Bernard Madoff, founder and president of a New York firm that invested funds for wealthy individuals, hedge funds and other institutions, was charged with securities fraud. Madoff, who told employees his $50 billion firm was a "giant Ponzi scheme,"

Here's an interesting article from Yahoo! Finance:

Specifically, we're hearing that the smart money KNEW Bernie had to be cheating, because the returns he was generating were impossibly good. Many Wall Streeters suspected the wrong rigged game, though: They thought it was insider trading, not a Ponzi scheme. And here's the best part: That's why they invested with him.

For years and years I've heard people say that [Bernie's] investment performance was too good to be true. The returns were too steady -- like GE earnings under Welch -- and too high given the supposed strategy.

One Madoff investor, himself a legend, told me that Madoff's performance "just doesn't make sense. The numbers can't be straight." Another sophisticated Madoff investor actually went through trade confirms in order to reverse-engineer the strategy and said, "it doesn't add up."

So why did these smart and skeptical investors keep investing? They, like many Madoff investors, assumed Madoff was somehow illegally trading on information from his market-making business for their benefit. They didn't consider the possibility that he was clean on that score but running a good old-fashioned Ponzi scheme.

Looks like Madoff may have committed the largest fraud in history! Genius!

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If you're not Hiro Nakamura, the future is... uncertain.

'Predicting' the future has its moments, and some glimpses of the future can be laser-beam accurate. Then, there’s the other side of the coin... Here’s T3s top 10 tech howlers.

10. "X-rays will prove to be a hoax" – Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, in 1883.

9. Spam will be solved – Bill Gates, 2004.

8. "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys" – Sir William Preece, chief engineer at the Post Office in 1878.

7. Nobody would ever need more than 640KB of memory on their personal computer– Bill Gates in 1981, allegedly.

6. "We stand on the threshold of rocket mail" – US postmaster general Arthur Summerfield in 1959

5. In 1933, after the first flight of the Boeing 247, a plane that could hold ten people, a proud Boeing engineer reportedly said, "There will never be a bigger plane built."

4. TV won't last because people would, "soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night" – Darryl Zanuck in 1946

3. "Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within ten years" – Alex Lewyt, president of the Lewyt Corp vacuum company

2. No need for a computer in the home – Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp in 1977

1. The iPod will never take off – Sir Alan Sugar in 2005

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Hmm... how 'bout this? GM, Chrysler and Ford Motor have been asking for loans to help them survive until 2010, when some cost cuts and labor contract savings kick in that could help the Big Three eventually return to profitability. The companies could get a total of $15 billion in federal loans as soon as Dec. 15!

In a statement, GM said it is plea$ed lawmakers are working on a bill that would give the industry immediate assistance. "Million$ of job$, America'$ manufacturing ba$e and future competitivene$$ hang in the balance and we urge quick pa$$age of thi$ bill," the statement said.

GM and Chrysler have warned that they could soon run out of the cash they need for operations without assistance from the government. Ford has said it has enough cash on hand for now and may not need the federal help but that it would still like the funds to be available as a backstop.

I dunno how this massive bailout is gonna help! I reckon, these automakers had it coming. Back in 2006, GM CEO Rick Wagoner earned $9.3 million in salary and bonus, nearly double what he earned in 2005.

Also, Ford's CEO, Alan Mulally, got $27.8 million in salary and bonus in his first few months on the job, including an $18.5 million signing bonus! They have ample chance to cut cost and make changes but nothing was done. No wonder they are in trouble today! I doubt the bailout is gonna help... comic below sums everything up!

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A new Google program powered by artificial intelligence allows internet users to search web pages 24 hours before they're created, the company said today.

The gDay technology – developed in the company's Sydney engineering centre – uses machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques from a system called MATE, or Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation.



The feature then creates a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from a given point by using the company's index of historic, cached web content and a combination of recurrence plots and "fuzzy measure" analysis.

By accessing web pages before they're actually created, users can view information from the future – including news events, share price movements and sporting results.

To rank these future pages in order of relevance, gDay™ uses a statistical extrapolation of a page’s future PageRank, called SageRank. "

If you wanna see tomorrow's football scores or lotto numbers... this is the greatest google product ever! Click here!

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Finally...! I've purchase my very own domain name... www.ivanchoe.com

heh heh... you will be directed here to this blog if you type the address into your favourite browser. ^_^

Veryy Niiiceee!

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Can you believe it?! 36 degrees celcius one day and 19 degrees the next! Madness! It's been raining the whole day and I must say... it's kinda refreshing!

That's Melbourne for ya!

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On Monday, November 5, 2007 at 12:01 AM, the Writer's Guild of America officially went on strike. Writers for all of your favorite shows left their jobs, picked up signs and took up positions outside the studios and corporate offices on both coasts.

You may be asking yourself why are they on strike? The big reason is a renegotiated contract that includes new technology. As years have passed the contracts that govern the pay-outs of residuals have not been updated and the studios are trying to keep from paying any type of residuals on new technology (e.g. DVDs, internet, downloads..).



With no agreement in place, and no apparent possibility in the near future, the writer's will be walking the line until such a time that serious talks can commence. However, neither side is budging on their stance. What does this mean to you and me, the television fan? Well, in a few weeks the new episodes will run out, perhaps sooner, and we will be left with reruns and probably more game shows and reality shows.



