HedgeStreet

Seems quite akin to gambling, and i bet at the moment there is quite a bit of a liquidity problem. One can open an account with as little as $500, but does someone like that really need to be trading derivatives?

Unlike options traded on other futures exchanges, these options will be “binary,” meaning that the option can have one of only two values at expiration—zero or a fixed amount. The options will be sold in bundles containing one put and one call option, with each bundle costing $10. A member who has purchased a contract bundle may sell either or both of the component options in the secondary market through the HedgeStreet system. A member also may redeem complete bundles with HedgeStreet for $10. HedgeStreet will be the only writer of options. In addition, there will be no leverage. All contracts must be fully paid up front and cannot be margined.

According to documents filed with the CFTC, trading will not be intermediated. Instead, customers who register as members of the exchange will interact directly with the trading facility. To become a member, customers will be required to deposit $500, show proof of U.S. residence, and have a U.S. bank account. Members will have no ownership, governance or voting rights in HedgeStreet. Trading will be conducted over the Internet and all trades will be matched through a price/ time priority algorithm. With respect to clearing, HedgeStreet will act as a DCO only in the sense of settling contracts between members. It will not offer novation or other credit enhancement, according to a statement from the company.

In effect, HedgeStreet will be similar to what are sometimes known as “event markets,” according to a CFTC staff memorandum. Only one other event market has been authorized by the CFTC to date—Iowa Electronic Markets—but several event markets in the U.K. have been successful. (See “Event Markets Campaign for Respect” in the January/February issue of Futures Industry). HedgeStreet has stated that it intends to list only contracts that have a legitimate economic purpose and does not intend to list contracts based on terrorist or gambling activities, such as the outcome of sporting events, according to the CFTC.

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hedgestreet: read

Bush in Europe

i would NEVER do it...but i might.

GEORGE BUSH: This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. (Pause) And having said that, all options are on the table.

Janus opens two new mutual funds

Scandal-tainted fund company Janus is hoping to stop the outflows of cash from their funds and draw some new money with the launch of two new mutual funds: the Janus Triton Fund, and the Janus Research Fund.

Janus Triton Fund (JATTX)

-A unique growth fund that focuses on small and mid-sized companies believed to have solid growth potential
-Manager Ron Sachs utilizes Janus' extensive coverage of the small- and mid-cap stocks, where there's less Wall Street coverage and more opportunity for a research edge
-As one of our newer funds, Triton allows investors to fully participate in arguably the most dynamic stage of a company's growth cycle

Janus Research Fund (JARFX)

-This fund pulls together the best ideas from Janus' research analysts into a single package
-Director of Research Jim Goff will oversee the investment process and manage the fund's allocation among these opportunities to help manage risk
-As one of our newer funds, it gives investors direct access to the broad-range of Janus' world-class research

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E*trade's lower fees

E*trade has lowered fees for those who trade more than 5 times/month. Still not as good as BrownCo though. "Power E*trade" has a free direct access trading program with real time charts and news that looks pretty good.

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power e*trade: read

Fishman Aura

Fishman's "Acoustic Imaging Blender": to make live performance sound like what you get from a studio mic.

Aura isn’t a pickup, yet it picks up where pickups leave off. Aura is not a microphone, yet it makes you sound like you’re playing into a great mic in a great room. And Aura is not modeling. It is Acoustic Sound Imaging™—, a quantum leap for acoustic amplification— and only Fishman has it.

With Aura, you can now have stunning, studio-quality performance to take to the stage, or to use in home recording.

And Aura’s sound? It amazes even the most seasoned studio engineers and professional players. That’s because, unlike modeling, Aura is derived from real pro-studio recordings, and is designed to preserve the individual tone of your acoustic guitar.

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review: read

Jethro Tull: Complete Lyrics

Amazon lists this book as "out of print - limited availability". It appears that it is still available, though only direct from the publisher. The book includes lyrics from every Tull album from "This Was" (October 1968) through to "Roots To Branches" (September 1995). It also contains commentary by Ian Anderson.

