Current setup: A 4 year old Sony Z laptop, 8GB RAM, SSD. I have a 6 year old homebrew desktop w/ a few terabytes of storage and 2 old monitors. I use Windows 7 and do most development in Ubuntu within VMware player (using Unity). When I need it, I’ve got instances running in AWS. I’ve got an ancient jailbroken iPhone, an iPad 1, and an older Kindle. Everything I own is old and works just fine. I use Emacs, bash, Chrome, and the usual grab-bag of software. I even use Visual Studio.

Dream setup: We all own a suite of devices that work OK in isolation. Each device does some things well for certain use cases. But when those devices are together, they should work together much better. Bluetooth and AirPlay are steps in the right direction, but ad-hoc and incomplete. When I sit in my car, my music and phone calls are routed through the car’s sound system. However, I can’t sync the map, listen/send text messages with my voice, nor ask Siri for help. AirPlay is really nice if you have Apple TV. You can send music, video and photos to the TV when you wish. You can send music to the stereo w/ Apple’s AirPort. Google Voice has a feature that allows you to move a call to another phone without hanging up. The Kindle can sync my current location in a book to every device, but I have to move papers and articles over manually.

I want more of this sort of slick integration between my devices. I’d like to group my work into virtual workspaces that have the same intention. Development stuff in one workspace, entertainment in another, communication in another, and so on. If I have 3 monitors, it should spread my workspaces across them. If I get a call while at my computer, I should be able to route the call to my computer’s speakerphone. When I’m reading something in Chrome on my desktop, I should be able to move it to my iPad. When I set my laptop down next to my desktop, it should allow me to move my work seamlessly to my desktop (and vice versa). File syncing is only the first step. I want my activities synced and moved across devices based on what I want, what the device is capable of, and what my work modality is (reading, typing, watching, listening, talking). Some of this can be done now in an ad-hoc way, and I’ve tried to glue the pieces together. But there’s enough friction to still make it fail in irritating ways.

We’re all going to accumulate more and more smart devices. We need to them work together better.

def choose_rec(n,k):
  a = range(k)
  choose_rec(0,n,k,0,a)

def choose_rec_aux(col,n,k,start,a):
  if col == k:
    print a
    return
  for i in range(start,n-k+col+1):
    a[col] = i
    choose_rec_aux(col+1,n,k,i+1,a)

def choose_iter(n,k):
  a = range(k)
  f = range(n-1,n-k-1,-1)
  f.reverse()

  print a
  while True:
    i = k-1
    while i >= 0 and a[i] == f[i]:
      i = i - 1
      if i < 0:
        return
      else:
        a[i] = a[i] + 1
        for i in range(i+1, k):
          a[i] = a[i-1] + 1
      for j in range(a[i], n):
        a[i] = j
        print a

    public class BloomFilter
    {
        HashAlgorithm hash;
        int m, n, k;
        BitArray table;

        public BloomFilter(HashAlgorithm h, int size, float falsePositiveRate)
        {
            hash = h;
            double bits = -(size * Math.Log(falsePositiveRate)) / Math.Pow(Math.Log(2), 2);
            double hashes = -Math.Log(0.7) * bits / size;
            n = size;
            k = (int)hashes;
            m = (int)bits;
            table = new BitArray(m);
        }

        IEnumerable<int> Probe(byte[] input)
        {
            int chunks = hash.HashSize / 32;
            for (int i = 0; i < k; i++)
            {
                byte[] val = hash.ComputeHash(input);
                for (int j = 0; j < chunks && i < k; j++, i++)
                    yield return Math.Abs(BitConverter.ToInt32(val, j)) % m;
            }
        }

        public void PutValue(byte[] input)
        {
            foreach (int index in Probe(input))
                table.Set(index,true);
        }

        public bool Exists(byte[] input)
        {
            foreach (int index in Probe(input))
            {
                if (!table.Get(index)) return false;
            }
            return true;
        }

    }

I assume Microsoft will ensure their hardware and price points are competitive with the iPad. The keyboard is a nice addition, but you can now get a thin keyboard case for the iPad. So the only thing to distinguish the Surface is the OS and software. Well, iOS has a ginormous lead in apps and developer interest. This may be insurmountable in the short-term. If a consumer has $500-$800 to blow on a tablet, which should they buy? I think the iPad still wins.

