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Harman/Kardon SoundSticks III 2.1 Channel Review

It took eight years of almost constant 24/7/365 use — but I did it — I killed my beloved Logitech Z-2300 THX Sound System and I was in dismay for a few days as I tried to wrap my head around the loss of a fantastic way to listen to anything and everything online and in my life.

After doing some quick internet research, I decided to go a different way and try a new company and system. I’ve always appreciated the keen scientific aesthetic of the Harman/Kardon SoundSticks series. The whole speaker contraption looks like a spaceship and I was curious if cool design was able to triumph together with a healthy technical spec.

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The Boles Blogs Apple MacBook Air 13-inch Mid 2013 Review

Yesterday, I took delivery of a brand-new Apple MacBook Air 13-inch computer.  I decided to leap on this upgrade for several reasons.  First, I love my Apple MacBook Air 11-inch model and it has been my main machine for 18 months, but it was starting to show its technical age.  The SSD drive was only 256GB and memory, at 4GB, was in short supply when it came to the work day.  Google Play Music live streaming would stutter and go bump in the night.   I am now back to true multi-tasking with this spec’d out machine.  My 11-inch MacBook Air was suffering from a lack of space and mind.  You can see part of my Apple family below.  The 13-in MacBook Air is in the center, my old, non-retina, iPad is my clock on the left, the 11-inch MacBook Air is nearby for comparison, and my beloved Thunderbolt display is on the right.

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The Liberator: Using 3D Printers to Kill

If you had access to a 3D printer and could create only one thing out of plastic, from scratch, what would you make?  An implantable human ear replacement?  A filter for pumping clean water in thirsty third-world nations?  What about forming something fun and whimsical like, say, an acoustic guitar?  Or, would you take the tunnel of least resistance, and the road of the lowest common human morality, and choose to print a plastic gun for killing people?

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The Curious Case of the Missing “C” and Why David Has to Edit My Punctuation

For economic reasons, I decided I was not going to ship my once state of the art gaming computer to Portugal when I moved.  “The Beast,” as she was known, would have almost doubled my shipping costs by the time all the relevant insurances had been applied.  It was simply not worth it.

She was sold to friend with whom I hear she is very happy.

This meant that when I got here I shared a computer with Mr P.  As anyone knows, sharing a computer is a delicate affair at the best of times and although we did not come to blows or even utter a cross word it soon became apparent that we needed another computer.

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Raspberry PI: Twenty-Five Dollar Computer

Portable computing has come a long way since the Compaq computer my mother used to lug around with her back and forth from work — I distinctly remember trying to lift it as a child and struggling. I believe that my mother told me at the time that it weighed nearly thirty pounds. Still it was impressive to me — that you could take a whole computer with you wherever you wanted from room to room and just plug it in and use it! As time has gone on smaller and smaller computers have come about — the smart phones of today are more clever than some of the biggest computers of twenty and thirty years ago.

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Panopticonic Consumerism or Mad Marketing?

Jamie Grace wrote this article.

The journalist Pete Warren noted in an article for The Guardian (UK) earlier this month that Google have duly noted, anticipated and are working toward solving the major problem that exists in attempting to link mobile Internet technology, social networking and online advertising. Google have developed their Orkut social networking application specifically for mobile phones – and so hope to dominate the most powerful form of advertising yet commercially developed – and in future, perhaps the most invasive as well as the most lucrative.

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Germany Refuses State-Sponsored Virus Infections

Germany did the right thing on Friday by refusing to let the government infect your computer:

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