Wednesday, October 22, 2008

NEW STOCK MARKET TERMS

CEO --Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO-- Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET -- A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET -- A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.

VALUE INVESTING -- The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO -- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER -- What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR -- Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST -- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT -- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO -- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR -- Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT -- An archaic word no longer in use.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Saudi Ambassador and President Bush

The Saudi Ambassador to the UN has just finished giving a speech, and walks out into the lobby where he meets President Bush.

They shake hands and as they walk the Saudi says, "You know, I have just one question about what I have seen in America ."

President Bush says "Well your Excellency, anything I can do to help you, I will do. The Saudi whispers "My son watches this show 'Star Trek' and in it there are Russians, and Blacks, and Asians, but never any Arabs. He is very upset. He doesn't understand why there are never any Arabs in Star Trek."

President Bush laughs and leans toward the Saudi, and whispers back, "It's because it takes place in the future...."

Monday, October 20, 2008

Three Men Sitting

Three men are sittin' on a bench. One's a Texan wearing a Stetson, one's a
Muslim wearing a turban, and the last an Apache with an eagle feather woven
in his hair.

The Indian is rather glum and says, "Once my people were many, but now we are few."

The Muslim puffs up and says, "Once my people were few, but now we are many millions."

The Texan adjusts his hat, finishes rolling a smoke, leans back and drawls, "That's cause we ain't played cowboys and Muslims yet."

Friday, October 10, 2008

YouTube gives Hulu a runs for its money

Today, YouTube has done something that has previously been unthinkable.  They started offering full-length TV episodes.  (Don't worry.  This is official CBS content, not pirated.)
For a long time now, Google has been trying to make a profit off of YouTube.  They have been also facing legal problems from Viacom because of the pirated content that has become prevalent on YouTube.

And they have done it.  Today, Google started a test run by offering a limited number of full TV episodes from Star Trek, Beverly Hills 90210, and MacGyver.  

Once you open the page, it looks like an ordinary YouTube video page, until you select the "Theater view" tab above the video.  Then the picture widens and looks strangely like Hulu with dark strips on either side to make the video easier to see.
As with Hulu, ads are dispersed throughout.  In many ways, it almost looks like a copy of Hulu taken one step better.

Overall, this is a big step for Google and TV on the web.  TV has been slowing coming to the web and now that Google giving a hand, things will start to move faster.  In the future, I expect to see GoogleTV.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Bad Day at the Roulette Tables

A lady is having a bad day at the roulette tables in 'Vegas. She's down to her last $50. Exasperated, she exclaims, "What rotten luck! What in the world should I do now?" A man standing next to her, trying to calm her down, suggests, "I don't know... why don't you play your age?"

He walks away. Moments later, his attention is grabbed by a great commotion at the roulette table. Maybe she won! He rushes back to the table and pushes his way through the crowd. The lady is lying limp on the floor, with the table operator kneeling over her.

The man is stunned. He asks, "What happened? Is she all right?" The operator replies, "I don't know. She put all her money on 29, and 36 came up. Then she just fainted!"

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Digsby pulls ahead


As people spend more time on the web, they acquire new friends. The problem is that those friends are not connected by a single network. There are those who have MSN accounts, others use Yahoo, maybe some are limited to ICQ or Facebook. As a general rule, in order to communicate, you need to be part of each different system. At least, that used to be the case.

Recently, there have been some moves to unite the systems. Yahoo and MSN users can talk to each others. There have also been several attempts to write an open source program to connect. I have tried several of those programs and best one that I have seen so far is Digsby.

Digsby is a multiprotocol instant messaging application. It can connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat Accounts. Manage multiple conversations with tabbed conversation windows. You can drag tabs out into their own windows for important conversations. Rename contacts with an alias so you don't have to remember buddy names like 'giantsfan123'.

Digsby also helps with your email accounts. You can manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts right from digsby. You can get popup notifications when new email arrives. It will also show a list of recently received emails.

The main problems that I have with Digsby is that it loads an icon into the system tray for every system that you are connected to beside the Digsby icon. Another thing is that Digsby is still in beta, but they are publishing quite often.

If you have friends on many different systems, try Digsby. It has the widest amount of compatabillity and works the best of its competiors.

Download here...