I don't store much stuff locally. Sure, I have a few things I need on my hard drive, including source files for my open source software projects. But my (few) documents and email are in Google. (Yes, I know ... but it's so easy.) On a 25GB /home partition, I'm using 6.7GB (29%). That would be less than 20% if you don't count the Fedora XFCE liveCD install image in my Downloads folder.

We've thought about buying an iPad for guests to use, but decided it wasn't right to knowingly let others use a computing platform that may have been compromised.

If you're willing to buy a $499 iPad just for guests to use, then you'd probably be willing to buy a $249 Chromebook instead. It's a great second laptop, and perfect for guests to use. There's even a "Guest" account they can use, and it clears the data when they are done using it. And it's secure - which you want if your guests have "high risk computing habits."

Hi. Can you add that note to the article summary? That should head off a lot of comments.

I really like my X1 Carbon (it runs Linux just fine!) - and from the photos, the new T431 looks to be of a similar design. Basically the same keyboard, similar form factor, same hinge. The T431 trackpad is different of course, but the lack of buttons isn't a problem. I also have a Samsung Chromebook (the ARM one) and the Chromebook has a trackpad with no buttons. And I don't miss them. Neither does my wife. You can click the trackpad to select something, and use another finger to complete the selection. Think of starting the click with your thumb, and using your forefinger to make the selection. It makes a lot of sense.

So to answer the question: No, I don't think Lenovo is going downhill. If anything, I'd say starting with the X1 Carbon, Lenovo moved from making "sturdy and functional" laptops to "sturdy and functional and sexy" laptops. Even my Mac-fan friends really like my X1 Carbon.

I think ReadWriteWeb is just trolling a negative review in an attempt to garner page-views and comments from readers. The author admits he hasn't even tried the new laptop ("Fair warning: I haven't laid hands on the new ThinkPad") so this is a pretty meaningless article. Ignore.

The launch video I saw was a bit different from the one described in TFS. I think it was delivering the right message, just for the wrong reasons. It's not about being a rock star, it's about learning how computers work. I think it's a great idea to encourage more people to learn how to write programs. It doesn't have to be C or Scheme or Java, just something that helps them understand how computers work. Computers shouldn't be scary technology; anyone can learn to write a simple computer program. And I think once you learn how to write that simple program, you start to understand how computers do the things that they do. Computers become less mysterious.

I am an IT Director / CIO for a small liberal arts university, and I've discussed this issue on my blog about IT leadership in higher ed. What many of us in technology sometimes forget is that technology is fairly new to the workforce, and that includes faculty. Remember, the PC was only introduced to office desktops in the 1980s (unseen mainframes in server rooms don't count). If people enter the workforce in their 20s and retire in their 60s, that's a 40-year work generation. So computers have only been part of the workplace for less than a work generation. There are still a lot of people out there who remember doing their work without technology.

And faculty are less likely than, say, accountants to embrace change. Accountants realized that they could use the computer to add up the numbers and create a spreadsheet to track the income & expenses. People in sales used the computer to write letters and other communication. But for faculty, their job is teaching and for that they have relied on a chalkboard (or whiteboard) for pretty much their entire careers, going back to undergrad. Powerpoint was a stretch for some faculty, but Powerpoint isn't much more than a "captured" version of their whiteboard talk, so many faculty took to Powerpoint as a means of delivering lectures.

One of the faculty at my university often uses the phrase "Technology should be like a rock; it should be that simple to use." And there's a lot to that. Faculty want technology that is easy to use. They don't want to tinker with technology, they don't want to try the latest thing. Faculty only want technology when it supports what they need to do for instruction.

And that's where we in IT see things differently, of course. For us, technology isn't just our job, it's often our passion. We got involved with technology as a career path (programming, desktop support, server admin, databases, etc) because we were pretty much doing that already (building web pages, building our own computers, installing our own OS, etc) and what better job than to get paid doing what you love? So campus technology folks are going to gravitate to the latest technology: the Raspberry Pi, smartboards, video capture, and the like. And we get confused when the faculty don't want to use it, as TFA mentions.

Faculty will adopt technology when they need it to do the job of teaching. The article includes some quotes along those lines.

"I went to [a course management software workshop] and came away with the idea that the greatest thing you could do with that is put your syllabus on the Web and that's an awful lot of technology to hand the students a piece of paper at the start of the semester and say keep track of it." What makes it easier for faculty to focus on teaching? Learning how to put a PDF on the web (or a course management tool like Moodle) when they've never done that before, or printing out a syllabus and asking the students not to lose it.

