After announcing that SOPA would be delayed until 2012, it’s hearing date and potential vote has been quietly rescheduled to 12/21/2011. While SOPA claims to help stop piracy, it also gives DHS even greater ability to act without due process. Even if that wasn’t a violation of the 4th amendment, DHS has a horrible record of abusing the power it already has. It’s time to once again call our representatives to remind them they are sworn by oath to protect the constitution.
More nanny state skullduggery on our Internet: check out who’s at the top of the SOPA’s author’s donor list.Then have a look at who’s been downloading!
Meet the most distracted generation as mobile data use explodes. Age demographic shows data usage peaks at 25-34 and declines with age.
Doing the only right thing to restore customer confidence: Sprint is the first wireless provider to ditch Carrier IQ.
An old tactic as a new trend? Buying new business in a very slow economy. Verizon offers $300 to competitors subscribers in the southern US to jump ship. Groupon burns some of it’s IPO cash trying to stay ahead of copycat offerings from Amazon and Ebay.
A few lucky souls in San Francisco will be getting uncapped 1GB broadband for about what most US cable subscribers pay for 30MB or less.
As the holiday shopping season focuses attention on retail, persistent rumors have it that Amazon is planning to invade the brick and mortar space.
Is it going to happen? I think it’s very likely. As local pols move aggressively to tax Amazon’s online sales, the real driver is lobbying from big box retail as much as from the need for revenue. If Bezos and company are to be force to collect sales tax, why not compete with the big box players on their own turf? Then there’s #1 book competitor, Barnes and Noble that has surprised nay sayers by leveraging it’s storefronts to better compete with Amazon in the virtual space. The over consolidation of physical retail has left a shortage of shelf space for competing products. Apple and more recently, Microsoft began operating their own stores to combat this. With Amazon’s growth to major player status in computers and electronics, many more sales of higher priced items will be made if consumers can touch and feel before making a decision.
What would an Amazon store look like? What would it stock?No way of knowing for now. One thing for certain is that physical stores could bring more competition back to the brick and mortar universe. IF that happens, everyone except maybe WalMart wins.
Karl Denninger makes the case that Amazon and Apple are toast in the long run. You can read the whole thing here. Some notable observations from the post follow –
Now on to Apple. There was a report out Monday that the firm had cut supplier deliveries by 25% out of Asia. There was a mad analyst scramble during the day to try to refute the damage that was rapidly accumulating in the stock, which was mostly successful. In my view, this was a fool’s errand and you were a nut if you followed people into the stock on that “dip.”
Apple gets a lot of its sales in Europe. But Europe is a train wreck economically. To believe in the forward story and that the production cut is not “real” you have to believe Europe will avoid a Depression. Given what’s going on over there, such a belief is an act of pure insanity.
Oh sure, they might not get the worst of it right now, but this is a forward projection, not a call for a crash in the morning. You also have to believe that the United States will not suffer the knock-on effects and that sales here won’t get hurt. And finally, you have to dismiss the fact that HP (HPQ) effectively destroyed pricing power for tablets with their “blowout” of the Touchpad.
The latter may well be a stake through the heart. HP’s “blowout” put the $99 price point in the mind of consumers and that is not going to go away. This sort of “ratchet” mechanism has a well-documented history in America, and once it takes hold it is almost impossible to get rid of. There are already signs that this pricing pressure is eroding the edges of everyone else’s tablets, with the first to succumb being RIM (RIMM)’s “Playbook.” This will reach Apple and margin collapse is a well-documented phenomenon that has a habit of trashing stock valuations.
First of all you might not have been a `nut` to have bought on the dip. Even if Xmas is flat, tablets are going to be the hot thing in tech this year. I suspect that Apple will sell all it has its hands on. So long as you intend to sell out near the end of Apple’s quarterly results one might make a small profit. Not a small feat in a down market.
But long term I think Denninger has it right. Jobs, the pirate that he is, had the pulse of what was hot as human factors and customer feel. Its been a signature mark of Apple and its CEO. But Jobs is bowing out now. His style of management only comes around about every 20 years or so. Not only that his imprint on Apple is probably its own curse. It been more than one company that lacking its signature captain has been cast adrift and floundered on the shoals of NoVision.
That ultimately will be Apples’ fate.
Amazon will also blow up; it shares Netflix’s former screwball P/E (currently 101).
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Amazon’s recently announced ebook subscription service could threaten public libraries. In an extremely supportive gesture, the company providing free Kindle selections to public libraries. Will it make a difference? I’m always the skeptic, but I hope it does.
Google denies evidence of rigging search in Senate hearings. The extreme variations in the referrals this blog has received from Searchzilla leads me state the obvious: denial of rigging is ludicrous.
Another CEO shakeup at HP? Could be. If Yahoo has it right, the new candidate is possibly the worst possible choice to date. It’s high time HP shareholders dump the incompetent board while their stock still has some value.
The troll me, sue you stupidity continues: Samsung sues to keep Apple out of Korea. Apple needs to bury the hatchet before the collective universe joins forces to kill it. Congress needs to bury the patent system it’s deliberately perverted into a trolling tool and start over.
Is Microsoft trying to “boot” Linux off new PC’s?
Google launches music discovery service.Will it help the Searchzilla’s languishing media locker service find users? As long as mobile data remains pricey, probably not.
OMB clears the FCC’s net regulation power grab. If you value your freedom, it’s probably time to start making a daily call to your representatives.
Glen Beck’s streaming service goes live today with 230K paying subscribers. Love him or hate him, this proves that you don’t need big media or a cable channel to earn large if you have an audience.
Are you ready for a Netflix style service for books? Where will that leave the public library?
Hacker exploits Windows update. Time to do away with Patch Tuesday Mr. Ballmer.
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