Acer, in contrast to what we'd heard before, has just said that they'll not be making a tablet to compete with the iPad, instead focusing on ultra-thin laptops. Acer sees these ultra-thins, including many that will run Google Chrome. Acer was cock-sure enough to mention that an iPad-like tablet "would not pose any technical challenges for Acer," but that that design just doesn't fit into their business model right now. Bet Apple's letting out a big old "phew!" in Cupertino about that one. [Digitimes via Engadget]

UK security agency MI5 has issued a warning regarding freebie flash drives and cameras. Apparently Chinese spies are handing them out to UK businessmen in hopes of infecting their computers with trojans and gaining access to corporate secrets.

Of course old-fashioned methods—sex and money—are still being used as well, but it seems that few people expect an innocent gadget gift to contain danger in the form of a trojan or malware. After all, why else would a security agency's 14-page report be focusing on this espionage approach more than it did on other tricks?

I guess it's time for me to become a bit more paranoid about the pile of flash drives I picked up at CES. [Times Online via IEEE]

Note: Pictured flash drive is not a known spy and belongs to Gadget_Guru

The WSJ says Google's launching an online store to sell software add-ons and bonus powers for Google Apps written by third-party developers—like more, um, secureness and other enterprise features—which Google's announcing in March.

At the beginning, it'll be just enterprise stuff that are add-ons for Gmail and Docs, etc., sold through a now conventional setup: Users buy the apps, written by other developers, through Google's store, and Google takes a cut. To be clear, it's a move intended to bulk up its assault on Microsoft Office with more features and capabilities, more than anything else. (Is extensive modularity and add-ons, which introduce more potential points of failure what businesses really want in their enterprise apps? Hmm.) But don't worry, Google wants to keep giving you, the normal person, their software for free, to make money on advertising. So click click click away. Google won't be selling you apps anytime soon. Probably, anyway. [WSJ]

Sixteen-year-old Alexander Kendrick has put together a low-frequency radio which allows for the transmission of text messages from caves nearly 1,000 feet underground. I still can't get a single bar of reception on the subway.

Aside from updating Twitter with messages of "It's dark in here" while spelunking, Kendrick's science fair-winning cave-texting device could actually help save lives. Underground rescues in caves or mines are time consuming and dangerous ventures because of the rescue teams' inability to communicate well—unless they lay down miles of telephone line as a rescue team in new Mexico once did. With this cave-texting system, rescuers would be able to maintain contact and potentially get medical aid where it's needed a heck of a lot faster.

Of course Kedrick's project isn't the first cave radio, but its test was actually "the deepest known underground digital communication ever to take place in the United States." I hope the text was "Hello World." [NPR via Slashdot via Make]

Photo by Brad Horn.

In today's Remainders: shouting! Fox News has been clamoring about Verizon and the iPad for a while, and today they kept on clamoring; an indie video game you control by screaming; a robot that listens for your commands; and more.

Fox Tales
Before the iPad's launch, Fox News Channel's Clayton Morris said that there would be two versions of Apple's tablet: one for AT&T and one for Verizon. According to Business Insider, Morris is still sayin' it. The information allegedly comes from a source in Verizon, and BI pretty much says that's good enough for them. Well you know what? It's not good enough for us. Fox News doesn't have the best track record with Apple rumors lately, so we remain skeptical on this one. [Business Insider]

Scream
If your video game habit really gets on the nerves of the people who live with you, show them this video and say, "see, things could be much, much worse." The game, presented recently at Sydney's Game Jam conference, makes yelling one of the primary controls. The louder the yell, the better you fare. Sure, your roommates might not appreciate your attempts to get to the blood-curdling bonus rounds, but if your gaming is provoking a lot of frustrated screaming already, this game might be one to keep an eye on. [CruchGearoarrrrr]

Hanging Out
Sure, this messy LED circuit chandelier gives your home decor a touch of the nerdiness that defines you. Then again, this messy LED circuit chandelier gives home decor a touch of the nerdiness that defines you. [Design Boom]

Atom and Eve
Fujisoft's Palro robot packs an Intel Atom brain, giving the little guy 1.6 GHz of processing power, Wi-Fi capabilities and a 3 megapixel on-board camera. All that hardware makes it a good worker, but it's an even better listener. Why? Because it also packs five microphones for powerful voice recognition ability. A video clip after the jump shows the Palro reacting to a woman's commands, though it's unclear exactly what she's commanding and thus unclear exactly how well it's taking those commands. The only downside to this pint-sized conversational companion is the price tag. To make Palro your robo pal,expect to dish out over $3000 when it's available in March. I think I'll just play some solitaire. [SlashGear]

When I reviewed MotionX GPS Drive for iPhone, I said it offered the best value but had some UI issues. Newly redesigned, the app's 3.0 version is far better—with landscape view and a more logical user interface.

