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Be very, very careful with expungement. The rules are intricate and vary from state to state. They permit you answer "no" to certain questions, but not all questions. They also prohibit employers from asking some questions. However, that's a game that is very easy for employers to get around...

Yes. Any modern OS uses uncommitted memory as a filesystem buffer cache. "Free" memory is very useful in making your system perform better, particularly if it is IO bound (which, unless you're trying to discover a new prime number, it probably is). The benchmarks I quoted used the default...

Quote from winter: The original question was will more memory help with a heavy processor load. It's very easy to misdiagnose an IO problem as a CPU problem. From what I've seen in this thread it screams IO bound to me. I'm not sure I agree that adding more memory will help with an IO...

Chiguy... I think you had the right impulse to get more memory. I suspect that you are IO bound. Swapping slows down your computer to the speed of your hard drive. Even if you're not swapping, free memory is used as buffer cache and will reduce the number of reads that have to go to disk. In my...

You neglect to mention that this is a 30% increase in their oil price target. That's hardly bearish news for oil. Martin

FYI, you can buy fractional shares at FOLIOfn, www.foliofn.com. You could buy $10 worth of Berkshire Hathaway if you really wanted to. It's also a good way to keep commissions from getting out of hand for odd lot investors. Google's management has indicated that they don't intend to split the...

The Brazilians are very successful producing ethanol from sugar as a transporation fuel. Their total costs are under $1/gallon. Corn is a much less energy efficient feedstock for producing ethanol. The US corn ethanol industry is a product of intense lobbying by ADM. Martin

Do you value a company based on what you hope they might be able to do, or what they have actually demonstrated an ability to do? Other than search-based advertising, what "nook and cranny of the future" has GOOG actually monetized? All the Google buzz and the new widget of the week just...

Our natural gas production is still significantly constrained by damage in the Gulf. In a normal year, demand suprises such as cold weather could be met with spare production capacity. This year, it's not clear whether there is enough capacity to react to abnormal demand. Unlike crude and...

Are you looking for truly automated execution, or a program to backtest strategies, or something to alert you to entry points? If you want automated execution, I hate to discourage you but I would stay away from that as a first programming project. Much as I would also suggest you don't...

Google's internal controls and forecasting are not particularly sophisticated. The rumor in the valley is that last quarter's results pretty much came as a suprise them. They had no idea they were making so much money until they ran the numbers after quarter end. One day the suprise might not...

I'm not. You assert that if rates were higher, deficits would be higher. That is only the case if you assume that government fiscal policy is unresponsive to borrowing costs. Martin

What makes you think that? Governments respond to the same incentives that anyone else does. When borrowing is cheap, borrow more. Martin

Accomodative monetary policy lowers interest rates, hence encouraging high levels of personal and corporate debt. It is hardly a coincidence that the personal savings rate is at record low levels, even going negative for part of the year. Martin

No. You're wrong. It is possible for small traders to systematically, consistently beat the market year in and year out. The key to results like this is the structural advantage of not having much money. Obviously this is not a provable assertion. Any strategy that depends on low volume also...

I agree that active mutual fund managers don't generally earn their keep. The evidence is increasingly that hedge fund managers as a group don't either (as you point out). Of course that doesn't mean that there are no excellent mutual fund managers or excellent hedge fund managers, but they are...

I'm not even sure what your point is, or if you have one. As far as I can tell, all you are saying is that some market participants are smart, some are dumb, and the smart ones make money from the dumb ones. Who can disagree with that? The reason I originally picked on your post was merely...

Well, Xerox makes money. TiVo doesn't. TiVo's mentioned on TV all the time, for the last 5 years. Letterman, Jon Stewart, Friends, Sex and the City, Howard Stern, Oprah, etc. Didn't help the stock price. Sure. I've seen lots of ads for Google employment in Scientific American and the...

That would make it one of the biggest companies in the world, far more valuble than any media company, more valuble than Microsoft is today, much more valuble than Intel, and almost as valuble as GE. In just 5 years. Do you really think that is realistic? Martin

Not always. Consider TiVo. Martin