Recently in Computers Category
Comments and Trackbacks have been temporarily disabled. I hope to have both items enabled again in the near future.
My personal favorite RSS reader is now free: FeedDemon v2.6. Previously, I paid for FeedDemon. That is no longer required.
For those unfamiliar with FeedDemon, it is an extremely useful and powerful program that allows you to efficiently read your RSS feeds. Rather than me trying to highlight all the important features, I urge you to click on the link above, read more about FeedDemon, download it, and try it.
I have used FeedDemon for several years and am a very satisfied user of Nick Bradbury's software. He created FeedDemon and TopStyle Pro, CSS and HTML editor. Both products are extremely well designed and functional. Again, I urge you to try FeedDemon v2.6. It is now being offered to individuals for free.
I am currently experiencing difficulties with my Flickr account. I have a hunch that the outcome is not going to be good. In any event, I ask for your patience with my site while I work on solving my Flickr difficulties.
Update
I have lost all my pictures, comments, favorites, contacts, and friends on my Flickr account. You can read a more detailed explanation of what purportedly happened. I will comment more on this topic in a day or two. So please bear with me and my blog while I get reorganized.
As those who follow my blog know, one of my hobbies is photography. As such, I follow and have invested in Canon Inc. (CAJ). During this past year, Canon has introduced two new professional cameras: EOS-1D Mark III, which retails for $4,495.95 at B & H; and EOS-1Ds Mark III, which retails for $7,999.95 at B & H. B & H is short for B & H Photo – Video – ProAudio. The first camera was introduced during the Spring and the second camera was introduced this Fall and began shipping only a few days ago. The demand for both cameras outstrips the supply. That is, if you want one of these professional cameras, you have to go on a waiting list.
Of course, these professional cameras require lots of memory. Moreover, they require large and powerful computers and disk drives to process and save the large image files. While I do not invest in many computer related technology stocks, I believe that the demand for these products is still healthy. And, as a side note, for those interested in learning more about these professional cameras and photography in general, I highly recommend joining Pro Photo HOME, an online photography site dedicated to the professional and serious amateur. The participants are friendly, knowledgeable and helpful—there is very little of the traditional internet noise.
While I think that the consumer slowdown will negatively affect camera sales, Canon's projections, available on the investor relations section of its website, still show healthy growth for the fourth quarter of about 13% by sales and 20% by units. Please note, although I discussed two professional cameras, the overwhelming majority of Canon's camera sales by units are point and shoot cameras. Digital SLRs (single lens reflex) sales by unit volume are a small fraction of the overall sales; however, they are more expensive and thus constitute a significant portion of the revenue.
As shown by this Yahoo's five year chart of Canon's stock price, the company shows reasonably steady growth. It has five main groups of products: 1) Office Imaging; 2) Computer Peripherals; 3) Business Information; 4) Cameras; and 5) Optical and Other. I do not understand the optical portion well, though it is one of the smaller groups. Camera sales constitute about 26% of Canon's overall sales and operating profit. The company is not widely followed in North America with only two or three analysts providing earnings and revenue estimates on Yahoo's financial site.
I have included some key statistics from Yahoo as of 5 December 2007:
- Market Cap (intraday): 68.43B
- Enterprise Value (6-Dec-07): 59.93B
- Forward P/E (fye 31-Dec-08): 13.80
- PEG Ratio (5 yr expected): 1.43
- Enterprise Value/EBITDA: 6.232
- Profit Margin (ttm): 10.96%
- Operating Margin (ttm): 17.12%
- Return on Assets (ttm): 11.12%
- Return on Equity (ttm): 17.14%
- Revenue (ttm): 39.89B
- Gross Profit (ttm): 13.31B
- EBITDA (ttm): 9.62B
- Beta: 0.67
- Total Debt/Equity (mrg): 0.008
- Current Ratio (mrg): 2.092
As the figures show, the company is conservatively financed. Overall, my general impression is that the company is well managed and provides excellent products and services.
Disclosure: I am long Canon stock.
Amanda Grace is featured in the photograph, which is hosted at Flickr. If you click on the picture of Amanda, you will be taken to where you can view a larger version and see even more pictures of her.
I plan to write a few articles reviewing the Alberta Review Panel Final Report (PDF, 2.25mb). Before writing those articles, however, I should provide you with more of my background.
