Losing our soul

Posted today on Defiant Majority:
And I ask myself today, what does the United States gain if it inherits the whole world but loses its soul? The soul that made this country a unique experiment — a beacon for the whole world to envy. Today, the United States my ancestors and I knew as a [...]

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Cell phones are bad

From 1983 to 1989, Dr. George Carlo, PhD, headed the telecommunication industry’s research into cell phone safety, with the ultimate goal of proving cell devices safe. The industry funded his project to the tune of $28 million dollars (U.S.) but his findings were so startling that he turned on his employers. Now involved with the non-profit Safe Wireless Dr. Carlo is telling the truth: Information-carrying microwave radiation, such as that used by cell phones, is harmful.

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Contextual interfaces

The debate regarding the effectiveness and wisdom of contextual user interface design has been getting more heated over the past decade. As program complexity expands and users developer greater technical savvy, contextual interfaces seem inevitable. But are they a good thing, or just a way to obfuscate already complicated systems?
Contextual interfaces are no easy thing [...]

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Opportunistic much…?

Maybe someone can explain why AscenderFonts is selling this Microsoft ClearType Font Collection for $299. Because, you see, anyone that buys a copy of Microsoft Office Home Edition 2008 is going to get them as part of the bundle… for $149. (Granted, Ascender’s package provides a five user license and Office Home only gives you [...]

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Twitterpated

This is why I don’t like Twitter or, for that matter, most of the social networking fads going on right now (I said most, not all).

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Whiteboard-space to wall-space (WBS/WS) ratio

Patrick Wilson Welsh has a great little rant on this really incomprehensible trend. I think the root of the problem is that too many companies still think of software development as an industrial, assembly line process and too few have really embraced the idea that it’s a creative effort. That might be why it’s called [...]

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The case for global cooling

About a half degree anomaly over a one-year sample means nothing statistically. I’m interested in the 50- and 100- and 500-year trends. My own conclusions from studying them, be they right or wrong (I’ve no idea which, really): Global warming is happening. And, it probably has little or nothing to do with human activity. And, therefore, while we might be able to influence it doing so would be very, very hard…

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When you’re boss doesn’t listen

I was recently approached by someone asking for advice dealing with a boss that won’t listen to the engineering team, and who doesn’t believe in methodology, testing or quality assurance. Statements such as “QA would just find a lot of bugs and keep us from making release dates” raised. This is a lousy place to [...]

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Well run beta

This is the way it should be.
When OmniGroup released their new (and absolutely delicious) OmniFocus product, they went into an early closed beta program to involve end users. At first it was opened up to a few hundred, then a few thousand, and over time the beta program grew until it became a public beta. [...]

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Leopard trips

I’ve been looking forward to OS/X Leopard seriously for about three months now. After seeing it in action on our development systems it definitely gets the nod for some beautiful, eye-catching improvements that will make any Windows Vista user jealous. But is it really worth the upgrade cost of $129?
Actually, I’m a bit miffed at [...]

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Finally some sense on extended warranties

I’ve been advocating against buying extended warranty plans for years. It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to do the math: Most people end up putting their extended warranty into play only rarely. In fact, of the literally hundreds of gadgets and gizmos I’ve purchased, I can recall actually having a malfunctioning gizmo repaired [...]

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New York Times photo from Iraq

John Gruber wrote, “if the photo accompanying this story doesn’t move you, you’re not hooked up right.”

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