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Amazon: read

Prion filter

Pall Corp, a filtration company, has developed a filter that can be placed in an IV line and will remove prions from fluid passing through. This allows someone who is recieving a blood trasfusion to reduce the risk of acquiring prions that could lead to Mad Cow or similar diseases. The filter is designed specifically to remove prions from red blood cells that are being transfused.

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Kill Process

It does the job, most of the time. Sometimes windows task manager fails to close a task. This program won't always succeed under such circumstances, but its worth a try. It won't hang either, like the task manager does.

- Terminate any executing process in milliseconds
- Terminate multiple processes at once
- One click shutdown of Windows Service Processes
- Prevent unwanted processes from executing
- Terminate anoying or troublesome applications without unecessary questions
- Easy to use GUI with nifty tray icon access

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Crate Acoustic Amps

Crate has updated their line of acoustic amplifiers. Their are 5 models in all, ranging from 15 to 125 watts of power. The 3 higher end models (60, 120, 125 watts) all offer XLR mic input as well as the standard 1/4" instrument jacks. The top of the line model also has a graphic equalizer on the control panel. Crate's acoustic amps are used by the likes of Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple, Rainbow) and Bill Nershi (String Cheese Incident). The also present a great value, especially for the prices you can get at musician's friend.

The delicate, clear tones of Crate's Acoustic series reflect instrument subtleties unlike any other acoustic gear on the market. With its unparalleled balance of clarity, power, natural tone, and intuitive controls, Crate Acoustic remains our most widely endorsed amp line. It's also one of our most flexible: Suited for instruments, vocals, or even as a coffeehouse PA, Crate Acoustic amps consistently produce studio-quality sound. Our acoustic engineers employ creative technologies to unify instrument and amplifier—even when playing mandolin or violin.

The technology in the New Crate Acoustic Series is unique, with preamp circuits you can tailor for piezo or active systems or BOTH!!. Our NEW feedback elimination circuits are efficient and simple to use and on the 60 and 120 watt units include the ability to automatically eliminate feedback at two different frequencies. Every CA amp has a high frequency component for crisp, clear highs. On the CA6110DG, CA125DG and CA120DG models we include special features for live performance like XLR & 1/4" balanced line out with Level control which does not affect your stage volume. They also have ground lift on the Line Out, Tweeter Level control, Effects Loop and a two button footswitch for Internal Reverb/Effects and Chorus switching.

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How to cut

Demonstrates proper cutting technique for a variety of fruits and vegetables, with graphics for both left and right handers.

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Christo's "Gates" unfurled

"This project is not involved with talk. It is real physical space. You need to spend time walking in the cold air - sunny day, rainy day, even snow. It is not necessary to talk."
-Christo

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AskJeeves buys Bloglines

AskJeeves purchased Bloglines, a popular rss feed aggregating site, for an undisclosed amount. They plan to keep with the free model and integrate Teoma's technology into the site's blog search feature.

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Bloglines CEO: read
AskJeeves blog: read

Visual search of the State of the Union

Style.org's State of the Union Parsing tool lets one search the 2005 state of the union address for words and then graphically displays the results. The 2005 address can be compared to George W's previous state of the union speeches, or to notable historical examples from Washington, Lincoln, Reagan, and Clinton.

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UCSD team discovers cardiac progenitor cells

Cardiac progenitor cells are precursor cells that can divide a number of times and develop into mature heart cells. Until now they were thought to be absent after birth, but the researchers discovered that a small number remain in the heart, though this number declines with age.

And according to the researchers, cardiac progenitor cells have one considerable advantage over stem cells: scientists can easily coax them into becoming fully specialized heart-muscle cells, without chemical or hormonal stimuli.

In the future, doctors might be able to capture and grow progenitor cells and then transplant them back into the patient's heart. For now, however, isolating substantial numbers of these special cells remains a technical challenge.