During the 1990s, when the National Oil Sands Task Force (NOSTF) lobbied the provincial and federal government for an oil sands fiscal regime, I worked for Syncrude Canada Ltd. in its business development group. I was the analyst who performed the majority of the numerical analyses for the NOSTF efforts in lobbying the governments. Moreover, I participated in many high level discussions with the industry players as well as the governments. Thus, I am extremely well versed in the fiscal terms and how the fiscal terms were arrived at.
The two dominant oil sands players in the 1990s were Suncor Energy Inc. (SU) and Syncrude Canada Ltd. I believe, though am not positive, that Suncor began its operations sometime in the 1960s, and Syncrude began its operations in 1978. When Syncrude began, it was a joint venture of several companies along with the provincial government. To encourage Syncrude's development, both the provincial and federal governments gave Syncrude a unique set of fiscal terms that were set to expire in 25 years or 2003. Syncrude's initial fiscal terms were generous and not likely to be replicated into the future. Furthermore, all oil sands projects had unique fiscal terms that reflected a company's bargaining strength at the time.
Syncrude knew that it would have to renegotiate its fiscal terms soon. Like most companies, it wanted to expand its operations. And it wanted to create an industry set of fiscal terms so that it would not have to negotiate on a one off basis and so that all companies would be treated equally. If a company negotiated a one off set of fiscal terms, then the government had all the negotiation strength. It could examine the economic strength of the proposed project and set the fiscal terms accordingly. I believe most industry players wanted an industry set of fiscal terms so that individual companies would be compared on an operational basis, not on a fiscal term basis. That is, Company A is doing better than Company B because it is a better operator, not because it negotiated better fiscal terms.
Industry pundits and various futurists were predicting that oil prices would remain in the $20 – $30 real region forever because technology would allow companies to find smaller pools of oil for less cost. Also, there was a fear that another energy source might be developed soon that could displace oil. Thus, the oil sands industry needed a set of fiscal terms that were attractive to encourage development. With oil sands development, the governments could monetize the value of the oil sands while oil sands were still valuable.
I will try to find an online source of the NOSTF report for those who might be interested.
This article summarizes my role with the NOSTF, which created the current fiscal framework. You should know my prior involvement because it will undoubted color my views as I comment on the Alberta Royalty Review.
Edmonton model Nikki G is featured in the photograph, which is hosted at Flickr. If you click on the picture of Nikki, you will be taken to where you can view a larger version and see even more pictures of her.
I have used Cloudmark Desktop for several years to fight my Microsoft Outlook email spam. I believe it is the best product available, bar none. To provide a quick high level summary, Cloudmark uses the contributions from its users to determine what is and is not spam. Through its algorithms, Cloudmark is able to rate its customers' feedback to provide an accurate assessment of each email that enters your inbox. Very little spam actually makes it through to my inbox, and I get virtually no false positives. I am a highly satisfied customer.
Cloudmark has just released its public beta for the Thunderbird email program. For those who use Thunderbird, you might wish to consider using Cloudmark as your protection against email spam.
By way of disclosure, the link for Cloudmark Desktop for Microsoft Outlook is a referral link, meaning that I receive a nominal fee if you decide to use Cloudmark. The link for the beta for Thunderbird is not a referral link. In other words, it is free and clear.
I have written two prior articles about reducing spam on your Movable Type weblog: Movable Type: Reducing Spam and Movable Type: Another Spam Reducing Technique In this article, I will show you another powerful technique to reduce your spam.
There is a free and paid version of a program called Xlogan that is available here. The program provides useful statistics regarding your website. I often download a few days worth of weblog data, and then look at the visitors tab. I look to see which ip (internet protocol) addresses have been making the most requests and which have been consuming the most bandwidth. When I find an ip address that has hit my site 500 times in one day, I then go to the raw logs, again inside of Xlogan, and look at which webpages have been hit by this particular ip address. When I see that it is trying to hit my comments and trackbacks, I know it is a spam bot. In addition to seeing which pages it accesses, I often do a WHOIS lookup to see if I can learn more about the spam bot. So I can then decide if I want to block it or not by using my .htaccess file.
I should note that I often find a family of ip addresses that originate from the same internet service provider (isp). Usually this isp is located in Eastern Europe or some other country that does not usually legitimately visit my weblog. When that is the case, I simply determine that isp's complete range of allowable addresses and block all of them.
Checking to see which ip addresses consume the most bandwidth is also helpful. The same technique applies here: determine if the ip addresses that consume most of the bandwidth are desirable guests or not.
