Speaking of mediocre violinists ...

Compared to a virtuoso, its rendition was a trifle stilted and, well, robotic. But Toyota's new robot plays a pretty solid "Pomp and Circumstance" on the violin.

The five-foot-tall all-white robot, shown Thursday, used its mechanical fingers to press the strings correctly and bowed with its other arm, coordinating the movements well.

Toyota Calls Robotics a Key Business

Paulson talked about the importance of preventing foreclosures now but concluded, "Under the worst conditions, you would be . . . going through a modification or a refinancing program. But we'll have five years to deal with it."

And there you have it, folks. That's been the problem all along.

We are in this predicament because homeowners were told not to worry about their ridiculously low interest rates because they could refinance later before the rates reset. Or they were delusional in thinking they could afford future rate increases if they couldn't refinance.

Don't worry. Be happy.

Well, people aren't happy now.

A Subpar Plan to Save Subprime Borrowers

The plan is too little, too late and too voluntary.

Show Us the Mortgage Relief

Radiohead’s pay-what-you-choose gambit didn’t just set off economic debates. It should also establish 2007 as two kinds of tipping point for recorded music.

Pay What You Want for This Article

Mexican telephone and retail magnate Carlos Slim, in a rare defeat, will exit the U.S. consumer electronics market, shutting the last 100 CompUSA Inc. stores after sinking about $2 billion into the business.

I was just in a CompUSA recently and had no idea they were in the death throes.

Last CompUSA Stores to Close

Advertisers discover Deep Packet Inspection.

CenturyTel Inc., a Monroe, La., phone company that provides Internet access and long-distance calling services, is facing stiff competition from cellphone companies and cable operators. So to diversify, it's getting into the online-advertising business.

And not just any online advertising. The technology it's using could change the way the $16.9 billion Internet ad market works, bringing in a host of new players -- and giving consumers fresh concerns about their privacy.

CenturyTel's system allows it to observe and analyze the online activities of its Internet customers, keeping tabs on every Web site they visit. The equipment is made by a Silicon Valley start-up called NebuAd Inc. and installed right into the phone company's network. NebuAd takes the information it collects and offers advertisers the chance to place online ads targeted to individual consumers. NebuAd and CenturyTel get paid whenever a consumer clicks on an ad.

Watching What You See on the Web

In its final Afghan Opium Survey for 2007 issued today, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows that opium is now equivalent to more than half (53%) of the country's licit GDP. Speaking at a conference in Brussels on the future of Afghanistan, hosted by Princeton University, the Executive Director of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa, announced that the total export value of opiates produced in and trafficked from Afghanistan in 2007 is about $4 billion, a 29 per cent increase over 2006.

Approximately one quarter of this amount ($1 billion) is earned by opium farmers. District officials take a percentage through a tax on crops (known as "ushr"). Insurgents and warlords control the business of producing and distributing the drugs. The rest is made by drug traffickers.

Opium Amounts to Half of Afghanistan's GDP in 2007

Only yesterday, it seems, teenagers stayed in touch outside of school on the telephone or at the mall. Now they log in to a growing number of social networks. Until lately, derivatives and hedge funds were marginal players in the financial marketplace. Now they shape market movements on a daily basis. These examples make a fundamental lesson clear: Embrace your edges or fall quickly behind.

Embrace the Edge—or Perish

Here is Andy Xie, an MIT-trained engineer/economist, and a former star analyst at Morgan Stanley:

“The hot money is going to come to China. Six months ago, I wrote an article that said as the U.S. comes down, a lot of people will come to China. The reason why is because I see the financial guys are running the world, so-called financial capitalists. … These people need to do something. When one bubble bursts, they go somewhere else. You can be sure of that. . . . Next year, the hot money story is going to become bigger. …

“Yes, we see a lot of problems in China. But the trade is still intact. The bubble can continue with all this hot money coming in. So the strong economy is likely to last.”

(Until recently, Xie was very pessimistic.)

China Rises

A semistructured approach can generate great ideas even in familiar settings -- and works better than unfettered brainstorming or strict quantitative analysis.

Breakthrough Thinking from Inside the Box