Why i think most traders fail? Change your ways. Now.

I used to be a systems programmer/admin on IBM mainframes.

At one point, my employer was buying a new IBM-compatible mainframe from a large UK computer firm who were marketing it on behalf of a large Japanese firm.

It was designed to eventually run IBM's flagship mainframe operating system MVS/JES.

However, a demo machine I went to see (only in sunny Manchester, not Japan) was running the Japanese firm's own version of the Operating System.

I don't know to what extent (if any) they had lifted the IBM code (wouldn't have thought they would have risked that). I think they had actually reverse engineered the whole thing, i.e. basically written it from scratch as a lookalike.

It looked more or less like MVS/JES, give or take some strange message codes.

It was a good machine actually, but I don't think many were sold, at least, not via that UK firm.


No names, no pack drill.
 
DionysusToast said:
Or - to put it in the terms of the CEO in the UK that poached me from Ericsson Copenhagen & sent me there...

"5 years ago they brought version 1.1 of our product and made 2000 changes. They just brought version 4.0 and plan to do the same thing - Make sure they don't **** it up"

I am sure you can understand, having lived there.
Click to expand...

Haha ok yup indeed !

:D

We were actually there almost 10 years, first Kobe, where we had our General Consulate, and then the Embassy in Tokyo.

And actually Tokyo was interrupted after the 11th class when my parents got posted to the twilight years of Ceausescus Romania (hardship post after 10 years in first class posts), so I was unceremoniously bundled off to a boarding school in Germany bang in the middle of nowhere...

Talk about depression after the glittering lights, excitement and life of Tokyo lol !

THANK GOD the place went bankrupt after my one year there, and back I went to Tokyo to my old school as happily friends of ours had agreed to let me live with them for my last year. (In case someone is unsuccessfuly trying to do the maths, we have 13 years in our German school system.)

So that was really the universe taking good care of me I must say, flying back I was as excited as a kid in a candy store :)

But, to be honest, visiting my parents and going out in Bucharest was also great, if in a totally different manner, but you really can have a good time pretty much everywhere if you go with a good, positive attitude.
 
BSD said:
but you really can have a good time pretty much everywhere if you go with a good, positive attitude.
Click to expand...

Err, apart from bang in the middle of nowhere maybe that is...
 
Remember once, out and about with some people in Roppongi, now dunno about these days but back when we were there the yakuza always drove around in white luxury cars with all the chrome parts gold plated and black tinted windows, just so everyone was under no illusions whatsoever who they were ;-) (the Japanese had a thing with white cars anyway, apart from the universal black for official cars).

So we're having some warm up drinks here and there, chatted up some girls who joined us and with whom we wanted to go clubbing later, and then ?

What happens then ??

On our way to the Lex one sharp, impressive and really suave guy in our group spots a convoy of Yakuza cars double parked on the streets, and in an attempt to impress the girls or what ever passed for the sorry thinking process his befuddled grey cells got up to he goes and sits on the bonnet of one of the cars, elegantly lighting a cigarette, and probably suffering from the illusion that he was creating a very James Bond like moment for the girls to admire !!!

And then ?

Out of a cafe or sthg right by the cars jump the drivers who'd remained there while their bosses were living it up somewhere and proceeded to let go with some really wild, gutturals roars - anyone who's been there knows the kind of incredible yelling Japanese guys can get up to lol !!!

Our buddy jumps off the car as quickly as you've probably never seen anybody jump off cars, and with some quick and urgent instant diplomacy we make our suitable apologies expaining that he's basically out on a free weekend from a very respectable mental institute and that he surely hadn't intended any harm, and, their bark being worse than their bite, we actually ended up being bid farwell with some very hearty backslaps.

Now all that ended up impressing the girls, but sadly for this buddy of ours not in the way he had probably intended.

:LOL::LOL::LOL:
 
i think people lose money because they are too directional...always thinking 'this is the turning point', 'buy support as it may bounce', which is why they don't consider calculated averaging down with very wide stop losses, which almost always works.
 
Re: Tell us another one Marcus

Nah ! Bugger why traders fail - tell us another story Markus:clap:
 
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Haha Monty I wish :)))

To my great and everlasting sorrow I had absolutely no idea about markets back then !!!

Neil, another school buddy of ours, half-Japanese, half-Swiss, and who never quite came to terms with Sie and Du, tu et vous, our strange system of differentiating how we address people, one day went to our school director and asked him, "Hallo Herr Forgotthename, Good morning, why do Du have a flat tire on Ihrem car" !!!

To this day I dunno if he did it on purpose, he did well in school, but some stunts he pulled ?