Yes, the landscape mode I was lamenting its lack of in the last edition is there, and it looks great. As you can see, even pulling up iPod controls doesn't hog the screen. Remember, naysayers, it's not that you need widescreen for the road ahead, you need it for extra info, and you need it because it fits on the windshield better.

Time till arrival, distance till arrival and estimated time of arrival still all scroll through to the right of the "upcoming turn" text. I would prefer that I could pick one (I'm an ETA man—though not the Basque nationalist kind), but you can't do that, yet.

The interface has a nice menu system that shows more priority to things I really use, and buries things like Compass and iPod where they need to be, on the periphery of my awareness. The only thing I'm missing still is the ability to navigate to a point on the map. That may be a trick, but one worth pulling off. There isn't a lot of custom routing options in there yet, but if you really care about prioritization of stops, you should buy something more elaborate anyway—perhaps a portable GPS unit.

As you can see, even in portrait mode, the menus are cleaner:

All in all, it's a palpable improvement for a worthwhile product, especially one so durned cheap. That's right, it's still just $1, with $3/month or $25/year turn-by-turn voice service. You may hate GPS navigators, you may even hate GPS apps, but if you are on vacation and you don't have this app—at the very minimum, that is—you are just crazy. [Motion X GPS Drive iTunes Link]

Sometimes, and only sometimes, a piece of geek jewelry can rise above being tacky and decidedly unwearable to become tacky and borderline unwearable. Steve Wozniak's nixie tube watch is one such example. This ring with working microgears might be another.

The Gear Ring, designed by Kinekt Design, is made of stainless steel and is, of course, quite ugly. But seeing the gears rotate as the ring's outer rim is spun is actually pretty cool.

Is it enough to make me consider wearing a gear ring? No. Is it enough to make someone consider wearing the gear ring? Probably.

If you're that person, you can buy the Gear Ring from Kinekt for $165. [Kinekt Design via Technabob]

Seagate's BlackArmor PS110 USB3 drive kit brings USB3 to laptops without USB3. And your transfer speeds will be 3 times what they were through USB2. If you weren't excited about USB3 before, you should be.

The Price

$180

The Verdict

It's three times faster than USB2, which is a pretty good jump this early on in the life of the standard. In theory, you can get somewhere around ten times as fast, but you're then running into bottlenecks such as the actual drive itself and the computer you're transferring data to. But our biggest complaint is it's not OS X compatible.

Here's how we tested. The kit comes with an ExpressCard adapter that can drive any one USB3 port. However, the adapter does need to be plugged into a USB2 port for supplementary power. So we used a MacBook Pro (an older one with ExpressCard) booted into Windows 7 to test. We also used a CyberPower P55 tower with USB3, because we wanted a more powerful unit to make sure the bottleneck wasn't with the computer we were using. And we went with CyberPower, because they're one of the only OEMs now that are including USB3 on most (all) of their builds.

Here's CyberPower's test results first. Comparing the USB3 drive to a similar Seagate USB2 drive showed that direct transfer rates on big files are about 3 times faster. A bunch of smaller files evened up the match, since that's more dependent on the hard drive itself to seek the files rather than the actual data transfer. Even still, USB3 came out ahead.

Similar results came out when we tested on a MacBook Pro bootcamped to Windows 7, because the ExpressCard kit doesn't support OS X. The difference between USB3 and USB2 is less pronounced here—not quite twice as fast—because of the bottleneck with the machine, rather than the transfer. But it is faster, which is great if you're constantly moving large files around on the go.

Gripes

Beyond the fact that the kit doesn't support OS X at all, Seagate also brilliantly placed the drivers for the ExpressCard adapter on the USB3 drive itself. This is somewhat confusing, because they don't tell you that you don't have to use the adapter to access the data—you can plug the drive into a USB2 port, get the drivers off, install it, then plug the adapter in.

