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The URL you want is: http://www.bn.com/borders which redirects to: http://ebm.cheetahmail.com/r/regf2?a=0&aid=266639891&n=100
Full text of the aforementioned email from B&N below.


Dear Borders Customer,

My name is William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble, and I'm writing to you today on behalf of the entire B&N team to make you aware of important information regarding your Borders account.

First of all let me say Barnes & Noble uniquely appreciates the importance bookstores play within local communities, and we're very sorry your Borders store closed.

As part of Borders ceasing operations, we acquired some of its assets including Borders brand trademarks and their customer list. The subject matter of your DVD and other video purchases will be part of the transferred information. The federal bankruptcy court approved this sale on September 26, 2011.

Our intent in buying the Borders customer list is simply to try and earn your business. The majority of our stores are within close proximity to former Borders store locations, and for those that aren't, we offer our award- winning NOOK digital reading devices that provide a bookstore in your pocket. We are readers like you, and hope that through our stores, NOOK devices, and our bn.com online bookstore we can win your trust and provide you with a place to read and shop.

It's important for you to understand however you have the absolute right to opt-out of having your customer data transferred to Barnes & Noble. If you would like to opt-out, we will ensure all your data we receive from Borders is disposed of in a secure and confidential manner. Please visit www.bn.com/borders before October 15, 2011 to do so.

Should you choose not to opt-out by October 15, 2011, be assured your information will be covered under the Barnes & Noble privacy policy, which can be accessed at www.bn.com/privacy. B&N will maintain any of your data according to this policy and our strict privacy standards.

At Barnes & Noble we share your love of books — whatever shape they take. We also take our responsibility to service communities by providing a local bookstore very seriously. In the coming weeks, assuming you don't opt-out, you'll be hearing from us with some offers to encourage you to shop our stores and try our NOOK products. We hope you'll give us a chance to be your bookstore.

It's a bigger deal than you might think - the Coop is operated by Barnes and Noble, as are the majority of college bookstores across the country.

Triv

Amazon paying money to the people surreptitiously using referral codes means that Amazon charges more to the consumer overall.

That's true, to some extent, but Amazon charges you the same price whether you use a referral code. If you don't like Amazon's referral-code based marketing plan, buy your books at Barnes & Noble. Amazon happens to have paid for a search toolbar in the official Firefox package - if the Mozilla Foundation wants to accept their money for that (and they do), they only have the choice between including a referral code or not. Not doing so would be throwing away money.

Check out http://www.bn.com/apress/ -- it's 40% off. And if you are one of their members, you get the additional 10% discount. For once, BN is cheaper than amazon! Pretty good deal if you want to buy the book.

"In 1999, Amazon obtained an injunction that forced rival bookseller barnesandnoble.com to go to two clicks"

So there you have it. Unless the USPTO vacates this patent, according to the logic in the injunction Amazon obtained, we'd have to let Barnes & Noble register ownership of "two click ordering" if they so desired. Then online bookstores & other retailers could logically follow suit, until Newegg was 84th in line & I had to write client-side auto-follow scripts to speed through the checkout process.

I have a virtual donut for anyone with a screenshot of what when Barnes & Noble's second click looked like when they first implemented it to comply with the injunction. I'd have done something like "Your order is almost complete. Please click here for no reason whatsoever except that a pissy competitor of ours fought in court to create this hassle for you. (More info)"

"[...] several other online businesses claimed [the patent] was overly broad and that the technology wasn't very original."

Well duh. For all the ink that's been spilt on this issue, I'm amazed that all it took was a dude from New Zealand willing to throw a few grand at the problem to get it reviewed. Krikey!

"Amazon.com remains confident in the validity of its 1-Click patent, which enables customers to shop conveniently without having to enter their shipping and billing information each time they purchase."

Uhhh... wait a minute. Was Amazon saying they own the idea of not having to re-enter one's shipping & billing information with each purchase? Really?

Did I miss something? When did they get their own University?

Or is this kind of like "TD Waterhouse Center" or "Verizon Stadium", where a big company sponsors something and thus gets naming rights?

7 years now. That's how long it's been since I've purchased anything from Amazon.

7 years Jeff. 7 years of lost revenue that has gone to other companies because of your stubborn insistence on doing crap like this.

My boycott shall continue.

May I suggest some of Amazon's competition?

