You are overestimating the "value" of the bloatware by an order of magnitude. That $350 computer will now be $385, not $700.

I use Enigmail daily and hate it because it makes my mail unsearchable. They've made the decision that all mail at-rest should remain encrypted. That's a great default because it's secure but I think there should be an option to store mail locally in plain text.

How much does a radio station with, say, a million listeners pay when they broadcast a song? Pandora seems to sit somewhere between radio and Spotify as a service and so I would expect the royalty rate to be somewhat more than radio and less than Spotify.

IMHO, Apple got ApplePay exactly right. Since it's built on existing systems and protocols, Samsung would do well to just copy it.

I think you would have to be nuts to build something on a Google technology. I thought about it because GWT is very cool, but with my luck I would roll out version 1.0 and Google would cancel that project and donate the code to the Apache orphanage.

I think the idea is to not get hung up on the actual number it presents you, rather look for trends. I have a FitBit and my numbers each day are more or less consistent. Yes, it might be measuring me picking up my phone as a step, but I'll probably do the same thing tomorrow. For me what matters is if I try to be more active I can see my numbers go up 10%. The actual digits don't matter, just the relative change.

Probability that I have no equity after 25 years of renting a property: 100%
Probability that some great disaster means I have no equity after owning a property for 25 years: less than 1%

I think the conventional wisdom is that renting is less expensive than buying, so you take the difference and invest it in something less risky than real estate. So, after 25 years you will have no equity in your home, but you should have other investments.

Radio Shack has tried to serve makers. It turns out, makers are among the people most comfortable shopping online.

I was in a RS recently and they had a 3D printer display, had a rack of Arduino kits, robotics stuff, and lots of little circuit toys for kids on display.

http://www.radioshack.com/diy-...

I have a tablet and use it all the time, but have no plans to buy a new one. I suppose if there are enough people like me, the tablet market is doomed.

Lesson learned: don't build a good product that is going to work well for a long time.

The person who called me didn't get far because I told him right away that I know it's a scam.

Then he threatened to kill me and my family. That was a little unsettling.

I'm thinking Stephenson was second choice because Lenovo already hired Ashton Kutcher to be a product engineer.

I put it on 2 computers, so does that make it $5/month?

I realize that in the long run, purchasing may save more money, but for such a small amount, it's an easy buy for me. Despite the hate here, Office 2013 is pretty good software and I don't mind spending a reasonable amount of money to support it. The $10 / month for 5 computers plan seems fair to me.

I actually defected the other way.

When Office was $250 per license, I used OpenOffice and then Google Docs because I didn't want to spend that much money. But now that it's only $10 / month and I can (legally) install it on my desktop and laptop, it's an easy buy. I'm going to be using it quite a bit until late spring, and then I can suspend my subscription if I'm not going to need it for a while.

his ability to sell a handful of vehicles to a small number of rich people

There are a lot of rich people in Texas. California is a bigger market for Tesla and New York may be as well. But Texas isn't far behind.

Proxying and caching was a huge win back in the analog modem days. These days it is still a win, but not as big. Looking forward, the costs associated with having a secure connection are only going down while the value of the secure connection is holding steady or maybe increasing.