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I'd hope they'll recycle most of it. A small tank/pump would allow ascent/descent without spilling much. But NASA has piddled away a lot of helium on the shuttle so you can't be too sure.

The Hollywood situation is a little different I think. The job security theory certainly fits with people revamping web pages every 6 months, but the reason Hollywood keeps pushing remakes is money and risk: if Hollywood made a lot more innovative movies, it'd be taking a big risk that they'd fail (and a certain percentage probably would). A failed movie costs a lot of money: if the movie costs $100 million or more to make, and doesn't make it back in ticket sales, that's a lot of money to lose. Check out the financials for "Gigli" for example, and that movie probably didn't cost that much to make either (not being an effects-heavy type of movie). Hollywood has found, however, that remakes, while not always hugely profitable, are at least a very safe bet, and almost always at least make money. So that's what they stick with.

For an example of a risky and expensive movie, look at Avatar. That's the kind of movie that Hollywood doesn't like: it costs a fortune to make (didn't Avatar cost a quarter billion?), so if it tanks, your studio will probably go bankrupt. Of course, Avatar didn't tank and did extremely well, but it was still a big risk. So why did they do it? Well, IIRC, "they" didn't: James Cameron did it much of it himself. Here's an article about it:
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2010/01/31/entrepreneurs-journal-business-lessons-from-avatars-james-cam/
Left to the regular Hollywood executives, Avatar would never have been made.

Sadly, it was run by people who got bigheaded with the advent of whatever "Web 2.0" was supposed to be. It is now unrecognizable and useless, the original goal of sensible search results seemingly long forgotten.

That killed Yahoo too. For a good time (not), check out Yahoo Finance's stock message boards. Much like Slashdot's 2.0 revamps, Yahoo did its message boards in 2006 and it's been all downhill from there.

Today, the Y! finance message boards for stocks of very widely-held companies (ORCL) consist of nothing more than (R)tards and (D)tards flaming each other. Midsize companies (ADBE) are full of people flaming the company (and spam from spambots). And the ones for tiny companies (wow, ELNK is still in business?) consist only of spam from obvious spambots that take a news headline, link it to the spam/malware site, and have a bunch of robots replying to it.

And Yahoo's nonexistent abuse department does nothing about the spam, even though the spam follows the same format, and uses the same limited set of spam domains.

Sadly, it was run by people who got bigheaded with the advent of whatever "Web 2.0" was supposed to be. It is now unrecognizable and useless, the original goal of sensible search results seemingly long forgotten.

That killed Yahoo too. For a good time (not), check out Yahoo Finance's stock message boards. Much like Slashdot's 2.0 revamps, Yahoo did its message boards in 2006 and it's been all downhill from there.

Today, the Y! finance message boards for stocks of very widely-held companies (ORCL) consist of nothing more than (R)tards and (D)tards flaming each other. Midsize companies () are full of people flaming the company. And the ones for tiny companies (wow, ELNK is still in business?) consist only of spam from obvious spambots that take a news headline, link it to the spam/malware site, and have a bunch of robots replying to it.

Make a law that you have to hold a stock for at least a day

That's an interesting idea. But it's obviously flawed. Let's say i buy some pharma stock at 9am. At 12 pm the FDA announces that they have found that pharma's main product to be dangerous. Should I not be allowed to sell?

I would argue that derivative speculation and complicated leveraging packages are what make the market insane.
Other people have made similar comments.

Yes precisely. Here we are with massive companies like Exxon that have market caps in the at over 300 billion dollars (1/3 larger than MS, nearly twice apple) with an annual profit of $40 billion that not only have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and to demonstrate that "There is no anthropogenic climate change(TM)" but have been outed as willing to fund that conclusion. The entire budget spent on climage change research in the U.S. is ~$2 billion a year but is spent on research where there is no foregone conclusion. Yet, despite this HUGE disparity in the amount of money that could potentially fund a given conclusion, some significant portion of people STILL believe that data after data and analysis after analysis are the result of some liberal conspiracy to punish the capitalists and put us back into the middle ages and that there's a massive media cover-up of the real data. Its no wonder people denigrate these people as "deniers".

And again, this is without considering heirs at all. The two richest women in America, for instance, are Wal Mart heirs who had nothing to do with the business.

Who was talking about $14/hour? The average is something like 25-33/hour.

I was talking about how widely debunked $70/hour is.

Sure, There might be less listeners then before because of MP3 players and what not, but radio is not "going out of business" and still plays an important roll in exposing "The Next Big Artist/Albumn/Song"

Yes, radio is going out of business.

