No we are talking about adding a filter in the aggregator Planet Gnome, the guy can speak all he wants about VMwere elsewhere AND he can keep blogging about it, even in the same blog that he uses for the Gnome stuff, it just wouldn't show up in Planet Gnome.

Planet Gnome is an aggregator, it collects new items from news feeds usually blogs. It can handle rules to filter content by keywords and, more often, by tags.

He just tried to create the Chinese wall of text. Impenetrable to any human! ^^

apple tried that with the original iphone. it was $600 and didn't require a contract although it was locked to AT&T because they gave Apple $750 million to help with development. the tech media loved it and said how it was the next cool strategy. it was a colossal failure and AT&T started subsidizing it a few months later

LyX is your friend. It's a wonderful WYSIWYM(ean) editor for LaTeX.

Agreed. I've always just gone out, bought a new phone outright, and whacked my existing SIM card in it when I got home. None of this contract crap. But from what I can tell it is very hard/impossible to do that in the US? Which sucks ... I hate being tied to a particular carrier (and besides I have several SIM cards floating around that I tend to use in different situations).

Even worse, the US phones I've seen actually brand the phone hardware/firmware itself with the carriers logo and stuff. Wtf?! The phone should have NOTHING to do with the carrier. The analogy you made with brand X Wifi cards only working with brand X hotspots is a good one.

I used to make my own pizza too - actually making the dough myself and starting with home grown tomatoes.

While the product turned out perfectly edible (even relatively enjoyable), after about a dozen attempts I just accepted that my homemade pizza tasted about like a decent frozen pizza and I gave up on doing it anymore. Just not my thing I guess.

Now some Thai Fried Rice on the other hand I can cook up pretty good :).

Profits are not declining, they only want to make you think that they are. Look up Hollywood Accounting in wiki. Essentially, it's a sneaky technique that "hides" profits and allows you to pay less taxes while complaining that you're not making any money.

Unfortunately, people will believe whatever they choose to believe. I can tell you how much I love my Kindle, and how much use I get out of it, despite having it given to me as a gift (all of this is true), and you'll still believe it's because I'm trying to justify it if you choose to. This is true about everything else in life, you have to choose if you believe people at their face value or not. It's up to you.

That said, I really do love mine. I have the original Kindle, not the 2, nor the DX. Due to not being close to any libraries my reading over the years had started to slow down. Getting a Kindle really "rekindled" my reading experience, and I'm back to losing sleep due to staying up reading too long.

However, it's not for everyone, nor for every use. My thoughts when I heard they were going to try to push it for textbooks were along these lines: "Man I wish I could have used an E-Reader to carry around all my books, but this isn't the device."

The Kindle is absolutely wonderful for reading novels, even more for entire series. If I want to read something front-to-back, the Kindle is my device of choice. I can generally fit it in my pocket, go read in the park, on the porch, plane, wherever.

But using it as a replacement for textbooks? I generally wasn't very demanding of my textbooks in college. I didn't write in them, didn't do very much dogearing, etc. Hell, I would find the section the teacher was in and read straight through it once or twice and then be done. Seems like it'd be a good fit for the Kindle, but I just can't see it as easy to flip through.

Additionally, there are some people who just won't be able to "get" it. My brother took a look at it and immediately focused on it's (poor) internet capabilities rather than it's primary usage. It'd be worthless to someone like him.

Bottom line, it's mainly for people who enjoy lots of reading, and for flipping through a book of text in a linear fashion. It can do other things, but there are other devices that can do those things better. I don't get why Amazon's surprised that this went over like a lead balloon with many students...

What, because a guy asked for subscriber information? Amazon has not provided the information yet, and they've got no reason to. We could just as easily be talking about the IRS here... If I go and ask the IRS to provide me with everyone's information, is that a reason to distrust the IRS? Pretty sure the IRS's answer's going to be "No."

Just to clear up your questions... Please keep in mind that I've got a Kindle 1, not a newer one however.

Yes, you can use Amazon's format, mobi format, or standard text. rtf has not been directly accessible, but you can convert it using the free Mobipocket program (or Calibre). Both of which have their advantages and disadvantages, but they're both free and work fine. Additionally, you can just email Amazon your file and they'll convert it to the mobi format (with a azw extension). That file will either come back to you or will go to your device, depending on which method you use. There could be a small cost involved in sending it to the Kindle directly.

I've had the Kindle for a bit over a year now, and have yet to purchase any books from Amazon. My books have so far come from other sources using the mobi format, or from html/rtf/doc/pdf/etc. conversions.

I will say, I'm a bit disappointed that Amazon isn't pushing this conversion utility more. There's a strong impression among people that the Kindle is closed, but I've never felt that way. It's been far too easy to get everything I've wanted onto the device.

I also will use the MP3 capability to play music while I read, though it can handle audiobooks too. The battery drain on using the MP3 player came as a bit of a shock however... After using the device for a week of reading, MP3 playback drained the battery down over a heavy reading day on a trans-Atlantic flight...

Personally, I'm glad that Sony is taking aim at the Kindle. I've got a soft spot for my Kindle, it's revitalized my reading habits, but it has it's issues too. Any competition here should only help us in the long run.

Yes. You can hook it up via USB. And no, at that point it's not hooked directly up to their systems, so you wouldn't get updates, and you wouldn't get your stuff automatically deleted.

Personally, I'm fond of using the SD card in the first Kindle to load my books. It's the same as using the USB cable, but I don't have to find the cable. You can still buy them from wherever you like that way. Turning the wireless off has been a major performance boost for me, and at little loss.

People are forgetting, there's dozens of places to get books, and these other places won't have access to get something deleted from your Kindle.