I understand what you mean. There's some pride when I show friends my setup, and for the most part I'm happy with it. But then something breaks down and it usually takes too much time I don't have to fix it.

The new submariners with ceramic bezels are near indestructible. It's the wristband that will get the most damage. Funny enough, mine was scratched within a week after purchase on the cyclops eye... while swimming. It will have no problems going 1000 ft under water, but if you scratch it against the wall while doing some crawls it will take a hit...

another watch might do that, but it will not look as good as a rolex.

Why would I want speech recognition from a book? Or handwriting as input method?

The only thing I would want them to improve on the kindle is the speech output.

We have a chat system at work, based upon xmpp. In the set up of my account it says 'encryption required'. Does this mean only my chat buddies can see the messages, and my employer cannot read those chats?

Imagine a beowulf cluster of English teacher shortage!

Assuming I don't lose my dentures and my hip doesn't give out I'm sure I'll be able to come up with some right after my daily afternoon nap.

If you can still remember the question, that is.

now now, there there

I, for one, feel that the human race has far better things it could be doing with its time instead of obsessing over increasing some numerical values to the detriment of other numerical values.

like watching the bold and the beautiful

and then what? You make it sound like trading is evil.

volatility has declined since electronic trading. Electronic trading made HFT feasible, and volatility further declined.

congrats, your site has been slashdotted

I don't think that's what he meant. I think he says that anybody who manages to add complexity to something simple and straightforward (a project that would only take a week to do) by adding "beautiful" layers that provide abstractions for the sake of abstraction, should be shot. Personally, I would happily set fire to the remains after the firing squad had its turn.

Probably the best advise I've seen. I'll try it myself.

the friend can surely find 90% of his lost stuff, but it will take him a lot of time to download it again. Also, if he's like me, he can't remember half of what he had.

Then there's his wife who's screaming at him about the loss of the "home videos" (no honey, they're really gone, they're not at somebody else's computer now)

Yeah, I guess the price of an extra 20TB raid array doesn't seem so high now anymore...