CNBC has been conducting a $1 million Porftolio Challenge. Anyone can enter as many portfolios as they desire for free, with the grand prize being $1 million.

However, there seems to have been a problem with this challenge.

A trader could go to the CNBC Web site and select a number of stocks to buy, but hold off on executing those trades. If you made the selection before the close of regular trading at 4 p.m. EST and left your Web browser open, you could execute those trades after hours and still receive the 4 p.m. closing price. For example, if a company whose stock closed at $20 a share rose to $25 in after-hours trading, you could buy the stock at $20, even though it was already worth 25% more.

This despite rules that traders are not allowed to execute after-hours trades.
The top four portfolios seem to have made use of this loopholes. With this strategy, they have booked phenomenal returns.

Over the first nine trading days of the final round, the top five stockpickers tallied average returns of 45%.

More at Businessweek.

AT&T is offering a challenge to Comcast and other entrenched cable companies through it’s U-verse service. Currently being offered in southern CA, it claims to offer more choice than the cable companies’ offerings.

I’m not convinced. They have not tried to unbundle the package, to let users pick and choose their own channels. Plus, the lower package offerings are still overkill – 100 channels at $60/month. Honestly, who watches more than 10 of those 100 channels?

A great map showing where Wal-Mart’s products come from.
http://www.benjaminedwards.net/Writings/walmart%20map.htm

… with my 1995 Dodge Avenger ES:

• Because it was so low to the ground, the front bumper cracked hard. Twice. I didn’t spend the $400 to get it fixed the second time.
• The weather stripping on the left window did not fully cover the left window. If I didn’t lay my arm against the back edge when going through a car wash, I would get sprayed on the side of the head with soapy water.
• To turn activate cruise control, you had to press a button to turn it on, then set it on the steering wheel. The button was tricky though. It often took me 7-10 tries of pressing it “just so” to get the light to stay on. All the while I was driving on a highway and avoiding traffic.
• The fuel tank door stopped popping open when I pulled the lever. To get the tank door to open, I had to hold lever while someone else pushed the door open. Every time.
• In spring, to switch to air conditioning, I had to: 1.) turn the knob from red to blue, 2.) press the “AC” button marked with a snowflake, and 3.) shift another knob near the central vent from red to green.
• The car was unnecessarily long. And the doors were incredibly heavy, as there were only two of them.
• And, my favorite. About 4 years after we bought the car, it started making clicking noises underneath the dashboard somewhere when I drove on the highway. Very loud clicking noises, about 4 seconds apart each. I could never find the source of that noise.

Dodge stopped making the car in 1998 or so. I learned recently that they have decided to re-release the Avenger. Guess who will not be in line to buy one.

Chirag mentioned that the Department of Veteran’s Affairs has recently released the VA Vista EMR as an application, as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Having studied large-scale EMR systems to some extent, this made me a tad nervous as I hadn’t yet heard about it.

After a bit of research, turns out that I need not worry about this system replacing the likes of Cerner or Eclipsys without government intervention (no pun intended…). At the very least, it is a system that should be watched carefully to see how its use evolves.

The following from a site compiling open-source EMR systems. The bold text is my emphasis. (And, by the way, has anyone heard of the M programming language??)

• VISTA
• The U.S. Veteran’s Administration Software.
• Available free due to the Freedom of Information Act
• Becoming easier to install the basic system on Linux due to the packaging efforts of World Vista Team.
• Still very difficult to set up a working installation due to detailed working knowlege of M programming language, and other detailed knowlege of the system required. I suspect the arcane knowlege required to set up and maintain it ensured job security for the team of programmers who spent their entire careers working on VISTA for the VA. This worked well at the VA where the users contributed the ideas and the develpers responded, but resulted in extreme dependence on the developer team provided by the VA. This may be VISTA’s Achille’s heel for the open source transition. Hopefully VISTA can eventually be packaged in a way that mere mortals can set it up and maintain it.
• The M language used is still good, but newer open source programmers are not familiar with it, which hampers recruitment of new developers.

Two large-name sites have come up with semi- to nearly-fully-independent entities to sell shoes online since Oct 2006.

• Gap –> PiperLime.com
  
• Amazon.com –> Endless.com

There are also three other major contenders out there.

• Zappos.com (the leader in the category)
• Shoes.com
• ShoeMall.com

It should be interesting to see how Gap and Amazon take on these somewhat entrenched players. Also of note, Amazon’s site offers free overnight shipping. At ~$20/pair, this is a significant investment to drive traffic.

(Note: the link between Amazon.com and Endless.com was noted by TechCrunch. All five outlets are reviewed at Trunkt.net)