It's a good drive

This USB3 drive costs a little extra from Seagate, since the 1TB version of their USB2 drive goes for $150, and this is $170 with just 500GB, but does come with an ExpressCard adapter. But if you plan on getting a USB3-capable laptop (everyone will), you might as well future-proof yourself now. And if you're looking for a USB3-compatible PC, there's CyberPower, which has them on just about all their systems now. [Seagate, CyberPower]

Fast

Comes with an ExpressCard kit

ExpressCard kit needs a extra USB2 slot to power

Slightly pricey

Doesn't work with OS X

Do you know why this guy is singing? Because he's happy. And do you know why he is happy? Because he won an Apple iPad in our Apple Tablet Sweepstakes. His name is Chris Kratzer.

Like we said in the sweepstakes rules, we eliminated the questions that didn't have a clear answer. In some cases, like the screen size, we took the the closest answer as the correct one (10.1 inches is near enough 9.7 inches).

Only nine people out of 37,382 were right. We put those in a list sorted by date, and then ran a random number generator, which gave us the number three. Chris was in that position.

Chris works in ITS at Auburn University-Montgomery, where he's also a senior in Marketing. I asked him what was his answer process and he said that he "went with my gut on most of them, and rumors that you guys posted that seemed likely." He believes the is "gorgeous, and the ten hour battery life is really amazing." Like many, he was "really shocked that it did not support background apps" but, also like many, hopes that "will come with the next OS update."

The tablet "is nothing that I need, but everything I want..." he says, but at the end, he wants it mainly for "watching movies and reading books."

Congratulations Chris, and thank you all for playing!

Just a few hours after the M11x specs first leaked, Dell has put its high-powered ultraportable gaming notebook on its website for pre-order. It starts at $799, and will ship on March 1.

Turns out the leaked info was pretty accurate, except for the pricing and ship date. That $799 will get you a Pentium SU4100 processor, though for an extra $100 you can equip it with a far superior Core2Duo SU7300. The start price also includes 2GB of dual channel DDR3 memory at 800MHz, while 8GB dual channel DDR3 will cost you an additional $350. You'll also probably want more than a 160GB SATAII hard drive, with your options scaling up to 500GB SATAII (7200 RPM) for $150.

In all, it looks like you're going to have to spend at least a thousand bucks—and probably more—for an M11x that's capable of the kind of gaming you're going to buy it for in the first place. It still may be worth it, but it's certainly not as much of a deal as we first thought. [Dell. Thanks, Sam!]

You'd expect a watch called 01 "The One" to be a celebration of binary code, but while the 01 certainly has a dual-dialed binary design, it's ironically analog.

A retro celebration of jump hour watches (that I've just learned were popularized in the 70s), one dial handles the hours, the other dial handles the minutes. It's nothing complicated, which is completely the point.

01 is constructed of steel and leather, and it's available in black, silver (pictured here) or what looks to be a bronze. It sells for $170—hey—just like an Xbox 360 hard drive! [Watchismo]

Sous vide is French for cooking in a vacuum, placing sealed meat or veggies in water held at an exact temperature. Because this precision requires high technology, the method was solely for chefs—until the $450 SousVide Supreme arrived.

Sous What Now?

Think of sous vide as cooking from the inside out, rather than the outside in.

When the Coen Brothers were making The Big Lebowski, they couldn't for the life of them figure out how to fling the ringer—a briefcase supposedly containing $1 million but actually holding Walter's dirty undies—in a graceful arc from the Dude's moving car. It sounds easy, but it's physically impossible. They were about to give up when the sage-like Jeff Bridges suggested shooting it backwards. Eureka. They filmed the bag toss, its perfect trajectory, falling into the slowly reversing automobile, and made cinematic history.

Sous vide is a lot like that. Instead of burning the crap out of your extra-thick filet mignon in a pan, perhaps tossing it into a hot oven afterwards, all with the hope of hitting a target internal temperature of 130ºF almost by chance, you vacuum seal the lightly salted raw meat and stick the bag into the "water oven," raising the temperature of the entire cut to 130º.

Once the ideal "medium rare" is reached, you sear the outside for a pleasing Maillard-effected crust.

Your steak is perfect. And you can't fail. Seriously, you can do this 1000 times and never screw up. Because of sous vide's precision temperature, you can let meat sit for hours without fear of it overcooking. Sous vide is (mostly) moron-proof—high science brought down to home kitchens that may or may not be worthy. If you eat medium-rare steak at home at least once a week, you basically need this.

