Ever felt like you needed a drink?

Well, I didn't. That is, until a couple of weeks ago when I finished what may have been considered a brief hazing period if we were pledging to join a fraternity. It was two straight weeks of coding day and night (evening), weekday and weekend, workday and holiday. It was a meaningful, courteous, well-supported haze. Then, we had a party. Then, we had a holiday. Finally, we started working for real, and this really should pre-date my post entitled C++.

The point of this isn't about working, but really drinking and how little of it I do and how the only time I felt like it I was too tired and by myself (adding a last minute feature to our project). Well, this last Saturday, I felt like it was alright to want to have a legal recreational drink in a social environment to celebrate the one year anniversary of the time my friend brought a civil sampling of beers for my 21st birthday. In the end, we didn't end up at a bar and I hadn't brought it up. Maybe it was the organizer of the gathering's aversion to drinking, or maybe it was my own newness to the practice.

That isn't to say it didn't go well. We set out to visit the Cathedrals of Consumer Electronics along Fifth Avenue in NYC but were side-tracked by the promise of free ice skating then by the marble enclosed Dining Concourse of Grand Central Terminal. We skipped the Nintendo Store (as one of us had recently visited it just several hours prior) to try the Sony and Nokia stores. When we made it to the Sony store, the employees were cleaning up behind locked glass through which we beheld several PS3s that were free and open to the air (and presumably not overheated). We kept our spirits high as we pressed on and made it to the Nokia store just as it was closing. One employee stayed behind while we were dazzled by the array of well-crafted phones and asked whether we needed help before we realized how late it was.

It would never be too late for the Apple store, which we saved for last. It was a beacon in the night for weary pilgrims who relied upon its ever present glow.

Google to let employees capitalize on option 'forwarddating'

That's not exactly what's going on, but Google is working with Morgan Stanley to create a market where financial institutions can buy vested options directly from employees via a web-based auction system. The benefit for employees is that they can get more money than they would from exercising the stock on the market as prices will factor in potential growth in the future. Why would banks pay for a premium instead of just buying the stock on the open market?

For one thing, instead of paying say $500 for each share, a bank could just pay $25 on the hopes that in a year, the price will exceed $525. By investing in the options instead of the stock, you increase the potential return because you can buy many more $25 options than $500 stocks. Google explains the bigger picture better in their page "The Market for TSOs" and talks about letting employees capitalize on the time value of their options. Hence, forwarddating as opposed to backdating : ).

The other interesting thing readers of this blog may appreciate is that while Goldman did Google's [last] stock offerings (and I speculated that they handled the YouTube aquisition), Morgan Stanley was picked to handle a technical solution for both their innovative online dutch auction IPO as well as this TSO auction system. [Incidentally, I missed the news that Morgan and CSFB underwrote Google's first secondary offering of (Pi-3)E8 shares.]

SOURCE: Official Google Blog

UPDATED: 12/14/2006 8:06pm EST

C++

After reading these interviews with Bjarne Stroustrup (I can now spell the name of the inventor of C++), I remembered that I should post about my new job. I'll be starting tomorrow with a team that develops middleware... in C++. This is a fairly large departure from my comfort zone. To be honest, I would not have imagined using C++ prior to the starting our training program, but my fears are being displaced by the anticipation of earning (albeit slowly) the credibility associated with mastering C++. This isn't to say that Java programmers don't deserve respect or that there aren't really bad C++ programmers. It's just that much harder to be good at C++. Whether you have to be is a different story.

A bit on my new job. In that first interview, Stroustrup talks about how most users want stuff fast and cheap--and if they get buggy software, then so be it. Our environment often supports a nicer sounding version of that attitude, but my team gets to do it to a lesser extent because people depend on the quality of what we make. Anyway, I'd like to be more candid about work like coffee cup Mike (I interned at IBM, btw) but it's too early. Plus, I'm not sure how to be both self-deprecating and uplifting at the same time.

SOURCE: Technology Review [via Slashdot]

Pirates of Silicon Valley (the must see classic)

I finally got to watch Pirates of Silicon Valley last week. This and an interview with Guy Kawasaki have vastly improved my opinion of Steve Wozniak. A proper one, unlike the one with Steve Colbert, that interview is both inspiring and humbling by virtue of Wozniak's genius and humanity. Back to the movie, though, you really don't have perspective unless you know the environment under which Wozniak/Jobs and then Gates/Allen won over the industry.

First of all, the Apple I and the II to a lesser extent, were truly revolutionary. Windows is a really direct rip-off from the Macintosh, but the inspiration for that really came from developers at Xerox. Interestingly, the scene where they spill all the beans to Apple engineers shows the Xerox developers really reluctant to share their management-stifled innovations. That leads us to the infamous quote by Bill Gates that Mike shared via a comment:

Get real, would ya? You and I are both like guys who had this rich neighbor - Xerox - who left the door open all the time. And you go sneakin' in to steal a TV set. Only when you get there, you realize that I got there first. I got the loot, Steve! And you're yellin'? 'That's not fair. I wanted to try to steal it first.' You're too late."

The movie starts with Jobs announcing a new partnership with Microsoft after which it goes back to the beginning of why Bill Gates drops out of college and the founding of Apple. It delves deeply into Jobs' personal life (with many scenes of him very much a cult leader) and leads all the way back to the opening scene. Anyhow, the movie is dramatized to the extent that dialogue was imagined and gaps were filled, but as far as I know, those impersonated in the movie don't object to its content.

