Octopus Overlords

They pretty much come standard for 6 months in a new Ford.

Little Steven's Underground Garage is the only radio station AM/FM/Satellite that I stay on for any length of time that isn't a sports game I'm interested in seeing.

FWIW on the SSD vs HDD discussion, my (relatively small) company is making the switch to all-SSD in our workstations this year. The day that Dell sells nearly solely SSD may be 5+ years away, but the day businesses buy nearly solely SSD in end-user machines may be this year. May not be, but if it's not 2011 or 2012 I'll be surprised.

Zaxxon wrote:FWIW on the SSD vs HDD discussion, my (relatively small) company is making the switch to all-SSD in our workstations this year. The day that Dell sells nearly solely SSD may be 5+ years away, but the day businesses buy nearly solely SSD in end-user machines may be this year. May not be, but if it's not 2011 or 2012 I'll be surprised.

SSD in the workstation, spinning platters in the corporate cloud.

LawBeefaroni wrote:

Zaxxon wrote:FWIW on the SSD vs HDD discussion, my (relatively small) company is making the switch to all-SSD in our workstations this year. The day that Dell sells nearly solely SSD may be 5+ years away, but the day businesses buy nearly solely SSD in end-user machines may be this year. May not be, but if it's not 2011 or 2012 I'll be surprised.

SSD in the workstation, spinning platters in the corporate cloud.

Yep, end-user machines is all I mentioned. Which do you think there are more of?

Zaxxon wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:

Zaxxon wrote:FWIW on the SSD vs HDD discussion, my (relatively small) company is making the switch to all-SSD in our workstations this year. The day that Dell sells nearly solely SSD may be 5+ years away, but the day businesses buy nearly solely SSD in end-user machines may be this year. May not be, but if it's not 2011 or 2012 I'll be surprised.

SSD in the workstation, spinning platters in the corporate cloud.

Yep, end-user machines is all I mentioned. Which do you think there are more of?

I wasn't implying that you made any kind of quantitative judgement. I was just pointing out that the cloud makes workstation SSDs feasable. Our new workstations have 80GB HDDs. It's overkill.

We're not at completely dumb terminals but getting closer. SSDs will help make them more reliable by taking out another moving part.

Got it. That's actually much of our rationale. We don't *want* our end-users storing much data on their machines, so now that 64GB SSDs with good performance are similar in cost to decent HDDs but with a host of benefits, it's a no-brainer. I expect a lot of businesses will make that realization this year.

American (or Western) businesses, at least. But who caters to that shrinking market anymore?

Okay. I sat through a multi-hour technical presentation that was very specific to NAND flash memory. I'm very unclear as to where the boundaries exist for which information I can legally share and which information I need to keep behind my mental firewall, so let me state very clearly: Do Your Own Research. I'm sure Tom's and other sites have information available to the interested.

Anyway, I come away from that meeting with a much more secure feeling for the place of rotating magnetic media in a NAND flash world.

The Meal wrote:

Carpet_pissr wrote:Who knows what the x factor will be when these things REALLY go mainstream, and every Dell desktop you buy except the very bottom line budget model will have an SSD in it (at least as boot drive), and all the players are in the market with their techs.

Based on your research, when do you expect that day to hit?

From what I hear behind closed doors, what you describe is >5 years away.

Pay close attention to the symbol in front of the numeral in my quote. After today's I'd either bold that character or plop down a bigger number after it.

[edit:]And my interest in purchasing a M11X with a SSD drive inside has COMPLETELY dried up.

Interesting, thanks for sharing that, and will keep that in mind. Whatever "that" is.

Slightly unrelated note: I just added an Intel 80GB SSD as a boot/OS drive in my desktop at home to see what all the hoopla is about.

Verdict?: Hoopla deserved, at least from a nerdy computer hardware geek perspective, but even more importantly from a decidedly NON computer geek perspective.

I didn't say anything to the wife after installing to see what she would say if anything. First time she boots up, she comes and finds me and demands to know why I bought a new computer when I just replaced all the parts recently. And holy hell is it fast. The little delays that we barely notice anymore probably, even on the fastest machines, when it comes to opening, closing, browsing, moving, etc. They are no more. It's just instant.

