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Look outside the app to bolster junk-mail filtering in Outlook 2003 and 2007.

Do bounties work? Perhaps. But perhaps they work for reasons other than the most obvious ones.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The explosion of a star halfway across the universe was so huge it set a record for the most distant object that could be seen on Earth by the naked eye.

A star 7.5 billion light years away exploded, giving off the brightest gamma-ray burst afterglow ever seen.

The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday.

The gamma rays were detected by NASA’s Swift satellite at 2:12 a.m. "We’d never seen one before so bright and at such a distance," NASA’s Neil Gehrels said.

It was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.

However, NASA has no reports that any skywatchers spotted the burst, which lasted less than an hour.

Telescopic measurements show that the burst — which occurred when the universe was about half its current age — was bright enough to be seen without a telescope.

"Someone would have had to run out and look at it with a naked eye, but didn’t," said Gehrels, chief of NASA’s astroparticles physics lab at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The starburst would have appeared as bright as some of the stars in the handle of the Little Dipper constellation, said Penn State University astronomer David Burrows. How it looked wasn’t remarkable, but the distance traveled was.

The 7.5 billion light years away far eclipses the previous naked eye record of 2.5 million light years. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles.

"This is roughly halfway to the edge of the universe," Burrows said.

Before it exploded, the star was about 40 times bigger than our sun. The explosion vaporized any planet nearby, Gehrels said.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Treasury Department said Friday it plans to lower the minimum investment amount for government bonds in an effort to make them more affordable for average investors.

Beginning April 7, people will be able to buy as little as $100 in Treasury marketable bills, notes, bonds and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS). Investors will also be able to purchase these securities in increments of $100.

The minimum amount and increment purchase size for Treasurys has been $1,000 since August 1998.

"The new, lower minimum Treasury amount will put marketable securities within reach of more savers and investors in the United States and around the world," said Anthony Ryan, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets.

Treasury securities can be purchased directly from the Treasury by creating a TreasuryDirect account online at treasurydirect.gov or a Legacy Treasury Direct account.

Securities can also be obtained on either a competitive or non-competitive basis through bond brokers and dealers.  

NEW YORK (Fortune) — It’s already hooked America’s youth, and now Facebook is set on winning the hearts of two potentially lucrative demographics: Adults and the rest of the world.

First, the adults: Facebook this week took on LinkedIn and other popular networking sites for working professionals with a new set of privacy controls that will give users greater control over who can see their profiles. Now a member can restrict who gets to see that drunken St. Patrick’s Day photo - an important tool for working-age adults worried about a boss catching wind of their extracurricular activities.

In the current issue of Fortune, I wrote about ways ordinary businesspeople can use today’s Internet, often referred to as Web 2.0, to their advantage. LinkedIn, with 20 million registered users, is the best of the bunch. But that could change now that Facebook, which started as a plaything on college campuses a mere four years ago, has set out to become a global tool for business.

Until now, Facebook hasn’t given users many tools to limit who sees their profiles, and how much of them. The lack of such controls up to now has been the single biggest reason why many businesspeople hesitated to rely on Facebook. Those of us older than 22 understandably want and need to keep a firewall between details about us we let close friends see and the more innocuous stuff we show to co-workers.

Originally, Facebook enabled students to amass one undifferentiated group of friends who had unfettered access their profiles. Later it created two categories: people who could see your "limited profile" and those who could see everything about you. Then, in December, it allowed members to aggregate friends into any number of groups - family, friends from school, friends from work, non-friends who had cajoled you into "friending" them on Facebook, etc. But you couldn’t do much with those groups except send them messages.

The new controls allow you to set different levels of access to information about you for each of those groups. For instance, close friends might get to see your cellphone number, music favorites, e-mail address and embarrassing photos of you from out-of-control parties. Work colleagues, on the other hand, might only see the basics about your education and resume - name, rank, and serial number.

