Huge Hilarious Facebook Ad Fail

This ad is gut-splitting hilarious. I went to the NASDAQ site to check on my favorite "stock most likely to go down the crapper" and I saw a couple of funny, ironic things.

First, a full 74% of the public amateur pundits who waste time with an account on NASDAQ, rate Facebook stock a BUY. It is these people who's money is taken when the market whipsaws their positions senseless. It is these people who bought early and are hoping to get their money back.

And it is probably these people to whom the above ad is aimed at. I took this ad directly off the NASDAQ site. For those of you without glasses, the ad says that if you invested in Facebook after the IPO, you were likely too late!!! FAIL !!!!!!!

But if you send this company money, they will tell you also how to get in early at the high price of Facebook, not at the low price that it is two weeks later. And if you act now, they will throw in a set of John-the-Baptist steak knives and Dead Sea Scroll shower curtains added to your order.

It's the John Q. Public way of investing -- buy high and sell low. Now if you were an institutional investor, you would have been tipped off by Morgan Stanley et al, that the earnings, estimates and outlooks were being revised in the general direction of one's sphincter muscle, and you would not have lost money. Or if you were as smart as Warren Buffett, you would have stood aside. But you aren't. Like poor old Abner Snodgrass who will take piano lessons to try and get a date, you will send your money to get in early on other stock market losers.

All this to say, is that PT Barnum had it right about one born every minute -- especially with this ad pictured above.

But never mind the ad, have I got a deal for you. Send me $50 and I will make you happy (limited time offer).

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Guess What Tech Stock is Gonna Tank Today?

It's 8:47 AM. About 13 minutes before the market opens. Guess what famous stock is going to tank again today? (says he gleefully -- he who predicted that Facebook is dead man walking).

Update 2:12 PM EDT. It's at 28.36 down $3.06 and that 9.62%. Now if it loses half of what's its at now, it might be getting near the range of a buy.

Update 4:07 PM Market Close. Facebook closed at 28.75 3.16 9.9% down almost 10%

This downward slide isn't over. The market will ultimately correct.

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MySQL TODAY() Function from TIMESTAMP

MySQL is my database of choice, and its sql query language is part of the package.

In an SQL table, I have a series of transactions that are timestamped. The timestamp column is of type TIMESTAMP NOT NULL so for every transaction insert, the NOW() timestamp is inserted in the format yyyy-MM-dd HH:MM:SS. This is all fine and dandy except a timestamp is not really a date. However one can get a date with the following syntax:

SELECT DATE(timestamp_column) and one will get a date.

MySQL has a NOW() function, but I needed a TODAY() function to select all of the transactions occurring today from a timestamp column. It would work something like this:

SELECT * FROM transaction_table where transaction_timestamp = TODAY();

Of course transaction_timestamp is not a date so it would have to be re-worded to DATE(transaction_timestamp).

The way to get a TODAY() function is to use the following SQL statement:

SELECT * FROM transaction_table WHERE DATE(timestamp_column) = CURDATE();

CURDATE() is current date and it works like a charm.

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Daytrading Facebook ~ Get Your Rectum Handed to you on a platter

(not exactly as illustrated ~ it's the Morgan Stanley version of the truth)

If you are a day trader, and you are in any position with Facebook stock, I am willing to bet you that you are getting your rectum handed to you on a platter.

Regular readers of this blog know that I write technical analysis software. I have been watching Facebook and something is rotten in Denmark.

I am convinced that the stock is being heavily manipulated, the short sellers are largely absent, and when someone wants to liquidate a long position, an automagic counter trade appears to cushion the downward descent.

All of the stock charts say sell. Yet the bloody stock declines by pennies and then it edges upward by pennies.. It is the most amazing stock price pattern, especially the discontinuity and singularities in the price between open and close. But what is happening, is that day traders are being whipsawed out of their positions because of the apparent manipulations going on. There are patterns here that are not seen with stocks in the "free market".

