Obligatory "Real Genius" reference. "Your mother puts license plates on your underwear? How do you sit?"

AFAIK, Edison isn't an ARM architecture. Not sure if that's going to be a long-term problem but what they do have going for them is the integrated wireless functionality. This has been a personal beef of mine for embedded single-board computers. Wifi was always an afterthought. You had to use a goofy USB dongle which doesn't lend itself well to a rough-service product. Technologic Systems TS-4900 addresses this in spades. I do want to know how long the Edison takes to boot because anything more than 10 seconds on a product with no display makes people think it's not working. And to be a true appliance, an actual power switch to turn it off without a graceful shutdown is essential.

For those of you old enough to remember a time before Apple had their own stores, the Apple fan would go into most electronics stores and be lucky to find an Apple-related product. Finally, Apple basically told the Cramp-USA's of the world to take a hike and opened their own stores where people could go to get an untainted look at Macs, iPods, etc. The plan worked like a charm. IMHO, Tesla is looking at the market and the fact that many car dealers have multiple brands under the same corporate umbrella and they know they're not going to get the attention they need. Tesla wants a stage that they don't have to share with other cars or even fight for a share of the sales staff.

Why isn't that whole code base in plain C/C++? Aside from hardware layers, it would seem that the higher lever functionality shouldn't be tied to a specific processor.

A few days ago, a new ant-sized radio was announced. Couple this fingerprint tech with tiny radios and the "internet of things" and eventually, some government server will have to authorize the firing of the weapon. Right now, the NICS computers, you know, the ones that are supposed to do those oh-so-important instant background checks, go down at unscheduled times and for indeterminate periods of time for no published reason. Do you really think a permission-based firearm will work when you need it? Add this one to your net neutrality arguments.

will be Faraday cages.

And while I have your attention, maybe a tweeting toilet is intended as a commentary on Twitter in general as in everything that's on that site is worthless crap.

Did they look at the CVs of those 100,000 people? How many of them were PhDs? How many were prolific inventors? How many where self-made *gasp* one-percenters?

Given that governments usually buy the crappiest software out there, this will be easily cracked. Not that I'm suggesting people do this, mind you.

How much bandwidth do you need for a family of four to stream four separate HD movies simultaneously? That would seem to be a practical threshold above which there isn't much benefit. I'd opine then that streaming one movie would be the minimum to call it broadband.

I've always heard that it was six pounds. It's funnier because the bag might survive or it might break but you won't know when or where.

Yup. People are putting up with all that security theater, too. Even first class on some airlines has less to offer beyond a big seat. IIRC, USAir had no inflight entertainment on a Phoenix to JFK trip.

I would bet that there is money involved in this somewhere. Just as every other regulatory agency, they need money to operate. Further, they continually need to justify their existence. Technology can't be uninvented. Picture this: A small group of UAV companies need to make money and keep making money without the fear of Joe-schmo and his home-built UAV cutting in on their territory. The formal companies get together and hire a few lobbyists to convince the FAA that the home-built UAV is dangerous and needs to be regulated in the form of expensive annual certifications. The companies that could afford the lobbyists can also easily afford the annual license fees. The little guy can't so he's forced to go away. The FAA is happy to have the additional revenue and probably some baksheesh from the lobbyists so they go along with it.

I'm wondering at what point are the consumers going to rebel against all of this. The whole luggage debacle has to be included in this discussion too. First, the airlines decided to start charging for checked baggage. The customers responded by not just switching to carry-ons but finding the biggest carry-on possible and getting one for each of their kids too. Trouble is that overhead storage can't accommodate one of these for every passenger so now the extras have to get checked at the door and they don't get charged for this either. The result is more pissed off customers and departure delays. The real question is why this had to happen in the first place. Was it the additional cost of fuel? Unlikely because fuel costs are directly related to weight and the planes know how much they weigh. Is it then the higher cost of fuel? Maybe but if domestic production of oil has been increasing over the past ten plus years and is now surpassing imports to the point of producers wanting to export, why are the fuel costs still as high as they were ten years ago? Or is it labor costs which never go down?

Which leads us to the seating arrangements. Adding 10 more seats puts another roughly $5000 revenue per flight assuming that the flight is fully booked. Would you be willing to pay an extra $33.33 for one inch of legroom? If people aren't willing to spend $25 to check a bag, $33.33 must make people apoplectic. What would you be willing to give up to bring those costs down and the comfort level up?

If it's taught in the style of Connections, I'm all for it. I absolutely loathed traditional history teaching methods until I saw that series.
If it's revisionist, then screw that noise.

The coffee world is already deep in bed with the organic, fare-trade, square-deal, jump-through-hoops, still-tastes-the-same movement(s). GMO coffee will make these folks lose their excrement in old testament fashion. Should be amusing to watch.