The Symptom – Power Reboots For No Reason

Transportation In An Obama Era

I found this fascinating quote today:

There may be a simple explanation. With most modern computers, the system comes with built in circuitry to monitor the state of the computer. One of the checks built into your system include testing the power supply levels. The power supply is not a component most people expect to fail. Most are concerned that their disk drives will be the major cause of failures, but in fact power supply problems are relatively common. The power supply will communicate to the mother board with a power good signal if the power output is within specification. If this power good signal is not present, the computer will simply not start up. This seems simple enough, however things do not always fit into the good or not good categories. Where you have a power supply that is failing, its outputs can fluctuate. The computer may then boot up correctly, but a little later when the power supply falls out of range the computer will detect this and activate the reset logic. The reset logic shuts the machine down, thus relieving the load on the power supply, which can then support a re-boot. It is the same as if you pushed the reset button yourself, but it appears to you as a random re-boot.The Symptom – Power Reboots For No Reason, Nov 2008

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A History Unlike Any Other – Ebay

The site quickly became massively popular, as sellers came to list all sorts of odd things and buyers actually bought them. Relying on trust seemed to work remarkably well, and meant that the site could almost be left alone to run itself. The site had been designed from the start to collect a small fee on each sale, and it was this money that Omidyar used to pay for AuctionWeb’s expansion. The fees quickly added up to more than his current salary, and so he decided to quit his job and work on the site full-time. It was at this point, in 1996, that he added the feedback facilities, to let buyers and sellers rate each other and make buying and selling safer.

In 1997, Omidyar changed AuctionWeb’s – and his company’s – name to ‘eBay’, which is what people had been calling the site for a long time. He began to spend a lot of money on advertising, and had the eBay logo designed. It was in this year that the one-millionth item was sold (it was a toy version of Big Bird from Sesame Street).

Then, in 1998 – the peak of the dotcom boom – eBay became big business, and the investment in Internet businesses at the time allowed it to bring in senior managers and business strategists, who took in public on the stock market. It started to encourage people to sell more than just collectibles, and quickly became a massive site where you could sell anything, large or small. Unlike other sites, though, eBay survived the end of the boom, and is still going strong today.

1999 saw eBay go worldwide, launching sites in the UK, Australia and Germany. eBay bought half.com, an Amazon-like online retailer, in the year 2000 – the same year it introduced Buy it Now – and bought PayPal, an online payment service, in 2002.

Pierre Omidyar has now earned an estimated $3 billion from eBay, and still serves as Chairman of the Board. Oddly enough, he keeps a personal weblog at http://pierre.typepad.com. There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay – that’s a lot of laser pointers.

Now that you know the history of eBay, perhaps you’d like to know how it could work for you? Our next email will give you an idea of the possibilities.

Nicole Richie Lights Up UNICEF Snowflake

I found this fascinating quote today:

Nicole Richie (in vintage YSL) and UNICEF Ambassador Joel Madden host UNICEF’s 2008 Beverly Hills Snowflake Lighting ceremony on Saturday, November 22 at the intersection of Rodeo Drive and Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.j4r3d, Nicole Richie Lights Up UNICEF Snowflake, Nov 2008

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America Gets On The Gold Standard

I found this fascinating quote today:

The Emergency Banking Act reached back in time to amend the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, which had originally been intended to criminalize economic intercourse between American citizens and declared enemies of the United States. One provision of the act granted the president the power to regulate and even prohibit “under such rules and regulations as he may prescribe … any transactions in foreign exchange, export or earmarkings of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency … by any person within the United States.” In 1918, the act was amended to extend its provisions two years beyond the conclusion of hostilities, and to allow the president to “investigate, regulate, or prohibit” even the “hoarding” of gold by an American.sfod223, America Gets On The Gold Standard, Aug 2008

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113 Tidbits

I found this fascinating quote today:

More than anything, an invalid click is a big no-no and it will get your account terminated faster than anything else.  Having said that, an invalid click is when a publisher clicks on their own ads to add to their earning potential .  It’s also when a publisher asks others to click on their ads just to raise their revenue.  It also raises the advertiser’s costs and Google won’t tolerate this.  Google Adsense has state of the art technology and they know what’s going on.on Nov 18 under Entertainment, 113 Tidbits, Nov 2008

You should read the whole article.