My analysis, which is pretty good, has shown that the stock should have tumbled at many occasions, yet it has not. We all know that this is not due to fundamentals, so the only other explanation is manipulation.

These games that the Wall Street underwriters are playing make investing a mugs game for the rest of us. There oughta be a law.

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Linux Bash How to show line numbers in vi

This is more of a reminder to myself than anything else. When I am working directly on the Linux server (Centos is my flavor of choice), I often need to find a line number. I have used vi and other editors for a long long time (since the days when unicorns wandered the earth), but I still forget some things. Like today, I had to look up how to turn on line numbers in vi.

It really is simple.

Hit the "Esc" escape key and type:

:set number

On some flavors of Linux:

:set nu

also works.

Easy peasy, now if I can just remember this.

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Microsoft Turning into Spamming National Enquirer

(click on image for larger picture)

During World War II, intelligence agencies used something called content analysis to determine conditions and morale in war-time Germany. They did this with soft information. They would get regional and small town weekly newspapers, go through them with a fine tooth comb.

Typically, these papers would have lists of local people that died. From that, they could create overall casualty estimates. The local papers would have notices that the butchery was closed due to lack of supplies. That would tell the Allies of food shortages. An article telling folks how many ration coupons was required for a liter of gasoline was a good window into fuel.

Essentially, content analysis is taking innocuous bits of information, making inference about them and coming up with a bit of knowledge. It is the process of integrating facts into knowledge about a situation.

Analysts on Wall Street do this by looking at balance sheets. However analysts miss the big picture very often. I am still irked that Arvind Bhatia was all over the media, pumping up Facebook saying that it was the best thing since sliced bread. He should be fired or resign in disgrace.

That aside, let's put Microsoft under the lens. I could not believe that my Hotmail inbox had spam from Microsoft. And to top it all off, it was salacious spam of the National Enquirer ilk.

My own content analysis tells me that their search engine Bing is suffering. Of course I don't have to cogitate hard to come to that fact. I have several websites, and I can see what search engines are the referrers, and Bing shows up once in a blue moon.

However this latest spam from Microsoft trying to encourage me to use Bing is pretty much a sign of Seattle desperation. The spam says: "We can't make this stuff up. Scary disease is turning cats into living robots !!!!!!". THe fine print says that you are seeing some of the hottest Bing searches.

I suppose that their reasoning, is that if they spam their entire hotmail userbase, and get a few clicks, then their numbers will improve. But this strategy is just as lame as those used by the spammers of malware and the Twitter spammers who say: Click here because I saw a funny picture of you on the Internet.

How the mighty have fallen. Microsoft used to be so supercilious that they didn't need to advertise at all. Now after begging didn't work, they tried scaring. After logging out of hotmail, they re-directed to a page that tried to tell me that my secure Chrome browser was a 2.5 out of 5 and that I should upgrade to the virus haven Internet Explorer. When the scare tactic didn't work, they sunk even lower and tried the tabloid effect with the kitty robots.

So, chalk up another dead man walking. Microsoft has had its day. And I am a geek but I oughta be a stock analyst. And if I was, I would advise my clients to short the living crap out of Microsoft stock. You will make a ton of money. (Fine Print: This by no means constitutes investment advice. You should consult a professional to be properly advised on how to lose money in the stock market. It is their job to mislead the ordinary investor and give inside information to institutional clients.)

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I oughta be a stock analyst instead of a geek

Instead of rising with a bullet, Facebook stock is deflating like a bullet wound in a balloon. I ought to be a stock analyst instead of a geek. I can pick them better than widely reported analyst Arvind Bhatia. His total paeans of praise for Facebook is either due to lack of objectivity (through payment or self-delusion) or simply that he made a huge mistake, and really isn't that smart when it comes to the stock market. It reminds me of the time where a kindergarten class outperformed a bunch of Wall Street analysts by picking stocks that they knew and loved (McDonalds, ToysRUs etc).

