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The linked C|Net article is down, here is the direct link to the B&N website where they notify the customers:
http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/press_releases/10_23_12_Important_Customer_Notice.html

The exact list of affected stores can be found here:
http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/press_releases/10_23_12_Important_Customer_Notice.html

Educational assistance is fairly common...

McDonalds, UPS...
http://work.lifegoesstrong.com/article/don-t-turn-your-back-free-education

"McDonald's tuition assistance program will reimburse up to $5,250 a year (which is the maximum IRS exemption), and $2,000 for part-time employees, which in effect adds two dollars an hour to someone's earnings. UPS has a program called Earn and Learn where students can have their tuition, expenses and transportation paid for if they work a part-time schedule; since 1999, UPS has paid out more than $47 million in tuition assistance alone."

B&N
http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/jobs/benefits/benefits.html

"Continuing Education
Our continuing education program offers full-time booksellers tuition assistance if you choose to further your business career by taking courses toward a job-related degree. "

And they will still pay Microsoft royalties for Android. From the B&N press release (link from TFA):

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft have settled their patent litigation, and moving forward, Barnes & Noble and Newco will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft’s patents for its NOOK eReader and Tablet products

Above emphasis mine.

Good guess, but that wasn't what I was hinting at.

http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/for_investors/for_investors.html

705 retail stores and 636 college stores. I think that qualifies as a large chain.

While IANAL, From my limited understanding of Bankruptcy law, the courts can basically dissolve nearly any contract in place.

I don' think bankruptcy can dissolve anything other than money contracts. (IANAL either).

Physical property, like land and houses are often accompanied with "contracts" such as covenants, easements, etc.
Yet even when these assets get sold thru bankruptcy you can't then claim that the easement or covenant is no longer in force.
These are public contracts that bind all future owners.

Similarly a publicly stated privacy policy, and explicitly restrictions on revealing consumer's credit card information, are public contracts.
The policy was in place at the time B&N bid on the Borders asset.

Borders explicitly stated (since 2008) in their Privacy Policy:

Disclosures in connection with acquisitions or divestitures. Circumstances may arise where for strategic or other business reasons Borders decides to sell, buy, merge or otherwise reorganize its own or other businesses. Such a transaction may involve the disclosure of personal and other information to prospective or actual purchasers, or receiving it from sellers. It is Borders' practice to seek appropriate protection for information in these types of transactions. In the event that Borders or all of its assets are acquired in such a transaction, customer information would be one of the transferred assets.

Similarly, B&N explicitly states (at least since April) in its privacy policy:

Sales, mergers, and acquisitions. If Barnes & Noble becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, personal information may be provided to the entities and advisors involved subject to a confidentiality agreement, and we will provide notice before any personal information is finally transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

So this seems to me to have been in the policy statements of Borders for a long time, most customers knew or should have known about this provision, and Borders provided an opt out link in the page referenced above. Therefore think B&N is well within their rights to use this information.

as a fall back plan. It costs $25/year. You can get 2 hours of wifi at any starbucks with it per day. (I don't work for Starbucks and I don't own any of their stock).

In cooperation with ATT Barnes and Noble offers free unlimited wifi.

Falcon

from an independent local bookstore that actually contributes to my community

Okay, I'll bite. How does B&N contribute to your community? Are you referring to this link? If you agree with their charity work and think they should be rewarded for it, then by all means follow the Barnes and Noble link. Personally, I'm none to happy with stores that require "memberships" to get special deals, but to each their own.

If it were not for Amazon, the Barnes & Noble online site would probably look a lot like bookstore.com, or worse maybe even B Dalton's web site.

Uhhhh, B Dalton's is owned my Barnes & Noble. Here's the press release. Also, just because someone did a good job, doesn't mean they deserve a monopoly on that. If Amazon could patent all that stuff you mentioned, then Barnes & Noble would not have those features unless they licensed them. For very innovative things I think people deserve patents, but one-click is something any programmer would come up with if someone wanted a quicker and simpler way to buy books. Even if the were the first ones to market it as a big feature, patent it, and license it. The idea is nothing special.

B Daltons is still around, though, just serving a different audience.

B. Dalton's is also owned by...guess who? Barnes and Noble, thank you for playing. BN bought 'em and kept 'em around to serve as their shopping mall/mass transit hub (like Union Station, Wash. DC) outlet.

Trib

The issue of "seconds" or "remainders" is a different issue than the profit margin. Remainders happen when a publisher has written off the remaining stock of a title at a LOSS. [The motivation for this is changes in tax laws that have the effect of discouraging the publisher from keeping the books in the warehouse.] They are not defective, but the publisher is also not making a profit at that price.

Retail markup is yet a third issue. That would appear in the operating results of book retailers.
Barnes & Noble have results showing operating profits which are 5.5% of revenues for their retail business.

Retail is not a good business environment in general. Books are no exception.

But don't worry about facts. Just wait for the next Slashdot discussion, and we can kvetch about how much money there is in music publishing.

After all, this is something that involves huge amounts of money. and investors/owners will want to know some details.