If a young Fortune colleague who brought me into his Facebook crowd last week had used these controls, I wouldn’t have seen the embarrassing photos of him and a girl, both looking drunk and flashing the finger. I’m already sorting my own 450 Facebook friends into sub-groups with different levels of access to my data.

Facebook appears to have learned from its recent privacy gaffe, in which it quickly backed off a new feature that let retailers alert friends when members bought something online. This new set of changes doesn’t directly relate to that fracas, but it indicates that Facebook appreciates how important privacy is to users.

The site’s privacy controls will continue to improve. Facebook’s managers, from CEO Mark Zuckerberg on down, have made it clear they intend in time to give users even more control over their data.

Now onto that other demographic: The rest of the world. Facebook already has a sizeable presence around the globe: Two-thirds of its 68 million members are overseas. But there are hundreds of millions more to conquer.

To that end, Facebook began last month translating itself into other languages. And it’s done so by applying its standard software solution-centric approach to the problem: Engineers have collected thousands of English words and phrases throughout the site and made each one a separate translatable object. Then members are invited to translate those bits of text into another language. Members then rate translations until a consensus emerges as to which translation is the best.

Facebook tested this wiki-like approach first with Spanish. The job was done by about 1,500 volunteers in less than a month. Next Facebook turned to German. This time, 2,000 volunteers completed the task in less than two weeks. In early March, Facebook invited French members to help out. They did the job in mere days. Now the peculiar Facebook action known as a "poke" becomes "dar un toque" in Spanish, "anklopfen" in German, and "envoyer un poke" in French.

The tools Facebook has built to enable translation will soon be made available for any language, even relatively small ones like Uyghur or Yoruba.

Consider the opportunity for Facebook: The site has more than tripled in size in the last year - and this was using English-only. Welcoming the world’s non-English-speakers will likely enable it to expand even more quickly.

Bit by bit, Facebook is making it easier to distinguish between people and treat them differently - just as we do in the real world.  

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Thanks to its stake in Visa’s initial public offering this week, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has enough money to pay for its Bear Stearns purchase and still have about a billion dollars left over.

JPMorgan (JPM, Fortune 500) made at least $1.36 billion in Visa (V)’s IPO Wednesday, according to federal filings. JPMorgan is the largest of six principal bank stockholders of the the card processor, who all reaped big bucks from the offering. The debut was so successful that Visa sold additional shares, boosting the banks’ takes.

"JPMorgan had a great week," said John Fitzgibbon Jr., founder of IPOScoop.com, an independent IPO rating service. "They walked away with $1 billion in their pocket and that’s after buying Bear Stearns."

JPMorgan scooped up embattled Bear Stearns for the bargain basement sum of $342.6 million, based on the bank’s closing share price on Thursday.

The Visa windfall couldn’t come at a better time for banks, which are struggling to raise much needed funds amid a credit crunch on Wall Street and a faltering economy. It will help boost banks’ first-quarter earnings, provide them more reserves for loan losses and improve their capital, an important measure of an institution’s financial health.

"It’s hard to raise that kind of cash in today’s market," said Chip MacDonald, partner in the capital markets group of Jones Day law firm. "It gives them more flexibility."

The IPO should increase banks’ first-quarter earnings by about $5.4 billion, Keith Horowitz, analyst at Citi Investment Research, wrote in a research note, according to the Associated Press.

Other banks receiving big windfalls from the IPO include: Bank of America Corp. (BAC, Fortune 500), $675.3 million; Citigroup Inc. (C, Fortune 500), $324 million; U.S. Bancorp (USB, Fortune 500), $298.7 million, and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC, Fortune 500), $295 million, according to the IPO prospectus filed with the SEC.

National City Corp., which was listed in the prospectus as getting $470.5 million, announced Thursday that it would see a gain of $530 million from redeeming 39% of its stake.