This Facebook IPO price was so wrong on so many levels, and yet greed made the underwriters do it anyway. It is now 18 percent below IPO price. The hedgefunds who bought the stock are not going to have a good year. Warren Buffet was vindicated.

Now two days on the market doesn't mean much in the long term, but it means a lot to the optics of the deal. The market is waking up after a 2:00 am orgy and finding itself in bed with a ugly woman, a male midget and Doberman (with all due respect to plainer women, smaller men and angrier dogs).

The correction is taking place. My bold prediction is that it WILL reach the $14 per share mark where it belongs. Actually it belongs lower than that, but lets see if they are made of sterner stuff.

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Elliott Wave Principle Re-visited With Computer Trading

I write software. I'm pretty good at it. My strength lies not in streamlined code, but in algorithms. Any code monkey can write code. Most coders today could NOT write an object sorter using recursion and recursion is kiddie scripting in some of the functions that I code.

The real aim of the game is to not to get paid for writing software, but to write software that makes money. A quant is exactly that:

quant

   [kwahnt]

noun

Business Slang . an expert in quantitative analysis.

So, one of the ways to write software to make money, is to develop trading software for stocks, bonds, derivatives and Forex. Everyone has their own proprietary technical analysis trading software but they all start with Weighted Moving Averages and all sorts of statistical charting and apparent correlations that you give signals when to buy and sell.

The great granddaddy of them all is the Elliott Wave Principle. If you don't know what the Elliott Wave Principle is, you can read about it HERE.

A typical Elliott Wave pattern stock price looks like this:

Elliott developed his ideas over 60 some years ago, and I idly wondered if Elliott Wave Patterns were still valid in this day and age of computer trading. Would computer trades at split seconds skew an Elliott Wave pattern if and when they occur? (The reason why I say "if" is that determining the milestones of the Elliott Wave pattern is a very subjective thing. Many technical analysts try to debunk the principle and its adherents swear by it.)

So the burning question is and was: Is there something to the Elliott Wave, and how has computerized trading changed the Elliott Wave, if at all?

To do that, I needed some data, and not just large time domain general data. I wanted data points demarcated by seconds, not days or hours. After all computers trade by the second. So I captured the real live second by second trading of Facebook on its opening IPO where volumes were shattered but the price remained flat.

Here is a sample of that data:

To prevent subjective interpretation, I wrote a computer object -- a model of the wave that was magnitude agnostic (meaning that I was just searching for the pattern and didn't care about the price). One of the biggest problems with the Elliott Wave is interpretation and where does one begin to count for the wave pattern. I let the computer do that for me. If the signal (serial stock price changes) didn't fit the pattern, I advanced to the next data point, and tried again. I have to say that the results were pretty dismal.

Then it struck me -- I needed an "ish" engine on this. I have previously discussed "ish" on this blog. It is a form of fuzzy logic that can ignore the odd outlier whilst still identifying the pattern. I used the ish engine to categorize wildly divergent answer schemes of health surveys in Nigeria. Once I incorporated the ish engine into my model, I started to get many more hits where I did identify the Elliott Wave pattern.

To answer the question of how computerized trading was affecting the analysis principle, I had to collect models of the deviation of the Elliot Wave. The first thing that the ish engine picked up, was that computerized trading injected many more outliers that were in fact intermediate steps in the pattern. From a macro perspective, the Elliott Wave still sort-of resembled the pattern, but on a micro level, the fractal pattern was different, and like fractals, this was carried over onto the larger pattern.

Here is a graphic illustration of the outliers where intermediate steps are introduced into the wave pattern:

Instead of going from 1 to 2, now there is a 1A step inserted into the pattern. This was when I tested for 1 deviation per step.

Then I allowed the computer to test for two deviations per step. Now one can see two outliers as the wave progresses from 2 to 2A to 2B to 3. This is so simple to do when you have a computer object that models the wave and allows for ish or deviation. One can run many many epochs (data sessions) over and over again and change the parameters each time.

