I think it’s funny that you can’t review or feature a video streaming device on the Internet without those last five guys on the planet coming into the comments section asking if you can stream MKV files to it over your home network.
It’s like the FLAC guys for audio stuff - “FLAC-compatible, or I do not buy.” Well, given that it’s a $39.99 device that comes with $1.99 headphones, I really doubt you’re going to “be sure you can tell the difference” between 256-bit MP3 and FLAC on this awful device.
It drives me nuts when tech journalists and Silicon Valley types underestimate how and why Excel is used so much in the industry. Reminds me of when I thought I had grammar licked in third grade because I knew about periods and capitalization.
I always imagine these guys having this mental picture that we all work for Northwind and run a bunch of three-column spreadsheets with columns like Customer, Orders, and Sales. With the default magenta and blue column graph over to the side showing the same data.
On the other end of the spectrum, is Excel used as a half-assed development platform too much? Yes. I’ve done it, as have most other power users in big companies. We do this because a native app or web app is an IT Project (insert sad trombone here) and requires a spec, scope, and budget simply to write the spec, scope, and budget. I do not kid here; we did this.
And in the end, if it’s house-built for less than a million or two, the native app or web app is generally just about as half-assed as the spreadsheet, just in more devious and permanent ways.
The problem is that Excel is a scaffold, not a building. But a well-built scaffold affords both flexibility and functionality. A poorly-built building affords neither.
I would buy a refurbished hard drive as soon as I’d buy a refurbished heart valve. I understand people have financial constraints, but what a wacky thing to risk stability over.
After the great XPocalypse rebuilds, I’m finding systems building be interesting mainly only on its periphery: cable management, small form factors, noise reduction, etc. The basics are too easy now, with most of the key hardware sitting on the motherboard and cables refined significantly, especially comparing ribbon cables to SATA cables.
“Hi, I’m Martha MacCallum in for Megyn Kelly on the Kelly File. There’s quite a commotion on Twitter now from such-and-such, go to our Facebook page - we’ve put it all up on there.” Hashtag, hashtag, @so-and-so. Cue Hannity with the stupid football.
These cloud music services need to include a proviso for disposable, one-listen links to individual songs. You could cap it to, say, five burner links per month per account.
Jobs had that half-assed press quote about song sharing in the pre-iPhone, pre-apps days, saying to share a pair of earbuds rather than design a vast online architecture and DRM and all that. But I think burner links would be quite nice, in limited use, for those “holy crud check this out” moments that arise when using a cloud music service regularly.
Edit: Appears this is already in place but, as you might expect, is cripped by Google+ nonsense and not working for all publishers.
