I just thought about it that this illustrates a benefit that selling Black Friday tech in low quantities at absurd prices brings--the Type A personalities that are most likely to influence people are also the types that will line up with sleeping bags at 6 PM the night before to get your goods, thus influencing others to buy at regular prices. Yet another example of prior art. However, I guess the supposed (and seemingly legit) unique aspect of MS' patent is using a social network to determine a person's influence rather than hand picking celebrities (sponsorship) or tailoring circumstances (Black Friday) or retroactive discounts (referral programs).

I actually had some remarkably good pizza a few weeks ago on a flight from Seoul, South Korea to Chicago on a Korean Air flight (I don't remember if we were over the Pacific or Soviet Russia atm of eating pizza, but since I ate the pizza, I guess it had to be the Pacific). So I voted "Other" because, while it wasn't the best pizza I've had, it was relatively excellent compared to my expectations, and plus that was the coolest poll option. Furthermore, a few rows in front of me was some cowboy from Texas nealing in his seat. Weird.

Yes. It takes us 5 seconds to an hour to actually come up with the fix, the remainder of the month is spent in bureaucratic hell - sitting in a trouble ticket queue, sitting in a verification queue, sitting in a QA manager's inbox, sitting with the communications team. Clearview, if it does what it says on the tin, only addresses the 5 second problem. Any "sane" dev shop would still run the resultant patch through the many cogs and loops of modern software management. You won't get your hole patched any quicker, you'll just have shifted the coders' attention away from your own app's bugs, and onto Clearview's bugs. Net gain: less than zero. Theoretically and conceptually, it's an interesting tool (you know, like Intercal). It just doesn't really fit in the industry, IMHO. [emphasis added]

You're missing the point. This isn't aimed at developers, it's aimed at end users.

The Kindle International edition was announced far before the Nook was announced. In fact, the release of the GSM Kindle was only a few days after the announcement of the Nook. So the features of the GSM Kindle were determined far before the Nook was announced. The price drop was done after the Nook was announced.

Furthermore, the article linked is only talking about the GSM Kindle in the UK. The GSM Kindle I have lets me use web surfing in the US without a problem.

Fundamentally, the issue here is not feature hobbling, it's airtime charges. At this point, Amazon seems to only be using a contract with AT&T for international roaming, which is absurdly expensive. Hopefully, Amazon will forge contracts directly with GSM providers across the globe and be able to afford to enable web surfing and book downloads without a surcharge. Right now a US-based customer can download books overseas, over-the-air for US prices, but has a $2.99 delivery surcharge because of the extra roaming charges Amazon has to pay. (Books can be downloaded to PC and loaded via USB at normal US Kindle prices.)

As it is, lifetime unlimited web surfing over US GSM & CDMA networks for the price of a device purchase is an unheard of bargain and a big profitability risk/experiment for Amazon. To do that worldwide with exorbitant roaming rates is unthinkable.

(Yes, I dislike Amazon's walled garden. Yes, I wish it was more open. Yes, I'm delighted that the Nook came out and is providing competition. But the Kindle was/is still an excellent, ground-breaking device that is setting all kinds of precedents.)

Amazon sent out an email this morning to people who bought an International Kindle (mine arrived yesterday) informing them that they had dropped the price by $20 and would be applying a $20 refund to my credit card. With this kind of customer service, I buy even my groceries from Amazon these days; no need to venture outside. I suspect that this is also fighting back against the Nook.

The new ($279) international version uses AT&T 3G GSM domestically.

Wow! That's scary! People will be looking back at our insane, all-knowing prognostications and laughing at what a bunch of idiots we are.

I "discovered found" a mistake; production of this story should have been delayed because of microscopic wrinkles in the sentence structure.

I appreciate how you raised the level of dialogue with a carefully reasoned, logical argument backed up with facts. /sarcasm

I say stick to the status quo until we know we can't.

The problem with that is, what if the "oh we can't stick to the status quo" moment is actually a massive human extinction event? The risk is that the "bullet has already been fired" so to speak. It won't hit for another 50 to 100 years, but it's on the way, and it'll cause damage when it finally does hit.

And that's ultimate irony of the most hysterical proponents of human caused global warming. They believe that we're already irreversibly doomed and that no matter what economic devastation we wreak on the developing world (read: starvation exacerbation), all we will do is the equivalent of attaching a few life vests to the Titanic. So if we were to believe and heed them, what's the point?

*ducks*

No, you mean du -cks * |sort -rn |head -11:
Mobile: EU Commissioner Wants Standard For Mobile Phone Connectors
Ask Slashdot: Does Your Vendor Issue Gag Orders?
Your Rights Online: Pirate Bay P2P Trial Begins In Sweden
News: Spiraling Skyscraper Farms For a Future Manhattan
Linux: Microsoft and Red Hat Team Up On Virtualization
News: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need?
News: New York Wants To Tax Internet Downloads
Science: Earth Under Threat From Dark Comets
Technology: Nuclear Subs 'Collide In Ocean'
Your Rights Online: Facebook's New Terms of Service

FTFA:

So we have two basic options: pay for bigger hardware, or spend more time writing/maintaining custom code that allows us to live on our existing hardware.

Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive:

Given the rapid advance of Moore's Law, when does it make sense to throw hardware at a programming problem? As a general rule, I'd say almost always. Consider the average programmer salary here in the US. You probably have several of these programmer guys or gals on staff. I can't speak to how much your servers may cost, or how many of them you may need. Or, maybe you don't need any--perhaps all your code executes on your users' hardware, which is an entirely different scenario. Obviously, situations vary. But even the most rudimentary math will tell you that it'd take a massive hardware outlay to equal the yearly costs of even a modest five person programming team.

From someone who's a published author, I expect better grammar in a book review.

That's what editors are for. In real life, good writers may be horrible at proofreading their stuff, but be excellent at connecting with their audience and expressing things in an easy to understand and entertaining way. As one of my professors said in a writing class, "Grab your readers by the eyeballs!"

(Far be it from me to criticize your Grammar Nazi ways; I'm with you the whole way. I did, however, want to take issue with that one sentence.)

When this book/review demonizes "chiropractic... medicine", it's talking about chiropractic methods that supposedly cure, for instance, your liver or high blood pressure. It's not talking about what a Doctor of Chiropractic (DC) does that demonstrably, scientifically, and certifiably puts your bones where they are supposed to be rather than where they aren't supposed to be (this is, quite obviously, a problem that needs to be fixed). The former is quite unproven by studies, while the latter is proven not only by studies, but is also shown logical by an 8th grade biology class. The former is an "off-label" use of the latter. Your injury/cure appears to have been the latter.