I think the reaction is an expression of denial more than anything else.
OK, how are we supposed to disagree without being "in denial"?
Seriously? Don't deny that sexism exists.
There, that was easy. You can disagree that the comments were intended to be denigrating to women, but that's sort of beside the point. Denying that they are sexist is like proving the existence of god: you can't.
Let me guess, you're a white male American, aged 15-35?
You have no idea how pervasive sexism and racism still are. You don't consciously experience them, but they are there.
You can't blame us. Nobody ever tells us that the US is still racist and sexist. Folks think it was all fixed in the 60s, but it takes generations to wipe those memes out.
I wish we could get past the denial and anger phase, and skip straight to the "reverse racism" complaints.
Yes, I'm recommending that you not disagree with someone who claims that something you said is sexist.
By all means, clarify your intentions. But denying it doesn't work, because it really IS about their perception and context. You can't change that, and it's not unfair or unjust.
We agree that it would be unjust for a court of law to work that way. But we're not talking about that, and anyway we have first amendment protection for sexist speech. You would have to cause actual harm in order to be convicted of something.
the larger issue is that as a man you have no *inherent* frame of reference by which to decide whether they are right or wrong or how serious or trivial it is.
This is exactly the issue - namely that the criterion you're using is that if some woman somewhere dislikes something a man says, and calls "sexism", that makes the man sexist and there is no way for him to rebut the claim. I call bullshit. Adopting that line of thinking creates a race to the bottom in which any easily-offended person gets to define anything that bothers them as socially unacceptable speech. It's nonsense and an insult to those who care about REAL sexism.
My point is that you, as a man, are probably not an able judge of what is sexist and what is not. (Maybe YOU are, but this isn't personal. I'm talking about men generally.)
Any individual is allowed to be offended by anything. When you deny that they should be offended, you are basically dissing their point of view. That's not constructive. They may have very good reasons for being offended. If those reasons are compounded by a history of oppression, you look as if you are trying to deny more than just your individual offense, and that's just ugly.
For speech to be socially unacceptable it has to offend more than just a small group of easily-offended people, so I think you can put that fear to rest.
We do need to have some sense and understanding of each other. But let's admit that for generations (if not forever) men have been forcing their understanding on women, without allowing much in the other direction. So I think we can afford to chill out a little, step back and say "Huh. You think that was sexist? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be, and I'll put it differently next time." That's all.
It's not labeling. Just because someone says that what you said or did is sexist doesn't mean that you ARE sexist. It just means that it can be perceived that way. You can't argue with that, and you shouldn't try.
If someone offends me with a statement, and I find out that it was truly unintentional, then it's hard to stay offended/angry. I may still be sad or whatever, but I would stop accusing the person of being an asshole.
Yes, you forgive them for making the remark. That's the civilized response to misunderstanding. But that doesn't actually change the nature of the remark. Intent has very little to do with it, actually, because part of the problem is that sexism is unconscious and automatic.
If someone accidentally says something racist, and they're sorry about it, that's good. That's how we learn. But what they said was still racist. You hear a lot less of that than you did even 20 years ago, and its because we're generally a lot more sensitive to racism now.
We can ignore all kinds of little annoyances and slips and mistakes in society. The problem is that if you ignore the little stuff, you have fewer opportunities to expose the people who are big time (and I mean dangerously) racist, sexist, or whatever. Your boss might tell a few off-color jokes now and then, does it mean he hates women? Maybe he doesn't. But maybe one of your colleagues does, and his behavior is reinforced by the boss's jokes. That's not okay.
Again, I say: Don't take it personally. Just because you say or do something sexist doesn't mean you're an asshole. You just didn't know.
The mark of an asshole is that he denies the offense, or tries to make excuses for it, or immediately changes the subject to how oppressed men are, too. Just don't. Go outside and yell at the moon or something instead.
Sexism is like racism: it's based on a power relationship. It only flows one way, in the direction of power.
For example, a woman denying a job to a man is not being sexist. Arbitrary, yes, probably unfair, possibly vindictive. But NOT sexist, unless we are talking about a job which is routinely and historically denied to men by women.
You are making perfectly valid points about the pressures that society puts on men to be macho and assume certain roles because of their gender. But you can't call that sexism, because that would imply that women were in charge, and making the rules.
But what you consider hypersensitivity might be considered by others as simply awareness.
You don't think the remark "I wish I could easily explain what I do to girls I meet at bars" is a big deal, so if someone calls it a sexist remark, they seem hypersensitive, right?
