Just look at this commercial for Old Glory Insurance robot protection plan!

http://www.digyourowngrave.com/saturday-night-live-old-glory-robot-insurance/

Two week turnaround? Maybe if you drop it off at the Genius Bar and the part was on backorder. If you use the on-site support the guy is going to show up in a couple days with the new component in hand. That's not even specific to Apple. When I did warranty repairs in the 90s we could turn a consumer repair in 2-3 days and a business repair 1-2 days.

These days companies can join a technician program with a vendor and do their own repairs. Often that means they have a parts depot on-site and can do a repair same day. If down time is a concern there are plenty of ways of mitigating the risk.

There's a lot of trades people building housing in the US because of the sheer amount of undeveloped land. Being able to put stuff in the back bed is a plus for that sector. Trades people tend to be a bit more independent in the US, many of them work for themselves and have their own tools and supplies they take to a job site. In Europe you have those really tall vans to do that kind of work and likely they would be owned by a company. Those vans are sold here in the US, but unless you need the materials covered most tradesmen see it as a tipping hazard to have a vehicle that tall.

The trucks are also very popular in agriculture, which is the biggest economic sector of the US. There's a lot of stuff you would want to put in the back bed that you wouldn't want to have in the driving compartment.

Most city dwellers do not have trucks. They likely have cars or SUVs. The cars are larger in the US because the roads were built for cars in the first place and the taxes don't penalize the ownership cost. For example, I had some friends stationed in Europe for NATO. They brought their huge Toyota FJ. I asked them if that was an expensive vehicle to drive in Europe. They said no, because of little thing called WWII US military personal are exempt from all gas and vehicle taxes.

I've been consulting for over a decade. I don't expect the company to pay to train me in a formal class, but they should expect project estimates to include "Marco Polo" time when you have to research something cutting edge.

Personally I like have work and personal computer space having a definite air gap. Most places have an IP agreement that stipulate their time and their equipment. Which is fine by me. If you want me to work at home you'll need to provide a laptop. If I'm going to set up a home lab it's because I want to dig into something interesting that will make me more marketable for the next contract.

Want to provide me with a weak sauce desktop, fine. They are the ones paying to have me sit there waiting for the compile to happen. I can demonstrate that a fast machine with SSD pays for itself in a rather short order. Though as a programmer I've rarely run into problems getting full admin and installing whatever I needed to get the job done.

As far as the contracting, I work with smaller firms. They take about a 10% cut. That's significantly less than national firms that take a 40+% cut. If companies actually started to invest in a future STEM workforce I'd likely get paid a lot less because of supply pressure. So far, that hasn't been the case.

The problem I see is there's not nearly as much college hiring as there used to be. I've been contracting since the 90's. I work with a lot of mid-cap and fortune 500 clients. When I first started we would often have a few college hires on the programming teams. I haven't seen a college hire programmer (or heaven forbid an intern) on a team in 6 years. They don't want to hire a college kid they have to train and mentor when they can get an "experienced" H1B contractor.

Off-shore and visa workers have created a tiered system where senior level contractors like me are paid a ton of cash to provide adult supervision and guidance on a project. Then the companies complain how much they have to pay domestic contract workers. They also complain about the quality of the work product. That has lead to on-shoring but they no longer have college hire's in the pipe they are leaning heavily on contract workers. Driving the rates up even higher.

What I do see is the college kids are more and more going off on their own to build a portfolio of clients. Usually small and mid-cap companies. A lot of it happens in the mobile and PHP space. Some do a really good job. Some I think are missing out by not having a mentors.

Recent? Target has put it's eggs in the offshore and "prevailing wage" H1-B workers years ago. They have a bit of a reputation in the market as a result. Their divorce from Amazon onto their own web platform turned out pretty poorly and it resulted in the CIO abruptly exiting the company.

"I wish they'd push a yank-resistant and positive-connecting plug along the lines of Apple's MagSafe."

So would Apple since they have a patent on the MagSafe design. I suspect it would be quite the patent windfall.

The biggest issue the the common antibacterial agent in soaps combines with other household cleaners water treatment chemicals to produce a dioxin like substance. Studies are starting to showing negative environmental impacts to takes and rivers as a result.

Laser, neat. Couldn't you just wrap the UAV in Mylar to deflect it?

The biggest surprise here is this happened in AKL instead of SFO. There is no transit freedom in the united states. If you're connecting you need to clear US customs and immigration and then re-check into your connecting flight. So if this was really a US demanded search one would think the phones and electronics would have been taken in SFO.

Generally for a reputable site I don't see a problem letting the site domain itself run. JS infection payload is far more likely to come from the ad network.

You may not, but the market says thin and light sells. Otherwise we wouldn't see a ton of companies copying apples Macbook Pro.

The Matte screen is just a film layer of the display. There are plenty of reputable matte film products on the market, and since the bezel is behind the glass in the MBP it's one of the easiest installations out there.

First, Ultrabooks are not all that much cheaper than the real Mac Book Air. Often they are just as much, if not more expensive when they try to copy the all metal case. There's a bit more of a delta in price on the larger 15" Mac Book Pro, but the windows machine is still going to be thicker and heavier. Once you start comparing truly comparable hardware the premium is pretty small. This is especially true once you start comparing all metal case laptops.

Want to save money, go with plastic. Resale value on a plastic laptop is pretty abysmal. The hinges are prone to cosmetic cracks and the finish gets pronounced wear patterns.

You also need to take into account with mac you're getting a free productivity suite, free OS upgrades, and you don't waste the first few hours of ownership removing a ton of bloatware and crippleware. Add that to the resale value and it makes fiscal sense to me.

Many credit cards have built in 1-year extensions to the warranty. I'd start there.