My company already migrated the workstations from Ubuntu to a different distro back when Canonical did this. Between their absolutely horrible initial Pulse implementation, the absolutely craptastic Unity interface being rammed down our throats, and then the totally sneaky way they brought in the Dash searches, we had had enough.

While us Linux folks got shafted with the loss of NPAPI support earlier this year, it appears that the Windows and Mac folks still have it.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop for them Maybe then we'll see PPAPI versions of common browser plugins.

I have never liked QR codes (just... stupid), nor how they are used (too hard to align the imager when my hand is unsupported - too picky a system).

I also have zero interest in giving merchants more power, taking all responsibility for the transaction unto myself, or tying anything public to a checking account or debit card.

In other words, you will never see me, nor my family, participate in a CurrentC transaction. In the absence of NFC I will just keep using credit cards at the POS until Chip & Pin finally happens in the U.S.

Maybe this will help the USPS catch up their tracking system to somewhere around the the turn of the millennium.

I tried out the Jawbone UP band in its first generation, and it was a disaster. The smartphone apps that were designed for it were severely lacking; for example, food items had to be (slowly) downloaded for every meal you wanted to input. My first band stopped syncing after 10 days, and two resets did not fix it. Jawbone sent me a replacement band, but it was the wrong size. They finally got me the correct band, but it would not sync at all.

As if that wasn't enough to trash the whole experience, the online seller I had initially purchased the UP from would not process my refund. This was due to me previously following Jawbone's instructions upon the first RMA return, meaning that I had already sent them the original packaging, etc. it turns out that they won't accept returns from their channel partners without the packaging, so this put my seller in a pickle. After several emails and phone calls I was not able to straighten any of this out, and ended up charging the purchase back via my credit card issuer. I know that stuffed the seller, but I feel that the issue lies purely between him and Jawbone, so I will let them figure out it.

When this is someone's first experience with wearables it is not hard to understand why their adoption and usage rates are low right now. I will not get into another wearable until both the manufacturers and their products mature.

Why do some OEMs continue to act as if Android games are so great that we'd want to play them on a big screen?

Ahh - I am glad to hear that. Thank you for the clarification. It still runs hotter than I would accept in an application like this, though.

We were just playing with freshly unboxed Minnowboards at LinuxCon, and it was not a pleasant experience. Here are he issues we uncovered as a group:

1) The boards do not boot consistently. It sometimes requires reseating power and/or the SD card multiple times.

2) The included parts kit has a 3 Ohm resistor instead of 3k Ohm, so the included LED will not light up with what's in the box.

3) The Atom chip runs quite hot, enough for the other side of the board to be uncomfortable to touch. This is despite the huge heatsink on it. I cannot imagine this processor ever being used in a mobile, battery-powered device.

4) The GPIO ports are as flaky as they come. High one moment and low the next despite no input and no touching.

When you add in that this unit costs more than 6x what the high end Raspberry Pi does, or twice with Adafruit's whole Pi kit does, I cannot find a reason to like the Minnowboard.

I haven't handwritten anything in almost 20 years except for Doctor's interview paperwork, and a couple of essays for a Luddite community college professor. I even take notes on a tablet now. This device seems to be at least one human generation out of usefulness

I'm trying to think of a single Android game that I would not only want to see played on a big screen, but that I would pay for the privilege to do so, and I'm coming up empty.

I've been using Google Voice for texting and call forwarding for several months now, and it is flawless except for not yet working with email-to-SMS (which has only caused a problem twice so far, with a workaround available in both instances).

The associated Android app works nicely, making this a no-brainer for me. It's also wonderful to be able to type a text on a full-sized keyboard while using the Google Voice site.

I hear you, and the absolutely limited experience that the entire Kindle line offers (e.g. the Kindle Fire HD, which is all things Amazon to the exclusion of all things Google, even though it's running on a (severely outdated) Google OS) does not bode well for a set-top box, especially when it has to compete with totally usable, cheap, all-in-one solutions like the Roku line.

I still read Kiplinger's personal finance magazine, but I do so through Google's Play Magazines on a tablet.

The problems of both carrier bloatware and abandonment are why I will never again buy a phone from a carrier. If you get your device straight from Google you get timely updates for a much longer period.

It's too early to tell what we will and will not be able to do with Glass, but I have have imagined how I'd use it:

1) GPS overlay while driving. I bet some folks will balk at this idea at first, but what's worse, taking your eyes off the road to look at a small screen, or having it overlaid (unobtrusively, of course) over some or all of your field of vision?

2) Access to the Internet is so locked down where I work that BYOD has been the employee's saving grace. I would rock Glass while at my desk as I could interact with the things I want without having to go for my tablet. This, of course, depends on how well I can control Glass by hand. The only time you will ever find me giving voice commands to Glass is on the trail, and even then only when hand commands are simply impractical.

3) Many desktop-based games do their damnedest to trap focus in the game window. It would be easier to do things like look up or track game info within my field of vision. The same would apply by default to console gaming.

IMHO Glass, and things like it, are a natural progression heading towards wetwiring. Mainframe -> desktop -> laptop -> phones and tablets -> wearable -> implantable.