Honolulu Star-Bulletin from Honolulu, Hawaii • 41

KOmrGAGE RATES Today's market NYSE. Up: 1,098 stocks Dow Jones Based on 20 percent down, oww-oocupied mortgages. Rates and terms vary; check with tenders for details. Down: 856 Stocks At; 3,652.09 Volume: 301,621,830 13.13 500: 460.13 0.36 Wednesday, August 25, 1993 Star-Bulletin Section Double goods orders plunge TERMS INTEREST POINTS American 30-year flxl 7 Savings 1 5-year fixsd 612 2 1 -year ARM 4 73 2 Bank of 30-year fixed 7 2 Hawaii JEJ 5I5 I 1 -year ARM 412 2 5 30-year 7 2 vvj First 15-year fixed 612 2 Hawaiian -year ARM 4 34 2 Bank of 30-year fixed 6 78 2 America' l5? 1-year ARM 4 38 2 jEHAYA 30-year fixed 678 2 Souw Coktwa Bn McdtHnweh html tmnm Durablo goods New orders Billions of dollars, seasonally adjusted 140 135 Star Bulletin 130 125 PERSONAL COMPUTER WATCH By Peter H. Lewis 120 year.

Last month's drop in orders followed a 4.5 percent increase In June, the best performance in six months, but orders had fallen in May, April and March. In July, orders for transportation equipment plummeted 18.1 percent, the worst since November 1990. The department did not have a precise breakdown but said most of the drop came in autos and aircraft. It followed a 14.3 percent rise. In a downbeat sign for future factory employment, the backlog of unfilled orders fell 0.4 percent in July to $434.7 billion, the lowest level since August 1988.

It was the filth consecutive monthly decline and an indication that the current factory workforce is easily keeping up with the flow of new orders. Orders for military goods soared 13.2 percent in July, the second increase in a row. Excluding military orders, which can swing wildly from month to month, orders fell 4.5 percent Orders for industrial machinery and equipment rose 45 percent. However, orders fell 0.6 percent for primary metals such as steel and 1.1 percent for electronic equipment' Non-defense capital goods, a barometer of businesses' investment spending, fell 10.8 percent But, 115 jinnnn onnonno A PC user's walk down memory lane AS MA 1922 1933 July '92 June '92 July 'A3 1 119.8 1 132.5 1 1127.51 Source: U.S. Dwt.

of Commerce BOB an electrician, was in the dark. He had received a used computer in barter for his services and called for advice. "It has 40 megabytes of memory," he said, revealing The 3.8 July decline is the worst drop In 19 months Associated Press WASHINGTON Orders to American factories for big-ticket durable goods plunged 3.8 percent in July, pulled down by a large drop in orders for aircraft and automobiles, the government said today. The decline, to a seasonally ad-Justed $127.5 billion, was the fourth in five months and the worst since December 1991, the Commerce Department said. An earlier, separate report from the Federal Reserve had indicated factory production was increasing in July but today's report is a sign that the flow of new orders isn't enough to support further increases.

Durable goods long-lasting, expensive items such as steel girders, cars, computers and appliancesare considered a crucial barometer of the economy's health. After a burst of activity late last year, the nation's manufacturing sector has languished, with little new hiring and little sign of a revival soon. It's been a major factor behind the economy's disappointing performance so far this Home sales surge 5.4 Falling mortgage rates boost activity Associated Press WASHINGTON The lowest mortgage rates in more than 20 years lured more buyers into the housing market in July, boosting sales of previously owned homes by 5.4 percent, a real estate trade group said today. "Summer generally is busy, but this year is extraordinary," said Honolulu Realtor William S. Chee, president of the National Association of Realtors.

Sales fell only in the Northeast. Buyers closed on 3.88 million existing single-family homes at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, Existing homo Seasonally adjusted annual rate, millions of units Toyota's profits hurt by car slump The Japanese automaker's net income declines 25 Japanese corporate giants hurt by yen's gains D-5 Reuters TOKYO Toyota Motor Japan's leading automaker, reported a 25 percent drop in annual profits today, saying that a strong yen clobbered foreign revenues while car sales at home continued to decline. Pretax profits slumped to 322.2 billion yen ($3.06 billion) in the fiscal year that ended June 30, while sales inched up half a percentage point to 10.21 trillion yen ($97.2 billion). "We have brought in new models and made great efforts in marketing, but our profits fell," Vice Chairman Masami Iwasaki said. Japan's auto industry has taken a battering recently.

