I wonder if that can be called a trojan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Makuka_Nkoloso

I don't think long lifespans are a necessity.. you can reproduce in flight and train the newer generation enroute..

and the people who win these contests happen to be very good programmers, so, all in all its a great way to find talent.

Don't you think a programmer who can churn out working code in a short span can do "properly engineered code" when the need arises? In coding contests, speed is important, it is the "goal" hence there is no need to "engineer" it properly. It just needs to work. A guy who actually "engineers" it for sake of robustness, readability, etc in a coding contest has lost track of the goals of the contest and would be more of an idealist than a practical man. The sort of people who rank high in coding contests are generally very good programmers, very strong in algorithms, pragmatic and fast. I would take them any day.

If you RTFA, the guy who actually discovered it torrented the dataset.

I don't know why people upgrade to 8gb RAM. I've a 4gb ram and my os hardly used 50% of it. I've a swap of 8gb which is never used. I don't know what kind of applications you run to need 8gb of ram; video editing, big games?

The high temperatures is produced not by things getting compressed, but because breaking bonds between a pair of entangled particles is highly exothermic. Also Polchinski says things get burned at event horizon, not compressed.

The one you're in

All the features in pebble + touch screen interface (those buttons look so hard). A colour screen would be nice too (if it doesn't affect battery life).

you couldn't hire one engineer for 10k let alone team of engineers.. anyway those are the kind of people who buy stuff because of the price not because of functionality

thats not correct.. all the rover does by itself is keep itself in operational condition (maintaining temp., etc), all other stuff like operating instruments, driving, etc is performed by sending commands through radio. http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/rover/brains/

What a fucking waste of money

Also cuts sales volume. If someone tells me there are lots of counterfeits that look almost like original, I'd stop buying.