It's no surprise, then, that the radio advertising business recently saw its worst quarter in history. The Radio Advertising Bureau said yesterday that combined national and local ad spending dropped 26% to $2.8 billion during the last quarter. Network radio dropped 13% to $238 million while off-air revenue receded 12% to $264 million.

Cargo ship speeds go up and down with the costs of ship charter and fuel, and with the demands of customers. Read "The Box", a history of shipping containers and the ships that move them.

Right now, the Baltic Dry Index is down to where it was around 2000, after a huge 5x spike last year. So there's a huge glut of available container ship capacity, charters are cheap, and freight rates are way down. So operators have to optimize for low cost at the expense of speed and throughput.

There's also no big demand for speed from the customers. Much of what's being shipped is going into storage anyway. Unsold cars are piling up near ports, filling up storage and spilling over into rented parking lots. That's presumably happening with containerized commodities too, in cases where the buyer can't just cancel the order.

It's one of those things that happens in a depression.

Why does the DELL promo video "Not Show" a full on video
of the keyboard and screen? Likely because it is a nearly identical
rip off of the macbook pro.

Other similarities, built from single solid piece of aluminum
and glass screen.

Ship it with a better OS and maybe Dell can join Apple's premium
laptop market. Otherwise forget about it.

Will this be the next Dell item to be made overseas?
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/03/04/dell-well-outsource-every-new-product-one-at-a-time/

And $2,000 USD for a Windows laptop..? Gimme a break.
Dell products are cookie cutter designs with cheap power
supplies and limping hard drives. (my own experience
supporting Dells at work).

The price of copper went to unprecedented levels recently (upwards of $4 a pound) and that drove a lot of the theft. In that last few months prices have returned to normal, and I would expect to see theft decrease as well. Of course with the economy tanking, and more jobless, the theft reduction from lower prices may be offset.

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/12/03/freeport-suspends-dividend-cuts-production-on-lower-demand-pri/

4. Not figuring out for years how to make money off of music the old fashioned way- by earning it through new ways of distribution, not by suing people.

There is no revenue in recorded music anymore. I know I'm not buying any, and nobody I know is buying any.

Just because you don't buy music doesn't mean others don't. Currently I don't, the last CD I bought I did about 4 years ago, but except when I drive I don't listen to music much anymore. And all I have in my car is a radio, there's no tape, CD, or mpg player. However I want to get a turntable, then I would buy vinyl records. In the past few years I've seen more and more stores selling turntables. Even Best Buy carry them, and they may start carrying the records too. Amazon already carries them. I'm still looking for a good one that plays 78rpm as well as 33s and 45s, all I've seen so far don't play 78s. Though only a small part of the market, vinyl record sales are increasing.

Falcon

It could also be that the recession is making people buy less new computers. I suppose you'd have to look at overall desktop sales. According to this, growth in U.S. sales were down to +3.5% last quarter (yes still growing, but growth is slow), but worldwide growth in PC sales are still up. So I suppose there's some truth in the people are switching to alternate OSes argument or installing corporate licenses.

I pulled $150 out of my ass, but I'm not the only one(I searched on Boone Pickens, not $150):

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/04/17/t-boone-pickens-says-oil-is-headed-to-125/

Other crazy predictions:

The dollar will stabilize over the next two years, at levels above where they are today.
Deep water drilling will provide some supply relief.
Demand increases will moderate.
The speculative component will be driven out of the price of oil by 2011(where it will be closer to $85 than $150).

Wal*Mart has tv ads that only mention the iPod. (That made me wonder if they've jumped the shark.)

No way has WalMart jumped the shark. It's as hip as it's always been. As proof, they're the exclusive outlet for the new album by the Eagles.

Seth

This might be a partial list, as I've heard reports of participating sites not on this list. But Here ya go:

        * AllPosters.com
        * Blockbuster
        * Bluefly.com (NASDAQ: BFLY)
        * CBS Interactive (CBSSports.com & Dotspotter) (NYSE: CBS)
        * eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY)
        * ExpoTV
        * Fandango
        * Gamefly
        * IAC InterActiveCorp. (NASDAQ: IACI) sites (CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, iWon, Citysearch, Pronto.com, echomusic)
        * Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE)'s Hotwire
        * Joost
        * Kiva
        * Kongregate
        * LiveJournal
        * Live Nation (NYSE: LYV)
        * Mercantila
        * National Basketball Association
        * NYTimes.com (NYSE: NYT)
        * Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK)
        * (RED)
        * Redlight
        * SeamlessWeb
        * Sony Online Entertainment LLC (NYSE: SNE)
        * Sony Pictures (NYSE: SNE)
        * STA Travel
        * The Knot (NASDAQ: KNOT)
        * TripAdvisor
        * Travel Ticker
        * Travelocity
        * TypePad
        * viagogo
        * Vox
        * Yelp
        * WeddingChannel.com
        * Zappos.com

from
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/11/22/facebooks-creepy-ads-put-your-mouth-where-your-money-is/
which sources the info from
http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20071106/AQTU20606112007-1.html