The banks still hold a significant stake in the card processor. Based on Thursday’s closing price of $64.35 per share, their ownership was worth $4 billion for JPMorgan, $2 billion for Bank of America, $1.4 billion for National City, $952 million for Citigroup, $878 million for U.S. Bancorp and $866 million for Wells Fargo.

Before its $19.1 billion IPO, which was the world’s second largest, Visa was an association owned by its 16,600 member banks. The largest IPO was Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, which raised $21.9 billion in October 2006. 

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — You might think that Mount St. Mary’s doesn’t belong on the same basketball court with North Carolina in Friday night’s NCAA match-up. But the small school from rural Maryland is a lot closer to the Tar Heels in talent than they are in earning power off the court.

According to figures filed with the Department of Education by each school, North Carolina’s men’s basketball program had revenue of $17.2 million during the 2006-07 school year, second only to the University of Louisville’s $23.2 million among the 65 in this year’s tournament. North Carolina’s profit of $11.6 million is behind only Louisville’s and Arizona’s.

By comparison, the Mount, as it is known to its students and faculty, essentially broke even with revenue of $876,744 from it’s men’s basketball program. That makes it the tenth poorest school invited to March Madness this year.

Mississippi Valley State, with revenue of $233,036 had the lowest revenue from its men’s program. It also lost $249,199 from its men’s basketball program, is the poorest. (Add your own joke about Mississippi Valley scoring only 29 points vs. UCLA here).

I’ve got a particular rooting interest in Friday’s North Carolina-Mount-mismatch since my sister-in-law, Mary Kate Birge, is a nun and a professor at Mount St. Mary’s. She’ll be risking a trip to confession in order to watch her school on Good Friday, and unfortunately probably using words she’s not supposed to use on any day of the year.

Since the Mount is a Catholic school, she won’t be the only one bending the rules to watch the game — and praying for a chance to watch the team play in the second round on Easter.

History and any objective judging of talent says the Mount has no chance to beat North Carolina. No 16th seeded team ever has knocked off a No. 1 seed. Just to tilt the field a bit more towards the Tar Heels’ favor, the game is being played a little ways down the road from Chapel Hill in Raleigh, NC.

But every year people watch these mismatches in the hopes they’ll be surprised. There have been a handful of 15 seeds who knocked off 2 seeds in the first round. And tiny Belmont (revenue of $1.2 million) almost did so against mighty Duke (revenue of $13.4 million) Thursday night.

Duke and North Carolina, besides sharing a one of the great rivalries in sports, also share a built-in financial advantage.

The poor schools will stay poor despite the $545 million per year that CBS (CBS, Fortune 500) is paying to broadcast the tournament during the life of its current 11-year deal. The television and ticket money is mostly paid to the conferences, based upon the games in the tournament played by each conference over the the most recent six years. Those pools of money are then split between the teams in the conferences.

So even if Duke and North Carolina had both lost their first games this year and Belmont and Mount St. Mary had somehow both made it to the final game of the tournament, the bigger checks from the 2008 NCAA would have gone to ACC-members Duke and North Carolina, not the upstarts.

In addition, the regular-season ticket sales and television money for the powerhouses from the major conferences dwarf what’s available for the so-called mid-major schools.

There are a few mid-major schools in the tournament with large revenue streams and good prospects, like Memphis and Xavier, but they’re the exception, not the rule.

The 34 schools from the major conferences in this year’s tournament have average revenue of $9.4 million, and an average profit of $4.4 million, giving them a 47% profit margin that any NBA team would give up a decade worth of No. 1 draft picks to achieve.

The remaining schools from the so-called "mid-major" conferences average just under $2 million in sales and an an average profit of $360,814, giving them a profit margin of only 18%. In fact, eight of those 31 schools reported losses from their basketball programs.

So by the time the Final Four arrives in two weeks, it is most likely to come down to the big money, top-seeded teams playing each other, as it does almost every year.

And while everyone says they love the David vs Goliath battles of the NCAA, the ratings for the Final Four show that what America truly loves is when big schools make it to the finals.