"What are the gains for students by bringing IT into the class? There isn't any. You could teach all of chemistry with a whiteboard. I really don't think you need IT or anything beyond a pencil and a paper."

One quote that highlighted when faculty were interested in using classroom technology: "They're undergraduates - you need to attract their attention before you can teach them anything." Because that helps the faculty in the job of teaching students, which is the most important thing. In this case, using some technology in the classroom may help get the attention of students, which the professor says you need to do "before you can teach them anything."

I'd also remind anyone working in campus technology to remember three important questions when trying to effect change on campus:

1. Is it the right change to make?
2. Are the right people behind the change?
3. Is the campus ready for this change?

Those three questions get at the three lenses of leading through change: Strategic, Political, Cultural. And you can be right on with Strategic and Political, but if you aren't respecting the Cultural lens, your campus will reject the change and you will get nowhere. That's not to say you need to wait for people to be ready for a change. You can certainly influence that change acceptance by finding faculty willing to try something new, having them do a pilot, then getting them to talk about it with other faculty. That's usually the best way to introduce changes, and the most successful.

We don't have cable TV where we live, but do have really fast Internet service. We watch shows on HuluPlus, Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, etc using a Roku box. It's well below $100 and I highly recommend it.

I'm confused why anyone - especially a technology-driven site like Slashdot - would create a "separate but equal" website just for mobile devices. It doesn't make sense these days. What's better is to build a responsive web design that scales down appropriately to the device. Then we don't have to visit a separate website with different branding to get to the same content on a mobile device.

In a responsive web design, you might still choose to detect a mobile browser, and then set the comment browsing level to "5" or maybe "4". That's arguably the only thing you'd need to do that requires knowing the type of the client device.

I'd like to know how you got the idea to do the "Will it blend?" videos in the first place? As mentioned in the summary, it's one of, if not the greatest viral marketing campaigns of all time. Did someone at BlendTec just suggest out of the blue "You should do videos on YouTube", or were you looking for a new advertising idea and a clever marketer had this idea?

Love the videos, by they way.

The summary gives the impression this is a patent, but the /. article title says trademark. Actually, according to the linked USPTO file, it's a service mark.

I had once considered applying for a registered trademark for the FreeDOS Project, just to protect the name. To be clear, a registered trademark is R not TM. But the Apple file is a service mark, or SM. To simplify, a SM is basically the same as a TM, but the understanding is a SM will be for a short term use, for various definitions of "short term" (usually a SM is applied to an advertising slogan, like Walmart's "Save money. Live better.")

First of all, to apply for either mark in the US, you need to pay a fee to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). But even if you file, there is the issue of diligence. If there's a violation (someone uses that trademark or service mark without permission) the mark holder fails to prosecute or take action, the mark can be found in a court to be unprotected and open for use. There are other ways to lose a mark as well.

However, it is not necessary to register a mark with the USPTO in order to claim it as a trademark or service mark. The USPTO says any time you claim rights in a mark, you may use the "TM" (trademark) or "SM" (service mark) designation to alert the public to your claim, regardless of whether you have filed an application with the USPTO.

Owning a mark registration on the Principal Register does give you several things:

• constructive notice to the public of the registrant's claim of ownership of the mark;
• a legal presumption of the registrant's ownership of the mark and the registrant's exclusive right to use the mark nationwide on or in connection with the goods and/or services listed in the registration;
• the ability to bring an action concerning the mark in federal court;
• the use of the U.S registration as a basis to obtain registration in foreign countries; and
• the ability to file the U.S. registration with the U.S. Customs Service to prevent importation of infringing foreign goods.

So really what Apple is doing here is registering the layout and design of their store as a service mark (an identity) so that if someone else comes along and uses the same layout and design, Apple can make a stronger case to sue them. The legal theory is that you could have looked up the service mark to see if someone else was using it so it's harder to defend yourself if you are found to be infringing. Not impossible to defend, just harder.

Companies do this kind of thing all the time. It just doesn't usually hit the news. Coke has a registered mark on the shape their bottle, for example.

This isn't an Apple patent, it's not an abuse of the patent system. It's just a service mark.

"A man using iOS Maps walks into a bar. Or maybe it's a church, or maybe a school, I'm not sure."