Barnes and Noble
Buy.com
New Egg
Ebay

Bryan

I still have yet to purchase anything from Amazon since the one-click patent. Everything since then has been through Barnes & Noble. In fact B&N got a loyal brick and mortar customer that day, too. I rarely go into any other bookstore.

So no effect? That's hyperbole. Negligable effect from Amazon's point of view? That would be spot on.

In five years, only one will remain.

Yeah, just like how there is only one Cola company, and Pepsi is completely bankrupt. And like how Amazon.com is the ONLY place to buy books online.

Monoplies only happen if there is a measuable barrier-to-entry in the market, either technical or legal. Postal DVD rental doesn't have a barrier like that, so there will probably stay two companies (functionally interchangable with each other).

What follows is a pretty good list for buying books. The top ones are pretty much 'bots such that by the time you get to Amazon, BN, and Half, you'll have already seen the prices as part of the 'bot output. Also, it builds in any discounts, coupons, and shipping. It's also handy for providing retorts in the discussions when people say, "Amazon's cheaper!" or "BN is cheaper!" because they only check those two sites.

BookPool
AddAll - Compare & Shop
Best Book Buys - Compare many sites & Shop
Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Half - mostly used books

B&N has a "Readers Advantage" card that gets you a 10% discount and only costs US$25 a year -- worth it if you buy more than US$250 of books a year. I usually buy books in bursts, and have let my Readers Advantage card lapse, but they let you buy one at the same time as you make a purchase and let you apply it to that purchase (not that a "leave the store and reenter" hack wouldn't work, but they are being friendly and saving you the hassle).

I don't know if anyone else has had problems, but I can't get through to real sites now. For instance Barnes & Noble doesn't work. I have found other instances, but this comes to mind first. This seems like a major lawsuit waiting to happen.

Web browser emulates a newspaper.

Web browser emulates a TV.

Web browser emulates a radio.

Web browser emulates a record store.

Web browser emulates a bookstore.

After checking Amazon and Barnes & Noble for the ISBN and title, there is no record of this book anywhere according to the my two favorite online book peddlers. Thae makes me sad.

For the first time ever, inspired by this article, I checked out WIL WHEATON DOT NET (the newest programming language from M$? Aye, sir...), and was very pleased with the experience. Not all blogs suck, apparently. Yes, I'm a geek.

If anyone can find a dead-tree merchant who's taking pre-orders for (or acknowledges the existence of) books by Wil Wheaton, post it here? Please?

Does anyone know if/when this will be available in the U.S.?

This doesn't appear be available online from usual suspects. It can be ordered from the UK version of Amazon, but who _really_ wants to pay shipping on that?

You know, it might be useful if Slashdot book reviews were limited to books that are currently in print!

For another, $12 is the exception, not the rule, for pricing--if you can find everything you want on CD at Target, more power to you. I can't. Best Buy charges $13-16 for CDs, generally, and they have about the best price to selection ratio of any place that I've found.

Here's where I've found a large selection of CDs in the $10-12 range:

• MyMusic.com - lots around $10, but shipping adds another dollar or two, depending on how many you buy
• DeepDiscountCD.com - lots around $12, free shipping
• Barnes & Noble - prices and free shipping deals vary, but there are lots of good deals around the holidays

It amazes me how much people are willing to spend on CDs sometimes. I had one CD that I bought (for about $10 or so) as a gift but never used, then sold on eBay two years later for over $15, with shipping and insurance (buyer requested) bringing it up to almost $20. Even after subtracting my expenses, I made a decent profit (and I didn't think I would break even).

In my experience, many benefits of XML come when dealing with the presentation layers of many application architectures, with the ability to repurpose syndicated data at wil, here are a few examples:

• RSS which defines an easy standard for any site to provide "News" in a well-defined XML Format. This allows developers to write software to aggregate news from different sites into one convenient interface, sites to exchange news headlines with eachother.
• Google Web APIs which allow developers to create their own custom google-powered search site with their own look and feel by simply proxying a user's search query to the google server which returns search results in XML data which can subsequently be transformed in HTML before being sent back to the user via various processes such as an XSLT transformation.
• Amazon Web API, similar in principle to the above Google API, allows developers to enhance their sites by allowing their users to search for Amazon products without having to go the Amazon site itself. One interesting side-effect of such API is that an Amazon competitor, say Barnes and Noble, could offer a similar API to their own site. Now I could allow my users to use my service to search for books and offer them results and price comparisons from both Amazon and Barnes and Noble

Effective use of XML and XSLT allows you to easily aggregate informational data from one or multiple sources and "repurpose" for an infinite variety of business and technological goals.

