John Mauldin, President, Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC (5 min)
Produced By: Kamelia Angelova & William Wei
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As you’ve probably noticed by now, HTC generally only produce high end devices (I can’t think of one that was deliberately low end apart from the HTC Tattoo), but that may well be about to change.
The latest set of devices to be leaked are all running on the Qualcomm MSM7227 platform (which given Snapdragon may well be a step back). MSM7227 definitely isn’t Snapdragon, as they are QSD8XXX. So, what is it then?
Well, according to Qualcomm themselves it “targets sub-$150 Smartphones with versatile, high-performance chipset supporting all leading mobile OS”. That includes WM, Android, BREW and even Symbian. Clearly then, this was never destined for high performance devices.
The main benefit of MSM7227 aside from the cost seems to be the ease of reusing tools and software for the MSM7200A chipsets that have been in almost every HTC device for the past few years.
So, are you looking forward to the day when Smartphones and “dumbphones” are indistinguishable in price, or would you prefer HTC to produce more devices like the HD2?
Filed under: Classics, Coupe, Performance, Auctions, Lamborghini
If you were shocked when Lamborghini unveiled a four-door in the form of the Estoque concept at the 2008 Paris Motor Show, then you know how enthusiasts must have felt when the Raging Bull took the wraps off the Espada in 1968. A four-seat Lambo? Shocking! But that’s what they did, and the Espada entered into the history books.
Powered by Lambo’s trusty 3.9-liter V12 that already appeared in the 350GT, 400GT and Miura, the Espada was the first Lambo to be offered with an automatic. In fact, it was the first automatic transmission – all two speeds of it – capable of handling that much power, and came on offer with the 1974 model. This model, however, was made in ’72 – making it one of the last Series II models made before the Series III came along – and is equipped with a five-speed manual, along with four-wheel disc brakes and a fully independent suspension: cutting edge stuff for its time.
It’s tan, it’s had one owner, and from the looks of things, it’s been kept in meticulous condition. The car’s up for grabs on eBay by Lamborghini Houston. Bidding at the time of writing is up to a modest $20,200 and the reserve price hasn’t been met yet, so if this is your idea of automotive heaven, stop on by and check it out.
[Source: eBay Motors]
eBay Find of the Day: 1972 Lamborghini Espada is tanfastic originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
If you thought that author Sherman Alexie’s views on the Kindle were quintessential luddism, you haven’t seen anything yet. Reader JonMontgo alerts us to a rather stunning opinion by novelist and poet Alan Kaufman who goes into full rant mode, calling Google Books and the Kindle to be the end result of Nazism. It’s hard to read this and not wonder if someone flipped a bit somewhere. He goes on and on, making wild cognitive leaps that have no basis in reality. The basic summary is that Nazis used “high tech” methods to more efficiently exterminate the Jews, and thus, pretty much any modern technology that hasn’t been carefully reviewed to make sure it can only be used for good purposes, is a continuation of Nazi efforts. Furthermore, the Nazi’s hated books, and thus, these new technologies are really designed to kill books, and claims that paper books are killing trees are simply propaganda from people trying to destroy books. Seriously. Here’s just a bit:
Today’s hi-tech propagandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form that society would be better off without. In its place, they want us to carry around the Uber-Kindle.The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas, where every examination of a text leaves behind a trail, a record, so that curiosity is also tinged with a sense of disquieting fear that some day someone in authority will know that one had read a particular book or essay. This death of intellectual privacy was also a dream of the Nazis. And when I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit.
Now, to be sure, there are reasonable concerns about the electronic trail we leave in using technology. And there are concerns about who really “owns” the digital book you access, and how much control you have over it as well as how much data you send back. But comparing it to the Nazis and concentration camps? That goes way overboard. And yet, Kaufman hasn’t just leapt off that board, he’s done so gleefully, in great detail:
The Nazis often were, by their own lights, well-intentioned idealists working for a better tomorrow. And their instrument was modern technology, aspects of philosophical and aesthetic modernism and the old religious concept of supercession implicit in the Christian notion of progress. Jews were outmoded, useless, they said. Most high level Nazis, like Himmler or Heydrich or Eichmann, did not feel visceral hatred towards the Jew. Rather, they looked upon them coldly as something that simply needed to disappear so that the new life could get on its way. And the means by which they sought to do so was first through a propaganda campaign that portrayed Jews, in Wagnerian terms, as a drag on the visionary energies and bursting vigor of the new Aryan man, and then by the implementation of this decision to eliminate Jews through ever more sophisticated state corporate and scientific technological means. And yet, during the war crime trials at Nuremberg, while Nazi Jurisprudence was tried and hanged, Nazi technological attitudes were not put on trial.The victorious Allies did not mandate that technology, which had been turned to such murderous ends, must pass an ethical standard review from an international body, like a UN of technology. No such body of decision came about. To the contrary, even while the war crime trials of Nazi chieftains were in session, American and Soviet governments were recruiting high-level Nazis to their intelligence services, military armaments industries, and space programs. So that, while in jurisprudence terms Nazi social and political values were delivered a blow, the Nazi fascination with technology merged seamlessly with that of their conquerors: us.
