SSDs help improve performance pretty dramatically, and also nullifies fragmented disk issues (which mostly disappeared when Microsoft started scheduling regular defrags of the drive in Windows version * )

You must have been born before the advent of the original iMac. Of course the color matters. Which would you rather eat, a raw potato or a fresh apple? People aren't robots, their brains are wired in a particular manner. Marketing is a huge industry that makes a ton of money capitalizing on that fact. Technology isn't a game of min/maxing for most consumers. Do you want to claim that World of Warcraft isn't addictive to a particular type of person? Marketing research went in to developing that product too.

That's how my bill in Texas works with Green Mountain Energy; I pay an X base fee for infrastructure etc and then Y rate per KWh, which is broken in to three rate tiers,
below 450KWh/mo (second cheapest),
451-900KWh/mo (the cheapest)
  and 900+KWh/mo (most expensive)
 
I'm not on any special solar plan (nor do I have the generating capability), that's just how they've broken down my bill for the last Z years.

Microsoft's 2001 era tablets were also almost 2" thick and wrapped in 1990's era gray plastic you might find on an old HP desktop. 2001-era touchscreen displays were thicker than an entire iPad or android tablet is today. Not to mention pixel density in the 640x480 range, and battery life left a lot to be desired.
 
Enter the high PPI display, Gorilla Glass, modern Li-Ion battery technology and modern CPU (ARM) designs and now you can produce a tablet that's lighter and smaller than most text books.

Is anyone else curious how he got three OLED displays powered off of the single Arduino? I can think of several good uses of a multi-display Arduino product...

We've had the capability to put a man on Mars since the mid-1970's.... Just not the political will. Now that spaceflight is in the commercial realm, it's no long political willpower + taxpayer cost, it's just private cost and selling that dream to the right person.

Either way, you didn't meet the standard definition...

You're "weightless" in a parabolic arc, just like on on NASA's DC-9 "vomit comet", and you get more "zero g time" on the Vomit Comet than you will in Branson's carnival ride.
 
Second, Branson is redefining "space". The generally accepted edge of space is 62.x miles. Virgin Galactic is having trouble meeting 60.0 miles and is looking at switching fuels at the last minute to meet that more limited 60.0 goal. If 2.x miles doesn't sound like much, Mt. Everest is 5.5 miles high. This is like getting a 68% and calling it a C grade average.
 
Probably best to wait 10 years and hitch a ride on a Dragon v2 to a Bigelow inflatable Space Hotel for a night for a cool half-million.

I doubt there are many similar industries, cars are the second most expensive item most people will buy in their lives, after their house. Cars also need specialty tools and parts (and with them a specialty parts warehouse).

In particular, Reno/Nevada offered this because it was beneficial to the state over the long term. Other states were also competing for this long term heavy industry by offering similar deals. The factory would have gone to another state if they had not offered this deal and then they would not be the national leader in battery manufacturing + all of it's cottage industries. The building the road part is genuinely a good idea as it adds value to their industrial park and is a good long term investment.

In the case of the "Exciting Choice", Astronauts will be riding in the same basic design as what Commercial Passengers will use, which means more flights and (theoretically) higher reliability due to a continuously refined manufacturing process, plus the loss of commercial passenger dollars. Going with the "Safe Choice" means you're riding in one of perhaps only four or five of a series that will ever be produced. The loss of commercial dollars is a big deal to SpaceX as it represents a much larger market than Government spaceflight will in the next five decades.

And yet if sales follow their current upward accelerating trend, by this time next year 1% of the world's population will own a copy of the game. What would you suggest hitching your wagon to instead? Second Life? Because that's worked out so well.

EA tried to buy them for $100 million a couple years ago, they let the CEO in to the office and shortly after showed him out. At that point they'd already made enough to all comfortably retire and it's not surprising that they would turn down a billion dollars (that's what, $100 mil each per employee?) before caving at the $2 billion mark? It's hard to turn down that kind of money.

The battery on the Model S is replaceable by robots, surely you could put a rooftop battery on there, and then just swap them out at large bus stations near neighborhood substations for charging? Who on earth builds an industrial grade public bus without swappable batteries in this day and age?
 
Propane and natural gas powered buses have had their fuel tanks on the roof for decades now. With hooks and simple optics it wouldn't be hard to lift an old battery pack off and swap it for a fresh one in under 5 minutes.

Imagine you can leverage off of their existing user base, your minecraft character becomes your xbox equivilent of a "Mii", and now you have a 3D avatar in a 3D world you can legitimately interact with. Did you not read Snowcrash? This is Snowcrash. Someone bootstrapped the 3D virtual world we've been promised since the 1980's (and failed at with Second Life) and now Microsoft will own it. And will integrate it in to your living room and cell phone.
 
P.S. Go read Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson