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Month: May 2009

2010 FIA Rule Changes Have Ferrari Fuming

2010 FIA Rule Changes Have Ferrari Fuming

Spending caps and sports do not make good bedfellows, despite cries form underfunded teams to the contrary. No where is this more evident than in F1 racing. Historically, the F1 team that spends the most enjoys the most success.

Max Mosley wants to change all that.

Mosley has proposed spending caps for teams, but the rules are not so cut and dried. Instead of enforcing a level playing field in all regulations, poorer teams will be allowed more freedom to interprete the rules as they see fit. Teams spending more than $60 million dollars (not including engines, drivers, and marketing expenses??)will be governed strictly by the rule book, while teams with pocket lint for funding will get to make it up as they go, but not if Ferrari has anything to say about it.

In a press release today, Ferrari publically denounced the rule changes, and threatened to end their 60 year streak of continuous involvement in F1 if the rules were not amended.

Ferrari is to F1 what the New York Yankees are to Baseball, so lets hope this statement does not go unnoticed by the FIA. It makes no sense to alienate the best teams or most well funded teams or the most ingenious, when the name of the game is being at the pinnacle of motor sports. Ferrari is routinely all three, and has only recently fallen off the podium as a result of not being able to do anything in their power to go faster.

I say “Let them go faster, Mr Mosley, at any cost.”

Results Of The Stress Test, By The Numbers

Results Of The Stress Test, By The Numbers

Today, the Federal Reserve released the results of their Bank Stress tests. The banks stress tested, as well as their additional capital requirements are listed below. I hope you didn’t eat a heavy lunch…

  • American Express: No additional capital requirement.
  • Bank Of America: $33.9 Billion
  • BB&T Corp: No additional capital requirement.
  • The Bank Of NY Mellon Corp: No additional capital requirement.
  • Capital One : No additional capital requirement.
  • Citigroup: $5.5 Billion
  • Fifth Third Bancorp: $1.1 Billion
  • GMAC: $11.5 Billion
  • Goldman Sachs Group: No additional capital requirement.
  • JP Morgan : No additional capital requirement.
  • KeyCorp: $1.8 Billion
  • MetLife: No additional capital requirement.
  • Morgan Stanley: $1.8 Billion
  • PNC Financial Services: $600 Million
  • Regions Financial Corp: $2.5 Billion
  • State Street Corp: No additional capital requirement.
  • SunTrust Bank: $2.2 Billion
  • US Bancorp: No additional capital requirement.
  • Wells Fargo & Company: $13.7 Billion

Compared with the leaked numbers from Wednesday, it appears most companies actual results have improved. Banks collectively need to come up with an additional $74 billion dollars in order to avert disaster should our economy significantly worsen.

Windows 7 on 1st Gen 13″ MacBook

Windows 7 on 1st Gen 13″ MacBook

I’ve been using the new Windows 7 Release Candidate on my 1st gen (1,1) 13″ MacBook for about two hours now, and it’s mostly pretty impressive.  Mostly.  I haven’t managed to get the sound working yet, and multitouch isn’t working on the trackpad, but I should be able to sort that stuff out with a little snooping around on the intertubes.

I installed it as a completely fresh install – no Boot Camp – so I think that is what’s causing the trackpad issues. I just got a new 320 GB drive for this laptop, so once I install that, I’ll put OS X 1.5 on it, with Boot Camp, and that should let me install the Apple drivers.

Oh, and I haven’t figured out how to left-click yet, which is pretty frustrating.

Other impressions so far . . . well, it’s quick. Even on an older laptop it feels fast. My internet connection feels even faster in Windows 7 than it does in OS X 10.4. I don’t have any real numbers, unfortunately, but it seems noticeably quicker.

Installing applications is also incredibly fast. There has been no lag while switching between installation menus.  I’m seriously impressed.

I’ve installed OpenOffice, The Gimp, Firefox, Songbird, Launchy, and VLC, and with each installation, I’ve noticed how fast things are loading.  Maybe it shouldn’t be particularly impressive. Maybe I’m expecting Windows 7 to suck. Without much real Vista experience, I guess I was expecting Windows 7 to chug and fail, especially in a non-typical installation, like on a MacBook, but so far, it’s been enjoyable. Besides the sound and trackpad problems, which are understandable, Windows 7 is a good time. Up next – installing some older applications and games and such to test out the XP compatibility.