I’ve spent my entire adult life enamored with technology and mainly by computers. Much of my vocational career has been dominated by computing and my hobbies are intricately intertwined with them. My first computing experience was on a friend’s Apple II system back in the late 1970′s and continuing on into the early 1980′s. The two biggest things I experienced on those systems was Zork and Choplifter. Those two games were
…
So Apple acknowledged the problem with their iPhone 4 this week regarding the now-infamous “death grip” and its impact on reception. The company put out a letter on its website to its users and among the comments is this gem: We sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal str
…
I was just reading a piece on Huffington Post about 15 of the stranger interview questions of late from top companies. I’ve had a reputation for being one of those people who does exactly this when I interview people. Most of the positions I’ve hired for demand creativity so I’ve found that the interview needs to be creative as well. You’re not looking for monkeys who know how to memorize responses in these roles. The que
…
…ed that Apple has decided that opening up FairPlay (the name of their DRM technology) would solve nothing and that DRM should be dropped entirely. In another article an RIAA rep pointed out that it’s estimated that over 1 billion songs are traded each month even with all the so-called success in suing individuals over the practice. To counter that the rep pointed out that iTunes has “only” managed to sell over 2 billion songs si
…
Dateline was back with the hidden cameras again this week. Chris Hansen attempted to make a big deal out of “exposing” iPod “thefts” and to make Apple out have some responsibility for not incorporating a complex solution to keep thieves from being able to use iPod’s that they steal. First, let me say right off, taking something that isn’t yours is wrong. It’s a moral issue. However, life is not fair and
…
…changed in that category. Surely things have gotten better, but when it comes to Logitech, their “hits” have always come with a healthy dose of “miss”. If my memory is in any way intact, it was around 1988 that Logitech got serious about their mice. Prior to that time each of their attempts were pretty much an attempt to interest the volume market. They adopted the Wal-Mart approach to making mice. Somewhere around this t
…
The company I work for is a big fan of Macworld so while most companies were off at CES I spent my week in San Francisco at Macworld. I hadn’t been to San Francisco in about a decade and was pretty shocked to find the city had aged pretty badly in that time. Homeless people were all over the streets everywhere we went. You literally couldn’t avoid them. When they weren’t lining the sidewalk they were walking around with signs o
…
Gritty urban settings lend themselves well to crime flicks and heavy dramas. Comedies are rarer. If they pop up in those settings, you can expect a different brand of humor — perhaps more profane or exaggerated. Gimme the Loot firmly establishes its roots in the Bronx and other parts of New York City. I’m split about how much I liked the film because it has great promise on many levels yet doesn’t follow through on the most important elements of
…
I don’t mean literally explode (assuming you’ve been reading too much about recent Dell laptop fires and Sony-provided batteries for them). I’m talking about the market suddenly being hit with multicore processors on the scale of 8-core, 12-core and possibly even 20+ cores or more. After attending the Microsoft Gamefest event I started making some calls and a number of them kept giving small little tidbits of information to sug
…
The VP of Iraq wants a timetable for US troops withdrawal. The President of Iraq supports this request. However, every time anyone mentions removing troops from Iraq, the Right goes into it’s pre-recorded mantra of labeling them with the concept of supporting “cut and run” policies. Of course this sounds cowardly and foolish, which is exactly the point. It never seems to dawn on these idiots that supporting our troops means tha
…
