It depends on the selection and how well it's categorized, a huge, searchable virtual library of old and rare texts would definitely be worth $10 to me. If it's just the NYTimes best sellers, probably not.
But my mom and her friends would probably go for it, the absurd price of ebooks turned them all into pirates, old ladies shouldn't know what Demonoid is but they all do. Getting them to spend $400 on an iPad, that's a different story.
And more importantly it's painful listening to a bunch of computer programmers spout off about politics and world events. I value 4Chan's analysis of current events more than Hacker News' and that's not even a joke. There are very few things more irritating than a spoiled rotten 20 year old's explanation of how the world works.
Please you guys, stick to talking about javascript. You're ruining this site.
First: what does this have to do with technology? Second: damn right Germany shouldn't trust us, because the world doesn't trust Germany and hopefully it never will. It doesn't bother me in the least that we're keeping an eye on them, I'd be nervous if we weren't.
What are the chances of getting a standard battery size in these things? I'd be a shame for stations to need a hundred different batteries for every make and model.
CNET is claiming the Washington Post & Guardian stories were wrong and the whole thing was based off a leaked Powerpoint document. James Clapper said the stories contained numerous inaccuracies but didn't specify. This whole thing is hilarious, especially HN's reaction.
Techcrunch knows nothing, if this is really going on it will be confirmed by someone within one of the companies forced to implement it within days. As of now I doubt that it is, I think the Washington Post got it wrong. Does anybody think Google and Apple would bend over for the federal government because of some semi-legal secret court order? Give me a break.
And no matter how smart the crowd here is when it comes to technology, discussing history or politics here is like talking to children. Many of the comments around here today sound like they came from the Drudge Report. It's embarrassing.
How old's your partner, I've known two people who escaped from East Germany and one from Romania. I asked them all about what it was like living there & how they escaped because of course I'm an asshole American and all I got was the thousand yard stare. When the Berlin Wall fell there were hundreds of divorces because they found out their spouses were spying on them. Bugging people's homes was routine. If you said anything against the government you were shipped off or executed. In the case of the Romanian guy I've never seen that kind of look on a man's face. In all three cases I feel terrible for even asking, and I won't be doing it again. Datamining your worthless Facebook page does not compare to what they went through.
Bullshit, 'the Stasi"? Go talk to somebody who lived in East Germany. And they catch people all the time trying to get bomb materials, how did you think they were doing it, luck? (In the case of the car bomb in Times Square you're right, it was dumb luck, the timer malfunctioned.) If the average person didn't freak out and start yelling retarded things like 'Stasi!' I'd say fine, maybe my fucking Facebook is worth people's lives but they do freak out and then they pass things like the Patriot Act, or worse. So to prevent mindless fear I say fine, scoop up whatever crap you need, if I want something kept secret I know how to do it.
But my mom and her friends would probably go for it, the absurd price of ebooks turned them all into pirates, old ladies shouldn't know what Demonoid is but they all do. Getting them to spend $400 on an iPad, that's a different story.