The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that the US consumer electronics market is in a state of recovery and should exceed $166 Billion in 2010.

pic courtesy: Permuto

How amazingly we are moving with time and getting used to the innovations. Keep reading !

Pi : Its longest calculation ever by Japanese Super Computer

The new value of Pi is 2,576,980,370,000 decimal places long. T2K-Tsukuba System, a supercomputer at the University of Tsukuba, Northeast of Tokyo takes the credit of setting a world record for calculating the value of Pi to more than 2.5 trillion decimal places beating the previous record of more than 1.2 trillion places, set in 2002 by a team from University of Tokyo and Hitachi.

This supercomputer is comprised of 640  Quadra-Core AMD Opteron processors and processing speed of 95 Trillion floating-point operations per second. It took 73 hours and 36 minutes (including verification time) to calculate this value which is 8 times faster than the previous record(600 hrs for calculating 1.2 trillion decimal places).

Daisuke Takahashi, Associate Professor of Centre for Computational Sciences wrote the two programs for this calculation.

This is yet another step towards exploring the endless value of the geometrical constant and a way of testing the super computer.

Warren Buffet: The greatest investor ever

credit: topnews

 The greatest investor ever in the history, world’s second richest man (according  to Forbes richest men as of February 13th 2009)  with a wealth of worth $37 billion, his company Berkshire Hathaway owns 63 companies, and yet he lives in a  (considering his stature) 5 bedroom flat in Omaha, Nebraska which he bought in 1958 for $31,500 after his marriage, he still drives his own car, he does not fly in a private jet ( as reported in 2006), took home a mere salary of US $1,75,000 in 2008 and there are endless stories that illuminates his simplicity.

We are talking about Warren Edward Buffet, the CEO( of Berkshire Hathaway),  the investor, the philanthropist, called the ‘Oracle of Ohama’, the second child and only son born to Howard Buffet, elected as a congress man and mother Leila Buffet, on August 30, 1930 in Ohama, Nebraska. His initial education was done in Woodrow Wilson High School, Washington D.C. 

Chronology: Warren Buffet’s Life 

His Education:

• 1947-1949: He joined The Wharton School, Pennsylvania for a degree in Economics.
• 1950: He took a transfer to University of Nebraska where he got B.S in economics.
• 1950-51: He registered for a M.S in Economics at Columbia Business School only after he came to know about Benjamin Graham ( The author of intelligent investor) and David Dodd, two famous securities analyst, taught there. And later Benjamin Graham became his mentor 

His Professional Career: 

• 1951 – 1954:  He was employed as an investment salesman at Buffet – Falk & Co
• 1954 – 1956: Then he worked at Graham Newman Corp, New York as securities analyst.
• 1956 – 1969: A crucial time, when he set afloat a partnership investment company called Buffet Partnership Ltd. Getting an initial investment of around $100,000 from his family and friends. It was a huge success with a capitol of $300,000 after 1^st year.
• 1969 onward: Around 1962, Buffet Partnership Ltd. invested in one of the textile companies called Berkshire Hathaway and slowly by 1970 this company was liquidated and turned into an investment business. By 1969 Buffet Partnership Ltd was also liquidated.  

The success story of Berkshire Hathaway still continues with its few major stock holdings being: 

1. GEICO (100%)
2. Applied Underwriters (100%)
3. Kansas Bankers Surety Company (100%)
4. Net Jets (100%)
5. The Buffalo News (100%)
6. Acme Brick Company ( 100%)
7. Dairy Queen (100%)
8. Wesco Fin Corp (80.1%)
9. Comdisco ( 38%)
10. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation (22.58%)
11. The Washington Post Company (18.38%)
12. USG Corp (17.21%)
13. Moody’s Corp (16.93%)
14. American Express (12.75%)
15. Carmax (10%)
16. The Coca-Cola (8.6%)
17. Kraft Foods (8.1%) 

There are around 40 companies which is completely owned (100%) by Berkshire Hathaway. 

His Personal Life: 

• 1952 – He got married to Susan Thompson and had three children Susan Alice Buffet, Howard Graham Buffet, Peter Andrew Buffet.
• 1977 – The couple decided to stay separately, though they remained married till Warren’s wife, Susan Buffet’s death due to stroke in 2004.
• 2006 – He married Astrid Menks (63 then), his companion since long. Susan Buffet arranged their meeting before she left in 1977. 

Warren Buffet: Reasons why he is a CEO with a difference  

• The generous philanthropist he is, Buffet announced in 2006 that he will donate 83% of his wealth to Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. His children would not inherit a great part of his wealth.
• He donates $12 million every year to Buffet Foundation, a charity foundation that he started
• He auctioned his car Lincoln Town Car to raise money for Girls Inc (A foundation run by his daughter Susan in Omaha), also he auctioned a luncheon with himself for a charity.
• He is working with Christopher Webber and Andy Heyward, DiC Entertainment on an animation series that will teach children good financial habit for a healthy and wealthy life.
• He was recognized as the top money manager of twentieth century by Carson group. 

Small revelations about Warren Buffet: 

• He is a fierce bridge player and makes it a point to play bridge for 12 hours a week. He usually plays with Bill gates and Sharon Osberg (He learnt the game from her).
• He bought his first share at the age of 11.
• He bought a small farm at age of 14 with savings from delivering newspaper.

Innovation at its best :

Why cant we create something like this !