One of the main benefits of XML is that it offers and effective, textual representation of "scructured data", that can be conveniently accessed and manipulated according to a slew of various surrounding standards such as XPath, DOM, XSLT, namespaces.

I'd like some recommendations on how to get her started: Books, URLs, software packages.

Books: Graphics books would probably be the best place to look they can be found at Amazon or Barnes And Noble

URLS: Well Google would be an excellent start.

Finally Software: Sams as books it can all be found at Amazon

I hope that helps your wife graphics can be a heap of fun and with the foundation I've laid out she should be off to an excellent start!

Now, aside from the irony of the slashdot review pimping the book for barnes & noble, under the Amazon.com terms of service, all reviews become exclusive property of Amazon.com.

Like it or not, this is just as serious of a licensing breach as if Microsoft Word included emacs code.

Alternatives include Barnes and Noble and The Tattered Cover.

buy from B&N.

• Self-Education: This basically entails buying a crapload of books from the neighborhood B&N, reading them cover to cover, and practicing everything in a real-world situation (ie: don't just read the examples.... do them!). Suggestions for good books: anything in the "The Complete Reference" series by Osborne, Hacking Linux Exposed, Hacking Exposed, etc.
• Programming Languages: OK, you don't need to learn Java (probably). So you don't have to go to college for that. I, unfortunately, had to learn that dumb language. But if you're going to be a sysadmin, learn some scripting languages, like perl, vbscript, etc. Perl for a *nix environment, but you'd be surprised how useful a junk script in vbscript can be. You just have to really know the language to crank out some good code.
• Start small: Don't expect to get root access during the interview. You will, invariably, go through the "System Analyst" stage wherever you work. Whether you go to college or not will affect how long that stage is: If you have a diploma, your superiors will automatically have more trust in you. Otherwise, you're a "college dropout," even if you never applied for college.
• Vendor Certificates: DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE these!! They are worth absolutely nothing to the savvy Admin, but are worth their weight in gold to an ignorant corporate exec. Speaking from personal experience here... My client gave me crap jobs, but trusted his nephew because he was MCSE certified. After meeting him one day, I knew that two of him wouldn't equal the abilities I had. Sucked for me, though, because I didn't have that certificate.
• Learn from the Best: Read the BOFH pages Then do the opposite. It also provides the side-effect of telling funny anecdotes to co-workers.

Certainly lots of sites link to Amazon. Amazon knows about more titles (and other merchandise) than any other single site, with the possible exception of Barnes & Noble. They've got LOTS more reader reviews than any other site including B&N. Their return policy is favorable to purchasers (that is, it's comparable to most brick and mortar bookstores). They frequently reduce shipping and offer coupons. What's not to like? Assertion of the one-click patent and their privacy policy changes (claiming they own the records of what you've purchased) are about it. Yeah, the privacy policy thing stinks, but even the brick and mortar stores track what you're buying. If you want privacy, pay cash.

Personally, if Bookpool has what I want in stock, I'll buy it from them. The prices are nearly always less than Amazon's. BUT, Bookpool only sells technical books, and nothing in the way of Christian theology (my other big reading interest). Barnes and Noble throws in free shipping with two or more books in an order, but the prices are usually higher.

People flock to Amazon because it's simply a valuable service.

Amazon: New ($16.80) | Used ($12.00)

Barnes & Noble: New ($19.20, free shipping)

Half.com: All Used (from $11.99)

Sorry if I included any unnecessary variables in the URLs. I previewed and they seem to work fine. I personally recommend getting it from B&N since it's free shipping and would probably be your best bet for a used version. However, some libraries with fair budgets might have this book too (or you could ask for it), so that's always an option.
_________________________________________ ___
Partner Site

hmmm... beginning to suspect you have no idea what you're talking about. it was hard getting past the hard-as-nails part. i have a new computer in my lab right now that won't install win2k and is locked up in the (default) install process where it thinks it's already installed but it really isn't.

Anecdotal points about specific hardware combinations failing to install/run a specific OS that fail to mention that the combination is in fact supported by the OS developer are rather worthless. For example, I have a particular model of IBM destop pc that signal 7s every time I try to install Redhat or Suse, but then, I never bothered to see if all the hardware in those pcs was supported by either distro. The same machines run Win2k just fine. So what? It proves nothing. My anecdotal experience with our servers is that Win2k on supported, properly configured hardware will typically have very little if any unplanned downtime.

dominant in marketshare only... i find it endless frustrating and difficult to use. Macs are infinitely easier to use and as far as I'm concerned, so is KDE. I used to use Win9x/NT before I found linux.

