My own Kickstarter project, used to launch Teensy 3.0 (a low-cost Arduino compatible board with a 32 bit ARM chip), shipped on time.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulstoffregen/teensy-30-32-bit-arm-cortex-m4-usable-in-arduino-a

We had 2 levels of rewards shipping, half within 2 weeks, the other half the next month. We did end up shipping the last several September rewards on October 1st, so technically we slipped 1 day for small group of rewards. Otherwise, all the September rewards actually shipped in September, and the rest shipped before the end of October.

Of course, a tiny number of backers didn't respond with their address or had other logistical problems with their info. Most of those shipped late, but even then, we resolved nearly all of them in October.

If I'm not mistaken, for historical reasons Apple used to add DRM on the user's side (which was always a bad idea, but whatever), rather than the server side. This would lock them into a model where they needed to run code on the end-user's machine, rather than globally.

Why they *STILL* have a crippled website is anybody's guess. It could be an attempt at platform lock-in. But also, It took nearly 15 years to turn the worst steaming pile Apple ever put out into a 2nd version, so maybe it's just a resource issue.

Bikes seem to be one of the largest broadly tradeable but untracked commodities that hit retail. Scammers are always looking to get bikes... A $1,000 bike can net the scammer 2 or 3 hundred real dollars. It is, in a way, a currency.

Agreed. This is a console transition year. Any investment you make in a new console now will probably be moot by next Christmas. The new Xbox and new PS are on their way. And while very little is known about them, they will probably launch by next Christmas. By the year after that, there will be a clear winner.

If you're OK with the idea of buying an obsolete console, then go for it. The Xbox has an amazing library of games, though at $250 with hard drive (you need the hard drive), it's hardly disposable income. With the exception of Halo, most 360 games come out on the PS3 anyway. $80 for a used Wii isn't terrible, and it has enough of a back-catalog of great titles that your kids could be happy for a year or two with it. But there aren't any new games that will come out for it.

Really, the other big gaming platform you could go for would be the iPad. But that, of course, would be even pricier.

They're quickly becoming about the same. Linux and OpenOffice on the desktop are still bad, but getting better. Gnome, etc are all pretty trivial to use until you get to things like adding printers, and Open Office is basically Word 2000. Similarly, Windows / Word is fine, but getting worse. Adding networked printers in Windows seems to keep getting harder, and Word keeps adding more and more junk until it's useless. On top of this Google Docs is more than adequate for most tasks, and the multi-user live-document-editing is an amazingly useful feature. That gives 2 solid Windows alternatives.

People don't really need training. The systems are about the same, and the parts that one would need to train for have become so far away from the normal user's abilities that there really isn't a point to training anyone other than your IT people. And your IT people shouldn't have a problem with any of this.

Additional thoughts:

1. Game rental is still in its infancy online, and games are expensive. Get known for renting those.
2. Deliver! Someone might rather wait the 3 days for Netflix delivery of things that can't be streamed, but if you can get it there in 30 minutes or less you're in great competitive shape.
3. If you can solve the licenses, turn a section of the shop into an on-demand movie theater.

Why hasn't anyone kickstartered a competitor?

Investors do get placated by *making* things, however. Unfortunately, at some point you have to stop making something and actually sell the darned thing. And then it all goes to zune. And that's when the next scheme gets pulled out in an emergency meeting, and the cycle starts again.

The problem with the PC industry is that a lot of OEMs went super cheap, with razor thin margins. Making it up in software bundles and volume. This is not sustainable.

Considering this has been the model for ~15 years now, volume pricing does seem to be sustainable (especially when it's *still* significantly cheaper to build your own desktop).

How is that different than what's going on now?

The problem doesn't seem to be that Johns deserve privacy until proven guilty. The problem is that rich or important Johns deserve privacy until proven guilty, and potentially thereafter as well.

Why are the well-to-do and well-connected being protected from losing their board positions, when the justice system doesn't bat an eye at causing factory workers and office assistants to lose theirs in similar circumstances?

I'll believe that physics is a branch of philosophy when I see philosophers use statistical and experimental methods to refine or dismiss the theories of Heidegger. Or, for that matter, use philosophy to send men to the moon.

While it started as "natural philosophy," you might as well consider Philosophy a branch of studying languages, and language as a form of music research. Science in general has evolved past its philosophy roots. And while philosophy, though, programming, language, social "sciences," politics, and others still influence and form separate basis for how human beings structure their scientific pursuits, it takes quite a bit of twisting of logic to consider physics in its current incarnation as a philosophy pursuit.

I'm a game developer. When I write a game I need to know:

Resolution. You can jam a lot more text on a computer screen than a phone.
Input Devices. A phone's touchscreen can do a lot of things that a console's controller can't, and vice-versa.
Target functionality. If my game is going to be based around location services, an Xbox isn't the best place for it to be.
Target architecture. On a basic level, which chipset am I compiling for?
Monetization system. Are we talking web ads? Retail software in a box?

Write-once-run-anywhere software for most developers is a years-old pipe dream. Functionally, it's Write-a-dozen-times-then-package-them-together. And while it's a nice pipe dream and worth pursuing, releasing a hydra OS with two incompatible user interfaces is a horrible way of doing that. By definition, even your single platform isn't a single platform.

In this case it seems like the issue isn't necessarily skeuomorphic relevance but the iconicness of the skeuomorphism chosen. Setting up your preferences doesn't need gears to turn, but in this case that older required interface clearly communicates the intended usage. A notepad app that looks like a yellow sticky, in my opinion, triggers certain automatic assumptions about the usage and impermanence of the data. Again, that's useful. On the other side, the Game Center app that looks like a craps table is downright awful: The colors clash with the text, making it harder to read. The mental context is all wrong for an achievement-driven system ( as oppose to a chance-driven system). Or those old websites that made you "tap the front door to enter." In that case, an old metaphor was just wasting user's time.

Like all things design, within the areas where the old state is iconic and communicates well, skeuomorphic design can help people understand quickly and easily what is going on. Done poorly, it communicates the wrong thing or nothing at all.

Temporary answer - additional authentication.

1. Send an additional time-sensitive password via 3rd party means. Texting, e-mail, etc.
2. Body-scanney stuff with various time-based encryptions.
3. Use a dongle to encrypt / munge the password before sending it.

Additional answer - stop storing any passwords in plaintext, or on unsecured systems, or with obvious routes in.

Questions & passwords aren't really the right authentication for the future. They're just too easy to defeat.