But maybe they are just naturally sensitive to remarks which they identify as sexist. See something, say something. They might be wrong, they might be right; the larger issue is that as a man you have no *inherent* frame of reference by which to decide whether they are right or wrong or how serious or trivial it is.
If all men were color blind, we would think women were being hypersensitive about the difference between red and green. It just wouldn't matter to us, and we'd wonder why they kept making a fuss about it.
It shouldn't be surprising that there is sexism of one sort or another in FOSS development. It's everywhere, and at all levels of Western society.
Sexism is so pervasive that we have a hard time recognizing all but the most obvious forms. And yet most of us recognize that it is an undesirable human quality, like bigotry or religious fundamentalism. So when we are called on sexist behavior, our first reaction is to get massively defensive and deny the problem. We're not sexist! We think sexism is evil! Some of my best friends are women!
Uh-huh. The problem is, the person calling you on your sexism ISN'T making it up. From her point of view, denying it just means you're as clueless as all the other men.
Guys, it doesn't matter whether your intentions are good. Sometimes you will say or do something sexist. You probably didn't mean too, you'll probably be really embarrassed to find out, but that doesn't change anything. The best thing to do is acknowledge, apologize, and try to accept that what you said or did was sexist. Even if you don't know why. Even if you think it wasn't.
Denying that what you did was sexist is the same thing as saying that what you did was fair because you played by the rules. It's not fair if the rules aren't fair. And the rules, in our society, aren't fair to women. Until we invent some new rules, you're going to have to cope with on-the-fly correction.
DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Apologize and think and try to do better next time.
Atomic battery. Seriously, it's all quaint and 1950s. Still a little cool and scary, but also fully controllable.
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were Nuclear Power Plants, generating Nuclear Power. We want to build Atomic Energy Stations that generate Atomic Energy. See the difference in how it sounds?
Yeah, like others I bought one of these based on Slashdot hype the last time around. And got burned.
In a nutshell:
- That router used a proprietary firmware format, and there were no obvious tools or shell scripts posted that would convert, say, current Tomato source to a package that would install on the Netgear.
- There wasn't even a freekin' howto!!!
- Community support is "provided" by the commercial MyOpenRouter site, which doesn't seem to be affiliated with, sponsored by, or in any other way connected to Netgear. It's some kind of back-alley licensing deal.
The result was that I found myself relying on untrusted third parties with no accountability to compile firmware for my router, and the firmware they offered was six months out of date and missing important fixes.
That's not support for Open Source, it's a twisted perversion of it. It smacks of carelessness and greed on Netgear's part, and a foolish attempt to stay relevant while their high-end sales are devoured by Linkysys and their excellent WRT-54GLS.
Before you buy one of these, take a look at the MyOpenRouter site and see if they've provided decent documentation, tools, and up-to-date firmware since last year.
So the planet is essentially a conveyor belt always in the process of being destroyed and created. The contents of the entire planet could have gone through this process many times already.
This is how you get real estate agents interested in astronomy. This planet just keeps making new land!
The idea is to build the page in fail-state first, and then use JavaScript to enhance it. Or in other words, build your DOM and then restyle, add event listeners, etc.
It doesn't take extra time, and it's a great technique for future-proofing your pages. It also makes them accessible to people who, for whatever reason, can't take advantage of teh javascript. If your website is in the US, and is big enough for anyone to care, ADA compliance pretty much requires it.
There is nothing stopping any of the console makers from embracing the iPhone, and turning it into an extension of the console experience rather than a competitor to it. (Well, okay, something might stop Microsoft, but Sony and Nintendo have nothing to lose.)
With a single app the iPhone becomes a full color smart controller, with mutli-touch, motion sensing, and a built-in camera.
Allow developers to incorporate that functionality into the iPhone versions of their console games, and you enable a seamless gaming experience from home (where the epic action happens) to the larger world (where you mini-game, grind, or play in smaller-scale settings).
The problem isn't so much the engineering. That's just applying new technology to the age-old practice of agriculture.
The problem is that Monsanto (and others) want to control the rights to the genetic code they produce. This puts them in the position to benefit from the natural spread (through pollination) of their intellectual property. Yes, they produced the code originally. But that code replicates naturally! It's like the New York Times coming after you for licensing fees because you have copies of their photos in your browser cache.
There's tremendous potential for abuse in allowing a company to own genetic code in this way. How long before someone starts secretly creating viruses and blights in order to wipe out crops that happen to be missing a patented resistance gene?
