The first key is knowing what you actually have to do, and knowing what else will be competing for your time. So let's say you estimate a component will take 8 hours of programming to do. Well don't assume that it will be done in a day. You have some break time in there, emails to answer, possibly a meeting, so 8 hours of work will likely take you closer to 11 or 12 to actually accomplish. After that - just keep guessing by writing stuff down and comparing actuals with estimates. My rule of thumb for myself is take how long I think I could do the project in, assuming nothing comes up to block it. Now double it. And add an extra half of the original estimate. That is usually in-line with the final product for me, but that does assume nothing else comes up.

Well that took a lot longer than expected.

Dell made some great smartphones. The "streak" line had Android and WP7. The Dell Venue pro is actually a very good phone. Shame it was never advertised and suffered a horrible death

Take the fallen wages into context however. In the 50s somewhere around 15% of gross household income was spent on food, now it is closer to 4%. Goods and services that people buy now cost LESS than they used to. I can buy a supercomputer (read smartphone) for what someone on minimum wage earns in a couple weeks. 30 years ago, how expensive was a computer? Also look at what has happened, China and India now have a middle class. The wealth isn't being horded by a few 1%ers (although they are doing very well), but it is shifting into new countries.

And now I find out /. filters out html comments.... sigh.

Google's blog post notes that "this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version."

I think this article also explains why the older parts of the population have a better percentage turnout for voting ;)

I'm up north in Canada, we have to worry more about the bears than the termites ;)

A car works for about 10 year... my sister is getting a new "smart home" which links everything to your iphone or android. Ignoring the security aspects of it.. makes me cringe when she doesn't get "your phone has a lifespan of 3 years, your house will last 90. Something is going to give" *sigh*

I find it ironic that my work firewall marked their website as malicious..

You do know there are things called 'shortcuts' that can be made so you don't need to go to the start menu, right? Amazing technology all the way back from Windows 95! Also, try hovering in the bottom right corner. I haven't had any problems with RDC

Well 20 to 30,000 pages is a huge range. If he only sent 25 pages it could have been just some part of 50 shades of grey ;)

It is amazingly common to have this kind of thing happen. Healthcare is always strapped for cash and they probabily look at the cost of conversion and someone freaked out. To them it made more sense to keep the old equipment with its old data around in case it needed to be accessed. Over time, everyone forgets how it works and then someone actually needs to access it. And ta-da. Money is a very powerful motivator and to be blunt, the healthcare system in nearly ALL places is so technologically behind, it isn't funny.

I have had a discussion with a few lawyer friends who state that the no-breaking-digital-locks portion may not hold up on court. The logic behind that is that the provinces are responsible for certain types of copyright, and the federal for others. The feds created a law that goes outside their jurisdiction, so it becomes a bit null. I personally always wondered what would happen if I exported the locked file to another country, had it broken in that country and then re-imported the new file...

Try to donate them as best as possible to a school or computer recyclers - although they do make GREAT Christmas tree decorations!