This is precisely what is happening now in St. Louis, MO. The mayor had colluded with AT&T (behind closed doors, no competing bids) to roll out city-wide wifi starting a few months ago. AT&T would get free electricity and free access to regularly maintained street lights in compensation for the cost they incur deploying equipment, along with $10Million from the city over the next few years. The remainder of AT&T's compensation would come from their exclusive privilege to advertise advertise advertise to a very captive market (eg. with heavily adware-laden copies of Internet Explorer). Problem is, AT&T is a still private concern whose #1 priority is AT&T. So even despite all these concessions from the city, AT&T ultimately decided (although has not publicly stated) there is simply no market for it in minicipal wifi, and it is doing whatever it can to back out of its contract entirely.

In the meantime, nothing has been built, and the press was even fed silly stories about how the deployment got delayed because AT&T technicians neglect to account for the fact that street lights are only powered at night. Evidently no one involved in covering this story has a capable BS detector.

Since the mayor neglected to solicit any competing bids on this project, there is no plan B.

And get the privilege of paying a $3000 phone bill - http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/09/10/the-3-000-iphone-bill/

Or not...

Did you actually read the blog in its entirety? He was given full credit for the full amount.

And get the privilege of paying a $3000 phone bill - http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/09/10/the-3-000-iphone-bill/

trying to bring emotion based branding to the technology market isnt the recipe for long term technology-industry success.

Read this:

http://www.auctionguild.com/generic150.html/

and this from a an ebaY user who goes by the handle firemeg (posted to a PheeBay.com discussion forum board http://www.pheebay.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1192 &postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=192&sid=60d0e05bbc 249bae59e846c158ab9524)

Well, I went and did it... I got booted off the eBay community forums for 7 days. How convenient for them. I bet you're wondering what type of malicious thing I said to make them kick me off for a week...

I simply suggested that all posters [to the ebaY discussion boards] put the number of what their post should be at the top of all new posts. (ie. so everyone could see how many posts eBay was pulling and how censored the board over there are). This was the exact post:

My post should be: #357
Let's all start to use the above line, along with the corresponding post number at the top of each of our posts...all the time!

Heaven forbid we number our posts. Someone in the media might have a bit of proof how many posts go poof. I also got an email through my website from another user who had also gotten a 7 day suspension today. He more-or-less suggested that ebay be as quick to remove scam/fraudulent listings as they are to remove posts that they don't like.

If you missed it, Blogging Stocks has another article on Vladuz that was published this afternoon: http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/02/23/ebay-hack er-vladuz-carrying-on/
_________________
www.firemeg.com (firemeg is blogging how Meg Whitman needs fired and ebaY's cratering in general)

PS you all should be shorting ebaY right now...the backlash against ebaY Team Legal is gonna get butt-ugly

I'm not sure why people think the iTunes Music Store makes Apple any money at all. Most of the money goes to whoever licenses the music. Apple provides the service to A) sell hardware (iPods with ~40% profit per unit, iTV?, mini?) and B) prove the feasibility and gain acceptance for digital distribution. Here are two of the big reasons for why the content from the iTMS has such low margins for Apple. They have the means and the motivation.

Motivation: As with all new products, Apple wanted iTMS to become popular and accepted. For any new technology to successfuly enter a market or create a new market, price and perceived quality are usually the most important factors. A cheaper better mouse trap with a pinch of good marketing will usually do well. Therefore Apple has an incentive to keep price as low as they can go.

Means: It is CHEAP to distribute digitally. Therefore Apple CAN sell for cheaper than the legacy content distribution moguls.

Note as evidence for at least the movies and TV episodes the recent Walmart vs. Apple articles, the articles usually contain some analysis that shows Apple undercutting Walmart's prices even though Walmart is selling new release DVDs at a loss! Trust me when I say that if anyone sells for less than Walmart (even if the products are not exactly the same), their profit margin is minimal. Then for music, even though this is not the greatest source, it's just one article of many that tell about the pennies made per song purchase on iTMS.