In some ways, sous vide is the next obvious kitchen tool, like its predecessors the microwave, the convection oven and the induction cooktop. It's a unique tool that could easily go from exotic to commonplace in just a few years. As you'll see, the microwave comparison is perhaps most apt, since they're both self contained, make simple meal prep easier, and function on a fool-proof, "set-it-and-forget-it" basis.

The only catch is, when cooking sous vide, you have to vacuum seal everything, or—as I discovered—buy food that comes pre-sealed. The SousVide Supreme doesn't have its own sealer, so you need to buy a FoodSaver or something like it, which can be expensive. I was loaned a Reynolds Handi-Vac, which was finicky but at least affordable. The sad news is that Reynolds discontinued it, so if you own one or buy one on eBay, make sure to stock up on bags. (Here are some official details on that.)

Beyond Steak

My crash course in sous vide cooking came from this amazing, nerdy practical guide by Douglas Baldwin, a comp-sci/math guy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He covers the basics of cooking meat and other protein in a sous vide bath as thoroughly as one could ask for from a guy busy getting his PhD in Applied Mathematics. I encourage you to read it, though it's basically a discourse of temperature and time, the only two factors in sous vide cooking.

Seriously, that's really all there is to the SousVide Supreme. You set the temperature, in Celsius or Fahrenheit, and then you set the timer. That latter part is optional if you own a clock, since it takes hours, sometimes days, to overcook anything. I prepared many meals in there, and only managed to ruin one dish. I left some chicken cooking overnight, mostly to see what would happen if I did. The meat just became inedibly flaky.

There is a very nice, very expensive cookbook by Thomas Keller (and his team of cooking/writing geniuses) that explains the miracles sous vide is capable of performing. I did not use that book during this test, in part because I wouldn't have had any money left over to buy food, but in part because we're talking about you and me, not TK and the CIA posse. If you will likely be creating "cuttlefish tagliatelle with palm hearts and nectarine" or maybe "squab with piquillo peppers, marcona almonds, fennel and date sauce" on a regular basis, then a) I pretty much hate you and b) why the hell are you taking advice from me? What I can tell you is what an enthusiastic, experienced and adventurous home cook could possibly do with this thing on an ongoing basis. That, it turns out, is the trick. It's not what you can make, it's what you can keep making, day in and day out. Here's what I cooked, and whether or not SousVide Supreme is worth having on hand for best results.

Food Porn

Eggs: Hard boiling an egg is easy, but getting the perfect custard-like consistency of a gently soft-boiled egg is not. This baby can do it blindfolded. Just set the temperature to 148º F, wait for the thermostat to beep, then toss in a few eggs, no vacuum sealing needed, since nature already did that. I made a spaghetti carbonara the other day that was absolutely perfect, in large part due to SousVide Supreme. Since I don't know of any other way to get the perfect soft-boiled besides maybe timing and praying, I'm going to say SVS wins this round: Worth It

Duck breast: Lord love a duck… and so do I. But duck is another classic overcookable meat. I set mine for 150º and frankly, I still think I could have gone lower. Once it came out of the vacuum-sealed bag (which it was conveniently packaged in when I bought it, along with a cheap but not terrible l'orange sauce), I stuck the breast in a hot pan, searing the fat out of the skin side, and then browning the rest of the breast with the rendered fat. Verdict? I've overcooked enough duck in the past to say yes, this kind of control is appreciated: Worth It

Rack of lamb, rib roast, and other tender roast meats: Steak and duck are just a few of the "tender" meats that benefit from sous vide. I didn't try these others (partly cuz they're so damn expensive), but my experience with them in ovens, sometimes undercooking, sometimes overcooking, tells me how nice it would be to have the ability to reach a fixed internal temperature, even if it took many hours. But is it worth it? These are not foods one prepares too often, and there are tried-and-true ways to roast them in an oven, especially a convection oven with more controls. So I am going to have to say: Not Worth It

Short ribs and other tough meats: Here's another example of getting something different than what you can achieve in an oven. I love to brown the hell out of my short ribs, then braise the hell out of them in wine and mirepoix for 4-6 hours, in an oven, at a temperature of 325º. With sous vide, you can slow-cook short ribs at 135º for two days, rendering them softer but still rare. The meat is almost prime-ribby. I actually browned them before their sous vide cooking process, so they could be eaten immediately out of the vacuum bag. Verdict? I've never tasted slow-roasted meats like this—it was very good, and there's something to be said for transforming a rude cut of meat into a fine steak, but my in-oven slow-cooking method is as fool-proof, and has the added benefit of creating a carmelized sauce to go with it. It's a Draw

