Even if you can't afford to buy that new car, the people who make that car still want to make you think it is a good car. After all, if you can't afford a brand new Lexus (or Camry for that matter), you might still consider buying one used, and that supports the market for the guy who is considering trading his 4 year old Lexus for a newer one. On another level, continued advertising to current customers, (like the guy who just brought the new Lexus) reassures them that they made a good decision, and makes it more likely the customer will present a positive image of the brand to those around him. That kind of word of mouth advertising is the most valuable form of advertising there is, the loss of positive word of mouth advertising in a competitive marketplace can be the kiss of death in some cases.

Advertising is not only about getting you to buy more stuff, it can also be about getting you to buy them as well. A lot of the PR and advertising related to Tech Companies is about burnishing a corporate image to impress potential investors to make new or continued investments into a company. Many of the big defense contractors, agribusinesses like ADM, oil companies, and even large consumer product companies like Coca-Cola and Proctor and Gamble advertise in this way to look attractive to investors, or to lobby for legislation favorable to their company's interests.

Amen Brother!!

I really wish this discussion would take a more serious tone than boning sheep!

I was involved in a serious car accident last May (I was the front seat passenger and the other driver was at fault), and which resulted in a compound fracture of my Tibia and Fibula. I spent 2 weeks in a trauma center followed by 3 weeks in a rehabilitation hospital, followed by months of physical therapy, and now wound care (the force of the impact ripped the front of my leg open). My most recent X-rays show incomplete healing of the Fibula, even after 8 months. While poor circulation in my legs is part of the reason I am slow to heal, even under the best of circumstances a fracture like this will result in several months of disability. Electrical stimulation is probably the next step, but orthopedic medicine in its current state doesn't have much more to offer me, and I certainly don't want to go back under the knife again if I can avoid it. Here is hoping they can bring it into the mainstream soon!!

That is, hit Play on your music source when the lion roars for the third time.

When the Lion roars for the third time.
NASA needs to do a story about Jupiter and monoliths now.

IDK, 50 million downloads at a buck apiece is quite a chunk of change, and will more than pay for the development costs and bandwidth to distribute it. The rest is gravy.

I wouldn't say that Electric Car development was at a standstill for oh those many decades between the end of the 19th century and the 1990s. Development of the Technology for electric cars has continued, the power electronics that goes into today's electric cars is closely related to that used in forklifts, golf carts, and other industrial vehicles that have been widely deployed for decades. Batteries have always been the limiting factor for developing an electric car that can compete with the range and duty cycle of an ICE powered vehicle. The development of Lithium batteries for electronic devices with several times the power density of previous Lead-Acid, Nickel-Cadmium, and Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries has brought us closer to a practical electric vehicle, but we are not quite there yet. Yes you can go a hundred miles or so with your 800 pound battery pack (if you go easy on the lights and A/C or heater) instead of 25-40 in the EV1 days, but the hard facts are that 110 pounds, or about 15 gallons of medium chain liquid hydrocarbon fuel (gasoline) in the fuel tank of my Accord will take me about 450 miles on the open highway, and 375 miles in rush hour traffic, with the headlights on, and the heater, wipers, and the stereo all going full blast. I don't want to have to worry about running the battery down if I have to take an extra service call, or have to buck a 30 mph headwind on the way home. If the electrics can deliver even a 250 mile range, that would go a long way toward making them a viable alternative to the ICE.

There is sort of a standard, and you can buy a "universal" remote at the local Wal-Mart or even CVS. The problem with Universal remotes is that they only support a limited number of features on each device. I'm with you bro, I have 4 remotes to control my patchwork home theater. My remote for the Cable Box has functions for the TV, but not my newer Blu-Ray player, and only limited functionality on the TV. I can manage to get a few functions to work on my 5.1 receiver. My TV remote has no functions for the cable box or receiver, never mind the new Blu-Ray player, and the Blu-Ray remote can control part of the TV, but not the receiver or cable box, and so on and so on....

I just gave up and dedicated a side table next to my recliner for the remotes.

In addition to my personal smart phone, laptop, desktop, I support numerous embedded systems in the course of my work. Many of the machines I work on have full on PCs to interface with the user, and they use combinations of keypads, mice, touchscreens, and regular old keyboards, and some have more than 1 PC. All of the machines with full on PCs have keyboards, in addition to the touchscreens mice, and keypads. Other machines have a somewhat simpler interface, using an LCD display and keypads with 4 Arrow keys, plus Start, Stop, Enter, and Cancel. At my largest site, there are 14 full on PCs, plus 8 machines with LCD Displays and Keypads only. Once I leave there, I am dispatched to similar venues via my Smart Phone, so it isn't uncommon for me to get my hands on up to 20 computers in a day.

Dire predictions on Friday for the areas west of the I-95 corridor of up to 7 inches of White Death from Above prompted me to get my snow tractor (an ancient Cub Cadet with a blade) ready to go, so I spent Friday evening wrestling and bolting on the plow, then strapping a set of rusty tire chains onto my spare set of wheels, then discovering that the battery was dead. I got it all together, and with a battery borrowed from my sprayer, I made a victory lap Saturday afternoon, pushing almost an inch of quickly melting snow aside. Hopefully the mere presence of this fearsome snow-fighter will divert the weather patterns and push the heavy stuff up into the mountains of Pennsylvania, and leave the roads of Central Maryland bare. Such seemed to happen for several years after I traded my old 2wd pickup for a 4 wheel drive in 2005. For several years afterward, I had little need for the 4wd feature, but my luck ran out in 2010, with about six feet of snow falling that winter.

As a typical worker bee who maintains such labor saving machinery in a large metropolitan area, I don't believe that increasing leisure time by having shorter work days is the best answer. As a typical worker bee, I get up, and typically spend an hour each way commuting on overcrowded roads to get to my worksite, so if I work 8 hours a day/5 days a week I am devoting 50 hours a week to my job. If my workday was cut to 3 hours, I would still devote 25 hours a week to the job, just half of the time as I originally spent. Now if I worked the same 15 hours over 2- 7.5 hour days, I would only have to devote 19 hours a week to my job. Of course, customers would still often demand full-time availability, but that could create an opportunity for someone else to work the other shift or shifts. Unfortunately, with the cost of payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, healthcare, and so on, its a safe bet that most employers would still rather have just one guy working that 40 hour week.

Another consideration of the human factor is productivity over the course of the day. Unless you are a line worker, cashier, or the like, it takes a while to get oriented to the day's tasks and gather the information, tools, parts, or supplies to efficiently do what needs to be done, and at the end of the day to put things away, finish administrative tasks, and get ready to leave. 8 hours a day seems to offer the largest sweet spot of peak productivity, much less you spend too much time commuting, setting up work, and cleaning up afterwards. Think about shop class in junior high, (I may be showing my age talking about shop class) you had a 50 minute period to try to get something accomplished, and you spent 5 or 10 minutes listening to the teacher explain the task for the day, another 5 or 10 minutes gathering the stuff you'll need for the job, and the last 10 minutes to clean up. You'll be lucky to actually spend more than 20 minutes working on the project.