this just makes me laugh. Sure, waste a trillion on bailouts (you know, more are coming), waste trillions on wars that are pure profit for corporations but also are pure debt to the US citizens and declare a profit with the banks, who just got a bailout, without which they just would have collapsed.
The banks are paying back the "bailout money" left and right, with interest. Even GM has paid back quite a bit on its loans. "Of the $245 billion invested in U.S. banks, over $169 billion has been paid back, including $13.7 billion in dividends, interest and other income, along with $4 billion in warrant proceeds as of April 2010."
It's insane, they print free money, give it to the banks and banks buy from the Gov't long term money at about 4% - T-Bills. What are the profits are you talking about, it's a negative effect all around.
Borrowing from the Fed is 0.75%, while 4 week Treasury bills are 0.15% (1 year are 0.4%).
The Fed manipulates interbank interest rates (the Fed Funds Rate) by buying Treasury securities itself. It owns a lot of them, actually. So when the Treasury (that is, the U.S. taxpayer) has to pay interest on those Treasury securities, that money ends up right back at the Treasury.
But the basic premise is yes, the Fed creates money. But who effectively "gets" that money is not banks but the U.S. taxpayer (because at least most of the time direct borrowing from the Fed is quite low, and the Fed mostly buys and sells U.S. Treasuries).
There is NO DIFFERENCE whether it is the Fed, who inflates the value of money or some Joe Schmoe in his basement.
Except that the Fed pays its profits back to the U.S. Treasury. So provided you like any of the services the federal government provides, the Fed's actions help to pay for them. A counterfeiter only benefits himself/herself.
Based on what we're seeing and reports from the internet, McAfee 8.0 and 8.5 are unaffected by this problem, while versions 8.7 and 8.9 are. It's also XP specific. Still, that combination has to be a very large number of computers worldwide.
People own/rent DVDs right now, lots of them. There is no easy, legal way to rip DVDs to iTunes for use with the ipad. Easy would basically mean built-in functionality like CD ripping. Since realdvd got shut down, I don't think we're ever going to see Apple go that way. Besides - Apple wants you to buy (overpriced) movies on iTMS.
The best video options for the ipad now (Netflix, ABC player) require an internet connection, so aren't very useful in a car (I doubt most 3G data connections have the bandwidth to use it).
Much of Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain. Not all of the stories are, though (the exception being the latest work from the 1920s). The relevant rule appears to be creation +95 years, which in this case protects longer than death of the author +70 years.
Complicating matters is trademark law. While you can certainly distribute the text of old Sherlock Holmes stories (and Project Gutenberg does), what protections do the trademarks provide with regard to adaptations and the creations of derivative works with the same characters?
The best part is, running apps in the background on the older models has been possible since 2007 through a jailbroken app called Backgrounder, and there's even supplementary software like ProSwitcher that lets you have WebOS-style cards to boot, all in a paltry 128MB of RAM. RAM clearly isn't the issue - it's a clear case of Apple trying to force people to upgrade.
Others have reported here that using Backgrounder much on older iphones doesn't work well.
The iPad's A4 processor has the RAM inside the A4 package using package-on-package technology. Perhaps the RAM inside the A4 could have been a higher density, but space inside the iPad is not relevant.
Sure, but that's the route Apple decided to go. Yes, it probably saves cost and battery life to some extent (especially if that design is easily carried over into the next iphone). The ipad is basically a very fast cell phone with a great screen and huge battery.
The ipad is fast for most things now, but my early web-browsing and PDF-viewing experience suggests that RAM is at a premium on this device. Adding any kind of multitasking only makes that worse.
I think that's a bit of a stretch. For example, the older Nokia tablets (770, n800) had 64 and 128MB of RAM, respectively, and they had full blown multitasking. Not to mention slower processor than the iPhone. (770 and N800 had a 250 and 400MHz ARM, respectively).