Fish: One of the funny things about sous vide fish is that so many fish come frozen vacuum sealed in plastic, often already steeped in marinade. You just throw the whole bag in, still frozen, wait an hour, and pull it out. There it comes, spilling out of the bag ready to eat, every bit a sci-fi—or at least 1st class airline—fantasy. But anybody interested in buying a SousVide Supreme will have no problem broiling or poaching fish to their desired doneness, and you don't sear a cooked fish as you would a cooked steak, so the sous vide process is a liability, or at least a limitation. Not Worth It

Vegetables: Veggies are another strangely gray area. I mean, I don't have any problem steaming, boiling, roasting or pan-frying vegetables, but there's some allure to the fact that you can cook them in a perfectly sealed environment, thereby preserving the very essence of that vegetable. (I'll admit, the allure doesn't pull me too strongly.)

I tried artichokes and beets. Nailing the beets was easy, since a beet is the same from outside in, so you just leave them in there for 90 minutes or so they're cooked through at 183º. And when they come out? They taste like cooked beets.

But those artichokes, ugh. Not only do the heart and petals cook differently, they can be quite different from one to the next. Also, they float. At least the big old leathery dead-of-winter flown-in-from-God-knows-where prickly sons of bitches that I tried. I've cooked artichokes for ages, even carefully charring them on the grill, but in this case I assumed the set-it-and-forget-it approach was good enough, and it wasn't. I eventually did get the artichokes cooked through, but I had to pop them out of the bag to check them, and I had to sit a heavy plate over the top of them to get them both underwater. Those two specific issues—and the general fact that I was dicking around with artichokes for several hours—combine to kill any advantage of this over the old pot-boil method. Not Worth It (though I am sure Thomas Keller's artichaux are to die for)

That Sweet, Succulent Bacteria

I might add that there's a food-poisoning angle to sous vide that could be a problem, but only if you're totally oblivious to the issues. Usually, you cook food at a bacteria-scorching 300º F or higher. With sous vide, you're often operating in that weird borderland of 130º to 140º, so you have to be far more careful. Generally speaking, anything cooked so that the center reaches 130º or higher is fine, and anything you sear the daylights out of after you sous vide it is fine, too.

If you want to research this issue further, I suggest starting with Baldwin's practical guide (specifically, the sections on "Safety" and—my favorite—"Pathogens of Interest"). In reality, the key is to exercise the same caution you normally should, only with extra vigilance. Don't reuse knives and utensils used for prepping raw meat, don't let food sit around at room temperature for very long, and don't undercook anything of dubious origin.

The Next Microwave

SousVide Supreme is the first home-targeted sous vide machine that I am aware of, certainly the first getting any kind of attention in the US. It's not the last. I know that precise temperature control does cost money, but technologies like this get inevitably cheaper, and I predict slightly smaller units selling in the $100 range in the next 2-3 years. I have a $100 rice cooker that gets a regular workout, and a brand new $100 Max Burton inductive burner that gets daily use. On the other side, I've got a $100 deep fryer that comes out twice or three times per year for occasions that demand Belgian frites, and a really nice slow cooker we have seriously never used.

My point is that, within the spectrum of fairly specialized cooking devices that a kitchen adventurer like me would own, the SousVide Supreme sits on the more useful end. But $430 is too much, and the size of the thing too great, to be justifiable for any but the most voracious of carnivores.

Five years from now, you will have a freezer full of pre-sealed pre-seasoned raw meats and fish, and you will toss these into your precision water bath like you throw something in the microwave now. We won't think about sous vide as a gift from science, just like we no longer consider it crazy that we "zap" food with radar microwaves. Sous vide will simply be an option, at least for those who want it. As great as this convenience will be for avid cooks, I hope the experience doesn't become mundane.

In the meantime, you could spring for the SousVide Supreme, which works as advertised, or you can hack yourself something cheaper, that's close if not perfect. Either way, you will love it—especially the steak—but don't expect a miracle. This won't turn you into the next Thomas Keller unless that's who you're destined to become anyway.

First "affordable" home sous vide cooking machine, offering a unique set of cooking capabilities that aren't easy to emulate without precision equipment

Extremely easy to use, and works exactly as billed

It will not make you a great cook overnight, though it will help you achieve goals you may already have

$450 is still too much for most home cooks, especially for something that they might not use often enough

Vacuum sealer equipment sold separately (and can be costly)

As large as a bread-maker or turkey roaster, equally hard to store when not in use

Interface not great; display lacks count-down timer, and buttons are sometimes unresponsive

Shout out to John Mahoney, who reviewed the SVS at Popular Science. If you're seriously considering buying this, it makes sense to read both of our takes; we think differently, but are equally in search of great culinary experiences.