Carpet_pissr wrote:Interesting, thanks for sharing that, and will keep that in mind. Whatever "that" is.

Slightly unrelated note: I just added an Intel 80GB SSD as a boot/OS drive in my desktop at home to see what all the hoopla is about.

Verdict?: Hoopla deserved, at least from a nerdy computer hardware geek perspective, but even more importantly from a decidedly NON computer geek perspective.

I didn't say anything to the wife after installing to see what she would say if anything. First time she boots up, she comes and finds me and demands to know why I bought a new computer when I just replaced all the parts recently. And holy hell is it fast. The little delays that we barely notice anymore probably, even on the fastest machines, when it comes to opening, closing, browsing, moving, etc. They are no more. It's just instant.

Bench test it now.

Do so again in one month.

PLEASE.

The Meal wrote:

Carpet_pissr wrote:Interesting, thanks for sharing that, and will keep that in mind. Whatever "that" is.

Slightly unrelated note: I just added an Intel 80GB SSD as a boot/OS drive in my desktop at home to see what all the hoopla is about.

Verdict?: Hoopla deserved, at least from a nerdy computer hardware geek perspective, but even more importantly from a decidedly NON computer geek perspective.

I didn't say anything to the wife after installing to see what she would say if anything. First time she boots up, she comes and finds me and demands to know why I bought a new computer when I just replaced all the parts recently. And holy hell is it fast. The little delays that we barely notice anymore probably, even on the fastest machines, when it comes to opening, closing, browsing, moving, etc. They are no more. It's just instant.

Bench test it now.

Do so again in one month.

PLEASE.

I know where you are going with that. But every test I have seen shows that even in the "used" state, the SSD (with TRIM support) is still EXPONENTIALLY faster than the fastest HDD out there. That's good enough for me to justify one even at this relatively early stage of the game.

[redacted]

I know too much. But I'm smart enough to not say it out in the open.

You're right that SSD devices are faster (I'll let you put adjectives implying how much faster, though I encourage people to Do Your Own Research) than HDDs, fresh out of the box and down the line after they've been saturated. But the implications of what happens to SSD devices and what the people who want to sell SSD devices would like for the consumers to experience can be Mind-Blowing.

I know too much.

Carpet_pissr wrote:"Sprint Says It Will Launch First WiMax Phone In the Summer"

I'm thinking now might be a great time to buy some Sprint stock.

Risky? hells yes. But I feel it in my bones...there is a double in the near future here.

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/2010 ... hoo_ticker" target="_blank

Last chance to get Sprint for under $5! (imo of course)

Has anyone ever done currency trades here?

I am interested in shorting the Euro vs. Dollar and don't see any option for this in any of my Ameritrade accounts. How does one actually do this? About the closest thing to a no brainer play I have seen in a while (that and silver doubling last year)

Some digging in the help file shows that they offer currency exchange trades using spot prices, but not sure that is what I want. I just want to go long the dollar vs the Euro.

Edit: Oh God. This is complicated. I found where you can do it, but there are so many options, no pun intended, that I'm a little worried about making a mistake here. Jeebus, it would be nice if there was an option that just stated "if you want to go long/short on USD/Euro, put the amount in HERE and CLICK.

Carpet_pissr wrote:Has anyone ever done currency trades here?

I am interested in shorting the Euro vs. Dollar and don't see any option for this in any of my Ameritrade accounts. How does one actually do this? About the closest thing to a no brainer play I have seen in a while (that and silver doubling last year)

Never done it. Pretty sure my Zecco account allows it. It looks like they also offer free forex practice accounts, which might be worth trying. Not something I would jump right in to, especially shorting.

Bought a few UTX Jan '11 75 calls today.

Oooh thanks. I will try that, but I feel strongly enough about this NOW to go ahead and do it. I think to avoid the complexity of actually using options to short the currency, I will just short the Euro ETF (FXE)

That's very cool of them to offer that free to non Zecco account holders btw. I just downloaded and installed with a minimum fuss. Very cool.

