We recently wrote about how filmmaker Rhett Reese was somewhat misguided in lashing out at fans over their claims on Twitter that they had downloaded his movie Zombieland. Of course, both of the fans that he lashed out at noted they had seen the film in the theaters (one of them multiple times) and the download was a repeat viewing — and they still planned to buy the DVD, since they loved the film so much. Still, the Twitter message from Reese that got the most attention was the claim that all this downloading would greatly impact the likelihood of a sequel. A few days later, Reese decided to further elaborate his stance on “piracy” and it is a bit more nuanced — he admits that his messages were fueled more by emotion than by rational thought, though he is still upset about people downloading his films and is worried about where it “inevitably leads.”

From this, Captain Kibble alerts us to an accurately described “rant” at ScreenRants.com about how this is “indisputable” evidence that piracy harms movies. The basis of that claim? Reese’s heat of the moment claim that this could impact the making of a sequel. According to the ScreenRants folks, this suggests it’s a fact that movie piracy is harming movies. Of course, there’s no actual evidence that there is any decreased interest in making a Zombieland sequel. In fact, since the highest grossing movies almost always correlate to the most shared movies online, it seems that being a top pirated movie also likely has extremely high correlation with movies that get sequels.

Could file sharing be harming movies? Yes, it’s possible. But there is scant evidence that it’s a huge or serious threat that can’t be dealt with through better and smarter business models. As we’ve seen with smart filmmakers who embrace file sharing as a way to gain more fans and “converts,” it can actually help them make more money by building up more people who want to support the filmmaker.

That said, the latter half of the ScreenRants rant actually does make a few good suggestions, noting that part of the issue is Hollywood’s slothlike pace in offering movie fans what they want in terms of online services and video on demand. One of these days, the movie industry will figure this stuff out, and the answer isn’t freaking out and complaining about “piracy,” but finally putting in place the business models that we’ve seen are working already.

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In his latest essay, John Hussman offers a kind of mea culpa, in explaining why he hasn’t been more on-board the rally this year.

His rationale: he didn’t realize how little investors had learned from the bust, and how much Wall Street would overreact to a “lull” in mortgage resets.

In other words: he’s been wrong because Wall Street is dumb.

I was wrong.

Not about the implosion of the credit markets, which I urgently warned about in 2007 and early 2008. Not about the recession, which we shifted to anticipating in November 2007. Not about the plunge in the stock market, which erased the entire 2002-2007 market gain, which was no surprise. Not about the “ebb and flow” of short-term data, which I frequently noted could produce a powerful (though perhaps abruptly terminated) market advance even in the face of dangerous longer-term cross-currents. I expect not even about the “surprising” second wave of credit distress that we can expect as we move into 2010.

From a long-term perspective, my record is very comfortable. But clearly, I was wrong about the extent to which Wall Street would respond to the ebb-and-flow in the economic data – particularly the obvious and temporary lull in the mortgage reset schedule between March and November 2009 – and drive stocks to the point where they are not only overvalued again, but strikingly dependent on a sustained economic recovery and the achievement and maintenance of record profit margins in the years ahead.

I should have assumed that Wall Street’s tendency toward reckless myopia – ingrained over the past decade – would return at the first sign of even temporary stability. The eagerness of investors to chase prevailing trends, and their unwillingness to concern themselves with predictable longer-term risks, drove a successive series of speculative advances and crashes during the past decade – the dot-com bubble, the tech bubble, the mortgage bubble, the private-equity bubble, and the commodities bubble. And here we are again.

Read the whole thing >

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See Also:

• Hussman: Beware The Oncoming Tanks
• The Second Wave Of Mortgage Resets Begins
• Hussman: The Market Is More Overbought Than Any Time In History

Now that Ubisoft has Assassin’s Creed wrapped up for now, they have plenty of time to work on another popular franchise of theirs – Prince of Persia…

Filed under: Motorsports, Hirings/Firings/Layoffs

There are plenty of reasons why Danica Patrick stays in the news. If it’s not her famous temper, photo shoots for Sports Illustrated or racy television commercials, it’s her impressive results on the race track. She is, after all, the first woman to win an Indy race and, after finishing third at the Brickyard this year, the most successful woman to race the Indy 500. But lately the news has centered over the future of her racing career.