I'm just a dump web guy, and not particularly evil. If I can cook up that scenario, you can bet that it has crossed the minds of executives at Monsanto.
Also, I think chat logs can not serve as evidence. Just as spoken language differs greatly depending on who you are talking to, the purpose of communication has a big influence on the level you are using to bring your thoughts across. You seldom chat with your superior. You usually chat with peers. Few of us would use the same phrases, figures of speech and abbreviations in a professional document, yet most of us have at one point used such language, to a degree.
OMG, so true. There's a theater company in New York that specializes in converting long, rambling telephone conversations into dramatic theater. The actors use ipods to stay in sync with the dialog, and the performances are hilarious. There's a lot of "yeah, um" and "so then I, no, wait" and so on.
If you really listen to yourself or others talk, casually, you'll realize just how much verbal communication is about context and expression, and how little syntax and the actual meaning of words plays into it.
I use Pixelmator a lot, and for what I do (web) I can get by without Photoshop.
But man I wish I had Photoshop. Pixelmator is lacking that extra few percent of polish, and in some really stupid places.
I mean, here's a tool which is really only useful for web images. Do they support Hex colors? No, they use the standard lame OS X color picker. There's also no way to see how big your selections or crops are, except to squint at the dark-on-dark rulers.
Civil trials have a heck of lot less to do with proof and right and wrong, as they do with who is more attractive to the jury.
I see a strong market in cloned celebrity IDs, then.
"Honestly I'm George Clooney, here's my Secure ID. This is what I look like without all those lights and makeup. Now can we settle this little matter and go out for beer?"
Yes, by all means tell ME when I'm subjecting my laptop or phone to unsuitable conditions, or doing something to it that might violate the warranty.
Everyone assumes that this patent is for a secret recording device. Didn't read the patent, but if it is then they're shooting themselves in the foot. The real benefit to the consumer of this idea is that the sensors in the device can alert you to damaging behavior. Kind of like the old warning that you used to get when you shutdown your Mac using the power switch instead of the Shutdown menu. The ideal way to do this is to throw up an alert that says, "Hey, you did something stupid that could break your computer. Maybe you should be more careful."
The last thing any company should want is a "he said, it said" situation where they have to call their customer a liar. Unless the accelerometer and other sensors are independently certified and recalibrated (like an odometer), this technology should be advisory at best.
I do have a feeling though, that this plan was not exactly thought out. Any sale to a gullible official - who isn't spending their own cash yet comes out with statements like "I've never been so excited about anything" sounds like exuberance has got the better over common sense. I would expect that the money earmarked for this plan would be far better spent on orthodox police patrols: more officers, more man-hours and maybe even a few public awareness campaigns. Not as sexy, but far more effective.
Exactly. If this sort of thing worked, they would have been doing it since the 60s. It's not like highly detailed aerial photography is a new thing, and manpower was much cheaper then than it is now.
This is just some jerk mayor fell for a sales pitch. Some days it's a monorail, other days it's a flying surveillance platform. Hopefully someone with some sense will show up at the next City Council meeting and that's the last we'll hear of it.
1) I don't usually re-read books. Not sure why, but I don't. Maybe when I turn 50 this will change, but in 10 years this will all look very different anyway.
2) The convenience and time savings of Amazon's "store" is worth the devaluation of the product caused by the DRM. I'm paying up to $8 per book not to have to go to Barnes and Noble, and I'm okay with that. I get new books the day they come out. I'm saving ink, paper, boxes, and fuel, not to mention space in my apartment and the municipal landfill.
3) I honestly think it will be broken before it becomes a pain in the ass.
But I'm extremely disturbed by hidden download limits. They clearly stated that they would keep your purchases on their servers so that you could restore them to the device at any time. Devices crash, break, get stolen, and get upgraded. The ability to always go back to Amazon for a fresh copy is a great feature, and one that really helps offset the value removed by DRM _at very little extra charge to Amazon_.
That's what doesn't add up: why would they risk lawsuits and alienate their core customers over something which costs them virtually nothing?
Slashdot Mirror
I think the reaction is an expression of denial more than anything else.
OK, how are we supposed to disagree without being "in denial"?
Seriously? Don't deny that sexism exists.
There, that was easy. You can disagree that the comments were intended to be denigrating to women, but that's sort of beside the point. Denying that they are sexist is like proving the existence of god: you can't.
Well, you could start by actually taking a hard look and seeing if what's being said is true, instead of being knee-jerk defensive.
