Archive for the ‘Good Read’ Category
Understanding Derivatives vs Synthetic ETFs
Below FT article explains the difference between the two using Gucci Shoes as an example (Very well written article by the way, though it does not explain why Gucci and it likes are so freakin expensive 
)
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/10/10/697136/etf-phantom-liquidity/
Meltdown – Documentary on the financial crisis
Al-Jazeera (one of the best news channel out there) has come up with 4 part documentary on the financial crisis.
The men who crashed the world
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/2011/09/2011914105518615434.html
The Global Financial Tsunami
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/2011/09/201191713542357406.html
Paying the price
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/2011/09/201191714104876434.html
After the fall
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/2011/09/2011917141938887360.html
Anti Patterns
Funny but True Anti-patterns catalog, some I can relate to to my previous employers/work-place. My favorite ones:
Seagull Management
A manager/consultant who comes in, makes a lot of noise, flaps about, eats all the sandwiches and flies out, leaving s**t everywhere.
AnAthena Pattern
Forces: A position needs to be filled quickly. Naturally, a certain level of expertise is needed. Management, for various reasons, do not wish to advertise directly. The people who screen the applicants do not have a good understanding of what the role needs.
Supposed Solution: Put together a list of requirements and place the job with an Employment Agency.
Architecture As Requirement
Forces: A new system is being designed. Designers want to use the BestPractices and BestTechnology? available. There often is a new-fangled technology/product/process in the marketplace; and/or the design team/architect has a “pet” favorite technology.
There is no compelling customer reason to use any particular technology. Some folks fall in love with a particular technology, and then profess that any system implemented in it is inherently superior than a system implemented in a “lesser” technology. Many (not all!) criticisms against Unix (LanguageIsAnOs, TheUnixHatersHandbook) seem to be of this variety, i.e. it’s written in C, so it must suck.
HFT Alert – Algo Trading Alert System
“HFT Alert, the first real time software designed to detect high frequency and algorithmic trading systems. HFT Alert identifies when these trading systems are running and what stocks are being affected. HFT Alert can detect several types of algorithms as well as stocks experiencing elevated quote rates associated with algorithmic trading.”
Traders Gun and Money
If you are working on Derivatives and/or even slightly interested in finance, get this book. I wish I could have read this before.
Download all Build 2011 sessions
Download all Build 2011 session videos via this nifty tool
HTML 5 + JS > SL/WPF?
HTML 5 is the most promising and core technology for the web and it is gaining ground as tablets/hand-helds are getting popular
First Apple said no to Adobe Flash and went with HTML5 for playing videos on ios devices, then google and opera put tons of effort to make their browser support HTML 5 (mind you HTML 5 standards are not yet complete). We have now learnt that Windows 8 is HTML 5 centric (.net and win libraries will not be ported on Win8/ARM-Architecture, only native version will have them – this makes HTML5+JS as silverlight lite).
The best news about HTML 5 coming this week is that we now have an entire OS built using HTML 5. Check out tech crunch article.
[Picture copied from tech crunch]
Automate installation of windows 8 via powershell script
If you have Windows 7, you can dual boot windows 8 from a VHD file (Virtual Hard Disk file); installing on a separate partition is so 2010. With the below script you don’t even need to burn the image on DVD or USB drive it would automatically expand the image on the vhd file. Don’t forget to change the policy of power shell (Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted) before you execute the below script.
