Force of habit. Honestly I'm a little surprised that Slashdot doesn't parse BBcode these days.

I think the term you're looking for is [url=http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later]Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex[/url], which he gave a stern and grave warning about as his last words before he left office.

Does blender have a greater, lesser or parity feature set compared to RenderMan? That's an important question for the casual user. I use blender quite a bit for 3D modeling for Kerbal Space Program, but if Render Man is better, and has the features I need, then I might look at their free edition. I use blender because it's free and do about 20 hours a year of 3D modeling a year for hobbyist purposes.

What happens to Blender? Will RenderMan have the ability to replace Blender as an all-in-one 3D modeling/sculpting/rigging/animation/rendering engine, or is RenderMan only an animation/rendering engine?

This probably has something to do with the fact that Chromebooks are something like 20% of the new laptop marketshare, Apple commands something like 25 or 30% leaving Windows with 50-60%, whereas Microsoft used to own 90% wholesale of the market. It's a lot harder to replace your old market share with new when you have half of the market presence you did six years ago, and the consumer marketplace is contracting at the same time. Desktop numbers probably look a lot better, but consumers buy laptops 2:1 and enterprise has learned to move from a 3 to a 6 year upgrade cycle.
 
My next laptop is going to be an Android powered laptop or Chromebook with crouton on it, so I can RDP in to work (windows environment). Nothing I do besides games requires Windows these days, and Steam in Home Streaming will probably solve that as well.

What do you think the X-37B is doing up in orbit right now? NOT housing an orbital laser targeting system for ICBMs?

Google just bought Titan Aerospace, which builds and sells solar powered airplanes that can fly for 5 years straight. In theory they would intercept the satellite transmission and then beam the signal down to "the last mile", or in this case last 40,000 ft.

Unless you're watching a Michael Bay film, most dramas etc with indoor, static sets and camea shots will stream 4K just fine. Obviously panning and car chases etc will impact your video quality on a standard American broadband connection.

Football and soccer would look GREAT on an 80 inch 4k TV. It will change how the games are shot, so you can really get a sense of what everybody is doing instead of following the ball so closely.

Football is shot at close angles specifically to tell a narrative; they will not and are required not to show the full field during a play. This is the view that coaches get on a closed loop. It is available to the public, but only 4 hours after the game ends and you have to pay a special subscription to get it.

Netflix? House of Cards and all of their new original series are shot and displayed in 4K if your device and display support it.
 
Also, there's a much higher quality Samsung 4K display for $50 more, that is probably the model you want.

They also brand android software drivers for cell phone and tablet speakerphones.

That's a long post by an AC, for sure.
 
It is a UK company that licensed the Chinese to manufacture unlimited copies. This is how all ARM chips are manufactured, under license. ARM Holdings does not have any manufacturing capacity outside of basic R&D.
 
The chips are so cheap because they're produced en masse, there's nothing shady going on here, besides the fact that the country put up the capital to kick start the project. Which isn't illegal anywhere. Mexico's petroleum industry was nationalized in the 1970's and it's worked out quite well.

Allwinner is the Intel of ARM chip these days, they're a Chinese National ARM chip manufacturer, they produce in volumes that allow them to get the chip in under $7 for the dual core models. The quad core models are pretty competitive as well. They're in pretty much every Hobbyist robotics kit (check out the PC Duino) and are quite reliable, and have been for years... I won't disagree that it's a silly name, but they did win basically the entire (all) of the low end Android market. So it's pretty accurate. Nobody else can compete on price.

bblean is a full explorer replacement, classic shell is an extension/skin of explorer

It's perfect for doing a webex/gotomeeting for a small business in a medium-dark conference room. I wouldn't buy a bunch of these for a large enterprise, but they're perfect for a small business of 5-6 people who use a conference room at least on a weekly basis, but don't want to invest in something more intensive.
 
Seems to project a 4' (48") image just fine:
 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8a_82So4jE