Sure, lots of older computers had far less than 128 MB of RAM and did real multitasking. The issue is whether iphone OS and its apps on the earlier generations of hardware work well enough. You can bet they tested its performance. I suspect they found it quite lacking due to RAM and decided to disable multitasking rather than allow it and have it run poorly. More cynical people would say they're doing it to encourage upgrades.
The older iphones and ipod touches don't get multitasking likely because they only have 128 MB of RAM.
I was disappointed to find out the ipad only has 256 (same as the 3GS). RAM is cheap, and there's no lack of space inside the ipad for an extra chip. With the way Safari currently works, it starts dumping web page caches as memory fills up. That means going to another "tab" (through an expose-like interface) can often mean re-loading the page from scratch, in practice. Word is the iphone 3GS does this a lot less, so it's definitely something they need to address for the ipad. Because the expose is two taps instead of the one required for tabs, and because of this reloading, I find myself using substantially fewer open browser windows on the ipad than on a desktop.
I'm starting to think they need to use part of the flash memory to cache things, especially with multitasking (that's what the "fast app switching" I presume does - save the full state of app memory on flash). The biggest downside to this is it wears down the flash.
I was a little disappointed to find out that the ipad release will be "fall". So far, though, the only time I've really wanted multitasking (or some pseudo-multitasking) is to play audio from Pandora or Magnatune while doing other tasks (and you can use the Magnatune website to stream since Safari's media player multitasks). Most of the other features are really for iphone users (ibook app, improved mail - though unified inbox will be nice).
By the way, anyone looking for an extremely thorough review of the ipad should look here. I have no relation to the author, but I found he covered things extremely well.
2, enhanced user experience, customer buys it and hacks it to do something else
If Apple really wanted to do this, it would make the developer program basically free instead of $100/yr. That way those users could compile whatever they wanted and run it on their device. Voiding your warranty just to get ssh/sftp running it silly.
There may very well be inside information, but I doubt the decision to leak such information comes from very high up.
That's more than likely a function of your age, not the intrinsic fun of the game. Many people seem to have an age where video game enjoyment is at a peak. Afterwards we're nostalgic for the fun we had at the time. There seems to be similar effects with some genres of movie (especially sci-fi) and music.
Why don't all car radio setups come with a line-in jack? Even many of the aftermarket ones don't have them (on the front, at least). Such a cheap part, and yet so many people use their ipods via FM tuner or tape adapter.
I agree, the story seems to complain that the cost of eReaders is comparable to the iPad which is blatantly incorrect, the vast majority of readers come in at half the price of the base iPad. I do hope this results in downward pressure on Amazon and Sony to hit the $99 mark, really 3G, wifi, etc. aren't truly necessary in a reader.
Necessary? No, but I think they are a huge reason why the Kindle was the first ereader to really take off. Syncing to a computer with a cable is not something most people want to bother with very often; in addition, the 3G purchases promote impulse buying, which seems like a really big deal with books. You're sitting in the airport and your plane is delayed. Ordinarily people went and bought an overpriced newspaper at the newstand or a book from the tiny shop. Now they can buy almost any of the major titles for $8-13 without even gathering up their carryons. Even wifi-only isn't good enough (though it certainly is cheaper), since it precludes people from buying books in the car or most airports with non-free wifi (who wants to pay $6 for wifi for a $10 book?).
That said, we will see $100 ebook readers (I'm surprised Sony hasn't gotten there already). I just don't think they will end up as popular (and no Kindle will ever be without wireless; it's part of the appeal of the Amazon way). My guess is the Kindle hits $199 by the summer, $149 by the holidays. Maybe for the 2011 holiday season we'll see $99 Kindles.
I'm a big fan of Linux (been running it as my primary OS for over a decade), yet I'm still getting an iPad. I don't like Apple's closed nature at all, but I've been on the lookout for a way to nicely read (and annotate) PDFs since the Kindle DX came out. My price point is about $500, and right up until they announced the price I thought that there was no way Apple would have the cheapest model be that price. I really like eink screens, but they seem better suited to linear reading of books rather than referencing PDFs.
