Ahh, you miss the point. The vast majority do not need to understand the code.

Open source's strength is not that everyone has to read/understand the code -- it is that everyone can. It takes only one person to find an issue, then others can see for themselves and confirm/fix. If the vendor not fixing it fast enough, a fork or patch can be done without vendor's approval. On the other hand when Apple logged your location, it was only found by accident because they left data laying around. Then you had to wait for Apple to fix it, which, for all we know, they did by not leaving the data easily findable.

Of course that is not perfect and plenty of bugs and issues do not get found quickly in Open Source - but if it is popular enough, it is much harder to be evil on purpose and hide it.

Well let's do the math and see - the #1 and #2 on kindle top 100 paid are kdp(self) published, #3 is a publisher book. They are priced $3.99, $6.59, and $12.99. Assuming they all sell same number of copies (which giving their rankings they don't, but let's assume) author of the first gets about $2.79 a copy, author of the second one gets about $4.54, and the third is lucky if he is getting $1.29 a copy. You think the first two authors would rather be with the publisher?

And by the way, kdp is not only digital, you can get a paper copy too. There are even audiobooks available. Furthermore - you are not restricted to kdp either - you can sell through other channels too. Amazon will want the cheapest price though. Quick google of the #1 book finds her in a number of online bookstores.

Depends on what you want. Most people do not care if it is android, iOS or windows. Most people don't know what bootloader is, let alone know why a locked one is bad. In fact for most people, locked bootloader is good, or at least irrelevant. They want someone else to take care of everything for them and the device to just work, even if only in limited capacity. On the other hand Fire HD has nice hardware, stereo sound, good WiFi, hi-res screen, features not found elsewhere (xray, basic multiuser support, backup of your app data, etc) all at a dirt cheap price.

It is not a device for everyone - I'd rather have a real android device, but I get why it is popular and would even recommend itin some cases.

You are assuming their goal is to sell tablets. YOU ARE WRONG. They do not care about Android. They do not care about selling Fire to someone who wants an Android tablet. They are selling these things at cost, so the main thing they care about is you buying content and other items from them. If you want an open tablet, they would much rather you buy Nexus7. If you want apple experience, they cringe a little, but say "knock yourself out"- buy an iPad. Guess what, you can still use either to read Kindle content, or shop at amazon.com. If you don't want to do that, why should they waste their and your time selling you something you do not care about and they make no money on?

Truth is that you and I and others who want open devices are a minority. Most just want a simple device that just works and does the few limited things they need. Fire, (just like iPad) is for them, not for us. Just a way to make it easier to buy from amazon for those who WANT to buy from amazon and don't care about building our own custom ROMs or paying through the nose for overpriced iCrap. It is not a mistake, it is a brilliant strategy which is clearly working for them (22% of the market in under a year ain't bad)

According to Bezos in the Kindle HD presentation, something like a quarter of Kindle top 100 sellers are self published.

Erm, computer is inherently a computing device, not a communication device, thats why they call it a "computer" and not "communicator".

Knee-jerk much? At least spend a second Googling something you know nothing about before commenting.

This is EXACTLY like Opera Turbo - which is an optimizing proxy server - the only key difference is that Google's service is browser agnostic and Opera's designed to work with Opera browsers only.

-Em

Its Google - we expect magic. Damn the common sense!!!

Seriously though - they could support it by you providing them with a key/cert - just like any other HTTPS proxy. The issue is that the way GHS works - it is very difficult, if not impossible, to support SSL. They would have to have a separate dedicated IP for each site (i.e. no just assigning your DNS to ghs.google.com) or a very large, very convoluted, ever changing certificates with a LOT of aliases. This is why GHS never supported SSL - even for content hosted by Google.

-Em

LOL. Talk about pot calling kettle black. This is what happens when you read the slashdot summary instead of the source material. Allow me to explain what you are missing - what Google is doing is not a CDN at all, its just a bad summary. They are providing an optimizing proxy - it could care less if your content is static or dynamic, as long as it generates HTML output, it will work. It is unclear from first glance if the proxy is a caching proxy - I would guess it is - but even then it would be a stretch to call it a CDN in a modern sense of the word.

Generally I think when Microsoft release a patch of a security vulnerability - I do say good job. Everyone has security problems, the issue is how they deal with it - and Microsoft in the past often ignored the issue for a long time (I dont deal a lot with Windows these days, but it does seem that that has shifted as of late)

Of course as others pointed out - this less like Microsoft patches to their own code and more like forced Anti-Malware install - for which I have mixed feelings.

For the Google challenged: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/subsidiary

I suggest looking up the difference between "division" and "subsidiary". Subsidiary is by definition a separate company, so yes, it is a case of a separate company. Having tangled with Amazon's lawyers (not a very pleasant experience), I know for sure those guys do not leave anything to chance - so I am sure they crossed the T's and dotted the I's when it came to this sort of thing.

Well, they CLAIMED to be creating up to a thousand new jobs in planned expansions, though you are probably right, the real number would have been smaller (thus "up to" claim). Still, thats 119 REAL jobs slashed, still sucks for 119 families that have to either loose jobs or move out of state.

Really, Texas should get off their ass and just tax every internet purchase, like NY did. It'll save a lot of headaches to everyone involved instead of trying to trying to do weaselly and shady back-billing that even their own Governor disapproves of (as per the article you linked).

It sounds logical but has nothing to do with legal reality.

Reality is simple: Company A Sells a product, but they contract to Company B to do their distribution. Company B is not selling anything, so it is not in charge of collecting any sales tax, all they have to pay is income tax from the contract. It does not matter who owns what - as long as these are separate companies and are run as separate companies. It's a loophole, but a very established and known one. And it is very hard one to close down, as it would pretty much screw every public company - after all they are owned by a lot of people in a lot of states. Plus same people own lots of other company stocks, so by your logic they would all have to be treated as one company.

The only way out of this is by just flat taxing everything shipping to your state, like NY does. But really, that just screws the people of your state. Meanwhile Texas already screwed its people out of thousands of jobs and millions in taxes that the distribution center WAS paying. Go Texas!

Besides that you missed the concept of "example", you focused on "showing", where the key word was "request". You request something of a server and receive a reply action. The confusion here is that X-Server machine is CLIENT to user request to display something but it is a SERVER to the program doing the actual displaying.

Yes, except it is not so simple because you are missing the human factor. The trouble comes from definitions and how they are interpreted. For example you state that a "sounds server" serves sound output (i.e. sound card) but you can just as well call a shoutcast server a "sound server" - which is the opposite. Now you and I understand that they are both "servers", and that when someone listens to a shoutcast server they are a client to the shoutcast server AND a client to a sound card server and that they are two separate sessions, but to a lay-person this is not obvious in the least.

Pretty much.

-Em