I have to assume that the vast majority of people who sign contracts don't read them. That's about the only justification I can imagine for some of the contracts I've seen recently. The people drawing them up are working on the assumption that they will never have to justify what they've written. Like the proverbial grad student inserting a $20 bill into their thesis at the campus library, they insert clauses almost just to prove no one will ever read them.

Dan Ziemecki

Recent news such as RIM's colossal miss-steps concerning the playbook update and extended world-wide outages make it hard for one not to suspect that the Canadian PDA pioneer is approaching end days. To be honest, this is a train that's been coming down the track for a long time, and I won't be among the mourners when it gets here. In fact, I'm writing a merry obituary right now, and looking forward to tossing my BES server to the curb as soon as I can manage it.

Dan Ziemecki

"TLDR" version: Meh.

If you are in to this sort of thing, you may have noticed that Microsoft has released a developer's version of their upcoming Windows 8 operating system. It's very pretty and obviously based upon the same "Metro" UI found in the recently released Windows Phone 7 OS. The general goal is to move away from the drill-down-tree type of navigation we've grown used to toward a tile and bucket look. It's the same thing, essentially, but visually, it's simpler.

Dan Ziemecki

I had long held on to my hobby of making mix CDs long after I actually stopped buying my music in that form. It was a neat way to create a little musical time capsule, and the products of this little tradition became treasured favorites during my long commutes. But time moves on, and now it’s becoming obvious what an inflexible annoyance Mix CDs are compared to the alternative: Playlists.

Dan Ziemecki

Greplin is a new web based service of which I recently became aware. It's claim to fame is that it's the Google for sites that Google can't see: Namely, password protected sites behind which we post and store data in a manner than protects our privacy but makes it difficult to search. Now you can have your cake and eat it to.

Dan Ziemecki