JetFable’s Gamer Writer’s Block

I often joked about the guy cleaning toilets at Google is probably richer than anyone I know. Today I read this: Even the Masseuse is a Multimillionaire at Google (what they pay whores with stock options? just kidding, I know Masseuse aren’t whores, at least not all of them, the 2nd question is, Google hires masseuse?), now isn’t that just sick? I had 20 shares of Google I bought at 400s and people think I am rich. Yeah, right. I always say that we don’t always get rewarded for hard work, so don’t work hard, work smart. Now i have no advice for people who want to start or work for the next Google, but you can invest in the next Google. For a while I invested and traded a lot, I still do, but I find that researching sometimes don’t really pay off, now I try not to read the news, the charts (damn if I can read the charts), and even look at it less. I try to look at other people’s blogs, people who know what they are talking about. If there’s a central place where more knowledgable than you people share what they find, you spend less time to look for them, and spending less time to know more is always a good thing in my book. Freakonomics said that there is not one economist that can predict the future of the US economy (unless its Greenspan), by that rule you sould know that one person can’t really predict the market, but 10 economists can usually come up with something better. This guy’s Z-stock’s blog is pretty educational (and really complex), while the economy seems to be going to hell for the last few days, he has pretty high target for the stock market based on EPS growth (QQQQ:60, SPY:1675, DIA:15,000), this guy uses math to explain everything, and for 90% of the time it works. He said he’s read the Foundation series 10 times, which is about using math to predict the future of mankind. The other times I go here, Beanie’s Blog, which has pretty good long term picks, and usually interesting and lively discussion (and also pictures of beautiful women). The other day he said that his astrologer predicted a worldwide market crash, and it is interesting science that if you map market cycle to planet movements, well, you get something out of it, so believe, or not believe it at your own risk.

I just realized I am probably never going to get to talk about my topic, but as you know me I am ill stricken with long windedness, and I am long overdue to write something. I have been busy making some of my Europe Trip preparation. I find that Yahoo Travel is quite useful, for making a trip plan and looking up recommended places. And Google Map reaches everywhere, even the outskirts of some undiscovered country. Other than that, they Eyewitness Travel guidebooks are quite good, even if not totally informative, they are pretty to look at (yeah just like how I like my women). And the funny thing is, I made all my travel preparation at work (I hope my boss is not reading this now, but not that I care). While I was messing around at work, my coworker called me, and I just realized he took a vacation day, and he asked me to send him some code from work. He said he was bored at home and wanted to work on something. Well, what I really want to say is, that people should get a life? If you are on vacation, even if you are at home, fuck your wife, play with your kids, fuck your wife again, play video games with your kids, whatever, you know, dont fucking work? And he wasted 5 sec of my work time hunting down files and attaching them in stupid Lotus Notes. I just realized how different people really are.

The other day I was stuck at a traffic jam. So I busted out my Ninendo DS (yes I recently got one) so I no longer need to stock my PSP in the car. I played Trauma Center on it while moving less than 5 miles per hour. Yes I know, its incredibly dangerous, so kids, don’t try this ever, unless you are the king of multi-tasker, have an IQ of 130 or above, and half as awesome as I am, or you will really end up in the Trauma Center. The funny thing was as soon as I passed the point where there was an accident, I noticed every car was suddenly racing towards the other end of the empty freeway. I was going about 90 miles per hour then and was literally the slowest moving car. Yes, even the grandma driving an old Buick next to me with a dead orangutan clanking in her trunk was driving faster than me. Hay, I had a sports car so I really had to drive closer to a hunderd just to be faster than everyone else. It’s funny because everyone wanted to make up that loss time and they knew that every cop in the vincinity was probably attending to the accident so you can’t really get caught for at least the next 5 min (hay, afterall the traffic handbook says you follow the flow of traffic, not the maximum speed), in an event that all cars are speeding, only the slowest one get caught. Freaknomics author said that when he visited LA, he noticed one of the things is that everyone uses thier Blackberry to send messages in the car, and the other thing is that people keep telling each other how beautiful they are (but we won’t get to that). The thing is that the traffic situation breeds really pissed off drivers in LA, and I become a pissed-off homocidal curmudgeon every day when I go to work. Trauma Center really works on the DS (yes I know, I am about 3 years late to the game), but yes it works much better than the one on wii because using the stylus to perform surgery is much more like surgery than using the wii-mote (oh and its very challenging when you are driving). That comes to my topic, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And since I recently finally get to play the DS castlevania games, I can attest to that, the same old formula works, and it work wonders. I grew up loving Castlevania and I still love it. Dracula X is also recently released on the PSP, and yes, it comes out of Symphony of the Night. I lost count of how many versions of this great classic there are out there.