The one really nice thing about the Apple store model and Apple's general market share is that you can be sure there will be serious app support. My Nokia phone (e63) runs Symbian and lets me run whatever I want on it, but most of the software out there (including the included software) is really bad. So it's not enough for a company (especially a small one) to release a device - it needs to have good software. The Barnes and Noble Nook is another example - great hardware (relative to the Kindle), but the initial software was terrible (didn't even support bookmarks after turning it off!).
Real tablets - that is, computers running full OSes like Windows or Linux - just aren't compelling to me. I want something thin and light for reading with good battery life, not a replacement for my 14" laptop. Aside from that, the Linux software I use would be absolutely horrid with a touch screen (you'd basically need a stylus for everything). I have some hope for various Android devices, but as of January most of these were still basically rough prototypes.
That said, it was clear when the iPad was announced that this wasn't a product for everybody. Not everyone wants or needs a separate device primarily for consuming media. I suspect the keyboard will be painful for all but the shortest of sessions; even movie watching will be somewhat awkward without a case helping to hold it in place at a good angle. Some people do legitimately need multitasking support the iPad doesn't provide (at least not yet). But relative to the Kindle DX, it seems much more compelling for my use. This is especially due to the app support: twocompanies have already announced iPad-specific PDF readers as replacements for the built-in reader (and the latter program supports annotations).
Apple's mobile devices get good app support because the install base is large and the number of devices are small. As I understand it, UI layout is done by pixel, allowing for very precise placement but horrible problems if you try to support many resolutions. With Android on everything from 3" smartphones to 5" Dell minis to 10" netbooks/tablets all at various resolutions even within a screen size (see, e.g. the Droid's awesome resolution), it's going to be tricky.
As an ereader (provided you're okay with the better-than-netbook-worse-than-eink IPS screen), the iPad looks almost ideal. You get Apple's bookstore, BN's bookstore (they officially announced they'll have an ipad-specific version ready about the time of the release), and likely an Amazon Kindle app (among other smaller ebook stores). If they drop the price on a Nook or Kindle within a year or two I can totally see picking one of those up to complement the iPad for pleasure reading. The Kindle app (and probably the BN app, I'm not sure), keeps track of what page you're on. You use any device and pick up where you left off. There is not (yet) any BN or Kindle app for Android or Linux/X11. If you don't like DRM books, that's fine - you'll be able to read whatever non-DRM ebooks you can find on the iPad (as opposed to more limited ebook readers).
As for the app store, I agree that Apple's effective censorship is very annoying. I'd love to have ssh/scp and a few other apps without needing to jailbreak the device. At this point Apple can't just open it up though, they'd get a lot of flack for that. Instead, they need a way out; I'd love to see them make
This is another revision over previous 64-bit Flash revisions. I've been using it for months, mostly without trouble.
Around mid-January though, Hulu broke with all Linux clients running 64-bit Flash. You get "Sorry, we are unable to stream this video", and the support forum is full of people reporting it. As far as I know Hulu has provided no response, and there are rumors that something related to video DRM that Hulu enabled (must be recently) is not supported in the 64-bit Flash player yet. Workarounds including using the Hulu desktop (which some report as buggy), watching at least some of the videos via Fancast (which I didn't even know existed), or using the 32-bit plugin. I just tried this 10.0.45 release and it has the same problem.
What? People on here will not consider a Kindle because it has drm in it but they will consider the iPad.
The kindle is more locked down in many ways than the ipad (well, than the ipad will be when it's released). The ipad supports epub, and most people seem convinced that Amazon and Barnes and Noble will port their iphone apps to the larger ipad screen. The ipad may have its apps available only through the app store, but it's going to support far more file formats than the kindle.
