The "average" person doesn't know the difference between DVI, HDMI, VGA etc. anyway. The only thing that will make it easier for John Q. Average is less wires period.

yea, and that fat guy goofing around with a kite and a key in a thunderstorm was totally wasting everyone's time too.

Or do people who would agree to something like having their brains zapped have a different sense of morality in the first place?

People generally neglect the fact that humans can perform amazing calculations nearly instantaneously. Take for example catching a thrown baseball - you brain can very quickly calculate where you need to put your glove to catch the ball, including variations caused by wind, ball rotation, variations in terrain, etc. Creating an AI that could properly take in all the inputs necessary to calculate the flight path of the ball is pretty difficult - add in the calculations required to move a human body and attached glove to the appropriate place at the appropriate time across variable terrain....... Humans (hell even dogs in this example) are more impressive than you might think.

"..it will open up application domains where current IT does not offer any solutions - controlling molecular robots, fine-grained control of chemical assembly, and intelligent drugs that process the chemical signals of the human body and act according to the local biochemical state of the cell." Interesting possibilities abound when you have microscopic computers running around our bodies. Where will we buy the vaccines? Pfizer or Symantec?

Balancing for PVP vs. PVE wouldn't be an issue if they made the AI sufficient that PVE mimics PVP. EVE has started this direction with "sleeper" npcs in w-space. Eventually someone will get to a point where NPCs foes aren't easily discernible from players foes - hopefully then the whole PVP vs PVE nonsense will settle to a dull roar.

So being concerned about the equipment I use to carry around a $5000 laptop is douchebagery? And I bet all of these haters drive Hyundais and dismiss anything more expensive as extravagant douchebagery as well?

I work for a pretty big company, and I know that our quotas/targets for 2008 (that were set back in 2007) were set without any consideration of a possible recession. So mid/end year we were slashing budget expenses to try and meet our profit goals. Now that it's 2009, I have a new budget to spend and I'm less worried about meeting my year end goals(hopefully no huge surprises in 2009). I think it's to early to say that people are "reinvesting" - companies just have fresh budgets to spend.