I love how this gets modded troll. Nice one.
+1 Rational
Let me guess, you're a white male American, aged 15-35?
You have no idea how pervasive sexism and racism still are. You don't consciously experience them, but they are there.
You can't blame us. Nobody ever tells us that the US is still racist and sexist. Folks think it was all fixed in the 60s, but it takes generations to wipe those memes out.
I wish we could get past the denial and anger phase, and skip straight to the "reverse racism" complaints.
Yes, I'm recommending that you not disagree with someone who claims that something you said is sexist.
By all means, clarify your intentions. But denying it doesn't work, because it really IS about their perception and context. You can't change that, and it's not unfair or unjust.
We agree that it would be unjust for a court of law to work that way. But we're not talking about that, and anyway we have first amendment protection for sexist speech. You would have to cause actual harm in order to be convicted of something.
Thanks, seriously. I respect your arguments.
the larger issue is that as a man you have no *inherent* frame of reference by which to decide whether they are right or wrong or how serious or trivial it is.
This is exactly the issue - namely that the criterion you're using is that if some woman somewhere dislikes something a man says, and calls "sexism", that makes the man sexist and there is no way for him to rebut the claim. I call bullshit. Adopting that line of thinking creates a race to the bottom in which any easily-offended person gets to define anything that bothers them as socially unacceptable speech. It's nonsense and an insult to those who care about REAL sexism.
My point is that you, as a man, are probably not an able judge of what is sexist and what is not. (Maybe YOU are, but this isn't personal. I'm talking about men generally.)
Any individual is allowed to be offended by anything. When you deny that they should be offended, you are basically dissing their point of view. That's not constructive. They may have very good reasons for being offended. If those reasons are compounded by a history of oppression, you look as if you are trying to deny more than just your individual offense, and that's just ugly.
For speech to be socially unacceptable it has to offend more than just a small group of easily-offended people, so I think you can put that fear to rest.
We do need to have some sense and understanding of each other. But let's admit that for generations (if not forever) men have been forcing their understanding on women, without allowing much in the other direction. So I think we can afford to chill out a little, step back and say "Huh. You think that was sexist? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be, and I'll put it differently next time." That's all.
It's not labeling. Just because someone says that what you said or did is sexist doesn't mean that you ARE sexist. It just means that it can be perceived that way. You can't argue with that, and you shouldn't try.
If someone offends me with a statement, and I find out that it was truly unintentional, then it's hard to stay offended/angry. I may still be sad or whatever, but I would stop accusing the person of being an asshole.
Yes, you forgive them for making the remark. That's the civilized response to misunderstanding. But that doesn't actually change the nature of the remark. Intent has very little to do with it, actually, because part of the problem is that sexism is unconscious and automatic.
If someone accidentally says something racist, and they're sorry about it, that's good. That's how we learn. But what they said was still racist. You hear a lot less of that than you did even 20 years ago, and its because we're generally a lot more sensitive to racism now.
We can ignore all kinds of little annoyances and slips and mistakes in society. The problem is that if you ignore the little stuff, you have fewer opportunities to expose the people who are big time (and I mean dangerously) racist, sexist, or whatever. Your boss might tell a few off-color jokes now and then, does it mean he hates women? Maybe he doesn't. But maybe one of your colleagues does, and his behavior is reinforced by the boss's jokes. That's not okay.
Again, I say: Don't take it personally. Just because you say or do something sexist doesn't mean you're an asshole. You just didn't know.
The mark of an asshole is that he denies the offense, or tries to make excuses for it, or immediately changes the subject to how oppressed men are, too. Just don't. Go outside and yell at the moon or something instead.
Sexism is like racism: it's based on a power relationship. It only flows one way, in the direction of power.
For example, a woman denying a job to a man is not being sexist. Arbitrary, yes, probably unfair, possibly vindictive. But NOT sexist, unless we are talking about a job which is routinely and historically denied to men by women.
You are making perfectly valid points about the pressures that society puts on men to be macho and assume certain roles because of their gender. But you can't call that sexism, because that would imply that women were in charge, and making the rules.
But what you consider hypersensitivity might be considered by others as simply awareness.
You don't think the remark "I wish I could easily explain what I do to girls I meet at bars" is a big deal, so if someone calls it a sexist remark, they seem hypersensitive, right?
But maybe they are just naturally sensitive to remarks which they identify as sexist. See something, say something. They might be wrong, they might be right; the larger issue is that as a man you have no *inherent* frame of reference by which to decide whether they are right or wrong or how serious or trivial it is.
