Make Up Your Melons

New news from the movie studios is old news: they still don't get it.

After fighting for years and years to prevent piracy, two major movie studios, Dreamworks and Paramount, are both announcing that they will only release their new movies in the HD DVD format.

What does this do? Well, for one thing, it keeps sales of new players from going out the roof. I know for a fact that, while it's nice to watch sports in HD, I also like my movies. And since I don't know which format is going to win out, and they're incompatible with each other, why would I buy one so early?

That leads to depressing sales in the actual disks. Why bother to buy a new movie release when the old format is still around, and you don't know which format will win out? Do you buy two copies of each movie? I don't think so. So what happens down the road when one format wins out and the other loses, and you backed the wrong horse?

Lastly, the other big reason why it's great to upgrade your disks to the HD format is that it's harder to pirate. Except that it's pretty easy now since everyone is fighting back and forth ... If they're so worried about losing money, you'd think they'd get their own house in order already.

Bizzare News Story of the Week -- No. 2

Sorry I was gone all weekend and on Friday. Friday, it was a hangover, and yesterday, just was still tired from the weekend.

But this week's bizarre news story comes from the Washington Post.

I too am fed up about an early termination fee, but if that's the case, I do'nt think I'd be this drastic.

After reading on a blog that wireless companies would cancel the contracts of deceased customers, "I thought, 'What have I got to lose, besides a cellphone I despise?' " Taylor said. The Chicago consultant fashioned a fake death certificate and had a friend fax it to Verizon Wireless, his carrier. He thought he was in the clear -- until the company caught on.

"In the end, I forked over the money," Taylor said. "But I bet I sent a definite message about how much people hate being strapped to a cellphone that doesn't work."

I hope actually that they hit this guy up with a lot more than $175, because it's people like that that make us have to pay more. And, as the industry points out, the cell phone that's sitting in my pocket now that I got basically for free, not to mention all the towers and fiber optic cables that make up the network, have to be paid for. It's either pay the cancellation fee or pay a higher monthly rate, and since I can live with an extra bit of time before moving on, I'll pay the fee if I have to leave.

I certainly won't fake my own death.

I Am Shocked, Shocked

Just found a really interesting article in today's Washington Post. Talking about the market for Carbon offsets and how exactly it is that you're willing to pay and what exactly you're paying for, when you buy them.

Here are the opening three paragraphs that summarize what the article is going to be about:

Sites such as this one, offering absolution from the modern nag of climate guilt, have created a $55 million industry that once would have been beyond the greenest of imaginations. The market for "voluntary carbon offsets" now encompasses dozens of sellers and thousands of buyers, including individuals and corporations.

But in some cases, these customers may be buying good feelings and little else.

A closer look reveals an unregulated market in which some improvements bought by customers are only estimated, extrapolated, hoped-for or nil. Some offsets support projects that would have gone forward anyway. Others deliver results difficult to measure.

It's a question that I've been wondering about for myself for awhile. For instance, what exactly do you get when you buy an offset? How is it that by spending more money, you're able to cancel out your own problems? Isn't this just shifting the blame for carbon problems that lead to "man-made" global warming?

But in a way, as a capitalist, I have to like the idea of carbon offsets. I mean, I love futures markets for commodities, I love the stock market and what it does, what's wrong with carbon trading? I think I, and other free-marketers would love to see an actual commodity develop that could be reliable traded back and forth. That would solve my problems.

But how do you create this commodity? Who's going to oversee it? The article asks that question.

But it also asks some of these other questions:

Some of the money paid for these certificates stays with the offset vendor or with a middleman. The rest usually winds up with the energy project's builder or the utility that buys its electricity. In some cases, this can amount to something like a donation to a for-profit company: American Electric Power, which sold an undisclosed amount of certificates from wind farms last year, earned more than $1 billion in profit.

Some environmentalists balk at this. If the certificate is bought only after the energy is produced, they wonder, how can an offset vendor know the energy wouldn't have been produced anyway?

Now, I don't have a problem with that at all. In fact, if a company is doing something the right way, and their service has value, then they should profit. That's the way the economy works. That's the way the system works.

