David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Motorola’s Project Ara would sell you an Android phone the way many of us buy PCs: as separate, swappable components that we can use to upgrade and customize as we please.
Think about it: The PC I’m typing this on has a 15-year-old keyboard. The case is about 10 years old. The monitor is about five years old. The motherboard, CPU, memory, and SSD are about three years old. When I need to upgrade, I have a great deal of freedom about what I replace. If the SSD is still big enough, I can keep it. I’ll definitely keep the monitor, keyboard, and case. They all still work well. I can basically build a new PC every few years for a couple hundred dollars. Sometimes less.
My Nook Color is my experimental Android rig. Since it’s aging fast, I don’t use it nearly as heavily as my other Android devices, so if I accidentally do something wrong, I can live without it much more easily than I can do without a phone or my nicer tablet.
So I tend to try a lot of different things on it, just because I can.
The newest ROM I’ve tried on it is called MROM, and I must say I am impressed. Read more
My mom asked me a few weeks ago to recommend a tablet or e-reader. She’s really only interested in reading, so that pretty much answered half the question. You can read on a tablet, of course, but when you sit down to read on one, it’s almost a guarantee you’ll end up doing more than just read a book. You’ll see that e-mail notification and you’ll check it, and next thing you know, you’re on to something else.
So… Kobo, Nook, or Kindle? For me, it was an easy decision. The Nook was the best hardware at the time, so I went with a Nook. Ve hev vays to get the books we want onto the hardware we want, but Mom doesn’t want that hassle. She just wants to be able to buy the books she wants and read them right away. Amazon’s done a hardware refresh, so their hardware is as good as any other at this point, if not a little better, and they have the largest library of books, so it was an easy decision. The newest Kindle Paper White it is.
So, the day after it came out, she went to the nearest Best Buy to buy it… and ended up ordering it from Amazon. That practice is called “showrooming,” and retailers hate it, but sometimes they shoot themselves in the foot. This was one of them. Read more
“Chances are you never heard of Major League Baseball’s Rule 7.06 before Saturday night,” wrote Boston Globe columnist Chad Finn after the Cardinals won World Series Game 3 on that rule.
It’s easy for me to say now, but when I saw Allen Craig trip over Will Middlebrooks trying to advance to the plate, the first thing I thought was, “He can’t do that!”
I couldn’t quote the rule number, but I took advantage of that rule a lot playing baseball in middle school.
I saw an assertion on Slashdot today that Millennials aren’t interested in information security, in spite of the average salary in the field being six figures. I’m not sure I agree with the article’s assertion that 24% of those polled being interested translates into disinterest, though. How many of them are interested in other white-collar professions, like medicine or accounting or law?
I also disagree with the article’s definition of information security. The article asserts that information security is working for “The Man,” namely, the government, and information security isn’t just for governments anymore. Read more
I read something this past week that made me both hopeful and very sad all at once. The guy who said it is right. I won’t say his name, because in these toxic times, a person’s reputation can often get in the way of anything else they have to say.
[L]et’s model for the country something that the country desperately needs: people who have different ideas coming together, and in a civil way, discussing those differences.
That, more than anything, is what’s missing in Washington, what’s missing on Facebook, what’s missing on Main Street, and what’s missing on television, especially on the cable news stations and on Sunday morning talk shows. Read more
Early Monday morning, a fire broke out a couple of streets over from me. Sadly, there was one casualty, a seven-year-old second grader who attends the same school as my oldest son. His older sister heroically came and got him and tried to lead him out the front door, but they became separated and he lost his way.
The paper noted that there have been a large number of fires with fatalities in my area in this past year. It did not speculate on the reasons, but I think I know why.
I think inadequate smoke detectors have a lot to do with it. Read more
We took the boys to Springfield, Ill., this past weekend, mostly to go to children’s museums, but we also wanted to take them to Abraham Lincoln’s home. Lincoln’s home, and most of the homes on the block, are preserved and look today much like they looked in 1860, when Lincoln moved out.
We toured the home, and the tour guide left us with some important words that I hope will sink in with the boys. But one person on the tour asked more questions than anyone else. That person would be my oldest son. Read more
After talking with another former classmate/newsroom-mate, I wanted to bring out the highlight from yesterday. I’m not saying this would have saved Brian, but it was life-changing for me, and I’d say there’s probably a 10% chance it can be life-changing for you, too. If you’re one of the 90%, it’s more likely to be merely helpful.
The problem is the word “should.” And while I generally think striking words from the English language is a bad idea because language control is thought control, this is one instance where I don’t think thought control is a bad thing. “Should” is a club that we use to beat ourselves up with far too often. Read more