I can’t really say the same for Silent Hill Origins. Weapons break. Come on, a wrench, after 3 whacks on a zombie, it breaks, when have you ever seen a wrench break ever in your lifetime? I don’t know whether the game is good, or bad, since I hardly played it, but I know they broke the “If it ain’t broke” rule, and that’s not good. But the game does look amazingly good on a handheld, and I wonder, if we will ever need another next generation handheld ever. While the DS continuously amazes in the fun factor, the PSP amazes in its graphical abilities. The controversial Manhunt 2 looks almost identical to the PS2 version on the PSP, and better yet, you can hack it so that the execution scene are not faded out, which is I think necessary to fully enjoy what the creators intended. Yes, parents out there, a plastic bag kills, your kids should learn that. We die from lack of oxygen, it is very simple. That’s how Manhunt is educational in teaching kids. Yes well, in order to hack Manhunt, you most likely have to pirate the game. I had recent long discussions about pirating, whether it is good or evil. I don’t advise people to really pirate (because its almost equivalent to stealing, and it hurts the developers), but I don’t think pirating is immoral. Sometimes paying extra to get an inferior product is stupidity, and being stupid in life is not a very good thing. Why pirating gets you a better product sometimes? At least in the PSP case, it elimintes the load times from the UMD and let your get a crack at the original content which isn’t available from the original disk, also it most likely saves you money and time to drive out to the store to get it. Yes, we all know that pirating hurts the developers, but has any creator of something really popular ever gone out of biz because pirates were around? I really doubt it. Pirating is a necessary evil, how I arrive at that is, through numbers, not statistically real numbers, but my assumptions. Lets say if 25% of Gamers have a firm stance of always paying for what they play (the true moral people), 25% of Gamers have no technological knowledge to have any access to pirated content (the idiots), 25% will never pay for the content unless they have pirated copies (the cheapskates), 25% can be swayed either side and they most likely wont pay for it if they can pirate the game (those who don’t give a damn). OK, so even in the existence of hackers, developers still gain 50% profit, but they would have gained 75% if pirates did not exist, but in the lights of pirates, 100% gamers get to play the game, and if the game is really any good, the word gets spread. What I always say is that true art only gets destroyed when it doesn’t get distributed. There really is no good or evil in life, there are only consequences and cascades of chain reaction. Consequences are that even people who make money from pirating (yes, those of you shamelss people in Asia) have mothers and starving children too. If your money don’t go to the developers, it goes to someone else’s. People buy the DS and if they want to pirate it they need a micro SD card and I am pretty sure Nintendo and Scandisk benefits from the sale, and Sony benefits from the 2 gig and 4 gig pro-duo memory sticks they keep releasing. Yes, sometimes the developers get screwed, and that’s not fair, but at the end of the day, has anyone really gone out of business because of pirates? And even if they had, is it because people pirated their kick-ass game and nobody bought it because it sucked? A good way to really counter piracy is selling content directly online, like the Xbox live model and the Sam & Max episodic content. I think people actually care less about not paying money to gype the developers than really getting things conveniently, and this way, the developers get to bypass the publisher fee and the evil GameStops that put the games on the shelves. Can you believe that, one time a GameStop employee kept badgering me to buy a used game for 5 bucks less. I kept telling him no, but he kept asking me if I was sure. I would have gladly stuffed him 5 bucks to shut him up. Buying used games is the equivalent of piracy, for the developers don’t get any profit for it, and you should never do it, unless it is under 10 bucks. Anyway, as opposed to what they teach you in school, this world isn’t black and white. And for the while, happy whipping.

