Carnival employees work on a contract basis, often on the same ship, for months at a time.

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Moreover, their light weight makes it easy to ship them directly from overseas contract manufacturers to customers in the U.S. market, analysts say.

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Marrying those scorecards to financial and other databases, Open Ratings presumes to predict which suppliers are most likely to deliver late, ship defective products or go bankrupt before completing a contract.

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When orders for Visors come in over the website (hosted by yet another company), the information is fed first to its fulfillment partner, which keeps the inventory, then directly to Handspring's contract manufacturers, Flextronics and Solectron, which also package and ship the product.

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Able UK eventually won the contract, says Peter Stephenson, its chief executive, precisely because of its ability to dispose of the ship properly.

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Vieira, 52, will replace Katie Couric, who announced yesterday that she will be jumping ship to CBS (nyse: CBS - news - people ) when her contract expires at the end of May.

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