Rumors first began to pop up that Danica could move on up to Formula One, initially linked with Honda and then with USF1 before Bernie Ecclestone put his foot in his mouth. Again. Most recently, however, Danica’s been tipped to switch to NASCAR. But with the latest announcement, those rumors have been quashed. Well, sorta.

Announced live today in Times Square on ABC’s Good Morning America, Danica has signed a “multi-year” deal (tipped to be three years) to stay in the IndyCar Series with Michael Andretti’s team. The four-car squad is restructuring this year, with partners Kim Green and Kevin Savoree splitting off the race promotion arm (responsible for the races in St Petersburg and Toronto), while Michael Andretti stays on to manage the team that drops the Andretti Green Racing moniker in favor of Andretti Autosport. GoDaddy.com has signed on to continue its sponsorship of Danica’s No. 7 car. Tony Kanaan and Marco Andretti are locked into long-term deals for two of the other cars, while the fourth car is expected to go to former Rookie of the Year and race winner Ryan Hunter-Reay.

The announcement of Danica’s extended contract would seem to put an end to the NASCAR rumors for at least the next three years, but reports still suggest that the talented Miss Patrick could run a parallel schedule in the second-tier Nationwide Series while contesting the full IndyCar calendar as well. Busy beaver indeed.

[Source: Andretti Autosport]

Continue reading Danica Patrick signs multi-year deal to stay in IRL with restructured Andretti Autosport

Danica Patrick signs multi-year deal to stay in IRL with restructured Andretti Autosport originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pound cake with real vanilla beans, fondue drizzled with truffle oil, a pasta with slivers of Parma ham…It’s such a treat to get to cook with the real deal, isn’t it? This year why not give your favorite cook a few of these small luxuries – and ask for one or two yourself!

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Update: Edelman’s Jonny Bentwood comments on the survey results, which I provided to him.

As the year winds down, I want to take a moment to breathe, recollect, and refocus on 2010.

In an effort to continually improve, I’m launching a survey to find out more about you, what you find useful, and what can be improved for the web strategy blog.  Frequently, I’ve taken the community’s feedback to factor into blog designs, and have taken in feedback from a survey we conducted about this blog in May 2008 (read part 1, and 2, ).

Although we’ll keep your name, email and other personal information private, I plan on sharing the high level findings (just as I did before), so we can collectively learn about the Web Strategy blog and the surrounding community.  I’ll also be sharing the anonymous data with some of the well known Analyst Relations bloggers, to get their take on it.  This survey is 20 questions, and should take hopefully less than 10 minutes to complete.  I really value your feedback, thanks.

Action Requested: Please Take The Web Strategy Feedback Survey.  (Update: Thank you, this survey is now closed, with nearly 200 respondents, will publish data soon)

Temasek Hedge highlights how these days Singapore’s port has become too quiet. The Financial Times agrees.

Temasek Hedge: These days, though, the view is obscured by hundreds of ships lying at anchor, some of them part of the estimated 10 per cent of the world container fleet idled due to lack of business. At the ultra-modern Pasir Panjang container terminal, stacks of empty containers piled up behind protective fencing tell a similar story.

…

You can see it for yourself. Just take a drive on the AYE/ECP, and note the number of crane “birds” that are standing up. If they are up, it means they are idle. Of course, FT notes that the silence is not just confined to Singapore. All other ports are suffering too.

We should note that Dubai aims to be transhipment hub, a meeting point for goods before they are shipped to elsewhere, like Singapore.

The problem for cities like Singapore and Dubai though is that everyone wants to be a hub now. Thus even a rebound in world container shipping trade, perhaps driven by a moderate recovery for the U.S. consumer, might not be enough to provide much container shipping growth to Singapore, because port capacity all over the world will have likely grown faster. Ports will be undercutting each other.

