Oh give me a break. As horrible an idea as I think this patent is, you and I are both fully aware that no one would ever block a 911 call with ads. Even if Apple were completely, 100% evil (and that looks more and more possible every day), they'd still want to avoid lawsuits caused by their devices blocking emergency calls.

So lay off the "ZOMG what if they block 911 calls?!" FUD, because only an idiot would consider that to be an actual possibility.

The fact that they state that their flattened prints are able to integrate with the FBI database clearly means that this isn't a problem. Hell, real-life fingerprints flatten differently against different objects, so it's not like this is some new constraint, and at least the flattening process of the 3D scanner is predictable and repeatable. In short, I don't think this will be an issue.

FTFA: "To integrate with [the FBI's Automatic Fingerprint Identification System] database, Flashscan has special software to flatten the 3D print into 2D without cracks or stretches."

So this system will still be useful in comparing 3D scans with 2D prints.

Wave is the killer app (the reference implementation, I mean). It is, at its core, a replacement for email, IM, and wikis. In fact, that diversity may be its biggest stumbling block. As your comment shows, people will want Wave to be "something". People understand email. People understand IM. People understand collaborative editing. But what do you call something that rolls all of those together? How do you create a niche for something that encompasses functionality from what are currently considered separate niches? It's like trying to explain to someone 50 years ago about how wonderful smart phones are. "What do you mean, text messages? If I want to send a letter I'll go to the post office. Calendar? I already have one on my desk!"

I think that this massive level of generic utility is going to slow adoption somewhat, and adoption past some threshold is exactly what Wave needs to break into mainstream usage.

No one is saying that the bandwidth is a problem. They're just saying that the bandwidth is unnecessary. FSM-forbid that anyone try to optimize something.

Plus, as the article points out, smaller updates mean more people can receive the update per unit-bandwidth, which means faster distribution of security updates when something critical is fixed.

You wouldn't. But if it were useful enough, had its own cheap set-tohttp://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/09/06/04/1754225/Hulu-May-Begin-Charging-For-Video-Content?from=rss#p box, had a wider selection, etc, you might be tempted to pay for it instead. I know I would. Especially if the pricing structure is more like the à la carte model that the cable companies keep balking at.

I have one of these already. It's called "cable." You pay a monthly fee and you get to watch a bunch of different channels with lots of different content.

You get to pay a monthly fee for X channels, when you only watch Y channels. And it's almost universally the case that X >> Y. It would be quite a bit cheaper if you only had to pay for what you actually watched. Wait, you want to time-shift, too? That's extra. Forgot to record something on your DVR? Tough luck. Maybe it'll be on again soon, and maybe not.

The only difference I can tell between a paid Hulu and cable is that Hulu is only "on demand," has less content, and wants to be PC-only. So, basically, Hulu will be the crappy version of cable.

With their new desktop app, I wouldn't be surprised to see Hulu branch into stand-alone set-top boxes in the near future. The "less content" complain could probably be solved with a subscription model, too.

So basically, things are poised such that, in the near future, people will probably think of cable as "a crappy version of Hulu".

My thumb was quite painful after playing Street Fighter 4 for a few hours. But after a few days of pain, I once again developed the "Street Fighter Callous" that I had had as a kid. Now my thumb laughs at the PS3 controller's feeble attempts to cause it further injury.

Then it would still not be theft.

If I post a scathing movie review on my blog, and that review prompts several people to not go see said movie, then I have deprived the movie studio of potential income. Am I guilty of theft?

The main point here is that the crime isn't "depriving someone of money (real or potential)", it's "depriving someone of control of their work." The crime is not "theft", it's "copyright infringement."

Except that, in this case, the behavior of the audio version of the book is not substantially different than the behavior needed to get audio from the kindle version: Push 'play'. This would be like selling frozen burritos with a self-heating wrapper that heats it up when you open it, so that, from a consumer standpoint, they might as well be buying a ready-to-eat burrito. I'm not convinced that this is a problem, but it's probably borderline enough to merit further investigation.

So I have a thought that this will be a gargantuan marketing flop. I don't see much out there in the way of parents my age that would buy this sort of thing.

You're forgetting that there's a generation that's halfway between you and your kids. As a 3X-year-old, I and my similarly-aged friends are huge fans of Rock Band. Bear in mind that we're probably one of the earliest generations to have grown up with video games (enabling us to see past the stigma of games being "for kids"), so we're most certainly within the target demographic for the game. We're also of the age that we're not put off by The Beatles, and would almost certainly find the songs to be both familiar and entertaining.

So no, I don't think this will be a marketing flop at all. It just won't appeal as strongly to non-game-playing-Beatles-fans (obviously), nor to teens. Then again, there's been a significant spike in album sales of some of the classic rock featured in Rock band (citation not included on grounds of laziness), so I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this being a hit with the kids, too.