Still some stupidity in ebook pricing

NPR was talking about the book "Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America" and I thought "that sounds interesting."

$21 hardcover everywhere. At Amazon, the Kindle edition is $18. At B&N, the Nook edition is $28.

What the hell? I guess I'd better try a little harder to get that Kindle DRM breaking software working.

That USB hub

I got that Rosewill 10 port USB hub today, and immediately took it apart. It also didn't have a diode in the USB power circuit, but it didn't have a jumper either. The +5VDC pin on the USB input wasn't connected (though there is a place to install a diode, it wasn't there). I checked the manual and it does not give bus power as an option; this unit is ONLY self-powered.

This is actually a sane option for a 10 port hub. It's ridiculous to use a 10 port hub and try to bus-power it; it's dicey with 4 ports unless you're running only self-powered devices such as scanners and hard drives with their own power supplies.

I went to Radio Shack yesterday to buy a diode for the other 10 port hub and found that they no longer stock Schottky diodes, and a regular rectifier diode won't do in this application. Radio Shack is pretty much a cell phone kiosk and Christmas cheap R/C car outlet these days.

After this though I think it would be just as sensible to just remove the jumper from the other hub as well and use it only in self-powered mode.