Thursday, April 15, 2004

Cassini has sighted Prometheus and Pandora, the two shepherding moons whose unpredictable orbits both fascinate scientists and wreak havoc on the planet's "F" ring. Prometheus is visible inside the F ring (enlarged at right), while Pandora appears above center, outside the ring. The two small, irregularly shaped moons exert a gravitational influence on particles that make up the F ring, confining it and possibly leading to the formation of clumps, strands and other structures observed there. Pandora prevents the F ring from spreading outward and Prometheus prevents it from spreading inward. This image was taken on March 10, 2004, when the spacecraft was 55.5 million kilometers (34.5 million miles) from the planet. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute + More Saturn Photos: Feb. 27 | March 5 | March 12 | March 19 | April 2 + More Saturn Photos from Planetary Photojournal + Visit Cassini-Huygens Web Site + View Previous Image + Return to gallery index 7:33:05 PM    comment []

And pay attention to what Professor Singh tells you or you'll be dunked in the Ganges: "Outsourcing, like other forms of international trade, creates winners and losers, but the policy challenge is how to deal with the losers," says Nirvikar Singh, professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz. "One way is to ban outsourcing, but that is costly and detrimental in the long run because it keeps the economy from changing and maintaining competitiveness." The deeper issue is the long-term threat to U.S. competitiveness posed by growing centers of innovation in places like India and China, he says. "It's natural for 'back office' jobs to move overseas, just as factory jobs did before them, but the growth of research and development in emerging global centers like India and China has far greater implications for U.S. competitiveness than the movement of these jobs," Mr. Singh says. "What if U.S. companies, by pursuing short run cost advantages, are creating future competitors in knowledge and innovation?" 7:29:59 PM    comment []

'Queen of Net' Turns Her Sights On China Market By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL April 15, 2004 7:49 p.m. HONG KONG -- Mary Meeker, the former Morgan Stanley Internet analyst once dubbed "Queen of the Net," has turned her attention to China -- just in time for its own growing Internet bubble, say skeptics. It's dot-com déjà vu in Shanghai for some investors, as excitement builds for Chinese Internet companies with business models that include sending jokes to cellphones and connecting gamers in virtual sword-fighting battles. With a flurry of recent public offerings, there soon will be eight Chinese Internet companies listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market. After the U.S. Internet bubble burst in 2000, Ms. Meeker fell off the analyst radar screen and was assailed as having overhyped Internet stocks. But now, in the thick "China Internet Report" released Wednesday, Ms. Meeker is back, pleading that "investors still underestimate the impact the Internet will have in changing business process and consumer behavior on a global basis -- and we believe that China is emerging as a market that helps prove this point." If that sounds just a bit less zippy than her assessment of the U.S. Internet industry circa 1999, it may be because Ms. Meeker is more cautious now -- and because she had to write the report along with Morgan's China economist, Andy Xie, a vocal bear on China's Internet stocks. Mr. Xie, a bit of a media darling himself these days, warns that China Internet investments are quite speculative and could become victims of a growing bubble in other areas of the Chinese economy. "The Chinese Internet is different from overlaying the Internet on a mature economy," says Mr. Xie. "At this very early stage, we don't really know what are the stable business models, or the characteristics of a winner." The sector needs stability before it can be valuated beyond speculation, he says. The recent surge in Chinese Internet stocks, says Mr. Xie, comes from American investors. "It is very hard for us to understand what they are thinking so far away," he says. Ms. Meeker says she takes Mr. Xie's point, and uses him as a foil in her report. But Chinese Internet stocks, she argues, aren't nearly as highly overvalued right now as ones from Silicon Valley in 2000. "The overall market opportunity from the Internet in China will prove to be quite significant over time," she maintains. Moreover, she's turned to China to prove her long-term theories about how the Internet can change business -- especially through economies of scale, provided here nicely by China's 1.3 billion potential consumers. "One of the elegant things about the Internet is that you can get a little bit of money from a lot of people. That can create a pretty compelling business model," Ms. Meeker says. Most Chinese people are poor but, Ms. Meeker argues, not too poor for the Internet. She points to the early success of Chinese online gaming companies, such as Shanda Interactive Entertainment, the owner of which became one of China's richest men by charging cents for subscription access to games played by thousands at a time. Ms. Meeker argues that simple math on a Chinese scale points to profit, even for companies following some of the same paths as U.S. dot-coms, such as online advertising and e-commerce. "If Internet user growth in China continues to grow at 30%, and usage grows higher as broadband becomes more pervasive, it's fair to say the revenue growth from Internet companies should at least be commensurate," she says. Not everyone agrees. Ten-year veteran Chinese technology analyst Duncan Clark -- who said he couldn't even squeeze Ms. Meeker's whole 217-page report down through his Internet connection -- took issue with her assumptions that business models that have sustained U.S. dot-coms could work in China. "E-commerce can be a great window, but can you collect?" asks Mr. Clark, managing director of BDA China. "Now people are using sites just to say, 'Let's meet at this street to pay each other off.' " In finding a bright future for Chinese Internet stocks, Ms. Meeker joins a long list of people who have "rediscovered" China for their own purposes, says Mr. Clark. "China is a mirror -- it reflects whatever you want to see that day. I don't want to write a book about China. I want to write a book about the people writing books about China." Ms. Meeker admits that there is some need to curb the zeal, and she doesn't want to be blamed this time if people lose money in the short term on Chinese stocks. "The bottom line is that the onus is on the investors to do the filtering process and set the valuation appropriately. Our hope is that investors are more prudent about that than they were in the 1999 to 2000 period," she says. But here and there some of Ms. Meeker's old enthusiasm comes shining through. "It is an irony that a few years ago some folks thought the Internet was over," she writes. "Well, it has just started, and it is not all made in America." 7:28:20 PM    comment []