The nation's soaring currency has slashed the yen value of overseas sales. But since U.S. automakers have become more competitive by improving quality and design, the Japanese cannot easily hike prices in America. Japan itself is going through one of the worst economic downturns in its recent history and the car market here is expected to see its third straight year of declines this year. Against this background, analysts said the results were relatively good.

"They've gone down a lot, but so has everybody else," said Ben Moyer, auto analyst at Merrill Lynch. Toyota has cut costs by standardizing parts, cutting temporary workers and reducing the number of its models. But, said Moyer, "They haven't been able to cut fixed costs as quickly as they needed to." Toyota forecast a decline in parent company current profit to 200 billion yen ($1.90 billion) in its current fiscal year, from 286.45 billion ($2.72 billion) in the 1992-93 fiscal year. Parent sales are seen falling to 8.7 trillion yen ($82.8 billion) from 9.03 trillion ($86.0 billion). It had no forecast for group earnings, but Iwasaki said these were likely to be in the same ratio to parent earnings as the current year.

Whether it achieves this depends partly on cost-cutting programs, but more on fluctuations in the exchange rate, analysts said. "That's the biggest imponderable," said Barclays de Zoete Wedd analyst Andrew Blair-Smith. With over two-fifths of the domestic car market, Toyota relies less than Japan's other makers on overseas sales. Honda Motor Co. Ltd.

gets 61 percent of its revenues from exports. Toyota gets only 37 percent. But Toyota is still vulnerable to currency fluctuations, and loses in the region of 1 billion yen ($9.5 million) from its revenues every time the dollar drops one yen. Asked how it would deal with the high Iwasaki said it would just carry on with its present programs. "We have no new ideas on this, but wilt continue to rationalize and raise prices abroad." Japanese loan rates sliced to record lows Reuters TOKYO Japanese commercial banks said today they will cut their key lending rates to the lowest levels ever in an attempt to stimulate corporate borrowing and prop up the economy.

Mitsubishi Bank Sanwa Bank Ltd. and Sakora Bank Ltd. announced a 0.25 point cut in the; short-term prime rate to 3.75 percent effective Aug. 31, while the three long-term credit banks are to lower their long-term prime rate by 0.2 percent-: age point to 4.8 percent, effective Sept 1. Other major city banks are expected to an-' nounce similar cuts in their short-term prime rates within a week.

The new short-term prime rate will be the lowest since 1989, when commercial banks introduced the rate. The long-term prime rate will fall below the previous low of 49 percent in March. Mitsubishi Bank, which has relatively few non-performing loans for a city bank, was the first to announce a cut in the short-term prime rate. A Mitsubishi official said the cut would be in line with declines in money market rates. 4.0 3.0 that he is one of many novice computer users who are understandably confused by the difference between system memory and storage memory.

Personal computers can have several different types of memory, each of which performs a sepa-'-' rate function. Random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), video RAM (VRAM) and storage memory are the most common memories a user will encounter these days. Before discussing memory, let us pause for a 1 byte. Computer memory is measured in units called j. bytes.

It takes eight bits to make a byte. It takes about a thousand bytes to make a kilobyte, about a I thousand kilobytes to make a megabyte, and about a thousand megabytes to make a gigabyte. The numbers are approximations because in the binary math of computers a kilobyte is actually 1,024 bytes. In a sense Mr. K's computer does have 40 megabytes of memory, but it is a secondary and I indirect type of memory, for data storage.

When one refers to the memory of a personal computer, it is generally understood to mean random access memory, or RAM, also called system memory or main memory. This type of memory is more critical to the performance of the computer because the microprocessor draws on it directly. 1 An analogy close at hand is this newspaper, which consists of many pages of words and pictures. The newspaper stores all of this information as ink on paper, while a hard disk stores its 1 information as microscopic bumps on a spinning magnetic platter. Let us assume the "storage capacity" of this i newspaper is 40 megabytes, the same as Mr.