I don't have access to the SDK, and can't answer the first two questions, but the iPhone does have both a Kindle app and a BN e-reader app. I take this as a very strong indication that the iPad will have those too, shortly after it comes out.
Sure, I know the iphone apps exist. But Apple doesn't allow apps which compete with its own, generally. Hopefully the precedent of the Kindle and BN app means that the PR would be too awful if Apple tried to block ipad-specific ebook apps. The ipad could turn out to be the most open device in terms of supporting ebook formats. Pick your viewer/store and make use of all ebook providers. It's annoying that part of the choice in Kindle vs. nook is to lock yourself in to one of the two stores.
Amazon took its time releasing an iphone app, so I'm not holding my breath that an ipad app will be ready soon. No idea about BN. Still, neither are (yet) available for those Android competitors.
And none of it was purchased through your iPhone. You can purchase music on a computer and transfer it to the device, but there's no way to get non-iTunes music through the device itself.
Having never owned an iPhone, what does Apple do to restrict web downloads of mp3s from Amazon or any number of other online services? The only thing I can think of is that the ipod app is incapable of adding news mp3s to its index without itunes on a computer, but I'm just asking...
While I certainly think that $15 is overpriced for an ebook, I say let Macmillan potentially shoot themselves in the foot with their pricing. Amazon should be focused on making everything possible available in ebook form and letting the consumer decide what's a good deal. Amazon can always go back to Macmillan with sales stats to show them what they're losing (or not...perhaps $15 really does maximize profit for them). With sample chapters and the possibility of very low prices from smaller publishers, ebooks provide a great way for lesser-known stuff to be widely available. The same thing happened in music; it's far easier to get fairly obscure stuff via the internet than in CD form at a store.
What's a little strange about the ebook market is the fixed breakdown for the retailer (seems to be moving to 70 publisher 30 retailer), while in the hardcover world Walmart, Target, and Amazon are falling over each other to bring you the books with little or no markup over wholesale. Still, Amazon is offering the 70-30 split only if you priced your book under $10 (otherwise it seems to be 65-35).
Do the record labels even make Compact Discs anymore? I thought they all switched to non-conforming discs compatible with some CD players
The backlash against those copy-protected discs was strong enough that I haven't seen one in a while. The CD these days is still the best way to get a non-EULA encumbered, lossless version of the vast majority of music. The loss of "first sale" rights may be one unfortunate consequence of moving to online distribution. I prefer my music to come without a license.
In the case of MySQL, stop using a toy and start using a REAL database.
Generally speaking, MySQL is very well suited for home use. I'm as much of a proponent of using the right tool for the job as anyone, but the various home applications are the sort of thing that MySQL is aiming to serve. Given how long we've been transitioning the ipv6, the lack of support for it in NFS and MySQL is disheartening.
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The banks are paying back the "bailout money" left and right, with interest. Even GM has paid back quite a bit on its loans. "Of the $245 billion invested in U.S. banks, over $169 billion has been paid back, including $13.7 billion in dividends, interest and other income, along with $4 billion in warrant proceeds as of April 2010."
Oh, and here are the profits.
Borrowing from the Fed is 0.75%, while 4 week Treasury bills are 0.15% (1 year are 0.4%).
The Fed manipulates interbank interest rates (the Fed Funds Rate) by buying Treasury securities itself. It owns a lot of them, actually. So when the Treasury (that is, the U.S. taxpayer) has to pay interest on those Treasury securities, that money ends up right back at the Treasury.
But the basic premise is yes, the Fed creates money. But who effectively "gets" that money is not banks but the U.S. taxpayer (because at least most of the time direct borrowing from the Fed is quite low, and the Fed mostly buys and sells U.S. Treasuries).
Except that the Fed pays its profits back to the U.S. Treasury. So provided you like any of the services the federal government provides, the Fed's actions help to pay for them. A counterfeiter only benefits himself/herself.
