Eragon, The Golden Compass, The Last Airbender, Divergent Series . . . that's without trying too hard.

If you're wanting to create an archive of messages that the kids can play back whenever they want Plex may be a good solution. You have playback apps for almost any platform, remote access with a plex pass account. The downside is the kids will struggle to leave messages for dad, but for Dad it should be easy to record messages and remotely drop them in the library folder.

. . . and (s)he is a computer scientist.

I think Doctor Who stands out these days for not having a female martial arts specialist who would blow over in a strong wind as the main character. I know, gross over-generalisation, but still . . .

Is it possible to create a company for your product, but you personally retain ownership of the product/patent/idea/whatever it is you have and license it to the company so that if the company should fail you are protected from loosing it? Could you give your marketing partner some sort of stock options based on performance, so if they do nothing, they get nothing? I really have no idea how this sort of thing works, so I thought I'd just throw ideas.

Isn't this the point where we blame video games? Or maybe just the fact that the current generation of law enforcement grew up with Lethal Weapon and Die Hard?

I guess you don't remember the days of dismantling your mouse to clean it every so often because it gunked up and failed to respond. Still happens to me occasionally with optical/laser mice when a bit of dirt covers the sensor or gets on the mat and it doesn't quite behave the way I would expect. Eye tracking may not be there yet, but just like mice the tech will develop and it will have it's uses, especially when pretty much every laptop already comes with a built-in camera, it'll (eventually) be an extra input that only requires software.

There are road signs telling you what speed you can drive at, which vehicles are allowed to use the road and which direction you are allowed to travel, not to mention police and cameras watching the roads to try to catch people breaking the rules. And while you may find a road that isn't being watched very closely, when you start to get a lot of people breaking the rules on that road you can be sure the cameras will go up and the police will start patrolling it.

Huge fuss over nothing. Tell Microsoft they have to remove IE from Windows when Apple allow Safari to be removed from iOS devices

But releasing the product specs, giving reviewers a chance to look at all the shiney new toys for free are also forms of advertising. The information you are basing your decisions on is out there thanks to some marketing department.

Would love to see a similar cost-benefit analysis done on the 'essential' security measures we need to combat terrorism.