This week’s Private Eye cover. Says it all, really. And yet, if it weren’t for Iraq, he would probably be remembered as a great reforming Prime Minister. As the man said, all political careers end in failure.
Stand by for the crash
The prime motive for a bubble in any field of human activity is the delusion that investing is a one-way bet. Britain (and, to an even greater extent, Ireland) is in the grip of a crazed property bubble. I don ‘t often agree with Will Hutton, but this time he’s spot on.
The risk of history repeating itself is known, but too few people believe it. Not the clubs of four or five young people ‘co-buying’ in order to have a chance of getting into the housing market. Not the wave of buyers of flats that are bought speculatively either to be let or which just stand vacant (and which now constitute one of the prime drivers of demand). Seventy percent of the 20,000 flats built in London last year were bought by buy-to-let speculators.
Neither they, nor those who lend the money, appear to be concerned that prices will fall. Cheltenham and Gloucester has just decided that it will finance small buy-to-let borrowers to buy up to nine properties rather than the three at present. The Bank of Ireland, according to the Financial Times, has just raised the maximum it will lend to any one entrepreneur by eight times – from £2.5m to £20m. It is risk-free lending. It may be that the yield from rents is lower than the costs of borrowed money, spelling disaster, but as property prices only rise, nobody worries. It is stories like these that prove we are in a bubble…
What’s funny about bubbles is that everyone knows, really, that they’re in one; but most assume that they personally will be ok.
Blu-ray’s secret key: now showing at websites everywhere
This morning’s Observer column…
What’s in a number? Quite a lot, it turns out, if it’s a 16-digit hexadecimal (base 16) number that begins ’09 F9′. (That’s ‘9’ followed by ‘249’ in normal – base 10 – numbering.)
Why the fuss? Well, it appears that the 16-digit number in question is the cryptographic key for unlocking the copy protection on the new generation of DVD discs. It was discovered a while back and posted in obscure parts of the web, where it languished…
The future’s orange
At the OU’s Curriculum, Teaching and Student Support conference earlier this week it dawned on Tony Hirst that some of our esteemed colleagues might not be, er, fully up to speed on the significance of RSS. So he composed a thoughtful manifesto/rant on the theme that the university ignores RSS at its peril. He’s right.
So was someone pumping Yahoo shares?
The WSJ is now saying that those ‘talks’ between Microsoft and Yahoo are off. One wonders now if they were ever seriously on. Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times is wondering if there’s been any insider skullduggery. After all, Yahoo’s shares jumped after the NY Post published its ‘scoop’.
The New York Post owes everyone a good follow-up story.
You can’t just drop a bombshell that jerks around 80,000 Microsoft and Yahoo! employees, rocks Wall Street and then fizzles before the day is over.
The Post should investigate — and report — whether its anonymous investment banker sources made any money off the huge run in YHOO caused by its story.
If the Post doesn’t do this, the SEC might. We don’t need any more reporter subpoenas.
At the very least, the Post needs to go back to its sources and clarify if and when Microsoft and Yahoo! ended their latest round of merger discussions.
Did the talks end sometime Friday, after the Post story boosted YHOO?
Stay tuned.
Premiership to sue Google. Hopes to win on penalties
Ah, the poor dears. It seems that YouTube is infringing their intellectual property.
The English Premier League is to sue video-sharing site YouTube for alleged copyright infringement.
The football organisation said YouTube had “knowingly misappropriated” its intellectual property by encouraging footage to be viewed on its site…
Tut, tut.
Yahoosoft or Microhoo?
From GMSV…
Yahoo stock is up more than 15 percent today after a New York Post report that Microsoft has formally renewed its effort to take over the Sunnyvale Internet giant at a price tag of $50 billion or more.
Many see the proposed takeover as a reaction by the Redmond, Wash. software sovereign to ever-increasing concerns about keeping up with the Googles, particularly after losing a recent bidding battle for online advertising specialist DoubleClick. With Google developing Internet-based software squarely challenging the dominance of Microsoft’s Office Suite, some think Microsoft has little choice but to move quickly and authoritatively.
Responding to such speculation last May, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel told the Mercury News: “My impartial advice to Microsoft is that you have no chance,” adding that it would not be smart to sell “your right arm while keeping your left.” Yahoo is thus far keeping quiet about today’s report.
Assuming some kind of agreement is reached, it’s all but certain to face heavy antitrust scrutiny. As blogger Vindu Goel points out, the critical question for regulators will be whether the government should allow a company with a monopoly in one field of technology to boost its position to fight another company with a growing monopoly in another field.
Thanks to Rex Hughes for the link to the original NY Post scoop.
Remix culture
Not mine, alas, but found on the Web while looking for something else. Ah, the marvels of PhotoShop.
The Proper Care And Feeding Of Fools, Internet Edition
Doug Stewart is not amused by the Digger’s revolt over the AACS DVD key.
To put it frankly, the actions of the digg community are idiotic. They are not “brave”. R3 was not “censoring” their “speech” and the infantile kicking of the ox goad that resulted was ludicrous in the extreme. “Brave” users seeking to stick it to the MPAA “Man” would have posted the offending string on their own blogs and thus exposed themselves to potential litigation, rather than dragging an unwilling digg into the fight. If they seek the destruction of the community they take part in, I can think of no quicker route than to get the creators sued into oblivion.
So well-played, diggers. You managed to make Slashdotters seem principled and Farkers seem reasonable by comparison. Dunces.
Yahoo Photos shutting down
From CNET News.com…
Yahoo will begin to close down Yahoo Photos, in favor of Flickr, the competing photo sharing site the company bought just over a year ago.
Yahoo Photos users will be given the opportunity to move their pictures over to Flickr. But Garlinghouse admits that Flickr isn’t the right sharing site for many users of Yahoo Photos, so users will be given the option to instead move pictures to Shutterfly or the Kodak Gallery.
This is an interesting move for Yahoo, a company geared towards serving the mass audience of online users. Flickr is a great service, but it’s the black sheep of popular photo sites — it’s got a different organizational system from most sites, it’s more open, and it attracts a more tech-adept user base.
Thanks to Tony Hirst for the link.