I'm glad that mutt isn't stagnating, and that there are people dedicated to keeping it awesome, relevant and supported. Rock on, you crazy forkers.

Why do we even have SIM cards at all? My impression is that they're basically read-only storage for a set of identifiers/credentials used by the carrier. Why not just allow the customer or company to input/transfer those credentials as needed? Or just allow a customer to fire up a new phone, input a username and password for their account, and then have the phone download the information needed to some bit of internal storage?

I'm actually asking, as I honestly don't know. What does the continued existence of a read-only SIM card which must be inserted into the phone win us?

Actually buying a lottery ticket does not significantly improve your chances of winning, if you're being realistic. But as long as you know that, if it's something that brings you joy, rock on.

I recently found myself in the market for a digital piano. I went to my local (actually local) piano store and checked what they had (wanting to feel the keys more than anything else), and fell in love with a particular model. They had it for $699. I went online and found an online retailer who had it for $499 ($20 shipping) in a special sale. As this is an actual local store, with actual local owners, I called the owner up and explained the price I had found (with a printout ready, which he didn't even demand).

Although he said he couldn't match that price without taking a loss, he immediately offered to knock $100 off his price, and to take my old model on consignment. In addition, he offered some great advice about stands, offered to deliver it for free. He also explained that he wanted me to be happy with it, so I shouldn't hesitate to return it if I had any problems with it. So, I went with the local guys, and picked it up (and the owner even stayed around 15 minutes after closing to seal the deal that very day).

All told, I probably ended up paying around $100 extra to stay local. But with the return policy being humane, the service incredible, and with actual expertise on the accessories needed, I still feel good about it, and feel it was money well spent. Had I demoed the unit at Best Buy and they'd had such a high price, I likely would've ordered online without a second thought, as I know they have a crappy return policy, no expertise, and no service to speak of.

Retailers need to know that price is not the sole factor that drives people towards (or away from) online retailers. Showrooming isn't all about price. With the piano, I paid the extra money for service and expertise (and to support that service and expertise being available in the future), online didn't just win instantly because of price. Lower prices aren't the reason I use Best Buy (and their ilk) as a showroom. Crappy service, pushy sales, and bad policies are the reason I showroom. Prices are just the excuse.

There are hackers, phishers, spammers, and other untrustworthy people on the internet. The FBI seems to have just realized that they can't prevent them from existing, and now tells us that we'll "never be secure", and people react. But this has always been the case offline as well. There are thieves, murderers, and con-artists, and we can never make them go away either, and as such, here too, we will never be secure.

That said, if you use common sense, encrypt your important data, don't click links in unsolicited emails, and use a password better than "12345", you'll already be enough of a pain to most "hackers" that they'll not bother, because next door, there's a guy who's got a plaintext full of banking passwords on his desktop with file sharing on.

There's a saying that if attacked by a hungry bear, you don't need to outrun the bear, just the other people at the campground. Same goes here.

One way to save a bit of cash is to buy a USB eSATA drive dock (single or double) with some bare eSATA drives. This cuts the enclosure out, and allows you to buy bare drives, which are often cheaper than enclosed drives.

You could also consider Drobo or one of the Wiebetech multi-drive RAID containers. But encryption + cloud isn't all bad.

Right now, it seems like the majority of Lytro pictures are technology demos, a fire hydrant in the foreground and a building in the background, or some equivalent, which just invites you to click both and move on. You can just hear the enthusiastic early adopter in the background of these pictures saying "OK, _now_ click the building! Whoa! Cool, huh?!". These shots are, to my mind, the photographic equivalent of arrows or spears coming out towards the audience in early 3D movies. Gimmicks which break the fourth wall, saying "Hey, remember, you're looking at a Lytro (tm) image, not just anything!".

I can't wait for real photographers and artists to actually find situations, styles and aesthetics where Lytro sorts of cameras can be used in a way that both effectively uses the new capabilities of the format _and_ produces something artistically and aesthetically wonderful. I think the technology has a ways to go, but right now, the biggest problem facing Lytro (and light field photography) is that it's a new medium that nobody has a clue how to use effectively.

Until we reach that point where people see a great Lytro picture and actually feel inspired, it's going to be tough to sell what is currently a low-spec camera with one big gimmick. So, if you want Lytro to take off, buy one for the craziest artist you know.

Right now, in the short game, everybody wants the ability to govern the internet, with the assumption that they'll do it right for their constituents/country/special interests, and with the flawed assumption that they'll be on top forever. The problem is that by attempting to run the internet your way and lock everybody into that _right now_, you're making it easier for somebody else who you disagree with more to take your place, leaving them controlling your internet in a way you may not want. You can't build an elaborate censorship, surveillance and control system on the internet and not expect it to be used against you the next time the torch is passed. In the long game, though, what everybody _should_ be wanting is the hardening of the internet against governance, tracking and regulation, by anybody, and de-centralize it enough that it doesn't matter who thinks they're running things. Only then can you ensure that your use-case is still functional, no matter who's "in charge".

Doing all the documentation for a few small IT projects, I've found that I'm better served creating task-based and user-based documentation than holistic documentation of the system. If you've a limited amount of time, I suspect it will be better spent creating easy-to-use guidelines for the most common interactions with the tech you're working with that people other than you will have. Step by step, idiot resistant, and with the technical nitty gritty just deep enough under the surface that somebody who understands, will, and that end users won't be troubled by it. It's a wonderful thing to imagine documenting all of it in some detailed, top-down and holistic way, but chances are that you (or whoever they replace you with) will be the only one looking at those guidelines, and that nobody will appreciate all that work, compared to a set of PDFs allowing anybody in the company with authorization to do X, Y or Z which make you look both useful and benevolent.

This definitely reeks of a personality cult, in the most disturbing, North Korean sort of way. Nobody has the rights to Dear Leader's image but us, and how dare you produce false idols. At least they didn't keep his body in state on the Apple campus...

"manufacturer's themes", that is. Not a plural apostrophe.

There's no wall here at all, just a foundation. You can still do whatever the heck you want with your device as a consumer, and this is just saying that manufacturer's shouldn't completely break the underlying UI structure, even if they want to supplant it with some theme of their own. "Do what you want with the field, just don't salt the Earth so nobody else can use it".

I can't think of anything I'd want _less_ than a candidate for public office sending me campaign-related text messages. Does anybody outside of the campaigns themselves actually want this, or is this a social marketing consultant's wet dream?

Acoustical modeling to determine the point of origin of sounds is nothing new, and although it's a wonderful idea to implement it as they are here, it'll go to hell the moment there are other vibrations on the surface. A low-pass filter should stop most environmental noise bouncing off the table/surface from triggering it, but if you put down your coffee mug on your desk, or bump your leg to the table, you'll likely get false input. Not to mention, as others have pointed out, the processing costs. This could be another of those technologies which is great for allowing input on an inert and durable psuedo-sterile and wipe-clean surface in a quiet, controlled room, but likely won't be worth much outside of bizarre use cases like that. But it's still amazing research.

At this point, I'm hoping that the system becomes so deadlocked with Software patents and everybody has a sword to everybody else's throat that even the big players have a reason to try and get the system dismantled. I'll be like a fever: unfortunate as it happens, but useful for ending the infection.