Its long overdue for a new entry. I wrote most of this in my head when I was driving this morning, zigzagging through traffic, it’s insane how slow people drives, and it never ceases to amaze me, in any case, I am so busy that hopefully I can type this all up in 5 min. I discussed with my friend at length about what made anyone a tech moron, so he are my criterias. Before anyone read it, I am assuming you actually listen to an MP3 player instead of CD, you search Wikipiedia instead of Encylopedia Britanica, you never read the map and yellow pages because those information is already on the Internet. If you still do any of the above and are not above 50 years old, please fast forward to the line where it says you are a moron. Here we are, the things that you know/do to make you not a tech dummy, in order or importance.

1) You have some sort of Online storage for important data. A good place would be Yahoo Briefcase (or Flickr for photos). This reminds me of a conversation many years ago about when my house is burning down (now that Southern California is burning), what would I want to save (other than my own awesome arse) first, is it photos (memories) or is it important documents like passports. The importance of online storage is you never have to save anything. If you are a writer because don’t only have 1 copy of your manuscript in 1 computer, and viola, you know what happens. Yes, your life is stored online, it should be. One day we should be able to die in a car crash and download ourselves into a new body.

2) You use firefox instead of IE. I know, it doesnt come with your computer. But really it takes 2 secs to download and install it, and even grabs all your bookmarks from IE. Forget how much better firefox is than IE security wise, firefox has all sorts of interesting plug-ins that checks yahoo and gmail, FTP, google bookmarks that stores your links online, forget the days (what was it, 8 years ago?) when I was icq-ing myself links from my work to home computer. Better yet, if your computer crash, firefox remembers everything.

3) You use RSS feeds to view your articles from your favorite sites. RSS is very useful, and you can use that on your my.yahoo page (or yahoo mail) or google documents. Forget about checking a site every 5 minutes and hoping that someone won’t update it (I know, you got to do that here), it tells you when and where there is something new to read.

4) You have a media PC, and that means you have a computer connected directly to your TV, if not that you should have some streaming device to act as a in between (like Apple TV or xbox 360), but there is no reason for that, for it is very easy to stick your computer next to your TV and access it remotely from a laptop. Forget about paying for tivo, if you had cable, use your PC to record your shows, in fact forget about cable, forget about your DVD player, forget about going to blockbuster, download compressed video, which almost look just as good. My computer has been connected to my TV for almost 5 years? If you haven’t done so, you are 5 years late to the world of technology.

OK, if you haven’t done at least 3 things out of 4 things in the list, you are in fact a tech moron. But it is very easy to change that, you can learn how not to be one. One thing about asking whether you are a moron, is that by asking that question, you are showing some sort of remote intelligence that is lacking in the majority of human population. Enough said, on to the next thing.

Lets look at emerging technlogy in the Internet Space:

	Winner	Laggards
Search:	Google	Yahoo, Everything else
News:	Newser Beta	Yahoo News, and everything else
Finance:	Google Finance	Yahoo Finance
Mail:	Yahoo Beta	MSN Hotmail, Microsoft Outlook
IM:	MSN + live messenger plus	Yahoo Messenger, AOL / ICQ
Social:	Facebook	MySpace, Friendster, and everything else
Photo:	Flickr	Sony Imagestation, and All other photo sites
Shop:	Amazon Marketplace	Buy.com, yahoo auction, and all other sites
Map:	Google Map	MapQuest, Yahoo Map
Office:	Google Document	Microsoft Office

I am not going to talk about any of them, you just have to experience them on your own. I am still most impressed with Newser, proven to entrepreneurs that even when someone else is 10 years ahead of you, doing something differently, in a better way, wins…, and that is possible. Facebook is now valued at half of yahoo but has 30 times less revenue (is this a sign of bubble?), but I have many good things to say about Facebook, which I am not going to say it here, but the stickiness factor is there (read Tipping point), it makes us go back, not just that, it makes us want to develop applications on it. No doubt when Web 3.0 comes upon us, new leaders will once again emerge.