I'm glad you have a choice to make. I do to, and I happen to find Win2k/XP the easiest to use.


Java - multi-platform
C# - windows only (you don't think MS is going to extend C# like they tried to extend Java for windows?)

Huh?

Now, you'd have to be insane to use windows as a production-level server.
Lots of insane people make their living off of windows as a production-level server
Unix is the only way to go... thus, Java.
What happened to choice? I thought GNU was about choices? What if I gasp> don't like to code in Java? Heck, what happened to OS/400 or BSD? You can have your choices. If you are more comfortable with Unix environments, then they will typically be cheaper for you to operate. But if you don't understand how to acquire quality hardware for Windows, and you dont know how to administer it, then you hardly have any room to cast stones.

I'm going back to school in a few days. I found great textbook deals at Barnes and Noble and Big Words, including used books I could only get new at my school's bookstore (major city, 13,000 students).

I don't normally plug things but, this is free, and it seems appropriate:

Currently Barnes and Nobles and their partnership is currently offering FREE Learn Perl courses online....

They try and sucker you in to buy the book, but it is not necessary for those who don't want to, but again, it is a very good book, therefor I would recommend it.

So if you ever wanted to know what we were all talking about when we say "PERL", now's your chance...

If you would like to read more on the subject of the book you can go here and look at some conference papers about the "public domain," one of them is even by Lawrence Lessig. I just bought his new book off of bn.com and I'm looking forward to reading it. Unlike the reviewer, I for one am looking forward to this book more than Code. I am thinking it will be more accessable to non computer people like myself.

I remember when the book Linux for Dummies came out. My first thought was "well, now I have to make the switch to BSD". While that may not have been bad in and of itself, I did then come to my senses and realized "Oh wait, I use Slackware, never mind".

Uh Oh! There's a Slackware for Dummies now, too. Maybe I'll have to switch to BSD afterall? Well, as long as Patrick doesn't try to make Slackware be the replacement for Microsoft Windows, then it will remain my choice.

I remember when the book Linux for Dummies came out. My first thought was "well, now I have to make the switch to BSD". While that may not have been bad in and of itself, I did then come to my senses and realized "Oh wait, I use Slackware, never mind".

Uh Oh! There's a Slackware for Dummies now, too. Maybe I'll have to switch to BSD afterall? Well, as long as Patrick doesn't try to make Slackware be the replacement for Microsoft Windows, then it will remain my choice.

Writing Solid Code: Microsoft's Techniques for Developing Bug-Free C Programs
Steve Maguire
ISBN: 1556155514
Publisher: Microsoft Press

Available on bn.com


--BEGIN SIG BLOCK--
I'd rather be trolling for goatse.cx.

One more reason to buy from Barnes and Noble.com.

Contrary to popular belief there are other booksellers out there. Some of which may not have sold their soul to the devil.

Barnes and Noble also bought up Fatbrain.com so their selection for /.'ers should be pretty good.

If you want to understand a lot about how sleep works and how to deal with various sleeping problems, read The Promise of Sleep by W. C. DeMent. This is a really excellent book.

The free-lance writers only want more money for republishing their works, no matter what the content. Who can blame them? They see the RIAA complaining about mp3's and hearing about new CD's that don't allow copying. If you want another copy of that song you need to pay up!

The MPAA is harassing people over the DeCSS case, just because someone wanted to watch a DVD on their linux box. They don't want Europe to get a hold of a DVD before it is released now do they. Need to control those dollars!

Even the Book Publishers are screaming at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com for selling used books. Why? Their not getting any extra royalties.

So why wouldn't the freelance writers be next?
Wouldn't you be a little upset? I would. The freelance writers aren't complaining about making a backup of the info (much like making a copy of your DVD or CD), That's not the issue here. The issue is having the freelance writer bullied into signing their life away. Simply put their being told to either sign this contract that is retroactive to all of your work or you can not work for us ever again. Oh, and by the way, we're going to reproduce your work for profit. That's right more profit that the freelance writer is not benefiting from. This isn't making a copy for the library or for personal use. This is a big bullying company trying to make more profit off of the individual.

