This time, I will let alone the technical stuff like covered call, albeit it's quite important. I want to talk about some interesting stuff from which I read recently.

Algae Business
As I am throwing myself into quantum mechanics recently, I am a big fan of Solar Industry. I read that now a new business is evolving, algae business. Dan~ How crazy people are thinking. The story was long, but let me cut it short, last year, oil price started to grow and US gov was pushing the use of biofuel, so that their farmers or US voters could farm fuel instead of less price competitive product. Then, corn is expensive, beef then becomes expensive, milk is expensive, coffee is expensive and everything is getting expensive. Even oranges are expensive because people are going to farm corn... But then know they are living in US, not in Brazil, efficiency of biofuel is poor. (for me, I would suggest them to directly convert sunlight into electrical energy, like SunPower is building solar plant in California, more: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080814/aqth082.html?.v=60)

They know it is not going to work, but then there was news on TV showing "Algae Chokes Bay That Will Host Olympic Sailing": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7ZJkd2d8vQ

One way they are complaining the poor condition for the Chinese Olympic, another way they know they can make money of it. First of all, those Algae specie in China are not from China, so it was totally unexpected, and its growth rate was dramatic. Second, by photosynthesis, Algae can transform CO2 to starch and oxygen. Cool, that's the selling point. Company called Solazyme raised $45m after Olympics claiming the use of Algae as biofuel. True that it sounds like Algae business can earn Carbon Credit, however as we all know Algae will use the oxygen in water during respiration, the reason why algae can suffocate fishes, and it will release CO2 as well. Also, the starch they make, I wonder how much CO2 are generated before producing the biofuel and how efficient they are. Still sounds like we have a net energy lost here. But surely Algae likes other green plant can help reducing global temperature.

Browser War
The new feature of IE8 is InPrivate, which people describe as "Porn Mode", which notifies users of third-party content that can track browsing history and allow users to block them. Sounds like a good anti-adv feature. However, the main target would be Google Ad. Microsoft is a loser in internet advertisement, so they don't really care if they cannot track users' behaviors for selling advertisement. From my poor experience with IE7, it hangs time to time which puts me off, I am now a firefox user, for me, the more functions they have, the harder I could browse normally. Then, it's time for Google to fight back, they have introduced their own browser, Chrome (www.google.com/chrome), I have just started to experience it, I am getting worried about the necessity of taking care of IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari when I am going to write a new webpage. However, Chrome will take Firefox users mainly I suppose, since IE users are those who won't care what browser they are using. Also, Chrome will open a new page for Google as they always want to let people to use their software offline, now Chrome as they claim is a desktop tool for Google everything, mail, translator, map, document, youtube... What's left for microsoft is really just the OS.

p.s. Unless LHC finds another way to transform photon to electrons next week this time in CERN, Einstein's photoelectric effect is the most efficient way of generating electricity from sunlight.