Special thanks to reader Michael A., who alerted me to the existence of the SousVide Supreme after reading my holiday gift guide for home cooks. He also told me about this slightly cheaper SV controller, a little too science-projecty for a Giz review, but possibly a great alternative for someone with enough cojones.

A quick note about the Coens: Though I've come across it on several occasions, one account of the Coen Brothers' ringer-toss challenge can be found in the source-rich—but literarily unsatisfying—The Big Lebowski; The Making of a Coen Brothers Film. Coulda been way better, but still, it's required reading for die-hard Lebowski/Coen fans.

And finally, a little self promotion: If you like my style of food porn, and my cooking chatter, take a peek at my online cooking diary, You Make It You Eat It.

We were quite taken with the M11x when we got some hands-on time with it at CES, and while newly leaked info on the gaming ultraportable aren't exactly what we expected, they don't at all dampen the excitement.

We knew already about the Nvidia 335M graphics running the show on Dell's 11.6-inch machine, but now the processor options have been detailed as well in slides that showed up on Sina.com. The M11x will apparently ship with either a Pentium SU4100 or Core2Duo SU7300, giving it more power than you would typically expect from such a small laptop.

The slides also indicate that the M11x will ship as early as Feb. 5th, earlier than the "later this year" we'd gotten earlier had indicated. It also apparently prices out starting at $899, presumably for the Pentium model, though it's not entirely clear based on the slide. UPDATE: According to the Alienware M11x Sweepstakes website, pricing will start at $799. So we'll have to wait and see exactly what configuration that $899 price point is referencing. (Thanks, Tyler!)

Time will tell if this information holds up, but if it does, that's sounds like a pretty good price for such a powerful and portable gaming notebook.

UPDATE: Looks like the specs held up better than the price and date. [Sina via Engadget]

Handsets like the iPhone may be capable of transmitting stereo Bluetooth, but as we've seen, it's tough to find a great stereo Bluetooth headset. So TDK just hands us a dongle instead.

Their new TH-WR700 utilizes any 3.5mm headphone port to transmit music for up to 10 meters, and thanks to Kleer wireless tech rather than Bluetooth, TDK claims a much higher fidelity—up to 40db less noise in the signal, which would be more than noticeable.

The TH-WR700 goes on sale in Japan starting this March for about $200, but there's no word on a US release at this time. [TDK via CrunchGear]

Apple has already put a 3-week delay on all of its 27-inch iMac shipments because of the manifold issues with its display. Now Hardmac is reporting they've stopped all assembly lines until a fix is found.

It's an anonymous source that has yet to be substantiated, but it makes some sense given the depths of problems Apple has had with the 27-inch iMacs, including a flickering and yellow-tinted screen. There's no point in continuing to manufacture a product that you know is faulty, especially if the eventual fix could potentially involve a recall. [Hardmac via AppleInsider]

Here's the reality of the situation: even when your job is to distract other people all day, you can still be distracted from that. It took me three hours to write this post. Damn you, internet! [CollegeHumor]

It's taken me a couple of days for me to understand the wet sickness I felt in response to all the post-iPad whining, until it finally came up in a sputtering lump: disgust.

The iPad isn't a threat to anything except the success of inferior products. And if anything's dystopian about the future it portends, it's an American copyright system that's been out of whack since 1996.

Mark Pilgrim, a man I don't know but can easily presume is my technical better many times over if only because he is employed by Google, said this in a piece called "Tinkerer's Sunset":

Now, I am aware that you will be able to develop your own programs for the iPad, the same way you can develop for the iPhone today ... And that's fine - or at least workable - for the developers of today, because they already know that they're developers. But the developers of tomorrow don't know it yet. And without the freedom to tinker, some of them never will.

Then, John Naughton, writing for the Guardian:

For the implication of an iPad-crazed world – with its millions of delighted, infatuated users – is that a single US company renowned for control-freakery will have become the gatekeeper to the online world. The iPad – like the iPhone – is a closed, tightly controlled device: nothing gets on to it that has not been expressly approved by Apple. We will have arrived at an Orwellian end by Huxleian means. And be foolish enough to think that we've attained nirvana.

