I think part of the problem here is that Star Trek is not a truly post scarcity society, but the Federation is a post monetary society. Things are kept purposefully murky, such as how the miners are rewarded for the work they are doing, but it seems that they join mining colonies and do things like that for adventure, not because they would starve otherwise or because prospects at home were so bad that they had to emigrate. Merchant ships also exist, even in the classic era, but even here it could be argued that Mudd and Cyrano Jones were in it for the thrill, not for the riches.

What I think Star Trek provides us with is a future where amassing material wealth is seen as slightly immature, as it no longer provides people with the one thing they want to buy most: influence and respect. Those are reserved for those seeking knowledge and adventure.

Even that is touched upon, especially in the novel Look To Windward. There, the situation was live viewing for a concert, so that they Mind in charge of the orbital mentioned that people were talking about it being good enough to reinvent money.

I do quibble a little with the opinion that the humans were pets, though some of the ship Minds may have felt that way when talking amongst themselves. Though some of the machines could be downright devious in manipulating the organic citizens, they were just as manipulative to each other. The core belief that individuals have a right to self determination was never questioned, but the Minds entrusted with running things did their job so well that there was no need for any other form of resource management (which is all money is).

Calling something number one implies that there must be at least a number two. Though I do not agree with the grandparent post's usage of "fool", it does seem to be the case that the Apple iPhone does outsell the most popular dedicated handheld game console, the Nintendo 3DS. However, since the iPhone is not a dedicated system, it's harder to compare. He did not claim that they were the only ones in town. If Apple can convince enough developers that tvOS is close enough to MacOSX/iOS to make develop for it, well, the reasons to develop for elsewhere do dwinde

As for why the 3DS and the PSVita are still around in an age where most people simply use their iOS or Android device for mobile gaming, well, the answer seems to be a combination of exclusive titles like Pokemon and the fact that a dedicated gaming thingy is still cheaper than, say, an iPod Touch. Oh, and the accent on offline play.

No, Spindler was long after Jobs left. Scott, Markkula and Scully were the first three CEO's, and Jobs left during Scully's term after losing a ham-fisted attempt to oust Scully. THEN you get Spindler, and then Amelio before Jobs assumes the interim role of CEO, eventually dropping the "interim".

I suspect part of this is because the collected partners are actually afraid of Apple, and so Apple is in a better position to encourage a good open standard by standing outside and holding a big stick. That's why they would rather have an open protocol that no one owns than a popular one that Apple owns. Everyone remembers what happened to Real and to Microsoft's Plays For Sure.

That's the problem right there: the Warthog is beloved by the Army troops, and that's why the Air Force generals hate it so. Unfortunately, the Army isn't allowed to use fixed wing aircraft due to division of powers, so it remains subject to the whims of the old men who sneer at anything that wasn't meant to fly thousands of feet above the earth.

This is even the model I used before the internet, buying at live gigs if I liked the act. Early internet, I would visit the artist's web site to see if they sold CD's.

SoundCloud, LastFM and such are where I discover non-local music nowadays, and if I like the artist, I buy directly from the artist. I don't trust middlemen.

I suppose you are technically correct, if you consider taxes on gasoline and other hidden taxes. But that hardly invalidates his point, as the amount the bottom 50% of the population earns less annually than the lower limit on federal income tax

And Apple didn't invent the MP3 player. A Slashdot tradition lives on!

Well, Palin had her moment, but showed Carly that there's an opening there that she can exploit to get perhaps a veep spot. Running companies into the ground like she did is not a hinderance in the Republican business world –heck, it's a sign of healthy locust appetite to them! So now all she needs is some bona fides on the social front, to attacking a popular CEO in her supposed field can let her appear to be sticking it to the arrogant artsy fartsy liberals. Fnord.

That is, well, a big jump to a conclusion there, son. Not mentioning something is not active refusal. At the moment, the situation in places like Saudi Arabia is such that advocacy there could even hurt the ones you are trying to help. Also the "we" factor is not to be ignored, as in "we Americans are better than that. Stop going backwards, Indiana" works better than preaching from the outside. All this assumes that Tim Cook has enough time and resources to call out every case of discrimination, of course. I personally feel Tim doesn't mention SA because it's basically like saying water is wet.

Though Apple does not release sales numbers by country, it's pretty safe to say that Indiana is still a bigger business than Saudi Arabia is, due to demographics and sales outlets. So I don't give that argument much weight.

So you never read any Iain M. Banks, Charlie Stross or John Scalzi? Missed William Gibson's return to futuristic fiction? Avoiding last year's Hugo winners?

Science fiction is alive and well, just not in the book section of your local Hefty Mart, I guess.

Without darkness, there can be no lens flares!

But on a more serious note, darkness is often mistaken for depth. Nonstop action for pacing. Fan service hat tips for reverence to the material.

What I feel was lost from Star Trek as it got older was the vast scale of the universe, the sense that these ships were billions of kilometres from the nearest home base, that any message sent would take weeks, and more weeks would pass before any help could arrive. What J.J. Abrams latched onto was the idea of the Starfleet as a military organisation, leaving the research part of the Starfleet by the wayside. But with the current fetishisation of armed forces, it does have the Trek characteristic of reflecting the moral climate of the age, though I feel it lacks the bigger part of the theme –how overcoming discrimination is the key to success.

What Leonard Nimoy brought into Star Trek was his interpretation of Spock, as someone who will always be different, an alien, a misfit, but at the same time respected, a part of the gang, a good friend. From interviews and histories, the picture emerges of Nimoy having a pretty large say in Spock's characterisation and backstory.

As for cultural differences, the classic Trek Line was always "oh, we used to discriminate based on religion, but we got over that." It was a little heavy-handed, thus the recognition in The Next Generation that religion was still around, but it was treated as something that enriched a character's background and was not allowed to be an excuse for intolerance. Intolerance within the Federation didn't play a major role until Enterprise, and by that time I had lost interest in the franchise (the Terran supremacists also seem cribbed from Babylon 5).

Agreed, as most "agile" workflows try to reduce the contact between stakeholders and the development team. The whole point of Scrum's product owner is to reduce the number of managers down to one, and the idea of things like sprint goal is to say "look, we can promise this by the end of the sprint. Now let us go do it!"

It's just that the internal tools are often abused by traditional managers, instead of leaving them to be tools for the team to manage itself.*

* I don't consider the scrum master to be a manager, as the role of the scrum master is more of a subordinate role than a managing role, a person who helps to smooth the way and referee, not to make sure everyone is working on what he feels is important.