Interesting you mention Babylon 5. Seems DHS and the TSA must have been avid fans of B5 and paid a great deal of attention to seasons 3-5 where similar government groups were discussed in the show. At least it feels like that to me :-)

"From the article: 'Cherie Anderson runs a travel company in southern California, and she's convinced the federal government is reading her emails. But she's all right with that. "I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind," she says. "I figure I'm probably boring them to death."'

I recall reading something like this in the beginning of a book I recently finished reading. It was called "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"

Very insightful book I must add.

This is a very slippery path we're walking down. There is a reason we have the fourth Amendment.

The man is simply and totally made of awesome.

"Ubisoft has gotten itself into such a complete knicker-twist over the PC games market via its groteseque DRM efforts that it wishes to give up on the whole affair as a bad job. But, like the classic stroppy teenager, it wishes to make clear to all and sundry that it's not being sent home in disgrace, it's making its own decision, for its own reasons, to take its ball and go home."

and that's the reason I don't purchase Ubisoft games. Period.

Their DRM has more than once caused my computer to freak out and force me to reinstall everything over again. I did purchase one years ago and I traced it back to their DRM solution. I gave up and today won't purchase any of their games. If one is a gift I go back to the store and with an unopened product replace it with something else (or just get the refund or credit).

Too much of a pain and not worth my time troubleshooting their crap.

Exactly. This is a great example of "are you using the right tool for the right job?" Does hweimer want to actually take a tablet and start learning the innards of the software or do they just want something convenient to carry around the house or the neighborhood that does basic things? Richard Stallman makes is career and life out of using nothing but free software that he understands from top to bottom. He makes a good point but he's an extreme case. My personal advise is don't get caught up in the allure of "free" if you aren't going to take advantage of it. Android has a ton of malware available for it, so maybe it's okay to take a less rapid free software stance and just find the best tool for the best price.

But if hweimer is interested in low level hacking, then good for them, I hope they find a rooted tablet.

The Technologist in me screams: "Spend more time making your OS secure and less time trying to band-aid it with virus protection!"

Okay this article is weird.

It starts with the conventional "idiots who don't understand science think x-rays damage their electronics". But it quickly switches to the "more likely a static shock" line which is much more feasible. But then why is this a story? Static shock affects all electronic devices, the Kindle is no different.

Then it goes into a "eWeek licks Amazon's balls happily" advertisement about how awesome the kindle is, which has no place in an article like this. Why the hell go this far? And then Amazon out and out denies the problem even exists. They don't say "it could be static shocks which no device is immune from." They use the "a bunch of other people don't have a problem" fallacy to deflect the issue. While it does nothing for me, that's kind of stupid because it will stir up the conspiracy theory wonks like a storm of bees.

Looks like this article was written for eWeek by an Amazon Marketroid, not by Steve McCaskil, which makes sense now that I think about it. Deflect and deny rather than address.

The problem with defining a fad is that those on the inside of the fad rarely want to be considered simply part of a fad, and those outside, for whatever reason often appear bent on making the fad look bad by calling the fad a fad.

So calling something a fad is little more than an ad hominem attack on the device or market itself when you don't list the factors as to why it's a fad. It's also a good excuse for people who look at it and don't like it or don't find it useful to denegrate it, when that specific person is in no way a target for that device.

Reasons why it could not be considered a fad:

1) The LACK of a keyboard is actually pretty useful, because it's far easier to carry around and hold.
2) Businesses like it because it's a generic touch screen, much like the ones you see at restaurants and food establishments that already use touch screens to take orders.
3) It's easy to retrieve information on, and like a PC, keeps all the information at your fingertips. Salesreps like this because they can hold it like a clipboard but yet have even more info, and airline pilots like it because they can manipulate charts with their fingers and review data but only have a single device with everything rather than several pounds of paper.
4) Reading anything or watching anything on a tablet form factor is generally more comfortable than trying to get a laptop balanced on a surface or even your own lap. Holding a book for many people is simple and natural, and holding a tablet is roughly the same thing as holding a book.

So there's plenty of evidence against your idea that they are a fad, but no real evidence supporting that they are a fad, except people who don't find them useful and don't have a reason to buy them. People used to call computers in the 70s and 80s a fad as well so don't use the term lightly.

Okay name me Sony's most recent successes?

Playstation? PS3 was a joke, it adopted slowly, they screwed up security for online gaming and further screwed up by not telling everyone right away, plus the playstation line was simply feeding off the knowledge they gained while working with Nintendo and it's quickly running out.

Blu-Ray? Adoption is slower than DVD, because no one wants to invest quickly in HD TVs because no one wants to replace what isn't broken, Blu-Ray are more expensive and the digital revolution is quickly overshadowing physical media.

Last major success Sony that can be looked at without question was the Walkman. Sony's TVs used to be a symbol of quality but not any more. Sony's successes lately actually look like equivalent failures for Apple.

Indeed, Sony, Apple, *and* the consumer may lose.

I'm praying for the long haul for someone to break down the media hegemony. On the surface this makes sense, but the problem is Sony is part of the problem! Sony is a media company too remember? Creating a TV that doesn't sacrifice their media profits is in their best interest. If anyone, Apple, who doesn't have an interest in media prices and uses them as a value add to make people buy their electronics, and who reported breaks about even on the iTunes store, has a much better chance of breaking the media hegemony than Sony simply because they have no interests within their own company to block them.

If only Apple and Sony are looking into new TVs, well Apple is about to win that race.

It is interesting. I've been messing with Hadoop a bit before speaking to my employer about it. We were using Sensage at the time performing data mining which it was sorta able to handle (they have a SQL like environment available). But performing joins has never worked properly (one of a few peeves I've had about the product).

About a year ago I went out to Hadoop training and built two small clusters of 10 data nodes each for work. Hive and some HBase running (and yes we can do joins in Hive). Pretty cool stuff.

The last few months I've been contacted through linkedin by several recruiters asking if I'd be interested in an interview. They notice my Hadoop cert from Cloudera and it doesn't matter that I said I'm not currently looking. They seem to be very interested in finding people.

Hadoop isn't the silver bullet for all big data needs however it does plug a big hole in my current job. Companies are willing to send people out for training (as in my case). But there definitely is a growing demand :-)

Did you offer him a +1 Funny or -1 Troll? :-)

And Concast was the other one who terminates people's internet access for a year because they were experiencing a full and rich media experience from the internet. That's what happens when people watch shows like "The Event" from web sites like NBC.com (and yes I know NBC.com is now a Concast company ::grinz::)

Ironic...

Unless you mention that the iPhone ran like horseshit on iOS 2 onward, and the iPhone 3G always ran poorly. now my wife's 3GS runs like butt on iOS 5..

I owned both phones out to the latest operating system they would support, and neither of them ran poorly out to the latest OS they supported. The only thing you were correct about was the fact that the 3G originally had some problems with OS 4 which were later corrected. I even gave my gf my original iPhone before her contract was up and we got her a 3GS, which is on iOS 5 and runs great.

So by my own anecdotal experience your whole argument about "how it ran like horseshit" is simply invalid on it's face.

You sir, deserve teenage feet all over your lawn.