I'll focus on music.

I just drag/drop the stuff I want on my portable devices to my portable devices. Done.

The device itself then indexes its local collection in the background using subfolders and id3 tags. I use rockbox on my sansa and music player remixed on my Palm Pre, fwiw. On the palm, it's all done wirelessly via an ssh filesystem. I never connect it to anything, not even to charge (they've had inductive charging integrated since inception).

If you have to rely on some magic software to put music on your devices, you are doing it wrong. If you are locked into that ecosystem, then you are just stupid and deserve the pain that you have caused yourself.

Sftware and business method patents simply should not exist. Period.

That a 'tech writer' even cares what facebook does with their site is bad enough. That it affects him is even worse.

Computers are tools. What makes them useful is the things we tell them to do. We tell them to do things through code. Therefore, to properly use a computer, you should know a little bit about how to code, and a bit about how the thing works, shouldn't you? I'm talking about general-use computing here, not things you would do with a kiosk or point of sale system.

If a big part of your job is to use a computer, to analyze and share data, then yes, you should know how to code. I certainly expect people who work on my house, my car, etc, to know how to use their tools.

If you create content or processes on computers, you should know how to properly tell them how to do things. Not knowing this leads to spreadsheet 'databases', single images in powerpoint (or powerpoint at all), word attachments in email that state what could have just been written in the email itself, and all of the other associated idiocy that I'm sure you all deal with every day. I don't expect my mechanics to know these things. In this analogy, they are the computer drivers, not the ones building and fixing the car.

Remember, SQL was originally written to make querying and correlating data easy for managers and NON-PROGRAMMERS. That's why it is so english-y. Now, it is considered 'programming' to understand how to create a SQL query, and management has to rely on other people to use the tool for them so they can have a non-flexible set of buttons they can push rather than just tell the system what they need at any given point themselves. Let that sink in.

Relevant: http://www.xkcd.com/1172/

Tablets are for content consumption. The interface needs to be toned down, with larger buttons and/or gesture interfaces to interact and multitask (Like WebOS). The interface doesn't need to be as flexible, but it must be consistent.

Laptops/PCs are for content creation. You type a lot here. You don't reach out and touch the screen. You also don't want huge buttons and gestures, as they are a poor interface on these devices. The interface must be FLEXIBLE, but CONSISTENT. It must be adaptable to a workflow. The direction all modern interfaces are headed are failing miserably at this.

Ubuntu and Gnome3 don't get this either. It's annoying.

Always the visionary:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Now that Phones are more prevalent, and unlimited txt as well, I haven't used IRC, IM, AIM, Google Talk, Jabber, etc etc etc in several years now. Everything is done via SMS. Maybe it's just who my friends are, mostly outside the tech industry.

If you have to do that, might as well put a full-featured firewall on instead. Pfsense, for example.

It would have been nice if HP had actually done something with WebOS. *sigh*

How many companies in the US have branches in China? How many of those put any kind of firewalling, other than any-any in the VPNs connecting those branches? Yup.

This is what happens when you believe in magic anti virus software rather than practicing good habits around your information security. AV is a sham and causes more harm than good.

to run your own mail server.

When they release a browser that is useable in Linux at all, even on a full sized system, again.