Reality shows — even though a great majority of them are written by professional writers — aren’t under the WGA contract, so networks would quickly add a ton of reality and even newsmagazines to the nighttime lineups.

So... in the near future when the network script stockpile runs out, you might see popular TV series in reality format.

Like Lost: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast. Imagine, each week a survivor from the plane crash will be voted out of the island. All they have to do is complete tasks and challenge assigned to them by The Dharma Initiative.



or Who Wants to be a Heroe? I dunno how that will work, but I reckon it will be like a deathmatch and see which Hero will be the last one standing. heh heh!



Any other suggestions?

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If you have recently crash on planet Earth, Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information.

Recently, Facebook users are being warned that they are putting themselves at serious risk of identity theft, fraud etc etc... Posting just a handful of personal details on the website can give fraudsters all the information they need.

Here's what happened to this dude who got his Facebook password stolen by his pals.

First they changed his profile info;





Then they took out a flyer for him;



and... look at the feedback he got.



Could have been worst. :P

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What's the big deal with global warming? Global warming refers to the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation.

An increase in global temperatures is expected to cause other changes, including sea level rise, increased intensity of extreme weather events, and changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation. Other effects include changes in agricultural yields, glacier retreat, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.


So how did this happen? Water vapour, carbon-dioxide and methane form a natural blanket of air around the Earth. However, the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation has led to a massive increase in the amount of carbon-dioxide released into the atmosphere. We are also releasing larger quantities of other greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide.


The surface of the earth is heated by the sun. As it warms up, it reflects heat back into the atmosphere.


About 70% of the sun's energy is radiated back into space. But some of the infrared radiation is trapped by greenhouse gases, which warm the atmosphere, and reflect heat back down to Earth.


As a result of the greenhouse effect, the Earth is kept warm enough to make life possible. But some scientists say that increased emissions of greenhouse gases are disturbing the balance of this complex system, causing global warming. In the last 100 years, the average global temperature has increased by about 0.4 to 0.8° C.

Evidence? Here's we go... temperature chart over the last century;


... and here's the temperature change;


... drill down chart by northern and southern hemishpere over the same period;



still don't get it?! I bet you will understand this graphical representation...



haha!

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Qantas today unveiled a new interpretation of its flying kangaroo logo.

The logo was adapted to fit the tail of the new A380 aircraft, as well as to reflect the airline's contemporary design focus.

It seems Qantas wasted up to AUD $100 million changing the logo on its fleet for what some described as an inelegant design.



Design agency Hulsbosch has spent 18 months working on the new kangaroo but even before its unveiling the logo has come in for a hammering from design and advertising experts, with one executive likening the new logo to a pterodactyl and the comic kangaroo from the Warner Brothers cartoons of the 1950s.

For me, it looks like the logo hasn't been redesigned at all... just a little bit more aerodynamic that's it. For AUD $100 million, one would expect much more! hmm.. maybe it's time for a career change eh? ;)

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I don't understand.... what's the big deal with Harry Potter! Spoilers, leaks, lawsuits... If you've been keeping up with the news, Harry Potter author JK Rowling said today she was 'staggered' by the publication of US reviews of the final book in the best-selling series, after a tight embargo was broken and books leaked.

A review in the New York Times revealed that at least half a dozen characters die in Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows - though it does not say which - and praises the work as a “monumental, spellbinding epic”.

Publishers tried to minimise the seep of plot information before publication at 0001 on Saturday in Britain (09:01 Saturday AEST) and most countries around the world by imposing a strict embargo.



The review, written from a copy of the book bought in a shop in New York City today, describes the final pages of Harry Potter as “a big-screen, heart-racing, bone-chilling confrontation”.

The row comes days after photographs of what purported to be pages from the final Harry Potter book appeared online.

Bloomsbury has refused to confirm or deny whether the extracts were genuine.

In a further twist to the tale, Scholastic, which is publishing the book in the US, has said it will sue some of its distributors who sent out copies of the book to hundreds of readers before the deadline.

I am not a fan... but c'mon, it's just a book!

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Ahh.. another historical moment in history! Microsoft Vista, the operating system replacement for Windows XP, was launched yesterday... worldwide.



Vista is finally here and it has some great new features. Vista changes the way you access your data and changes the way you find documents, music, videos, pictures and everything else you use a computer for.

The operating system's new graphical look is called Windows Aero and brings Vista's look and feel into the 21st century. Think in terms of clean, clear and very user-friendly. There are lots of 3D effects and modern typefaces for the user. In its own way, it's Microsoft's answer to Apple's OS X. Vista's new interface is very, very slick.

If you've noticed, media everywhere is flooded with 'impartial' write-ups, ads, self-annointed pundits parroting PR bilge like it's news, freebies, podcasts, you name it, and all devoted to trying to convince us to buy Vista. But before you rush out of the door with your wallet... there is an issues with the So-called digital rights management (DRM) technology in Vista which gives Microsoft the ability to lock you out of your computer.



Microsoft has defended its use of DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control, "saying it is only acting on the requests of content rights holders," of which it is of course, a major example. yeah right!

Anyways, old Microsoft habits die hard... here's a pic of a paculiar error with the new oS. It is an error message saying that the operation was completed successfully is just intriguing.



hahaha.. also, it seems that Microsoft Windows Vista has kept the Blue Screen of Death "feature";


Looks like we're gonna have fun with this new OS aren't we?

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