Well, free 30-day trial, anyway, of the Paperwhite, the HD 7”, or the HDX 7”.

I haven’t used them myself (I kind of lost interest in Android/iOS tablets after I bought the Surface Pro 2), but I like the fact that you can download a lot of the Prime video collection for offline viewing. That would be handy.

Regardless of the flaws and limitations of the specific tool, saying “it will slow us down” is not a valid argument against code reviews.

From today’s Emacs 24.4 announcement:

Highlights of this release include:
  - A built-in web browser (M-x eww)
  - Improved multi-monitor and fullscreen support
  - "Electric" indentation is enabled by default
  - Support for saving and restoring the state of frames and windows
  - Emacs Lisp packages can now be digitally signed
  - A new "advice" mechanism for Emacs Lisp
  - File notification support
  - Pixel-based resizing for frames and windows
  - Support for menus in text terminals
  - A new rectangular mark mode (C-x SPC)

Looks like I’ll need to add a few more disabling commands to my .emacs file…

In your lengthy Creative Cloud survey (in which you mistakenly addressed me as a former customer), I was struck by what was missing in the list of possible answers to the question “how did you learn to use Adobe creative tools?”: books.

Apparently the kids you’ve got running the game now are so hooked on the web that they’ve forgotten that Adobe software used to ship with manuals, and that third parties used to write entire books on how to use the stuff. Or perhaps they’re too young to have ever known.

Also, I was amused when the surveydroids referred to the process of installing the CC tools as “onboarding”, and then immediately had to explain their jargon, but what the fuck does this statement mean, which I’m supposed to rank my agreement with: “I have been able to meet the objectives I set for using Adobe Creative Cloud”? The correct answer would be “you stopped selling products, so I had to start renting them, which I’m not a big fan of”.

And I love this question toward the end:

“What methods would have been helpful to you in getting started to use Adobe applications or use the applications more?”

• A call from customer support to provide more information
• More emails explaining the benefits of applications
• A learning game
• Live chat online to provide more information
• A five minute how-to video
• A prominent 800 number to call Adobe customer support
• Included access to a 3rd party training provider such as Lynda.com
• A social network connection e.g. via Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc.
• Step-by-step tutorials (just text and graphics, rather than "how to" videos)
• Online or in-product tutorials
• Access to an Adobe learning resource center
• Links to CC user forums
• A 30 minute webinar/online seminar
• Other (specify):
• None/no other resources needed/none would be helpful

Odd how none of these options are related to the quality of the documentation, which defaults to online help pages these days. In fact, you have to manually download the actual PDF reference manuals separately from the CC applications; it isn’t even a clickable link in the help options.

On a whim, I went looking for a new small-form-factor PC to use as a home firewall. I found the Shuttle DS61, which has several things to recommend it: dual gigabit NICs, mSATA port, dual serial ports, 4x USB2 and 2x USB3, HDMI and DVI, and the ability to take up to a Core i7 and 16GB of RAM.

Everything but the USB3 ports are supported by OpenBSD, so it will make a spiffy little firewall. It would be nice to have a third NIC to run a DMZ, but the only thing I’m using a second static IP for right now is my wireless, which I can leave untouched. The CPU and RAM are serious overkill, but it means I have plenty of spare power for Openvpn and IPSec tunnels.

So, for $427.61 on Amazon, I got:

• Shuttle DS61 - $175.99
• Intel Core i3-3225 CPU - $134.99
• 2x Crucial 2GB Single DDR3 SODIMM - $22.22 x 2
• Crucial M500 120GB mSATA SSD - $72.19

It took about ten minutes to put it together and boot it up. I did a quick OpenBSD test first to make sure everything worked, then threw a graphical install of Scientific Linux 6.4 on it to see how it worked as a potential developer box. (modulo the lightweight CPU and small amount of RAM I put in it, that is)

So far I like it. I might even hold off on turning it into a firewall for a while, and use it to replace dotclue.org and move it out of the current co-lo. I’ve been running on an old beta NetEngine for, um, too many years, with a 500MHz Pentium 3, 256MB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive.

So, to hide my new Kindle behind a VPN that pretends to be in Japan (so it won’t trigger region-detection forced on the ebook market by publishers), I had to resurrect an old wireless access point and put it behind a machine that could NAT out through an OpenVPN tunnel. I grabbed a dusty old Shuttle from my closet, put a fresh distribution of OpenBSD on it, and then had it lose all of its BIOS settings when I moved it to a more convenient place in the house.

I’d forgotten about the joy of replacing CMOS backup batteries; we’re so spoiled today.

Details on nearly three million customers stolen. So, how’s that switch to renting your software by the month working out?

Adobe Acrobat release notes:

"Because PDFs are used so universally, they can be a target for hackers. Adobe provides regular updates to safeguard your computer from attacks."

What they really mean:

"Because we took a perfectly-safe document-formatting system and crufted it up with Flash and JavaScript and anything else we could think of, downloading a PDF file is about as smart as blowing a junkie in a third-world shantytown. Have a placebo and come see us again next month."