I bought a replacement Model M keyboard with USB from Unicomp. This is the original IBM keyboard, just newer. From their website: "The buckling spring “Model M” keyboard, invented by IBM in the 80’s; popularized by Lexmark in the early 90’s; and manufactured by Unicomp for the past 15 years is regaining its status as one of the best keyboards in the market."

Same original design. Very sturdy; you could probably cleave your way through the zombie apocalypse with this thing, and it would keep working. You can get them in either PS2 or USB. Mine's a USB version, and I love it.

It's interesting to draw a comparison between this guy making his own watch as an "art project" and Woz's Nixie tube watch which he says he has worn on flights. Did the TSA just let Woz through because he was Woz?

While not a perfect match to the above, I think the story of the king's toaster is a good example of the difference between an "engineer" and a "scientist". I originally saw this on USENET in the 1990s, so the technology is a little dated:

A great king summoned two of his advisors, and showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob and a lever. "What do you think this is?"

One adviser, an engineer, answered first: "It is a toaster," he said.

The king asked, "But how would you design an embedded computer for it?"

The engineer replied, "Using a 4-bit micro-controller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the toaster and start the timer. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."

The second adviser, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete."

The adviser suggested a future-oriented embedded computer innovation, with a forward-ready platform: "Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too.

"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't want the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface.

"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap."

The king had the computer scientist thrown in the moat, and they all lived happily ever after.

I'm a long-time Doctor Who fan. I like the new series, but maybe not as much as the classic series. The actors are good, but I think the writing and stories aren't as strong. I've heard Lalla Ward mention in classic episode commentaries, for example, that it would do a world of good in the new series to cut their budget in half, so they learn to focus on making the stories tight (and not rely on special effects as much). The linked blog also mentions that some stories in the new series did really well because they had small budgets and had to keep the story tight and within that budget.

Now that we're coming up on the 50th anniversary season, I'd really like to see some hard references to the classic series. I came up with a great idea a few weeks ago that I'd love to see. With 7 Doctors in the original series, you can have 7 episodes to use as references. (Or 8 if you include McGann.) Imagine a series arc like this:

Story 1 : The episode starts with the Doctor, Clara (the new companion they'll introduce at the Christmas episode), and "Colin" (new companion .. see later) discovering a strangely quiet space museum on the planet Xeros. Exploring the museum, they discover themselves on display in the museum, with the TARDIS nearby! The Doctor realizes the TARDIS must have jumped a time track when they materalised. Thus they temporarily occupy a fourth dimension. This lets them be simultaneously in the cases in one reality and standing, looking at themselves in the fourth dimension. The Doctor adds that is why everything seems familiar, yet unfamiliar - for example, why he can remember meeting Clara but is fuzzy on meeting Colin - they're experiencing time out of order and things are all mixed up.

From there, the rest of the story is a one-hour version of 'The Space Museum' (1st Doctor). It was a good story, and would translate well to the current series, but needs editing down.

(The "Next Time on Doctor Who" trailer is not actually from the following story, but a re-cut trailer from a classic story. Same for the rest of the season.)

Story 2 : The TARDIS arrives on Earth in the year 3000 and the travellers quickly discover a base where scientists commanded by Leader Clent are using an ioniser device to combat the advance of a new Ice Age. The scientists uncover Martians (Ice Warriors) frozen in the glacier ice. The Doctor warns that the Ice Warriors are dangerous enemies. He also comments how similar this is to the first time he met them, also in Earth's future, but Colin suggests this is deja vu from jumping time tracks from the earlier episode.

This story re-introduces the Ice Warriors from the classic series, and in fact is a one-hour version of 'The Ice Warriors' (2nd Doctor).

Story 3 : The Doctor and his companions make a test flight in the TARDIS, trying to jump back to their original time track, and arrive on the planet Peladon. Seeking shelter, they enter the citadel of the soon-to-be-crowned King Peladon, where the Doctor is mistaken for an Earth dignitary (Clara and Colin as his aids) summoned to act as Chairman of a committee assessing an application by the planet to join the Galactic Federation.

The rest of the episode plays out similarly to 'Curse of Peladon' (3rd Doctor) but edited down to one hour. Sort of a cheesy episode, but can be improved through editing and some minor re-writes. I'd change the antagonist to one of the delegates, probably Alpha Centauri. The Doctor believes he knows who was causing trouble, but would end up being wrong. Instead, Colin and Clara ferret out the bad guys. The Doctor is really confused by now, especially since things seem familiar, yet unfamiliar (a theme repeated throughout this season).

