Australian Stock Exchange

S&P SX200: 3809.2 -60.2
ALL ORDS: 3768.3 -63.3

The ASX Stock exchange began as six separate exchanges established in the state capitals Melbourne (1861), Sydney (1871), Hobart (1882), Brisbane (1884), Adelaide (1887) and Perth (1889).[2] An exchange in Launceston merged into the Hobart exchange too.
The first interstate conference was held in 1903 at Melbourne Cup time. The exchanges then met on an informal basis until 1937 when the Australian Associated Stock Exchanges (AASE) was established, with representatives from each exchange. Over time the AASE established uniform listing rules, broker rules, and commission rates.
Trading was conducted by a call system, where an exchange employee called the names of each company and brokers bid or offered on each. In the 1960s this changed to a post system. Exchange employees called "chalkies" wrote bids and offers in chalk on blackboards continuously, and recorded transactions made.
The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is the primary stock exchange in Australia. The ASX began as separate state-based exchanges established as early as 1861. Today trading is all-electronic and the exchange is a public company, listed on the exchange itself.
The Australian Securities Exchange as it is now known resulted from the merger of the Australian Stock Exchange and the Sydney Futures Exchange in December 2006.
The biggest stocks traded on the ASX, in terms of their market capitalisation, include BHP Billiton, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Telstra Corporation, Rio Tinto, National Australia Bank and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group. As at 31-Dec-2006 the three largest sectors by market cap were financial services (34%), commodities (20%) and listed property trusts (10%).
The major market index is the S&P/ASX 200, an index made up of the top 200 shares in the ASX. This supplanted the previously significant All Ordinaries index, which still runs parallel to the S&P ASX 200. Both are commonly quoted together. Other indices for the bigger stocks are the S&P/ASX 100 and S&P/ASX 50.
The ASX is a public company, and its own shares are traded on the ASX. However, the corporation's charter restricts maximum individual holdings to a small fraction of the company.
While the ASX regulates other listed companies listed on the ASX, it cannot regulate itself, and is regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
The current managing director Robert Elstone was appointed in July 2006. Prior to the merger of ASX with the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE), Robert Elstone was the CEO of the SFE

Firefox, Opera downloads soar after IE warnings

Advice to drop IE sparks download rush to alternate browsers

By Gregg Keizer

January 20, 2010 03:22 PM ET

Mozilla yesterday reported a "huge increase" in downloads of Firefox in Germany after that country's computer security agency urged users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) to dump the browser and run a rival instead.

German downloads of Firefox during a four-day stretch starting last Friday jumped by about 300,000 over normal, said Ken Kovash, Mozilla's director of analytics, on the company's "Blog of Metrics." "Over the past few days there has been a huge increase in the number of Firefox downloads from IE users in Germany," Kovash claimed.

Norwegian browser maker Opera Software said that downloads in Germany of its desktop application were double the usual rate last weekend, and downloads in Australia were up 40% over normal.

Mozilla and Opera cited recommendations by German, French and Australian authorities to stop using IE as the cause for the jump. Last Friday, Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, known by its German initials of BSI, and France's CERTA each called for users to stop running IE until Microsoft patches a critical vulnerability. "Pending a patch from the publisher, CERT recommends using an alternative browser," a translation of the French advisory stated.

An alert posted by the Australian government's Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy made a similar recommendation last week. "If you do not wish to install the temporary fixes [by Microsoft] ... consider using an alternate web browser (Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari are two such browsers) until an update becomes available," the alert read.

The countries were responding to Microsoft's confirmation last week that a flaw in IE was exploited by hackers to break into the corporate network of Google and other major Western companies. Google has alleged that the attacks were launched by Chinese attackers and security experts have offered evidence that links the attacks to China.

Today, Microsoft announced that it would deliver an "out-of-band" update tomorrow at approximately 1 p.m. Eastern.

Some security experts have argued that the advice to dump IE is wrong-headed.

"That's an irrational fear," said Richie Lai, the director of vulnerability research at security company Qualys. "Any browser has vulnerabilities. Rather than recommend switching from IE, the messaging should be that corporations should be upgrading to the latest browser, whether it's IE8 or Firefox."

The nearly nine-year-old IE6 is the most vulnerable to the current round of exploits on the Web, in part because the attack code was written specifically for that edition, in part because it lacks advanced security features like DEP (data execution prevention) and Protected Mode, a sandbox-style defense that makes it more difficult for hackers to break into the operating system if they exploit the browser.