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Adderall off the Canadian market

Canada's health regulatory agency, Health Canada, requested that Shire stop selling their drug Adderall on the Canadian market. Shire's biggest market for the drug is in the US, with $759 mil in sales last year, as opposed to $10 mil in Canada. The drug is an amphetamine, a stimulant, used to treat attention deficit disorder. Health Canada pulled the drug because of cases of sudden death and stroke. The FDA viewed the same data as inconsequential. A Senator is alleging that the FDA tried to convince Health Canada not to pull the drug, because it could not take on another "drug safety crisis".

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Taser can cause heart damage?

CBS News obtained a study done by the Air Force on the safety of the Taser device. According to their report, the study found elevated Troponin T levels, a sign of heart damage. After being shown the study, a Georgetown cardiologist called it a "red flag", and said that the troponin T levels shown would probably indicate "heart muscle damage, or heart attack." The Air Force researcher who performed the study called the elevated levels "statistically insignificant. Obviously there is a difference of opinion in interpreting the data. Taser International, the makers of the stun gun, are of course vehemently opposed the the news article and have a section on their web page devoted to promote the safety of their device. It is interesting that while they provide some reports in pdf, the Air Force study is not available on their web page.

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Taser's response: read

Yahoo toolbar now for Firefox as well as IE

Yahoo has released a version of their toolbar for Mozilla Firefox.

• Search the Web from anywhere online
• Easily discover and add RSS feeds to My Yahoo!
• Customize and access your Toolbar from any PC
• Anti-Spy for Firefox coming soon

I don't really see much point to it, as firefox already has a search box built in that lets you search using any number of engines and add those that you want.

Yahoo toolbar: read
Add engines to firefox's search box: read

Wikimedia

Wikimedia announced it has recieved an offer from Google to host some of its content. Best known for the free online encyclopedia that is compiled by collaborative contributions from people around the word, Wikimedia's board will discuss the offer and will reach a decision in March or soon after.

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Best places to stay

Conde Nast has its Gold List for 2005 out.

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Dissapointing results for Inspire

Dry eye can be a painful and irritating condition. Current there is only one drug on the market to treat severe dry eye, Restasis. Restasis is a formulatoion of cyclosporine, an immunosuppresive agent. It is used to reduce ocular inflammation, believed to be the cause of dry eye disease. Restasis was jointly developed by Allergan and Inspire. Inspire pharma's lead candidate is another treatment for dry eye, Diquafosol. It works by activating receptors on the eye surface, stimulating the "release of water, salt, mucin and lipids - the key components of natural tears". Today they announced results from a phase III study of the drug, the fourth phase III study they have done. The outcome was dissapointing, with the primary goal, corneal clearing, failing to show a difference from placebo. There was an improvement in some secondary areas, such as corneal staining, conjunctivital staining, and conjunctivial clearing. Overall, the trial was a letdown though, and investors let it be known by sending the stock down 45%. The biotech firm does have a FDA approvable letter for the drug, but conditions must still be met before approval. It is not clear whether they have the case the FDA is looking for. Inspire is considering a fifth phase III trial, and will also pursue a trial using the drug to facilitate corneal wound healing.

Piper Jaffray Senior Research Analyst Mark Karvosky was upbeat despite the news, writing that there was still hope for the drug, which he thinks eventually will be approved.
"Diquafosol's failure to meet its primary endpoint is clearly negative and increases its risk profile," he writes. "However, we remind investors that ISPH has an approvable letter for diquafosol and the FDA has been flexible in approving dry eye products, namely Restatsis. We believe that the lack of formal FDA guidance for dry eye could help ISPH by allowing flexibility in the interpretation of the existing data."

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Carly booted from HP

HP's board finally booted CEO Carly Fiorina. The reasons are numerous, but probably mainly stem from her failure to deliver on promised results following her big merger with Compaq. It has been several years since the merger and HP has little benefit to show for it. The printing business is still the only truly successful segment, and the merger diluted investor equity in that business. HP shareholders before the merger went from owning all of the printing business to only 63% afterwards.

