Yes and no. I think you make a valid point, and yet the hybrid technology proposed in the article is an important step in the right direction. What I'm resistant to is the argument against moving in the direction of digital textbooks altogether in the absence of a perfect product. Color e-ink certainly sounds like a nice future, but in the meantime I think we need to get products in people's hands that start to turn the battleship. There will be a lot of infrastructure and process required to convert the textbook market into a viable digital system. What are we waiting for?

I think we're losing sight of the bigger picture here. What we're talking about is the possibility to make a significant change in the delivery of classroom text, and unbelievably the arguments against the *potential* for doing so are sounding much like the argument in favor of postal mail versus email. What about the tons of paper saved every year? The reduced barrier to publishing material? The ability to update inaccurate information mid-semester? I'm just a little speechless that people are readily naysayers about the matter, and/or are having a technology discussion instead of a discussion of the use case.

How exactly does the cost evaporate when you factor in the cost of an e-reader? Doesn't it seem that should this idea come to fruition that market forces will make this a no-brainer? It seems to me that the cost of an e-reader is on par with about a single semester's worth of textbooks. Subtract the cost of printing and distribution from the price of each e-book and you'll have no problem finding a way to make more money for the publisher and yet cost less money overall for the student assuming an e-reader can survive an average of four semesters or so.

I think the main theme is that laptops, netbooks, or tablets alone aren't perfectly suited for e-books and the needs of the student. Ideally, we'll have a solution someday that combines everything the student needs into one device. This article shows signs that the industry is finally acknowledging the need for a specialty product.

Because students tend to not check textbooks out of libraries. They buy them for the semester at considerable expense, and then have to lug them around all day. Or did you miss the use-case that this article is about?

Einstein's theory led to the atomic bomb. The most tangible output from any subsequent theory is "Stargate:Atlantis" at best. I doubt we'll have a satisfactory understanding of space, time, or gravity in my lifetime, and I'm not closing in on social security anytime soon.

...are the notorious 'employee discount codes' that vendors such as Dell and other have employed. A few years back I was looking to buy a new LCD and had a Dell in mind when I remembered my company had a discount code. So I dug it up, and used the instructions provided to logon to the 'discount' site (the mechanics of doing so may be different today.) To my surprise, I found that the 'discounted' price of the monitor was several hundred dollars more than just the plain ol' Dell site. WTF? How do you advertise a code and process as a discount, and then the merchandise therein is actually priced higher than your regular price from your main site? I'm glad I double checked before hitting the purchase button.

Currently, the entirety of the American people are helping to prop up this '8th largest economy'.

How exactly is that? The federal government wouldn't even extend a $7B loan to California recently, while Californian federal income taxes spent propping up AIG alone have far exceeded that sum. Cite one extra penny that's been diverted to California if you can.

Speed of light. No need to lead the target. You can use a low powered aiming laser to paint the target. Whenever you shoot something painted, you hit it. 186K Mps > 1K Mph

By the way, we could make a boatload of money selling these things in Afghanistan. Economy problems solved.

Two computers. One is a relatively high-powered PC suitable for gaming, etc. The other is a work laptop. Two displays, both connected to the PC. Primary display (27") for use as main PC. Secondary display (22") is typically used fullscreen for either A) work laptop running RDP, B) Linux VM via VMware Workstation 7, C) HDTV via Slingbox HD, or D) an actual secondary display for my main PC.

The beauty is that I don't need a KVM switch, and I can treat everything more or less like one big cloud. Hey, that's it. I've got the world's first personal cloud. Hold on while I patent my process and method of watching hockey while pretending to do work.

I'm that guy that only gets a strike when I take my 5-year old son bowling and they put up the bumpers. Hey! It takes some skill to setup the angle shot. What was that thingy about incidence and refraction again? It's a lot harder than just throwing the ball down the middle, you know, the easy way.

I know that a few years back at my previous employer the only reason I was able to get HP blades into the DC was due to the inclusion of Cisco switches in the blade enclosures. I wonder if HP will continue offering Cisco switches, and if not how badly will it hurt their sales? I think it's a lot easier for a networking guy to bring in a foreign x86 server than it is for a server guy to bring in a foreign switch to the DC. Round 1 goes to Cisco.

People tend to love government tinkering and interfering and generally overstepping their bounds a whole lot when the result happens to coincide with their own personal views and feelings. The criteria that should be considered are the laws and the constitutions concerning each governing body, no more or less. The last thing in the world I want are politicians violating their charter because they know what's best for the rest of us.

That's a valid point, but has no relevance on what a government body should use for criteria when deciding a matter such as this. Potential is everything you haven't done. Taking it to the extreme, there's no law or principle that dictates that Oracle may not buy Sun and promptly dismantle MySQL entirely. With the presence of IBM's DB2/UDB and MS SQL in the marketplace, there's no rational argument that Oracle+Sun with MySQL creates the risk of a monopoly. It's easy to argue that the marketplace is 'better off' with MySQL independent from Oracle, and it's valid to point out that 'someday' MySQL could rival Oracle. Neither of those arguments are valid decision making criteria for governmental restrictions. Businesses have the right to buy out the competition so long as in doing so they don't create a monopoly. The EC is trying to play Robin Hood instead of acting like a responsible, by-the-book government entity.

This is somewhat like preventing Mercedes-Benz from buying Kia in order to prevent a monopoly. As well-stated earlier, Oracle doesn't compete against MySQL often if at all. IBM and Microsoft appear to be the most legitimate competition Oracle has in their DBMS space, and MySQL wouldn't seem to impact the competitive balance all that much. Having said that, who would want MySQL? Cisco, HP, and EMC don't seem like good choices because they all have product families that each would hate to have to tie to a 'Runs Best with MySQL' campaign. Red Hat makes sense from a certain point of view, but I'm not sure they want to diversify into the DBMS space.

I happen to use two on different systems. On my work system I use Roboform, and on my home system I use the password manager included with Norton 360. IMO either one is fine. They both function almost exactly the same. I actually give a slight nod to Norton for providing an easier method to organize and manage the entries.