Archive for February 20th, 2008stoolpigeon writes “The O’Reilly School of Technology is teaming up with Wolfram Research to provide on-line math courses using an AJAX version of Mathematica. O’Reilly has posted an and interview with Scott Gray, the director of OST, that has more details on the program (named Hilbert after David Hilbert) itself as well as the classes they’ll be offering.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. bsdphx writes “OpenSSH developers Damien Miller and Markus Friedl have recently added a nifty feature to make life easier for admins. Now you can easily lock an SSH session into a chroot directory, restrict them to a built-in sftp server and apply these settings per user. And it’s dead simple to do. If you need to grant semi-trusted people on your personal, then you want this bad!” Read more of this story at Slashdot. An anonymous reader writes “When Richard Feynman investigated the Challenger disaster as a member of the Rogers Commission, he issued a scathing report containing brilliant, insightful commentary on the nature of engineering. This short essay relates Feynman’s commentary to modern software development.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. Microsoft has released documentation on their Office binary formats. Before jumping up and down gleefully, those working on related open source efforts, such as OpenOffice, might want to take a very close look at Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise to see if it seems to cover those working on GPL software; some believe it doesn’t. stm2 points us to some good advice from Joel Spolsky to programmers tempted to dig into the spec and create an Excel competitor over a weekend that reads and writes these formats: find an easier way. Joel provides some workarounds that render it possible to make use of these binary files. “[A] normal programmer would conclude that Office’s binary file formats: are deliberately obfuscated; are the product of a demented Borg mind; were created by insanely bad programmers; and are impossible to read or create correctly. You’d be wrong on all four counts.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. Filed under: World wide web, Web services  What if you held a protest and nobody noticed? Unfortunately it happens all the time. And while a group of eBay sellers who are protesting eBay’s new fees are getting some media attention for their week-long boycott, the truth is that it’s hard to findy any real impact on the auction site. The boycott launched on Monday, and according to Fortune Small Business, eBay listings are down just 3%. That might sound like a substantial figure until you realize that it means there are 14 million items listed for auction, down from 14.5 million a few days earlier. Those figures come from third celebration services, while eBay officials tell Fortune that there’s been no noticeable impact at all. And even if there was an impact, would it make any real difference? eBay is still the biggest name in on the internet auctions, and even if the site isn’t the seller’s paradise it once was, it’s still the go-to spot for buyers. So while sellers may be able to stage a one week protest, we’re guessing they’re going to wind up returning to the service soon with no choice but to put up with higher fees. While eBay isn’t the only on the web auction site around, it doesn’t face very serious competition from any other service, so while there’s pressure to increase revenue, there’s little pressure to stay competitive with Amazon Marketplace or other rival services. [via Silicon Alley Insider] dangerz writes “CNN has fired one of its producers because of his personal blog. Chez Paziena, the ex-producer, has stated that he started the blog ‘mostly to pass the time, hone my writing skills, resurrect my voice a little, and keep my mind sharp following the [brain tumor] surgery.’ After a few months, CNN found out about it and ended up letting him go because his ‘name was “attached to some, uh, ‘opinionated’ blog posts” circulating around the web.’” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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2008
 
FeedJournal: Kill a tree and print your RSS feeds like a newspaperPosted by: in ServicesFiled under: World wide web, Web services  Ever wish you could print out your RSS feeds and read them like a newspaper? FeedJournal is a new service that lets you convert RSS feeds into printable PDF files. The layout is very newspaper-like. You can choose the number of columns, and whether or not your paper will include images. Web publishers can also add a widget to their web sites that’ll let visitors view their content as a newspaper-style PDF. There’s something compelling about the newspaper format. For one thing, it can be much faster to read text in short columns because your eyes don’t have to move across the width of your personal screen. On the other hand, why the heck would you want to print out a “newspaper” with a list of feeds that are updated far more frequently than your daily paper? Do you know how much paper and ink that could potentially waste? FeedJournal Developer Jonas Martinsson says that FeedJournal works best for sites with longer articles that you might not want to read while sitting in front of your personal. So he acknowledges that you might not want to print each article from every blog or news site you follow. But most sites that publish long articles don’t include the full story in their RSS feeds, and FeedJournal will only grab the portion of the text included in the feed. Overall, FeedJournal presents a neat trick, but we’re not sure we have the ability to see ourselves using it very often. dtwood writes “Infoworld’s Cringely has an interesting take on the Julius Baer bank trying to silence WikiLeaks.org — and how stunningly stupid they’ve been. ‘But the bank’s solution is so mind-bogglingly stupid, you have to wonder if these guys need help getting their pants on each morning. First, this is exactly the kind of story bloggers and Net-centric journos crave. Big nasty corporation stomps all over plucky public-serving underdog. Who can resist that plot line? Second, the equation Bank Julius Baer = Money Laundering is now firmly cemented in the minds of everyone who has encountered this story, regardless of whether it’s true. Trois: The documents in question, which might have been quickly forgotten alongside the 1.2 million others on the site, are now hotter than the Paris Hilton sex video. Dozens of mirror sites have sprung up, and Cryptome.org and PirateBay have squirreled away copies of the docs for any interested parties. “ Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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02
2008
Peter Lynch looking for a dot-com ‘ten-bagger’Posted by: in Companies Competitive StrategyFiled under: Launches, Competitive strategy
So, what is he doing now? Interestingly enough, he’s an investor in a dot-com startup, Jackpot Rewards, which has raised $16.7 million so far. It’s hard to pigeonhole the company. For example, it is a for-profit entity — yet it plans to contribute 50% of its profits to charitable causes. The site is a place for consumers to get discounts, such as from Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Best Purchase (NYSE: BBY), Nike (NYSE: NKE) and so on. And yes, these seem like the kind of companies Lynch would invest in. Oh, and Jackpot Rewards says it will give away $1 million per week to its members. There is even the possibility of a $100 million prize. OK, so where does Jackpot Rewards gets its own revenues? There’s a $3 weekly fee. Sound kind of looney? Not really. Hey, Lynch is a math maestro. Essentially, the site needs about 150,000 paying users to get to critical mass. So, yes, this could be one of those situations where there really is a “win-win.” Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook
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02
2008
Wal-Mart’s strong international growth a sign of things to comePosted by: in Companies Competitive StrategyFiled under: Products and services, Competitive strategy, Wal-Mart (WMT)
Wal-Mart’s Q4 sales came in showing a 19% international growth rate that pushed those sales to $27 billion for the just completed quarter. At the same time, the retailer’s U.S. sales rose only 5%. Is international becoming the company’s growth engine enjoy it has frequently wanted to happen? This quarter proved it — yes, it has. Wal-Mart’s Asda grocery chain in the UK even showed same-store sales growth in the “mid-single digits” for all of 2007. Wal-Mart indicated that its Asda operation was the fastest growing food retailer in Europe, ahead of competitors Tesco and Sainsbury. Is “Everyday Low Prices” winning over customer groups outside the U.S. now? That was the reason given behind Asda’s growth, as customers seeking out the lowest prices more frequently shopped at Asda. Is this the beginning of the “Wal-Martization” of all its global markets? Commodity and energy prices aren’t doing anything to help, but it’s too early to make that call. Give four quarters of outstanding international growth, and finally, Wal-Mart investors may have something to cheer about. |
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One of history’s greatest investors is Peter Lynch, who managed Fidelity’s Magellan mutual fund from 1977 to 1990. For the most part, he focused on investments that he understood well, such as 
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