The alarm clock and he were on a constant ongoing battle that sadly he kept losing as long as I knew him, one day he actually came into class, a fashionable 15 minutes late as always, and by way of explaining said that his bus had had too strong headwinds going against it to be able to make it on time !!!

And with the straightest of faces at that.

I remember when he got a motorbike, one of those chuckable motocross thingies, and in a similarly enlightened moment as our Yakuza friend above and in a break between classes where we were all outside with the girls chatting about nothing in particular he decides that now with a suitably large audience present that can't easily make a getaway it's a great time to show off not only his new toy but also his excellent riding and stunt skills !!!

So then ?

What's he do then ???

He jumps on his bike, kickstarts the engine into action, revs it enough times so that he has the attention of the last not attention paying laggard, lets the clutch fly, pulls up the front wheel in an incredibly competent looking and sexy wheelie, keeps roaring on, and as excited as he is he ignores the lil ole problem of a wall ahead of him coming ever closer, in all his starstruck euphoria he forgets how to get the wheel back down again, and heeding that old law of physics about two objects not being able to inhabit the same spot at the same time neatly proceeds to crash into the wall in an upright, near vertical position !!!

Now, some people have guardian angels, and no great harm was done to him personally apart from his severely injured pride and, later after we'd all made a suitable fuss over him and made sure he was OK some sniggers from the girls about certain guys and their very gungho macho tricks.

:LOL::LOL::LOL:

Went googling for Yakuza cars, and while this one certainly isn't white seeing that in Tokyo no one would be under any illusions whatsoever as to who the inhabitants are:

http://www.xdreamcaraudio.de/_content/download/Wallpapers/1024x768/Yakuza-Phaeton.jpg

4a097e2554d51.jpg


Liked their tatoos too didn't they, the Yakuza and their hubbies:

yakuza_girl.jpg
 
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Is that true about the Vapours song? There's also a nice tune by The Who called "Pictures of Lily", also about onanism. If you listen to the lyrics it's quite an amusing ditty.


(verse)

Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful
Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night
Pitcures of Lily solved my childhood problems
Pictures of Lily helped me feel alright
 
Hmmmm, possibly apocryphal

(from Wiki)

In the U.S., the song was believed to euphemistically refer to the face a male makes during the act of masturbation.[1] In a VH1 True Spin special the band denied this. Fenton explained: "Turning Japanese is all the clichés about angst and youth and turning into something you didn't expect to."[2]
 
montmorencyt2w said:
I used to be a systems programmer/admin on IBM mainframes.

At one point, my employer was buying a new IBM-compatible mainframe from a large UK computer firm who were marketing it on behalf of a large Japanese firm.

It was designed to eventually run IBM's flagship mainframe operating system MVS/JES.

However, a demo machine I went to see (only in sunny Manchester, not Japan) was running the Japanese firm's own version of the Operating System.

I don't know to what extent (if any) they had lifted the IBM code (wouldn't have thought they would have risked that). I think they had actually reverse engineered the whole thing, i.e. basically written it from scratch as a lookalike.

It looked more or less like MVS/JES, give or take some strange message codes.

It was a good machine actually, but I don't think many were sold, at least, not via that UK firm.


No names, no pack drill.
Click to expand...

No names ?

Could we at least disclose that the Japanese company in question with the IBM rip-off was Fujitsu ?

They ended up with their own line of mainframes in the end. I would imagine their design process started with an IBM machine and worked backwards from there...

...allegedly...
 
What happened to the thread starter, GladiatorX. Does he realise he has created the most successful thread since medbs' Holy Grail effort?
 
well.it's so long to read,but i appreciate the guy can share the article with us.
 
DionysusToast said:
No names ?

Could we at least disclose that the Japanese company in question with the IBM rip-off was Fujitsu ?

They ended up with their own line of mainframes in the end. I would imagine their design process started with an IBM machine and worked backwards from there...
Click to expand...

You may say that; I couldn't possibly comment. :)

No prizes for guessing the name of the UK firm.


Funnily enough, I used to work on another IBM lookalike machine marketed by the same UK company, an earlier generation, based loosely on the IBM 360 (well it had mostly the same instruction set). I think it was originally called the RCA Spectra 70 by its US makers, but was called something different over here.

...allegedly...
Click to expand...

Indeed.
 
DionysusToast said:
plus there used to be a shi!t load of money in IT.

Now - not so much the case...
Click to expand...

Still plenty of money in IT if you're good. The less 'skilled' end of it (business analysts, project managers, business process, you get the drift, the people who wouldn't know one end of a computer from another) get less money these days but good developers, designers, config managers, dba's, sys admins, etc still command handsome premiums in any sector but mainly in finance and telecoms.

e2a - I'm on about contract rates btw, not perm salaries. you don't need the myth of 'job security' if you're good at your job.
 
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