That's a nice job. Of course, the only original part is the case. Coneniently, there's someone who sells a board with buttons designed to fit in a GameBoy case and bring out the buttons for emulation purposes.

If you 3D printed a new case, you would't need a Game Boy at all. I wonder if there's a decal set for that.

iDrive, which is supposed to be a remote backup service, has a similar problem. They used to be a honest remote backup service, with client-side encryption. (They didn't protect the client password very well on the client machine, but at least the server didn't have it.) File contents were encrypted, but filenames were not, so you could look at logs and the directory tree on line. Then they came out with a "new version" of the service, one that is "web based" and offers "sharing".

For "sharing" to work, of course, they need to know your encryption key. They suggest using the "default encryption key". Even if you're not "sharing", when you want to recover a copy of a file, you're prompted to enter your encryption key onto a web page. The web page immediately sends the encryption key to the server as plain text, as can be seen from a browser log. Asked about this, they first denied the problem, then, when presented with a browser log, refused to answer further questions.

They try real hard to get their hands on your encryption key. After you log into their web site, a huge pop-up demands your encryption key. Without it, some of the menu items at the top of the page still work, and with some difficulty, you can actually find logs of what you backed up. You can't browse your directory tree, though.

It's possible to use the service securely (maybe), but you have to run only the application for recovery, and never use the web-based service. They don't tell you that.

This isn't a free service. I pay them $150 a year.

There are specific holes designed into all iPhones and iPads that show up in iOS allowing them to bypass any locking.

They're not "published" per se, but they're there and many suppliers of law enforcement software provide them, which work either over wireless or the data/power connection ports.

What warrants? They're already quartering troops in your pocket and purse.

I mention the iPhone and iPad angle, since more than 60 percent of all adult US citizens use those. You'd think Droids would be more popular, but that's not showing up in the government metrics.

Happened this summer, mostly May and June. Details in Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province and Georgia Straight, and Globe and Mail.

Comrade Harper had to "suspend" the TFWP because it meant his Conservative Party was not going to be reelected, and was going to lose half it's seats.

That's a sop to allow corporations to bring in H1-B to fill our community colleges.

Probably about half of the students in my math classes in Seattle Central are not American. Or Canadian.

Nothing wrong with that, but it's not helping with retraining when you outsource the jobs overseas.

They said that they needed Temporary Foreign Workers and it would lead to full time jobs in Canada too.

And then the media got off their butts and figured out that it was really being used to provide cheap labour in Canadian restaurants instead of hiring local teens.

H1-B is a giant sucking sound of jobs being outsourced to India, and I don't mean native tribal lands here in North America.

Code monkeys are, and that's the way that managers who hire code monkeys like it.

There are plenty of programmers out there creating interesting and useful new software, and plenty of customers/clients willing to pay serious money for the value that software offers them without all the unnecessary bureaucratic overheads and middle management crap.

If you are a good programmer and professional in your general conduct, you owe it to yourself not to be a code monkey for anyone, IMHO. You have to be really, really unlucky with the time and place when your current gig(s) run out not to have better options in 2014.

If you're developing on a platform as developer-hostile as that and you're locked into it so your business can't port to other platforms if necessary, I would submit that you have bigger strategic problems and long-term risks than merely being a small company. An arrangement like that is an axe hanging over the head of almost any size of company and you have absolutely no control over when it might fall.

(No, I don't develop iOS apps or write console games, despite occasionally getting enquiries in those fields, and this is why.)

The author has a point. At one time, there were development tools, which cost money, were relatively static, and which were expected to work correctly. Then there were applications, which relied on the development tools.

We now have a huge proliferation of tools, many of them open source, poorly integrated with each other, and most badly maintained. Worse, because everything has a client side and a server side, there are usually two independent tool chains involved.

Web programming is far too complex for how little most web sites do. (And the code quality is awful. Open a browser console and watch the errors scroll by.)

The cursing thing *might* have come from a bit of reverse semitic paranoia. In some far out fundamentalist theologies- Jews are actually revered and considered *closer* to God than Christians ( a strict literal interpretation of the events of the Pentateuch).

Oddly enough, I've noticed this in non-fundamentalist forms of Christianity as well, especially my own Catholicism. There is a reason why Pope Benedict XVI forbade the sacred name from being spoken in Mass, out of respect for our older brethren, and why a good deal of 20th and 21st century theology has been devoted to the consideration of Christianity as a sect of Judaism.

Had a girl who acted like this in my wife's daycare. One day, due to misbehaving, I put her in what we call a "Daddy time out", which is one of the more serious corrective actions we take (spanking's not allowed in our state, and you can even get your own kid taken away). Instead of sitting with me on the couch, she spent the whole four minutes (a minute per year of age) standing ramrod straight, as if I was about to do something to her.

I found out later she had been abused, and her mother had converted to fundamentalist Xianity to get her some free counseling. Due to my Daddy Time Out and her reaction to it, she was removed from the daycare soon after, presumably to one run only by women.

This is how we manage to increase inflation while keeping the CPI from growing out of control. A "case" of soda still only costs $7 (didn't it used to cost $5), but now there is only 20 cans in a case in stead of 24. But, no, the price didn't go up, so no inflation. A box of crackers is now 8 ounces instead of 12, but it's the same price, so no inflation. On the other side of the coin, you have added features that you don't really want or care about, but can't get the product without. A new car costs twice as much as it did 8 years ago, but it has so many nifty new features and safety mechanisms that you don't really need or want and that make the car weigh more and use more gas. So that is not considered inflation either.
It's all a big lie. In real terms, the price of everything is going up 10 to 15% or more per year, but salaries are remaining stagnant. This can't go on forever.

Streaming IS a dead end, because the cable companies, which happen to provide much of the internet service in the United States, have begun instituting caps on what was sold as unlimited service. With my girls watching netflix while out of school this summer, they reach the bandwidth cap in about a week. The cable company wants me to buy an upgraded plan, but the highest plan they offer is a little less than double the current bandwidth cap, which means that we will hit the cap in a week and a half. Also, why should I upgrade my plan when I was sold an unlimited plan? Besides, with all of their extra fees, my $99 a month plan is costing about $240. Since I am paying 2.5 times what I agreed to, I should be able to consume 2.5 times what they agreed to (which was unlimited).

It's rather ironic that seamless integration with the OS is much less of a privacy issue than seamless integration with remote servers nowadays....