This fizzle-bomber, alongside with couple of previous attempts (the one with shoe fire, and couple of fizzle smokers in GB), seems to somewhat follow the similar pattern I tried to explain with simple equation:

Engineering Ability = 1/Fanaticism

By 'Engineering Ability' I mean the overall knowledge, creativity, practice, experimenting, logistics, and generally effort involved in producing an rather complex technical devices.

As for the 9/11 group, it appears this was the top of the fanatics' intellectual/engineering crop, where fanaticism was sufficient just enough to match their engineering abilities, enabling them to fly, but not to takeoff/land the planes, or to save themselves. It is also beneficial (for the terrorized side), by above definition, such 'masterminds' are removed from living - at the time of their top achievement.
Subsequent attempts, while abundant in fanaticism, were mush less sophisticated in every aspect.
I like above equation because it keeps my hope in humanity a notch above the absolute zero.

Ah basic math schmath... Who needs math when there is a flashy advertisement here, there, left right, shiny happy people with their 'buy one get one free' $99 port your number sign here no credit no problem if you breath you can have it ... plans...

And for us remaining geeks good luck finding prepaid data "plans" in year of two... Let me peek into my futur-o-scope ... I see no reasonable prepaid data rates, not now, not soon, and most likely not ever (in this land of the free, not sure about over there in socialist EU)... for that is evil... to have a prepaid data, payable by kb, on your unlocked or (gasp!) linux driven GSM device... to check your email or other minor data xfer- for you are no good if you want only that - for you have to stream, to download, to navigate, to upload movies, and for that my dear consumer, you need PLAN...

For those remembering old car (>20yrs) ignition systems' related pain, I'll abuse this thread to thank the automotive engineers for getting rid of distributor cap. Modern car ignition, if not over engineered, is quite a pleasure to use and not notice, ever.

FlashBlock firefox plug-in! Since installing the FlashBlock, my CPU usage went to nil. Without Flash, I've lost almost no web -content-, and if/when you need it, i.e. youtube, one can enable it for that site only.

But but... as I see it... there is no 'company -vs- people'...
As I see it, there are people, with similar interests, they group, collaborate, and as such are 'company of the people', in the simplest sense of the word company - the group of people sharing similar interests.
The (free part of) world is a wide place and you can join or walk away from any company of the people. One may expect the company of the people taking care of him/her, and also may be disappointing in the company... but should always be aware... this is the company of the people, pretty much like you, which hurdled together because they thought they will benefit somehow... all of them.
As in any company of the people, there are leaders, bullies, geeks, dudes, chicks, etc... but nothing else, just people..
So, imho, there is no need to lift and separate the 'companies' as something necessarily opposed to 'people'. There may be 'companies of ivy league graduates' grouping together and taking care of each other on the expense of self taught geek like me, but again, they are just another company of the people... nothing out of this world...

Never following the BSG before, couple of days ago I taped the whole day of last season's episodes, and was relatively amused by it until the expected, but always disappointing happened:
1. Scene A: Guy got shot in the knee, blood all over, open wound and fractured bones close up, as realistic as it can get, well done, you did the good job, I feel little sick.
2. Scene B: Cute Indian actress, love scene with ex-president-turned-saint, about to undress, I feel better already, okay, she is undressing, removing last garment possible... and silly me, seasoned to realism, open fractures, blood and guts... expecting to see a tiny little bit of otherwise shapely acress' body... ah silly me... no realism here.. all we will see is standard issue bra and nothing more, because:
2.1. Blood, open fractures and guts, is good for you
2.2. Women breasts, is bad for you

And this happens over and over and everybody just whistles and pretends all is good and does not care and instead of having a realistic realistic tv, we have half realistic tv, and for other half we must all hide and sneak into wast expanses of silly and often extreme fields of what is referred to as porn...