The Kindle Revolution Ain’t Happening

We Know How Many Kindles Amazon Has Sold: 240,000

Bullshit.

If it had been anywhere near six figures (that’s in the vicinity of 100,000), I think Amazon’s Bezos would have openly brayed about it. That would have made the print publishers — of all stripes: giant conglomerates as well as small press — scramble into ebooks, tripping over each other to issue press releases about having seen the eBook Promised Land.

But Bezos has been coy and no print publisher has sung a hosannah.

Plus, I haven’t heard a single writer cry out about the Kindle windfall royalty he or she has received.

Finally, the source is TechCrunch, which has a tendency, let us say, to paint glowing pictures of outright dead dogs.

So 240,000 Kindles sold?

No.

Reference: AA-Battery iPhone Charger

It’s not listed on their site, but reviewer Paul Biba says they will have one.

Note that Fiend Kendrick is in love with a swanky LiOn pack that he says he’s ordered, but no review yet!

Blog Notes: Bandwidth From Hell

All day I’ve been experiencing the worst bandwidth.

I don’t know if the cable modem is melting or if the eejits at Time Warner are throttling my connection because I have a BitTorrent going.

It’s a BitTorrent I have a legitimate research reason to undertake.

And if they’d give me my full damned bandwidth, it’d be over with in one day instead of the seven days they’re dragging it out to be!

I haven’t had time to, for instance, get on Veoh and download interesting things, so it’s not like I’ve been sucking on the pipe for anything other than daily WWW.

There should be a Hammer button on all keyboards. Press it and a nice pop-up list comes up. At the top I’d have my ISP. And when I select them, someone over there gets popped on their skull with a ballpeen hammer.

Yeah, now that’s customer feedback, baby!

Reference: Mac OS X Leopard On Asus EeePC 901

EeePC-OS X WikiSpaces

Reference: OS X Backup On USB Drive

Creating OS X Leopard Install on a USB Drive or iPod
— see Comments for problems

See this thread for relation to MSI Wind:
Another easy method to boot the custom disk from USB

That looks very pretty and very tempting. But would I like it? That is, would it be speedy enough not to drive me up the wall? Techies are too often impressed simply by being able to do something. My agenda is different: I want to get work done!

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #183

Stressed banks borrow record amount from Fed

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Banks borrowed a record amount of funds from the Federal Reserve in the latest week as the year old credit crisis took a persistent toll, while the commercial paper market continued to contract, signaling tough conditions for short term borrowers.

Banks’ primary credit borrowings averaged $17.45 billion per day in the latest week, the second straight week this had hit a record and up from $16.38 billion the previous week, Fed data showed on Thursday.

“It shows there’s a shortage of liquidity in the system,” said Christopher Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York.

Secondary credit the Fed extended, which is usually taken out by banks in need of emergency cash, rose to $89 million in the latest week, from $34 million the week before. Although these numbers are still very small compared with primary credit, “What that tells you is that there’s an increasing number of banks that the Fed is classifying as ‘unsound’ or inadequately capitalized,” Low said.

Emphasis added by me.

Well, duuuuuh, Watson.

The killshot:

Cash strapped financial institutions can convert the Treasuries temporarily into short term cash loans in the repurchase market in order to shore up balance sheets depleted by the credit crisis.

Emphasis added by me.

See? It’s all degraded into an outright game of musical chairs. “Look! I’m not bankrupt (yet!)!” As long as they can continue to paper over the holes in the dike, they don’t give a damn about the condition of the dikes themselves.

The dikes are rotting. Let them break and fall and sweep away this machine!

Just remember: Losses have been socialized while profit remains privatized.

Such a scam!

Where’s your money today?

Educate yourself!

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #182

GM posts $15.5B 2Q loss, 3rd-worst in its history

DETROIT (AP) — General Motors Corp. posted a $15.5 billion second-quarter loss Friday, the third-worst quarterly performance in the company’s nearly 100-year history.

The loss came as North American sales plummeted and GM faced expenses due to labor unrest and a massive restructuring plan aimed at preserving cash to weather a prolonged U.S. economic downturn.

And:

So far this year, GM has gone through about $1 billion in cash per month, including $3.4 billion in the first quarter.

Young said GM had $21 billion in cash and $5 billion available through credit lines at the end of June for total liquidity of $26 billion, which he called a strong position. GM already has announced plans to generate another $15 billion in liquidity in the next 18 months.

Emphasis added by me.

Why hasn’t the entire executive suite at GM been bounced onto the street?

Where’s the shareholder uprising?

There is none. Because institutions account for most of the holding. It’s a sweet, corrupt circle-jerk.

$1B cash burn per month? Burn baby burn!

Previously here:

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #169
Ominous Rumors
The Deserved Fall Of General Motors
Goodbye, Middle Class. And Good Luck!

Blog Notes: July Contents Is Up

It was done yesterday.

Too many frikkin posts!

I have no idea what I’ll do today.

Still sitting here in my post-sleep ick.

Must shower.