That's a lot of damn bugs. How does one go about breeding 20 million mosquitoes? Maybe more importantly, how do you separate out the ladies from the gents?
A number of manufacturers officially consider this 'normal', meaning that they won't fix it under warranty unless it burns more than a quart per month. I know for a fact this is BMW's policy as well.
I don't need a button to order new detergent, but I imagine it would be quite easy to intercept the signal from these devices and cause some other action. Close the garage door, turn down the lights in your home theater, set the thermostat back a few degrees when you go to sleep, etc.
Amazon doesn't seem like the type of company to negotiate exclusive (restrictive) deals like this. I'd bet that they decided to use a GSM radio in the phone, which will work around the world. Verizon and Sprint use a CDMA network that pretty much only exists in the US. Sometimes we tend to forget that the US only makes up 5% of the world's population.
You missed a few digits there. Google is getting 1.8 million (with an m) per year. They paid 12.5 billion (with a b) for Motorola. That puts the payback period at 7,000 years, which methinks is a little long.
It drives me crazy- my kids have several java-based websites they are required to use for school. I'm not too worried if their laptops get borked- there's nothing of value on them. When the nasties spread across the network to my PC and my server, I've got real problems. What do I do besides complain to the school?