ok, so i did the "i told you so" post about roger frank.  1.

and i did the "i told you so" post about light markup.  2.

which means there's just one more post in this year-end
trifecta of "i told you so", with the culmination this month
of a 5-year bet back in '05 with the teleread idiot rothman
about e-book hardware development from 2005 to 2010...

basically, rothman had predicted a $50 e-book-machine,
-- wrong! -- and i said it won't happen for 5 years, if then,
and that if it did, i'd buy him a tofu turkey for thanksgiving.

if you'd like to refresh yourself on the original exchange
and my revisitation to the post at the one-year mark, see:
>   http://www.teleread.com/2005/11/29/you-can-buy-the-mit-100-laptop-for-200/

the teleread post was november 29th of 2005, so i will make
my 5th anniversary posting (haven't missed a year!) that day,
as my final entry in that series, as i nailed things conclusively.

the bottom line is that rothman lost the bet.  completely!
there is no $50 e-book reader-machine at all, let alone
in sufficiently high volume to produce such a low price...

you might pick up an off-brand unit on black friday for $99,
or for $69.  but no guarantee even of that, we'll have to see.
and even if so, don't you forget that 2010 was _my_ guess...
rothman had the cheap machines arriving _much_earlier_...
indeed, he's had $50 machines as "right around the corner"
for about a decade now; it was just downright embarrassing.

meanwhile, there are all kinds of e-book-machines in stores
this holiday season at the kinds of prices that we should have
been expecting all along, realistic prices, which would not give
"sticker-shock" because we had believed a cracked crystal ball.

have a happy thanksgiving, folks!

-bowerbird