and manufacturers.

While a case can be made for why eBay is the next Microsoft, there are plenty of counterpoints that highlight the risk of such as position. First, Microsoft benefited from several exogenous factors that had nothing to do with the merits of Microsoft’s model. In particular, the decision to base Windows upon an Intel platform looked smart in hindsight. However, they were fortunate that Intel outpaced IBM, Sun, and DEC to dominate the market for CPU’s. Second, the failures of Claris (WordPerfect), Lotus (123 spreadsheet), and Corel (Quattro spreadsheet) were due in part to Microsoft’s aggressive strategy, but each had their own idiosyncratic execution failures that collectively contributed to Microsoft’s dominance of the office application market in addition to the operating system market. It was only after the release of Windows 95 and the introduction of MS Office that the integration of the office applications with the operating system began to give Microsoft and unfair advantage. Both companies have strong management teams and aggressive cultures.

Only time will tell whether or not eBay will be the next Microsoft, but it is well positioned to achieve such a potential. The business has high barriers to entry, enjoying a virtual monopoly in its market. It delivers value to the consumer and small business market on a global basis. eBay enjoys extraordinary revenue growth and high margins with low capital requirements. Finally, it controls the proprietary platform that delivers its value directly to the customer without dependency upon distributors or other intermediaries.

del.icio.us noise filter

2005-07-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

del.icio.us/lightray I'm a little late to the game, but del.icio.us is the coolest web service I've found in a long time. It hold the promise of solving the "filter" problem for information overload. If you are reading this blog, then chances are you also read stuff that's of interest to me. bookmark your sites in del.icio.us and let me know your user name so I can link to your feed.

WSJ on eBay--clueless

2005-06-10T06:39:00.000-07:00

WSJ.com - EBay Agrees to Acquire Shopping.com: "The following excerpt was from the WSJ on the eBay acquisition 'The acquisition is eBay's latest effort to reignite its growth, particularly in mature markets such as the U.S. and Germany.'

The authors had the data needed to understand the real reason for the acquitition when they said, 'Shopping.com, for example, relies on Google to place advertisements on its site. Those ads accounted for 44% of the Brisbane, Calif., company's revenue of $28.9 million in the first quarter, according to the company's quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. EBay officials declined to address the future of the relationship between Shopping.com and Google, which also declined to comment.' BUT THEY MISSED THE POINT. eBay is Google's largest customer, as they buy ads on Google to redirect traffic to their own auctions. Shopping.com competes with eBay for SUPPLY of words on Google. This competition drives up the price of words on Google, reducing the ROI on marketing spend for both companies. By acquiring Shopping.com, eBay will be able to reduce their marketing spend ($$ to Google) by paying less for ad words because they can integrate Shopping.com's demand rather than compete with it in an acution. eBay bought Shopping.com to reduce their cost and improve margins--the rationale for the acquisition was not motivated by growth.

The Wall Street analysts missed the point too, as the subsequent quotes in the article point out 'There appears to be a substantial amount of interest from buyers and sellers away from eBay,' said Derek Brown, an analyst at Pacific Growth Equities. 'It seems to be a way for eBay to reach a new pool of potential buyers and sellers.'

If the price of Google ad words goes down, Google's revenue growth rate will slow. Given the time it will take eBay to integrate the Shopping.com acquisition, look for this to happen around the time eBay's margins begin to expand late this year."

CNN.com - Sex offenders get Viagra paid for by Medicaid - May 23, 2005

2005-05-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

CNN.com - Sex offenders get Viagra paid for by Medicaid - May 23, 2005: "This was just too wacky to not post. It's a good thing the breaucrat responsible for this is working for Medicaid rather than the DoD, otherwise, we'd be using foreign aid to subsidize weapon purchases for alQu'eda...oh, wait, that was a different breaucrat"

Today in History

2005-05-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

Building Process Improvement into IT Operation

2005-04-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

shun1015: Building Process Improvement into IT Operation Great Blog of a META research report that is actually comming to pass

podscope - I spoke too soon

2005-04-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

podscope - your're listening. we're searching. Well, it looks like Podscope is taking a wack at the search engine for podcasts concept, but it's pretty ineffective so far.

iPodder.org , blogging without a keyboard

2005-04-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

iPodder.org : Unlike most of my early adopter friends, it wasn't until Feb. that I bought my first Ipod--a 30 gig Photo iPod. At first, I thought I'd use it at the gym. I haven't been to the gym since I got it (so much for the new years resolution), but I've been using my iPod every day--in the car, and walking down the street to Starbucks. I use the iPod to listen to audio books that I downloaded from the iTunes store--not music as I would have expected. While I'm blessed with an 8 minute commute, I'm managed to consume three books in the past 2 months this way--three books I never had the time to read. This is important, because listening to a book is much slower than reading. However, I cant read while driving, and carrying a book to starbucks just doesn't happen.