K's computer. Actually, the text alone is probably less than a megabyte, but let's pretend. And while we are at it, let's pretend that you, the reader, are a computer. Your brain is the micropro-! cessor. At the risk of stretching the analogy too far, how fast you read and process information is determined by the speed and power of your processor.

Some of us have Intel 286s for brains, while others have 386s and 486s and Pentiums. The information residing on the pages of the 2.0 A SON 0 MA .) 1032 1333 excluding aircraft, orders were up 0.4 percent. Shipments of durable goods, a measure of current production, fell 4.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted $129.3 billion following a 2.1 percent increase in June. Philip Morris says it won't raise dividend Disappointed investors sell off the cigarette stock Associated Press NEW YORK The Marlboro man got roughed up in the stock market today after the Philip Mor-ris Cos. Inc.

board held the line on its quarterly dividend and put its 25-year record of annual payout hikes at risk. The owner of a brand-name treasure chest that includes Jell-O, Oscar Mayer and Kraft as well as Marlboro said volatility in the domestic cigarette market made maintaining its dividend rate the "most prudent course of action." But many investors who had grown accustomed to yearly dividend increases which averaged 24 percent over the past decade alone and who expected another increase this year unloaded Philip Morris stock. In heavy trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Philip Morris was off $2,125 a share to close the day at $49 and was the second most active Big Board issue with more than 6.8 million shares changing hands. The stock had dropped 5 points in early trading but recovered. Spokesman Nicholas Rolli said the dividend has been raised at least once each year since 1968.

Dividends are a big expense for Philip Morris, which at current rates pays out more than $2.28 billion in dividends on its 880 million common shares. Philip Morris, the nation's biggest tobacco maker, put itself at the center of a price war earlier this year when it launched an aggressive promotion aimed at protecting Marlboro's leading share of the U.S. market. Jury 92 June '93 JutyS3' 3.88 I up from a revised 3.68 million in June and the highest level since a 4.04 million rate last December, the Realtors said. It was the fourth straight increase after sales slumped during the se 14 newspaper is memory in one sense, because it is information that can be retrieved and processed by our microprocessors.

But only a small portion of the newspaper's information can be processed at any William Chee corporation began tracking rates in 1971. They had fallen to 7.10 percent by last Thursday. Also making previously owned homes more affordable was a 0.1 percent decrease in the median price, to $109,200 from $109,300 in June. The median means that half of the homes cost more and half costless. Still, the median price was 6.2 percent higher than the $102,800 posted in July 1992, which Chee said reflected steady demand.

Chee said purchases by first-time buyers continued to dominate many markets, although the trade-up market also remained Regionally, sales shot up 9.5 percent to an 810,000 annual rate, in the West, where the median price was $144,500, up 1.3 percent from June. Despite the heavy rains and flooding, the Midwest posted a 9.3 percent gain in sales, to a 1.05 million rate. The median price slipped 0.1 percent to $86,500. vere winter months from January through March, although June sales were revised to a 1.7 percent advance from an initial estimate of 1.9 percent. The government said earlier that sales of new homes and apartments jumped 11 percent in June, a gain analysts also attributed to favorable mortgage rates.

July sales will be reported next Monday. A Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. survey showed that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 7.21 percent in July, down from 7.42 in June and lowest since the i given time, and that is where RAM comes in. I Our own built-in microprocessors cannot absorb all of the 40 megabytes of this newspaper all at once. The outspread pages would not fit in our range of vision, let alone our capacity to consider several dozen articles at once.

Our brains do not have enough RAM. It is common, however, to look at one page of the newspaper at a time (1MB RAM, in our analogy, the same as Mr. K's computer). Many people hold the paper open to scan across two pages at a time (2MB i RAM), while others fold a page in half (512KB RAM). The key is that all the information on that page is I accessible almost instantly, Just by moving one's i eyes from one item to the next All the articles on the page are essentially "in memory," even though 1 the reader's focus may be on just one item.

If the article is too large to fit on one page, the microprocessor issues a seek instruction; the reader looks for the "continued on page address and turns to that page to continue reading, taking one page out of RAM and putting another in its place. I The more RAM a system has, the more informa-! tion and activities are available instantly, without having to go back and forth to storage memory. A typical computer today comes with 4MB RAM and an 80MB hard disk, which is enough to do basic i work with Microsoft Windows software. i Peter H. Lewis writes about computers for The New York Times.

