Greg In The Desert

• Buyers flock to cheap foreclosed homes – A Glendale home that sold less than two years ago for $259,000 sold again three months ago for $113,000. A Phoenix home that fetched $190,000 two years ago just went for $45,900. A Queen Creek home sold for nearly $275,000 when it was built in 2005. Last month's price: $78,000.
• Bomb threat prompts search at Dobson High – Police searched the school buildings and fields this morning before students arrived for school. Bareiss said the school day proceeded as usual.

  "I think this is a time of year when students get spring fever and may think this is a joke," Bareiss said. "It's not a joke, and as a district it's our responsibility to take every threat as real."

• Costco Homes in Tempe to close – Costco Homes in south Tempe will close July 3.

  ]The Tempe home store, which sells furniture and appliances, is one of just two Costco Homes in the nation. The other one, in Kirkland, Wash., also is closing.

  "Costco Home has been a valuable experiment for us," Costco's CEO, Jim Sinegal, said in a news release.

  "The current economic slowdown and resulting weakness in the home furnishings business in particular have led us to conclude that the single-format Costco Home concept does not fit into our long-term expansion plans."

• Whole Health Source: Reversing Tooth Decay – What about humans? Drs. Mellanby set out to see if they could use their dietary principles to cure tooth decay that was already established. They divided 62 children with cavities into three different diet groups for 6 months. Group 1 ate their normal diet plus oatmeal (rich in phytic acid). Group 2 ate their normal diet plus vitamin D. Group 3 ate a grain-free diet and took vitamin D.
• The Pragmatic Studio | iPhone Developer’s Roadmap – So where do you start on the path to learning how to create iPhone applications? Well, that depends. There's no single book, screencast, or training course that suits everyone. You'll need to take honest stock of your current skills and choose the appropriate resources. Here are some pointers to help you get started:
• Hulu tries HTML encoding trick to protect streaming content – Ars Technica – The discovery was made by TunerFreeMCE's Martin Millmore, whose media center software makes it possible for users to watch video feeds from a variety of sources in one application (similar to Boxee). Millmore noted on his website that new Hulu content contained a string of URL-encoded characters that are byte shifted from the original characters. "They then run the character stream through a series of JavaScript functions to convert it back in to plain text before pushing it in to your browser using DHTML," Millmore wrote. "That's quite a lot of effort just for fun, so I assume that is to stop screen scrapers from parsing content."
• GE and Intel to unveil health care partnership| Reuters – U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co and Intel Corp, the world's largest chip maker, have scheduled a joint press conference for Thursday, and are expected to discuss an alliance in health care, according to a source with knowledge of the plans.

  The companies' respective chief executives, Jeff Immelt and Paul Otellini, are scheduled to discuss their tie up at an event in New York.

• Windows 95 almost had floppy insertion detection but the training cost was prohibitive – One feature which Windows 95 almost had was floppy disk insertion detection. In other words, Windows 95 almost had the ability to detect when a floppy disk was present in the drive without spinning up the drive.

  The person responsible for Windows 95's 32-bit floppy driver studied the floppy drive hardware specification and spotted an opportunity. Working through the details of the specification revealed that, yes, if you issued just the right extremely clever sequence of commands, you could determine whether a disk was in the floppy drive without spinning up the drive. But there was a catch.

• Local Pistachio Farmers React To Recall – Albuquerque News Story – KOAT Albuquerque – Pistachio farmers in southeast New Mexico are angry over the Food and Drug Administration's warning that people should stay away from the nut.
  The warning comes after a salmonella scare at a pistachio plant in California, which accounts for about 99 percent of all pistachio harvesting in the U.S.
  Marianne and George Schweers own Eagle Ranch Pistachio Grove in Alamogordo.
  They said they have been busy doing damage control since the FDA's general warning to stay away from all pistachios.
  "We are not involved at all," Marianne Schweers said. "By painting with that big broad brush then people are really not looking to see the address on the bag."
• Current affairs, future outcomes? – t seems the real cost of building the [Eclipse] FPJ never dropped below $2.3 million dollars, even during the 'volume' days last summer. Current best estimates are that the bird will cost something like $2.5 million to build in low (1 per week) numbers, possibly dropping a little if the rate rises. The killer appears to have been the totally unrealistic number of build hours being spent on each one. Consensus is about 4,000 hours per aircraft, without fixing squawks. No matter which way you try to do this, you need to sell FPJ's at something north of $2.5 million to make a profit, and closer to $3 million to offer an ROI to the moneymen.

• FrugalMechanic Gets A Tune-Up With A New Round Of Funding – FrugalMechanic, like a Froogle for auto parts, has gained a niche following of mechanics and consumers as a nifty price comparison tool in the auto market. Founded in July of 2008, the site doubled traffic from December 2008 to January 2009 and boasts over 5 million auto parts from 50 retailers. In an economy where everyone is looking for a deal, FrugalMechanic’s growth isn’t surprising. And when cash and credit are tight, consumers may be looking to repair cars with new auto parts instead of buying new cars.
• Intel CEO On Plan To Invest $7 Billion In U.S. : NPR – (audio interview) Intel CEO Paul Otellini traveled to Washington today to announce a $7 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing plants. Otellini talks about this investment, the role the private sector can play in ending the recession, and what he thinks about the stimulus package currently in Congress.
• Intel CEO supports stimulus plan – Eamon Javers – Politico.com – So grateful was the president for this bit of private-sector economic stimulus that he called Otellini at his hotel room to congratulate him. And he took advantage of the call to do a little lobbying, asking for Otellini’s support in the debate over the economic stimulus package.

  In a conversation after his announcement, Otellini told Politico that he generally supports the president’s economic stimulus plans.

A Republican congressman accused of abusing his ex-mistress agreed to pay her about $500,000 in a settlement last year that contained a powerful incentive for her to keep quiet until after Election Day, a person familiar with the terms of the deal told The Associated Press. Rep. Don Sherwood is locked in a tight re-election race against a Democratic opponent who has seized on the four-term congressman’s relationship with the woman. While Sherwood acknowledged the woman was his mistress, he denied abusing her and said that he had settled her $5.5 million lawsuit on confidential terms.

link to AP story.

What’s in a name? In the case of Rio Rancho’s $45 million, 160,000-square-foot arena and events center, about $500,000 a year. The Santa Ana Pueblo has reached an agreement with the city of Rio Rancho to purchase naming rights for the center for $2.5 million for five years, Mayor Kevin Jackson said.

Link

It’s funny because it’s true. And couldn’t have happened to a better corporation…

Hitting stores from Florida to Arkansas, Texas to Iowa, four Portland, Tenn., residents lived for more than a decade off the proceeds from a theft operation of a ‘’staggering magnitude,” police say … The four suspects and their immediate associates are accused of scamming Wal-Mart out of $1.5 million over 10 years. That doesn’t include what they allegedly stole from two other unidentified retail chains.