Based on what we're seeing and reports from the internet, McAfee 8.0 and 8.5 are unaffected by this problem, while versions 8.7 and 8.9 are. It's also XP specific. Still, that combination has to be a very large number of computers worldwide.
People own/rent DVDs right now, lots of them. There is no easy, legal way to rip DVDs to iTunes for use with the ipad. Easy would basically mean built-in functionality like CD ripping. Since realdvd got shut down, I don't think we're ever going to see Apple go that way. Besides - Apple wants you to buy (overpriced) movies on iTMS.
The best video options for the ipad now (Netflix, ABC player) require an internet connection, so aren't very useful in a car (I doubt most 3G data connections have the bandwidth to use it).
Much of Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain. Not all of the stories are, though (the exception being the latest work from the 1920s). The relevant rule appears to be creation +95 years, which in this case protects longer than death of the author +70 years.
Complicating matters is trademark law. While you can certainly distribute the text of old Sherlock Holmes stories (and Project Gutenberg does), what protections do the trademarks provide with regard to adaptations and the creations of derivative works with the same characters?
Others have reported here that using Backgrounder much on older iphones doesn't work well.
Sure, but that's the route Apple decided to go. Yes, it probably saves cost and battery life to some extent (especially if that design is easily carried over into the next iphone). The ipad is basically a very fast cell phone with a great screen and huge battery.
The ipad is fast for most things now, but my early web-browsing and PDF-viewing experience suggests that RAM is at a premium on this device. Adding any kind of multitasking only makes that worse.
Sure, lots of older computers had far less than 128 MB of RAM and did real multitasking. The issue is whether iphone OS and its apps on the earlier generations of hardware work well enough. You can bet they tested its performance. I suspect they found it quite lacking due to RAM and decided to disable multitasking rather than allow it and have it run poorly. More cynical people would say they're doing it to encourage upgrades.
The older iphones and ipod touches don't get multitasking likely because they only have 128 MB of RAM.
I was disappointed to find out the ipad only has 256 (same as the 3GS). RAM is cheap, and there's no lack of space inside the ipad for an extra chip. With the way Safari currently works, it starts dumping web page caches as memory fills up. That means going to another "tab" (through an expose-like interface) can often mean re-loading the page from scratch, in practice. Word is the iphone 3GS does this a lot less, so it's definitely something they need to address for the ipad. Because the expose is two taps instead of the one required for tabs, and because of this reloading, I find myself using substantially fewer open browser windows on the ipad than on a desktop.
I'm starting to think they need to use part of the flash memory to cache things, especially with multitasking (that's what the "fast app switching" I presume does - save the full state of app memory on flash). The biggest downside to this is it wears down the flash.
I was a little disappointed to find out that the ipad release will be "fall". So far, though, the only time I've really wanted multitasking (or some pseudo-multitasking) is to play audio from Pandora or Magnatune while doing other tasks (and you can use the Magnatune website to stream since Safari's media player multitasks). Most of the other features are really for iphone users (ibook app, improved mail - though unified inbox will be nice).
By the way, anyone looking for an extremely thorough review of the ipad should look here. I have no relation to the author, but I found he covered things extremely well.
The 3G and second gen ipod touch can get the update, but no multitasking support.
The 3GS and third gen ipod touch get multitasking (probably in large part because they have 256MB of RAM instead of 128).
If Apple really wanted to do this, it would make the developer program basically free instead of $100/yr. That way those users could compile whatever they wanted and run it on their device. Voiding your warranty just to get ssh/sftp running it silly.
There may very well be inside information, but I doubt the decision to leak such information comes from very high up.
That's more than likely a function of your age, not the intrinsic fun of the game. Many people seem to have an age where video game enjoyment is at a peak. Afterwards we're nostalgic for the fun we had at the time. There seems to be similar effects with some genres of movie (especially sci-fi) and music.