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Falcarinol in carrots wards off cancer

Falcarinol protects carrots from fungal diseases, such as liquorice rot that causes black spots on the roots during storage.

The scientists investigated the compound after a previous published study suggested it could prevent the development of cancer.

The research team carried out tests on 24 rats with pre-cancerous tumours.

After 18 weeks, rats who ate carrots along with their ordinary feed, and those given feed and falcarinol supplement were one third less likely to develop full-scale tumours than rats who were given just ordinary feed.

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Merck knew of unsafe mercury levels in vaccines

An anonymous whistle-blower gave the LATimes access to a 1991 Merck memo. It said that on the vaccine schedule, children would recieve about 87x the limit for maximum consumption. After recieving hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the pharma industry, Republican Senator Bill Frist has introduced a bill in his fifth attempt to stop any sort of ban on mercury in vaccines.
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Regal Mastercard

Regal Entertainment Group (Regal Cinemas, United Artist Theatres, Edwards Theatres and Signature Theatres), has partnered with Chase to issue a co-branded rewards credit card. Cardholder will be able to earn "Regal Entertainment Group Rewards Points" with any purchase, though the details of the program have not yet been revealed. Regal also announced a marketing partnership to promote Mastercard in its theatres, "making MasterCard its official payment card brand".

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Sirius Suites

Looks like Sirius has a new partnership with Starwood. Two of Starwood's W Hotels now have a Sirius satellite radio in their suites, the W Los Angeles, and the W New York. I guess it could be nice if you like to listen to music at hotels. You could listen to the news too, though i don't know why you would when you can watch tv.

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Microsoft to enter antivirus arena

Microsoft announced today that it plans to acquire Sybari, an antivirus software company. I've not heard of Sybari before, but they appear to be focused on the enterprise market. It doesn't sound like there are any plans for Microsoft to enter the consumer antivirus market or integrate antivirus into any of their products yet. Microsoft plans to focus on these areas:

· Layered defenses. It is common practice in business networks to use a set of layered defenses to improve protection against malicious code. Similarly, effective protection of collaborative environments requires layers of defense.

· Integration with infrastructure. The layers must be tightly integrated not only with each other, but with the rest of the infrastructure in the network. Without such integration, a security solution can be unmanageable, have poor performance and let attacks through.

· Protection from the latest threats. Malicious threats evolve quickly. Defenses must be updated often, and be backed by worldwide networks of researchers who will identify and develop protection measures against the latest threats before they have a chance to impact businesses.

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Google maps

Google has a new competitor to Mapquest and Yahoo maps. Their take is that the current offerings are annoying, due to having to reload in order to get a different view, and i must agree. Google maps has "dynamic, interactive maps" so that you can quickly and easily explore an area on the map. They have also incorporated their search expertise to make it easier to find what you're looking for.

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use it: read

Phenserine

Axonyx's Alzheimers drug, Phenserine, did not show a statistically significant improvement over a placebo in its phase III trial. Shares of the biotech firm (AXYX) dropped a whopping %63. The trial had been conducted over a 26 week period, studying 384 patients with Alzheimers. Two dosage levels, 15 and 10mg were compared with the placebo. There were no safety issues observed.

Phenserine is currently undergoing testing in a Phase IIB trial to
evaluate its anticipated ability to lower levels of beta-amyloid
precursor protein ((beta)-APP) and beta-amyloid (A(beta)) in the
plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which may lead to a slowing of
disease progression. The results of the Phase III trial will not
impact the interim analysis planned of the available CSF and plasma
samples for (beta)-APP and A(beta), and these results are expected
before the end of March.

Phenserine is a highly selective acetylcholinesterase (AChE)
inhibitor that breaks down a neurotransmitter in the brain important
in memory and cognition. Unlike other AChE inhibitors, which only
suppress the activity of the enzyme, Phenserine has been shown to have
two mechanisms of action: (1) the inhibition of the AChE enzyme, and
(2) in preclinical studies, the inhibition of the synthesis of
A(beta), the protein in the brain that is thought to be a cause of
brain cell death in Alzheimer's disease.

