You want me to blacklist you on Facebook? Here is the recipe

Google Plus Custom URL is so messed up it's not funny.

A small bluetooth peripheral that combines both wallet theft protection and lessens the number of cards you need to keep in your wallet. Pre-order for 50% off only on 12/12/2013 (ok, I waited for the last day to pre-order mine and get a referral link).

Then apparently they will fire the manager who tried to live up to the guarantee

Respond to this, especially the "controversial for Americans" paragraphs 50-64 and 178-216

Yeah, well, I've got a new soapbox. On social media in the past

I'm a masochist. No, not of the sexual variety. Of the slashdot variety. For some reason, not only do I still continue to read this site, I click on links to stories about cars and phones. The raging stupidity and arrogance is amazing.

And yet I come back.

The drill! You may know it from my last journals. Ask questions and I'll be happy to help. Feel free to answer any questions you have ideas about yourself, too.

I need to think about this

Yep, /. is just as UI-fugly as I remember it. :P

-MT.

The Horse, Hunter, and Stag
An Aesop's Fable

A quarrel had arisen between the Horse and the Stag, so the Horse came to a Hunter to ask his help to take revenge on the Stag. The Hunter agreed, but said: "If you desire to conquer the Stag, you must permit me to place this piece of iron between your jaws, so that I may guide you with these reins, and allow this saddle to be placed upon your back so that I may keep steady upon you as we follow after the enemy." The Horse agreed to the conditions, and the Hunter soon saddled and bridled him. Then with the aid of the Hunter the Horse soon overcame the Stag, and said to the Hunter: "Now, get off, and remove those things from my mouth and back."

"Not so fast, friend," said the Hunter. "I have now got you under bit and spur, and prefer to keep you as you are at present."

In the past few weeks different people came to me with the dreaded phrase: "I have an idea for an app". If you feel targeted, you probably are, but you're not the first, and you won't be the last. Some even trusted me enough to tell me what their great idea was. Many, though not all, couldn't code their way through a paper bag and thus they look for someone "to code the app for free".

You even might find someone like that, and if you do, it's someone with a lot of time on their hands like a student with not much experience.

What those ideas (if I get to hear them) all have in common is that they need infrastructure behind it. Uploading pictures, movies, heck, even simple text need a place to be stored. That's definitely not your phone, especially if others need to be able to access it. Yeah, you can start off with hosting a little database and web front end on your DSL line (if you have one), but in the long run this will require some serious money. I'm not even talking about the people managing and creating it for you. I'm just talking about bandwidth, storage, electricity.

So, if you have an app idea, assess where you want to store what: if you have no concrete answers to those questions, shelve your idea until you do.. An app is nothing magical, it requires real resources, real work and thus real money.

Yet another cutting edge, value adding software project cut because the stock market went down.

The manager who told me in 2001 that any project that takes over 4 months to be complete is a failure, has been proven right in my career more often than he's been proven wrong. 2 quarters, that's all you ever get to show success anymore.

Oh well. This one was good resume fodder for next time. But I'm glad I never got around to buying my own whiteboard pens.

I unintentionally used this pun over the weekend discussing Microsoft with my wife.

Given Microsoft's success rate with Surface, Windows Phone, Zune, and the negative publicity the next Xbox has received, it seems the best way to hurt Microsoft is to leave them to their own devices.

I am significantly less bothered by individual acts of sin, both in others and myself, than I am by collective attempts to redefine sin as not-sin.
 
Even in authoritarian terms, forgiveness outweighs justice.