If one thinks of the wave as a series of vectors, then one begins to see how a direction vector can be incorporated into the ish engine or fuzzy logic. Let's suppose that Talib is right (and I am sure that he is) and there is a lot more randomness than one suspects. My posit was that computerized trading is responsible for generating the randomness.

When I altered the wave model to accommodate a deviation in the direction of the vector component in the wave, the computer came up with a model that was topless:

So, I now had models that the computer had saved. The next step was to assign Bayesian Probabilities to each model. The first injection of Bayesian probability was for predictive effect. Based on where I was at the moment, what magnitude and direction of the price vector would happen next? Then I determine the probability of which overall model that it will fit. From there one can make larger price determinations. Incidentally, no-fit is also an outcome in this model, where there simply isn't a pattern.

What's the next step? The next step is to introduce artificial intelligence multi-layer perceptrons as a fall-through model to analyze the price signal in real time. Then the perceptrons keep correcting themselves based on real time outcomes.

Can this updated algorithm score alpha and make money on stocks, futures, derivatives and Forex? I don't know yet, but I am too busy earning a living to take this to the next step. Are there any fund managers out there willing to fund a research project with the updated Elliott Wave coupled to fuzzy logic, artificial intelligence and Bayesian Inference?

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This is a MUST - READ -- DNSChanger Malware

From the FBI site: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/november/malware_110911/DNS-changer-malware.pdf

DNSChanger Malware

DNS (Domain Name System) is an Internet service that converts user-friendly domain

names into the numerical Internet protocol (IP) addresses that computers use to talk to

each other. When you enter a domain name, such as www.fbi.gov, in your web browser

address bar, your computer contacts DNS servers to determine the IP address for the

website. Your computer then uses this IP address to locate and connect to the website. DNS

servers are operated by your Internet service provider (ISP) and are included in your

computer’s network configuration. DNS and DNS Servers are a critical component of your

computer’s operating environment—without them, you would not be able to access

websites, send e-mail, or use any other Internet services.

Criminals have learned that if they can control a user’s DNS servers, they can control what

sites the user connects to on the Internet. By controlling DNS, a criminal can get an

unsuspecting user to connect to a fraudulent website or to interfere with that user’s online

web browsing. One way criminals do this is by infecting computers with a class of malicious

software (malware) called DNSChanger. In this scenario, the criminal uses the malware to

change the user’s DNS server settings to replace the ISP’s good DNS servers with bad DNS

servers operated by the criminal. A bad DNS server operated by a criminal is referred to as

a rogue DNS server.

About

The DNS Changer Working Group (DCWG) was created to help remediate Rove Digital’s malicious DNS servers. The DCWG helps monitor DNS servers run by ISC, under court order, in the former Rove Digital colo space.

The DCWG is an ad hoc group of subject matter experts, and includes members from organizations such as Georgia Tech, Internet Systems Consortium, Mandiant, National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance, Neustar, Spamhaus, Team Cymru, Trend Micro, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Click on this site to see if your computer is infected: (no scan is done and nothing is downloaded)

http://www.dns-ok.us/

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Facebook's True Valuation, Stock Price and Capitalization

In yesterday's blog entry, I outlined why Facebook will never overtake Google. Most of the valuation of the company at $38 per share is based on unrealized, unmonetized potential. I argued yesterday, that the user base is near its limit of monetization, and gave reasons why.

So lets assume that one of the biggest fans of Facebook, Arvind Bhatia is right about Facebook's search capability. (I don't buy it, but let's go with it for the sake of argument). Bhatia says that Facebook's search capability is better than Google's and Facebook will monetize it. Nobody is better at monetizing searches than Google. They are the gold standard. They do it with less data on the searcher than Facebook, and they outperform Facebook by orders of magnitude in the revenue department.

Google currently trades at 19 times revenues. Facebook at $38 is 100 times revenues. If we say that Facebook is at least as good as Google, then it would be fair to assume that they also would trade at 19 times their revenue. That would make a fair share value of Facebook at $7.22 at share. That would make a market capitalization of $3.04 billion dollars instead of $16 billion.