Sometimes I will organize the ip addresses by entry page. You can do this readily by simply clicking entry page row header. As I scan down the page, I will notice that several ip addresses will hit the same comment or trackback. Obviously, several computers from different locations are trying to insert a comment or trackback. It is hard to block these bots because they are coming from all over the world. In this situation, you can rename your comment and trackback scripts, which I highlighted in my first article. This technique tends to slow them down for a while.
I also moderate all my comments. So even if the spam bot gets through my initial defenses, I must examine the entry and approve it.
I hope my techniques outlined in my three articles help you to reduce your spam load.
I just finished reading the Wall Street Journal article Gates, Jobs Trade Compliments And Jabs in Rare Joint Appearance (subscription required) and watching the accompanying seven segment video. I do not believe the seven segments require a subscription.
- Wall Street Journal Video - WSJ.com: Segment 1
- Wall Street Journal Video - WSJ.com: Segment 2
- Wall Street Journal Video - WSJ.com: Segment 3
- Wall Street Journal Video - WSJ.com: Segment 4
- Wall Street Journal Video - WSJ.com: Segment 5
- Wall Street Journal Video - WSJ.com: Segment 6
- Wall Street Journal Video - WSJ.com: Segment 7
Please note that it takes a few moments for the video to load.
I thoroughly enjoyed the videos and, for those interested, I am sure you will too.
The following four companies all sell computers and related equipment to their customers:
- CDW Corporation (CDWC);
- Insight Enterprises, Inc. (NSIT);
- Tech Data Corporation (TECD); and
- Ingram Micro Inc. (IM).
The companies have differences in their customer base, offerings, and geographies. CDW and Insight are both mail order. Tech Data and Ingram Micro are in the computer wholesale industry.
I gathered the following financial metrics largely from Yahoo! Finance:
| Financial Metric | CDWC | NSIT | TECD | IM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data Sources | Yahoo! Finance 2 April 2007, Insight Website, and Tech Data 10K | |||
| Market Cap. | 4.77B | 869M | 1.94B | 3.27B |
| Employees | 5,500 | 4,500 | 8,000 | 13,700 |
| Revenue (ttm) | 6.79B | 3.82B | 21.44B | 31.36B |
| Gross Margin (ttm) | 15.77% | 12.55% | 4.70% | 5.37% |
| EBITDA (ttm) | 468.09M | 141.63M | 216.78M | 510.78M |
| Oper Margins (ttm) | 6.25% | 2.71% | 0.73% | 1.34% |
| Net Income (ttm) | 266.08M | 65.08M | -100.93M | 265.77M |
| EPS (ttm) | 3.299 | 1.556 | -1.759 | 1.555 |
| P/E (ttm) | 18.36 | 11.45 | N/A | 12.38 |
| PEG (5 yr expected) | 1.19 | 0.9 | 0.99 | 1.14 |
| P/S (ttm) | 0.71 | 0.23 | 0.09 | 0.10 |
Let us look at each row and see what we learn.
- Market Capitalization: CDW has the largest market capitalization with nearly $4.8 billion. Ingram Micro has about 70% of the market capitalization of CDWC. Similarly, Tech Data has about 41% and Insight has about 18%.
- Employees: Even though CDW has the largest market capitalization, it has one of the lower employee counts. Or stated differently, the market capitalization for each CDW employee exceeds that for the other companies. Each CDW employee is worth about $870K. Similarly, Insight, $193K; Tech Data, $243K; and Ingram Micro, $239K. CDW market capitalization per employee is considerably higher than the others.
- Revenue: Similarly with employees, CDW has one of the lower revenues. Or stated differently, CDW has a higher market capitalization for each dollar of revenue. For each dollar of revenue, the companies are rewarded with the following market capitalizations:
- CDW: $0.70;
- Insight: $0.23;
- Tech Data: $0.09; and
- Ingram Micro: $0.10.
- Gross Margins: CDW has the largest gross margins at roughly 16%. Insight comes close at 13% and the remaining two companies have significantly lower gross margins.
- EBITDA: CDW has one of the highest Earnings Before Interest Taxes and Depreciation. Again, CDW is richly rewarded for it EBITDA as indicated by market capitalization to EBITDA (market cap divided by EBITDA) ratios:
- CDW: $10.19;
- Insight: $6.14;
- Tech Data: $8.95; and
- Ingram Micro: $6.40.
- Operating Margins: CDW has the strongest operating margin by a large margin. It is more than double that of Insight's, its nearest competitor.
- EPS: The earnings per share are as listed above.