Normally, I would just call Godwin’s Law, and move on, but this is just beyond bizarre. Automatically assuming that all new high tech is a straight line from the Holocaust is just sickening and delusional beyond pretty much any level of standard luddism.
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So we all learned about Just Cause 2’s basic game mechanics in this earlier video (qjnet/playstation-3/just-cause-2-set-to-explode-in-march.html). Now it’s time to see what Rico Rodriguez can do when he gets
In case you're skeptical about U.S. government employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), here's a reminder -- ADP's private payrolls data has lined up reasonably well with it.
In some cases, ADP's data has recently shown a more positive trend than the governments.
No data set is perfect, thus the more data points that roughly line up, the more one can be confident that the indicated direction is indeed the real underlying trend.
And while the employment situation remains challenging for many Americans, it's pretty rich to argue that the overall unemployment trend hasn't improved. It has, and more than one data set shows this.
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2009Dec7: “the last ten years have been the warmest period in the 160-year record of global surface temperature, maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Similar results are revealed in the independent analyses made by the United States National Climatic Data Center and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies” (Met Office).
Reference: Met Office http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091208b.html
Image Description: see case description. Image Location: Met Office http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091208b.html Image Permission: This work is copyrighted and unlicensed. However, it is believed that the use of this work to illustrate the subject in question, Where no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information, on Interlinked Challenges, hosted on servers in the United States by Michigan State University, qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.
Filed under: Truck, Chrysler, Dodge
The Dodge Dakota — as we know it today — will go away in 2011, but looking at current sales of the mid-size pickup, it may as well be dead already. Chrysler has only sold 10,000 Dakotas this year, with an anemic 663 units cleared in November. But while the Dakota is selling poorly (it’s not helped by being too close in price to the much more capable Ram), it doesn’t necessarily mean that the enigmatic pickup won’t live on in another form.
Coinciding with earlier reports, the Detroit News says Chrysler is contemplating a unibody Dakota to replace the current model. A more fuel efficient car-based platform could yield better efficiency, especially when paired with a turbocharged four cylinder with direct injection. The car-based truck probably wouldn’t be a hauler but it would still have a functional bed similar to the Honda Ridgeline, and AWD would likely be an available option. Fred Diaz, the new head of the Ram brand, told the DN that the Pentastar is looking both at Fiat and from within its own stable of vehicles for any platforms that could help make the unibody Dakota a possibility, adding, “The emphasis is going to be on getting a vehicle that is still true to the Ram brand image and also gets excellent miles per gallon rating and at an attractive price point.” Chrysler was reportedly already working on a unibody Dakota when money troubles forced the idea to the back burner.
While we like the idea of a fuel efficient pickup that can do most of the things that a body on frame truck can do, we’re wondering if the truck-buying public will embrace the idea. The best example of a unibody pickup, the Honda Ridgeline, has been anything but a massive commercial hit and midsize trucks are already a dying breed, with only five percent of the overall vehicle market. But if Chrysler wants to make Ram its own brand, we’re guessing that the Pentastar’s truck company is going to need more than one vehicle.
[Source: Detroit News]
REPORT: Chrysler still considering unibody Dakota replacement originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Scratch one game off the PS3 exclusivity list. Tecmo has just made it known through a press release that their upcoming third-person shooter, Quantum Theory, will be heading to the Xbox 360 console as well.
Many patients with health insurance think that when they go to a laboratory their doctor sends them to for blood work or other tests, the lab is surely in-network. After all, the doctor is in-network, right? No. It’s a puzzling maze that the best of us get trapped inside at times.
I’ll give you a personal example. According to one rather crazy insurance rule of my specific plan, I can have blood drawn at my doctor’s office and sent to Lab A that’s not in network and it will be covered 100%. However, if the doctor sends me downstairs to the same Lab A, then it’s out of network since the doctor’s office didn’t draw the blood themselves. I spent nearly an hour on the phone with my insurance this morning to figure that one out.
It gets even worse since most specialist offices are sending patients out to labs (often in the same building) to get blood work. Have you noticed that only general physicians tend have in-office labs these days?
