Bloomberg BusinessWeek (II)

choi

(4) Ashlee Vance, Your Facebook Data Are Here.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... -on-hardware-makers

Quote:

"To simplify its servers, which are used mostly to create Web pages, Facebook’s engineers stripped away typical components such as extra memory slots and cables and protective plastic cases. The servers are basically slimmed-down, exposed motherboards that slide into a fridge-size rack. The engineers say this design means better airflow over each server.

"The custom hardware designed by Web giants such as Google and Amazon.com has remained closely guarded, but Facebook’s openness [as seen in Open Compute Project] has raised interest in its data center models beyond Internet companies. Facebook has provided a road map for any company with enough time and money to build its own state-of-the-art data megafactory. * * * Taiwanese hardware makers such as Quanta Computer and Tyan Computer have started selling systems based on Open Compute designs.

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Its remote Swedish data center is leading a server revolution
(b) The photo shows a male red deer (Cervus elaphus), which is closely related to elk (Cervus canadensis).

(c) "When Facebook started to outline its ideas, traditional data center experts were skeptical, especially of hotter-running servers. 'People run their data centers at 60 or 65 degrees with 35-mile-per-hour wind gusts going through them,' says Frank Frankovsky, Facebook’s vice president of hardware design and supply chain operations, who heads the Open Compute Project. Its more efficient designs have given the company freedom to place its data centers beyond the Arctic. The next one will go online in Iowa, where cheap wind power is plentiful. The company has also begun designing its own storage and networking systems. Frankovsky describes the reaction from hardware suppliers as, 'Oh my gosh, you stole my cheese!'”
(i) "hotter-running servers"

The current Facebook data (server specifically) center "lies just south of the Arctic Circle, in the Swedish town of Luleå" to servers frigid. But other "[p]eople run their data centers at 60 or 65 degrees" as these are located at temperate zone.
(ii) "beyond the Arctic"

That means Iowa, for example, in the next sentence.
(iii) "you stole my cheese"

Who Moved My Cheese?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F
(published in 1998)

(d) "HP has responded by unveiling a server and networking system called Moonshot, which runs on extremely low-power chips"

moonshot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshot
(Moon shot or moonshot is often slang for a space program aimed at manned exploration of the Earth's moon)
(e) Tyan Computer Corp  泰安電腦
http://www.mic.com.tw/TheBrands/Tyan.html
, founded in 1989, was acquired in 2002 by MiTAC International Corp 神達電腦.

choi

(5) Annie Linskey, A Junk-Food Ban for Bears.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... ting-with-junk-food
("Maine has one black bear for every 44 residents")

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Activists in Maine want to outlaw hunting with piles of pastries
(b) Alton, Maine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alton,_Maine
(c) Bethel, Maine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethel,_Maine

Both Alton and Bethel are towns.

choi

(6) Joshua Brustein, A Fading TV Maker Turns to Berries.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... -strawberry-farming
("Dubai is a logical home for the project, because Japanese strawberries are popular in the Middle East, expensive, and quick to spoil")

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Sharp finds an unorthodox use for is LED lights and air purifiers
(b) quotation underneath the title in print: The next step: “Stable production of high-quality strawberries”
(c) "Sharp, known for its televisions, actually has its origins in mechanical pencils."

Founded in 1912, the company takes its name  from the Ever-Sharp mechanical pencil, which was invented by Tokuji HAYAKAWA 早川 徳次 in 1915. Wikipedia.
(d) Aki Fukuyama, Sharp to grow strawberries in Middle East. Asahi Shimbun, Sept 21, 2013
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/economy/technology/AJ201309210048
("With a high degree of sweetness, Japanese-grown strawberries are popular with the wealthy in the Middle East, a region that is unfit for farming because it is covered by desert. But strawberry shipments from Japan to the Middle East have been a big hurdle due to the distance and ease with which the fruit can spoil")
(e) Japan: Sharp Corp Ventures Into Middle East Strawberries. FreshFruitPortal.com, Sept 24, 2013
http://www.freshfruitportal.com/ ... -east-strawberries/
("Sharp is not the first Asian technology multinational to make moves in the fruit industry. Lenovo, through its subsidiary Joyvio [Group 佳沃集团], has moved into global fruit sourcing, as well as the production of blueberries and kiwifruit in China")

There is no need to read the rest of (d) or (e).

choi

(7) Chines Still Prefer Property Over Stocks.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... -the-housing-market

Quote: “Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man and owner of Dalian Wanda Group, the country’s biggest commercial land developer, says the property market is ‘definitely’ in a bubble, though it’s ‘controllable, not big.’ Michael Chang, a 33-year-old investment manager in Shanghai, isn’t concerned about bubbles. * * * Citing a recent ranking of global housing prices in which Shanghai placed sixth and Beijing did not appear, he says: ‘Let’s talk about bubbles when Beijing and Shanghai rank among the world’s top five most expensive cities.’

summary underneath the title in print: Despite curbs, a promise of higher returns keeps housing markets hot

Note: The above is adapted from
Bonnie Cao, No Confidence in China Markets Inflates Housing Bubble. Bloomberg News, Sept 16, 2013.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/20 ... housing-bubble.html

The “market” in the Bloomberg news title alludes to STOCK market.

choi

(8) Juan Pablo, Peter Millard and Ken Wells, Nothing Man; How did Eike Batista lose $34.5 billion?
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... st-34-dot-5-billion

Quote:

“One longtime associate with knowledge of Batista’s operating style, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak, says caution and patience aren’t Batista characteristics. * * * Batista also doesn’t like bad news, according to this person. “Management was structured in a way that there was incentive to take only good news to Eike because he had a tendency to shoot the messenger,’ he says.”  web page 4

My comment:
(a) This is a cover story. The cover reads, “How to Lose a $34.5 Billion Fortune in One Year”
(b) Once you see the photo in web page , you will comprehend paragraph 1. A picture is worth a thousand words.

