The Golden Compass

The DVD of The Golden Compass comes out on April 29th. This was released from New Line Cinema but had a brief time in the cinemas due to troublemakers who spread awful lies about the intention of the film saying it was devil worship and the like. See my review here at Rotten Tomatoes.

Pity because it is a wonderful movie full of value and it also encourages creativity and freedom of expression (which is the real reason I believe however for controversy which followed). It neither encourages devil worship or is it anti religion. Rather it warns that if allowed, the world could be ruled by one entity which would have the political power to take away your creativity and freedom of expression. A power that is threatened by the curiosity and open questions of a child. It suggests that only children hold true freedom in their minds, hearts, and souls but they must be aware that a power seeks to confine, define, and limit their minds.

The main character in the story is a young girl named Lyra, her daemon and the daemon of all children which are physical manifestations of ones' soul. A kind of guardian angel that we can interact with.

New Line Cinema (which made Lord of the Rings) now ceases to exist as an independent studio. It has been absorbed and consolidated by Warner Bros Entertainment which is owned by Time Warner in a move that has eliminated some 400+ jobs. This is not the right time to trade TWX until its current downward trend stops and it shows signs of strength.

Buy or rent The Golden Compass DVD for yourself. It is both entertaining and hopeful. A movie that the whole family can watch together and discuss afterward.

Rejected!

My membership with a social web site was rejected late last week because they felt that my content was not wholly original or that some of my content was pulled from other sources. I wonder when the last time they checked that their other members were truly wholly original? Perhaps they should send themselves a rejection notice as well! It can be easily said that there is nothing now that is wholly original. Nothing that has not already been thought of before. The closest to original you can get seems to be a variation of an idea.

All businesses are copy-cats. Look at Microsoft for instance. Look at business in general. They buy their expertise through acquisition, repackage an idea, mass market, etc.. Once an idea that hasn't been done before is successful or even a failure, you almost immediately see businesses spring to life that in some way imitate or merely swing a slight variation of the same.

It is not a matter of originality but rather perhaps uniqueness of the same, quality, and marketability. We are all pirates of the earlier innovations and ideas. No one on this earth today has an original. If so, there would be far less businesses, far less wealth. There would be less competition of similar products. Consumer choices would be more definitive. Companies with bad products would not survive to try again as consumers would move onto the better idea rather than be confused over the choices and have to go through the experience of crap vs. genius.

We would not have to wait to speak to customer support or be given the run-a-round when a company like Dell sought to use it's customer service reps as a wall to prevent customers from returning bad product, getting refunds, and or new parts. Google "Dell Nightmare" to see any one of over a thousand posts. (There used to be over 480,000 posts with the content of Dell nightmare. Or see my experience here. My post is the last one near or on the bottom. Dell's stock price has been in an overall downward trend since March 2005.

In fact while the site rejected my membership it is not original either. While its monetizing idea holds some merit, it is not original. The site I won't mention here trys to bring bloggers and businesses together. It seeks to allow businesses to reap the benefits of a blogger's positive comments as a way of gently promoting a product or service on their blog. Businesses give bloggers an opportunity. The opportunity offers to pay bloggers for their words expressing the product/service. The idea is that this gives businesses more exposure for their product/service. What I haven't found out is; does the blogger still get paid if his/her comments on a product are negative?

This is nothing more than an offer to cheaply pay someone to sell their product for them. It is cheap exploitation of blogger's time for little compensation. This is not a new idea. Nor are most of the products/services touted. The site takes the idea from FaceBook or MySpace to exploit networking for dollars. This is no new idea either. Its all a matter of perspective. But we are all pirates. Better perhaps to be a pirate who trys to do something better by providing something more through: education, entertainment, better ROI for the user's time, charity, or something else perhaps.

Anyway it is no different than how companies like Nike exploit the poor and disadvantaged in Vietnam. They might retort otherwise but they are no different in how they use bloggers as cheap labor. Read this article written just this month. Click on the Asia Times pic.

Nike has been a buy since March gaining nearly $10 to a closing price Friday of $67.89


Do I have wholly original content? No
Do I glean supportive content from the internet? Yes
Do I blog to promote thought? My perspective? To ask questions? Yes

I may be rejected by a site that thinks they are original but then I just smile brightly and giggle at the thought.

In All Fairness

I am known for my love-hate relationship with Microsoft's products and for the hate mail that I once received from William (Bill) Gates regarding my thrashing of their first white paper on ROI with Microsoft products.

I felt that it was wrong to capitalize on the extreme number of problems with the Microsoft OS and so basically I got out of the business of computer service. This is partly were the white paper thrashing originated. I have it appears, certain morals in business which may put me at a slight disadvantage when it comes to investing. For example, I have never invested in oil producers.

In all fairness, I'm not an Apple user. I'm a PC user. I don't use Linux but XP and Vista. Microsoft is far from its stock hey day and Apple is the clear front runner when it comes to making money on its stock.

I just noticed these videos on the video bar and thought that I had to give both Apple and Microsoft some even billing on the blooper/funny factor. So in all fairness, it is not just Microsoft that has problems. So does Apple, but perhaps far far fewer problems than Microsoft. Enjoy watching the videos for yourself! LOL

New Perspective

This time next week we'll be within exactly one hour from landing time in Los Cabos for the Future1investor Conference Cabo















At this point it feels like I'm just dreaming of the warmer weather and sound of crashing waves on the beach. But I'm looking forward to this trip as a way of re-energizing myself for working with the market and providing a new perspective for 2008.

There has been so much gloom and doom in the recent past that almost anything is positive. And it seems with last two weeks the market thinks so too. Everyone is jumping in, perhaps not with both feet but certainly a few toes. We are looking very positive on solar and the alternative energy sector and will be carefully observing various company moves and their technicals to find good entry points for maximum profits on our end.

We look forward to seeing you in Cabo next week; not only to share great weather and fun but also to share our business insights and investing experiences.

Volatility...Am I a Gomer?

Perhaps I'm like Gomer, but I just also realized why advocates of mutual funds, and holding companies don't like stock price volatility.

Their success largely is seen by continual growth or rise of chosen stock prices in their portfolio and not from trading the volatility. The costs are too high for them in trading volatility. And as in the sake of mutual funds it is a double whammy. The mutual fund's management fee would be generally higher which customers tend to shy away from. Also portfolio turnover is high which generally at least in the past, indicates that maybe the manager doesn't know what he/she is doing or that they are taking on too much risk in the process.

In my way of reasoning, this is also why only 20% of mutual funds beat the S&P 500.