Force of habit. Honestly I'm a little surprised that Slashdot doesn't parse BBcode these days.

I think the term you're looking for is [url=http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later]Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex[/url], which he gave a stern and grave warning about as his last words before he left office.

Speak for yourself. You couldn't pay me to trade my Windows Phone for an iPhone.

Suspension on cars do this automatically, already. That's a big part of the reason we have suspensions on cars. I can't imagine there's that much of a benefit to counter the extra weight and complexity of the system.

Does blender have a greater, lesser or parity feature set compared to RenderMan? That's an important question for the casual user. I use blender quite a bit for 3D modeling for Kerbal Space Program, but if Render Man is better, and has the features I need, then I might look at their free edition. I use blender because it's free and do about 20 hours a year of 3D modeling a year for hobbyist purposes.

What happens to Blender? Will RenderMan have the ability to replace Blender as an all-in-one 3D modeling/sculpting/rigging/animation/rendering engine, or is RenderMan only an animation/rendering engine?

This probably has something to do with the fact that Chromebooks are something like 20% of the new laptop marketshare, Apple commands something like 25 or 30% leaving Windows with 50-60%, whereas Microsoft used to own 90% wholesale of the market. It's a lot harder to replace your old market share with new when you have half of the market presence you did six years ago, and the consumer marketplace is contracting at the same time. Desktop numbers probably look a lot better, but consumers buy laptops 2:1 and enterprise has learned to move from a 3 to a 6 year upgrade cycle.
 
My next laptop is going to be an Android powered laptop or Chromebook with crouton on it, so I can RDP in to work (windows environment). Nothing I do besides games requires Windows these days, and Steam in Home Streaming will probably solve that as well.

What do you think the X-37B is doing up in orbit right now? NOT housing an orbital laser targeting system for ICBMs?

Every decision that Microsoft makes affects nearly every human being in the modern world. Microsoft would not be the company they are today if they made changes with so little consideration.

it will not break any existing Windows functionality

You don't know that. There are much smarter people than you, at Microsoft, who know whether this statement is true or not.

Google just bought Titan Aerospace, which builds and sells solar powered airplanes that can fly for 5 years straight. In theory they would intercept the satellite transmission and then beam the signal down to "the last mile", or in this case last 40,000 ft.

Unless you're watching a Michael Bay film, most dramas etc with indoor, static sets and camea shots will stream 4K just fine. Obviously panning and car chases etc will impact your video quality on a standard American broadband connection.

Football and soccer would look GREAT on an 80 inch 4k TV. It will change how the games are shot, so you can really get a sense of what everybody is doing instead of following the ball so closely.

Football is shot at close angles specifically to tell a narrative; they will not and are required not to show the full field during a play. This is the view that coaches get on a closed loop. It is available to the public, but only 4 hours after the game ends and you have to pay a special subscription to get it.

Netflix? House of Cards and all of their new original series are shot and displayed in 4K if your device and display support it.
 
Also, there's a much higher quality Samsung 4K display for $50 more, that is probably the model you want.

They also brand android software drivers for cell phone and tablet speakerphones.

You have a gadget that pumps ads to you? That's horrible. I would never spend a penny on a device that required me to see advertisements. That's kinda' fucked up.