Aside from unaddressed junk mail, and two or three paper bills each month (since the cableco's on-line bills are more or less impossible to navigate and understand) we see virtually no "mail."

It's been years since I received an actual letter from anyone, and aside from my mother, an actual birthday card.

Eidos Vision improves vision allowing wearer to see 'time trails' similar to a timelapse photography."

Oh joy. Tech that mimics the effects of magic mushrooms......

" and helped some customers save money, according to the utility that operates it. "

I'll believe that when I can see an actual measurable decrease in my power bills. I'm only slightly less skeptical of utility companies than I am of politicians and cel providers.

Sounds like the issue may have been with the support person rather than OS X. I've seen a number of Windows people who just never manage to get past the fact that OS X simply doesn't behave like Windows.

I'll chime in with my own experience. I bought a PowerBook expecting it to "just work." I've used DOS, C64, Various Windows, currently Linux, and way back when, even punch cards. Yes, I'm flexible and adaptable.

I really wanted to love the Mac, but at the end of the day, after three frustrating years, it just never did things the way that I wanted it too. Not big stuff, just lots of little things that drove me away.

There were lots of things that didn't "just work," or only worked with one official Apple sanctioned product, or required you to work in one specific Apple designated fashion. And there were a handful of things that, after three years, I never managed to make work well.

The problem is never that Windows (or Linux, or whatever) users "can't" understand how to use Apple products. The problem is that Apple insists that you take their whole world view, hook line and sinker, to the exclusion of all other ways of working. There is the Apple way, and it is the One Way, and the Only way.

Some people find that works. Some people are happy to take whatever comes preinstalled and live with it, apparently not caring that there are other, sometimes better ways to do things, more powerful applications, and even more intuitive ways to design some UI elements. Some people are happy to buy Apple hardware to attach to their Apple computer to run their Apple software, and don't feel the need to look at anything else. Likewise, some people are happy to live their whole life with twenty-five albums on their iPod, that they previously owned as CDs, and before that as LPs.

Finally, the real differences between a Windows Desktop (pre Windows 8 anyhow), an OS X desktop, and Gnome or KDE desktop are really just cosmetic. The desktop paradigm (icons, menus, some kind of task bar, drag and drop) is pretty much universal, and no-one really has an issue moving between platforms any more.

The arrest of these supposedly dangerous terrists (as Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety (and doesn't THAT sound Orwellian?) pronounces the previously three syllable word) was carefully timed to happen the same day that the government is pushing through a particularly nasty bit of spy legislation.The kind that lets the government lock you up for days at a time without charges just because you sort of fit some cop's definition of "terrist."

These guys have a very spotty record in terms of suppressing dissent, and arresting people for non-existent crimes, so I'd hold off until some actual evidence shows up. Cop press releases are not (yet) enough to prove anything. I actually wonder about how these guys can present a serious threat to public safety when the same goons are saying that at no time was any member of the public at risk.

Thought crimes anyone?

The New York Times begs to differ: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/09/ny-times-new-quote-approval-policy-136180.html

“[S]tarting now, we want to draw a clear line on this. Citing Times policy, reporters should say no if a source demands, as a condition of an interview, that quotes be submitted afterward to the source or a press aide to review, approve or edit,"

Reviewing the article is the default expectation and offer in anything that resembles an interview for publication.

Really? I've never had a reporter offer that, and wouldn't expect it. What publications were you interviewed by?

I very quickly figured out that the best way to follow this particular story was to ignore everything said until a day later when the rampant speculation, mistruths, and gross errors had settled out so that only the actual facts remained.

As it turns out that was the best bet - during day one and two there was endless barrages of media coverage, 98% of which turned out to be just plain wrong.

Although I think that I speak for most of the world when I say we did snicker a little when the Czech ambassador issued a press release explaining that Czechoslovakia and Chechnya are in fact two different countries....

Aside from his just "waking up" to find his laptop and wallet gone.... yeah - he was probably at church at the time, and the sermon was dull... I seriously doubt that anyone at The Reg would "offer an interview with a promise to let him review the article and keep his name secret."

Keep his name secret? Possibly, and not that uncommon. Let him review the article? I really, really, really doubt that. No journalist - hell, no J-school student - would be that dumb.

Once you've been interviewed the deed is done. Unless it involves highly technical information - say interviewing a top scientist in specialized field, where there really is a need for detailed discussion - there's no way you'll be asked to "review" anything.

Aside from stuff like alumni magazines that show up unsolicited, we've pretty much quit magazines entirely.

The first obstacle is costs - the last time I bought a magazine it was pretty near ten bucks for one copy at the news stand. Wow - that's a psychological barrier for me.

The second obstacle is the amount and timeliness of content. Although the Economist, New Yorker, or Harpers feels like a fair deal, most magazines are thinner than I remember, and too often have articles that were outdated by a web site somewhere weeks earlier.

The third reason is that I just can't see the reason why I would choose dead tree versions of most things over something delivered electronically by e-mail or RSS (of for the Economist, via Google+). I'm not a died in the wool environmentalist, but it seems that print as medium is becoming a pointless exercise for probably 60% of information. Especially for news.

Anyone who begins this discussion by going "Grumble Whine Users don't know nuffin... just confuse things..." should immediately be shown the exit.

Cause guess what: directly or indirectly, it's end users that actually buy products. You can be as high and mighty a geek as has ever lived, but if there are no sales (downloads, installs, users, whatever) you've got no reason to be around.

There are actually a lot of really, really effective ways to work with end users, figure out what they need and don't need, and how to make things work better for them. To listen to them and learn from them.

Yes, LEARN. Instead of complaining about them and ignoring them.

If you can't or won't learn how to do this, then hire someone who can do it.

For those who aren't up on it, from the web site:

OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing the ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds. The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being simple to implement, massively scalable, and feature rich. The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.

Who's behind OpenStack? Founded by Rackspace Hosting and NASA, OpenStack has grown to be a global software community of developers collaborating on a standard and massively scalable open source cloud operating system. Our mission is to enable any organization to create and offer cloud computing services running on standard hardware.

Who uses OpenStack? Corporations, service providers, VARS, SMBs, researchers, and global data centers looking to deploy large-scale cloud deployments for private or public clouds leveraging the support and resulting technology of a global open source community.

Why open matters: All of the code for OpenStack is freely available under the Apache 2.0 license. Anyone can run it, build on it, or submit changes back to the project. We strongly believe that an open development model is the only way to foster badly-needed cloud standards, remove the fear of proprietary lock-in for cloud customers, and create a large ecosystem that spans cloud providers.

I looked over the new permissions being demanded by Facebook for the latest Android app update, and stopped dead at the point when they told me that the app could now "call phone numbers without your intervention." Say WHAT??

I expect Google to have pretty intimate integration into an Android phone. I signed on knowing that. From everything I read Facebook is now looking to pretty much take control of the phone OS, not by developing their own, but by hijacking large swaths of control from Android or the user.

Ultimately though one thing is making me stay away from this update, Facebook Home, and probably Facebook entirely on my phone: the Facebook app has been hands down the worst thing I've installed, and gets more useless with a very upgrade.

Exactly. Real keys. And I can make one of them answer the phone, and one more take pictures, I'll be tickled.