Can we rename the investment thread to the speculation thread?

Carpet_pissr wrote:Oooh thanks. I will try that, but I feel strongly enough about this NOW to go ahead and do it. I think to avoid the complexity of actually using options to short the currency, I will just short the Euro ETF (FXE)

I'm not giving advice here -at all- but you do know there are leveraged short ETFs, right?

DRR and EUO are double leveraged short Euro currency ETFs.



EDIT: The advantage here, of course, is that you aren't actually holding a short position. You're long a short ETF.

Ha you beat me to it! I just came across this:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/31129-a ... s-and-etns" target="_blank

MUCH easier!

Just load up long on some inverse Euro ETFs. Sweet.

noxiousdog wrote:Can we rename the investment thread to the speculation thread?

I see the winky smile there, but I would argue that a long Dollar (as crap as it is right now) versus the recently and even crappier Euro is as safe a bet as buying BAC or many other equities that might have been considered blue chips at one time.

I foresee MASS fail in the Euro based on what I have been reading. Greece has been taking the news (and the stock market down with it), but that's just the tip. Portugal is sooo close to the same situation...Spain and Italy not too far behind. I'm typically an optimist too, even in investing (I never short), but the looming ugliness can't be ignored imo.

Best case: Somehow the stronger economies in the EU bail out the failing ones successfully, and IMF loans are somehow avoided. ECB uses this as a learning experience and over the long term, this strengthens the currency by resulting in legislation that avoids similar situations.

Worst case: Looming countries try to pull out of the Euro which boggles the mind to even think about. Or stronger EU country bailouts don't work and PIGS have to get nasty IMF loans. Either case spells short and medium term pain imo, if not downright dissolution of the currency.

Carpet_pissr wrote:I see the winky smile there, but I would argue that a long Dollar (as crap as it is right now) versus the recently and even crappier Euro is as safe a bet as buying BAC or many other equities that might have been considered blue chips at one time.

That may be well and true. But it doesn't make it an investment. In fact, I'm sure when you've done your research, there's plenty of speculations that are likelier to return money than many investments.

noxiousdog wrote:

Carpet_pissr wrote:I see the winky smile there, but I would argue that a long Dollar (as crap as it is right now) versus the recently and even crappier Euro is as safe a bet as buying BAC or many other equities that might have been considered blue chips at one time.

That may be well and true. But it doesn't make it an investment. In fact, I'm sure when you've done your research, there's plenty of speculations that are likelier to return money than many investments.

These days in particular, I would argue the line between speculation and investment is non existent.

However, as opposed to a short term hope in the direction of the currency, I have very strong reasons to believe that this is not some short spasm, but a much longer process of the currency devaluation. So I might not be right tomorrow or even a month from now, but in 2 years, I feel very confident that this is going to be a sound INVESTMENT.

Carpet_pissr wrote:

noxiousdog wrote:

Carpet_pissr wrote:I see the winky smile there, but I would argue that a long Dollar (as crap as it is right now) versus the recently and even crappier Euro is as safe a bet as buying BAC or many other equities that might have been considered blue chips at one time.

That may be well and true. But it doesn't make it an investment. In fact, I'm sure when you've done your research, there's plenty of speculations that are likelier to return money than many investments.

These days in particular, I would argue the line between speculation and investment is non existent.

That's silly. They differ in both motive and content.

In other news, the DOW is down nearly 700?

EDIT: um down another 150 in a few seconds...

noxiousdog wrote:

Carpet_pissr wrote:

noxiousdog wrote:

Carpet_pissr wrote:I see the winky smile there, but I would argue that a long Dollar (as crap as it is right now) versus the recently and even crappier Euro is as safe a bet as buying BAC or many other equities that might have been considered blue chips at one time.

That may be well and true. But it doesn't make it an investment. In fact, I'm sure when you've done your research, there's plenty of speculations that are likelier to return money than many investments.

These days in particular, I would argue the line between speculation and investment is non existent.

