Archive for January, 2008

Housing – Price Increases Year Over Year

Housing – Price Increases Year Over Year

| January 22, 2008 | Reply

Today is a perfect day to share some facts on the up side of finance. As is usually the case, even in an ugly market not everything is always all bad. For example we are once again to going take a look at Hardtack data on price per square foot. This time we review the […]

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Shaping Up As A Tough Day In The Markets

Shaping Up As A Tough Day In The Markets

| January 21, 2008 | Reply

Asia markets are picking up again heavily on the down side, with the India down almost 10% at the moment. The Euros are predicting a start at last -3% down from yesterday’s bloodbath. At the moment the Dow futures are off 500 or so points, meaning at open it will be down 500 points immediately […]

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China Banks Getting Subprime Hit

China Banks Getting Subprime Hit

| January 21, 2008 | Reply

Well, so much for containment! It seems that the banks in China were no smarter than the rest of the world, and became investors in the funny money structured investments backed up by questionable loans. From CNN Money: China’s banks feel subprime heat BEIJING (AP) — Shares in China’s banks fell sharply Monday after news […]

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World Markets Take A Pounding – The Beginning Of The Correction?

World Markets Take A Pounding – The Beginning Of The Correction?

| January 21, 2008 | Reply

While the US took MLK day off in the markets, the other parts of the world traded into uncertainty and doubt. As a result all world indexes ended sharply lower: % Today % YTD FTSE 100 (UK) -5.48% -13.61% DAX (Germany) -6.83% -15.49% Nikkei (Japan) -5.49% -14.36% HANG SENG (China) -7.41% -13.22% Why is this […]

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“I Am Legend” redux

“I Am Legend” redux

| January 21, 2008 | Reply

Having seen and reviewed “I Am Legend” (2007) last month, and having re-read the original novella by Richard Matheson, I thought I’d watch the two earlier movies based on that same novella: “The Last Man on Earth” (1964) with Vincent Price, and “The Omega Man” (1971) with Charlton Heston. I now have a much, much […]

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Solid state replacing optical media

Solid state replacing optical media

| January 19, 2008 | Reply

Some 18 months ago, I wrote about the Blu-Ray v. HD-DVD format battle and suggested that both formats were a dead-end, and that the real next-generation video media would be based on solid-state storage (e.g., flash RAM). I predicted this was quite a few years away, though. What I forgot is that there’s another optical […]

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“Cloverfield”: A brief review (w/spoilers at the end)

“Cloverfield”: A brief review (w/spoilers at the end)

| January 15, 2008 | Reply

[Thanks to the incoming links, particularly from io9 and Ace of Spades HQ, two of my favorite blogs; as the saying goes, feel free to look around (and to hit the tipjar over in the right column). Also, the first section of this review is spoiler-free; all the spoilers are in a white-text section at […]

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I’m not a big Katie Couric fan…

I’m not a big Katie Couric fan…

| January 15, 2008 | Reply

…but this video of outtakes while anchoring in New Hampshire makes her downright likable: Doesn’t mean that I’m going to start watching CBS Evening News, though. I haven’t watched network evening news since David Brinkley retired or thereabouts. Hat tip to Suitably Flip. ..bruce w..

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Housing Price Decline – California Cities

Housing Price Decline – California Cities

| January 14, 2008 | Reply

As most of the readers here know, my team has been working with new technology to extract, refine and exploit information that is all around us. We have named that technology Boomerang and one example of it is an application called Hardtack. We are approaching the 1 year anniversary of full scale data gathering with […]

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Stranger than fiction

Stranger than fiction

| January 14, 2008 | Reply

When a science fiction author postulates some bizarre astronomical or planetary configuration, hordes of fans (and not a few scientists) will tsk-tsk, saying that such a system could never possibly exist. And then there’s this: A quartet of stars has been discovered in an intimate cosmic dance, swirling around each other within a region about […]

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