If all men were color blind, we would think women were being hypersensitive about the difference between red and green. It just wouldn't matter to us, and we'd wonder why they kept making a fuss about it.
It shouldn't be surprising that there is sexism of one sort or another in FOSS development. It's everywhere, and at all levels of Western society.
Sexism is so pervasive that we have a hard time recognizing all but the most obvious forms. And yet most of us recognize that it is an undesirable human quality, like bigotry or religious fundamentalism. So when we are called on sexist behavior, our first reaction is to get massively defensive and deny the problem. We're not sexist! We think sexism is evil! Some of my best friends are women!
Uh-huh. The problem is, the person calling you on your sexism ISN'T making it up. From her point of view, denying it just means you're as clueless as all the other men.
Guys, it doesn't matter whether your intentions are good. Sometimes you will say or do something sexist. You probably didn't mean too, you'll probably be really embarrassed to find out, but that doesn't change anything. The best thing to do is acknowledge, apologize, and try to accept that what you said or did was sexist. Even if you don't know why. Even if you think it wasn't.
Denying that what you did was sexist is the same thing as saying that what you did was fair because you played by the rules. It's not fair if the rules aren't fair. And the rules, in our society, aren't fair to women. Until we invent some new rules, you're going to have to cope with on-the-fly correction.
DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Apologize and think and try to do better next time.
Atomic.
Atomic battery. Seriously, it's all quaint and 1950s. Still a little cool and scary, but also fully controllable.
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were Nuclear Power Plants, generating Nuclear Power. We want to build Atomic Energy Stations that generate Atomic Energy. See the difference in how it sounds?
Yeah, like others I bought one of these based on Slashdot hype the last time around. And got burned.
In a nutshell:
- That router used a proprietary firmware format, and there were no obvious tools or shell scripts posted that would convert, say, current Tomato source to a package that would install on the Netgear.
- There wasn't even a freekin' howto!!!
- Community support is "provided" by the commercial MyOpenRouter site, which doesn't seem to be affiliated with, sponsored by, or in any other way connected to Netgear. It's some kind of back-alley licensing deal.
The result was that I found myself relying on untrusted third parties with no accountability to compile firmware for my router, and the firmware they offered was six months out of date and missing important fixes.
That's not support for Open Source, it's a twisted perversion of it. It smacks of carelessness and greed on Netgear's part, and a foolish attempt to stay relevant while their high-end sales are devoured by Linkysys and their excellent WRT-54GLS.
Before you buy one of these, take a look at the MyOpenRouter site and see if they've provided decent documentation, tools, and up-to-date firmware since last year.
So the planet is essentially a conveyor belt always in the process of being destroyed and created. The contents of the entire planet could have gone through this process many times already.
This is how you get real estate agents interested in astronomy. This planet just keeps making new land!
The idea is to build the page in fail-state first, and then use JavaScript to enhance it. Or in other words, build your DOM and then restyle, add event listeners, etc.
It doesn't take extra time, and it's a great technique for future-proofing your pages. It also makes them accessible to people who, for whatever reason, can't take advantage of teh javascript. If your website is in the US, and is big enough for anyone to care, ADA compliance pretty much requires it.
There is nothing stopping any of the console makers from embracing the iPhone, and turning it into an extension of the console experience rather than a competitor to it. (Well, okay, something might stop Microsoft, but Sony and Nintendo have nothing to lose.)
With a single app the iPhone becomes a full color smart controller, with mutli-touch, motion sensing, and a built-in camera.
Allow developers to incorporate that functionality into the iPhone versions of their console games, and you enable a seamless gaming experience from home (where the epic action happens) to the larger world (where you mini-game, grind, or play in smaller-scale settings).
The problem isn't so much the engineering. That's just applying new technology to the age-old practice of agriculture.
The problem is that Monsanto (and others) want to control the rights to the genetic code they produce. This puts them in the position to benefit from the natural spread (through pollination) of their intellectual property. Yes, they produced the code originally. But that code replicates naturally! It's like the New York Times coming after you for licensing fees because you have copies of their photos in your browser cache.
There's tremendous potential for abuse in allowing a company to own genetic code in this way. How long before someone starts secretly creating viruses and blights in order to wipe out crops that happen to be missing a patented resistance gene?
I'm just a dump web guy, and not particularly evil. If I can cook up that scenario, you can bet that it has crossed the minds of executives at Monsanto.
