MajorTom writes “Right now, we are not tracking many of the asteroids that could destroy earth. But within the next decade, new telescopes will make that possible, and leave us with the tough decision of what to do about objects with an alarming chance of hitting our planet. Last year, NASA said that the ideal option is to nuke them. This week, Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, explained that there are far better options, and he has started an organization to prove that they can work.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

NBC will dominate Olympic coverage - MSNBC
NEW YORK - NBC News could rent a small plane just for the top news personalities going to Beijing to cover the Olympics: Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, Ann Curry, Lester Holt, Richard Engels, Kevin Tibbles and the Weather

Congress approves $48 billion for global AIDS fight - Philadelphia Inquirer
WASHINGTON - The Home voted yesterday to triple money to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world, giving new punch to a program credited with saving or prolonging millions of lives in Africa alone. The 303-115 vote sends the global

News in brief - Times On the web
Cesc Fàbregas has hinted that he is interested in playing for Real Madrid but poured cold water on the idea that he could move to the Bernabéu this summer. Reports in Spain suggested that Ramón Calderón, the Real president, has prepared a huge

Is latest stocks bounce a suckers’ rally? - USA Today
NEW YORK — They raise the hopes of investors. They occur out of nowhere. They have the ability to be money-making opportunities. But they tend to be fleeting. These are the stock rallies that occur when the economic outlook is bleak, news headlines are

Why not all debts are bad - News.com.au
Bad kinds of debt includes credit cards and personal loans Good debt is used to buy investments and build wealth More investing news in our Money section

ANZ Bank Profit to Fall as Much as 25% on Bad Debts (Update3) - Bloomberg
July 28 (Bloomberg) — Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. said profit will drop as much as 25 percent on bad debts, the second Australian bank in a week to cut earnings forecasts after the U.S. subprime crisis prompted a global credit squeeze

Not just Rossi vs. Gregoire: Governor’s race actually crowded - Seattle Times
Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi aren’t the only candidates running for governor. Eight others also are vying for the spot on the November ballot, even though they’ve virtually no chance of surviving the Aug. 19 primary. OLYMPIA — More than likely

Park your money somewhere safe - News.com.au
Savers can get up to 9pc on deposits Advisers warn against selling shares and moving everything to cash More banking news in our Money section

Farc ‘co-ordinator’ freed on bail - BBC News
A women arrested on suspicion of being the representative in Spain of the left-wing Colombian Farc rebel group has been released on bail. Maria Remedios Garcia Albert, a Spanish national, was detained near Madrid on Saturday as part of a joint

Sources state Biedrins, Warriors agree to 6-year contract - ESPN.com
The Golden State Warriors have moved swiftly to prevent Latvian center Andris Biedrins from seriously entertaining interest from deep-pocketed teams in Europe by reaching terms on a lucrative new contract with the restricted free agent. NBA front

Share This

Share This

Downchuck writes “Researchers at Ohio Say University claim to have synthesized a new material capable of delivering electricity directly from heat, at an efficiency far superior than existing thermoelectric materials. Scott at ArsTechnica has an interesting take: ‘Merge this with the new MIT solar dish and you’re in business!’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Rob Goldsmith writes “Earlier this week we heard that Cambridge University Spaceflight would be entering the N-Prize competition. The N-Prize is a competition to stimulate innovation directed towards obtaining cheap access to space. Most importantly, the launch budget must be within £999.99. Cambridge University Spaceflight plan to win the prize using a balloon and a rocket. They’ve now opened up an official forum where the public can track their progress.” The linked story has images from a test flight of July 23, and an interview with a member of the team, Ed Moore.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Adam Korbitz writes to point out that SETI@Home has added a new algorithm for use in evaluating signals from outer space. It’s called “Astropulse,” and they’ve made the scientific details available. Quoting: “The original SETI@home is narrowband, meaning that it is listening for a particular radio frequency. That’s like listening to an orchestra playing, and trying to hear when anyone plays the note “A sharp.” Astropulse listens for short-time pulses. In the orchestra analogy, it’s like listening for a quick drum beat, or a series of drumbeats. Since no one knows what extraterrestrial communications will ’sound like,’ it seems like a good idea to search for several types of signals. In scientific terms, Astropulse is a sky survey that searches for microsecond transient radio pulses.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