(c) In 2012 “Eike Batista stands * * * on his 22,000-acre-plus Açu port project, a massive oil and iron-ore shipping complex about 200 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. * * * most of his enterprises are managed under the umbrella of a holding company bearing his initials, the EBX Group. At 55, he’s Brazil’s richest man—and the eighth-wealthiest man on earth.”
(i) For Açu, see Assu, Rio Grande do Norte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assu,_Rio_Grande_do_Norte
(ii) Açu Superport. LLX, EBX Group, undated.
http://www.llx.com.br/en/superporto-do-acu/Pages/default.aspx

is not at Assu municipality.
(iii) EBX Group
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBX_Group
(comprises six companies [all ending with an “X”] listed in BOVESPA’s Novo Mercado [a stock market; including] OGX (oil) and LLX (logistiss))

(d) “Batista was born in Governador Valadares, these days a town of about 260,000 in Brazil’s mining state of Minas Gerais, but spent his teens in Europe with his family, hopping from Geneva to Düsseldorf and Brussels as the career of his father, Eliezer Batista da Silva, took off. The elder Batista is a polymath who speaks seven languages, and a giant figure in the industrialization of Brazil. In the early 1960s he ran Vale do Rio Doce, at the time the government-owned mining company, transforming it through his two stints as CEO into the world’s largest iron-ore producer. Known as Vale today, it’s valued at more than $80.6 billion.”
(i) Eike Batista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eike_Batista
(His mother, Jutta Fuhrken, was born in Germany)
(ii) Governador Valadares
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governador_Valadares
(a Brazilian city in the state of Minas Gerais; In 1937, the municipality of Figueira do Rio Doce was established, which then changed its name to Governador Valadares, in honor of the governor at the time, Benedito Valadares)

Encyclopaedia Britannica, in the page for Governador Valadares, says the name change occurred in 1939.
(iii) father Eliezer Batista da Silva
(A) Eliezer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer
(B) Portuguese name
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_name
(The Spanish pattern is to use both the father's and mother's family surnames, but in reverse order compared to Portuguese pattern)
(iv) Vale (mining company)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vale_(mining_company)
(Headquarters  Rio de Janeiro; Founded as Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (widely known as CVRD prior to 2007) (in English, Freshwater River Valley Company) by the Brazilian Federal Government in 1942; section 1.1 Vale's privatization in 1997)

(e) The article is lacking in numbers or accounting, so I as a reader do not know how the empire collapsed blow by blow. Bloomberg News, with its wealth estimation of teh rich and famous, should know but is not saying. My conjecture is that Mr Batista pumped up everything about him (image and expectation included), so the stocks of his companies were unrealistically high, which crashed when his invincibility popped. Mr Batista then would have to sell his good assets in fire sales to pay off debts. Otherwise dry oil wells should not have spared conflagration.

choi

(9) Hugo Miller, Is Canada’s Smartest Investor Insane?  BlackBerry is in free fall, and Prem Watsa is buying.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... als-prem-watsa-does

Note:
(a) This is a feature story.
(b) Hugo (name)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_(name)
(of Germanic origin; meaning "Bright in Mind and Spirit" or "intelligence;” The English version of the name is Hugh)
(c) a 1974 job interview at

Confederation Life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation_Life
(1871-1994; once headquartered in Confederation Life Building, then in, before being forced into liquidation (in 1994), what is now the Rogers Building)

* Confederation Life Building
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation_Life_Building
(was home to insurer Confederation Life)

(d) Prem Watsa “began building a company that would become Fairfax Financial Holdings, now a C$9 billion ($8.8 billion) conglomerate. * * * Watsa was born in Secunderabad, in southeastern India, in 1950. * * * secur[ed] a spot at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras * * * At his father’s urging, Watsa joined his brother in Canada in the fall of 1972. He enrolled at the University of Western Ontario, 110 miles west of Toronto
(i) The photo in the online version (none in print) shows him.
(ii) Prem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prem
(is the Hindi form of prema, a Sanskrit word meaning love)
(iii) The English surname Fairfax is “from Middle English fair feax ‘beautiful tresses.’”
(iv) Secunderabad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secunderabad
(Named after Sikandar Jah, the IIIrd Nizam of the Asaf Jahi dynasty, Secunderabad was founded in 1806 AD as a British cantonment; north-east of Hussain Sagar, the lake that separates Secunderabad from its twin city Hyderabad [much like St Paul and Minneapolis separated by Mississippi river])
(v) For Madras, see Chennai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chennai
(vi) University of Western Ontario: established in 1878, public, located in London, Ontario. Wikipedia