If you haven't seen the other 50th anniversary goodies, I highly recommend them. "An Adventure in Space and Time" is basically the real-life story about Doctor Who's beginning with William Hartnell (http://www.bbcamerica.com/doctor-who/guide/50th-specials/an-adventure-in-space-and-time/) and the "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot" is an amusing story about the classic doctors trying to get into the 50th anniversary special with some nice jokes for knowledgeable fans of the classic series (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01m3kfy).

As a *huge* fan of Doctor Who, I don't deny the movie at all. In fact, I watched it again about a month ago and while it doesn't really fit the style of the classic episodes (which is really what made me dislike it the first time), it does fit the style of the new series. It is a very watchable movie and I do think Paul McGann makes a good Doctor. His work in the mini-sode for the 50th, makes me wish the I could see more of him as the Doctor. I honestly wish they would have gotten him to play the part that John Hurt played in the anniversary episode to prevent the confusion caused by inserting another Doctor into the mix.

The 50th anniversary episode was in all aspects for me AMAZING. It tied up a lot loose ends that were created between the classic and new series. With the prelude mini-sode with Paul McGann, we have now seen every single regeneration of the Doctor. Paul McGann has been solidly firmed up in canon, the ultimate end of the Time War has been shown, and we might even have Gallifrey back.

BTW, if you haven't seen the other 50th anniversary goodies, I highly recommend them. "An Adventure in Time and Space" is basically the real-life story about Doctor Who's beginning with William Hartnell and the "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot" is an amusing story about the classic doctors trying to get into the 50th anniversary special with some nice jokes for knowledgeable fans of the classic series.

Perhaps it isn't your cup of tea, but I quite enjoy the show and the history of the show. I've watched or listened to every episode from episode number 1 and enjoy it immensely. I've seen shows that I don't like and other people do and I just assume that it just isn't my cup of tea. I've also gone back and watched those shows and liked them significantly more years later. The writing on Doctor Who is hit and miss sometimes, but I think the characters are fairly well hashed out in general. The enjoyed the Clara story from the current series and am interested to see if they do any more with it or if she will just become a normal non-mysterious companion. I liked David Tennant a bit more than Matt Smith, but I thought Matt Smith did quite well and was very quirky, like people have come to expect the Doctor to be because of the 4th Doctor, Tom Baker.

Overall, I think it is better to just call it something you don't enjoy then to basically troll and insult all of the shows fans by calling everything about the show bad. I will agree that some of the episodes are hit and miss, but there have been some excellent episodes and some that I haven't enjoyed very much. I've also found with shows that I really have to get into them to enjoy them to there full extent. I need to get an understanding of the characters and the setting and just the general feel of the show and writing to enjoy it. I tend to really get into a show or not watch it at all. I don't have a middle ground.

BitTorrent does NOT know your secret. They create a hash that is derived from your secret (and some other information) and use the BitTorrent protocol to publish that hash. When a device sees another device with the same hash, they start to communicate and that is how they ultimately connect with each other, but each one still needs to have the same secret key.

In there being no third-party, yes, you have to have the two computers on at the same time in order for the files to sync with each other.

I've been looking for a good solution to "divorce" myself from the cloud storage trend for quite a while and I'll started using BitTorrent Sync as soon as it was announced. They also now have an Android version for testing and it also works quite well. They use a secret key for each folder shared that is generated by the software, or can be created by you. Each folder has a full access and read only key, so you can share files at two different levels. These keys can be changed anytime and it has a key delivery mechanism of one-time keys that can be more easily shared. Obviously, in order to keep your files safe, you need two locations that separate, such as home and work or you could sync your files with a friend. The features have been coming very quickly and I'm pleased by all they have added. You can choose how much you want to use the BitTorrent network (your files are always encrypted with your key though so they cannot be viewed over the network) from using their trackers, a relay server, and the DHT network, to just using the LAN and hardcoding the host IPs into the software configuration. The more of the network you use, the easier it is to access your files from anywhere. So, if you don't trust BitTorrent, then you don't have to use them. The Android application (and the iPhone one when it come out I'm sure) has some additional features, such as the ability to easy transfer files between mobile devices by simply scanning a QR code and things like that. So far, I am very pleased with this software and have been recommending it to everyone.

For the data that I really care about, I use a USB drive and an online cloud storage service (Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive, etc.). I don't really trust either, but both would have to fail on me at the same time for my data to be lost.

