The pirates of Somalia, in making world trade a bit more of a high risk venture, have finally placed their own unsavory hobby in jeopardy. Bloomberg reports that NATO is currently reassessing its operations in the insecure waters off the coast of Somalia. "This hijacking could really change the picture and we could see much more proactive rules of engagement,'' said Hans Tino Hansen, managing director of Risk Intelligence, a maritime security consultant based in Vedbaek, Denmark.

Already, there are at least 15 warships in the region, forming a multinational coalition armed with the intent of calming those pirate churned waters. In the last ten days, India, Russia, Britain and Germany have each engaged pirates in battle. The report from Bloomberg indicates that more warships are on the way to the Gulf of Aden. When considering what is hoped to be a decisive end to cargo ship hijackings by maritime pirates in the region, I say we must use every available means to make those waters safe for world commerce. I don't know about you, but I have always considered the taking of a sea-going vessel to be an overt act of war.

The whole world is eagerly watching to see how this saga shall finally play out. One thing is for sure, the clock is ticking down towards the demise of pirate profitability off the shores of Somalia. At this time, we might take pause to remember the indomitable words of Popeye the Sailor Man, who often uttered this statement when forced to take drastic and decisive action against obviously abusive behavior:

"That's all I can stands, and I can't stands no more."

In something that sounded straight out of the movies, the world learned Monday about the hijacking of the MV Sirius Star over the weekend. The oil-rich supertanker was attacked and hijacked by Somali pirates in deep water in a brazen move that left even Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, "stunned."

In addition to carrying about $100 million in cargo, the supertanker has a crew of 25 different nationals. It was seized on Saturday, far to the south of the NATO patrolled zone, about 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, according to the U.S. Navy. The pirates took the ship to a Somali port known as a hub of pirate activity. The difference between this attack and other recent ones is that usually pirates attack within 200 miles of shore and go after much smaller vessels.

This is a cause of alarm since, as Navy commanders put it, it "represents a fundamental change in pirates' ability to hijack bigger vessels farther out at sea." It gets even scarier. If pirates have managed to attack this supertanker, there's no reason to believe they couldn't hijack LNG tankers. Liquefied natural gas is highly volatile and if a tanker explodes, it would equal fifty Hiroshimas. If an LNG tanker was hijacked, it could end up at the hands of terrorist.

Last week I blogged about the premiere of the long-awaited Transformers movie and how Susan Linn, a psychologist who co-founded the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, said the movie was improperly marketed towards children.

While Ms. Lind's complaint fell on deaf ears, Transformers rocked the box-office this week with $67.6M in the box office in its first weekend and $152.5M worldwide since its opening one-week ago today – beating the original Spider-Man with the biggest first-week revenues for a non-sequel.

The Wall Street Journal believes the Transformers debut, which research firm Merriman Curhan Ford & Co said was nearly twice as strong as the studio's expectations; has a strong chance of hitting $300M in domestic ticket sales.

Could this summer hit become a franchise?

Viacom, Inc. (NYSE: VIA)'s Paramount has been without a new franchise in nearly a decade. With key cast members Shia LaBeouf and others already optioned for another movie, will Transformers be their first? The answer has to be yes: Transformers 2 is slated for 2009, according to IMDB.com. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is already in talks with director Michael Bay, who kept the movie down to a $150M price-tag, half the cost of Pirates and Spider-Man sequels.

Paramount has gone without a franchise for ten years and now has the opportunity to have three by 2008. The other potentials: The Spiderwick Chronicles, directed by Mark Waters, and a new version of Star Trek directed by J.J. Abrams, although that's already an established brand name. Sadly, neither of these directors compares to Michael Bay and his re-creation of the Transformers, but the potential for a franchise is there.

While Transformers fans will wait in agony over the next two years for a sequel, Viacom's Paramount looks to be sitting pretty with dreams of being in franchise heaven. Keep an eye on the big screen to find out if Paramount's dreams come ever true.

I recently blogged about my concerns if Evan Almighty flopped this weekend.

I, as well as many others, would classify the $32.1 million opening weekend of Evan as a flop. Peter Sanders of the WSJ believes that Evan Almighty was the first "major pothole" in Hollywood's sequel-filled summer. He also put Evan in the same category as Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, by saying May's blockbuster "threequels" were all expected to fall short of their previous domestic sales numbers.

Could that be true? Looking at the numbers, Sanders has a good argument. That's only if you thought sequels should outperform the original. Other than Shrek II, most of the recent sequels made less than its predecessors. Even the Harry Potter franchise couldn't make a sequel that outperformed the $317.5 million earned from Sorcerer's Stone.

This is the sign o' the times -- pirates from just about anything that can be marketed electronically are making legitimate business models out of illegitimate goods (physical or virtual). I found this article to be quite humorous, since many of the tactics used by DVD movie pirates in this case mimic the strategy of the world's largest Internet retailer, Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN).

Hey, innovation is not just the refuge of the legit, right? Far from it -- some of the most successful criminal enterprises have been wrought with incredible innovation that would impress any businessperson -- and I've looked at quite a few in my time. Arab News reported on media pirates using SMS messaging and even websites to advertise their pirated catalogs earlier this year.

The piraters of DVDs have become even more advanced, with websites that have secure shopping cart services and online checkouts. In fact, also strinkingly similar to Amazon.com and other retailers is the fact that one of the most trafficked websites in pirated DVDs features movie summaries, profiles of actors, reviews, and a site search engine for speedy one-click shopping -- not to mention a selection of hundreds of titles.

If developing the next profitable business were anything like treasure hunting, then Microsoft is the very picture of the digital buccaneer. The company always profited from the hard work of others (not that being a pirate is easy!). Microsoft watches with keen interest while others blaze trails and forge paths into unknown lands. When these companies discover treasure, Microsoft lays ambush and relieve them of their bounty during their trek across the ocean of marketing. Before you make me jump off the plank for these metaphors, would you be willing to hear me out? You may also gain some investing lessons as I dissect the Microsoft Motto!

I will forever be more fascinated with how a business operates than with how its stock price fluctuates. That's why I'm a lousy technical analyst and need to rely on value investing principles. Let's think back to Microsoft's humble beginnings when they decided to buy a disk operating system and brand it as its own - "MS-DOS". Hmmm... that Windows 3.1 seemed awfully familiar to a Mac OS in development! Netscape suffered the same fate when Microsoft bought Internet Explorer (IE) from Spyglass. IE was re-developed and implanted successfully through its Windows integration.

Has Microsoft veered from tradition? X-Box's recent success shows that the pirating spirit is alive and well. Don't be the first to develop a product and train consumers that they need it! Instead of focusing on the early-adopters, target your version of an existing product to the mass market and distribute, distribute, distribute! This may be a reason not to doubt Microsoft's timing and decision to forge into portable digital audio players with Zune. Microsoft certainly heard the criticisms that the company simply rebranded a Toshiba audio player and made it the Bellevue Buccaneer's own. So what? I'm wondering how that's different from the company's past track record? If history does repeat, where should I be standing?