lindik writes “As part of their research efforts aimed at building real-time human-level artificial vision systems inspired by the brain, MIT graduate student Nicolas Pinto and principal investigators David Cox (Rowland Institute at Harvard) and James DiCarlo (McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT) recently assembled an impressive 16-GPU ‘monster’ composed of 8×9800gx2s donated by NVIDIA. The high-throughput method they promote can also use other ubiquitous technologies like IBM’s Cell Broadband Engine processor (included in Sony’s Playstation 3) or Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Computing services. Interestingly, the team is also involved in the PetaVision project on the Roadrunner, the world’s fastest supercomputer.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Consumer experience, Ford Motor (F), Economic data, Housing

President Bush is no stranger to drug and alcohol addiction. So when he talks about addiction, he’s an expert. In 2006’s State of the Union Address he lamented America’s addiction to oil. It happens that Houston, where his dad lives, is the best city in America for business thanks to ita ability to satisfy this addiction. And he gave a speech there just this week about Wall Street getting drunk.

Thanks to their thin layer of capital, lenders are rationing access to debt that’s contributing to a decline in housing prices. Bloomberg News reports they’ve fallen 15.3% in the last year in the 20 largest cities, and one estimate advocates that $6 trillion in housing wealth will evaporate in 2008.

Meanwhile, automobiles have lost so much value that Chrysler announced that it would quit leasing its automobiles because their trade-in value wasn’t adequate to keep the leases profitable, according to The New York Times. The loss of this financing business is a major blow.

In January 2006 I pointed out that the car companies were making their money on financing and the cars were simply a life support system for the money lending. Houses performed a similar function for the mortgage finance industry. Financing has become the tail that wags the dog.

And now that financing has dried up for houses and cars, the industries that make them are suffering catastrophic losses — Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) just announced an $8.7 billion net loss — $2.1 billion of that was related to unprofitable leases according to the New York Times. Thanks to their inefficient use of gas, SUVs have far lower resale values than automobile companies anticipated.

Eventually, prices and supply will drop enough that demand will revive. But with the absence of financing, the prices at which supply and demand will come back into equilibrium could be much lower than they were just a year ago. Our declining use of debt and gasoline is likely to continue to produce painful economic withdrawal pangs.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Products and services, Wal-Mart (WMT), Employees, Target Corp. (TGT), Ideal Purchase (BBY), Circuit City Stores (CC)

When Best Buy Inc. (NYSE: BBY), Circuit City Stores Inc. (NYSE: CC) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) are all stacked up together, which one comes out on top? Well, it depends on how you phrase the question: Are we speaking solely prices here, or customer service? The pricing angle can be debated all day long. When it comes to service though, my experience is very similar to the conclusion that this article says: Ideal Purchase is king.

Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT), although a much cleaner and brighter location in which to shop, seems to have a weak schedule in the consumer electronics department. Most weeks, I roam into many retail chain locations just to walk around and observe. In many cases, Target seems well-stocked when it comes to checkout personnel, but not if you have questions about a flat-panel television. At Circuit City, its tarnished reputation is well-deserved: It’s hard to just find anyone to help you.

And Wal-Mart? The world’s largest retailer has made strides to really improve the consumer electronics sections in its stores. The customer service, however, is a completely separate story. If I step into a Ideal Purchase, there’s a 99% chance that I will be greeted by a security guard manning the front door, and will be asked at least four times within five minutes if I need help.

While Wal-Mart might have slightly better prices on many consumer electronics items, is that all that matters? Of course not. I give Wal-Mart props for making large strides in product presentation, though. Chris Denove of J.D. Power and Associates states that “Across many industries, we’ve seen that the retailers that grow customer-service ratings the fastest have greater sales growth.” If Wal-Mart wants to try and really compete with Ideal Buy’s winning combination of price and service, it ideal listen to that advice. Target — it’s also time to step it up on your end. What are you waiting for?

Share This

Share This