That's because the Nebraska Oranges are in such high demand that the farmers don't sell locally. Where do you think frozen orange juice comes from?

I made the mistake of moving a massive amount of files from one server to another with teracopy. When the move failed due to a dropped network connection, teracopy deleted all of the files in the queue, including those that it had failed to copy to the server.

Really? Where did you find a phone with a built in CD player? I want one! :-)

I remember DVD's, They made such pretty coffee coasters after I ripped all of their video to my media server.

I found some amazing compatibility the other day. I needed some files off of a hard drive for my old toshiba laptop.

The toshiba was an x86 core solo dual-booting the Windows 7 RC and Ubuntu 9.04. I threw it into my desktop with an i7 920 (64bit quad core) processor, Raedon 5770, ect, basically a bunch of hardware that didn't exist the last time the drive was booted.

Windows crashed on startup and wouldn't boot, but I was shocked when Ubuntu booted perfectly, connected to the network, and everything seemed to just work.

This is fantastic news! We can start charging people for incompetence then! We're going to be rich.

And no, I don't mean we, the United States, I mean we, as in Slashdot and it's editors!

Well, that went right over your head. Look up the history of the word "grok".

It may be that he knew exactly what he was saying, and his sentence would have been the same irrespective of whether he used that first word or... that other word I can't quite remember. Regardless, my point still stands.

You can't just create words out of the blue. People will never be able to grok your meaning if you do. You know I'm right, so don't be all fugnutish about it.

Not buying one isn't a solution in any sense of the word. It's leaving a problem unsolved. And I haven't bought one, so they don't have my money. However, if they offered extra bandwidth for an available fee, they'd have my money for the device, money for books, and money for additional bandwidth each month. They could even have an apps store, where I'd pay to download applications with the features I'd like.

Instead, they are leaving a partially untapped market open, and not receiving the income.

What I want it for is programming. And I do a large portion of my programming in vim. Vim, ssh, and a crude text only web browser would suit my purposes perfectly.

No, you're right, I've never used an e-ink screen, and the refresh times might be too slow to accomplish what I'd like to accomplish with it.

All I really want to do is be able to sit outside and program on nice days. I've tried on laptops with many different types of screens, and the experience is lacking.

You (and AndersOSU) definitely have a point. Specialized devices definitely should have a market.

The current problem is that I (and obviously a few others) really would like a netbook with an e-ink screen. There currently isn't a device for sale (that I am aware of) that provides this. But there are devices for sale that could provide this.

The problem we have isn't with them providing a niche product, it's that there isn't an equivalent general purpose product available. The only current way to solve that problem is to open up a niche product.

Amazon and B&N are in a market where there is a demand that is not being fulfilled, and I think they'll both regret not fulfilling that demand when open devices start being built and they (possibly) become more popular than either of their niche products.

Until then, they have the problems of being in a market where people have to create their own solutions.

That's not the argument at all. The argument is that you should know what your customers want, and if you can give it to them, you should, and should price your products accordingly.

If you don't, they will go with another product or create a solution for themselves out of the materials that they have.

Yes, so you allow free internet usage... up to a point, or for certain things. Then you charge.

Doesn't that sound like any reasonable plan?

Instead, they create a device that could do what you want, but is limited by DRM and artificial restrictions. That is just asking for the device to be opened up, and now they've created the problem they could have solved by simply pricing bandwidth appropriately and increasing their revenue stream.