I travel a lot and I read a lot so I've also been eyeing an ereader for quite some time. Until recently I've pretty much refused to buy one because I send paperbacks back and forth with my father after one of us gets done with the book and the idea of DRM offends me on pretty much every level. I also read quite a bit of sci-fi, specifically from the publisher Baen, and was unable to find any of that specific publishers books on Amazon or BN. After some searching I found that Baen does offer Ebooks for a couple of dollars less on older releases than a paperback and about half the price on new releases (hardcover only at the moment) through their own webstore without any DRM restrictions. As a result I am buying an ereader when I get home and will be directly supporting a publisher who sees that DRM is an awful idea, and has the advantage of not supporting a middleman like Amazon or BN.

I hope more Slashdotters will support publishers like Baen on their endeavor if only to show that DRM is not needed.

Steve Jobs was stopped with those items because he was passing through a public terminal to get to his aircraft. If he had boarded through a private gate onto the flight line, which many airports have, he would not have been subject to that scrutiny. It would be similar to boarding a small two seat aircraft at any grass strip or private FBO which are not subject to any security oversight.

I actually laughed at that quote too.

Having had a run with the joys of bored suburb code enforcement officers I can tell you first had how nasty these things can get because of an obscure law/city ordinance.

In my case I just told them that it wasn't going to happen and if they wanted to challenge me on it I'll be happy to take them to court and see what a judge thinks. That and I walked down the street and left a 15 minute message on her answering machine with the addresses of every single house on the street who also didn't comply with her petty nit picking, there was something like 10 of them...

There was an article a while back (no I can't find it with the 2 minutes of searching I did) where a magazine compared the ticket sales of economic recessions during the 90's and early 2000's. The summation of the article was that even with major blockbuster films, like Starwars ep 1, Hollywood made less money than the year before because times were good and people were doing things besides going to the movies, but in economic downturns they actually made more money. The theory was that audiences will attend movies to distract them from all the problems that they have instead of stewing in them.

I'll post it if I can find it but the laziness is running deep tonight.