As I reflected upon the new value that the iPod brought to my otherwise wasted time, I ran across iPodder.org and discoverd "podcasting". While Blogging is profoundly huge in its emerging impact on society, I think podcasting might be even bigger. Why? Because more people listen to the radio than read the newspaper. More people will end up getting a podcast feed via RSS to their portable mp3 player than people who really have the time to spend reading blogs like this. Finally, content producers will have an easier time cranking out audio content than trying to compose the written word--remember its much easier talking to your friends than writing a letter to them, at least for most people.

If after contemplating this potential and you figure out a slick idea for using voice recognition to drive a podcast search engine, let me know and we can talk about VC funding terms.

Dell quits 'white box' PC biz

2005-03-17T10:01:00.000-08:00

Dell quits 'white box' PC biz | The Register Looks to me like Dell is eating it's seed corn. The 'white box' market for Dell was a great way to take share in the reseller market away from competition and achieve price discrimination on a commodity product. Why would Dell change strategy?--because they need a new source of profit growth and there's nowhere else to go. Nice for the short term, but bad for the long term prospects of profit growth.

Wait to see if Apple jumps on this opportunity to start supplying 'white box' G5 X-servers.

Yahoo! News - Leaking Gravity May Explain Cosmic Puzzle

2005-02-28T18:02:00.000-08:00

Leaking Gravity May Explain Cosmic Puzzle Here's a great example of really smart people wasting valuable brain cycles. For over 3 years, there's been a clear explanation for the dark matter anomaly published by Randell Mills but it's obvious simplicity eludes erudite physicists. Dark matter is simply hydrogen emitting from different quantum levels than people would expect. There's no such thing as leaking gravity. However, if you get suckered into believing string theory and it's claims of an 11 dimensional relaity, anything's possible with enough math and assumptions that can't be tested.

HP Feature Story: Eliminating the Need for Transistors: HP researchers are reinventing the computer at the molecular scale (February 2005)

2005-02-02T15:38:00.000-08:00

ObsoletingTransistors HP has now demonstrated a working crossbar latch at the nano scale. Something tells me that Carly's not going to focus on the opportunity to transform HP into the Intel of the next generation.

Azul Systems: Products & Solutions

2005-01-11T10:21:00.000-08:00

Azul Systems: Products & Solutions I've got gigs of storage and megs of RAM, but one CPU. Is the new multi-core vector of CPU development the new tipping point that will drive the new metric in computing to be kiloCPUs? Will the CPU unit of measure be the last generation of Pentium before Intel went multi-core? It looks like Azul might have an early lead in a new paridigm in this computing trend.

2004-12-30T13:27:00.000-08:00

: "Semantic disagreements cause the large majority of arguments and political issues" This is a cool site that explores the role of semantics, language, and the source of misunderstanding. I love the author's quote: “How can we agree on 'what is fair' until we can agree on 'what fair is'?”--Alexander Rohde

Guenter Albrecht-Buehler, PhD

2004-12-30T09:45:00.000-08:00

Guenter Albrecht-Buehler, PhD: "Wireless optical networking between Mitochondria and and centrosomes" Maverick research reveals that the organelles inside cells may communicate with each other by emitting and detecting infrared light. This implies that optical connections are acting as the "nerve" pathways inside cells. If so, it creates the foundation for a revolution in biological computing technology.

Tsunami Adds to Belief in Animals' 'Sixth Sense'

2004-12-30T07:59:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! News - Tsunami Adds to Belief in Animals' 'Sixth Sense' How is it possible that there are no dead animals in Sri Lanka after the Tsunami? Is there any current scientific hypothesis that can explain why animals are able to sense the onset of natural disasters? Growing up on a farm, I observed that the animals would anticipate bad thunderstorms, but I attributed that to changes in barometric pressure. Earthquakes are different.

Natural Gas, Oil Occur Naturally

2004-12-07T11:11:00.000-08:00

Natural Gas, Oil Occur Naturally: "Another thing is that oil, consistently, the world over, contains a large concentration of the natural gas helium, which is totally chemically unconnected to biology. There is no biological material that could have attracted it or produced it. " Very interesting article related to my earlier post. A friend at an oil company pointed this site out to me. It's somewhat consistent with the earlier observation.

Uranium--source of oil?