The Surface Pro is like the Asus Transformer Infinity, an ultraportable laptop with a detachable keyboard. However, the Surface Pro is the only tablet to run a full OS. I don’t think the typical iPad customer will care. It’s not for people who use their laptop intensively, like developers or video editors or designers. It’s for business users who use Office a lot, which is a large chunk of ultraportable customers. This is an important segment because Microsoft does not want the iPad to get a foothold in enterprises. MS owns the server and desktop business market. It should be easy to extend that dominance to tablets. The killer feature is how easy it is to deploy and manage apps within the enterprise. I don’t know how well Apple’s enterprise program works, but I believe Microsoft should easily trounce them by integrating with everything else in the enterprise.

So based on very little information, my guess is the iPad still wins against Surface. In the ultraportable market, the Surface Pro might grab a chunk of enterprise customers who are primarily Office users. Also, they will do ok with enterprise customers who want specialized devices for certain jobs.

The problem with Ubuntu, and Linux in general, is that it always requires some magical incantation to make things work. And it takes a while to find the right commands because searches often lead to unhelpful threads on Ubuntu’s forums. I’m not a Linux newbie. However, I detest sys admin drudgery because I’d rather work than waste time figuring out how to get hibernate turned on. Linux fans are like gearheads who love to work on cars. For me a car is an appliance, as is my computer. Frankly, I am happy to pay the Windows (or Apple) tax because it means I’ll always get the right drivers and my computer will just work. That is certainly worth $100.

I am willing to pay an Ubuntu tax for a service that makes it dead simple to install and maintain my laptop. Someone could curate all the shit needed to get my laptop working, including memory cards, fingerprint readers, etc. I would pay to subscribe to their PPA. Also, they could run something like AskUbuntu specifically for my laptop model. That way I can be sure the solutions are appropriate for my hardware. I don’t want vague instructions to run some commands; I want a script from them just does it for me. For example, double-tap-and-drag doesn’t work well. Turns out I need to adjust a variable with synclient. But it doesn’t persist across reboots, so I have to add a script to change the value every time I restart. This is not how I want to spend my time. I’d pay for someone else to do this for me.

When my SSD comes back I’ll be reloading Win7 and running Ubuntu in VMware. This setup works perfectly fine for me. I should say, though, that Ubuntu Precise is actually pretty good. If it ran smoothly on my laptop, I might have stuck with it. Maybe.

• When I installed git, it didn’t change it’s status to installed until I moved to another screen and back.
• When I went back to see git, it had a “Buy…” button. When I clicked elsewhere and back again, it changed to “Remove”. 
• It’s so slow. I doubt it’s VMware because other GUIs respond just fine. 
• It’s constantly bringing up a new debconf window that appears for a few seconds in my launcher. 
• The back/forward arrows don’t work sometimes. I did a search, clicked a package, then I couldn’t go back to the result page because the history disappeared (back arrow no longer clickable). 
• It’s always refreshing the screen. I queued the removal of all default games. While I was looking at another package, it kept refreshing the whole screen again and again. 
• The window just uses space poorly. A search gives you a list of packages on the left side, leaving a vast amount of lonely white space on the right side. They could have used that to show more info, improve search (tags cloud, refine search), list dependencies, whatever. 

A good place to start is to run your current housing situation through the excellent Buy vs. Rent calculator from the NYTimes. The table below the chart outlines all the expenses for buying. Except for principle payments, everything else in that list is the equivalent of rent, i.e. you’re throwing it away. The calculator already adjusts for the interest and property tax deductions from your taxes. You also “throw away” the closing costs, selling costs, and the lost investment income from your down payment. And don’t forget the ludicrously high condo/co-op fees. Your profit comes entirely from home appreciation, which is historically 2-3% on a 5X leveraged investment. As the recent global financial meltdown should have taught everyone, housing can also be a risky investment.

Outside most urban areas, housing is usually a good deal relative to renting. A rule of thumb is a house should be cheaper than equivalent rent times 240. In urban areas both housing and rent are insanely expensive. The housing meltdown may have finally caused some homes to dip below equivalent rentals. Many of the homes I’ve looked at in my neighborhood near Manhattan have suffered a 10-20% loss. Due to leverage, that is a 50-100% loss of their down payment. That is in addition to all those monthly costs already mentioned above. All these people threw their money away on overpriced homes.