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iPad Getting a Subscription Infrastructure?
itwbennett writes "Peter Smith is blogging about an article in the San Jose Mercury News leaking news that Apple is 'almost ready to take the wraps off a new system to support subscriptions. The terms, if the leaks are accurate, sound less than ideal for publishers though. Apple will take 40% of advertising revenue, and 30% of subscription fees from participating publishers. In return, Apple will offer consumers the ability to opt-in to sharing their data with the publishers.' Apple isn't commenting on the speculation. 'In somewhat related news, Apple has released iOS 4.2 to developers. This is the version of iOS that will let iPads, iPhones and iPad Touches print to a WiFi-enabled or shared printer on a local network, via the new AirPrint service. It sounds like you'll be able to print articles from your digitally delivered newspaper before too long,' says Smith."
It's nice to see that Apple is charging a reasonable fee in proportion with the cost of the services they're actually rendering instead of taking advantage of their control over the platform and price gouging the hell out of their customers.
About Fucking Time. I was printing wirelessly off my Palm Pilot 15 years ago.
US fared worse because we had regulations that encouraged sub-prime mortgages.
I always shake my head in sadness whenever I see people getting in a fight over 'more' or 'less' regulation. It isn't the quantity of regulation that matters, it's the quality. You can't throw random regulation at a problem and expect things to get better. You can't randomly remove regulation and expect the world to be more beautiful. Finely crafted regulation can keep the economy humming, but poorly written regulations can choke it.
Whenever anyone proposes a change in regulation, don't ask, "is it more or less?" ask "what changes?" People who do that spend less of their time looking like idiots.
Qxe4
Rrrrrrrrgh.
Nothing is more annoying than sites like CNN.com (in before sheeple), in which compelling-looking links to stories direct the viewer to just a video(usually along with a mandatory ad that can do tricky stuff like pause automatically when the window loses focus).
Yeah, I know they started putting the "TV" icon next to the links. It's still infuriating that the text versions are not offered or are so hidden that you might as well just google it and go somewhere else.
Gadgets and the internet are all about instant gratification. Many of us can read much faster than we can sit through a video and an ad.
A significant part of the subprime problem came from the bond rating agencies, like Moody's. They rated bonds based on mortgages that were almost certain to default as AAA, or investment grade. This made is possible for pension funds and others that demand fixed-income financial instruments with virtually a guarantee of stability to invest in this sort of bond.
Other folks then took out insurance on the bonds for little or no money at all because obviously these were "investment grade" bonds. So the insurance paid off handsomely when the loans default and the investors lose everything - since they aren't the ones holding the insurance.
Once it got around that it was possible to package up a passle of these soon-to-default loans and pass them off on unsuspecting folks as being quality bonds virtually everyone wanted to get into the act. It was easy money. At that point "mortgage brokers" could get money from many different sources based on the ease of getting the mortgage-backed bonds sold. They had no liability if the mortgage went bad, because it was sold off to someone else. The brokers got a hefty commission for loan origination and there was no control on this - nor should there really be at that level.
This is what everyone seems to be missing. What new regulations are there on the bond rating agencies? None. What will prevent another round of this taking place next week? Nothing. What is going to happen when the mortgage defaults percolate up to the bonds that pension funds invested in? The funds will go bankrupt, as will states and municipalities that invested in these bonds. Nothing has been done about the bonds themselves.
We have introduced a bunch of nearly irrelevant regulations that affect banks and some large financial institutions but none of this addresses the origin of the problem. If someone is standing on a street corner passing out checks for $1000 people will take them, no matter what. This is basically what happened in 2003-2006 and while the guy has gone to lunch there is nothing to keep him from coming back. And when the money starts flowing again, we will be right back where we were before when this "crisis" started.