This noxious attitude has permeated our tech culture for the last couple of decades, from a half-decade of open-source devotees crying about Microsoft on Slashdot, on toward the last few years of Apple ascendency. It's childish. It's defeatist. And it shows a simultaneous fear to actually innovate and improve while spilling gallons of capitulative semen to a fatuous, dystopian cuckold wank-mare.

Stop trembling, start creating

Nerds! You're not smarter or better than the people who just want to use your creations for their own purpose. You want it both ways: to be able to complain about the incompetency of your family when you're asked to help them work on their computers, but to swing around the half-understood ideas of dead authors when a company actually decides to build a computer that doesn't crumble to dust as a matter of course.

You learned to love technology by tinkering? That's great! Please explain to me how a closed ecosystem like Apple's will impede a curious child's ability to explore in the least way. It's not 1980. It doesn't cost a month's salary to buy a computer. And as long as it takes code to make programs, there will still be plenty of "real" computers around.

Worse, this inviolate right to tinker you claim, the oh-so-horrible future you're trying to frighten everyone with literal think-of-the-children fearmongering, is the imagined possibility that future engineers won't be able to create their own tools.

Well guess what? Only shade-tree tweakers give a flip about creating their own tools. Most people want to use the quality tools at hand to create something new.

Fix the law

Is the DMCA a travesty? Is it bullshit that someone should go to jail for cracking the firmware of a device they own? Of course. Only monsters would allow the curious to go to jail for exploring. Every song ever recorded, every movie ever filmed—they're all together less important than a person's freedom.

But you know what will fix those issues? It's not bitching about how those stupid customers may or may not buy an iPad. It's fixing the legal system. (Or for most of us, myself included, letting the EFF fight those battles for us.)

The number of engineers complaining about Apple's decisions who aren't using products of other capitalist corporations who thrive in the shadow of patent law and the DMCA approaches zero: Moan away in your Google browsers on Windows running on your copyrighted Intel processors. You're really fighting the good fight.

Hilariously, the great open-source hope is Google's Android, but its best apps are designed—and tightly controlled—by Google, which has used its clout to roll over countless web-based companies in a manner just as Orwellian or Huxleyan or whoever it is we're invoking now as Apple or Microsoft. And even with the threat of the DMCA looming, the iPhone has been cracked over and over again. It's been a tinkerer's paradise.

If you want to walk the walk, you can follow Stallman's lead and do all your computing on a tiny netbook, interfacing with the internet from a text console running emacs. Let me know how that works out for you. Be sure to take a picture of yourself using your Lemote Yeeloong next to the biodiesel engine you made on your handforged anvil.

Fix your product

"Now it seems [Apple is] doing everything in their power to stop my kids from finding that sense of wonder. Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world," whimpers Pilgrim. Grow the fuck up. Apple has no more "declared war" on your children than Henry Ford declared war on colors besides black.

Apple is selling a product. They've chosen to keep it closed for demonstrably reasonable benefits. And—yes, okay!—several collateral benefits that come from controlling the marketplace that services their products.

But Apple is not the government. There's no mandate to buy an Apple product except the call of excellence. And if you think the average persona on the street doesn't recognize both the ups and downs of buying into an Apple ecosystem, you're eyeing them with the typical nerd myopia, looking down your nose with the same autistic disdain you cultivated in high school. Turns out the internet you helped build as a sanctuary ended up a great place for normal folk, too.

Consider a path that will truly inspire the coming generations of tinkerers and engineers: Working your ass off to make a product that competes with Apple on every count that matters—design, ease-of-use, a simple marketplace, customer satisfaction; you know, everything—and does it with the open-source licenses and values you claim to believe in; or fight to change the broken copyright laws that demonize the tinkering in the first place.

Intel and Micron's IMFT joint venture's just announced they've started producing NAND flash using 25nm transistors—they're pushing 8GB on a single die—with products shipping sometime this year in fatter capacities (up to 600GB). In English:

Using the smaller 25nm manufacturing process, they can get roughly twice as much storage in the same amount of space as the current 34nm flash manufacturing tech. More storage in the same amount of space, as we learned before, doesn't just mean more storage, it means more storage for cheaper. [Anandtech]

Absolutely dread going to your location wireless provider's store and having to be social? If it's one of your worst nightmares, hopefully this will help you change that.

Guest post by a "connect" in the wireless industry.

