Amazon is like a naughty girl next door. She might be bad and not that pretty, but very conveniently close.
fair
Reasons not to buy from Amazon
41–50 of 152 posts
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#42That whole thing about the tor keyboard intercept by nsa was never proven afaik. The common conclusion is that they wouldn't be so stupid as to let the customer tracking show the keyboard passing through them so they can bug it. And as for Amazon reducing the price of books from publishers, this quantitatively has shown they will sell more and make more money despite the lower price tag.
The Tor develop made it practically impossible to verify by complaining about it on twitter.
If they actually thought it was tampered with it seems like the correct approach would have been to keep quiet and then do a forensic tear down of the entire thing to find it. There are plenty of people who would be more than willing to take a look at what could potentially be a real TAO intercept device.
Reminds me of #BadBIOS
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#43The villain of the times is a company that delivers books to me better than any company ever has?
Pretty sure there's bigger fish to fry, which makes me wonder what personal agenda the author is pursuing here.
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#44> "Amazon cut off service to Wikileaks, claiming that whistleblowing violates its terms of service. It had no need to go to court to prove this, because if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights." I find it highly amusing that RMS doesn't seem to agree with Amazon's restrictive ToS agreement but his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there. If I include a GNU licensed library…
Restrictive in that it prevents you from fucking people over. This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves).
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there." Of "open source" licenses perhaps. In the grand scheme of software licenses, it is pretty fucking permissive. Most software licenses don't let you anywhere near the source, don't let you modify the code, and don't let you redistribute or share the software.
> Most software licenses don't let you anywhere near the source, don't let you modify the code, Are there any software licenses where the source code is provided but you are prohibited to view or modify it?
I wager so. Many commercial video games have plaintext script files buried in their installations. I am not in the habit of reading licenses very carefully, but I suspect more than a few of those do not lay out the right to view or modify those files. (Although 'modders' do anyway of course.)
Software licenses which allow you to view the code but not to modify it are fairly common.
Typically, software licenses grant none of these rights.
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#46Stallman raises some interesting points, but calling the Kindle a "Swindle" doesn't make for a very rational argument.
Stallman strongly believes that the language you use in large part frames the debate you have. This belief is supported by a century of marketing research. Stallman's limitation in this regard is that he's not a marketing genius, and lacks the funds to hire one, so he's forced to resort to clunky puns like 'Swindle'.
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#47This is not exactly nuanced. It reads like he disliked Amazon for some reason and then went out and googled around for a while to come up with more reasons to support that belief. Personally, I like Amazon... so of course I'm just looking for reasons to dismiss his arguments without considering their merit. Ha!
It's kind of hard to imagine Stallman googling for anything.
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#48Sabotaging Customers: I have no reason to believe that they would ever sabotage me. Restricting and Shafting Customers: I have never had a problem with my kindle or any other media from Amazon. If I ever do I'm sure I can find an alternative source in a matter of minutes. Censorship: They are Amazon's servers and it is their right to enforce their rules on them. If Wikileaks believes that they were unlawfully cut off…
"Sabotaging Customers:"
"I've never had a problem with Amazon particularly and this article seems rather strange to me."
I had a problem with Amazon once, they repeatedly messed up a delivery. I emailed Jeff Bezos, got a call the next day from his office and my problem was solved.
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#49Amazon is like a naughty girl next door. She might be bad and not that pretty, but very conveniently close.
What the fuck. Why would you post this kind of thing.
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#50> "Amazon cut off service to Wikileaks, claiming that whistleblowing violates its terms of service. It had no need to go to court to prove this, because if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights." I find it highly amusing that RMS doesn't seem to agree with Amazon's restrictive ToS agreement but his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there. If I include a GNU licensed library…
"GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there" But those restrictions are in place to protect your freedom!
So its like the Patriot Act of licenses? Everything you do must be done in the open for the sake of freedom!