New CMS spec is here

By: Ray Pellecchia

File Under: NYSE, NYSE

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Maybe not quite as much-awaited as the new Springsteen released yesterday, but much-awaited nonetheless, CMS Spec 42.00 now is available, targeted for production in May 2006. This Hybrid Market bulletin summarizes the CMS changes, tells how to get the spec, and also offers an update on the Hybrid rollout: Phase I impacts, Phase II underway, and Phase III anticipated to be implemented in late summer.

Why do phases always get Roman numerals? Feel like I'm reporting on the Super Bowl.

Speaking of numbers, haven't done a number on numbers in a while. So for those of you who miss it, and have not yet been prescribed some serious meds, here's some 411 on 42.00:

· The number 42 plays a key role in Douglas Adams' science fiction series The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I haven't read, but from what I read of it, it would spoil a plot line for me to tell you what that role is. So if you too haven't read it and the suspense is consuming you, get thee to the bookstore.

· 42 is the number that Mariano Rivera, the Yankees' peerless closer, proudly wears on his pinstripes.

· According to Wikipedia: "Bracketed by twin primes, this composite number's factorization makes it a sphenic number, as it is the product of the first three terms of Sylvester's sequence. It is also the third 15-gonal number, a Catalan number, a meandric number, an open meandric number. It is believed to be the third moment of the Riemann zeta function, based partially upon evidence from quantum mechanics. In base 10, it is a Harshad number and a self number. It is also a perfect score on the USA Math Olympiad and International Mathematical Olympiad." (I knew all that; I was a finalist for the Math Olympiad but failed the steroid test.)

· Wikipedia also notes that 42 is the number of teeth in a canine mouth. So if you've ever been bitten by a dog, now you know what you were up against.

· 42 is the number of lines on each page of the Gutenberg Bible, the oldest surviving book printed with movable type. And MovableType, not coincidentally, is the name of the publishing platform of this here blog. I can't think of coming full circle any better than that, so I'll leave it right there.