Singapore is a far more sustainable model than Dubai, but it wouldn’t take much to rock its relatively small economy. A prolonged trade slump could be enough.

The picture above shows a recent snapshot of the ships sitting idle around Singapore. Check out the actual live, updated image here. Just don’t expect much action. They aren’t moving.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• US Container Trade Is On Fire
• Reduced World Trade Is Destroying Container Ships
• Desperate Rotterdam Port Offers Shipping Rebate

“Bad loans = big losses.”

Goldman’s most recent quantification of bank losses begins objectively enough, yet promptly devolves into yet another cheer fest for the financial system.

GS promptly rehashes its estimate of “only” $2.1-2.6 trillion in bank losses, slighty adjusting the composition of loans it believes will go bad, while completely ignoring the onboarding of off-balance sheet liabilities (FAS 166-167) as well as any and all potential losses in the derivative realm, where Goldman itself is on the hook for tens of trillions in gross notional.

The only thing missing from this fluff piece is a Conviction Buy rating on Goldman itself (but the Conviction Buy on toxic credit card and real estate debt laden BAC, JPM and COF is certainly present).

Continue reading at Zero Hedge >>

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See Also:

• Goldman: This Is What A Sub-Par Recovery Looks Like
• Rosenberg: This Isn’t A Recession, It’s A Depression
• SocGen: Prepare Yourself For The Worst Case Scenario!

If you don’t celebrate Christmas where you’re from or your neighborhood has gone completely Scroogey, you can get your holiday cheer from PlayStati…

Filed under: Classics, Coupe, Performance, Chevrolet, Design/Style

There’s really nothing wrong with the first-generation Chevy Camaro, except perhaps for the fact that rows upon rows of them can be seen at every single car show in America. In fact, so ubiquitous is the 1969 model that there are a couple of aftermarket companies willing to build you a brand new example from the ground up utilizing just about zero OEM bits or pieces.

This being the case, it’s hardly surprising that this is the model year The General chose to mimic with its new fifth-gen Camaro for 2010. But what would happen if you could somehow jump to-and-fro through the time/space continuum in your Mr. Fusion-equipped DeLorean time machine and transport yourself back to ’69 with visions of the 2010 model in your head?

Answering that question-that-nobody-asked is the 1969 Danz Camaro SS concept car, which you can see in the high-res image gallery below. Words cannot describe the initial reaction we had when opening this sucker up in our browsers for the first time, so we’ll just say that we hope its creator kept the original pieces in the garage when it comes time to sell. Yikes!

[Source: Carpictures.com via Carscoop]

Back to the Future: 1969 Danz Camaro concept goes the wrong direction originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been absolutely stunned by the Italian attempt to prosecute Google execs over a YouTube video. If you don’t recall the story, apparently some schoolboys taunted a disabled boy by throwing a tissue box at him. They filmed the entire ordeal and posted it to YouTube. Because of the video, the kids in the video were actually held liable for the taunting. It actually helped bring those kids to justice. Meanwhile, Google took down the video as soon as they were alerted to it by the authorities (within a couple hours of finding out about it). But Italian prosecutors insist not only that Google should have blocked the video entirely, but the fact that they left it up means that its execs are guilty of criminal violations and deserve jailtime.

In pressing the case forward, prosecutors are claiming that Google must have known about the nature of the video because there were comments on the YouTube video expressing disgust over the video. It’s as if they believe that Google execs read all the comments posted to YouTube and use those to pick and choose which videos should stay up and which should be taken down.

In the meantime, I’m still wondering why Italian prosecutors are not trying to push the tissue manufacturer in jail as well, as I would argue that those who made the package of tissues thrown at the boy are at least as, if not more, responsible for the actions of those kids as Google.

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Anyone who’s ever allowed themselves be drawn into those shiny blocks can attest to the Puzzle Quest addiction. D3 Publisher picked up on the craze, t…

European officials and lawmakers don’t really like big US companies, though most often than not their actions are justified. eBay has now been ordered to pay a €1.7 million fine for allegedly failing to prevent its users from selling products from the luxury goods manufacturer Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) in France, something it was forced to do after a previous legal battle. The auctions giant will fight the decision which it claims that the fine is grossly exaggerated and that for the most part it complied with the injunction.