2004-12-06T16:36:00.000-08:00

I saw recently (I think in the San Jose Mercury News) that a "maverick" geologist is doing some experiemnts to determine if the core of the earth is made of uranium. Not being a geologist, this seems logical, as the heaviest things float to the bottom--everything below the crust of the earth is liquid, and the center of the earth is "the bottom" and uranium is the heaviest element. Seems logical.
However, as with most erroneous memes in science, people have long thought that the earth's core was made of iron--at least that's what I recall from high school science class. I'd bet that assumption arose from the observation that the earth has a magnetic field. Never mind that spinning conductors also generate magnetic fields, and that the earth is spinning and that molten lava is probably a decent conductor too.
I guess the maveric theory claims that the uranium at the core is reacting in a fission proces that doesn't reach enough critical mass to blow the earth to bits, but instead works like most of our existing nuclear reactors--it heats the surrounding liquid--we obsere this every once in a while when a volcano blows.
If this theory is true, that means that there are lots of atomic particles flying out of this process at the core of the earth. Namely, lots of hydrogen and helium are getting produced. Has anyone every asked why we still even have helium floating around after several billions of years? You'd have figured it would have all floaated into space by now, unless it was being continuously generated.
What's interesting to contemplate is the process of how the hydrogen and helium make it from the core through the crust (they are light, and float to the top. There's lots of pressure down there, so the light gasses get forced through the crust.
As hot hydrogen gets forced through the crust, it will react with things--hydrogen is quite reactive. What happens when high pressure, hot hydrogen encounters organic deposits deep in the crust from eons past? It makes hydrocarbons. Oil is made of hyrocarbons. Petroleum engineers have often been puzzled by wells that continue to produce oil decades longer than was originally estimated. It's as if the oil were being "generated" from somewhere. I'm guessing that the hydrogen from the core is the source of this generation process.
We've been stuck thinking forever that the sun is the only source of continuous energy for our planet. What if we've also got a nuclear reactor in the core as well? If so, those oil wells are not really depleting assets, but may actually be growing their production.

Kenneth S. Deffeyes � Hubbert Peak of Oil Production

2004-12-06T13:56:00.000-08:00

Kenneth S. Deffeyes � Hubbert Peak of Oil Production: What will happen when Oil production lags demand? Prices will continue to go up. Here's a controversial book on the topic that claims that we are at the peak.

WebRing--Evolutionary Biology

2004-11-15T22:07:00.000-08:00

WebRing: hub I was following a link from "The Lucifer Principle" by Howard Bloom and ran across this novel list of web sites that cover various aspects of Evolutionary Biology, Paleoanthropology, and the like. It's a good collection of links for the subject matter. BTW, read "The Lucifer Principle"--if you haven't read the book, don't hold onto any point of view you may have on the forces in history too tightly.

Free Statistical Software and Resources

2004-11-12T10:46:00.000-08:00

The Impoverished Social Scientist's Guide to Free Statistical Software and Resources This is a page full of links to statistical analysis software packages that are free.

Fantasy Blog Share Market

2004-10-27T16:57:00.000-07:00

BlogShares - Fantasy Blog Share Market This is the best idea I've seen yet for creating a leveraged model (ie lots of people working for free) that can keep track of blogs and identify the most popular ones. The site creates a "game" where people "invest" in different blog sites. The investment grows proportionally with the growth in links to the blogs they invest in. The site gives a rank order list of the most "valuable" blogs based upon links and also ranks the top "blog pickers".

128 bit storage limit

2004-10-19T12:26:00.000-07:00

Jeff Bonwick's Weblog: "proof that 128 bit storage is really boiling the ocean"

Fractional Quantum State Hydrogen

2004-10-15T11:02:00.000-07:00

Water bath calorimetric study of excess heat generation in ``resonant transfer'' plasmas Randell Mills theory of classical quantum mechanics predicted that the hydrogen electron can exist at energy states below the n=1 ground state. This publication is the first time the "estabished" scientific community has allowed publication of the experiemental results that back up the theory.

About three years ago, I visited Mills' lab and saw an operating device as described in this paper. When I was a grad student at MIT in 1994, I was successful in replicating some of the experiemental results described here. While it's hard to believe on paper, I can say from first hand experience, the phenomenon is for real.

blinkx

2004-10-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

blinkx I tried the X1 client search engine and was impressed, but the $100 price tag was too hard to swallow. Glad I waited--Blinkx is a generation ahead, it's free, and it combines web search with realtime desktop search. Everyone should have this on their machine.

The Wealth of Nations

2004-10-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Cool link that published the whole text of Adam Smith's landmark contribution to economics. Infinitely cheaper than buying it on Amazon.

