Greece Ready To Start Selling Its Islands. Makes the very good point that no international investors will touch these with a bargepole, because you simply can't trust the Greek government to honour the sale. The author mentions the possibility of forcible renationalisation without compensation, but to my mind more likely is a sudden, large, escalation in land and dwelling taxes — and perhaps specific to the islands in question.
Monday 10 September 2012
Sunday 9 September 2012
Content lock-in
What does Bruce Willis have in common with the new generation of Kindle book readers from Amazon? They both illustrate the dangers of content-based lock-in.
Willis is publicly complaining, and considering suing Apple, because he can't leave his (apparently huge) collection of iTunes music to his daughters in his will. His "ownership" of the tunes (really just a license to play them) will die with him, and when that happens his account will simply be deleted, and his investment of presumably substantial amounts of money will disappear.
The new Kindles show an even more insidious approach (Jeff Bezos is a sharp businessman). The earliest Kindle didn't have adverts at all. The next generation contained a couple of price points, and at the lowest price point the Kindle was subsidised by displaying adverts alongside text, or while books were opening. But you could avoid the advert experience, even after buying your Kindle, by simply paying the difference between the subsidised price and the next price up.
And all the while, you were buying content. More and more content.
With the latest generation of Kindles, apparently, all models at all price points now display adverts. And there's no way to turn them off. But you aren't going to just dump your Kindle are you, because of all those books you've bought that are only readable on the proprietary Kindle readers... Oops!
Willis is publicly complaining, and considering suing Apple, because he can't leave his (apparently huge) collection of iTunes music to his daughters in his will. His "ownership" of the tunes (really just a license to play them) will die with him, and when that happens his account will simply be deleted, and his investment of presumably substantial amounts of money will disappear.
The new Kindles show an even more insidious approach (Jeff Bezos is a sharp businessman). The earliest Kindle didn't have adverts at all. The next generation contained a couple of price points, and at the lowest price point the Kindle was subsidised by displaying adverts alongside text, or while books were opening. But you could avoid the advert experience, even after buying your Kindle, by simply paying the difference between the subsidised price and the next price up.
And all the while, you were buying content. More and more content.
With the latest generation of Kindles, apparently, all models at all price points now display adverts. And there's no way to turn them off. But you aren't going to just dump your Kindle are you, because of all those books you've bought that are only readable on the proprietary Kindle readers... Oops!
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