That's silly. They differ in both motive and content.

see appended text

Make it 1000.

Carpet_pissr wrote:

noxiousdog wrote:

Carpet_pissr wrote:I see the winky smile there, but I would argue that a long Dollar (as crap as it is right now) versus the recently and even crappier Euro is as safe a bet as buying BAC or many other equities that might have been considered blue chips at one time.

That may be well and true. But it doesn't make it an investment. In fact, I'm sure when you've done your research, there's plenty of speculations that are likelier to return money than many investments.

These days in particular, I would argue the line between speculation and investment is non existent.

However, as opposed to a short term hope in the direction of the currency, I have very strong reasons to believe that this is not some short spasm, but a much longer process of the currency devaluation. So I might not be right tomorrow or even a month from now, but in 2 years, I feel very confident that this is going to be a sound INVESTMENT.

It's still not an investment. Currency doesn't do anything. You're speculating that it will be worth more but it has no production value of it's own.

That doesn't make it bad. It just is. But it's not an investment. At least to my way of thinking. I know the common usage has perverted the meaning, but I don't have to like it

LawBeefaroni wrote:In other news, the DOW is down nearly 700?

EDIT: um down another 150 in a few seconds...

Holy Shiite.

And to think I always poo poo'd the traditional Wall St. sayings like "stay away in May". Huh.

noxiousdog wrote:It's still not an investment. Currency doesn't do anything. You're speculating that it will be worth more but it has no production value of it's own.

That doesn't make it bad. It just is. But it's not an investment. At least to my way of thinking. I know the common usage has perverted the meaning, but I don't have to like it

Semantics.

But even the formal definition of speculation indicates a short term mentality as well as a guess in a particular direction without consideration for underlying fundamentals.

I plan to short this for a looong time, not trying to time anything here (i.e. I won't be trading in and out of the position). I'm making a reasoned transaction based on the newly discovered, weak fundamentals of the Euro as a currency, which I think will have long term negative repercussions.

That was awesome.

And my retirement already took a nosedive yesterday. I guess I'm really going to hate seeing it tomorrow. And this comes right when it finally has reached 2008 levels again (though that includes 2 additional years of contributions)

LawBeefaroni wrote:That was awesome.

What the HELL was that?! Seriously.

I expect that's what the market would do if someone blew up the Statue of Liberty. God that was crazy.

LawBeefaroni wrote:That was awesome.

Interesting:

Just got an alert from CNN saying the plunge was due to the Greece issue, and this just came in from Morningstar:

BREAKING NEWS
Market Plunges, Recovers; Machine Error Suspected
More details to follow.

A friend of mine said the machines kicked in around -480. He's in a trading shop so he was watching it happen.

"The market dropped as much as 9% then recovered to a 3%-4% loss Thursday afternoon. CNBC reported that a bad price or system failure involving Procter & Gamble (PG) may have triggered a sell-off on a day the market was already down on European debt woes. We will continue to report as more details become available.

PG went as low as $22.79. Wow.

Since it's a DOW component, that makes sense.

LawBeefaroni wrote:PG went as low as $22.79. Wow.

Since it's a DOW component, that makes sense.

I wonder if they would honor a buy made at that price if it was found to be a machine error? That would be one hell of a lucky day if you happened to buy at that time!

(although NYSE currently reporting that there was no machine error interestingly! Then WTF was that?)

Carpet_pissr wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:PG went as low as $22.79. Wow.

Since it's a DOW component, that makes sense.

I wonder if they would honor a buy made at that price if it was found to be a machine error? That would be one hell of a lucky day if you happened to buy at that time!

(although NYSE currently reporting that there was no machine error interestingly! Then WTF was that?)

Probably fat fingers at a very large firm. I know they can bust erroneous trades but something that big? No idea.

My strategies are based on asset allocation. So when the market goes berserk like that, my cash position winds up over allocated in a hurry, so was going to take advantage of the situation.

Sadly, I was a few minutes away from picking up something cheap. But it's moved 8% up already from where I wanted it cause I always use limit orders and don't chase.

Rumors are swirling. Someone f'd up big.