Mike Cooper

Six Flags Is No Bargain Even at a Buck

I would like to point out to ubu_ibi and others above who are investing in this stock for sentimental reasons that NO ONE is talking about Six Flags dissolving. Your dreams and memories are safe!

Six Flags is an eminently cash-profitable enterprise with simply too much debt. If it with does enter bankruptcy it will reemerge debt free and under new management. The only thing about Six Flags that will disappear is the stockholders' money!

ubu_ibi I strongly urge you to take your 401K money out of this stock. Even those who are bullish on this stock must agree that it is a risky investment and no place to put retirement funds.

Six Flags Is No Bargain Even at a Buck

I'm sure there must be other blogs out there to review vacation experiences. The author is wasting our time here. Perhaps he would like to post some home movies of his experiences too?

That said, his major critics here are not offering much by way of repost. As an investor I don't care if the current owners are getting a raw deal or if amusing guests day after day is just so hard! (cue violins). Don't know about you but I'm in this for the money. And I don't see any here. The authors figures are right. In a labor intensive industry like amusement parks, $972 million in gross revenue cannot service $2.4 billion in debt. The economy will limit attendence in the short and medium term and there are no rabbits left in this hat.

I haven't heard anyone who has dumped on this author suggest how Six Flags is going to bridge the gap. I would like to.

Bill Gross To 'President' Obama: Double The Deficit

This is just what I told my wife this morning when she said she was worried about our huge credit card card. Huge debt?! Oh my God! Get your check book honey, and get to the mall right now! DOUBLE THAT DEBT!

Wireless War: 4G Battle Lines Have Been Drawn

I 'm with majority above. WiMax is a real standard with real infrastructure, being deployed today. LTE is just a lovely vision. When you see big companies pushing phatoms (phantom-ware?)over real products and services something consumer-unfriendly is likely brewing in the background.

Disclosure: I own a little Alvarion and will own a little more once my tax rebate check comes in.

Palm Girds for a Smartphone Comeback

I live my life through a used Palm T3 that I bought off ebay and pimped to its maximum. I too would love for my first smart phone to be one that that is directly compatible. That said, there are too many questions here that Palm isn't answering.

If they are about to come out with a new phone now, it's going to be a Windows Mobile device. Has anyone else noticed that NO company has ever made a consistent profit off a Windows Mobile device? Such a device would be immediately judged against the Samsung Instinct that just came out; that is against a new device of a new entrant to the market. The iPhone market would barely twitch. Palm, the supposed market veteran, would have to chop its prices below Samsung to stay in the game, and it cannot afford another second tier $99 giveaway eating at its own declining Treo market.

And the new Linux-based platform they are supposed to be creating? Where/What/When is it? Palm is playing that card so close to its chest, that we don't even have a firm date! We're given no details about it which tells me there are no details to give.

Sadly, I believe Palm's window of opportunity has passed. Even a home run at this point would do no good when they have lost the ball park.

Zongshen Power: Potential E-Bike Growth Should Lift Stock

Would have been nice is the author had mentioned what the heck an e-bike was!

Congressional Insanity: Sue OPEC over Oil Prices

You're absolutely right, but I wouldn't get to worked up about it. It's an election year, and one in which the left has the wind to their backs. It is akin to legislating while intoxicated. Personally I just glad Congrees is wasting their time on symbolic fluff like this rather than attempting real legislation.

Netflix's Roku is Doomed to Fail

Do you have cable Steve? What is 90% of cable? Old movies and TV shows. Netflix is offering the same for 1/4th the price of a cable subscription, with one upfront charge of $99.00.

And your belief that customers will pass on Roku when they can simply (theoretically?) stream PC content to their Xbox 360 game console just as soon as they figure out how to hack the Netflix/Microsoft DRM...what the hell was that?? How much money have you got invested in the belief that ANYONE is going to do that??

And your reasoning about "people not wanting more boxes in their living room", stumbles on your strange definition of "people". Maybe the kind of advice your making here actually earns you enough to own a satelitte dish or digital cable (at least you didn't say both!), an Xbox 360, full home theater, TiVo, AppleTV and a stereo system along have a "Media Center PC" doing nothing in an attic (or was it in your home office? I forget...). Unfortunately most "people" don't have the problem of too many $1000.00 + toys cluttering up their living rooms.

Can Icahn Bring Microsoft's Bid for Yahoo Back?

Icahn is an idiot. If Microsoft wanted to take its Yahoo bid hostile, it could have done that without Icahn. Ballmer guessed correctly that trying to "conquer" Yahoo would result in the flight of all the major talent that makes Yahoo more than some nicely situated California real estate and a warehouse of Linux servers. Icahn doesn't get that.

If Ballmer is willing to come to the table at all following Icahn's palace coup it will be with a number that will put Icahn in exactly the same hotseat that Yang is in now!

Apple's $199 iPhone Is a Game-Changer

Is Schwartz forgetting about the economy? $199 sounds like an incredible deal compared to last year. But this year, a recession year, the IPhone is an expensive toy no matter how you look at it. This move will stabilize IPhone sales nothing more.

Why Is Red Hat Abandoning Linux for PCs?

Think about your arguments above. Macs? An established base of users and one of the best computer interfaces ever designed. And they are STILL not even 10% of the consumer market. EEPC and OLPC? Both computers selling for less than $400 I believe. That is perilously close to breakeven (OLPC is non-profit) and they STILL face an uphill battle.

RHAT knows the GUI flavor of the month is Ubuntu. Between Microsoft being dominant, Apple being the best and Ubuntu being fashionable, where is the money here?

YHOO/GOOG Deal Would Be Anti-Competitive - Microsoft

I don't necessarily disagree with Microsoft here. I just want to point out how similar (recycled) this argument sounds compared to the argument Microsoft used in the anti-trust lawsuit filed by Netscape against Microsoft in the early '90s. When Netscape complained that embedding Internet Explorer in Windows was anticompetitive, Microsoft's argument was "Netscape owns 90% of browser market. How can THEY cry monopoly?" Ofcourse the next two years after that play out exactly as everyone, including Microsoft, knew it would with Microsoft gaining 90% share and driving all commercial competitors out of the business.

The moral: NEVER trust a commercial business to define the term "fair competition" for you. Just don't bother listening. Ever.

Yahoo Goes Scorched Earth

I am a little unclear what Microsoft gains with its offer. Yahoo's search engine is only marginally better rated than Microsoft's. Yahoo has better content, but that is one of the easiest things to improve assuming you have the intellectual talent working in the trenches for you.

And there's the rub. Yahoo has got it, but every indication is that Microsoft will lose it if/when it takes over. The IT culture wars, in which Bill Gates plays a 4-eyed Darth Vader, is alive and well there. I can guarantee you, that Yang's maneuvering, however anti-shareholder, is getting rave reviews from the employees.

I forsee Microsoft winning this battle but winding up with a $40+ billion empty shell of a company. How can they not see that?