Just something I've been thinking about a lot. I'd like to see it develop, but I'd like to see a whole heck of a lot less governmental subsidies in general. Lose the ones for oil too while we're at it. I'm willing to pay a little more for wind power.

And if a hydrogen fuel cell car ever comes along, I'm buying it immediately ...

Did You Get the Memo?

A small piece in the Washington Post and with what's going on at NASA isn't getting much play right now, except for on conservative sites. Basically, NASA did it's math wrong and didn't correct for urbanization and the way that all the blacktops and reflective car windshields in heavily populated areas raise the temperature.

If what NASA says is correct, that when they corrected it only lowered the temperature average by 0.15 of a degree Celsius, then I have nothing to complain about. If they're wrong, and it actually did make a bigger difference, then .... maybe Rush should say something. I'm not doubting NASA too much, just saying something.

I think the bigger issue here is the global hysteria over global warming. Whether it's natural or man made, it looks like global temperatures may be rising. Hmm, don't think this has ever happened in the past? What about the fact that a subtropical ocean, where water temperature were 50 degrees Celsius, lived there in the past? Ever hear about the Ice Ages and how everything melted? What about the dinosaurs?

Look, global warming should not comes as a surprise. The only thing that I know about the weather is that it changes. It doesn't stay the same. So yeah, we need to plan for long-term climate fluctuations, and not just sit and take with what comes out right away. And if certain animals, like the polar bear or the Dodo, can't adapt, then they can join the fossil record like the dinosaurs and sabertoothed tigers, and Neanderthals, for that much. I don't understand how scientists, who believe in evolution, can get so worked up about seeing natual selection at work. I just don't. Can anyone else explain it to me?

Oh, and if you want to read a book that talks about how the ideal of the virgin, American landscape might not be true, read 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. It's eye-opening to say the least.

Why I Don't Want Girls ....

There are times when I think that I want to have kids down the road, and then there are times when I don't want to have them.

Someone sent me this rant, from Tech Liberation Front, and it had me laughing outloud. (And no, I will never LOL, ever). Go to the link, since I can't get the picture up on here, but man, is it funny.

Now, I totally can hear myself saying all the things that I have to say to the kids to explain why the dog is buried. But I seem to remember being the one who buried my pet iguana after my mom fried it one day. Found a nice big rock, put him under it in a foot deep hole and let him go. I hope the garden didn't swallow him up too much.

But yes, the Mattel toy recall is a big deal, and it's just funny that 1) someone sold to a toy company the idea that a pooping dog and a Barbie with a pooper scooper would sell; 2) that it actually did sell; 3) the fact that I can see myself thinking the same thing as the three year old. I mean, how old am I now that I'd say something like that? Yikes.

It also raises the fact that lead paint was a childhood problem for my parents generation, and maybe for current kids now. They turned out fine, are the leaders of the free world now. Let's relax and let kids have some fun.

P.S. Old Yeller still makes me bawl, but not as much as Where the Red Fern Grows. My kids will definitely be reading that one with me.

If I Only Had the Cash ...

... I'd invest in this: the NASDAQ Portal Market.

I mean, how coll does that sound? Minimum networth to invest is $100 million? No governmental reporting requirements? Away from the SEC's prying eyes?

You don't need governmental regulation here because, if you have $100 million to throw around, you're smart. The SEC is only there to keep public confidence in the stock market, confidence that is the keystone of the main arch that supports our entire financial system. But if you have enough money to throw around that paying cash for something like this isn't that big of a deal ... then you don't need a governmental safety net.

I think it makes sense, and, especially given the fact that the market is breaking up in terms of giving out cheap loans, getting another way for private companies to raise money without having to go public or go to banks and their interest rates is fun.

I just wonder how venture capitalists feel about this idea ... I could see something like this, and the rest of the private exchanges that the article talks about, opening up a way to bypass them. Which may mean that VC money will have to go back into securities. It's always nice to have more cash flow coming in.

F**k off Duberry

And this is terrible news:

Sir Alex Ferguson has confirmed that Wayne Rooney will be out of action for two months after suffering a hairline fracture of his left foot in Manchester United's game with Reading on Sunday.