Just for fun, let us double the fair market valuation to $14 per share because they have close to a billion in followers (although even Facebook admits that a fair percentage are fake accounts). That still is a long way off from $38 and $16 billion.

Facebook has a lot of potential to realize. I suspect that the Morgan Stanley and the hedge funds that bought Facebook did a lot yesterday to support the price at $38 a share in the last hour of trading. And the hedge funds are not going to permit the borrowing of shares to short the Facebook stock, so it may be kept up artificially for a while.

My own risk radar says that this valuation is way too high, and that Facebook will not fulfill its potential. There has to be a correction, like there was for Zynga that lost 13 per cent of its value on the same day that Facebook had its IPO. Ten percent of Facebook's revenue comes from Zynga and its Facebook games, so another red flag goes up.

The thing that really gets me, is that if a geek like me can see the obvious, why can't Wall Street and the pundits see the obvious? Are the financial markets so out of tune with reality, that players like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs can tell us to believe what they say and not believe what our eyes and rational senses tell us?

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Why Facebook Will Not Overtake Google

Last night I watched a video that interviewed a stock market analyst called Arvind Bhatia associated with the firm Stern Agee. He was quite bullish on Facebook, saying that it will overtake Google etc etc in advertising revenues once it monetizes the mobile market. It was quite obvious that he is enamored with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.

It reminded me of the tech boom that collapsed in 2001-2002. People were raving about waterfont property on the Internet, only to discover that it didn't exist. Facebook is now undergoing an IPO frenzy, and the opening price suggests that they are capitalized at 100 times their trailing revenues. For any other stock, this valuation would be sheer fantasy. Surely that if something is too good to be true, it is.

With the unbridled optimism of Wall Street, they are charging ahead, forgetting that one piece of exploding Muslim-fanatic underwear on an airplane can turn unbridled Wall Street optimism into deep despair.

As I was listening to analyst Arvind Bhatia, I was struck by a couple of things. He was demonstrating a zeal for Facebook that seem to transcend the rational practicality of most stock pickers.

Let's look at some aspects of Facebook and its IPO. First of all, the smartest stock picker in the world, Warren Buffett is not participating. This tells you something.

Secondly, Facebook says that they have a billion users, yet all they can garner is $4 per user per year. Facebook has not yet figured out how to monetize its users, and specifically it has not figured out how to do so without violating their privacy. Google has.

Bhatia the analyst says that Facebook has a lot of personal information that can be used to direct advertising to. While this is true, a lot of that personal information is not that useful in getting monetized. For example Bhatia mentioned that Facebook knows what high school that I went to. After many years of graduating, our high school displays the entire spectrum of graduates who have go on to greatness, and others that have gone on to jail. There is no smooth curve of socio-economic demographics to glean out of that kind of information.

When doing a comparison of Facebook and Google, Google has the upper edge. First of all, they have an order of magnitude of intellectual capital compared to Facebook. Facebook has a bunch of php coding freaks brogrammers. Put plainly, Facebook isn't smart enough to take their info to the next level.

Google has the smartest guys on the planet developing algorithms. There is a huge difference between the two. It is the same reason why in spite of the fact that China makes all of our stuff, they will never overtake us in development and innovation. All of the intellectual capital resides in the free universities and companies in America that are unfettered by dogmatic rules when it comes to science and thinking. The profit motive is a very strong innovation driver, especially when it is coupled to a strong research base. Facebook doesn't have a strong research base like Google does.

There is another problem with marketing and Facebook. Many of the top bricks and mortar stores have closed their Facebook stores. Why ? Part of the reason is that the information on Facebook is too open. Facebook blasts out the fact that you play Bejewel or that you were looking at the adult diapers page on Facebook. I don't want all my Facebook friends to know that. I carefully screen the pics that I put up on Facebook to show that I haven't gained 20 pounds, yet if I am shopping at the "husky" page, my friends will know. Liking the Viagra page will tell my friends that there is trouble in sex department. Looking at the singles ads will let my wife's friends know that I am checking out the menu. I don't want my godson to know that I am turned on by lithe, exotic dark skinned beauties on the Victoria Secrets page.