SOURCES: TUAW [via DIGG] for the Kawasaki interview, DIGG for the Colbert interview

Revisiting the Rwandan genocide

Is a French court considering the possibility that Tutsi rebels brought a genocide upon their own kind? Supposedly, what triggered the genocide was the death of the former Rwandan president, which the Hutus blamed on the Tutsis. A French judge issued a warrant for the arrest of people in the current Tutsi controlled government relating to his murder.

SOURCE: BBC News

Not desperate enough

I have been without my iPod for a while and it's taking it's toll. This is not to say my iPod experience is flawless (need better headphones). I'm thinking of getting a shuffle to avoid cleaning my room as there's a small chance it could be somewhere there. Oh, and it also doesn't help that I rely on it to motivate my jogging.

BONUS: Zune is virtually a Windows CE powered portable media center edition that doesn't support Vongo : /

It's Election Day

Will you express your preference?

If you don't know, check OnTheIssues.

Wow, the bush administration is desperate

Hey, at least people take Kerry seriously (in contrast to when Bush screws up). Sorry for the lack of context, but I'm not sure it's needed.

Google Web Toolkit now for Mac OS X!

Google's java-based AJAX widget framework, the GWT, has a new version:

Mac OS X | gwt-mac-1.2.11.tar.gz | 22 MB | d649c6a6e30d4ba942576fb37b329841

SOURCE: GWT Blog

I have a strange relationship with my conscience

I have a strange relationship with my conscience. I think I ignore it too much because I rely too much on external cues (including physical ones saying eat another cookie!) or momentum in making decisions. Conscience, let's start over.

You can trust me now

I'm free from potential conflicts of interests as I've closed my positions in Apple and Google. Sad, but not a bad time, right. Apple still didn't revise the their earnings to take into account the options irregularities, but oh well. No more silly half-hearted disclosures like "the author of this article owns shares of the aforementioned company".

A more palatable color

Apple colors its logo for the Fifth Ave Apple Store in Manhattan to promote the (PRODUCT)^RED initiative. Plus, more red products on the way?

Behind Google's acquisition of YouTube

You will not get anything out of reading the rest of this post.

Sometimes, the people who don't ask questions know a little something. Following are a list of analysts present during the YouTube acquisition conference call.

Analysts:

Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley
Imran Khan, JP Morgan
Doug Anmuth, Lehman Brothers
Mark Rowen, Prudential
Justin Post, Merrill Lynch
Kevin Allison, Financial Times
Daniel Arnell[?], ABC News
Victor Anthony, Bear Stearns
Laura Lach[?], Time Magazine

Also, if Goldman handled the acquisition details, why have they been getting more Google business? Was it because they got on Google's good side after hanling their secondary stock offering almost for free?.

SOURCE: Seeking Alpha [via Google]

Maybe Jobs should pay up...

Whether or not Steve Jobs improperly benefitted from the backdated options really depends on whether Apple restates it's past earnings to account for costless shares (as far as earnings statements go) they gave him in return for him not having gained anything from the options they initially awarded him. It's worthwhile to note that he didn't really receive any other compensation (asides from a private jet, I think).

We'll know by October 18th, hopefully, when they announce their latest quarterly earnings.

SOURCES: Bloomberg [via TUAW], FASB

I currently own some Apple shares, but I probably won't sell them until after the earnings are released for all the stuff I've been posting and even then for some [innocuous] work reasons.

YouTube and Google

That's the way to do it:

It also means that Google just picked up YouTube for about 1 % of its equity. That’s the power of a $125 billion market cap.

SOURCE: DealBreaker

Former Apple CFO resigns following addition of Schmidt

Apple's former CFO, Fred Anderson resigned from its board of directors at the conclusion of an internal investigation that exonerates the rest of Apple's senior management. This follows the addition of Eric Schmidt to the board, lending credence to the speculation that Apple wanted to reinforce the credibility of it's corporate governance.

It's unclear as to whether this is the end or the end of the beginning of the controversy over it's past practice of options backdating, as it's the SEC's turn to review the findings. Anderson's comments over the situation in the quoted context imply that while he was responsible for the implementation of the practice, he wasn't directly responsible so.

UPDATE 1:46 AM: TUAW reports that two officers no longer with Apple were singled out in the report in relation to options accounting issues.

SOURCE: digg

A pill

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

Hate the sin, not the sinner.

On the new iPods

Personality is back in the world of iPod. While some may opine that the iPod is too popular, too conformist and losing appeal, Apple Computer seems to have deliberately let the iPod line run out of steam and flat-line in sales before releasing a revamped version in a variety of colors (5 including the original black and white). This comes after almost 10 months after releasing the original iPod nano.

A common theme with Steve Jobs' marketing strategy is to limit the amount of unecessary choice for the consumer and concentrate marketing efforts. Give them a great product. Differentiate later. This applied to the original iPod (white, then black), the minis (three-then five colors), as well as the original iMacs (one, then many). The original iMac came only in one color.

Finally, I wanted to note that the new shuffle fulfills the promise of an artist's conception of what was to be the budget under $100 iPod that led to some disappointment upon the announcement of what Apple actually released.

SOURCE: Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos meet Ginger via digg, new iPod nanos

Don't judge

While waiting for the bus the other day, I noticed a man wearing his iPod headphones oddly. They didn't protrude properly from his ears. It turns out that he had them switched--the left channel was playing in his right ear and vice-versa. I tried this and found it to enhance the volume of the sound.

Too bad they don't stay in my ears either way. My right-ear is not receptive to earbuds.

Arial vs. Helvetica

I'm on my new iMac 17" and thought the following might be interesting to analyze:

The goal for me is to be able to spot the difference between the classic Helvetica font from the Microsoft version, Arial.