I never thought I'd read something that would make me feel so bad about my keyboard chioces. :(

And that's the problem - by default, it's a 4-digit pin. You can enable a more complex passcode that can be longer and include other characters, but that option is turned off by default.

You can use a more complex passcode that is as long as you want and contains more than just numbers - but it's optional. In settings -> general -> passcode lock, turn off "simple passcode."

For those of us who don't really know much about tapes - can you point us to some drives and media that don't break the bank?

Gatekeeper is not mandatory.

I actually like the idea of that, and I like that they've called it that. It acknowledges that real life sometimes intrudes on our time at work, but still ensures that it's kept to a reasonable minimum.

There are also still (for the time being, at least) other models in the Macbook Pro line to choose from.

What type of home server do you have? Is it a Mac of some sort using Time Machine, or can you access the volumes on your Airport Extreme using other means?

You can purchase phones that are unlocked and unsubsidized in the US. Just very few people do it.

As I understand it - IANAL - it's not illegal for them to ask, per se, it's just illegal for them to consider that information when determining whether or not to hire you.

Obviously that's not a very simple thing and is a huge grey area and hard to prove one way or the other, but it's still worth mentioning.

The problem is not Gmail specifically, it's e-mail in general.

While the traffic between your computer and Gmail is encrypted via HTTPS, the messages may or may not be encrypted on their servers (hopefully they are), and they also may or may not be encrypted between Gmail and the mail servers being used by the people you're corresponding with.

I would be more worried about sniffing of packets between e-mail servers than I would be about Google employees reading your e-mail.

The only encryption that occurs is the actual connection between you and Google. The e-mail may or may not be encrypted when it's sitting on their servers.

Not to mention the fact that there's zero guarantee of the e-mail being encrypted when it's passing between mail servers.

Apple has been transparent about this.

See question 8 here: https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27Apple-Q-A-on-Location-Data.html

My iPhone also has a setting to enable or disable collection of this traffic data. I have it disabled :)

What I often end up doing on my Kindle (regular e-ink kind), is highlighting a portion of something I want to look up. Then I can go look it up later, the kindle saves your highlights.

I've had terrible luck with PDFs on my Kindle. I've tried to convert them with various utilities and they always come out horrible looking. The problem is the screen size, and the fact that the Kindle basically displays them as images. Maybe the big Kindle DX would be better for them.

The Kindle is totally awesome for eBooks, but I just print PDFs if I need them to be portable.