Lai acknowledged that many corporate computer users were unable to upgrade from IE6 because they needed it to access older Web applications or intranet sites. Those people, Lai said, are stuck. But if users could install a rival browser, such as Firefox, that meant they could also install IE8, Lai argued.

Other security experts disagree. Sheri McLeish, an analyst with Forrester Research who covers browsers, noted that even if many enterprise workers are forced to use IE6, they often can install a non-Microsoft browser, as a second browser. The same isn't possible with a more secure version of IE, say IE8; that's because Windows does not allow users to run two different versions of IE.

When asked to comment on the dump-IE calls by German, French and Australian organizations, Microsoft instead repeated its assertion that only IE6 has been targeted by hackers. "As such, customers using earlier versions of Internet Explorer, such as Internet Explorer 6, should upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 immediately," said a company spokesman.

Bill Gates launches Gates Notes to share his thoughts

After joining Twitter and Facebook, former Microsoft chairman launches Web site

By Sharon Gaudin

January 20, 2010 05:35 PM ET

As if joining Twitter and rejoining Facebook in the same week weren't enough, Bill Gates has now launched a Web site on which he can share his thoughts.

Sure, most people can share their thoughts and opinions using Facebook and Twitter. But most people aren't the former chairman of Microsoft Corp. and a world-renowned philanthropist.

So to better let people know what's going on in his world, Gates launched a site today called the Gates Notes.

"Since leaving my full-time job at Microsoft to dedicate more time to our foundation, a lot of people have asked me what I'm working on," wrote Gates as a welcome message on his new site. "It often feels like I'm back in school, as I spend a lot of my time learning about issues I'm passionate about. I'm fortunate because the people I'm working with and learning from are true experts in their fields. I take a lot of notes, and often share them and my own thoughts on the subject with others through email, so I can learn from them and expand the conversation.

"I thought it would be interesting to share these conversations more widely with a Website, in the hope of getting more people thinking and learning about the issues I think are interesting and important," he added.

So far, the site has information about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, epidemic preparedness, relief for Haiti and climate change.

It's been a busy week for Gates.

Yesterday, he joined Twitter, sending out his first tweet. Since that first tweet on Tuesday afternoon, Gates has twittered six more times, and he quickly amassed a following of more than 236,000 people. He also made it onto more than 67,000 Twitter lists.

A little after 3 p.m. EDT today he Twittered about his new Web site. "My new Website is live check out www.thegatesnotes.com. Excited to share more about what I'm learning, hope you like it!"

And after quitting Facebook last summer and publicly saying that being on the social networking site was more trouble than it was worth, he made a return on Tuesday. To avoid being crushed with friend requests this time around, Gates has opted to let people become "fans" of his page instead.

An Interview With Ken Adams - GIC Chair

Q. How long have you been playing B$?

Almost five years now, I first signed on in March 2005.

Q. What got you interested in playing B$?

I had started blogging in December 2004, and the spiders found me a month later. As I started to figure things out, I noticed a few hits from the game and decided to check it out. At first, the volume of information was intimidating, and I actually left the game alone for about 4 months.

Q. Ideas or Shares?

It depends, I play both. Shares can be a lot of fun when there are many players fighting over a few blogs, and so can competing for drops on rare or artefact industries.

Q. Why did you volunteer to be on GIC?

I really like to understand how things work, and I spent a lot of time mapping out the new ideas math. After that, I made some suggestions to the GIC and was doing some testing to help AdamF with the Dead Blog Finder. My membership on the GIC is all his fault.

Q. What's the hardest part of being on GIC?

Sometimes, players have really cool ideas and I have absolutely no idea how to make them work. A close second is explaining to my wife why I need to spend every evening online playing B$.

Q. You are the head of GIC? How is that different from other GIC members?

Not much different, really. My role as GIC Chairman is to be the primary interface with the game administrators and BOD. And to referee the Jello wrestling matches.

Q. Potent Wind send share prices all over the place. What happened? Can we expect to see that again any time soon?

The spike from Potent Wind was an expected consequence of removing the artificial limit on outgoing link value, coupled with the time needed to settle things out in the database. At the time, we had over 7 million blogs that needed to be indexed about 10 times to fully propagate the new valuations, and that caused the perturbations.
I don't expect to see anything like it again, but if someone has an idea that makes long-term sense with weird short-term effects, I'm game.

Q. Occasionally GIC will have a contest. How do you decide when to do this? Can we expect any new contests soon?

We don't have anything currently planned, but if someone has an idea for a contest we'd be happy to help set it up.