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Sonos lauded by reviewers

Reviewers are loving the Sonos digital music system that can broadcast tunes throughout your home. It is controlled by a remote that sort of resembles an ipod on its side. Just from looking at the specs, i'd have to fault it. It has the same major problem as the ipod, a Rechargeable Li-ION Polymer battery, "factory-replaceable". Why would anyone want a "factory-replaceable" battery. They should follow the cell phone model and have batteries that pop off the back. That way you can always have one charging and when the battery wears out it can easily be replaced. Other than that, this is sounding like a great home music system.



PC Magazine: read
Cnet: read
Playlist: read

IBM and partners Sony/Toshiba, unveil Cell processor

The chip was shown for the first time at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. The processor uses Rambus's XDR memory and FlexIO processor bus interface (formerly known as Redwood). These allow the Cell's speed to be taken advantage of with fast transfer between the Cell and its memory and i/o.

The Cell has a modular design based on a slightly less powerful I.B.M. processor that is currently in G5 64-bit desktop computers from Apple Computer. Additionally, the Cell architecture is distinguished by the fact that it controls an array of eight additional processors that the design team refers to as synergistic processing elements, or S.P.E.'s. Each of the S.P.E.'s is a 128-bit processor in its own right.

The Cell has some components that in the lab switch at 5.6 GHz, and several people familiar with the design said that it was both more flexible than is generally understood and that it has been designed with high bandwidth communications, such as high-speed data links to homes, in mind.

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"Miracle Workers": reality medical care

Courtesy of ABC, you may soon be watching a reality show about medical care. Doctors will travel the country treating those in desperate need of care, but without the means to get treatment. It sounds like they will be trying to tell the kind of touching stories that have made their "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" so popular.

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Outerspace

Outerspace is a project by some students at the Berlin University of the Arts in their Digital Media Class. It is a robot that responds organicaly when interacted with.

The basic form is motivated by insect antennae that are able to make flexible movements in order to explore the environment. Outerspaces broad repertoire of motion actually originates from animals, both in the behavior of single organs and body language. At the same time, human gestures are part of the motion patterns of Outerspace.

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The Gates

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Gates project is projected to be completed in New York City's Central Park on the 12th and will be in place until the 28th. It is a temporary work of environmental art, so will only be in place for 16 days. Those that get to see it in person are pretty lucky.

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Government updates carcinogen list

What surprises me is that x-rays were only just added to the list. Viruses showed up for the first time on the list, as Hepatitis and HPV.

- Known Carcinogens (6)

Hepatitis B virus

Hepatitis C virus

Some human papillomaviruses

X-rays

Gamma rays, which are used in medicine, the nuclear power industry, the military, scientific research and various consumer products

Neutrons, used in medicine and research

- Reasonably Anticipated Carcinogens (11)

1-Amino-2,4-dibromoanthraquinone, a vat dye used in the textile industry

Cobalt sulfate, used in electroplating and electrochemical industries; as a coloring agent for ceramics; a drying agent in inks, paints, varnishes and linoleum; and in animal feed

Diazoaminobenzene, used to make dyes and promote the adhesion of natural rubber to steel

MeIQ, MeIQx and PhIP, heterocyclic amine compounds that are formed when meats and eggs are cooked or grilled at high temperatures. They also are found in cigarette smoke

Lead and lead compounds. Lead is used to make lead-acid storage batteries, ammunition and cable covering. Lead compounds are used in paint, glass and ceramics; as a fuel additive; and in some cosmetics

Naphthalene, used in industrial chemicals, moth repellants and toilet bowl deodorants

Nitrobenzene, used mainly in the production of aniline, a poisonous liquid used to make dyes, resins, rubber additives and agricultural products

Nitromethane, used in specialized fuels and explosives, among other uses

4,4-Thiodianiline, used in the preparation of several dyes

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