Networked sensors, actuators, and communication devices have been shown to be of value all sorts of applications. Thank god for the visionaries and dreamers that try to make a new reality instead of always looking backwards.

Sure, technologies that change society always get over-hyped at some point before reality bring everything crashing back down, but then the technology adoption will move forward on a more sustainable trajectory.

And... cities should care about and support their innovators if they want to grow their city to attract new businesses and start new companies.

I think that it was more than just marketing. Prior to Arduino, it as hard to get started in working with microcontrollers. Almost every manufacturer focused their products on already trained engineers. Arduino, from the beginning was primarily targeted toward learning for beginners.
1. Arduino was cheap
2. Arduino did not require specialty hardware for programming
3. The IDE was free, cross platform, and worked out of the box without any complicated set up.
4. They focused on lots of accessible documentation and learning material.

Now that Arduino has been successful, everybody else has jumped on the bandwagon and in many ways have developed superior ecosystems. But I credit Arduino for being the trailblazer. I have recently reallly been into MBED and Spark Core, but I doubt that those systems would exist as they are today had it not been for the creators of Arduino.

I think a lot of IoT implementation have that idea of a central server. There is nothing wrong with it, but even then, IP still comes in handy because so many integration issues are already solved. For instance, there are existing IETF protocols for device discovery currently used for devices like printers that would work well for other devices as well.

I had no idea that this was part of uPnP. Scary.

Vegetables are good for us.
In fact, I like eating most vegetables.
But if I want a peach pie, I should be able to go the grocery and just purchase the peaches, flour, and sugar that I need. I do not want someone to force me to buy broccoli along with my peach pie ingredients. That does not mean that I will never by broccoli in the future. But right now, I just want a peach pie.

So from what I gather, your coworkers have degrees, most likely took humanities classes to get those degrees, and it did not seem to do a whole lot of good. So who is benefiting from them paying for those humanities classes?

A single engineer approved a part change from a subcontractor. This probably happens daily on these vehicles. The delphi engineers probably thought that they were just improving the reliability of their ignition component and probably do not have insight into any safety critical functions that it plays when integrated with the larger vehicle. The GM engineer was in the best position to see how ignition reliability would effect safety, but even then I would not describe it as obvious. The faulty ignition switch may have been determined to be the root cause of the problem, but there were a number of other causal factors in these deaths. From what I have read, it appears that GM was made aware that they had a reliability issue, but nobody put it together that this could ultimately result in a failure of the safety systems. There have been many cases where known safety issues are intentionally swept under the rug, but this one appears to be an honest engineering mistake.

It was Delphi that changed the part and kept the same part number. GM was notified and approved the change. This happens all of the time with sub contractors and it is not usually done as some sort of scandalous cover up. It is usually done to reduce the costs of the part change by avoiding having to change instruction manuals, catalogs, drawings, diagrams, inventory systems, etc...

There are standards in place (or at least in mature draft form), but I agree with your general sentiment.Those predicting that we will see an overnight transformation (I think Cisco predicted $14 Trillion in value creation of the next 10 years?) are probably not being realistic. Bridging Bluetooth-LE to the internet - see IETF draft spec for 6LoWPAN for BTLE (6LoWPAN = IPv6 for low power personal area networks). Wifi works in some use cases. If the device only connect once every 10 mins, then it does not consume a lot of power to cycle on the wifi, perform transfers, and then cycle off. When it comes to low power wireless, duty cycling is pretty much the key. Technologies like BTLE just have built in duty cycling and with Wifi or 802.15.4 you have to manage it via the software. Networking companies like Cisco are already moving in the direction of directly integrating 6LoWPAN 802.15.4 radios into industrial Wifi access points, so that is how I see this playing out on the consumer side as well. Its not like your 802.11 router has only a single radio anyhow, so if a router also shipped with an 802.15.4 radio + 6LoWPAN bridge, then having low power IP is feasible.

Authentication and Security are the two really big issues that will have to be tackled.

I agree that NSA employees should not be killed. But those that have abused this system should face justice if they have violated the law. We have at this point, irrefutable proof the James Clapper committed perjury. We know that other crimes have been committed within the NSA, an investigation needs to identify the parties responsible and they need to be brought to justice. It is also clear that there is rampant fraud, waste, and abuse in the forms of programs that have no value to US citizens and only serve to increase the power of the intelligence community. Those programs need to be shut down along with appropriate reductions in force.

The same could be said for attacking other nations. You may not care about the citizens of other countries, but our actions toward them have ramifications. Sometime in the form of blowback, sometimes in the form of direct cost to the tax payers. Right now, most of the NSA work appears to be motivated by politics or the hopes of the intelligence community to justify their own existence by getting lucky enough to stop a terror attack. The intelligence gathering arm is failing to produce anything of value and the cyber attack arm has cost the US a great deal of value by hurting many companies and giving every other country in the world the justfication needed to conduct cyber attacks against us. Our infrastructure is more vulnerable than ever to cyber attack, and the government agency that should be making sure our networks are secure is putting us all at greater risk, and for no apparent benefit.

It may be the NSA's job to spy on foreign goverments, but there has to be form of rationale behind it. It is good to have the capability when there is a need, but right now, it seems that the NSA's actions are not tied in any way to the needs of this countries citizens. Most of the spying appears to be politically motivated and done for the benefit of persons/politicians/companies that are part of the intelligence community. As far as economics go, who determines where the economic interests of the citizens lie? Should the NSA spy on BP for Exxon? Which companies employs more US citizens? does it matter that Exxon is headquartered in the US? In an era of huge multi-national companies, how can anybody make an unbiased decision on which "freind" should be subject to spying and which "freind" should receive a direct benefit?

The only way the the spying machine can function and provide value for the tax payers is if it is restrained with the correct set of checks and balances, transparency, and oversight.

I still think it is a stretch to characterize DDOS as computer hacking or whatever other legal term they are using that puts it on par with spreading malicious software and other things that involve defeating security measures and stealing data. Technically, these DDOS relies on the workings of the internet and if a company relies on the workings of the internet for its business, then angry DDOSers, are part of the cost of doing business on the internet. The government should not be involved in deciding what type of traffic is allowed or unallowed over these telecommunications networks.

Except you could have sued the phone company if Congress had not passed a retro-active law that stripped citizens of their rights to do so.

I think that they will need to repeal a lot more than just the Patriot Act at this point. Besides, it is not like operating outside the law has detered these organizations in the past. The only solution is to accept that no government office should be above scrutiny.