From someone else’s recommendation, I revisted this AOL music page, and I realized I was part of a team that helped develop early versions of this when I was a consultant there, but I never really used it (I always wonder why AOL still exists, among other things). It is actually a good way to listen to the top songs. And I became wasted on this song after listening to it 1000 times — Carrie Underwood’s Wasted. I love the song. Hay she is not bad looking too. Kelly Clarkson’s songs are terrible lately (and have you seen her recent pictures? Implosion: Trust me, you do not want to see her up close)

	Winner	Laggard
Somewhat cute chick American Idol turn Pop Star:	Carrie Underwood	Kelly Clarkson

While talking about technology, I will touch upon investment, I saw Google yesterday at exactly 666.66 when I came into the office, thought that was somewhat sarcastic. While their motto is to do no evil, Google is the only corporation in the position of power to take over everything that is humanity, whoever controls the flow of information, controls everything. No doubt in 20 or 30 years, Google will become so pwerful that it can track anyone and predict anyone’s move based on their browsing habbit, it can change human history on the fly, it will become, well the mother brain, and one day someone will deploy a EMP bomb to take it down, and take us into the dark ages, and a band of adventurers will challenge the mother brain… RPG style, I have gone off topic. On to investment, market is see-sawing, I now think the tech leaders (GOOG, RIMM. AMZN, AAPL) are over extended, no doubt they are still good for long-term hold (probably beat putting it in the bank, or under your grandma’s bed), new leaders are ascending, as per my last post a few weeks ago, my recommendations are still making new highs, FSLR and VMW (I keep saying VMW will get you a BMW, earnings out today!) are the new leaders, and contenders are SPWR (no dent today in the horrible market) and STP, speculative guesses: STV and IGE. My long time bottom recommendation NYX has finally reversed its course (from pathetic to rising steadily). One trading advice I have is, don’t gamble and always have cash reserves. If you don’t want to take a chance when earnings come out, sell half of your positions (Cramer teaches trading around your core position). I did that with Google (which turns out to be a bad move), that way either way the stock moves it goes in your benefit. If it goes down you can accumulate, if it goes up drastically, you can forget about it and move on to other things. Its good when you flip a coin and either side there’s something to your benefit. Buying an reverse index fund for short term seems to work quite well as hedging your positions (QID is the reverse of QQQQ and hedge against GOOG), so do that instead of ever shorting anything. If you did that right before goog earning, it becomes a win-win situation, the next day Nasdaq falls drastically but google is still up, your reverse index fund would make about 5%. Anyway, enough with the boring stuff.

This is one of those random thoughts article which I usually dislike, because it lacks artistic unity, but hay, I can’t always stick to art, it is information that gives us power, and well, I got to unload my brain once in a while. Interesting new contenders in the web 2.0 space this week: Newser, which tumbnails news, and surprisingly, I really like it a lot. I am one of those multi-tasking gurus which are doing a million things at the same time, Newser enables me to read and sort out the news I want, in an organized way, while doing other things. Well as this is happening, Google is moving towards having user comments in their news, an idea already used in Slashdot, which I read religiously. The second contender to stealing away Google’s leftover lunch is Spock.com, a search engine that claims to be the google of people, yep you use it to search people (who needs privacy?). So far its very good, and most likely you’ve been indexed if you put in your full name in sites like Friendster and Linkedln. Spock is still in Beta and reminds me of Friendster, which didn’t always work (and failed because of it). It is worth trying out. If you sign in you can manage the entry under your own name, not unlike Wikipedia. As for whether these two companies will be sucessful when we move towards the Metaverse, who knows? But my bet is they are here to stay.

The stock market is going nuts this week, the subprime mess that Bush left us in is finally taking effect, worldwide. But I don’t think we will crash. We are ending this year higher is my guess. If we correct more, that’s more buying opportunity for your 401K account, tech and solar energies still leading the next bull market. A lot of people ask whether housing will crash? I am still waiting. But the fact is that, if you need one, you need one. And it will always be okay if you are in it for the long haul.

