A REVIEW OF AMAZON’S NEW 9″ TABLET COMPUTER. “Our independent sources say Amazon’s new tablet, due in October, is a direct shot at the iPad and a huge improvement over any of the me-too tablets that have tried but failed to gain any traction against Apple this year. The new tablet, sources say, will be a 9-incher that, like Amazon’s Kindle, will include contract-free 3G connectivity and synchronization capabilities. The tablet will serve as the broad-scale distribution endpoint for downloading and sync of videos, music, photos and books from Amazon’s Cloud Drive. It’s a direct hit to the iPad and, in particular, to Apple’s iCloud, sources say.”
Archive for 2011
July 22, 2011
HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Yes, The Higher Education Bubble Will Pop This Decade And Here’s One Reason Why. “To begin to understand just how screwed up the situation is it’s important to realize how federally-insured student loans are so different than other kinds of debt. . . . as a collector I’d regularly come across borrowers who had gone YEARS without ever making a payment and the loan’s capitalized interest had just grown and grown and grown — much to the bank’s delight.”
PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON HIS EXPERIMENT WITH E-PUBLISHING. Two thoughts: (1) From what I can see, $2.99 seems to be the magic price point for Kindle books. (You get more sales at 99 cents, but you get a lower percentage from Amazon, and for impulse buys the difference doesn’t seem to be that great. But I don’t know if the same pricing experience applies to academic books); and (2) Academic publishers now provide so little in the way of either editing or marketing for most books that all they really offer is the prestige of their imprint, and once you move very far down from Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale, that’s not really all that much. And if you’re a professor with an established reputation (as Bainbridge is) the prestige isn’t such a big deal anyway.
I’ve already reached the point where, to me, the real publication date of my scholarly articles is when they appear on SSRN, with the actual law-review appearance something of an afterthought. I can imagine scholarly books becoming that way soon. Again, for junior professors it’s still probably worth chasing publication in a top law review, but for established scholars your name is the brand, not the law review’s name.
And, interestingly, the Kindle textbook rental deal may actually be good for textbook authors who self-publish. Most big-publisher contracts have terrible E-book terms, but that doesn’t matter if you’re the publisher. And with Kindle books, you don’t have such an issue with the used-textbook market cutting into your sales after the first year.
ROUNDING UP news from Norway.
SHOCKER: GAO Audit Reveals Fed Played Fast and Loose With Loan Rules. “At the height of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve evoked emergency powers to make loans to Wall Street firms without bothering to adequately explain the legal grounds for those loans. And nearly three years after the loans were made, the Fed still hasn’t provided a satisfying answer for why it made loans to the London-based broker-dealer subsidiaries of Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup, as well as the U.S. broker-dealer subsidiaries of Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, according to the Government Accounting Office’s newly released audit of the Federal Reserve’s financial crisis activities.”
WORSE THAN GUNWALKER? State Dept. Allegedly Sold Guns to Zetas.
It seems like the only people they don’t want to have guns are ordinary American citizens.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? Poll: Obama 41%, Ron Paul 37%.
ED DRISCOLL: The Space Shuttle Program’s Ignominious End. The current Obama Administration policy is not bad, really — and it’s certainly better than the porky-yet-ineffectual Congressional alternatives — but the underlying situation is poor. Much of the problem is, as James Lileks observes, cultural.
BACK TO SCHOOL SPECIAL: Amazon offers free shipping for students.
Also, textbook deals.
WHEN THOSE STUDENT LOAN PAYMENTS COME DUE: “The borrower, Terron Austin, graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2008 with a degree in journalism. Mr. Austin lived at home during much of his college career to cut down his costs, and he had a job lined up at graduation. So, when his grace period ended six months after college, and his first bill was due, Mr. Austin was able to manage the payments. But then, Mr. Austin was laid off. Asked by one of his co-presenters, Tasha McDaniel, the school-training director for the servicer, if he had ever missed a payment or been late, he replied, ‘Haven’t we all?’ . . . Mr. Austin also said that his exit counseling could have been more detailed and specific, and that when his first student-loan bill arrived, ‘”ouch” was the first word.'”
PROFESSOR PUNISHED for reporting plagiarism. I structure my writing assignments in ways that make it hard to cheat — or at least, nearly as much work to plagiarize as it would be to write the piece from scratch.
AN OPED FROM MORGAN MANNING: “War On Photography” Tramples Rights.
TERRORISM: Deadly Blasts in Norway Are Followed by Gun Attack. “A terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami (the Helpers of the Global Jihad), issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, according to Will McCants, a terrorism analyst at C.N.A., a research institute that studies terrorism. The message said the attack was a response to Norwegian forces’ presence in Afghanistan and to unspecified insults to the Prophet Muhammad.” Turds.
RAND SIMBERG: The International Space Station In The Post-Shuttle Era. “No more shuttle flights means the ISS can fly higher, but what happens now if there’s an emergency?”
Plus, a bright side: “It’s quite likely in fact that historians may call the end of the shuttle the beginning of the golden age of humans in space.”
FASTER, PLEASE: Gene Therapy In Rabbits Prevents Artery-Clogging. “A one-dose method for delivering gene therapy into an arterial wall effectively protects the artery from developing atherosclerosis despite ongoing high blood cholesterol. The promising results, published July 19 in the journal Molecular Therapy, came from research in rabbits.”
DEMOGRAPHIC DATA ON NISSAN LEAF BUYERS. Including this: “Leaf owners drive less than 60 miles a day.” Well, yes.
JERRY POURNELLE ON Apple’s new OS X Lion. “It looks to be a real advance, but from all reports I’ve seen, it’s not quite finished. It doesn’t do anything that the average user has to have yet.”
DESPITE THE BILL’S OVERWHELMING POPULARITY WITH AMERICANS OF ALL STRIPES, the Senate has shot down Cut, Cap and Balance by a straight party-line 51-46 vote. “It will be interesting to see how Ben Nelson and Claire McCaskill defend their decision to deny a balanced-budget amendment vote when it comes time to run for re-election next year.” But Jim DeMint plans to bring it up again.
VIRGINIA POSTREL: Branding Medici-Style, No Need for Tiger.
IN THE MAIL: From Robert Bidinotto, HUNTER: A Thriller.
No, but it would serve them right if it turned out to be true. . . .
BYRON YORK: Obama Could Be Comeback Kid If He Mimics Clinton. “In his drive for re-election, Clinton needed Republican help, not just as a foil but as a source of policy initiatives. For a man who announced ‘the era of big government is over,’ Clinton had to be dragged kicking and screaming toward both balanced budget legislation and welfare reform — now seen as key accomplishments of his presidency. Republicans did the dragging, and when Clinton moved the GOP’s way, his prospects improved. The public also found that it liked divided government. Republicans were elected in 1994 because voters wanted to place a check on Clinton. Republicans were elected in 2010 because voters wanted to place a check on Obama. With that check in place, Obama might find that if he, like Clinton, were to move the GOP’s way, his prospects might improve.”
UPDATE ON THAT WIDENER LAW SCHOOL SCANDAL: Panel: Law School Did Not Prove That Prof’s Classroom Hypos Were Racist. That’s because, as far as I can tell, they weren’t. Violent hypotheticals, and hypotheticals involving law school deans, are hardly unusual in criminal law classes. I’m sure that Dean Linda Ammons now wishes she’d never opened this can of worms, which has been a long-running PR nightmare for the school, but that’s the problem with being thin-skinned — and, perhaps, politically motivated.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT INSPECTOR GENERAL is investigating illegal retaliation against ATF whistleblowers. This really calls for an outside special prosecutor.