Do:
Buy at the end of the month or during bad weather. It's funny, but the best time to buy a phone is at the end of the month. Every store has a quota to hit and the sales reps are a lot more tempted to make a good deal if it's the end of the month. They'll most likely be offering better discounts to try and get those final sales for their quota. Also, on days when the weather is really bad, the store has probably been slow most of the day and the reps are bored. We're not kidding. They'll want to talk to you and want to sell you something. The sales reps have probably made nothing in terms of money for that day and they'll be eager to try and make a deal for you.

Take the features:
Use them as a bargaining tool. This is a great way to get extra discounts or deals on a phone. Tell the rep you'll sign up for the data plan (if not already required based on the phone like a smartphone) plus insurance and other extra features if they'll cut you a small deal on the equipment. ARPU (Average Revenue Per Unit) is always a huge goal for managers and employees, and it adds a large amount to our commission check. You can always take these features off (if they're not contracted like the smartphone data plans) if you don't use them. Just know that most wireless carriers require features to be active for a certain amount of time or else the representative won't get the commission from it.

Also, try to find a rep that is passionate. It might seem like common sense, but we can't tell you how many people just enter the store and mosey on over to any boring dope and expect greatness. Look for a rep that looks happy to be there. That rep will most likely be an upfront person and be detailed on equipment and plan pricing. If the rep is trained well enough, he or she will know about other carrier's pricing and plans as well, making this much easier on you.

Ask the representative to be blunt and honest - telling your rep from the get-go to be straightforward and to-the-point will save both of you a lot of trouble. They'll get the job done faster and you'll get the info you're asking for without all the corporate mumbo-jumbo that they're supposed to shove in your head.

Plus, if you don't already have a phone in mind, ask the representative what phone they use. If they're carrying it, it's most likely a decent phone. Most likely.

Sales reps can usually budge on the equipment pricing, accessories, or waiving activation fees depending on whether you're at a corporate store or an indirect dealer. But something they can't do is budge on the plan pricing; that's something no one can adjust - only the retention department over the phone can.

If you see a better price at another store or online, ask for a price match. This requires a print out of the ad that you saw, but you'd be surprised how many people don't care, or don't come prepared. Corporate stores can only price match in this fashion, too. Buying at a corporate store versus a 3rd party store (Costco, Sam's Club, Radio Shack) has its benefits such as better trained employees and usually original/more encompassing warranties.

Don't:
Don't threaten to leave your carrier if the representatives you're talking to don't give you a good deal. Sales reps know your contract length and they know you aren't going to pay that $200 ETF to get little Timmy off your plan and into an iPhone because they won't give you $50 off that dumbphone he wants. Things like telling them that you've been with them for 10+ years and you deserve 5 BlackBerry Bolds for free will only frustrate the poor guy. When it comes to equipment cost, the amount of years you've been with a carrier as a customer doesn't mean too much. Also don't say that you'll get a better deal by switching from x-carrier to y-carrier if you don't know for sure if it's exactly true. A good rep knows when a customer is lying and they'll pretty much be done trying to work with you at that point.

Remember to play it smart. Don't try and ask for a smartphone without a data plan. That's like buying a brand new BMW and not wanting to put premium gas in it. The reps most likely can't make that happen due to restrictions with the way those plans work. Also never ask to speak to the manager while negotiating for a better deal. You're undermining the representative and are only going to annoy the manager.

Upgrades (phone discounts you get when extending your current contract with your existing carrier) mean pretty little to the sales reps in terms of commission. The rep doesn't make much on these kinds of contracts and if you're going to give them a really hard time about pricing, they'll either pass you to another rep or put 0% effort into trying to help you out.

Tips from reps we know:
• "I've had high maintenance customers bring a store employee coffee or thank you card after working really hard for them. Doing even the smallest things like that will get us to do pretty much anything you want in the future or fix any problem you might have down the road."
• "Reps work on commission; it's how they pay their bills, feed their kids, and pretty much survive. It's really aggravating when you spend 45 minutes in the store talking to us about plans and pricing and then come back the next day to sign up with our co-worker on our day off."
• "Reps are people too. We have our good and our bad days. Act like a decent human being and you'll be treated with the same respect."

All in all, pretty standard stuff though like we said, you'd be surprised how many people don't really get the big picture. Hopefully this makes shopping for a new phone, wireless plan, and even carrier a little easier on you the next time around!

While this post tried to encompass all wireless carriers in the U.S., some have different policies and practices and it's best to visit their respective website to learn about plan/feature requirements, and any sales/rebates they have available before you go to the store.

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