Can someone please explain to me why Russian Oil stocks just don’t perform like Brazil, China or anywhere else. I am tired of watching companies like Lukoil struggle compared to powerhouses like Petroleum Brazil, Petro China and Valero. What are they doing over there?
Russia’s equity markets are illiquid and their U.S. exchange listed stocks trail every other BRIC country. I have stopped believing in Russia’s ability to produce equity winners. Brazil looks to be where the best action is for some time to come as they have great growth, energy policy and controlled inflation. Economists are going to have to change the acronym to BIC.
June 30th, 2008
Posted by
Gab |
Equity Markets |
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I just got one and absolutely love it. It averages 47 miles to the gallon and really makes a statement about what’s important to me as a consumer and as a concerned citizen. I can’t wait for cars like the Chevy Volt to get off of the the drawing board and on to the city streets.
May 14th, 2008
Posted by
Gab |
Uncategorized |
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Okay, I am getting hooked on the concept of LinkedIn.com. At first I thought it was just one more social network but it has truly grown on me. There is no other way to find all of your old coworker friends. It encompasses all age groups and therefore has more mass appeal compared to MySpace of Facebook. Check it out if you haven’t yet.
May 14th, 2008
Posted by
Gab |
Uncategorized |
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I think Google bought multiple lawsuits when they purchased youtube, but does their argument of the DMCA really stand up?
Just last week I began to read the story of Viacom’s lawsuit of Google’s newest and largest acquisition, YouTube. Viacom has a 1 Billion dollar claim against YouTube for its copyright infringement of their video content illegally being distributed and viewed on YouTube.
Youtube argument is that it does not place ads on the actual pages where you view the videos unless they have an actual publication deal with the author. What YouTube does do is place ads around the search results when you run a search for video. The question remains what happens if a court hears this case. Will the court see this as a loophole of the fair use act, which was created for a different sort of network when AOL lobbied for it, or will they let YouTube off the hook and protect them for fear that they will open up a can of worms in internet law.
Regardless of what the actual law is, the reason that this threat was even brought by Viacom was because of the break down in negotiations between YouTube’s parent company Google and Viacom over the distribution of video on YouTube and on Google’s own video network, Google Video Search. It is my opinion that Google, the company whose motto is “do no evil”, has become a bully in
Silicon Valley, and in its acquisition of YouTube, Google decided that it could treat fortune 500 companies the same way that it has treated tech companies.
This time it seems as though Google has encountered a negotiating strategy of escalation.
It is doubtful that Google and YouTube will not come to a settlement before this reaches a courtroom and it would seem as though the threat of this enormous lawsuit was positioning in a negotiation that began months ago to protect the legal intellectual property rights of Viacom’s content on Google’s networks. What makes this particular case so interesting is it extremely wide spread effect on every single person in the world because this case is about the free wealth of information on the web.
YouTube’s bandwidth costs before the acquisition by Google exceeded 1 MM per month. Although websites are created every day on shoestring budgets the costs of bandwidth, disk storage space and programming costs lots of money. Lawsuits can impede the growth of technology by limiting the outlets of these companies to earn enough to support their operations. The greatest progress in voice technology is because of web companies like TellMe networks. Great strides in artificial intelligence on the web started with the Army’s website but trickled down to an avatar that answers questions on Ikea’s website. Voice technologies are becoming cheaper everyday because of the Voip technology that Skype pioneered. Clearly, we have a conflicting need to allow companies like YouTube to grow without destroying a multi-billion dollar industry and intellectual property rights.
I wonder what these 2 companies can negotiate and how it will effect the internet. What’s scary is how quickly the outcome of that negotiation can change the not only the face of the internet but the face of the internet. One of YouTube’s most popular video’s Afroninja has been viewed millions of time and the success of videos like the “Secret” (made famous by Oprah Winfrey) are having people rethink video distribution. YouTube’s technology and ideas can clearly change an industry just as Napster changed the music industry. Now we just have to wait and see if these 2 companies can negotiate something that will help the evolution of
Hollywood as well as allow tomorrow’s web 3.0 companies to expand the wealth of knowledge through slicker applications.
March 17th, 2007
Posted by
Gab |
Law, Technology |
no comments
Going through my Techcrunch RSS feed I noticed a blurb about video blogging. Not that I am interested in doing it, but it made sense since audio blogs are already available that someone take the next step and do video blogs. I guess www.vlip.com felt like their was a space available on the net for their web 2.0 technology. My biggest problem is that with plugins for video from youtube which you can easilly put on your blog why do I need vlip. I won’t count them out, but they seem too niche to gain mass appeal even in the niche of the blogosphere.
March 17th, 2007
Posted by
Gab |
Technology |
no comments
Validate
- You acknowledge that the other party has a right to feel the way they do
Empathize
- Empathy is an attitude toward others
- You don’t have to be in the other person’s shoes in order to understand what their feelings are
Clarify and Summarize
- In order to clarify what the other party’s goals are you have to ask questions and illicit more information so that you are in a position of really understanding what the other party is trying to communicate to you
- You can then summarize back to the person what you believe they have communicated to you and then you can ask for confirmation
- If you do not get confirmation that what you have summarized back is actually the goals of the other party then you must go back and illicit more information until you do get confirmation of the party’s goals
March 14th, 2007
Posted by
Gab |
Law, Negotiation |
no comments