Interesting discussion in Freaknomics “Cut God Some Slack” blog about who buys the Religions are bad for you books. Those books generate a lot of controversy, and by looking at the 100 comments a day, you know that both sides of the fence buy these books, making them best sellers. And no, I have never read one, and most likely will never, because I already know what it says. The comments are entertaining to read, and I contributed my own as well. And this one is especially classic: A person asked me on a plane if I believed in God. I said no and he asked me why. I said it was like believing in my wife. He said how is that. I said, I don’t have one. He said,I see, you would almost have to have one first before you could believe in her wouldn’t you. I said right. Plus, even if I did have a wife, over time I might not want anyone to see me with her, if you know what I mean. He said I guess that goes for gods too. We just laughed and shook hands. So much for God in America!

Some other interesting discussions this week I have with my friends are: Well, do you need good language skill to make you a good actor? I still remember Kevin Costner in Robinhood (The prince of Theives?) who couldn’t even mimic an English accent, while everyone around him did. Well that’s not acting skills but language skills, but to me thats just not believable, though I am sure a lot of people don’t care. But if you can’t role-play the character you are in, how can you even be a decent actor? The best actors do have good language skills.

The second topic is, is saying “Women can’t drive” a sexest comment? And is it even true? I am not even going to comment on that, but well, statisically speaking, when you run into really slow drivers, or drivers who aren’t paying attention to the road, if you guess “women”, 75% of times you’ll be correct. Statiscs do speak for themselves. What makes men better drivers? Its very simple, video games. Video games give us better hand-eye coordination, and multi-tasking ability, and that’s very important in driving. Not to mention, most people who race, and know the car inside out, are men, and men drive women out on dates, so practice makes perfect. Men are constantly competing in all sorts of genetic traits for the women to select them as mate, well, while women just have to compete in beauty. This reminds me of this one time, that a woman almost hit my car, and she was on the cell phone, and didn’t even notice she almost hit me, while I dodged safely out of her way. This comes to my next question, are women drivers more dangerous on the cell-phone because they are worse muti-taskers? If you think about it, this is only probably true to a certain extent, because men simply talk less, or as my friend suggested, they have the ability to not pay attention to the woman they are talking to and pretend that they are, so which makes them better concetrated on the road. I remember, this once, during a conversation, my bluetooth got disconnected, so I searched for my handsfree, while changing lanes on the freeway, hook it back up on the phone, and voila, she’s still talking, and didn’t notice I was away for at least 30 sec, I repeated her last sentence into a question, and she thought I was paying attention. Hands down, men ARE better drivers, just because we are jerks.

New US drama I watched this week is Jericho (recommended by a friend), and hands down, its awesome. It’s what happend after Jack Bauer failed in preventing a terrorist attack, after the 10th time. Enough said.

Here’s an insightful article about how Chinese copy the Iphone, and I know, they claimed that the cardboard inside bun story is fake. Fake news, fake buns, same difference to me. They both smell fishy (Coverup!)

This Survey says 40 percent of PS3 owners knew that their console included Bluray, and thats equivalent to saying 100% of idiots in american didn’t know their heads contained a brain. It’s just sad. Another survey also said that people who download video over the internet (legitimately) are dissastisfied with the quality of interent video and they prefer going to blockbusters. They are also idiots (if you don’t know why, so are you). 

Someone said my blog is awesome, I cannot agree more. At least it isn’t depressing. I am generally a happy person, it is not that I can’t get depressed, but I think I am very used to compartmentalizing myself so nothing really devastates me (trust me, don’t attempt if you lack high IQ) , the only depression I get is a writer’s depression, that I am too lazy to find new ideas and too damn lazy to write, and too damn lazy to finalize my manuscript and too damn lazy to publish my work. For those who are depressed about life, I don’t understand why, life is full of interesting new things to investigate and look forward to. T Jefferson Parker, in his book The Fallen, wrote that in order for a man to be happy, there are 3 things: He must have someone he love, he must do the things he love, and he must have something to look forward to (hopefully these 3 things are not refering to the same -> person -> insert sexual joke here). Its very easy to achieve this, I think. You might think that the first one is out of your control, but it’s not, it doesn’t even require that person to love you back. And well, get a hobby, and look forward to something. If not, you can keep refreshing this page and hope that I won’t update my blog (yes I stole this from Tommy), and you may get your wish. Be happy.