Also, I think chat logs can not serve as evidence. Just as spoken language differs greatly depending on who you are talking to, the purpose of communication has a big influence on the level you are using to bring your thoughts across. You seldom chat with your superior. You usually chat with peers. Few of us would use the same phrases, figures of speech and abbreviations in a professional document, yet most of us have at one point used such language, to a degree.
OMG, so true. There's a theater company in New York that specializes in converting long, rambling telephone conversations into dramatic theater. The actors use ipods to stay in sync with the dialog, and the performances are hilarious. There's a lot of "yeah, um" and "so then I, no, wait" and so on.
If you really listen to yourself or others talk, casually, you'll realize just how much verbal communication is about context and expression, and how little syntax and the actual meaning of words plays into it.
I use Pixelmator a lot, and for what I do (web) I can get by without Photoshop.
But man I wish I had Photoshop. Pixelmator is lacking that extra few percent of polish, and in some really stupid places.
I mean, here's a tool which is really only useful for web images. Do they support Hex colors? No, they use the standard lame OS X color picker. There's also no way to see how big your selections or crops are, except to squint at the dark-on-dark rulers.
At least it has layers.
Civil trials have a heck of lot less to do with proof and right and wrong, as they do with who is more attractive to the jury.
I see a strong market in cloned celebrity IDs, then.
"Honestly I'm George Clooney, here's my Secure ID. This is what I look like without all those lights and makeup. Now can we settle this little matter and go out for beer?"
Yes, by all means tell ME when I'm subjecting my laptop or phone to unsuitable conditions, or doing something to it that might violate the warranty.
Everyone assumes that this patent is for a secret recording device. Didn't read the patent, but if it is then they're shooting themselves in the foot. The real benefit to the consumer of this idea is that the sensors in the device can alert you to damaging behavior. Kind of like the old warning that you used to get when you shutdown your Mac using the power switch instead of the Shutdown menu. The ideal way to do this is to throw up an alert that says, "Hey, you did something stupid that could break your computer. Maybe you should be more careful."
The last thing any company should want is a "he said, it said" situation where they have to call their customer a liar. Unless the accelerometer and other sensors are independently certified and recalibrated (like an odometer), this technology should be advisory at best.
Whoever tagged this "youremyonlyhope" is a genius!
I resolve right now to buy a video camera with a built in hologram projector, just in case I'm kidnapped by the Empire.
I knew it!
Sure, they can put the whole moon into Google Earth, but can they get it to tell you the name of the river outside your window?
No, didn't think so.
I love G.Earth, but it's still a toy. It could be so much more, but they go for flashy stuff like this over solid geographical info.
If cameras prevented crime, there would be no such thing as a corrupt politician.
I do have a feeling though, that this plan was not exactly thought out. Any sale to a gullible official - who isn't spending their own cash yet comes out with statements like "I've never been so excited about anything" sounds like exuberance has got the better over common sense. I would expect that the money earmarked for this plan would be far better spent on orthodox police patrols: more officers, more man-hours and maybe even a few public awareness campaigns. Not as sexy, but far more effective.
Exactly. If this sort of thing worked, they would have been doing it since the 60s. It's not like highly detailed aerial photography is a new thing, and manpower was much cheaper then than it is now.
This is just some jerk mayor fell for a sales pitch. Some days it's a monorail, other days it's a flying surveillance platform. Hopefully someone with some sense will show up at the next City Council meeting and that's the last we'll hear of it.
I don't mind the Kindle DRM for three reasons
1) I don't usually re-read books. Not sure why, but I don't. Maybe when I turn 50 this will change, but in 10 years this will all look very different anyway.
2) The convenience and time savings of Amazon's "store" is worth the devaluation of the product caused by the DRM. I'm paying up to $8 per book not to have to go to Barnes and Noble, and I'm okay with that. I get new books the day they come out. I'm saving ink, paper, boxes, and fuel, not to mention space in my apartment and the municipal landfill.
3) I honestly think it will be broken before it becomes a pain in the ass.
But I'm extremely disturbed by hidden download limits. They clearly stated that they would keep your purchases on their servers so that you could restore them to the device at any time. Devices crash, break, get stolen, and get upgraded. The ability to always go back to Amazon for a fresh copy is a great feature, and one that really helps offset the value removed by DRM _at very little extra charge to Amazon_.
That's what doesn't add up: why would they risk lawsuits and alienate their core customers over something which costs them virtually nothing?