“Today’s outcome hurts consumers by preventing them from buying and selling authentic items online. The injunction is an abuse of ‘selective distribution’. It effectively enforces restrictive distribution contracts, which is anti-competitive,” Alex von Schirmeister, eBay general manager in France, said. “We believe that the higher courts will overturn this ruling and ensure that eCommerce companies such as eBay will continue to provide a platform for buyers and sellers to trade authentic goods.”

The court’s decision is part of a longer case in which eBay was accused of failing to do enough to prevent the sale of counterfeit products on its site. In June 2008, a French court ordered the company to pay almost €40 million to a couple of luxury goods … (read more)

I know, I know. Subprime is so, like, 2007. And most of the financial press has moved onto sexier mortgage words like “option ARMs,” or “FHA loss reserves.”

That said, I thought it would be interesting to dive back into subprime waters, taking a granular look at individual deal performance using November remittance data from that old standby, the ABX. (For those that don’t recall, the ABX index was launched by Markit in 2006 to track the private-party subprime RMBS market — and it allowed some hedge funds an easy mechanism to short the market for subprime mortgages.)

We decided to take a look all 81 different deals across the 2006 and 2007 vintages within the ABX, comparing month-to-month percentage changes in both 60+ day delinquencies (not yet in foreclosure) and properties in foreclosure status.

Read the whole thing at HousingWire >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Citi: The Commodity Collapse Could Be "Subprime Part II"
• California Housing Market Continues To Recover, Befuddling Bears
• Latest Facts About The State Of The Housing Market

…And just now my latest Fast Company piece popped up on the site. “Futures Thinking: Scanning the World” is the third in the occasional series on thinking like a futurist.

In my opinion, it may actually be the hardest step of all, because you have to navigate two seemingly contradictory demands:

• You need to expand the horizons of your exploration, because the factors shaping how the future of the dilemma in question will manifest go far beyond the narrow confines of that issue.
• You need to focus your attention on the elements critical to the dilemma, and not get lost in the overwhelming amount of information out there.

You should recognize up front that the first few times you do this, you’ll miss quite a few of the key drivers; even experienced futurists end up missing some important aspects of a dilemma. It’s the nature of the endeavor: We can’t predict the future, but we can try to spot important signifiers of changes that will affect the future. We won’t spot them all, but the more we catch, the more useful our forecasts.

It boils down to this: keep reading, keep asking questions, keeping looking for outliers… and if you think you have enough, you don’t.

Tower Light S.r.l. is a young and dynamic factory European leader in the production of lighting towers and pumps. Tower Light S.r.l. is able to develop in autonomy all the structures studying every component, planning and realizing it inside, with the most modern robotized and numerically controlled machinery.
To guarantee to our clients an extreme quality products, every lighting towers and pumps are tested singulary and equipped of all necessary documentation for use it in autonomy.

Tower Light S.r.l. has always believed in the quality of own lighting towers and pumps and in the correct management of all the working phases.
In 2002, Tower Light S.r.l. has obteined the Certification of Quality ISO 9001:2000 and in 2004 of the VISION 2000

The range of Tower Light lighting towers is divided as follows:
Lighting towers with manual raising
Lighting towers with hydraulic raising
Lighting towers with halogen floodlights
Lighting towers with metal halide floodlights
Lighting towers indipendent feeded by external source
Lighting towers coupled with generating set
Lighting towers studied for building, army, civil protection, shows, event application, etc.

Thanks to experince of three generations pump’s building, Tower Light ‘s range is composed by:
Self priming pumps
Vacuum assisted pumps
Electric pumps
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Electric submersible pumps

Filed under: Hybrid, Hatchback, Chevrolet, GM, Electric, Quick Spin

Three years ago this December we first walked into a Manhattan conference room for a background briefing on a new concept being developed by General Motors for the upcoming Detroit Auto Show. Earlier that year, the release of a documentary called Who Killed the Electric Car made the then largest automaker in the world the subject of some well deserved criticism for its handling of the end of the EV1 program. The movie and announcement of the all-electric Tesla Roadster lit a fire under GM to get back into the plug-in electric vehicle game.