 

 

Chinese people are known to many things, not just software. I have heard them making soy sauce from human hair, diluting milk to increase their profit margin, gold farming on MMO which I’ve often talked about… now they put cardboard in their buns (The exact compostion of cardboard and fatty meat is 60/40). After I read that, well it got me to research about how to pirate an egg, which was a rumor I heard from before. Here’s the exact step to create a counterfeit egg. I was pretty amazed. Inhumane, yes of course, but also ingenious. I am not sure if I should be proud to be Chinese or not, but to think that if we used some of that brain power to not gyp others (well usually ourselves — there’s a saying: Your brothers are usually the first to swindle you), we could create more useful inventions in the history of mankind.

I like to tell others I am always right. Well it’s mostly true. But others always like to argue with me, and they always lose because they have no basis for arguments, they simply cannot recall when I was wrong. not that I am never wrong, I usually admit my wrongness right away and only argue when I am right. I pick my battles so only the ones that I can win. In any case, a little more than 1 week has traversed since my last blog entry, but it seems that all my predicions are correct. I compared the iphone to the wii, and viola, today Nintendo’s CEO compared the Iphone to the Wii and say it has Wii-like staying power. I gave some stock predictions on my last blog, and I am just about 99% correct (it is in fact 100% but I don’t want to sound too conceited). NYX did bottom and then rose about 10 points, AKAM got into S&P 500 and rose about 3 pts, GOOG and AAPL made new highs yet again. Best yet, my solar picks all gave mind-boggling returns, FSLR reached 117 from 90s (looking like to be the next Google) when I recommended, STP broke 30s, TSL hit 70s from 50s. Anyway, I sound like a prophet of sorts but not really, if you study technology enough you should know which technology is here to stay and which will lead our future.

While Microsoft Windows maybe going away soon enough, the web is here to stay and its still at its beginning stages. Here’s an article where Tim Berners-Lee (the father of the internet) Discusses the Future of the Web, he talks about semantic web where we carry the data with us and share it across different web applications, and that is what we may call web 3.0 or eventually 4.0. The metaverse will also be an eventual point of the evolution of the web. I predict Google buying a company like Linden Lab (the makers of Second Life), but I think we are still at least 10 years away from that, so the semantic web will be here first. Now let anyone challenge me whether I will be right or wrong.

This is one of those times when I can’t think of a good title for my post, and the result is just a conglomeration of incoherent ramblings, and I hate that. I am a title person, I think titles should mean something, but I guess that should not distract me from writing the real stuff. In any case, does anyone not believe in Roswell? Does anyone not believe in aliens? Well if you don’t, you are an idiot. This article here says that one of the pilots’ document is now released (after his death) that he has witnessed an alien aircraft and their bodies. Believe it at your own peril. Like I said, all conspiracy theories come from somewhere. Have you seen the move Shooter? Not at all a bad movie. Have you played Metal Gear Solid? Do you still believe 911 is not orchestrated?

The iphone is out. I wasn’t too excited about it, it does cost an arm and a leg, and it doesn’t even have sim cards. It does look nice though. Many people compare Apple products to BMW. I think there’s some truth in it. They look great and don’t always work, but people will buy them anyways. After all, looks are everything, right? This person here has taken it apart and you can read what’s inside the iphone. Congratulations, he had just broken the most expensive toy in history (well, other than that robotic doll thingie under your bed). Did you know the mayor of Philidelphia went to line up for the iphone at 11 am, and then a few hours later, affronted by a journalist which asked him why he was wasting his time instead of solving the city’s problem, read the article here. Citizens of Phili, I feel sorry for you, not for the 200+ murders you have anually, but the idiot you have as a mayor. First of all, do mayors not have secretaries who do their chores for them (+ other stuff I bet)? I don’t think Arnold had to line up for an iphone. And then, well, at 9 pm the iphone was available everywhere, with no line. Yes, you are an idiot as well if you bought one on Ebay for two thosand dollars.

