Never mind the fact that some authors have done pretty well by self-publishing, particularly with digital books. I think it should be obvious that good writing legitimizes itself.

I'm sure this has been mentioned before, but Hulu's policy of allowing all of its content to be played for free on PCs (where PC means any computer running a traditional desktop OS), while other devices only get access to limited content feels twisted. That limited content, of course comes at a premium—a premium to the tune of a $7.99 per month subscription.

I'm about to give up, and cancel Hulu Plus. While the idea of watching TV shows on a 40 inch screen on my own schedule remains appealing, there are a number of factors working against the service. First, all of the shows that I'm paying for are readily available for free if I watch them on my PC. Second, it seems like the vast majority of shows that I actually want to watch are only available via PC. Hulu Plus just doesn't seem like it adds enough value to warrant a premium over the basic service.

Hulu needs to do something about it's horrible Hulu Plus device policy. Maybe add an intermediate tier? Add more commercials? Obviously, there's no reasonable explanation for Hulu to restrict streaming to TVs and other internet-connected devices.

The fact is that "race" has lost validity as a term to differentiate between biologically distinct people. For most people race is completely interchangeable with ethnicity. "Racisim" has become the catch-all for any kind of cultural, religious, or ethnic bias. While Alcoff refers to herself as a "racial realist" having "defended the reality of race throughout [her] work," she might as well call herself an ethnic realist. In the end, while the idea of race remains sociologically important, it shouldn't be biologically significant.

Well here we are in 2013, and everybody knows that using feature detection is the way to write browser specific code. Maybe browser vendors are leery of breaking the web, but they should be able to come up with a standard implementation of the UA string. It should be trivial, really. There are only three or four important pieces of information traditionally included anyway: OS, vendor, browser, version number, and perhaps device type (mobile, etc.). The UA for Chrome on my Nexus 4 includes references to Mozilla, Safari, Gecko, KHTML, and AppleWebkit, but makes no mention of the actual vendor (Google). How about this?

Android 4.2.2; Google Chrome 27.0; mobile

How hard is that?

All CSS and images are contained in the JS file, so setup is a snap. All you have to download is the script. Include the script in the head of your document, and add rel="popbox" to links you want to open with Popbox.

Popbox has been tested on Firefox 3+, Safari 3+, Chrome 1.0, Opera 9+, and IE 7+.

Popbox is free software released under a Creative Commons license.

Download popbox.js | Download CSS

Forget performance. The last thing a person wants to see when perusing consumer product reviews is whether or not a product works. Whether the item does what the manufacturer claims, or fails spectacularly, if you're going to mention that information, be sure to bring it up last. Better yet, put it in a lengthy footnote. Really, you don't have to mention performance at all. It's a well-documented fact that long, vague, repetitive reviews rate higher than those that are insightful and succinct.*

Be effusive. Whether or not you like the product, say so as frequently as possible. Verbal abuse and vacuous praise are both signs of a thoughtful, stable person. For bonus points fit in a tired cliche or two (double points for the phrases "works like a charm" and "piece of s#@t").

State the obvious. Remember, the whole point of reading other people's reviews is to find out things about a product that you could easily learn without owning it. If you think an item is overpriced, say so. If you're reviewing electronics, write an in-depth explanation of the underlying technology. If you don't have a good grasp of how the thing works, all the better, the reader is certainly as ignorant as you are. Besides, credibility is overrated. By the same token, there's no need to include relevant information in your review. People like surprises.

One last thing: Whether or not a product is labeled for a particular use is irrelevant. The customer is ALWAYS right. Products should do whatever you want them to. It is perfectly reasonable for the manufacturer, the retailer, and state and local governments to be able to read your mind, and make sure your every need and comfort are met. The reader realizes this, and cares deeply about your needs, so don't be shy about venting your frustrations.

So, go ahead, write your review. We couldn't possibly care more.

*Not a well-documented fact.

After reading In the Plex, Steven Levy's in-depth look at what makes Google tick, it's easy to see how a group of engineers focused on creating new (and profitable) ways of using mountains of stored data could overlook the little, old issue of user privacy.

Google: Something's not right.

Me: Care to elaborate?

Google: We're having trouble contacting our servers. We're going to keep trying.

Me: Well, sure, that'll fix everything.

Every time I talk to one of those people I have to grit my teeth and smile as they tell me how incompetent weather forecasters are. Predicting the weather is hard, and most of the time these guys get it right. Seriously, forecasts in the Northeast predicted a snowstorm, and we got...snow. The fact that we're even given an approximation of snow in inches is a bonus.

So, if you don't have confidence in the weatherman, that's fine. Next time he predicts a blizzard, pack your sunblock and head to the beach. Just don't complain to me how he's always wrong.

Rather than try to cram two account configurations into a single file, I've created two separate config files, plus two scripts that allow Mutt to use the appropriate file. In my case, I have a config for Gmail, and another one for my own domain.

First, I created a folder with the two config files (I won't include my configurations here, others have covered the subject in depth elsewhere):

mkdir -p ~/Documents/.mailconfigs/; cd ~/Documents/.mailconfigs/
nano gmail.com.muttrc gmail.com.msmtprc ronsome.net.muttrc ronsome.net.msmtprc

The trick to making this work is in the simple bash scripts I created.

For Gmail:

sudo nano /usr/local/bin/gmail

And enter:

rm ~/.muttrc
rm ~/.msmtprc
ln -s ~/Documents/.mailconfigs/gmail.com.muttrc ~/.muttrc
ln -s ~/Documents/.mailconfigs/gmail.com.msmtprc ~/.msmtprc

The other is similar; simply replace "gmail.com" with "ronsome.net". now I can type gmail, and Mutt will start with my Gmail config, or I can enter ronsome.net to begin with the other one.