Idola Blogs

Google’s SVP, Operations about the service outage yesterday:

An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam. As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions. We’ve been working hard to make our services ultrafast and “always on,” so it’s especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens. We’re very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we’ll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won’t happen again. All planes are back on schedule now.

via Official Google Blog: This is your pilot speaking. Now, about that holding pattern….

• assessment of SARs filed by the securities and futures industry by FinCEN’s Office of Regulatory Analysis as well as information from staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on how to file SARs, the SEC’s use of SARs and the consequences to regulated institutions for failure to file
• covers the securities industry, Ponzi schemes and mortgage fraud cases

Secretary Timothy F. Geithner following the semi-annual plenary meeting of the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group (BSAAG):

The Bank Secrecy Act continues to be a powerful weapon against fraud, but that weapon is only useful when it is armed with the valuable information that our private sector partners provide.  This partnership has proven its resilience throughout these financial times because our efforts to fight financial crimes are collaborative and because we seek common ground to safeguard the financial system.  I am confident these joint efforts will thrive into the future.

via TG-128: Statement by Secretary Geithner on the Bank Secrecy Act
Advisory Group Plenary Meeting.

Apr 28, 2009 – Two investors in Metavante filed lawsuits on behalf of current investors in shares of Metavante Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: MV), who purchased their shares prior to the proposed takeover of Metavante by Fidelity National Information Services for $2.94 billion in stock, in Milwaukee County Circuit Court against Metavante, its CEO, directors, and others alleging the offered price is too low and the board of directors breached their financial duties in agreeing to the sale under the present conditions.

via Metavante Technologies, Inc. Takeover Investor Lawsuits.

How many times cleaning the disk clutter becomes a task because folder size is not known, this small utility from a sourceforge project allows it.

Download and execute the utility. Close all windows explorer windows.  On a new explorer, right click on the title bar and choose Folder size as a column to display and wallah!!!!

Folder Size for Windows Explorer

Want your Explorer folders to show sizes of folders and files in the same column like this?

via Folder Size for Windows Explorer.

Researchers have suspected for some time that emissions from coal-fired power plants in energy-hungry, rapidly industrializing China and India were a major environmental threat: according to the study, over the past two decades, emissions during the combustion of coal, which contains elemental mercury, have declined in North America and Europe, but “increased substantially” in East Asia and India. But exactly how airborne mercury from Asia has been entering deep ocean fish caught thousands of miles away has not been understood until now.

“Mercury researchers typically look skyward to find a mercury source from the atmosphere due to emissions from land-based combustion facilities,” USGS scientist and coauthor David Krabbenhoft said in a statement. “In this study, however, the pathway of the mercury was a little different. Instead, it appears the recent mercury enrichment of the sampled Pacific Ocean waters is caused by emissions originating from fallout near the Asian coasts. The mercury-enriched waters then enter a long-range eastward transport by large ocean circulation currents.”

In mid-depth ocean, the study showed, decomposing algae interact with mercury to form lethal methylmercury that enters the food chain, eventually contaminating tuna and other food fish.

via Mercury in Fish Predicted To Soar | Environmental Working Group.

Catch the longest running Rodeo in United States at Cowtown Rodeo, New Jersey. The Season begins May 23rd through September 26th every Saturday night at 7:30 PM.

Sharpe (1964) had published his capital asset pricing model (CAPM), which indicates that a portfolio’s expected return will increase with its systematic risk (beta) according to the formula

E(Z_p) = z_f + β[E(Z_m) – z_f]          [1]

That is, a portfolio’s expected return  equals the risk-free rate  plus the portfolio’s beta β multiplied by the expected excess return of the market portfolio . Formula [1] defines the portfolio’s expected return as a linear polynomial of the market expected return.

According to CAPM, portfolios may randomly outperform or underperform the market from one year to the next. Over many years, the random good years will tend to cancel the random bad years, and the portfolio’s long-run performance will fall on the capital market line (if it is optimized under CAPM) or under the capital market line (if it is not)

Jensen was interested in whether mutual fund managers add value over the long-term. Could they through skill, privileged information or intuition outperform the market reasonably consistently, year after year? This was not about having randomly good or bad years, but about having good years with noticeable consistently. The CAPM formula [E(Zp) = zf + ß[E(Zm) – zf]] didn’t accommodate this possibility, so Jensen added a term to it that did:

E(Z_p) = α + z_f + β[E(Z_m) – z_f] [2]

and so alpha, α, was born. This allows for a persistent positive contribution to a portfolio’s expected return due to the manager’s skill.

A frequency distribution of the alphas Jensen estimated for 115 mutual funds based on at least ten years of data for each. The vast majority have estimated alphas that are less than zero. The average fund’s alpha was –.011, or –1.1%. Results are after fees but not including sales loads. Returns, and hence alphas, are with continuous compounding. Reproduced from Jensen(1986).

Jensen’s results lent strong support for the efficient market hypothesis, suggesting that no investment managers have positive alpha.

Alpha has become a symbol. It is a one-word moniker for investment managers’ belief they can outperform the market. Alpha is out-performance, and it is the job of an active manager to produce alpha.

Source: alpha

A design student made a battered old Skoda “disappear” by painting it to merge with the surrounding car park.

Sara Watson, who is studying drawing at the University of Central Lancashire Uclan, took three weeks to transform the car’s appearance.

She created the illusion in the car park outside her studio at Uclan’s Hanover Building in Preston.

via BBC NEWS | England | Lancashire | Art student’s car vanishing act.