Remember how photo printers put photo shops out of business? Not exactly. If you want prints, it's usually cheaper to go to the local drug store or box store and print them out there than it is to buy the special paper and ink yourself. It will likely be the same with 3-D printing. If you don't do it all the time (and most people won't), it will be cheaper to print your designs at a local shop. They'll have the large high-quality industrial printer that you can't afford, along with a wider choice of materials than you could stock.

What it will do is cut into the profit margins for mass-produced items. They will have to compete with the price of printing out your own design, not just what other companies are charging. That will eat into the profits of retailers.

I remember in grad school, there was a crow that was often on a branch above the path to the computer science building. After walking past it, he would fly down next to me and screech loudly right when he was next to me, then circle back and cackle after landing on his branch. He apparently enjoyed the reactions he got by startling people.

Birds are very smart. Another reason to be afraid of dinosaurs, I suppose.

Why does Yahoo! need a new YouTube alternative when they already have Broadcast.com?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

My digital camera has horrible compression. I can load and save the pictures with pretty much any application, and the size of the files is reduced significantly without any noticeable image quality reduction. (And yes, I am saving it in the original size.) Maybe it's just my old Sony camera, but it's likely a common issue--I expect embedded compression in consumer devices worries more about simple and fast than best quality for the file size.

But my point is that Microsoft has nothing to do with this. If they're not already maintained well, they're probably already infected with malware. Lack of support from Microsoft isn't likely to make the problem much worse than it is already.

In other words, keep doing what you're doing, and you're probably at just as much risk tomorrow as you were yesterday.

To protect from malware from a web site, you should do the following:

*) Run a good anti-virus program
*) Make sure all plug-ins are current, especially Flash
*) Use a Flash block add-on
*) Remove Flash
*) Use an up-to-date browser (probably Chrome or Firefox)
*) Use an ad blocker (most malware on legitimate sites is from ad networks)
*) Configure private mode to not allow plugins
*) Use private mode for untrusted web sites

None of those have anything to do with whether Microsoft is supporting your OS or not.

No, it won't magically break. It will keep doing what it always has been doing. Yes, new security holes might be found that won't be patched. Yes, this means you need to have a good firewall and practice other safe computing strategies. Yes, you should be doing that already.

So essentially, very little is changing.

I use Llama to configure based on location. I've heard nothing but good things about Tasker, other than not being free.

On my regular Linux desktop and laptop systems, I just want the basic apps, and then have it get out of the way so that I can work:

emacs, xterm, OpenSSH, and twm (with a few patches I've added).

The only big apps that I use are Thunderbird and Chromium.

I make sure to not install Gnome or KDE.

On a new Android phone, the first thing that I do is root it and install Titanium Backup.

Then there are a few other apps that I must have, though the specifics aren't as important as the functionality:

VNC client: I like Jump (which was a Amazon Free App of the Day a while back) because it has ssh integrated. It's a pain using middle and right mouse buttons, though, and it doesn't use public key authorization for ssh (though I think the iPhone version does).

Terminal: I like KBox (http://kevinboone.net/kbox2.html) so that I can write and use some scripts.

SSH Client: I think I use SSH Droid.

Hacker Keyboard: Having a keyboard with both numbers and symbols active at the same time as letters is really nice, even if it does use up half the screen.

The point is that it should have noticed that upgrading the software on the iPad would require an updated iTunes, which was incompatible with the system. The problem would have been avoided if iTunes had insisted on upgrading iTunes before upgrading the iPad.

Snow Leopard is particularly important for many users because it was the last release to support Rosetta. Anyone who still needs PowerPC apps can't upgrade.

My wife still uses Apple Works, so upgrading won't work for her.

Also, Apple has been known to push upgrades that break things without warning, so upgrading is often a last resort. For example, we were running 10.5, and iTunes asked if we wanted to update our iPad to the lastest release. After doing so, it said we had to upgrade iTunes. But we couldn't upgrade iTunes because that required 10.6. There went our ability to sync the iPad.

There have been lots of articles about employee performance reviews and the "stack rank" system. Pretty much everything that has been learned about employee performance reviews can apply to students, particularly in higher education.

Companies like to use performance reviews when adjusting compensation, and they also like to have a system that encourages employee development (or at least retention and advancement of the better employees, and hopefully helping other employees become "better" employees). Perhaps we can learn something from the corporate world.

I've heard others suggest using class rank. That's fine if all professors are grading at the same level, but they're not. I think that was part of the point of the original article.

Of course, there are other aspects of the system that can be adjusted, too. Perhaps you force professors to give out lower grades, or come up with a system that voids the advantage of a professor who consistently gives higher grades. But then don't report the grades on transcripts. Just report that a given student was in the top 10%, 25%, 50%, or passed (say, one level overall and another for in-major courses).

There are lots of solutions.

This doesn't work with Slashdot. At least if you put in a https, it redirects, so they have it set up; they just don't use it. You would think that a technology site would be up on current technology.

I ignore the nagwall limits by loading the links in a private browsing window. This is mostly for articles where someone posted a link, not for regular reading.