Why don't all car radio setups come with a line-in jack? Even many of the aftermarket ones don't have them (on the front, at least). Such a cheap part, and yet so many people use their ipods via FM tuner or tape adapter.
Necessary? No, but I think they are a huge reason why the Kindle was the first ereader to really take off. Syncing to a computer with a cable is not something most people want to bother with very often; in addition, the 3G purchases promote impulse buying, which seems like a really big deal with books. You're sitting in the airport and your plane is delayed. Ordinarily people went and bought an overpriced newspaper at the newstand or a book from the tiny shop. Now they can buy almost any of the major titles for $8-13 without even gathering up their carryons. Even wifi-only isn't good enough (though it certainly is cheaper), since it precludes people from buying books in the car or most airports with non-free wifi (who wants to pay $6 for wifi for a $10 book?).
That said, we will see $100 ebook readers (I'm surprised Sony hasn't gotten there already). I just don't think they will end up as popular (and no Kindle will ever be without wireless; it's part of the appeal of the Amazon way). My guess is the Kindle hits $199 by the summer, $149 by the holidays. Maybe for the 2011 holiday season we'll see $99 Kindles.
I'm a big fan of Linux (been running it as my primary OS for over a decade), yet I'm still getting an iPad. I don't like Apple's closed nature at all, but I've been on the lookout for a way to nicely read (and annotate) PDFs since the Kindle DX came out. My price point is about $500, and right up until they announced the price I thought that there was no way Apple would have the cheapest model be that price. I really like eink screens, but they seem better suited to linear reading of books rather than referencing PDFs.
The one really nice thing about the Apple store model and Apple's general market share is that you can be sure there will be serious app support. My Nokia phone (e63) runs Symbian and lets me run whatever I want on it, but most of the software out there (including the included software) is really bad. So it's not enough for a company (especially a small one) to release a device - it needs to have good software. The Barnes and Noble Nook is another example - great hardware (relative to the Kindle), but the initial software was terrible (didn't even support bookmarks after turning it off!).
Real tablets - that is, computers running full OSes like Windows or Linux - just aren't compelling to me. I want something thin and light for reading with good battery life, not a replacement for my 14" laptop. Aside from that, the Linux software I use would be absolutely horrid with a touch screen (you'd basically need a stylus for everything). I have some hope for various Android devices, but as of January most of these were still basically rough prototypes.
That said, it was clear when the iPad was announced that this wasn't a product for everybody. Not everyone wants or needs a separate device primarily for consuming media. I suspect the keyboard will be painful for all but the shortest of sessions; even movie watching will be somewhat awkward without a case helping to hold it in place at a good angle. Some people do legitimately need multitasking support the iPad doesn't provide (at least not yet). But relative to the Kindle DX, it seems much more compelling for my use. This is especially due to the app support: two companies have already announced iPad-specific PDF readers as replacements for the built-in reader (and the latter program supports annotations).
Apple's mobile devices get good app support because the install base is large and the number of devices are small. As I understand it, UI layout is done by pixel, allowing for very precise placement but horrible problems if you try to support many resolutions. With Android on everything from 3" smartphones to 5" Dell minis to 10" netbooks/tablets all at various resolutions even within a screen size (see, e.g. the Droid's awesome resolution), it's going to be tricky.
As an ereader (provided you're okay with the better-than-netbook-worse-than-eink IPS screen), the iPad looks almost ideal. You get Apple's bookstore, BN's bookstore (they officially announced they'll have an ipad-specific version ready about the time of the release), and likely an Amazon Kindle app (among other smaller ebook stores). If they drop the price on a Nook or Kindle within a year or two I can totally see picking one of those up to complement the iPad for pleasure reading. The Kindle app (and probably the BN app, I'm not sure), keeps track of what page you're on. You use any device and pick up where you left off. There is not (yet) any BN or Kindle app for Android or Linux/X11. If you don't like DRM books, that's fine - you'll be able to read whatever non-DRM ebooks you can find on the iPad (as opposed to more limited ebook readers).
