I think the main reason to hack the kindles is to remove annoyances ... I buy a new kindle every year (yeah, I'm a sucker and I love the products) but I don't get my next one until I'm sure I can jailbreak it. Then I can add my own fonts, remove their ugly "screensavers" (exactly what am I saving btw? the display takes 0 power, just leave the fucking text there, thanks) and allow more formats (eg, epub). I buy a lot of books too, amazon isn't losing anything. Why don't they let me do these simple things out of the box? Idiots. No, wait, not idiots. If putting an mp3 in the usb drive can crack it... I think they know how to fix it and choose to not care. But this way, they not only have to not support it, but they don't even get the calls, "Hi, I cracked my kindle to use unsuported features; will you help me?"

There are also xss allow headers you can send in the http headers, called "http access control" and you can also get around it with things like JSONP.

It doesn't really have to be useful to do what you're describing. That's just gravy.

I'm under the impression that the current azw format is a mobi with hooks for the generation 1 kindles that do prc (palm III format) only. So your standard reader can read them, yes, by finding either the prc header or the mobi header. If it's encrypted, no so much, but yeah. it can read them.

... was document that he held the copyright or that he had permission to publish it.

This is standard procedure actually. You have to show that you hold the copyright or they won't publish it. I published a book for an author of a book that's been on the web for years. He (the author) had to fully document that he wrote it or they would have pulled the book -- despite the fact that we had a contract agreement that I was supposed to publish it. They insisted that only the copyright holder can publish under the model we had selected and they made him document it. That policy actually makes sense. There's like 6,000 copies of most public domain books, most of which are easier to read or better formatted for the web.

Oh, definitely. I just wanted to blame management and bad fortune, not webos. The platform is dead, I agree on all counts of that. I quit developing for it and tell customers on a monthly basis that I have no interest in updating the apps -- though I offer to help, help fork, or help publish if they wish to take on the code. But I don't think the half-hearted year-or-so they gave it (with no decent hardware releases) was enough to say that they couldn't develop a customer base. They got about as much as you can expect for a slow beginning in a market where iPhone/Android are the only two thoughts a customer thinks. It coulda worked if Palm had a billion dollars to throw at it like the other two giants. I doubt HP was capable of doing it even if Hurd had been able to stick around. But Palm maybe could have done it. Maybe.

You didn't quote the whole thing. I also said it takes time to develop a market share and that they gave up long before they tried because of a CEO change.

Usually. But in this case, Palm just ran out of money. If they had been able to persist, they'd have gained market. Look how long it took Android to come up. It's up now, so there's more devices. It was *not* like that initially. Personally, I didn't think they'd ever succeed, especially at first. But look at them now. Palm would have done the same thing. Hell, even HP would have done the same thing, if that CEO hadn't gotten fired. The new management at HP abandoned the platform after they fired the guy that bought Palm (Hurd)

The cards worked better because I knew what I wanted running and what I wanted closed. Android seems to close the things I'm using and leave all this shit open I don't care about. I use google maps like once a month, and facebook next to never. Why would I want them running, but want ICS closing shit I'm trying to cut and paste between? Happens constantly and I have no control over it because in android users are considered too stupid or lazy to manage what apps they want open. In webos, when I'm done I close it and when I want it open, it stays open. That's brilliant. the only way the android way would really work very well is if it had a human intelligence managing what apps should close and what should stay open. I would gladly volunteer for this, if I could, but I can't because android got it wrong.

I'm not sure lack of consumer interest was the main problem. webos had a decent following, but there were no new devices after a long time and the only company really selling them was sprint (for a long time) and then only sorta half heartedly. I think the real problem was a lack of *vendor* interest. Had Palm not run out of money and stuck in there long term, I think there'd be a third OS afoot still and I wouldn't be suffering under this shitpile they call Android. I guess Android is alright, don't get me wrong, but next to webos, it's a pile -- particularly if you're a dev. Whatever. It's fully dead now. It'd be a stupid thing to work on unless HP starts making new widgets, but even if they do, they'll fuck it up (see what they did with their tablet? 1billion invested, politics happened, project abandoned). Maybe not quite a billion... but you see what I mean.

The Editors at Gallup are pretty obvious in their authoritarian leanings when you listen to interviews. Their polls are likely good science, but their interpretations should almost always be ignored (unless you're authoritarian yourself). You can easily read the bias out of the comments here:

According to the article, criticism of the TSA comes primarily from 'Internet sites, where reporting standards are generally not at the same level as newspapers, where reporters are taught to consider what is told to them with skepticism and to seek responses to charges.' Furthermore, 'the TSA is put into a difficult situation when such charges are posted with little or no fact checking by reporters"

I admit that I can't tell who said that from the writeup, but I'm assuming it was gallup. Does anyone think that reporters actually do any fact checking anymore? Like at all? On the other hand, if you hit Bruce Schneier's site (or many others), you'll find actual experts telling you that the TSA is pretty much worthless and a giant waste of money.

It's ok, I figured it out though: The TSA is actually a jobs program. In a world where socialism is a curse word, the TSA is a surprisingly effective jobs program for a segment of society with no critical thinking skills or meaningful education. Neeners.

OpenID seems to be the way to do it, but it's really complicated. I think if you look around, nothing is really holding it up. It's used all over the place. Speaking as a dev, it's annoying to set up the first time. I think that's holding it up for sure, but to a much lesser extent. For end users, just try explaining what it is and you'll see why more people don't use it, understand what it's for, why you'd want it, or when you'd use it.

Really the argument about a single security breach and tracking issues are all false too. There are as many OpenID providers as you'd ever want to use, *and* you can roll them in your own websites and swap out the underlying provider using yadis at will.

So the only thing holding it up? End users have never heard of it.

... what percentage of these sites are false positives? They don't really seem to mention that, but as with any antivirus pile, I'm sure a large number are false. They have a feedback form to request a fix if it comes up, because it obviously does. What's the turn around like? How many days do you have to live with not being able to talk to customers when it does?

Don't use his md5crypt and think you did anything useful he says. http://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/md5crypt_eol.html

If that's all it did, you'd be correct.