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camholder

Listed below are comments made by camholder between Tuesday, 28th July 2009 and Monday, 19th October 2009.

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Reading the Kindle 1:01pm on 19 Oct 2009 I'm quite happy to call myself a geek, have the iPhone, the PC and netbook and my copy of Windows 7 is pre-ordered. I'm not convinced by e-books and e-book readers.

Firstly, I don't want to hand control of my content to Amazon, I fell for that one with iTunes and won't be doing that again. I have almost full control of what I do with a physical book with very few restrictions.

Second, e-book readers are too expensive, period. Why on earth would I pay £200 for a reader and then still have to buy the content. I'm not going to digitise my book collection like I did my CD's so there is no base to start from.

Third, I worry that e-books will devalue writing much like MP3's devalued music. A novel is an experience to be enjoyed not consumed. I think if I had a reader I'd just end up with 100 on it, most of which I would not have read or would only partly have read.
We'll pay for banks to be virtuous 11:21am on 06 Oct 2009 Hang on a sec Robert you are assuming we are all happy to swallow a pretty big premise here, namely that the banks get to maintain their sizable profits.

I recognise that banks are commercial institutions with shareholders who need to be compensated for their risk but the banks have made stupid amounts of money earlier this decade and took many risks, although no one really realised just how risky they were. We know that now, we are making the banks less risky, rewards will fall accordingly. If the yield is unacceptable to shareholders they should switch to another type of investment. I'm not accepting the assumption that the customers should pay for this.
Broadband Britain - how far down the league? 2:34pm on 01 Oct 2009 Well 90% of the country could be up with the best right now but you just know someone on a farm in [insert area people have hardly heard of] is going to whine about it until the whole process grinds to a halt.

I'm quite happy to subsidise giving Old MacDonald decent broadband, I'm a Londoner, it's my job to subsidise everything and in return everyone generously puts up with my obnoxiousness. But since it's going to take 5 times as long to hook up the farmhouse could I at least have my connection while we wait?
Apple's 'Big Brother' sequel 4:02pm on 30 Sep 2009 I bought an iPhone last year and this was my first real dealing with Apple. I have to say the more I deal with them the more I find them controlling and manipulative as a company. I love my iPhone but worked out that the contract and phone in the end will have cost me over £1000 in the end. It's not worth it.

They make beautiful and innovative products I can't stand the company. I'm just hoping beyond hope that Nokia pulls their socks up by the time I am due an upgrade. Then I can ditch the iPhone, ditch iTunes and dis-assimilate myself from the Borg...
Charging for online news 5:19pm on 20 Aug 2009 One of the really interesting things I'm observing from the comments is the percieved lack of quality of newspapers in general. You might argue that it's a circle, we pay less therefore the quality goes down meaning we pay less...

What's clear though is that more and more people are reading the news because it's there, not because they think it's valuable. In London they literally have to shove a newspaper in your face these days.

I doubt people would pay for most of the news services available these days unless there is a significant 'upgrade' in the offering.
The watchphone: Gadget or gimmick? 12:24pm on 20 Aug 2009 This will fail because it misses people's expectations of what they want a phone for.

For everyone:
It must make calls - tick
It must text - no tick (I suspect this can but it's more trouble than it's worth)
It must be portable - tick
It must have a good battery life - doubtful

For some:
It must surf the net - Nope
It must have GPS - Nope
It must be an entertainment point - nope
It must play music - No idea

In short, almost no one wants a phone that just makes calls and those that do (normally the elderly) want a simple phone with REALLY BIG BUTTONS and are usually only willing to spend £20 on the handset.
Why men are to blame for the crunch 11:44am on 29 Jul 2009 I fear that there is a step missing here because the culture is so male dominated that even when women get into the boardroom, they are the women that think like men.

1 of 2 things will need to happen: Either we will need a decade of Thatcher's in there so the men in the room can get used to seeing overly pointy shoes and handbags every day, after which a more feminine side can assert itself. Or we can wait another 10-15 years for my generation to get into the boardroom, I'm 30 and it doesn't even occur to me to think in gender stereotypes.
The Facebook fizzle 5:26pm on 28 Jul 2009 Yawn...
If markets don't work, what will? 4:08pm on 28 Jul 2009 Writingsonthewall I'm going with Horned_devil on fixed pricing. He may have used Zim as a recent example and it may have been extreme but the fact is almost all large scale fixed pricing systems have collapsed.

They are inherently inefficient because while they help the poor they don't take advantage of people who can afford to pay the going price so they always become too expensive to run in the end.

Robert's reference to Stephen Green is also interesting, or at least the reaction to it is interesting. Didn't Churchill say the same thing about democracy? (Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others). Maybe we just need to understand the least bad economic system and work to counterbalance it rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Who'll boss our banks? 11:53am on 28 Jul 2009 The problem with this job is that it's a stint, get the banks back on their feet and then sell them off to shore up public accounts. Who's going to want a job that will, by its nature, be smaller in a few years?

In the civil service you just move on to the next assignment but it makes no sense to jump from the private sector to the public sector and then work your way out of a job again.

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