Just because I get the paper at home doesn't mean I'm entitled to automatically get the online version too. I've got to pay for that also. Why shouldn't the freelancers get paid twice also?

Well, it would help if I got the correct URL.

Let's try this again:

see some rather more interesting, entertaining and damning illustrations of technology's sociological effects by picking up Terry Pratchett's newest, The Truth.
read the review at your favorite book source, or go to barnes & noble and quicksearch "pratchett truth".

---

Of course computer professionals are going to suffer more back pain than professional movers - if you spend all day moving couches & heavy stuff, you're giving most of the muscles in your body a good workout. If, on the other hand, you spend your entire day doing next to nothing physically (relatively), using a little force in the same direction over and over again, what do you think is going to happen to most of the muscles in your body? One word: atrophy. At least, that's what happens according to the author of Pain Free At Your PC (http://www.bn.com has it too, just can't get that link to work correctly). To quote from the first chapter: "The true source of chronic musculoskeletal pain is rarely the site of the pain. . . . If your wrist hurts while you are pointing and clicking a mouse, the pain probably has nothing to do with the device." The book has four programs of simple exercises (maintenance or light, moderate and power users) specifically designed to work the muscles we're neglecting.

I bought this book right after my doctor perscribed me drugs, and said if they didn't work we'd go for surgery. I don't believe in conventional medicine (aside from when they function as body mechanics), so I bought this book when I saw it at the local food co-op in the hopes that it would have some information dealing with what was causing my "repetitive stress injury". I had actually gone to the doctor to get a referral to a chiropractor, 'cause slashdotters have said they can help. Of course, doctors prefer drugs & surgery to dealing with root causes (what was I thinking?). I haven't been very diligent about doing the exercises, but after reading it I corrected my posture, and my back was damn sore for the next few days. If you suffer from pain while using a computer, Buy This Book. I wish I had found it before purchasing a Datahand keyboard... probably would've saved myself a bathtub of cash.

You know those ergonomic chairs that don't have a back? The one several of you with back problems have tried, but can't sit in for any length of time? The muscles in your body have probably decayed because of poor work habits.. Before you go out and spend $1000 on a chair or keyboard, please spend $10 on this book, and give the e-cises a try.

These three companies are in violation of patent # 4,309,234,398 that is currently held by me.

This patent covers the use of using tabs at the top of the page in order to allow quick navigation to major portions of the site.
See for yourself at amazon, barnes & noble, and Musicians Friend.

Micro$oft is also violating one of my patents.

I currently hold patent #3,456,232,632, which covers the production of shoddy products in order to shaft greedy and ignorant investors. Unfortunately I can not give you a URL for either of my patents, because my webserver, which is running $H1t-OS, has crashed.

i was at work and in a hurry so i just slapped the link over and forgot about the spacing issue. here's the link i used, in text: http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/OopBooks/OopResults .asp?userid=2MV2P65425&mscssid=3MDCX V7Q0 NLB8GJCS385A41FXQJGFW10&title=splendid+war+kids

or you can just go to Barnes&Noble, go to the advanced search screen and type into the title field, "war between splendid kids". then hit the "More titles from our network of out of print book dealers" link and it should be right there.

really, that was one of the books that planted in me the idea of not just going along with whatever public school tried to make me, and actually tell my teachers, "Sorry, I read, I think, and I'm smart -- what you want me to do is dumb. Therefore, i respectfully decline from praticipating."
I still crack up thinking about the "Status Quo Homogenizer" or whatever it was called... hehe

---
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties

Understand the subject before marking a post as off-topic. The by-line references That_Hideous_Strength, by CS Lewis. Mars is Malcandra (sp?). "Pod"..."soreni"...

**Sigh**

Ya Know, others besides O'Reilly publish books... get one.

Back on topic, myself: I really don't understand how the Martian rocks get to Earth to begin with, but am enjoying watching the theories fly about looking for a place to land. Anyway,<ugh> 'rock on'. </ugh>

Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers

Don't forget the bookpool, at least for computer books. I haven't been able to beat their prices anywhere.

B&N is usually better than Amazon, too, because B&N offers coupons (which is why they're taking heavy losses on their web sales, from what I've read. Check out Movie Price Guide for coupons to B&N, as well as a lot of DVD sellers.

They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.

Since everyone is in the mood to sue of stupid, lame, idiotic stuff then why isn't amazon suing musicians friend? if you go to the sites you will see what i mean.

