The Geek Church

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but Wal-Mart CEO said: “If there is going to be a ‘Wal-Mart of the Web’, it is going to be walmart.com”.

Some people area saying that Wal-Mart’s sudden price drop on books is sending signals that it intends to wage a price war with the world’s biggest bookstore, Amazon.com.

The price of $10 per book that is not made to be an e-book sounds pretty good considering some hardbacks can sell at very high prices.

Perhaps we are looking at a time when books are going to truly go out, and e-books will take their place.

Whatever the case, I’m not certain if we can talk about this whole issue of Wal-Mart and Amazon’s tactics as the coming of a war. However, it does create very sensational news.

For those of you who don’t know, 1984 by George Orwell was removed from Amazon Kindle’s everywhere a few months ago, without any explanation.

Yes, the company did apologize and go through all the motions necessary for a recall.

I’m still laughing at the irony. For those of you who have never read 1984, you should know it is one of the finest novels ever written. It is about Winston Smith, a man who works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, and his job was to rewrite history. Part of it was deleting past headlines and replacing them with substitutes in order to support Big Brother. I’m not going to explain the concept of Big Brother, but Amazon has just taken a step to become it.

To make this situation even more humorous, some kid was doing a book report on 1984 for school, and his notes were on the Kindle itself. When 1984 was officially unbooked, he lost his notes.

Since the Kindle ate his homework, he sued Amazon, and he won. Yes, it’s official. He has to split $150,00 with the co-plaintiff and the law firm, but I think most of his college fund is taken care of.

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