Facebook crosses too many personal lines. And they don't know how to fence that. Whereas Google deals with pure algorithms, Bayesian inference and data mining. I am reminded of the Target customer that sent a teen some pregnancy coupons based on extensive data mining of the fact that young pregnant women buy some sort of skin cream coupled with a renewed interest in health and vitamins. They had detected the fact that she was pregnant before she told her parents. Google has this capability and Facebook, the way that it is configured, does not. And trying to change Facebook, will be like trying to put lipstick on a pig and taking it to market.

The biggest factor is that everyone is stating that Facebook has unmonetized potential. And they put a high valuation on that. My contention is that the valuation of the user base is way too high. There is a common misconception that every user base can be turned into a marketing base. That is simply not true. The older folks on Facebook just find it an easy way to keep up with people that normally they wouldn't make the effort to do so. But in no way, will they buy anything off Facebook. What the analysts fail to realize, is that many people want a social network just to be social and not to shop. The valuations of the user base are overly optimistic.

So while the emotions of Wall Street may inflate the price of Facebook, I am reminded of what goes up must come down. They don't have the strong basics that Google does of pure substantiveness in their model, and if they anger enough people, Facebook will overnight become another MySpace. Facebook is particularly vulnerable to someone coming along and making something better that doesn't violate my privacy the way Facebook does. You can't knock Google off that way without a billion dollars to do some research and develop some better technology. And when the Facebook collapse happens, we will all wonder why we never saw it coming.

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Domain Name Works but www domain name not resolving

Tomcat again. I wasted a lot of time on this. I went to Godaddy and changed my domain name and the IP address associated with it. After that, I went to my Apache Tomcat server and changed the hostname to mydomain.com.

Then I went back and tried to access the website. It would work. It would work without the www, just the http://mydomain.com but not with http://www.mydomain.com. Couldn't figure it out. I thought it was a Godaddy issue. It wasn't.

In desperation, I went to the Tomcat server.xml and called the host "www.mydomain.com" with an alias. Everything works. Thought that I would pass it along to save you some time.

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IE9 Again ~ Domain Forwarding with Masking Problem

In a blog entry two down from this, I detail a problem how the IE9 browser wouldn't cache session objects. Well, after a lot of debug (doing stupid things) we have finally come up with a solution.

In their infinite stupidity, the newbie coders at Microsoft decided that the security on their browser was more like a sieve than a wall, so they decided to try and make the sieve holes smaller. The new IE9 browser doesn't support Domain Name Forwarding with masking.

We are starting a new venture, and after doing some market testing we came up with a better name and the domain name was available. But we already have beta testers using the old domain name. So the solution, we thought, was to forward the new domain name to the old one, with masking. Masking means that the new domain name appears in the browser navigation bar instead of the old one. Well, this has been shut off in IE9.

I can understand why they would THINK that they want to try and do that. Masking is a great way to prevent phishing, but one has to have access to the DNS manager, and those things have security on them. Instead, Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot.

So the bottom line is that you can view websites with domain forwarding and masking, but you can't cache session objects, or set parameters, or do anything of the things that a truly functional website does. All this to prove that Microsoft is truly dead man walking.

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Virus Injection Domain ~ Someone in Portugal Please Lay a Beating on this guy

I have an acquaintance named Dwight who is a nice guy. I met him at a dinner party in Nassau at a mutual friends place. Nassau is a small place and I occasionally ran into him. Dwight was transferred back to Florida. I haven't heard from him in a long while. Thus I was pleased when I saw an email from him in my inbox. However, I was not pleased when I saw that it was a virus generated email going through his contact list sending out links that will infect your machine.

