nigeljones - Slashdot User

Submission + - Barnes and Noble Bookstore Chain Put Up for Sale (guardian.co.uk) 1

Submitted by suraj.sun on Tuesday August 03, 2010 @09:01PM

suraj.sun writes: America's largest chain of high-street bookshops, Barnes & Noble, last night put itself up for sale in the latest sign of distress in the literary retailing world which has already seen the demise of the Borders book chain in Britain.

B&N, which owns 720 high-street shops in all 50 American states, announced it was calling in the investment bank Lazard to advise on strategic alternatives including "a possible sale of the company" after a 45% slump in share price in the last year.

In common with other booksellers, B&N has struggled with changes in customers' habits. Readers are buying more books online, while digital readers such as Amazon's Kindle are rapidly becoming popular alternatives to traditional books.

The chain's founder Leonard Riggio, who started the business with a bookstore in New York's Greenwich Village in 1965, immediately declared that he was a possible buyer, sending Barnes & Noble's share price up by 25% in unofficial after-hours trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/04/barnes-and-noble-for-sale

Hardware Hackers Reveal Apple's Charger Secrets 371

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 03, 2010 @01:50PM from the hard-charging dept.

ptorrone writes "In this 7-minute video we explore the mysteries of Apple device charging. Usually, device makers need to sign a confidentially agreement with Apple if they want to say their charger 'works with iPhone / iPod,' and they're not allowed to talk about how the insides work. If you don't put these secret resistors on the data lines too, you get the dreaded Charging is not supported with this accessory. We demonstrate how anyone can make their own chargers that work with iPhone 4, 3Gs, etc."

Comment Reality Check (Score 1) 336

by nigeljones on Thursday July 01, 2010 @07:10PM (#32765958) Attached to: HDBaseT Supporters Hope To Kiss HDMI Goodbye

The HDBaseT documents (http://www.hdbaset.org/files/HDBaseT_Comparison_Table_Nereus.pdf) suggest that it will be compatible w/ standard networking.

As for powering a TV via the cable, don't we call this Power over Ethernet? Unfortunately looking at Wikipedia, none of the PoE standards offer 100W, so it'll be interesting to see if they propose an updated PoE standard.

My real concerns with this is:
- No mention of IPv6
- No Gigabit ethernet for now - seriously
- No 'n' wireless? Surely that'd be fast enough to watch some TV via the Satellite/Cable box on the other side of the house?

This standard has all the hallmarks of the "This standard is SOOOO good everyone, so good infact we'll declare it rubbish in 1-2 years time and force everyone to update their TVs/media centres/etc to get everything we could have implimented now" pitch.

Argh!

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