A Letter to Technology Companies Utilizing Patents to Stifle Competitors

3 min read

Stop it.

Seriously, just stop. All of you are acting like children. Not merely children, but spoiled little selfish brats, and it’s embarrassing to everyone. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Why?

I’ll tell you, and it’s not what you might expect to hear. It isn’t about fanboys or fangirls, theft of intellectual property, laughably vague patents on generic concepts which could feasibly apply to practically anything, jealousy, innovation, or even the almighty dollar. It’s all of these things, yet none of them, for which you should avert your attention to the ground and sheepishly beg our forgiveness.

Review: End of Days

5 min read

As far as post-apocalyptic dystopian novels are concerned, Robert Gleason’s End of Days is unique mostly because it’s mid-apocalyptic. Some of the blurbs on the jacket proclaim Gleason as the “Dante of our age,” so it must have been worth reading. I’m not sure what kind of hyperbole inspired a comment like that, but I really hope it’s sarcasm.

Long Time, no Me. Android, Weeee?

3 min read

Yes, I’m still alive. Just in case you were wondering.

With that out of the way, I’ve been enjoying my Sprint Galaxy S2 variant immensely. It feels orders of magnitude faster and more powerful than my old Android Eris. And really, the stats reflect about a 4x multiplier over every attribute of the Eris. It took some getting time to mentally transition from a 3.2" screen to a 4.5" screen, but I did it. Now when I look at my old phone, sitting idly on a nearby end table, it looks like a Chiclet in comparison.

2011 PGOpen is now Closed

5 min read

Well, that was an interesting couple of days. Unfortunately my birthday came right after and I didn’t feel like writing anything for the duration. Now though? Why not!

In the end, I think my presentation, NVRam for Fun and Profit went over okay. Not a ton of people showed up, but I did get ambushed afterwards with questions after I got off the stage. Why those people didn’t ask while I was in Presentation Mode, I can’t quite understand. But Greg Smith was there, and he played the required heckler, so it wasn’t all bad.

Veriz-On or Off?

3 min read

The Samsung Galaxy S II is currently the top selling phone in the world. And it’s not a popularity thing, the device is genuinely exceptional. Reviews across the web have effectively hailed it as, “… the best smartphone, period.” What’s notable about this, is that various US carrier shenanigans have guaranteed we get it dead last, right after India and Mexico. And Verizon? Won’t be carrying it at all.