It's consumer interest that drives this. More people cared about getting music and movies. Most people don't read much.

That $9/month (more or less) that I pay is not enough to support a ecosystem to create new works, but it's plenty to milk more out of old works. Book subscription services (Amazon/Scribd/Oyster) live off the past. There's little chance that any new book that I want to read is in their libraries, but with 700,000 old books available, there's enough to keep me occupied, much in the same way that I can sit with Netflix and kill time with 10 years of Grey's Anatomy instead of supporting new works.

According to the Forbes article you referred to, Kindle sales are 19.5% of ALL book sales. Since all ebook sales are 30% of total book sales, Kindle sales are about 65% of ebook sales, not 19.5%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Until the US kills off the Grover Norquists and starts allowing tax increases as a possible policy option, we'll continue our descent into third-world status.

You may think 5 years is too short, but you do need some expiration date for non-critical data. Without an expiration date, whoever manages the data has to go into CYA mode and keep it forever. That gets expensive - it's not the cost of raw storage, it's the cost of ensuring that everything is kept as systems change.

If Bill gave away all but his last billion, he would still have A BILLION DOLLARS. So, nice of him to help, but there's no real cost to him for spending billions on charity work.

No, we can't.

How does showing how to fake the lunar landing images show that they weren't faked? Articles like this, that take the Apollo deniers seriously, are much more of a problem than the deniers themselves. Also, nice ad for Nvidia, Slashdot.

Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.

All Michael Phelps did was eat, sleep, exercise, and do bong hits. The typical Slashdotter, with his monitor tan, should not use him as a guideline.

Cable (or FiOS, if you're "lucky"), dial-up, or massive latency. O boy, what choices!

No one wants Windows 8, even on the only device where it might be useful.

...it's about pay scales - employers figure recent grads will work for less.

Argument Fail. Traffic of a certain type always has to come from a specific source. Prioritizing video over email helps video companies at everyone else's expense.