..offer your products at very reasonable prices and make them available for easy download.

I do not need a box for a game, nor do I like going to the stores for one. I want a free preview download with one level and if I like it I will buy it when the price is right. EA got it right in my eyes, I got a free trial of C&C and then went and bought it through their online store. My download went at 1.2MB/s filling up my 10Mbps connection. The price was also slightly less than getting the boxed set in a local store.

Perhaps I am, reading the comments I do see the POV where Amazon severely infringes on the rights of their customers if you follow the line of thinking that once you have sold the product to someone they own it. But it is not new that this right is infringed upon and perhaps I have become somewhat dulled to the effects of it. Let me explain.

I have worked as a systems administrator in the past where we used volume licenses for the Microsoft products we used. Windows XP was one of them. Stupidly enough we allowed some of our users to use a copy of windows on their home machines (which Microsoft actually allows or at least allowed at the time). A copy of our volume license must have ended up in a torrent network or something and it got blacklisted. Then with one of the automatic updates the product was noted as no longer "Genuine". For us this was not a very big deal because we contacted Microsoft, got a slap on the wrist and a new key, and fixed our issues quickly. But the users already using our software at home ended up being unable to update their machines properly anymore.

Long story short, with incidents like this and having worked at Joost where we had to find a way to deal with these sorts of DRM issues, I suppose it is easy to get used to things like this happening. Hopefully, this will improve in the future, but I think it is more likely that it is something that we are going to deal with more and more. Like the guy in the article says,

Now I am not saying we should live with it, but it is easier. Damn, I guess I really am a pushover! ;-)

The referenced site in the article on Wired for the trailer and the D-9 site in the article here do not work for me it seems. I found a good trailer on the site Sony made for it.

This is sure to be a movie that I am going to watch, very interesting story. It also interests me that the director is from South Africa, the way the aliens are moved to camps does seem to have some parallels with the Apartheid

Amazon has refunded their customers according to the article, but if I was halfway through a book and it got deleted from my device I would be very annoyed. To me it seems that the better solution would be for Amazon to arrange the correct rights from the copyright holder and arrange some form of deal to make sure that those who have a copy of the book on their Kindle can continue to use it or receive a new copy with the proper rights and at no cost. In the end, the material was offered through their service and they do have responsibility to their customers, even if it is not illegal for them to use this solution.

The apology posted from Mr. Bezos sounds heartfelt indeed. I wonder how this will be handled in future incidents like this one. Unfortunately, in the Netherlands we do not have access to the Kindle. But even with the risks of allowing Amazon to retain control to remotely delete items you have purchased I would definitely be a customer for the device. I suppose that with products like these you have to decide whether you trust a supplier or not.

I work at Getronics in the Netherlands. Some of the colleagues that I work close to manage a special CA that is used to sign the certs for all government based websites. When a certificate is requested for one of these sites you can be sure that the requester is audited first. Then, to actually sign the key a ceremony is used which involves 7 people.

I started programming by learning python. Still valuable to know the language. But now I suppose I am screwed for life as I also write Java and C#. Why I would need to learn C++ is beyond me, perhaps I just need more convincing, but I have not had a project where I wished I knew more C++.

This promises to be a fun discussion, about what is good and what is best and what sucks. Personally, my opinion is that few are in a position to really say that one tool is better than the other. It is like telling a carpenter that he is better off using a screwdriver than a hammer, where obviously he has a purpose for both.

Best first language? The one you have most fun working with I think. When you have fun with a certain tool you are much more likely to have success and really learn it. But whatever tool you choose, whatever language you prefer, learning about the right way to use your chosen language is smart in any case. For that, python might be a good choice as a first language because it does force you to at least indent properly. If you are more of a mathematician it works well enough for functional programming too, so it does seem to be a safe academic choice.

Perl anyone?