So, before you go to your next doctor’s appointment that may involve lab work, some tips for you:
Do you think that last tip is a bit too cautious? It’s not. I’ll give you a short version of my story. My health insurance plan is changing on January 1. I called my insurance in November to ask why two of my lab visits were out of network. I was told that was a mistake and that the lab I was going to was an in-network lab. I asked twice: “Are you sure? I’m going back there for another visit.”
I was assured that the lab I was going to was an in-network lab. Not so. I found out today that it was really out of network after all and I’d have to pay for all the visits. The person I was talking with was looking at my future coverage plan, not the current one. Of course, when I complained that I had been given the wrong info, I was reminded of the telephone disclaimer about benefits being paid at the time of processing, not based on the phone call.
I was told I’d have to appeal in writing, but I insisted on speaking to a supervisor who may or may not take care of me. I’m still waiting on that call.
Do you find it difficult navigate through the swamps of in-network or out-of-network services?
(Image via stock.xchng)
Post from: Blisstree
Filed under: Saab, Earnings/Financials, Rumormill, Geely
Just about every time an automaker decides to sell one of its brands, Chinese automaker Geely comes up as one of the potential suitors. Geely executive Lawrence Ang has reportedly told Automotive News that the reason Geely has been present at a lot of negotiating tables is because it wants to grow in part through acquisitions. And while the Chinese automaker has yet to finalize any big-ticket buys, it appears to be the front-runner for Ford’s Volvo unit.
Earlier in the year, Geely looked into purchasing the Saab brand, but talks reportedly broke down after Koenigsegg presented what appeared to be the winning bid. But now that Koenigsegg has dropped out of the Saab sweepstakes, the door is open again for Geely. Is the Chinese automaker interested? Ang reportedly gave reporters at a shareholder event the ambiguous “who knows?” as an answer, but he also acknowledged that the company is investigating buying opportunities which have presented themselves during the automotive industry downturns in Europe and the States. Geely is also reportedly interested in purchasing parts and engines, which could be possible if General Motors decides to disband Saab if an adequate bid doesn’t present itself by year-end.
While Geely appears to be close to purchasing Volvo and is perhaps in a good position to pick up Saab for a song, the automaker is also looking to increase its presence in its home market. Automotive News is reporting that Geely will increase spending by up to 43% in hopes of increasing sales from 300,000 in 2009 to over 400,000 next year.
[Source: Automotive News – subs req’d | Image: AFP/Getty]
REPORT: Even while pursuing Volvo, Geely again mulling bid for Saab? originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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One of the themes of 2009 was that collection societies around the world went nuts trying to charge for anything they possibly could, while also trying to increase the rates they could charge. Remember how one collection society wanted to charge a woman because she put on music for her horses? Or how about the woman who worked in a grocery store, who was told to stop singing while stock the shelves, or the store would have to pay a performance fee. And, of course, we had ASCAP trying to claim that ringtones were performances, and mobile operators needed to pay up — beyond the license fee that was already paid on the recording.
SOCAN, up in Canada, has been no exception, pushing for drastically increased rates that cover new places as well. But the most ridiculous may be the one sent in by a few people (Jesse was the first) about how SOCAN is trying to get buskers — street musicians — to pay a performance fee if they perform in SkyTrain stations in Vancouver. SOCAN is claiming that TransLink, the transit authority for the trains in Vancouver should be paying up to $40,000 in performance fees for all the buskers singing in stations, and TransLink’s response is to pass those fees on to the buskers.
Of course, many musicians actually got their start as buskers, and built up their performance chops that way, but SOCAN is about to put them out of business by making it pretty damn costly to busk where it often makes the most sense. Nice work, SOCAN, in harming the very musicians you’re supposed to be helping.
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(This guest post originally appeared at the author’s blog)
Few things have been more predictable in recent months than the rallies that occur every time Ben Bernanke opens his mouth. Like clockwork, the market moves higher every time the Chairman speaks as he gives the market exactly what it wants to hear. Today’s comments are no different:
What is odd about this is that Bernanke has been so fantastically wrong about everything for so many years. What warrants this extreme confidence in Bernanke? Bernanke missed the greatest economic bust in the last 75 years. Some argue that he helped us avoid the second Great Depression. Of course, regular readers know I think that is simply preposterous as the Second Great Depression was never on the table. All Bernanke has done is rehash a monetary policy approach that Alan Greenspan admitted was a failure. There is little to no evidence in Bernanke’s history that leads me to think he will be correct this time. The market is nearsighted and I believe this love affair with Bernanke is nothing more than a Tiger Woods like fling. We can only hope the long-term repercussions aren’t nearly as severe as they will be for Woods….
