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PrintOctober 10, 2010
Location, location, location
The long standing real estate mantra has always been ‘location, location, location.' Even during the current housing slump the basics principles of capitalism (supply and demand) still drive the market.
The Daily Mail tells the story of Donnie and Kathy Fulbright of Maiden, North Carolina who had the good fortune to own a home that was vital to ‘Project Dolphin.' The Fulbrights purchased their modest home 34 years ago for $6,000 and recently sold the property to computer giant Apple for $1.7 million.
Apple is in the process of building a $1 billion data centre pn the surrounding property. The gigantic warehouse-like facility is set to be humming with servers and generators that will deliver all the digital entertainment that makes Apple's flagship products - the iPod, iPhone and iPad - so popular.
The centre - dubbed ‘Project Dolphin' by officials - is believed to be aiming at allowing customers to download the products via the online iTunes store.
But they will be able to download to the ‘cloud' - that is, via internet-based computing, with resources and software provided to computers on demand, similar to an electricity grid.
Using the cloud - rather than downloading data on to a hard drive - is set to speed things up considerably.
So here we have a prime example of an evil corporation, developing innovative new products that the public actually wants to purchase and then investing its resources in land and the construction of a sprawling new facility which will create actual, real, honest-to-goodness, verifiable, private sector jobs right here in America. This seems wrong somehow.
If this were a government project, the Fulbrights would have learned a different lesson about location, location, location now wouldn't they. Lucky for them they were dealing with an evil corporation instead of their own government, because we know what happens when the government wants your property.
paboehmke@yahoo.com