What we saw that day in NYC was a description of a new powertrain architecture then dubbed E-Flex. GM folk on hand that day included vehicle line executive Tony Posawatz and former VP for environmental affairs Beth Lowery. They explained that among the biggest lessons learned from the EV1 program were that range anxiety and lack of practicality would make a car like EV1 nearly impossible to sell in the mass market. The engineers went back to the drawing board to address those issues and came up with the extended range electric vehicle, or ER-EV. The Volt concept was approved for production mere months after it was revealed at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show. At this week’s LA Auto Show, GM is publicly showing the production intent version of the Volt. Before that, however, we were among the first to drive a Volt with its range extender running. Read all about it after the jump.

Photos Copyright (C)2009 Sam Abuelsamid / Weblogs, Inc.

Continue reading Quick Spin: 2011 Chevrolet Volt charges toward production

Quick Spin: 2011 Chevrolet Volt charges toward production originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Smart Colon Cleanse is a diet pill that claims it will do the following:

“Flatten Your Stomach
Lose up to 30 Pounds
Decrease Gas and Bloating
Improve Your Skin Quality
Look and Feel Great” (website).

This Smart Colon Cleanse review will explain the ins and outs of this product and help you determine if Smart Colon Cleanse is the product for you.

What ingredients are in Smart Colon Cleanse?

This is a great question. We contacted customer service with Smart Colon Cleanse to find out (since they do not list the ingredients on their website). There is a “live chat” on the Smart Colon Cleanse website that allows potential customers to ask questions. When we asked for an ingredient list, we received the following message:

“Smart Colon Cleanse contains the most powerful and effective ingredients for internal cleansing available anywhere on the market today. Smart Colon Cleanse will help you to rid your body of all that excess buildup in your digestive tract and prevent future buildup from occurring.”

When we asked where we could see an ingredient list they gave us the same information. Obviously our “live chat” was with a computer.

The only way to learn what the ingredients are is to purchase Smart Colon Cleanse.

What are the details with the Smart Colon Cleanse Free Trial?

Smart Colon Cleanse offers a 14 day free trial. If you choose to cancel your free trial before the 14 days are up, return the unused portion and you will not be charged. Otherwise you will be enrolled in autoship (they automatically send you more pills each month and charge your credit card for it).

How much does Smart Colon Cleanse Cost

The cost of Smart Colon Cleanse is $84.71 per month. Considering the company is unwilling to reveal what ingredients are contained in Smart Colon Cleanse, there is no way of knowing what effect it will have on weight loss or what the potential side effects might be. This Smart Colon Cleanse review finds that $84.71 is far too expensive for this product. If you really want to lose weight, you can find a much less expensive option that is truthful about the ingredients it contains. Choose a product that contains proven ingredients in the necessary amounts.

Is Smart Colon Cleanse Really Endorsed By Celebrities?

The Smart Colon Cleanse website contains a clip of Katie Couric talking about colon cancer and how to increase colon health. However, there is no mention of Smart Colon Cleanse in the clip. Therefore, while some celebrities are endorsing awareness and good health, there is no specific celebrity endorsement of Smart Colon Cleanse.

How does Smart Colon Cleanse Work?

Because there is no ingredient list on the Smart Colon Cleanse website, we cannot answer this question for sure. However, most other “cleansing” products contain ingredients that will merely keep you on the toilet for several days.

Smart Colon Cleanse Conclusion

This Smart Colon Cleanse review finds Smart Colon Cleanse diet pills are not worth your time or money. There is no ingredient list, so you can’t be sure of what you are putting into your body. Do yourself a favor and choose a product that is honest with the ingredients it contains, one with proven ingredients included in the necessary amounts.