Marcel Marchon’s Blog

Ok, so Hitachi and Seagate both announced hard drives with sizes of 1 TB (or possibly bigger). But how can they say 1 TB when it’s not really 1 TB at all? Hard drive manufacturers have been overstating the capacity of their drives for years. They are the only people who define “1 MB” as “1 million bytes”, “1 GB” as “1 billion bytes”, etc. (see for example the small print in http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_internal_sata.pdf). I doubt that the TB drives will be any different. So what happens is that you will go and buy one of those fancy new 1 TB drives, put it in your computer, format it and then the OS will tell you that you really only have a 931 GB drive - because the OS calculates it properly - where 1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes.

See also this Wikipedia entry:

As of 2006, most consumer hard drives are defined by their gigabyte-range capacities. The true capacity is usually some number above or below the class designation. Although most hard disk manufacturers’ definition of GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes (however, computer memory has a natural inclination towards units that are powers of 2), most computer operating systems use the 1,073,741,824 byte definition. This distinction can be a cause of confusion, especially for people from a non-technical background, as a hard disk with a capacity of 40,000,000,000 bytes would have a reported capacity of only 37.4 GB.

[ via neuerdings.com, CrunchGear & Endgadget ]

This is an extract from the actual email:

The link takes me here:

And then when you click on http://www.chasepayyourtaxes.com/united, you get:

Technorati Tags: united | mileageplus | email

Für meine deutschsprachigen Leser: Blah(g).

For my German speaking readers: Blah(g).

Really? Vandalism not allowed? You don’t say … Isn’t that kind of obvious? Isn’t Vandalism illegal/not allowed by definition?

I do not buy penny stocks …
I do not need any home loans …
I do not want to buy a watch or jewelry …
I do not buy any “performance enhancing drugs”…
I do not want to help you transfer your money from Nigeria …

So please stop wasting your and my time (and money) and stop sending me all those emails!

PS. Also, I do not know how to read chinese (?):

(Yeah, I know this post is completely useless …)

Just saving this here for future reference …

Fortunately for America’s 95 million investors, Adams’ secret nine-point formula was finally revealed in “Dilbert and the Way of the Weasels.” Notice its simple brilliance in the exact reproduction of his formula:

1. Make a will
2. Pay off your credit cards
3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support
4. Fund your 401k to the maximum
5. Fund your IRA to the maximum
6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it
7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account
8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement
9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio

Adams boldly states that this is “everything you need to know about personal investing.” In just 129 words, nine simple points, one page you have the unabridged “Unified Theory of Everything Financial.” That’s it. Everything!

Thanks to Adams’ formula, the average irrational investor can ignore Wall Street: “Everything else you may want to do with your money is a bad idea compared to what’s on my one-page summary. You want an annuity? It’s worse. You want a whole life insurance policy? It’s worse. You want to invest in individual stocks? It’s worse. You want a managed mutual fund instead of an index fund? It’s worse. I could go on, but you get the point.”
Check the bottom line: A portfolio with an asset allocation of 70% in Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index (VTSMX) and 30% in the Total Bond Market Fund (VBMFX) is doing just fine, performing remarkably close to the S&P 500 index. Moreover, that simple two-fund portfolio is perfect for the vast majority of America’s 95 million investors who are passive much as Adam’s Dilbert character.

[ ‘Dilbert’s’ 9-point financial plan worthy of economics Nobel - MarketWatch ]

First this report here and now also this:

Norton Internet Security has long been known to block Google AdSense ads with its default installation of the popular virus protection program that blocks advertising by default. But now, Norton Internet Security is triggering medium risk intrusion attempt alerts, even with ad blocking turned off.

[ Google AdSense triggers intrusion attempt alert in Norton Internet Security - JenSense.com]

I’ve had other issues with NIS interfering with our websites before …

[ dilbert.com ]

Scott Adams in The Dilbert Blog:

The Swiss think they are all superior because they stay out of wars. I think they’re just lucky that they’re freezing their chocolate covered nuts.