I had a touch screen netbook with Windows 7 on it and I loved it. I found myself trying to use the touch features on non touch surface (my other computer at home and my work computer) only to be disappointed when it didn't work. Unfortunately, the netbook was slow and not really up to par with what I wanted, so I opted for a less feature rich and less useful Android tablet. Since then, I've wanted to go back, but I cannot justify the cost. On a laptop or desktop computer, touch is NOT a replacement for the keyboard, although it is could be a replacement for the mouse if the applications are designed with a touch screen in mind.

When people doing ANYTHING, people want justification if it is something that is seen as negative and I think we have this here. While I agree that a college degree is not a necessity to being a smart and intelligent person and also that a college degree doesn't make someone a smart and intelligent person, a college degree is an important piece of paper if you want job stability and security. I used to work in Silicon Valley during the .COM boom. I dropped out of college to work there and I made decent money. The first company that I was with got acquired and downsized and I was one of the people cut. I don't know if it was because of the lack of college degree or because of inexperience, but it happened. I then turned to taking online classes and finishing my degree. The next job a got with the degree paid me 50% more money and unfortunately went out of business. I don't regret dropping out of the college, but I'm very glad that I have a college degree 13 years later. I know that I wouldn't have the job that I have today without it.

When talking about the cost, the options for obtaining an accredited college degree have not be more open than they are now. There are many accredited online degree granting options that can be done at home, while you have a full time job. In other words, you can start working AND work on your degree if you don't want to take 4+ years out of your life for college. Some of these options are quite affordable compared to the traditional college experience.

Just like "The Sharper Image" and "Circuit City," the Twinkie name will live on. It is a name that is worth probably around half a billion dollars per year to a company that is able to manage it correctly. There may be a few months in which Twinkies are off the shelves, but they'll be back.

Getting fired from a company was the best thing to happen to me. Obviously, I didn't think so at the time, but it being 12 years later makes me realize how valuable getting fired was to my life and my career. I really was in the wrong job and it got my mind straight and I starting doing stuff I enjoyed much more and even got a massive raise from my previous job on top of that. When it happened, it was pretty much out of nowhere and I was furious. I couldn't sleep for several days just thinking about how angry I was at the company. Once I got a new job and a 50% raise from the previous one, I kind of got over it. I didn't lose $100 million dollars in the deal, but the company did get purchased by a publicly traded company, so I did lose some money in the firing. Overall, my life and career are better off because of it. It taught me some valuable lessons about job security (you can always be replaced) and my career path and, looking back, I'm glad it happened.

I had Comcast and was reasonably happy with it. I moved about 12 miles and Comcast wasn't available at my new house (although they say it will be available soon and I have a Comcast cable run to my house). So, I was forced to go with the telephone company's DSL option (Frontier). So far, it seems to be as fast and cheaper than Comcast. I'm not sure if I'll switch back when Comcast does get to my area. I don't have any TV service right now and it is a nice experiment to see how well I do without it.

I disagree with you on certifications and I guess your entire attitude about IT in general. I will proudly say that is have the CISSP and a CCNA certifications. My employer paid for the CISSP because it looks good to our clients and I learned some stuff in the process. Speaking of critical thinking, do you think the way you don't even give people with certifications a chance passes the fairness test or the relevancy test? In addition, you make a huge assumption about people with certifications, that they are naive and easily scammed, and claim that the evidence is that they have a cert. You smell of personal bias and that is counter to the "essential critical thinking skills" of which you speak.

I once had a DVD drive that didn't support the disc check that was done to ensure you had an authentic disc in the drive. I tried to fix this via Internet searches and posts on the game makers support site, but without success. I'm thankful for the people that cracked this kind of DRM because without it I wouldn't be able to play my legally purchased games. Plus, since I had opened the package, the stores wouldn't take it back and the game maker wouldn't help me either assuming that I was trying to do something nefarious. Saying this, the DRM for this game will be cracked and we will be free to play it on any computer we want without worrying about hardware changes. The worse the DRM, the harder the hacking community will work to bypass it. In my opinion, when DRM becomes noticeable to the consumer it has crossed the line.

In my opinion, passwords are pretty much here to stay for the foreseeable future. The thing that I see changing is making the password a single item in an authentication scheme. Most of the major websites have two factor authentication methods available (think Google, Facebook, Paypal, etc.) and most of the banks that I use have methods of dealing with unknown devices connecting, via a series of questions, an email link, or a code sent to me out-of-band. We are certainly moving in a direction where the password is simply a single piece of information of many needed to authentication. Obviously, the sensitivity of the information will determine what kind of security is needed, but five years ago two factor authentication was only used in the most secure situations and now it is available on the most popular web sites.