As for the app store, I agree that Apple's effective censorship is very annoying. I'd love to have ssh/scp and a few other apps without needing to jailbreak the device. At this point Apple can't just open it up though, they'd get a lot of flack for that. Instead, they need a way out; I'd love to see them make
This is another revision over previous 64-bit Flash revisions. I've been using it for months, mostly without trouble.
Around mid-January though, Hulu broke with all Linux clients running 64-bit Flash. You get "Sorry, we are unable to stream this video", and the support forum is full of people reporting it. As far as I know Hulu has provided no response, and there are rumors that something related to video DRM that Hulu enabled (must be recently) is not supported in the 64-bit Flash player yet. Workarounds including using the Hulu desktop (which some report as buggy), watching at least some of the videos via Fancast (which I didn't even know existed), or using the 32-bit plugin. I just tried this 10.0.45 release and it has the same problem.
The kindle is more locked down in many ways than the ipad (well, than the ipad will be when it's released). The ipad supports epub, and most people seem convinced that Amazon and Barnes and Noble will port their iphone apps to the larger ipad screen. The ipad may have its apps available only through the app store, but it's going to support far more file formats than the kindle.
Sure, I know the iphone apps exist. But Apple doesn't allow apps which compete with its own, generally. Hopefully the precedent of the Kindle and BN app means that the PR would be too awful if Apple tried to block ipad-specific ebook apps. The ipad could turn out to be the most open device in terms of supporting ebook formats. Pick your viewer/store and make use of all ebook providers. It's annoying that part of the choice in Kindle vs. nook is to lock yourself in to one of the two stores.
Amazon took its time releasing an iphone app, so I'm not holding my breath that an ipad app will be ready soon. No idea about BN. Still, neither are (yet) available for those Android competitors.
Perhaps someone with access to the SDK can answer the first or second.
1.) Does the pixel doubling of iphone apps include all text rendering?
2.) Is the PDF viewing app built in any good? Can it remove margins or doing any kind of annotations?
3.) Will Apple do anything to block an ipad-specific Kindle app or Barnes and Noble app from the App Store?
Having never owned an iPhone, what does Apple do to restrict web downloads of mp3s from Amazon or any number of other online services? The only thing I can think of is that the ipod app is incapable of adding news mp3s to its index without itunes on a computer, but I'm just asking...
While I certainly think that $15 is overpriced for an ebook, I say let Macmillan potentially shoot themselves in the foot with their pricing. Amazon should be focused on making everything possible available in ebook form and letting the consumer decide what's a good deal. Amazon can always go back to Macmillan with sales stats to show them what they're losing (or not...perhaps $15 really does maximize profit for them). With sample chapters and the possibility of very low prices from smaller publishers, ebooks provide a great way for lesser-known stuff to be widely available. The same thing happened in music; it's far easier to get fairly obscure stuff via the internet than in CD form at a store.
What's a little strange about the ebook market is the fixed breakdown for the retailer (seems to be moving to 70 publisher 30 retailer), while in the hardcover world Walmart, Target, and Amazon are falling over each other to bring you the books with little or no markup over wholesale. Still, Amazon is offering the 70-30 split only if you priced your book under $10 (otherwise it seems to be 65-35).
The backlash against those copy-protected discs was strong enough that I haven't seen one in a while. The CD these days is still the best way to get a non-EULA encumbered, lossless version of the vast majority of music. The loss of "first sale" rights may be one unfortunate consequence of moving to online distribution. I prefer my music to come without a license.
Generally speaking, MySQL is very well suited for home use. I'm as much of a proponent of using the right tool for the job as anyone, but the various home applications are the sort of thing that MySQL is aiming to serve. Given how long we've been transitioning the ipv6, the lack of support for it in NFS and MySQL is disheartening.