Summary of this week:

The Federal government remains in shutdown - sort of - then re-opens
Windows 8.1 is here
HTC's big smartphone is here
Healthcare.gov is still not here and no one knows when it will be fixed
IBM applies Watson technology to health care
Weak demand for the iPhone 4C, Apple reduces orders
Lenovo joins others with an Android (not Microsoft) laptop
St Louis (real America) and Boston (East coast elites) in the World Series

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday

Monday October 14, 2013

More information on the catastrophe that is healthcare.gov.

Tales from Oakland about how Federal money is spent for surveillance and data collection systems to "thwart terrorism." It is just more police state and eye balls on citizens. This is a bad thing for America. More efforts are spent watching innocent citizens with the justification of counter-terrorism.

And this is a terrible story from New York City: The NYPD puts police inside just about any group that comes into the city to spy on them. Horrible.

Tim Ferris will have his own show on Headline News Network.

HTC's big smartphone is here.

Is the library dead? I hope not, but its role will be different.

The use of Google's Chrome on iOS is small, but it is there and it is growing.

Predicting economics, society, and Congress. This mathematician got is all right.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Tuesday October 15, 2013

A closer look at the HP Google Chromebook.

More on how the NSA grabs all our information - address books and such.

The current Administration doesn't want the NSA case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court. I could have sworn that all this evil big brother stuff was supposed to vanish when that other guy stopped being President. What was the name of that guy from Texas? Can't seem to recall.

Fighting link rot in important papers, perma.cc tries to provide a permanent Internet address for cited papers.

IBM continues to apply its Watson technology to health care.

There is a lot of money floating about in Obamacare. Guess what? There is now a lot of fraud also floating about. Funny coincidence, ey?

This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important. Apple has hired the CEO of Burberry to run its retail stores.

Strong rumors about a Google smart watch.

A security weakness allows tens of thousands of sites to be hacked. I am sure (not) that healthcare.gov safe from hackers. Is everyone ready for national electronic health records?

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Wednesday October 16, 2013

Ireland is considering changing its tax laws so that it won't "shelter" Apple and others. Apple and others will adjust accordingly. I am not sure why the Irish would do this as it will reduce their tax revenues.

The 2% in China buy one third of the world's luxury goods. The world has changed before our eyes.

Google will now allow home servers on its fiber network. At least they corrected this silly policy. I wonder why they ever had it.

Intel predicts much cheaper, more powerful products for consumers by Christmas. It is a good time to be a consumer of computing.

Demand for the iPhone 5C has been low. Apple is reducing production accordingly.

How laser radar is changing the world.

How to write bad software. Often, it is a good learning exercise to do something as badly as you can.

HealthCare.gov: no expectation of privacy. Well, at least someone on the project is being candid.

Flextronics America of Austin if hiring people. The rumor it that they will build the new MacPro computer.

The Digipen Institute of Technology - training video game programmers for 25 years.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Thursday October 17, 2013

The Federal government is open again. The big difference is that the Contractors who run the government are back to work. A large percentage of the Federal employees missed only a couple of days of work and missed none of their pay.

Windows 8.1 is here today.

A look at the Sony Vaio Pro 13 Ultrabook. New Intel processor, very thin.

Everyone reverses the rumors that Apple has reduced manufacturing of the iPhone 5C.

Ubuntu 13.10 is here - first stable version for smartphones.

Reseaechers find security holes in the software that runs power stations. Take down the power system without laying hands on it. And some people think HealthCare.gov is perfectly fine. I don't understand that thinking.

Oregon Scientific releases its tablet for kids - $150.

AOL's local news Patch is closing most of its areas and laying off people.

Rich? Run a newspaper for fun and loss. Newspapers can't make money, but if you are really rich, you can take a loss every year for the rest of your life.

Google+ is still a small fraction of Facebook and others in terms of users and referrals.

The iPhone is still a giant compared to Android when considering users and ads and all the rest.

Apple is hiring a lot of people who have a fashion background. The reason is wearable tech.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Friday October 18, 2013

This is what we should be doing with technology. A new "camera" with gesture control informs blind people what is about them.

American schools are not teaching programming, so who is? It isn't as if American schools don't have the money, see, for example, all the iPads given to American high school students, who then hack them and have to give them back if the schools can remember who they gave them to...and the moronic behaviour goes on.

School zero-tolerance policies hit another low - student suspended with a cartoon bomb drawing. I would have never made it past 1st grade in today's world.

Advanced Micro Devices had a good financial report due to its role in game consoles.

The company that pays its programmers the most is...Juniper.

After 2 1/2 years, PS3 beats Xbox 360 as the top-selling game console.

Google has another good financial quarter.

New seat designs allow airlines to put more people in a play. The passenger isn't supposed to notice any change in comfort. I doubt that and I also believe that we will be able to feel the extra body heat.

How to build a Police Scanner software-defined radio for $20.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Saturday October 19, 2013

NVIDIA is attempting to change video games via variable-rate display refreshing. If it works, it will change things. It is a completely different method of re-drawing what is on the display.

NVIDIA shows its new high-end video card - the GTX 780 Ti. They do have a line of cool names for their products.

It seems that iOS 7 adoption has been slower than it was for iOS6.

But over 70% of iOS users have moved to version 7.

A look at the data center in the Navy's newest ship: off-the-shelf hardware running Linux.

Ars Technica summarizes what Ed Snowden showed the world about the NSA.

Google Hangouts now lets you call phone numbers for free.

Lenovo now has an Android laptop computer with a touchscreen and all that "convertable" stuff. The big deal is that yet another major player has a non-Microsoft option.

Maladies brought on by our addiction to the mobile phone. Some are silly, some are serious.

Microsoft made it difficult for small businesses to update to Windows 8.1.

Junk science is taking over the world of science. If you cannot verify a study with experiement, you have a theory. This is not rocket science folks.

Perhaps we will have a new sub-series of items like, "What would a day be without yet another story about that disaster known as HealthCare.gov?" HealthCare.gov is sending bad data to health insurance companies even with the small number of customers. Your tax dollars at waste. This is one of the big problems with huge government programs and it is something that inexperienced people trip over: forget the theory and state of the art in anything. Government is decades behind the world in technology and everything else. Government cannot implement what everyone else does. There are many reasons.

There appears to be too much money being donated to Wikipedia.

Virtual colleges are reaching rural high school students. This is great. Now, someone explain to me how you can earn two years of college credit while still in high school. There is something missing here. Perhaps all that "college credit" is not really wothry of the title college.

Email me a t d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Sunday October 20, 2013

It is Sunday, so there is much here about writing. The baseball pennants have been won by St Louis and Boston. East Coast elites vs real America.

Scott Adams on success and failure.

Google unveils some technical details of its balloons that will take the Internet everywhere.

The secret to becoming a prolific writer is… wait for it… write all the time.

The courts continue to wrestle with sales taxes and online sales.

It seems the MegaUpload had a few (10million) legitimate files when it was raided.

oooops, Microsoft pulls the Windows RT 8.1 update from its site because of a problem.

How to make a book cover in MS Word.

Creating space in your life so you can write more.

There can be great value in listening to your audience before you write the next thing.

Looking for short story inspiration.

There are situations when you should write for free - no pay. One item is that you choose your readers and write just for them.

Ideas for stories are everywhere - here are a few more places to look for them. Excellent.

Flash Fiction: shorter short stories.

Formatting for eBooks is different from formatting for paper books.

Thoughts on returning to freelance writing. Returning? Have we had that many people leave it want to come back?

We don't need permission to be ourselves. Many of us, however, do seek it and wait and wait and

Email me a t d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page