His column appears every Wednesday. I 1 LOOKING AHEAD NEWSWATCH EXECUTIVE PROFILE Managing managed care KEY RATES 0 IN PERCENT 3 PRIME RATE 6.00 6.00 6 00 DISCOUNT RATE 3.00 3.00 3.00 FEDERAL FUNDS 2.94 3.01 3.29 BILLS 2.98 3.02 3.16 6- MO.TREAS. BILLS 3.06 3.12 3.25 7- YR. TREAS. NOTES 5.14 5.22 6.26 30-YR.

TREAS. BONDS 6.19 6.22 7.47 Source: Salomon Brothers and Teterate Tomorrow: Why stocks of mutual fund companies are riding high. FARCUS David Waisglass-Gordon Coulthart The goal of Straub Clinic Hospital is to "increase the participation in the pre-paid market," says Karen Lennox, the new executive director of the managed care division. Most of the Straub operation is on a straight fee-for-ser-vice plan but Lennox will work to change and improve Straub's pre-paid financial programs. Straub has several plans including supplements for Medicare and the Cham-pus program for military dependents.

The Straub Health Plan includes pre I Name: Karen Lennox Age: 39 Position: executive director, managed core, Straub Clinic Hospital First Jod: summer intern, Department of Health. Favorite pastime: tennis and swimming. Sylvania agrees to halt claims on Energy Saver The Federal Trade Commission says Osram Sylvania Inc. has agreed to stop saying its Energy Saver light bulbs are as bright as regular bulbs. The consent decree announced yesterday is similar to one that General Electric Co.

signed last fall to settle FTC charges that ads for its Energy Choice bulbs misled consumers about their power of illumination. Any claims that consumers will save money by using the Energy Saver bulbs must be accompanied by a statement that they burn less brightly than comparable regular bulbs, it said. The FTC charged in its complaint that Energy Saver packages used large, black numerals to list the wattage of the bulbs they were designed to replace. The wattage of the Energy Saver bulbs appeared in smaller, thinner print the agency said. Packages also contained such statements as "full light output" or "as much usable light as an ordinary bulb," according to the commission's complaint Sylvania will be allowed to use existing packaging for 120 days after the FTC accepts the consent decree.

The consent decee will be open for public comment for 60 days before the commission votes to make it final. From Star-Bulletin news services Builders Emporium to close end lay off 4,300 Collins Aikman Group said it will shut down its 97-store Builders Emporium chain, putting 4,300 employees out of work in the Southwest The closings, which include 82 stores in Southern California, will be completed by the end of October. The other 15 stores are located in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The decision, announced Tuesday, follows two years of losses for the home improvement chain, which was hard-hit by California's recession. Builders Emporium, founded in 1946, was purchased in the 1980s by New York-based Collins Aikman, formerly known as Wickes Cos.

Collins Aikman put the chain up for sale last spring, but no buyer was found Electronics makers agree on CD video standard Four Japanese electronics companies today announced a common standard for compact discs that will store videos of movies and educational material. The companies are Victor Co. of Japan Ltd. and the world's three biggest consumer electronics makers Japan's Sony Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd and Philips Electronics NV of the ventive care, health Netherlands.

They said the standard was based on one called Karaoke CD, established this year by Philips and Victor, which sells karaoke-playing compact discs machines for bars and night clubs. The four eletronics giants planned a number of other products based on the standard, and Sony would probably have models available sometime in 1994, a Sony spokesman said. A 12-centimer (five-inch) compact disc will store 74 minutes of motion video. In addition to the features offered by Karaoke CD, Video CD will also offer still pictures at two levels of resolution and more sophisticated playback control, the companies said. Video CD discs will be playable on a range of audio and video CD products that are designed to handle the new format promotion, physician and other professional care, outpatient and home health care.

There also are hospital, emergency care, mental health, ambulance and contraceptive services offered. Lennox had been vice president and general manager of the southern region of Managed: Health Network, and director of health managed ment organization (HMO) acquisitions and integration with Aetna Health Plans. She also managed Kaiser Pertnanente's health plans in Dallas. Lennox holds a bachelor's degree from Cornell University and a master's degree from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Jerry Tune, Star-Bulletin "All I have left are videos of my kids at the beach.".