More people watched the final three games of the tournament, which included Florida, Ohio State, Georgetown and UCLA, than watched the four-game sweep of small market Cleveland by even smaller market San Antonio in last year’s NBA Finals.

It’s likely the Mount and Belmont will be distant memories when the final game is played April 7. And that will be just fine for CBS, most basketball fans and the teams that profit from the tournament. 

NEW YORK (AP) — Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said Friday it has struck a more cautious stance on brokers and may downgrade Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. because of the prospect of volatile markets hurting profit more than expected.

S&P said its current rating on the brokers assumes revenues will decline 20% to 30%. It is possible, though, that given how unpredictable markets have been, revenue could decline more, S&P said.

S&P adopted a "negative" outlook - meaning it could slash ratings within the next two years - on the brokers to account for the potential for a more precipitous decline in profitability from the capital markets.

The fate that befell Bear Stearns Cos. (BSC, Fortune 500) highlights the extent to which firms are exposed to negative sentiment in the capital markets, S&P said. This week, the liquidity-starved company, whose stock topped $155 last year, sold itself to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM, Fortune 500) for $2 a share.

While Lehman Brothers (LEH, Fortune 500) has a stable structure for raising cash and bank’s earnings have held up well, S&P said it cannot ignore the possibility of an "adverse change in perceptions," even if that change is misguided.

Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) has proved itself particularly adroit during this credit crisis, but S&P said its aggressive willingness to assume risk leaves the bank vulnerable.

S&P began considering a downgrade of Morgan Stanley after the bank reported $9.4 billion in losses on its portfolio at the end of the fiscal fourth quarter. While the fiscal first quarter was more benign, S&P said it has doubts about whether that performance is sustainable.

S&P said it will determine whether to downgrade Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) in the next month. The ratings agency downgraded Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER, Fortune 500) to "A+" in October and said the rating remains unchanged. 

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Though times are tough now, Americans believe the economy will bounce back by next year, according to a survey released Friday.

A national CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll found that 60% of respondents think economic conditions in the United States will be "good" next year, as opposed to the 75% who think the economic situation is "poor" now.

"Most people realize that the economy has cycles of ups and downs," said Wachovia economist Sam Bullard. "Fortunately, the last two recessions were some of the shortest on record, so in 2009 we should be pulling up out of this."

Of the more than 1,000 American adults surveyed in the poll, conducted March 14-16, 83% said they are "confident" that they will be able to maintain their standards of living next year, and 85% are "confident" they will keep their jobs over the next six months.

Americans also showed faith that they would be able to pay off their future debts, with 90% of respondents demonstrating confidence they would be able to meet their monthly mortgage payments for the duration of the mortgage.

Nearly as many Americans - 83% - said they could pay off college loans, car payments, and credit cards in the future. The average amount of credit card debt of those polled was $4,000.

"Consumers, in general, are optimists," said Bullard, who believes that increased consumer spending after the tax rebate checks are delivered in the late spring will help boost the economy in the third and fourth quarters of 2008.

"Even when they’re not optimists, they love shopping," he added.

But Americans are less optimistic about their long-term financial situation. Only 23% felt "very confident" about paying for their children to attend their choice of college.

Furthermore, only 29% said they were "very confident" about saving enough money to live comfortably when they retire, and just 44% believe they will be able to retire when they want to. According to the poll, 58% want to retire sometime in their 60s.

Since respondents were uncertain about their long-term prospects, only 34% said they were "very confident" about maintaining their standard of living over the next 10 years, as opposed to 45% who said the same about next year.

"They’re worried about inflation," said Bullard. "Medical care and education costs are outpacing other price increases, and they’re worried about how they can afford to retire."

As for the more immediate future, however, Bullard thinks consumers are right to be confident.

"The Fed’s rate cuts will start to take their toll later this year, and the economy should bounce back by the end of 2008," he said.