Tivo

The best gift I ever received was a tivo. It was given to me years ago and I was an instant fan. Soon afterwards DVRs started popping up essentially stealing tivo technology and violating their patents.

It has long been my belieft that this theft of intellectual property has had an adverse effect on tivo's stock prices and for years the stocks have been in the cellar>>>see link http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1269720087484&chddm=999396&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:TIVO&ntsp=0
The main thieves of their technology is Dishnetwork and Echostar and tivo has been in court many times with them. This week tivo won another victory against Dishnetwork and stand to win up to 300 million dollars>>http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100305-709285.html. The impact for Dishnetwork is enormous, because they have 30 days to negotiate with Tivo on a possible settlement and up to 14million of their dvrs could be shutdown if negotiations don't go well.

I being a huge tivo fan am celebrating this victory, not as much if I was an investor. The next day after the ruling stock prices went up 61%.

Some questions for myself. Are Tivo's Patent Lawyers fixed cost, or variable cost and why don't they sue cable providers with the same technology? Tivo's Patent Lawyers are worth their weight in gold lately and they have lawsuits against AT&T and Verizon.

Go get them tivo, way to have an inelalastic product.

Germany's success and the EU

Hello all,

My blog response is in this article I found rather interesting, located at this link: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15663362&source=hptextfeature

Now it says here that before, Germany was lagging behind in the European economy due to high unemployment and slow growth, but how did this all change? Even in the world recession, Germany has managed to have high account surplus, while still exporting many goods to other countries. Now in the article, it says that Germany managed to hold down labor wages in 2001-08. This brought down the cost of labor, but it seems to me that there would be “less” labor after that, due to the demands of higher wages to pay for that labor. So labor cost may have been down, but that would still produce less because firms would not want to pay the higher prices for more labor.

With the recession, this low labor cost benefited Germany because other countries could outsource to it and increase the production in Germany, hence increasing the standard of living. It also says in the article that German’s success in the recession is hurting its other Euro neighbors. Germany was saving money while other counties like Greece in the Mediterranean were spending money like it was going out of style. This recession has rendered many counties in the EU with weak economies, with Germany being the country with the most capital it seems logical to help the other struggling economies linked in the EU by spending and investing to get them on their feet. It’s been said before, that in recessions a government must spend lots of money and in the recovery period must accumulate money and pay off bonds. I think that role is in Germany now.

As current leader in the EU market, Germany must put more priority to saving less and spending more in terms of investing stock to have more currency flow to the other countries. This will get the countries like France, Greece, and Italy more room to maneuver while they still try to lower their labor costs. It will be the road to recovery to ensure a strong European economy.

I'll Bet He Never Looks Up

...or Why I Hate "Avatar": A Contemplation on Externalities


So I am pretty sick of hearing about how great “Avatar” is. On the eve of it possibly winning the Best Picture Oscar, I feel like sharing my opinion. While my reasoning is not totally rooted in economic reasons, it seemed like a decent enough topic for the blog assignment, and it is somewhat difficult for me to get my entire point out on why I hated it before I am harangued by the legion of apologists. And I know what you are thinking. “It was about the special effects, and that the story didn’t have to be that good. It wasn’t about the acting, it was about the world he created.” Fine. Great. Wonderful. My gripe is not with the story. I love some movies with downright terrible or incoherent plots. My problem is with the message.
By the conservative estimates, “Avatar” cost $237 million dollars to make. Two-hundred. And thirty-seven. MILLION. Freaking. Dollars. In the midst of a global recession, we have $237 millie just hanging out to blow on what some had called the largest gamble in cinematic history. Add to that the $150 million allocated for promotional costs, and you have yourself a total bill of $387 million. And this is the conservative estimate. Some people place the total costs at over half a billion dollars. This does NOT include the cost of developing the software and cameras used to create the film, which could easily add several million dollars to that figure. Then you factor in Mr. Cameron’s opportunity cost for spending 15 years of his life making this movie. Sure it is the highest-grossing movie of all time, but will he see a dime of it? Likely not, according to this article. Accounting profit? Yes. Economic profit? Who knows.
“So it cost an buttload of money, Marcus. Who cares? Hollywood spends ridiculous amounts of money all the time on atrocious films. Why pick on ‘Avatar’?” I’ll tell you why. I have a serious problem with some d-bag spending over half a billion dollars to make a movie that costs me $15-20 dollars to wear plastic glasses so I can watch 3 hours of painful dialogue comprised of big blue avatars (watch your metaphors, buddy) telling me to save the freaking planet. “Energy is only borrowed; you have to give it back?!?” What about the gas used to drive to and from the studio every day, or the electricity burned in the fifteen years it took to make the movie? How many Styrofoam cups were thrown away by programmers building the software, and how much disposable plastic was used/thrown away during that whole time? This doesn’t even begin to factor in the gas used and waste generated by the theater-going masses. Anyone who knows me knows I am not a tree-hugging hippie, but I find this glaring hypocrisy downright appalling. You want to save the world? Dedicate fifteen years of your life and half a billion dollars SAVING THE WORLD. Don’t expend all of those resources and expect me to do it while you fly around in a jet with your self-righteous, “I’m doing good for the planet” feeling. I pulled the following quote from the Word Wildlife Fund website, dated 17 December 2009:

“In addition, Australia, France, Japan, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States announced they will commit USD $3.5 billion of public finance over three years to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in developing countries.”

At the time I am writing this “Avatar” has made around 2.6 billion dollars worldwide, and is the highest-grossing movie of all time. It will likely make much more before all is said and done. I love movies. I love ridiculous, big-budget action movies. I do NOT love being preached to, especially in such a ham-fisted, contradictory manner so economically disadvantageous to your purported goal.