Monthly Archives: January 2013

Some Cheap and Less Cheap Books

In the upcoming days and weeks I will apply for a job at some of the major strategy consultants. To do so, I have to pass some case interviews. To ace them, you need practice – a lot of practice. I ordered one of the (self-proclaimed) case interview bibles: Case in Point, written by Marc P. Cosentino. I had to pay about 25 euro for it, and a signifcant amount of shipping costs.

Today I received it. This book is supposed to give me more confidence. But then, I looked at the cover (see picture below).

CaseInPoint

Left: the book. Right: a close up of an interesting part of the cover.

So, apparently, proofreading the cover was too much to ask. And I paid (way) over 25 euro for this book. Continue reading →

Could Game Theoretic Price Collusion be Legal?

Price fixing or price collusion occurs when companies agree to keep the price of a product or service at an elevated level (or limit production) with the goal of receiving large profits or cornering the market. This is deemed illegal. I am wondering whether price fixing could be legal if it is the result of so-called repeated or iterated games. Continue reading →

The Scam Called Terravision

In a previous post I wrote that our journey from London to Munich was not as smooth as one may expect.

Ferry

Well, we left our London hotel early, around 3.30am, to get on an early bus to Stansted Airport. We booked reserved seatings with Terravision. Arriving at the bus stop around 3.50am we saw a remarkably big crowd waiting for buses to the airport. Unfortunately, it was raining quite hard. Our bus was to depart around 4.20am. Around that time a bus from Terravision indeed arrived, but something was wrong. It was actually the 3.50am bus, which was late. But, people waiting for the 3.50am bus, at least 20 or 30 people, could not even get on: it was full! Continue reading →

Munich-Salzburg-Munich: Christmas Markets, Climbing the Alps, Wagner and Mozart, Bavarian Beer, and More

In an earlier post I described our latest British experiences, which ended with us getting on a plane to Munich. In Munich and Salzburg we would celebrate Christmas with Sarah’s (my girlfriend) family, who came all the way from the U.S. for six days.

December 20 we arrived in Munich, but the journey was not as smooth as one may expect, but more on that in a future post.  The plane that took us to Munich was one of the smallest I have ever been on, with only four seats in every row. At the airport we would wait for Sarah’s family, who would arrive an hour or so after us. We wandered a bit across the airport, and were surprised to see our first German Christmas market. Continue reading →

Sharing LAN Internet: Use a “Virtual Router”

In my apartment I have a LAN (“cable”) internet connection. I recently got a second laptop which I would like to connect to the internet as well. Every attempt to do so failed, until an hour ago.

I cannot split the cable, because my MAC address is (uniquely) registered with my landlords (the internet connection can only be accessed by the computer with the registered MAC address). Also, my landlords forbid to use routers, so the LAN cable will have to be my access point. Continue reading →