The whole point of all of this is to prove that none of these lawsuites that are going around over patent infringement have anything to do with the design of products or copyrights.

The only reason Macromedia is being sued is because they make graphical design programs, as does Adobe. Adobe is only trying to hurt one of their biggest competitors, and if they keep them from using their precious widgets then that is just a bonus.

Musicians Friend has remained untouched because they sell musical instruments and do not represent a significant threat to amazon's book sales, in fact amazon sells far more music books than musicians friend.

One more example of this practice of hurting your competitors with stupid lawsuites is that between Barnes and Noble and amazon a while back. (Read the Slashdot story here.) The only reason amazon started that lawsuite is because B&N is their biggest competitor and once again, if they could keep B&N from using their precious 1-click crap then they were all the more happy.

When will the Courts handling these cases wake up and smell the mud?

Napster has urged its fans to run a "buy-cott" this weekend. Oh, Napster! Why have you turned your backs on your fans like this! This is a classic example of an ends-justify-the-means tactic; even when the means contradict the ends you are trying to reach. They can't ask us to support the institution that is trying to destroy them!

Napster changed the face of music distribution. No longer are fans forced to buy a $15+ dollar Britney Spears CD in order to listen to one or two "decent" songs. The digital music revolution gives fans the choice to download and play the exact songs that they want. And yes, under current laws, it's probably illegal. But, the problem is that it's entirely unstoppable. Laws will have to adapt to the digital landscape. Everyone knows the obvious conclusion.

But, the Napster case isn't about Napster proving to the industry that they'll drive more sales into a sinking institution or that digital music will give Hilary Rosen new sales channels. It's about a new paradigm in music distribution. It's about the collapse of the music industry as we know it.

Napster has an arsenal of arguments at its disposal, probably the most effective is that they're just hosting a platform and can't be held responsible for what is traded. But, the underlying theme is that the control of information has changed in the digital world. Without an effective way to control distribution, information is becoming virtually free. Music is just the first controlled digital substance to be unleashed.

It saddens me that Napster won't stand up for this inevitable stance. They have to resort to begging their users to give more money to Hilary Rosen so she can fight Napster with even more lawyers. Is Napster crazy?

Napster has failed: and they have proven that they are not strong enough to stand up to the challenge. But we know that the revolution isn't dead. Use Napster for all it's worth until its shut down. But when it is, don't go out and buy CDs. Download Gnutella and continue as your were.

p.s. Do you have any information where I can get a free counter for my website?

--

$30,000 or $99 through Iuniverse.com and your distributers are Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Online, and any bookstore that orders from the Ingram catalog in whatever size runs they want. The books are printed on demand and available as quickly as most other books. Limited to 6" x 9" paperback format, but that's not much of a restriction. You may not be on the shelves in the local Borders by default, but no other publishing method guarantees that either. I've seen several of the titles published in this program on endcaps in my local B&N.

LetterJ

The link to the book on amazon is here

Aren't we supposed to be boycotting Amazon.com in favor of Barnes & Noble?

I just tried to reach Book Stacks at www.books.com, and it now appears to be simply Barnes & Noble. Does anyone know a working URL?

FWIW, while Amazon.com is abusing the patent system, B&N does not exactly wear a white hat. It has been B&N who have most agressively, in the brick-and-mortar market, been squeezing out independant bookstores. Support your local independant booksellers!

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship b y the press.
-- G. K. Chesteron, "Orthodoxy"

Well i just did that. Amazon has a nice;-) feature to cancel unshipped orders. i used that and reordered at bn.com.

btw, bn.com does not have this feature (atleast not so obvious on the website) of cancelling unshipped orders. though this is the first time i used bn.com, i found the Amazon site to be much faster and easier to use.

Amazon (if you are reading)...you don't need stupid patents to win, your execution seems to be good enough for that....but if you persist with your 'patents'........well i just moved my $$$s.

Actually, the links are cgi-trapped so that we can tell how many potential Amazon customers are being redirected to competing vendors.

Experience has shown that complaining to Jeff Bezos about Amazon's abuse of the US patent system earns you a cheery "We are proud of our innovative business practices, and we believe that we're entitled to patent protection" spiel in reply.

Our thinking is, if we can demonstrate to Bezos that we sent 10,000 people to Barnes & Noble or DVD Express, he might be convinced to re-examine his company's "innovative" business strategy.

That's the idea, anyway.