I am sure you have seen these latest viruses. You get an email from one of your trusted contacts that says "Hey look at this". When you click on it, BANG -- you're infected.

Well, its time to fight back. Here is the domain name registration of the sub-human sending out these viruses. It is from Portugal. If there is anyone in Portugal who is an anti-social psychopath who is just itching to lay a beating on someone, go to the town or Porto (yes where port comes from). Find the street Rua Barao de Nova Sintra, and the building number is No. 433. Ring the bell for apartment 3530 and beat the living crap out of the guy, and while you are at it, smash all of the computers and cell phones.

The domain of virus injector is: dunil.pt. Don't click on it.

WHOIS information for dunil.pt:

Nome de dom?nio / Domain Name: dunil.pt

Data de registo / Creation Date (dd/mm/yyyy): 04/12/2000

Data de expira??o / Expiration Date (dd/mm/yyyy): 28/02/2013

Estado / Status: ACTIVE

Titular / Registrant

Dunil - Confeccoes Lda

Rua Barao de Nova Sintra, No. 433

Apartado 3530

4306-901 Porto

Email: dunil@ip.pt

Entidade Gestora / Billing Contact

G9SA - Telecomunicacoes S.A .

Email: geral@g9sa.pt

Respons?vel T?cnico / Tech Contact

Joao Carlos Ramos Perdigoto

Email: perdigot@interacesso.pt

Update: Got another virus mailing from Dwight's machine. This one came from Malaysia. (They shouldn't let half-civilized monkey goons play on the internet). Here are the domain registration details:

Chan Kee Siak

Exabytes Network Sdn Bhd

1-18-8, Suntech @ Penang Cybercity

Lintang Mayang Pasir 3, Bayan Baru

11950 Bayan Lepas

Pulau Pinang

Malaysia

@exabytes.com.my

(Tel) 604-6308283

(Fax) 604-6308288

g [Registrant Code] DENAI1.ORG

Denai Solutions Sdn Bhd

(531969-A)

38-5-2 Jalan 1/101C

Cheras Business Center, Cheras

56100 Kuala Lumpur

Wilayah Persekutuan

(Tel) 03-91334299

(Fax) 03-91411266

h [Administrative Contact Code] KHIZYAHA0.CON

Khuzaif Yahaya

Denai Solutions Sdn Bhd

Level 12, Bangunan MAS

Jalan Sultan Ismail

50250 Kuala Lumpur

Wilayah Persekutuan

Malaysia

@hotmail.com

(Tel) 03-20523909

(Fax) 03-21649405

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Internet Explorer 9 Won't Cache Session Objects

Having put the finishing touches on my mobile web app, I was ready to go. One of my partners bought a new computer and it was loaded with IE9 and the website doesn't work. Can't log in. The login is simple. It caches a login session object in the session. Doesn't work.

Played around and added the site as a trusted web site, disabled a bunch of stuff and we could log in. The website is crippled after login. Key components aren't working. IE8 is fine. Safari is fine. Android, Chrome and absolutely everything else works.

On top of that, it took me over an hour to download and install IE9 for testing. I tell you Microsoft is crap and a dead man walking.

I will let you know the fix when I find it.

Update: See blog entry above on Domain Forwarding with Masking.

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The Best Free Mobile Website Template ~ MobiFreaks

I am good at what I do ~ and that is architecting, designing and coding apps with unique algorithms, sophisticated functions and graceful code. My idea of what looks pretty and appealing is more like an equal mixture of punk and baroque -- Punk Baroque -- yeah that's the ticket. That's my style. Not many other people find it attractive.

Also what many many people in the tech business cannot wrap their head around, is that I write apps (in Java) in which the visual layer or the presentation layer is an internet browser. It is not a conventional website. It is an app with a web-based presentation layer.

So I am working on this super smart web based app that will change many paradigms. It will be a killer web app, it has already attracted the attention of venture capitalists, but still we want to make it look pretty.

