Do any LTE services have reasonable data rates? The 5GB package from Verizon isn't going to take a whole lot of video use.

FTTH might help, but it might just be another duopoly situation.

I think Netflix doubling prices was really just setting up Instant as a separate service. It's unreasonable to expect that the free, then later, $4 instant add-on was going to continue for too long. I wasn't happy with it though, so I dumped the discs.

They do lose content, but they also constantly add new. I imagine they don't have much choice without paying a lot more.

It would be nice if channels were unbundled, but I think that's just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The idea of linear channels just seems increasingly antiquated. Yeah, there's live events, but the reasons for dedicating a specific band for them are diminishing when events can be streamed live.

Yes. A new Cessna 172 Skyhawk probably cost $310,000 or more.

Even renting an older (though nice and very well-maintained) airplane is $90/hr, which at least includes fuel.

Some people kit-build planes, but that's a lot of work and it all has to be done and maintained right.

Insurance is expensive. Renting a hangar stall is expensive. Continuing education is expensive.

Regulations don't help, though there are low-regulation categories. Those are a considerably higher risk category because some of the people that take advantage of the lower barrier to entry are a bit more lax in doing things properly.

Learning to fly often isn't a good career move because pilots are now generally paid poorly.

One really has to want to fly badly, especially to give up several other hobbies to afford flying.

I think you may have a mistaken impression of corporate structures. I don't think many corporations would allow electrical engineers have that kind of control unless said electrical engineer started the company.

I also doubt Lenovo or HP engineers would be in a position to point fingers, their consumer PCs aren't very good either, criticizing competition's build quality won't do them any favors when it invites reciprocation.

Clipping waveforms is a problem that can also ruin expensive speakers too.

"Slashdot combines editor quality control and insight with crowd-sourced harvesting"

but... there is little to no editor quality control on Slashdot. At least Rob got the advertorial feature of Slashdot used to his personal benefit.

I get that poverty in the US is an epidemic, but your 40% and 50% figures seem very inflated. Citation, please?

I have nothing against the creators, but when one broadcast format gets preferential treatment over another, I don't see how that serves anyone.

And yet people still listen to the crap when there are plenty of easy alternatives - including podcasts & personal music collections. I really don't get it. Sports and other live events are the only decent reasons to turn on the radio.

I really cringe at how often music is repeated on a music radio station, it's the same 20 songs repeated every hour or something like that.

Also, Cheetos & mechanical keyboards should be a worse combination, hygenically speaking and reliability speaking, given how many crevices there are in a keyboard. So if Cheetos is supposed to be a problem with touch screen, then why doesn't anyone backtrack that thinking to the keyboards?

Goofy naming doesn't seem to prevent a product or service from getting popular, witness Wii and iPad. I think DDG is a better name than those of web services that add or drop vowels.

That is a long tail kind of market, and brick and mortar retail is generally incompatible with filling long tail demand, unless you have a very large, dense city where you can find a customer base for niche items.

Clearly, the term "lifetime" should be abandoned. As you say, it's too vague to be of use, and frankly, I ignore that, it's not a selling point for that reason. Along similar lines, in practice, I generally find that a lifetime warranty to be of less value than a warranty of specifically defined duration.

Under no circumstances is it realistic to assign a lifetime warranty of an electronic device to the life of the owner. It's clearly a hyperbolic stretch, but I'd almost be concerned that it would give a perverse incentive to rig the device to kill the owner in the case of failure.

I have a laser engraver and I've tried to cut what I think is run of the mill MDO. It really doesn't go very well, but it didn't seem dangerous either. I think you probably need to pump pure oxygen to get a flame.

I don't know about the temperature stability issue, I don't expect to use a laser engraver in extreme temperatures.

That's what I was thinking. Technically, the copyright owner owns the rights to derivative works. I don't see this as hypocrisy on the part of Netflix, Netflix owns very little content. If the studios did it, then OK, I see that as hypocrisy in a way. But people complaining that someone stole something from thieves? That's a different kind of special right there.

I'll go with "not all Netflix devices use Silverlight". I would bet that Silverlight is a minority of Netflix's traffic. I'm pretty sure the set-top boxes, game consoles and optical disc players with Netflix aren't using Silverlight. Wii and PS3 doesn't use it. I know Netflix iOS doesn't use Silverlight in a conventional sense, if at all. I don't even use my computers to watch Netflix, it's a console or a set-top box.