Month: November 2006

Categories
Fun

More about RedHat

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Last Updated on November 2, 2006 by stlplace

Thought this is funny. The RedHat webmaster must be busy. After Oracle announced the RedHat linux support, now Microsoft joined the party – it announced the partnership with RedHat’s rival, Novell’s SUSE linux. So this is what I saw from RedHat’s web page:

“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”

 — Mohandas Gandhi

For those not from IT industry, “they” refers to Microsoft. Microsoft did all these “ignore” and “laugh” thing. Now “they” are at “fight” stage.  

Categories
China Stocks

Basics for Investment

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Last Updated on November 2, 2006 by stlplace

I happened to see this “Investment 101” from forun web site, a very small (boutique) research firm. Wish I had read it before jump into market 3 years ago. Oh well, I know even if I read it, I would forget it and make the same mistakes. A lot times we have to learn the lesson the hard way.

It’s an interesting story to find this research firm. So I was listening to the conference call of Ninetowns, the stock I bought at its IPO and bought it again today. An analyst from forun called in and talked in English with a heavy Chinese accent. Sometimes when he got stuck, he used Mandarin with strong Hunan accent . The CEO of Ninetowns can not speak English. So they talked in Mandarin. Another SVP of Ninetowns did the translation. There are only two analysts called in for the questions. The other guy Dick Wei from JP Morgan, is also ethnic Chinese. Note JP Morgan was the underwriter of its IPO in Dec 2004.   

Categories
Stocks

Trade of the Day

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Last Updated on November 2, 2006 by stlplace

I sold the remaing Symantec (SYMC) stocks today and I bought an old stock for me: the Ninetown Digital (NINE, recently changed name to Ninetown Internet). Here are my reasoning.

Symantec moved up quite a bit in past serveral months. It reported good earning in Q2, but missed a penny in Q3 due to some weakness in Europe. I think it’s a solid company and may do well in Q4. Note enterprise software companies usually do more sales in Q4 because of end-of-year spending (so is the Wall Street expectation, so don’t expect a big pop). Another reason is Symantec is just too big for me to understand, its main business is from enterprise (storage, security, compliance etc), not just the Norton Anti Virus or Internet Security for individual customers. By the same token, as the world No. 5 software company (by market capital, behind Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Adobe), its stock just does not move too much compared to smaller software companies. I think it’s good for mutual funds or people who just want to get average return without doing much homework.

Continue reading “Trade of the Day”
Categories
Fun

Programmer’s humor

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Last Updated on November 2, 2006 by stlplace

This is a good one. I got this from a programmer friend. Open a new document from Microsoft Word, type in the following:

=rand(100,2)

then hit “enter” or “return”. What did you got?

There are many similar interesting hacks in the software we use daily. I think it’s just a way for programmer to express themselves during their daily boring work 🙂

Categories
Software development

Dumb C++ Mistakes

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Last Updated on May 28, 2009 by stlplace

It seems like I don’t have anything to do with C++ because I have not touched C++ much in this blog. I am a software engineer by trade; programming and debugging is a large part of what I do during the day. I was a little frustrated last two days by a memory problem shown only on UNIX. The program ran fine on Windows, except one or two instances slightly weird results which I tend to ignore. But I could not pass the UNIX test and obviously something is wrong. By looking at the trace back I can tell it’s a memory problem. Memory problem is kind of problem everyone hates. Because it’s usually hard to find the root cause. Dev Partner made the process a little easier because it will show all potential memory overrun and leaks. To my surprise, I made a mistake like the following (very basic C++ mistakes):

char *temp_str = new char[length]; 

for(int ii = 0; ii < length*2; ii++){     // do something with temp_str[ii] } It is a typical memory overrun problem because I only allocate "length" number of char, but I was trying to use "length*2" number of char. It's like use twice the credit limit? But I am still very puzzlled that my program ran on Windows (without Dev Parter) before the fix. No wonder we see "Windows crash" from time to time :-) Seriously, in software development we want the problems being uncovered the earlier, the better. Because we don't want our customer run our program and crash.

Categories
Stocks

Words of Wisdom

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Last Updated on November 1, 2006 by stlplace

Words from Warren Buffett’s interview, mostly regarding his opinion on the markets, the full article is here.

…Common stocks are part of a business. Markets are there to serve you, not to instruct you. You can often find a couple of companies that are out of line. Find one; get rich. Most people think that what the stock does from day to day contains information, but it doesn’t. It isn’t just something that wiggles around. The stock market is the best game in the world. You can take advantage of people who have no morals. High prices inside of a year will typically be 100% of the low price. Businesses don’t change in value that much. That is simply crazy. There are extreme degrees of fluctuation, and Mr. Market will call out the prices. Wait until he is nutty in one direction or the other. Put in a margin of safety. Don’t find a bridge that says no more than 10,000 pounds when you have a 9800 pound vehicle. It isn’t a function of IQ, but receptivity of the mind.

When investing you don’t have to invest in all 10,000 companies available, you just have to find the one that is out of line. Mr. Market is your servant. Mr. Market is your partner and wants to sell the business to you everyday. Some days he is very optimistic and wants a high price, others he is pessimistic and will sell at a low price. You have to use this to your advantage. The market is the greatest game in the world. There is nothing else that can, at times, get this far out of line with reality. For example, land usually only fluctuates within a 15% band. Negotiated transactions are less volatile. Some get this; others don’t. Just keep your wits about you and you can make a lot of money in the market… 

BTW, words from Fortune cookie today, “A new hat will brighten your day give you an updated look”.