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Weak November sales are most likely the catalyst for the mass selloff of Zales Corporation (ZLC) stock today.
Same store sales were down 18.6% for November compared with last year. Currently, the stock is down 22% to $3.89 a share.
Reuters: The Dallas-based chain, which is being investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the accounting practices that led it to restate its 2008 and 2009 earnings , gave no update on those proceedings. However, it said it did not believe the probe “will have a material effect” on its financial results.
I guess diamond’s aren’t forever after all.
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John Mauldin, President, Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC (4 min)
Produced By: Kamelia Angelova & William Wei
More Video: TBI Calendar Click HERE >
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Add ING analyst Rob Carnell to the list of folks that just refuses to believe Friday’s shocking unemployment report.
His basic contention, via FT Alphaville, is that the report was too good to be true, ergo it must not be true.
In our view, the only potential fly in the ointment of this labour report is how believable it is. Payrolls has been making very, very slow progress in recent months, and such a dramatic turnaround will raise eyebrows, and may not be taken at face value by many. An improvement in the payrolls series always looked on the cards from last month. But most of the labour market data in the run up to this release had been consistent only with a very small step forward, so we may need to see this backed up again next month before concern about the labour market can really be filed away as ‘last year’s worries’.
Further support for the turnaround in the employment sector came from hours worked – which gained 0.2 hours on the month, helping to push weekly earnings higher. Hourly earnings continued to decline and now stand at only 2.2% YoY. But they lag employment growth by up to two years, so it would be a bit early to expect much improvement here.
In contrast to the weak November non-manufacturing ISM survey’s employment index yesterday, which registered only a small increase from very low levels, the service sector apparently generated 58K jobs in November. Strong gains in temporary help jobs (usually a retail sector phenomenon) were a big factor here, so anecdotal reports of relatively soft retail sales in November may see some of these jobs rapidly removed after the end of the year, once sales have finished (if demand does not improve).
We are also slightly curious about the apparent surge in government jobs, which on revision have risen by more than 50K in the last two months. When state and local finances are in such a deep mess, even the Obama fiscal package is unlikely to have generated this rapid turnaround in the public sector. More believably, goods producing, construction and manufacturing jobs all saw continued large falls.
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You know natural gas is getting sexy when Hollywood rolls in. Get ready for Haynesville, a movie about thrills and perils of a natural gas boom town in Louisiana.
Haynesville: As the Haynesville boom erupts, the film focuses on three lives caught in the middle of the find: A single mom takes up the defense of her community’s environmental protections, an African American preacher attempts to use the riches to build a Christian school and a salt-of-the-earth, self-described “country boy” finds himself conflicted as he weighs losing his land to an oil company’s offer to make him a millionaire.
Check out the movie's official site here, and definitely see the trailer below. (Tip via The Energy Collective)
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Nintendo’s rolling out a few downloadable classic games for the Wii and DS this week. The original Rayman game’s coming to the DSiWare service alongside another mix of handheld games and apps. The Virtual Console service is
Filed under: Aftermarket, Convertible, Coupe, Performance, BMW, Luxury
Autotechnik + Tuning has done a job on the BMW M3, but if you don’t look closely, you might miss it. Echoing a sentiment we love, they declare “At first glance you cannot estimate the scope of retrofitting.” However, while we appreciate their tuning philosophy, we’re not so sure about their tuning math.
ATT adds a supercharger and remaps the engine software, all of which bumps the M3’s horsey count from 414 to a nice, round 500. To get that bad boy in your engine bay will cost you a tear-shedding €11,749 ($17,455 U.S.). But that’s not all: a new exhaust, KW coilovers, and ATT-TEC Le Mans wheels on 20-inch rubber will add more than €7,000 ($10,399 U.S.) to the line at the bottom of the invoice. Those are the kind of numbers that’ll give you a concussion, especially when we’re talking about an 86-horsepower improvement.
Either way, you can read about it in ATT’s own words in the presser after the jump, or check it out in the gallery of photos below, and if nothing else, at least that’s free.
[Source: Autotechnik + Tuning]
Continue reading Autotechnik + Tuning brings the rain with its Thunderstorm BMW M3
Autotechnik + Tuning brings the rain with its Thunderstorm BMW M3 originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The SPDR Gold Trust ($GLD) is having an amazing day.
Just when it looked like the gold bubble had burst, in came the program traders to save the day with massive buying volume.
30 million shares and counting have exchanged hands as gold tries to erase its $25 drop from earlier today.
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