- P/E: CDW has the largest P/E ratio by a significant margin. The higher P/E ratio is attributable to its higher margins listed above.
- PEG: The Price Earnings Growth ratios for all companies vary from 0.9 to 1.2, a reasonably close range. CDW has the largest PEG ratio. CDW is rewarded for its better margins.
- P/S: Again, CDW enjoys the highest Price to Sales ratio.
I am generally bearish on the computer technology sector. Vista sales have been tepid and the U.S. economy is not as robust as it has been. Thus, I believe the computer technology related companies are vulnerable. In particular, I am biased against CDW. You will note that compared to Insight, CDW enjoys an approximate 6.8 times valuation even though its sales are less than double that of Insights. When I often buy computer peripherals, I check both CDW's and Insight's online offerings. Although I find Insight's web site more difficult to navigate, I often found its prices were slightly better than CDW's. Last week when I bought some items, I found the reverse. CDW was prices slightly less than Insight. Thus, I think CDW's margins might be under pressure if it is undercutting its competition.
Please note, because I live in Canada, I use the Canadian versions of both CDW's and Insight's web sites.
I have provided a link to a Yahoo! Finance chart showing the relative performance of the above stocks for year-to-date. CDW is down the most with a loss so far of about 15%.
All the companies that I mentioned are worth monitoring to gauge the health of the computer technology sector. As stated, I am bearish because Vista sales have been slow and U.S. economy appears to be slowing. Should the economy slow even further, I believe the technology companies will have even more difficulty moving product out the door.
Disclosure: I am short CDW shares.
Many blogs have recently mentioned the Great Firewall Of China website. I decided to see if Specious Argument was banned. Fortunately it is not banned.
I then had a look at how Specious Argument appears in China. It looks very similar except some elements in the sidebar. The Flickr badge is does not work. Google AdSense uses Chinese rather than English, which only makes sense. And Amazon.com advertisement is missing. From those observations, Flickr and Amazon.com must be banned.
I wonder if the restrictions will be eased toward the Olympics when China will have many foreigners.
Update
China Law Blog provided an interesting comment, which I am promoting as an update to the original article.
China typically blocks all LiveJournal, Blogspot and WordPress blogs, but let's Typepad be. Looks like you are typepad (movable type), so that is probably why.
I find it interesting that certain brands of blogs are targeted. In looking through my blog's hit statistics, China ranks about 15 out of 123 countries.
I received a further response from China Law Blog, which I am also promoting as an update.
I have been given two different explanations (but I have no idea if either or both are true)that China does not like the free sites because those are the ones typically populated by Fulan Gang and others "out to get China." I have also heard that Typepad has done a good job shmoozing with China. I too would love to know the real reason. Anyone?
If anyone has any suggestions or answers, please leave a comment.
Earlier I wrote an article for Movable Type users providing advice of how to reduce spam intake. I have another suggestion. Add the following code to your mt-config.cgi file.
# ThrottleSeconds
ThrottleSeconds 120
My ThrottleSeconds simply forces 120 before another comment or trackback can be submitted to my weblog. If some bot carpet bombs my weblog with large bursts of spam, very little will be accepted because of the throttle. My weblog does not receive a large dose of legitimate comments and trackbacks, so a throttle of 120 seconds is fine.
One thing to watch out for is when your write an article with more than one internal trackbacks. Your first trackback will succeed, while the rest will be throttled. This is an easy issue to overcome, though. You just need to wait for two minutes and then save again.
About two years ago, I wrote an article about FastExcel, a software product designed to make your Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheets run more efficiently. I am reminding Microsoft Excel users again of the benefits of FastExcel.
Charles Williams, the software developer of FastExcel, summarizes the program's function as the following: FastExcel helps you run Excel faster by providing a set of tools to analyse and time your workbooks, online help and advice on how to eliminate many frequently occurring bottlenecks, and a Worksheet Flow Optimising tool.
When I work with large and complex spreadsheets, I find FastExcel invaluable. I am able to find my bottlenecks and remove them, allowing the spreadsheets to operate significantly faster. In addition to removing bottlenecks, the software can also clean workbooks by cleaning the excess of the used range, deleting temporary files, removing invalid names (I use named ranges extensively), deleting empty worksheets and much more.
The following two links provide a sample of the program's uses and functionality:
Because I find the program invaluable, I thought I would highlight it to others. As a matter of disclosure, I am merely an appreciative user. I receive no remuneration for providing a strong endorsement of FastExcel. I endorse the product because it is an extremely well written program that is invaluable.