I love Wayne Rooney, and not just because he's a former goaltender like yours truly. He just likes to play, and that "Joga Bonito" Nike commercial he filmed last year, with Tim Howard scoring the great goal was just perfect.

If anyone can find video evidence of Wayne in Match of the Week last year, miked up, telling the ref to "F**k off" over thirty times, please share in the comments section. A video I miss seeing.

Bizarre News Story of the Week

Just because I know you're all getting sick of reading my boring dribble, here's something new and fun. Each Monday morning, I'll link to a news story that I found to be particularly funny, weird or that makes me just want to shake my head.

The inaugural (or what is the term for first weekly? Latin readers anyone?) story comes from the AP.

"E-ZPass is an E-ZPass to go directly to divorce court, because it's an easy way to show you took the off-ramp to adultery," said Jacalyn Barnett, a New York divorce lawyer who has used E-ZPass records a few times.

Are you kidding me? Seriously, who is her media coach, because he needs to be fired. How is there not even a Monopoly reference in that quote? Was it just too easy? Stick it in right after "to go directly to divorce court" and you're money. And how couldn't the editor work in something like that? This is what passes for journalism these days by the AP.

But wait, it gets better ....

"When you're marketed for this new convenience, you may not realize there are these types of costs," said Nicole Ozer of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia turned Libertarian and privacy rights advocate, said people who want to protect their privacy shouldn't use electronic toll systems.

"People are foolish to buy into these systems without thinking, just because they want to save 20 seconds of time going through a toll booth," he said.

The ACLU and Bob Barr, who is most famous for helping run the Clinton impleachment on the House floor, is telling me that by saving 20 seconds I'm opening myself up to a vast left-wing conspiracy. Uhh, Bob, have you been inhaling the stuff that Georgia imports up to Tennessee? (25,000 lbs of weed along with meth and coke?) Have you not driven down the Jersey Turnpike and across the Delaware Memorial Bridge or the Garden State Parkway? Twenty seconds? I want to know what lane your black Suburban powers through on. So I can stay out of the way of the insurance assessors. And the ambulance chasing lawyers.

Metro Madness

I can't understand Metro. Seriously.

Don't get me wrong, it's an easy commute that ultimately drops me off everyday just a half block from my office.

But I can't understand something. With July being a month in which Metro set a ridership record in terms of number of riders on the rails, combined with the fact that everyone on each of those 19.2 million is spending at least $1.35 to ride, and large numbers of them, at least in the morning and evening rushes.

Now, even though I was a physics major in college, the numbers and math side was never my strong suit. But let's just for a minute assume that the average fare on Metro is $1.50 for each of those 19.2 million people sticking a fare card through the gates each day. That means that in July, the transport system took in $28.8 million. Since we're physicists, let's just round that to $30 million. And that's just the train part, not including the bus service, parking for those train riders in the outer suburbs.

Why all the math first thing on a Monday morning? Well sitting in the subterranean caverns under the Centurions (Union Station Metro stop, Red line), I waited for two trains to roll through because they were too full. The problem? At least one car in each of the first two six-car trains, had it's lights turned off and was out of service.

I see cars out of commission every night on my way home too. In times of record ridership, why can't Metro throw the money back into the cars and service? I can deal with having to wait, with single tracking and trains that aren't evenly spread out. But that's because at the end of the day, I expect that when a train rolls into the station, I'll be able to hop on quickly. When cars are too packed to stand there without spraining your back (as I did this morning piling on and then arching my back to fit in with the seas of humanity), can I ask where my transit money is going?

And does anyone know why this is happening repeatedly? Has Metro said anything? And isn't Metro a non-profit? Don't they have to sink all their money back into the system?

Repeat after me .....

This is very worrisome news, especially with all the equity that I have in the market.

If Europe is going down too, along with the the American Mortgage markets, we could be in trouble.

And add me to the group of folks who don't like the whole concept of hedge funds and going public for them. I'm keeping my money out of any of those folks. Though if I had money to invest like they do, I would totally try and fleece the market and get them to give me more money for my shares.

The good news out of all this?

Remember to repeat after me: I am a LONG term investor. What being in your mid-20s will do for you.