All sorts of self-styled experts were going to skin it out and make it mobile pretty. The last quote was for $10,000. I told the company that they were getting hosed. The guy wanted to add a whole new javascript framework just to change the look and feel.

To prove that they were getting hosed, I went to the MobiFreak website, and downloaded one of their free mobile web templates. The download page is:

http://mobifreaks.com/free-mobile-website-templates/page/2/

The one that I downloaded with the Mobifreaks Classic Mobi. I gotta say, it is better liked than the $10,000 quote to re-skin our app.

So thanks MobiFreaks, and thanks for all the fish. Your free mobile web template is the greatest and I am a fan.

www.MobiFreaks.com

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Invest in Facebook ~ Not on your life

Regular readers of this blog will know that I consider Facebook to be dead man walking. They will become like MySpace. Why? Because they are not making money the way they should. They are trying to monetize themselves and change the way they operate by selling private data. In the words of Jimmy Fallon~ Facebook is selling 330 million shares. Great now you can own a piece of the website that completely owns you.

Not only will they alienate their user base, but they have a couple of problems. First, many of their users are fake. The private data is not real. Facebook themselves will publicly admit that "at least 5%" of their users are fake. Using their figures, that means that 50 million Facebook accounts are fake. I'll bet that the real number is much higher than they are willing to admit.

Secondly, for a billion users, they are only making $3 or $4 dollars per user. That is not enough to sustain the business model long term. Secondly, it tells you that their paradigm is not suited to business. Several Fortune 500 companies have abandoned their Facebook storefronts.

The biggest reason that you shouldn't invest in Facebook, is that the smartest stock player in the world, Warren Buffett is giving Facebook stock a pass. His chief investment officer had strong words about not investing in Facebook. You can read the article by following this link:

http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/06/news/buffett-facebook/

So, that is why I am not investing in Facebook, and it further reinforces my belief that Facebook, like Microsoft, has had its day. The only way to go is down. Microsoft has already turned that corner.

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Java MySQL SQL Tip Comparing Timestamp in Column to Current DateTime

There are many ways to skin a cat. I have a database table where I have to compare a column timestamp with the current date/time as well as adding hours and minutes. I realize that there is an SQL NOW function, but I also need the now time converted to calendar to be able to add and subtract calendar units, and I construct the SQL statement in Java.

Here is the syntax of the snippet in Java for comparison to the current datetime:

java.util.Date utilDate = new java.util.Date();

java.sql.Timestamp sqlDate = new java.sql.Timestamp(utilDate.getTime());

try {

stmt = conn.createStatement();

String myQueryString = "SELECT * FROM sale_table where saleStart < {ts '" + sqlDate.toString() + "' }";

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Microsoft Buys Into Nook ~ RIP Nook

Having just bought an eReader (the Sony) and wishing that I had bought a Kindle, I eagerly read about Microsoft putting $300 million into the Nook reader. Microsoft is dead man walking, and everything they have touched eventually turns to crap. They couldn't make a go of their phone. They have lost the internet browser market because of their bullheadedness in integrating it with Windows and trying to rule the computing world with an OS that is bulky, bloated, regressive, poorly designed and made and literally a piece of crap.

Microsoft did have dominance, and they were a world changer, but they couldn't take the news that their paradigm no longer works. And, believing that their dominant position was because of their belief in their own brilliance, they haven't had many successes lately.

They are using wads of cash to stuff into the holes to stop the market-share hemmorage, and they have lost the ability to think strategically and re-invent themselves.

So, I am here today as a prophet to say that Nook the eReader is also dead man walking. Having Microsoft invest in anything remotely successful, is the kiss of death in the marketplace. They will bugger up the OS to try to incorporate Outlook or do something similarly stupid and ruin a good product. They are clutching at straws and applying $300 million dollar bandaid fixes and are going nowhere. They need a total re-invention, and they don't have the balls and creativity to do it.

In the meantime, goodbye to Nook. I never did use you because ebooks are cheaper on Amazon, but I am sure that there will be some folks out there who will be sad to see you go.

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