Story 4 : The Doctor, Clara and Colin arrive on a desolate and apparently deserted Earth in our far future. They soon find a group of shipwrecked astronauts from a human colony in the Galactic Federation, lured there by a fake distress call. The astronauts suspect the Doctor of luring them. One of their number, Roth, tells Clara of an alien conducting gruesome experiments on his crewmates and him. The alien turns out to be a Sontaran (we've seen them in other seasons) compiling a report on human physical and mental capabilities as a prelude to an invasion of the galaxy.

It's a direct lift from 'The Sontaran Experiment' (4th Doctor). Not much editing required this time.

Story 5 : The Doctor, Clara and Colin arrive on Sea Base 4, a near-future nuclear missile station under the ocean. The Silurians (we've also seen them in other seasons in the new series) soon invade the base.

The rest of the episode is a one-hour version of 'Warriors of the Deep' (5th Doctor). Lots of things are changed, however. I'd lose the cheesy "neural implant" operator plot device from the original story. Colin plays a more "action" role in defending the base against the Sea Devil invasion. Why is Colin suddenly interested in getting a piece of the action? This causes the Doctor to wonder if they have really jumped time tracks, or if something more sinister is happening.

Story 6 : In the TARDIS console room, the Doctor decides to investigate further, and decides to retread his path, to backtrack and perhaps "reboot" the time line. He throws a switch ... The Doctor and his companions arrive on the Earth around the same time as story #4. Why is the Earth abandoned? They soon discover an underground colony, and learn from the people living there that the Sun became unstable (this sort of got mentioned in the Chris Eccleston season) and destroyed the surface, so they were forced underground. "The Earth has recovered, the surface is completely habitable now," insists the Doctor. But the colony is controlled by a service robot who was programmed to maintain an underground survival facility, so underground they will stay.

The story progresses more or less like 'The Mysterious Planet' (6th Doctor, 'Trial of a Time Lord'). It needs some editing to fit Colin into the story, with Colin taking on the role of Sabalom Glitz from the original story. But why is Colin becoming some kind of action hero?

Story 7 : The TARDIS materialises in Iceworld, a space trading colony on the dark side of the planet Svartos. The Doctor and Clara encounter Colin, a mercenary who has come here to search for a treasure guarded by a dragon. Also on Svartos is Kane, a literally cold-blooded criminal who has been imprisoned here. Wait, wasn't Colin a companion just a minute ago? This is left undefined for now, but the Doctor and Clara seem to recognize Colin from a previous encounter. The Doctor and Clara agree this seems weird ...

The story mostly follows 'Dragonfire' (7th Doctor) but with major changes. The Doctor suspects something is up ...

(The "Next Time on Doctor Who" trailer for this one needs to be lifted from 'Dalek Invasion of Earth'.)

Story 8 : Right away in story #8, show the classic clip from the end of 'Dalek Invasion of Earth'. Follow with an intense video clip montage of the Doctor saying (Hartnell) "I'm the Doctor" ... (Troughton) "The Doctor" ... etc... shown from all of the Doctors, in order, from Hartnell to Smith. The Doctor suddenly, unexpectedly wakes (shouting "I'm the Doctor!") to find himself in a dark chamber, with leads connected to his head. He finds Clara in a similar pod, and revives her. Colin is nowhere to be found. The Doctor realizes that they have been plugged into a virtual reality generator, drawing on the Doctor's own memories as some kind of entertainment. He wonders how long they've been in there. The emotion of seeing his granddaughter Susan's farewell woke him.

The story would uncover Colin is actually an Eternal. (You may remember the Eternals from 'Enlightenment' in the classic series ... they also got mentioned in spinoff media with Tennant's Doctor.) The Doctor reminds us that Eternals dwell in the domain of Eternity rather than the smaller one of Time. This meant they are unaffected by Time and thus unaging. But Eternals have no imagination, after so many millenia. They seek constant diversion. The Doctor refers to the Eternals as parasites for using Ephemerals (us regular folks who eventually die) for their creativity, as Eternals need the imagination of Ephemerals. Colin The Eternal used the Doctor's broad experience as a source for his own entertainment, inserting himself as a companion to join the adventures.

The rest of the story is a typical "end of season - the Doctor defeats the bad guys," possibly by trapping Colin The Eternal in his own device.