Your argument is sound, but there are exceptions. At home I have a PC hooked directly into the TV via HDMI, playing 5.1 (not 7.1) natively. No 24" monitor. The girlfriend plays World of Warcraft on it when she doesn't want to bring out the lappy. 1920x1080 resolution, nice fast graphics, and a wireless keyboard and mouse to drive it all. Granted, consoles are a LOT easier, as in "plug and play", and setting up the PC does take a while, and for most things a PC is overkill for a home TV, but it can be done, and isn't that difficult. That doesn't stop us from having a PS3 plugged in, which does everything the PC does, but is just easier (and faster to boot). The PS3 is sexy, and "just works", the PC is big, heavy, ugly and doesn't quite fit behind the TV. However, for some people, plugging a PC into a TV is the "norm".

Which is why I'm getting paid more and more to do assembly... People might think that they don't need it, but sometimes, you can't let a compiler do things for you, there are things that even might C cannot do. Activate a cache on an ARM, shave off a few microseconds on an interrupt... This is something that we are forgetting, and it is a shame, since sooner or later, everything runs as assembly. It would terrify me to do work on a mobile phone or on an embedded device and not know exactly what is happening. When things go wrong, plug in a JTAG debugger and look. Now when I see young engineers come in, there are 2 categories. Either they don't know assembly, but they are curious, and willing to learn, or they don't know assembly, and really don't care. Either way, low level debugging jobs arrive in my inbox directly.

I knew somebody with that; he could read words, like just about anyone, but each letter had a colour. Fill a whitebord with hundreds of letter "O"s, and add one Q, and he could find it instantly, it was the letter that was a different colour from the rest. His parents remember him saying "Hey, I didn't know you could change the colour of F, just by adding a line!" (i.e. turning it into E). That was their wake up call, and he was diagnosed with synaesthesia a few weeks later.

Great. Now future cars are going to be sold as having x rat-power, instead of x horse-power...

In France, everything goes through the Internet line. I have a white box at home with SFR written on it; I plug my TV into it, my phone and my computers. I pay about 35 Euros a month for unlimited national phone calls, about 40 channels and unlimited Internet, basically as fast as my line will allow it (which comes to about 8Mbit/s). There are no download quotas, no surprises, nothing. You pay to get connected, and that is how it goes. I can only imagine how much data gets transferred, between normal use, uploading/downloading files for work, listening to icecast all day long, downloading games via Impulse or Steam, watching the TV, listening to the gf spend hours on the phone with her sister and parents... No-one in France is charging additional fees, except for 3G Internet access, and even then, some of them are unlimited.

It isn't only about the engines; BA 009 did suffer engine failure over 20 years ago, and they managed to restart all their engines and land, but the incident didn't stop at the engines. On final approach, they also found out that they could hardly see outside. Once they landed (doing an instrument landing), they also found out that all the attack surfaces had been sandblasted; the wings, the tail, but also the windshield. Flying through microscopic particles of stone or glass isn't just a danger for the engines.

Technically, end users are told not to install firmware upgrades unless told to by a representative, to correct existing problems or dangers. Ok, so most geeks don't hesitate to flash mainboard BIOS chips, and in the worst case, the mainboard boots up form a secondary BIOS to reflash the primary. The point is, mainboard updates are there to correct small issues; memory latency, support for newer CPUs, etc etc. Most of the time, a firmware "bug" will just cause minor annoyances. A firmware "bug" on a car is, potentially, a killer. I know, I'm going to extremes, but the aeronautics industry has a different view on firmware updates. If a bug is found, if a new firmware comes out (passing all the tests), they flash it, end of story. If I were in the same situation, I'd accept any firmware update that comes from a manufacturer that affects critical components. If it only affects the CD player or the wipers, I wouldn't bother, but if it affected the brake pedal, I'd personally go for it. Yes, there are risks, but I still have confidence in a computer flying me with humans "suggesting" actions to a computer every time I fly an Airbus.

In France, you'll find contracts talking about speed, but everything will say "up to". My home line goes "up to" 8Mbit/s, but it more around 6. A friend has a 100Mbit/s connection, but he seems to peak at about 35-40. There is actually relatively little difference in price between different offers; most go for a flat fee of around 35 Euros a month for unlimited Internet (up to 8, 18 or x Mbit/s), unlimited national phone calls via VoIP, and free TV via ADSL. If I get the full 8 as advertised, well, great! I get 6, and I pay the same fee. However, if it goes radically under that, like 1Mbit/s our even 512k, then they do lower their prices. Here, we pay to get connected, not for speed. Speed is just luck, somehow.

I used to be an iPhone dev too, but I've completely given in. XCode is beautiful, working on MacOS X is a dream, iPhones are incredible, but I really, really hate it when a control freak sends me back my application because an icon is a few pixels to the left than what they were expecting. The Apple iPhone Guidelines isn't a guideline, it's a Bible, and any transgression is immediately punished by sending the app back with a fat "No" written on the email. I've had apps refused for graphical problems (i.e. they didn't like my icon), for too much functionality (i.e. One application should do only one thing, and do it well) even though the extra functionality can be defended and explained as "necessary". So I quit my job, and I'm back doing embedded Linux projects. I still have an iPhone, but with the recent events concerning Google and Apple, quite honestly I've given in and I'm looking for a new phone. As for iPhone development, I've had job offers, and I've refused every single one. Apple development is history as far as I'm concerned.