Blackberry maker, Research in Motion (RIMM) went crazy over the last few days on earnings and split news (I do not own any, though I wish I had a machine that could turn back time). Many people were bearish on it because they thought Apple would defeat them with the iphone. I think I have said it many times, they are not even in the same market. Corporate environments will continue to use the blackberry, while the younger hip generations who owns ipods and such may look towards the iphone. They may have one or the other, or both. I like to draw the parallel between the Wii and PS3/Xbox 360, those who buy the wii are causal players, not hardcore gamers. And I personally do not think Sony/Microsoft is competing directly with Nintendo. People may own both a 360 and a Wii, but they are not likley going to own both a PS3 and an Xbox 360. That says the same about Palm and the Blackberry, versus the iphone.

I really don’t like to talk about stocks at that much, just like I don’t like to talk about work. I think its boring, but then who knows, some people think I talk about games too much on my blog, but I think games are interesting, games reflect the real society. Stocks, they are just people’s empty speculations of the future. But I do belive in investment, even gambling a little, when you are young, you got to take risk. That, or you’d be like my dad, and you’d have no more risk to take. Here’s an interesting article about how the number #8 influences the chinese stock market. Its true, chinese people can be very superstitious. And you know what, stock prices are moved by people, its somewhat like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Speaking of which, the Freaknomics blog is a very interesting place to visit (other than here, that is), if you haven’t already read the book, you should make that your first priority (do that before passing on your genes).

Some people think I have very good stock picks, but it isn’t always true. I don’t really recommend people to buy anything, I just recommend people to buy in general, if you lost money, it ain’t my fault. I’ve had good picks and bad picks but I just tend to talk about the better picks, but if you really need stock advice, you can continue reading. Otheriwse you can reread this 6 months later to see if I am right. I think alternative energy will lead the next bull market. They have been running up nonstop for months and I have invested in some, like I said before, I wish I had invested more, or I figured out how to quantum travel back in time. If you want to buy alternative energy stocks, I’d go with the biggest solar, those include FSLR, SPWR, TSL, STP, JASO. Some of they are in china, some in the US, walmart has recently gone solar and SPWR owns part of the contract, do your own research. WWAT.OB is a good one to own because they do everything, penny stocks are not good otherwise, except this one (I have a little from 50 cents). Some of these stocks had run over 300% in the last 6 months, well, either you believe solar will take over or you don’t, but you can always wait for a pull-back before entry. I think all the other industries are played out if you want mind-boggling returns. I am still in GOOG and AAPL, and I believe they have more room to run. Google will eventually take over the internet space. You don’t need anything else, don’t buy those small startups and search engines, nothing else except maybe Akamai (AKAM) who speeds up the internet, or Divx, who plays high quality video over the internet. Well of all the stocks I picked from before, Divx performed the worst, but I believe all bad news had been accounted for. Riverbed (rvbd) is a pretty good performer (reseach if you want to know what they do), and of course Amazon.com (amzn), which surprised me with their increase (again, I don’t own any). Eventually, I believe 10 years from now, Amazon and Ebay will be one entity, that takes over every shopping and auction stuff on the net. Korean auction house Gmarket (GMKT) is also a good choice. Amzn has more room to run whether you believe it or not, but I personally will rather put my money in Solar power (as long as oil stays expensive). I am pretty much an all-tech person, in the financial side I own mastercard (MA) which is an excellent stock, ICE which is a future exchange which I think may have potential, and the NYSE exchange platform (NYX) which keeps bottoming and bottoming, this was once Crammer’s stock pick of the year and he basically screwed everyone (Yes, even me, but I do believe this has been manipulated down enough and has bottomed, truly). He also told everyone that solar is played out and he has been wrong for 2 months now. Do you believe in Ted Turner or do you believe in Crammer? Or do you believe in me? Let’s see what happens in 6 months.