PeterB

Does Amazon Need to Be So Highly Regulated?

I for one am glad that my local water supply is regulated, since it protects me from the kind of cholera epidemics that used to devastate the populations of major cities like London just 150 years ago. And that the sewage system treats the outflow from me and my neighbors. Especially those upstream.
And I am glad that the local governments collect taxes to pay for the education of the future workers who will keep the economy going, so I can continue to get Social Security and my other retirement investments will continue to have value.
Of course it would be nice if such things could be provided free, but that is quite unrealistic. My relatives and friends who work in schools and government agencies, and their colleagues, need food and shelter too.
Now that Internet commerce, which has mostly so far escaped the normal taxation methods, has become a significant fraction of all commerce, there must be some method to replace the taxes so lost.
The intellectual underpinning of the American Revolution was largely based on the avoidance of taxation without representation, a principle well established in Britain at the time, but not extended to the colonies. It's success was followed by a revolt, "Shays Rebellion", based on economic problems, finally leading to the Constitutional Convention, to establish a stronger government.
Fortunately for most of us, probably even John100.

Will Amazon Insert Ads into Kindle E-Books?

Many paperback books have lists of similar or related books (for example by the same author) on the back few pages. Skipping them is trivial (you have finished the book, anyway), but could be useful if you are looking for another such book. An unobtrusive ad in a Kindle book would be not much different

Harris Interactive Reputation Survey: Corporate America Rates 'Terrible'

Wow!
" * Nearly all (98%) respondents believe it is important that corporations do evolve to more sustainable business practices.
* More than two-thirds (68%) believe American corporations are lagging behind companies in other countries.
* Only 16% of Americans believe that they will make these changes on their own.
* Most Americans (90%) give some consideration to sustainable business practices when purchasing a company’s products and and services."

Has anyone told Congress? Especially the Republicans there? Sounds like Obama (esp. the candidate version) has the country behind him. I am thrilled!

Amazon's Kindle 2.5 Doesn't Seem Worth the Buzz

Maybe as a college student, you don't see any application for a Kindle. However, maybe when you are old enough for your eyesight to be deteriorating, you will see some point in being able to read a book on an electronic device that will blow up the text to a readable level. And how would such a person, such as my late father-in-law, or my wife, handle reading a book three characters at a time on an iPod?

Yes, I agree that textbook prices are often disgustingly high, but I suspect the first publisher to offer a low-cost electronic form may force such a trend. Perhaps if you are studying Macroeconomics, you can start a new company to do that, and put the older companies on the spot, if not out of business. Incidentally, I do still refer to my old Physics textbooks from half a century ago from time to time.

Some Things Change Everything: Amazon's Cloud Computing

I am intrigued by the ideas about technological revolutions, but I think there is another between the 4th and 5th, the explosion of semiconductor technology (especially the IC) between 1960 and perhaps 1985, now in a near-mature stage, perhaps topping out in the next decade. This also fits in with several lincages in the revolutions, so that the steam engine and the railways depended on the results of the first industrial revolution, and leading to heavy machinery and electricity, thence the automobile. The IC made possible the information technology age, and low-cost telecommunications (yes, the earliest computers ran on vacuum tubes and magnetic cores, I know, I used some of them).
As to the main point of the article, in some ways cloud computing is like my early computer usage, where one fed in one's deck of punched cards (or a paper tape) to a central machine, and got back the results later as a printout, but with vastly improved input and output channels.
I wonder if Amazon has the book...