The Gripe Line Weblog by Ed Foster

2004-09-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

The Gripe Line Weblog by Ed Foster: "Crystal charges to email reports" Wow, sounds like BOBJ is stepping across the line to increase revenues. While some reporting vendors are trying to stimulate report usage across the organizaion, the recent Crystal licensing strategy will likely stifle adoption.

Sun's fighting chance

2004-09-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

Sun's fighting chance: Excellent article on Sun's strategy to attack Red Hat. The next move will be Microsoft's claim that Linux contains some Windows code....I'm guessing that MSFT got a nice deal from Sun on their UNIX license to parallel the indemnification offered by Novell to Linux users. 10 years from now, folks will look back at this as the time when Linux crossed the tipping point to dominate the OS landscape and the incumbents became another chapter for Clayton Christensen.

Scaling Laws in the Functional Content of Genomes: Fundamental Constants of Evolution?

2004-09-17T16:31:00.000-07:00

Scaling Laws in the Functional Content of Genomes: Fundamental Constants of Evolution?: "there is in fact a large array of genomic features that show power law distributions." This is a very cool observation about the structure of natural information systems.

DeepChip Homepage

2004-09-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

DeepChip Homepage: This is the best survey of real customer opinions on the relative strength of DRC tools in the EDA market that I've seen.

Journal of Rampant Speculation

2004-09-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

Journal of Rampant Speculation:
Very cool idea for breaking the "peer-review" bottleneck in science that inhibits discontinuous innovation.

MJM Engineering Co -- Cryogenic Cooling

2004-09-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

MJM Engineering Co -- Cryogenic Cooling: "supercool your chips"
For the extreme gaming system, you can multiply the speed of your computer by attaching a cryrogenic cooler. I talked to one guy who got a 4x increase in chip speed by cooling his pentium to liquid nitrogen temperatures.

Nouse--Nose-Steered Web Surfing System

2004-09-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - Inventor Develops Nose-Steered Web Surfing System
This would be a killer app for laptops--the current replacements for mice in mobile computing are poor at best. This new technology holds a lot of promise for improving the human interface in mobile computing.

Skype

2004-09-13T18:07:00.000-07:00

Skype
Now that Skype offers software for your PDA phone, you can walk into a WiFi hotspot and make a call to anywhere in the world for FREE. Of course, this assumes that your phone is 802.11 enables, which is rare and even more unlikely, the person you want to call on another continent is also a Skype user. Of course, you can still save money by using their discounted service to call internationally to a real land line. However, give this a couple years when most phones will have 802.11 and hotspots are more ubiquituous--what will the cell phone companies do for revenue then?

Spammers embrace email authentication | The Register

2004-09-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

Spammers embrace email authentication The Register: "long as spammers comply with the protocol by not spoofing the sender address, their messages will not be stopped by SPF, which "

The only way the spam problem will get solved is when there is a cost associated with sending email. It's a classic "tragedy of the commons" problem from economic theory. Great Britain experience the same problem with their postal system 200 years ago when advertisers got the idea of using the printing press to do mass mailings--back in those days, the receiver of the mail paid for the postage. It became a big problem and almost killed the postal system until they invented stamps. The invention of stamps allowed senders to be charged for the mail. We need the electronic version of stamps to solve the spam problem. The great part is that normal people would probably never see the cost of the postage, as they send less than they receive--thus the cost of postage could be offset by the revenue from postage for normal people, while the spammer/advertisers end up paying for the system since they send more than they receive.

Oasis provides respite from GDSII

2004-09-02T16:25:00.000-07:00

SEMI's Oasis provides respite from GDSII

The biggest challenge for Moore's Law to continue is the ability to link the chip design process with the manufacturing design. Right now it cannot be effectively done because of the GDSII standard. Unfortunately it doesn't look like it is in any of the EDA vendors interest to adopt an open standard, as it would accelerate competitor for platforms they currently control.

Intel Updates Third-Quarter Business Expectations

2004-09-02T15:59:00.000-07:00

Intel Updates Third-Quarter Business Expectations

Intel guided their revenue for the quarter down due to a global slowdown in consumer demand relative to expectations. The important point to note, is that they are still posting strong growth--there's a difference between slowing growth and negative growth. Semiconductor growth follows GDP, and GDP is still growing steadily. While we may be near the "top of the cycle", the market did not over heat, so it's unlikely to crash like it did in 2000. This reduction in volatility should actually make the prospects for the industry more favorable. Of course, the market only looks quarter to quarter and will discount Intel's stock for the short term change despite the long term benefit that will likely result.

First Posting

2004-09-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

This is the first post on the Techbuzz weblog. This will be a collection of novel weblinks and observations that I've made doing analysis of the technology market place.