So they copied look and feel. Are there any patent-worthy inventions involved?

Patents are supposed to protect inventions, not megacorps that happen to be butthurt.

Well, when I was a 5-6 years old child, we used to have -20 C (-4 F) every frigging winter morning, and +24 C in the summer. As of late it became -5C in winter and +35 C in summer. I don't need nobody's propaganda to tell the difference, and I am not alone. You can ask ski resourt owners about receding snow line, or use the new shipping lane Canada to Russia via the North pole. How about you educate yourself first?

Let's break down the variable costs of your soap dish example (assuming the soap dish factory in China already built and 3d printer purchased)

3D printer costs:
- 20 minutes of time my to find the design, boot printer and spit the item out.
- Monetary cost: feeding in raw plastic and electricity should be negligibly cheap.

Mass-produced costs:
- Spitting it out of factory is negligibly cheap.
- Soap dish is loaded onto a giant container ship going from China, still cheap
- Somali ransom, let's assume it's still profitable
- Loaded onto trucks and shuttled around the country.
- Sit on the shelves of a dollar store for half a year.
After that 60% of still unsold soap dishes go to landfill. This is where the real costs of mass production kick in. Shelf space aint cheap. Landfill is still free, but it should not be.
- 20 minutes of my time to go to the store that has those in stock, of the kind that I like.
- $5 paid for the super-efficient mass-produced, tankered from China, trucked from New Jersey, collected dust on a shelf for half a year. Where is your efficiency now?

WinXP had to be forcibly retired eons ago because seniors tend to solve problems by clicking on everything, and that how he installed too many toolbars and rootkits. Switch to ubuntu+gnome2 was fairly painless.

Most of the stuff that was made in US is now made in China. What still is made in US does not carry the quality stamp anymore. I will take "made in Germany" over "made in US" without hesitation, all the while Germans enjoy over one month of vacation. All that is left of US superiority is either projecting our military power or Imaginary Property laws across the world.

Mass media propaganda machine is also one of the best, but sady we cannot export that.

So you suggest we honk to indicate that we don't tolerate behaviour? Like a teaching tool? I am afraid that is the problem they have in India -- everyone is a teacher, no students left.

There is a very safe one, it's called brakes. (unless you are tailgating).
When someone is shifting into your lane you can either honk or dodge. Unfortunately shifting into my lane happens so often here I just gave up and accepted it as part of life. Moreover, if you drive in Manhattan -- there are no lanes. Traffic weaves in and out around obstacles, like a snake.

Video on Demand stopped working on Linux some time last year. It is possible that the main culprit is Adobe, who stopped updating Flash on Linux. So my only option for Flash is now Google Chrome browser, that has its own interpreter. Unfortunately, Amazon vide is broken there as well. And the worst part? I cannot teminate my Prime until next year.

It is pure optimisation, actually. If you dangerously cut me off I can a) give way at the cost of 0.5 seconds of my time or b) slam that accelerator, which will result in either you reconsidering your driving habits or clipping a mirror and a body panel it is attached to. Given that you aready indicated a lack of mental capacity, there is a fat chance of spending the next hour waiting for police in your company.

... to stay on topic, I can also honk and be flipped a bird in exchange -- a mutual understanding, which will flow into a pleasant conversation and invitation for a dinner while we pick up lost bumpers and sidings off the highway.

Although I can imagine that driving in NYC is not a bad as India, the traffic gets pretty busy here. My driving algorithm is as follows:
1. Aways yeld to idiots and jackasses.
2. Maneuver to avoid accidents, honking does not help much.

Very seldom, if someone fell asleep at the traffick light, I give it a very short blip.

If all horns were uninstalled tomorrow we would not loose much. Now let's discuss sirens and light pollution.

Ridiculous premise is ridiculous.

I am reading your post on a 47" display (a repurposed TV). It feels all right. All you need to do is adjust your notion of a "reasonable distance".

My phone has 1920x1080. Everything + a video card fits in 8 mm thickness. Surely a 40 lb desktop should manage 4x more pixels?

This has been done before. Also like this

C-x M-x M-butterfly

That and the fact that Win8 phone is a buggy unmaintained and short-lived crap.