Well, that went right over your head. Look up the history of the word "grok".

It may be that he knew exactly what he was saying, and his sentence would have been the same irrespective of whether he used that first word or... that other word I can't quite remember. Regardless, my point still stands.

You can't just create words out of the blue. People will never be able to grok your meaning if you do. You know I'm right, so don't be all fugnutish about it.

Not buying one isn't a solution in any sense of the word. It's leaving a problem unsolved. And I haven't bought one, so they don't have my money. However, if they offered extra bandwidth for an available fee, they'd have my money for the device, money for books, and money for additional bandwidth each month. They could even have an apps store, where I'd pay to download applications with the features I'd like.

Instead, they are leaving a partially untapped market open, and not receiving the income.

What I want it for is programming. And I do a large portion of my programming in vim. Vim, ssh, and a crude text only web browser would suit my purposes perfectly.

No, you're right, I've never used an e-ink screen, and the refresh times might be too slow to accomplish what I'd like to accomplish with it.

All I really want to do is be able to sit outside and program on nice days. I've tried on laptops with many different types of screens, and the experience is lacking.

You (and AndersOSU) definitely have a point. Specialized devices definitely should have a market.

The current problem is that I (and obviously a few others) really would like a netbook with an e-ink screen. There currently isn't a device for sale (that I am aware of) that provides this. But there are devices for sale that could provide this.

The problem we have isn't with them providing a niche product, it's that there isn't an equivalent general purpose product available. The only current way to solve that problem is to open up a niche product.

Amazon and B&N are in a market where there is a demand that is not being fulfilled, and I think they'll both regret not fulfilling that demand when open devices start being built and they (possibly) become more popular than either of their niche products.

Until then, they have the problems of being in a market where people have to create their own solutions.

That's not the argument at all. The argument is that you should know what your customers want, and if you can give it to them, you should, and should price your products accordingly.

If you don't, they will go with another product or create a solution for themselves out of the materials that they have.

Yes, so you allow free internet usage... up to a point, or for certain things. Then you charge.

Doesn't that sound like any reasonable plan?

Instead, they create a device that could do what you want, but is limited by DRM and artificial restrictions. That is just asking for the device to be opened up, and now they've created the problem they could have solved by simply pricing bandwidth appropriately and increasing their revenue stream.

Yes, and it should.

If I want to pirate a movie, I can go to a single site, find multiple options (1080p, 720p, ipod, ect) for just about every movie in existence. All of which are "in stock" and most of which I can download to my computer in less time it would take to drive to the store. The movie is presented to me without unskippable ads, without worry of scratching or losing, and can be archived without taking up space on my shelf.

All of this is free.

As most technical people are very aware, if I'm selling a product in a marketplace where a virtually identical product is available, I need to add value in order to get people to purchase through me instead of the competition. Adding value for movie studios is easy. They are selling legal copies and supporting the people who made the movies. The added value is already there. However, to add value, they need to provide an equivalent experience.

Currently, they aren't even close.

A sufficient amount of water or any other oxygen containing substance found in greater quantities on the other planets would explain the why the earth has so much atmospheric oxygen. Granted, that we know of, there is very little, but our understanding of what is contained on our planets is very limited. In addition, we're beginning to find evidence of oxygen in the form of water everywhere we look in areas where we hadn't found any before.

As far as Mars and Venus is concerned, CO2 has a pretty high concentration of 02 oddly enough. For the gas giants, hydrogen is much lighter than oxygen, and H2O contains quite a bit of H. Since we can only see what has floated up to the top of the gas giants, it really isn't a surprise that what we are able to measure easily is hydrogen.

Our atmosphere would have a much lower percentage of oxygen if plants hadn't pulled such a large amount of carbon out of the air and if our temperatures were low enough to keep all water vapor frozen and out of the atmosphere. That of course doesn't account for all of the differences by any means, but what we don't know about the composition of other planets (or our own for that matter) is far greater than what we currently know.

Whew! I'm so relieved I'm running Windows 8 on my main pc. My server running Windows 3.11 is probably in trouble though, I'll have to see...

Certainly. I plan to launch a series of 25 geosynchronous satellites providing broadband internet access to the entire world. It will be independent from any government's control or oversight. I'm going to call it the Archangel Network. ...What?

Exactly. I, and I'm sure many others, spent countless hours studying web technologies in the late 90's. I was starting to become quite an expert in typography, accessibility, interface design, and the myriad of technologies necessary to create complete web applications. Then I started trying to develop standards based web pages that worked in IE.

So, now I'm a database developer.

There could be one serious advantage of everyone's personal dirt being available at all times. Eventually people would have to stop pretending to be so perfect. People make mistakes, and currently as that isn't currently ok with society, everyone spends most of their lives trying to hide those mistakes from everyone else.

I think that's a larger detriment to us personally and to society as a whole than not being able to hide those things. If all of our dirt was public knowledge, we probably would be a bit more understanding.

This was in Bosnia. I'm pretty sure the guy was just bored.