Consider the latest Keurig machines. Some doofus at Keurig decided that only official K-cups will be allowed to use their machines hoping that the public would get used to it and not buy k-cups that aren't compatible thus driving them out of the marketplace at which point they jack up the prices. What's happened though is that the consumer rejected it and the hacker community hacked the machines to work with 3rd party k-cups. It's a bit like Napster was to the long-entrenched record labels who enjoyed being able to sell you 11 crappy songs for 1 good one.

This is how the 3D animation marketplace has been evolving. Autodesk owns the two most popular software products so they can charge more for them. Sure, there are a couple of second-tier tools and some open-source stuff but if you want to work for the major VFX or game companies, you'd better know Maya and/or 3D Studio (not the Pixar's of the world as they write their own stuff).

It's relevant once their egos inflate to offensive proportions. This is the resulting effect of what happens when kids get participation awards. Both suffer from the delusion that their sh*t don't stink.

Personally, I'd like to be able to get royalty payments every time somebody used one of my commercial software programs or one of my hardware devices. Think about it. You spend a few months writing a piece of software and then get paid for it for life. Quite frankly, IMHO, the entire royalty business model is broken because while the original intent may have ensured that the "artists" weren't being taken advantage of, it's gotten so out of control that these "artists" have now been brainwashing into believing that they are oh so much more important than everyone else and that their opinions on things they know nothing about are to be taken seriously.

Tiffany rumored to be forming a new flash mob group called "Al-Shama-lama-ding-dong"

If the bulk of technology dollars were focused on social media, I'd say yes this is a bubble. Social media stocks are wildly overvalued. But that's only a small segment of the tech market these days. Tech is permeating everywhere. What's going to happen is a collateral damage effect from the upcoming FCC Title II ruling, assuming that it stands. Further, there is a steady rise in sub-prime lending for things other than houses e.g. cars and college education. Bubbles form when a market rise is based on bullsh*t and/or "social engineering."

Who cares if somebody rips off somebody else's cellphone case design?

Actually, I'm all for engineers attaining rock star status. Let the bidding begin. Although agents and head hunters will have to actually work for the engineers and not the employers as they do now.

Obviously.

The no night flying restriction is incredibly myopic when it comes to search & rescue operations. As an 8-year veteran of SAR ops, I can tell you that most searches start at night. Why? Because it's only after it gets dark that the reporting party decides that they need help. We never ever delay an initial response for daylight hours. Low-cost FLIR cameras are starting to become available. And I'm certainly not going to submit a flight plan 24 hours in advance. 87% of all searches are resolved in the first 12 hours. For this administration to tie one hand behind our backs is further evidence that Washington knows nothing about what goes on in the real world. I have the same opinion towards the line-of-sight rule. We may need to get eyes on in a remote canyon that we can't see from a decent launch point or it might take several hours to hike up to where we would have line-of-sight.

Granted that this is all supposed to be about commercial flying but try convincing some bureaucrat that SAR ops are not. For evidence I point you towards the recent FAA/Texas Equusearch dust up. Personally, I would enjoy introducing said bureaucrat to the family of a missing 3-yr old with the following words, "Allow me to introduce Mr. Head-up-his-ass who won't allow us to use every tool to find your child."

Suddenly, everyone is an "expert" on the subject finding the "cure" on the internet that somehow managed to escape people who have actually been to medical school.

Here's something that I'm having a hard time figuring out. How is it that this particular Apple team has the time and resources to design and make fancy enclosures for the stuff on the van? Speaking more generally, I've noticed that a lot of companies including ones that aren't that big or are even startups are able to do this too. What's the secret to getting some nice molded plastic enclosure without having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on tooling?

Hmm...that's a new one on me. I've been working in a Yocto embedded environment. I'll have to see if nmcli is part of that distro. At least a curses-based version of wicd works now. You still have to build it though.

Well, at least on commercial platforms there is a front end to configure it. On Linux (sans a GUI), you have to edit files. Or at least you did until wicd was finally updated this past December. It's still a major pain though.

Wifi support in Linux is a mess.

Not really the same thing. Gravity's effects are well known but the causes are not understood, yet you don't see masses of people pretending to understand it demanding that obscene amounts of money be spent in an effort to counter the effects. Then again, if that were the case, we might have flying cars by now or easy access to outer space.