That's like complimenting the milkman on his diet because "his" milk is SO DELICIOUS.

The artists make the art. The cable/tv companies only deliver it to you. The internet has made delivery trivial. Cut out the middle-men, pay the artists more.

Slightly OT in that I'm getting away from the Apple-ness of the topic, but...

This is precisely why smart phones and pads are going to return us to the days of $2000 hard drives and $5000 PCs. The general population has needed to buy a PC or laptop in order to not be left behind in our increasingly computerized and online society. Now that the average person has access to surfing the web, reading email, and anything other than compute-intensive work in the palm of their hand, there is absolutely no need for them to buy desktops or laptops. The commodity surge of desktops and laptops is now passing us by, and we're going to see general purpose computing return to non-commodity prices.

To quote Samuel L. Jackson, "Hold on to your butts!"

Not everything marketed as an SUV is a true 4x4.

If you are thinking 4x4, I had a notion once to take an original humvee and outfit it with these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_hub_motor
Rip out the entire drive train, save a hug amount of weight, or replace it all with batteries for distance, and build in a computer drive system that could do a great job of detecting the torque of each wheel so that the power goes where it needs to. Should have better clearance, too.

[...] yet whenever the Lumia handsets are reviewed in the mainstream press they are often highly praised.

References?

And by 'squatter' you mean 'facade':

From http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Donuts:

In June 5, 2012, Donuts announced that the company submitted applications for 307 generic top level domain names (gTLD) with different character sets to ICANN's New gTLD Program and secured $100 million capital from multi-billion dollar private equity and venture funds. [2]

[...]

The company signed a strategic partnership with Demand Media in pursuit of certain gTLDs. According to a press statement, under the agreement, Demand Media has the right to acquire some of the approved gTLDs applied for by Donuts. [6] Furthermore, Demand Media Europe Limited, will serve back-end registry service provider for Donuts. The registry provider is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Demand Media.[7]

From http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Demand_Media:

Demand owns eNom, the world's second largest domain registrar. Recently, Demand and eNom came under fire from ICANN, as Internet security group HostExploit reported that eNom is host to an unusually large number of malicious websites and is a preferred domain name registrar for pharmaceutical spammers.[4]

Anyone get .swirlingthedrain yet? Do the morons at ICANN understand the train wreck they're steering the internet toward, or have they simply been bought out?

The problem with texting and driving isn't the texting; it's the driving. NPR had a guest on the other week who made the point that the upcoming generation is going to see driving as a huge waste of time and likely let their cars fall by the wayside in favor of mass transit.

Just because the last couple of generations of Americans have had it ingrained in our psyche that car ownership is the epitome of our identity, doesn't mean that every generation will drink that Kool-Aid. Their Kool-Aid is always-on, always-connected, and much more interesting than staring at someone else's bumper stickers in stop-and-go traffic for a couple of hours every day.

Who decides what is 'suspicious'?

The really insidious part is this:

[...] help the police apprehend criminals based on foreknowledge [...]

If they haven't committed a crime yet, they're not yet a criminal. Period.

It's more than a bit concerning that the most flexible, agile, and innovative part of the economy is the military.

Any one else think we need CARPA - the Civilian Advanced Research Project Agency? Preferably one that has nothing to do with the government.