But I imagine this poll wasn't aimed people who collect science fiction first editions.

And I'm adding to my library all the time.

Good! Amazon has recently suffered from a severe problem in that companies like Hephaestus Press and Webster’s Digital Services have created "books" out of scraping public domain content like Wikipedia and slapping them between two covers (or digital equivalent thereof) and putting deceptive titles on them. For example, Hephaestus published the book Novels By Jerry Pournelle, including: The Legacy Of Heorot, The Mote In God’s Eye, The Gripping Hand, Footfall, Inferno (novel), Fallen Angels Starswarm, which looks like an omnibus edition, but which is actually scrapped Wikipedia content.

Sounds like they're finally cracking down on this practice, which is a good thing.

The main stream democrats will not use this information because it is not from legal means

Oh, you mean the same way no one used Joe the Plumber's tax returns in 2008? And remember, this was just some guy who dared to as Obama a question, not the Republican Presidential nominee. They'll use them in a Chicago minute.

Or like how no one in the media would use Jack Ryan's sealed divorce records when the Ombama for Senate campaign illegally leaked them in 2004?

And followed the news, posting some commentary and clips on my political blog. I also followed along on Twitter.

However, at the same time, I was attending the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago, which I covered on my other blog. And I took a lot of pictures I posted to my Facebook page.

It was a busy week.

1. They're easier on the eyes.
2. They retain their resale value; trying to resell an ebook ranges from hard to impossible.
3. They never crash.
4. They work even when you're out of battery power.
5. If you drop them, the book (and 500 others) doesn't instantly become completely useless.
6. You're not beholden to any particular supplier.
7. Neither Apple nor Amazon can remove the book from your house if they decide that releasing it was a mistake.
8. They look great on shelves.
9. They provide insulation in the winter.
10. You don't have to turn the book off for takeoffs and landings.

Of course, I'm hardly a neutral observer. On the other hand, I do take my own advice.

The important % is: "What % of the available profit in the smart phone ecosystem is Apple extracting?"

I would wager that Apple's percentage there is considerably higher.

...for the least transparent administration in American history. Perhaps the Obama Administration will restore the petition shortly after they turn over the Fast and Furious documents Obama has claimed Executive Privilege over.

This is also par for the course for the Obama Administration's constant defense of the TSA. When Texas tried to pass a bill to ban TSA groping in the state, the Obama Administration threatened to impose a no fly zone on Texas over the right for TSA agents to grope people. Do you think think the Obama Administration will be any less protective now that they're unionized.

Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz has called for the abolition of the TSA. Given the wasteful, intrusive, and ineffective security theater they stage, does anyone think the America public would object to to their abolition?

"We could for sure do more if we had more people," says FTC official. "There are a lot of opportunities that we have to let go by because we don't have the people to seize them ... opportunities to measure and evaluate what's happening every day in people's computers and phones."

I don't want the FTC to have more people and monitor more people's computers and phones. I trust them far less than I trust Google, since the scope for abuse is so much higher. I don't recall Google ever imprisoning or shooting someone for violations of their TOS...

... in order to be more successful was for the iPad never to have been invented.

Define "interact." The bits that represent the letters I am typing into this field have passed from my iMac, through my router, through my cable modem, up through my ISP's machines, up until it finally reached the Slashdot data center, with all its web servers, load balancer, firewalls, etc.. How many different OSes were on the machines in the journey of those bits? Linux? Solaris? Windows?

And the numerous interactions only get more tangled when sending email, what with multiple MX machines, DHCP lookups, etc.

And what's an OS? Is my router running its own OS? My cable modem?

It could be hundreds without even talking about my iPhone or TV...

...when she was attacked by the FailFandom brigade for comments ever-so-mildly critical of Islam.

But I strongly oppose this. A government with the power to barcode everyone at birth is the sort of government powerful enough to commit just about any abuse of its citizens. And the well-connected will still be able to get data related to their barcode altered for their benefit.

I'll pass on the Panopticon society, thank you. And strong private property laws are the first step from preventing it from happening.

I almost missed that it was back again today. I participated in 2010, but nobody seemed to be doing it in 2011. Glad to see it's back, and I would have missed it if Pakistan hadn't brought attention to it.

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day serves three important purposes:

1. It reaffirms that the First Amendment is alive and well, and that the United States legal system cannot, should not, and will not knuckle under to transnational demands for Sharia-compliant suppression of "blasphemy" as defined by oppressive theocratic Islamic states.
2. To prove that in the 21st century censorship is self-defeating, as it only draws more attention to whatever is being censored than ignoring it would.
3. To provide so many targets for would-be jihadists to assault that the give up due to the futility of the task. Theo Van Gogh is dead and Molly Norris is still in hiding. Standing in solidarity with them proves to jihadists that using violence to achieve political ends in a free society is counter-productive (something people eager to attack Chicago cops with Molotov cocktails evidently haven't learned).

While the MPAA is wrong, this article is a bit of a strawman. The Avengers being a a big-budget, special effects laden film, is the sort of film seen best in a movie theater. And obviously it's all-but-impossible to replicate the 3D experience with a pirate copy (whether you like 3D or not). A smaller, quieter independent film, something that doesn't lose much by being seen on TV, might suffer more from pirating.

FWIW, I liked The Avengers the best of any live-action superhero film I've seen. Granted, the half-naked Scarlett Johansson didn't hurt...